Agincourt - Bernard Cornwell [8]
Hook held few things dear beyond his brother and whatever affection he felt for whichever girl was in his arms, yet archers were special. Archers were Hook’s heroes. England, for Hook, was not protected by men in shining armor, mounted on trapper-decked horses, but by archers. By ordinary men who built and plowed and made, and who could draw the yew war bow and send an arrow two hundred paces to strike a mark the size of a man’s hand. So Hook looked into the old man’s eyes and he saw, not a heretic, but the pride and strength of an archer. He saw himself. He suddenly knew he would like this old man and that realization checked his hands.
“Nothing you can do about it, boy,” the man said gently. “I fought for the old king and his son wants me dead, so draw the rope tight, boy, draw it tight. And when I’m gone, boy, do something for me.”
Hook gave the curtest of nods. It could either have been an acknowledgment that he had heard the request, or perhaps it was an agreement to do whatever favor the man might request.
“You see the girl praying?” the old man asked. “She’s my granddaughter. Sarah, she’s called, Sarah. Take her away for me. She doesn’t deserve heaven yet, so take her away. You’re young, boy, you’re strong, you can take her away for me.”
How? Hook thought, and he savagely pulled the rope’s bitter end so that the loop constricted about the old man’s neck, and then he jumped off the cart and half slipped in the mud. Snoball and Robert Perrill, who had tied the other nooses, were already off the cart.
“Simple folk, they are,” Sir Martin was saying, “just simple folk, but they think they know better than Mother Church, and so a lesson must be taught so that other simple folk don’t follow them into error. Have no pity for them, because it’s God’s mercy we’re administering! God’s unbounded mercy!”
God’s unbounded mercy was administered by pulling the cart sharply out from under the four men’s feet. They dropped slightly, then jerked and twisted. Hook watched the old man, seeing the broad barrel chest of an archer. The man was choking as his legs drew up, as they trembled and straightened then drew up again, but even in his dying agony he looked with bulging eyes at Hook as though expecting the younger man to snatch his Sarah out of the marketplace. “Do we wait for them to die,” Will Snoball asked Sir Edward, “or pull on their ankles?” Sir Edward seemed not to hear the question. He was distracted again, his eyes unfocused, though he appeared to be staring fixedly at the nearest man tied to the stake. A priest was haranguing the broken-jawed Lollard while a man-at-arms, his face deep shadowed by a helmet, held a flaming torch ready. “I’ll let them swing then, sir,” Snoball said and still got no answer.
“Oh my,” Sir Martin appeared to wake up suddenly and his voice was reverent, the same tone he used in the parish church when he said the mass, “oh my, oh my, oh my. Oh my, just look at that little beauty.” The priest was gazing at Sarah, who had risen from her knees and was staring with a horrified expression at her grandfather’s struggles. “Oh my, God is good,” the priest said reverently.
Nicholas Hook had often wondered what angels looked like. There was a painting of angels on the wall of the village church, but it was a clumsy picture because the angels had blobs for faces and their robes and wings had become yellowed and streaked by the damp that seeped through the nave’s plaster, yet nevertheless Hook understood that angels were creatures of unearthly beauty. He thought their wings must be like a heron’s wings, only much larger, and made of feathers that would shine like the sun glowing through the morning mist. He suspected angels had golden hair and long, very clean robes of the whitest linen. He knew