Agincourt - Bernard Cornwell [81]
“Polecat,” Father Christopher said musingly. “You know Rob Pole is ill?”
“So’s Fletch. And Dick Godewyne’s wife.”
“Alice? Is she sick too?”
“Horrible, I hear.”
“Rob Pole can’t stop shitting,” the priest said, “and nothing but blood and mucky water comes out.”
“God help us,” Hook said, “Fletch is the same.”
“I’d better start praying,” Father Christopher said earnestly, “we can’t lose men to sickness. Are you feeling well?”
“I am.”
“God be praised for that. And your hand? How’s your hand?”
“It throbs, father,” Hook said, holding up his right hand, which was still bandaged. Melisande had covered the wound with honey, then wrapped it.
“Throbbing is a good sign,” the priest said. He leaned forward and sniffed at the bandage, “and it smells good! Well, it stinks of mud, sweat, and shit, but so do we all. It doesn’t smell rotten, and that’s the important thing. How’s your piss? Is it cloudy? Strong-colored? Feeble?”
“Just normal, father.”
“That’s grand, Hook. We can’t lose you!”
And strange to tell, Hook thought, but he reckoned the priest was telling the truth because he knew he was doing his ventenar’s job well. He had expected to be embarrassed by the small authority, and had feared that some of the older men would deliberately ignore his orders, but if there was any resentment it was muted and his commands were obeyed readily enough. He wore the silver chain with pride.
The weather had turned hot again, baking the mud into a crust that crumbled into fine dust with every footstep. Harfleur crumbled too, yet still the garrison defied the besiegers. The king would come to the archers’ pits four or five times a day and stare at the ramparts. At the beginning of the siege he had chatted with the archers, but now his face was drawn and his lips thin and the archers gave him and his small entourage space. They watched him stare and they could read from his scarred face that he did not think an assault could break through the new inner walls. Any such attack would have to stumble over the ruins of the burned houses, suffer the bolts spitting from the barbican, then cross the great town ditch before climbing the wreckage of the gun-shattered wall and all the time the crossbow bolts would slash in from the flanks, and once across the wall’s ruins the attackers would be faced with the new inner wall that was made from thick baskets of earth, and from balks of timber and stones fetched from the fallen buildings inside the town. “We need another length of wall down,” Hook overheard the king say, “and then we attack instantly into the new breach.”
“Can’t be done, sire,” Sir John Cornewaille said grimly. “This is the only dry approach we’ve got.” The flood waters had receded, but they still ringed much of the town, restricting the English attacks to the two places where the mine shafts were being hacked toward the town.
“Then bring down the barbican,” the king insisted, “and beat the gate beyond into splinters.” He stared, long-nosed and grim-faced, at the stubborn barbican, then suddenly became aware of the anxious archers and men-at-arms watching him. “God didn’t bring us this far to fail!” he shouted confidently. “The town will be ours, fellows, and soon! There will be ale and good food! It will all be ours soon!”
All day the chalk and soil was dragged from the mine shaft while the timbers, cut to a bowstave’s length, were carried inside to support the tunnel. The guns kept up their fire, shrouding the besiegers’ lines with smoke, punching their eardrums with noise, and pounding the already pounded defenses.
“How are your ears?” Sir John greeted Hook on an early September morning.
“My ears, Sir John?”
“Those ugly things on the sides of your head.”
“Nothing wrong with them, Sir John.”
“Then come with me.”
Sir John, his fine armor and surcoat covered in dust, led Hook back through a trench and so to the mine’s entrance beneath the sow. The shaft sloped sharply down for fifteen paces, then the tunnel leveled. It was two paces wide and as high as a bowstave. Rushlights burned