Agincourt

Hook looked at the retreating figure who wore a bright surcoat of red and white. “No, father, no idea.”

“Geoffrey Chaucer’s son,” the priest said proudly.

“Who?”

“You’ve not heard of Geoffrey Chaucer?” Father Christopher asked. “The poet?”

“Oh, I thought he might be someone useful,” Hook said, then slammed a hand onto the priest’s shoulder and so forced him to crouch. A heartbeat later a crossbow bolt slapped into the muddy back of the trench where Father Christopher had been standing. “That’s Catface,” Hook explained, “he’s useful.”

“Catface?”

“A bastard on the barbican, father. He’s got a face like a polecat. I can see him raise his bow.”

“You can’t shoot him?”

“Twenty paces too far off, father,” Hook said, and peered between two battered wicker baskets filled with disintegrating earth that formed the parapet. He waved, and a figure on the bastion waved back. “I always let him know I’m still living.”

“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 begi

“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 tu

“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 tu

The far end of the tu

Hook listened. A miner coughed. “Shh,” Sir John said.

Sometimes, in the long woods that fell from Lord Slayton’s pastures to the river, Hook would stand quite motionless, just listening. He knew every sound of those trees, whether it was a deer’s hoof-fall, a boar snuffling, a woodpecker drumming, the clack of a raven’s bill as it preened its feathers or just the wind in the leaves, and from those sounds his ear would find the discordant note, the signal that told him a trespasser was prowling the undergrowth. Now he listened in just the same way, ignoring the breathing of the half-dozen men, letting his mind wander, just allowing the silence to fill his head and so alert him to the smallest disturbance. He listened a long time.

“My ears ring all the time,” Sir John whispered, “I think because I’ve got beaten on the helmet with blades too much and…” Hook held up an impatient hand, unaware that he was ordering a Knight of the Garter to silence. Sir John obeyed anyway. Hook listened, heard something and then heard it again. “Someone’s digging,” he said.

“Oh, the bastards,” Sir John said quietly. “Are you sure?”

Now that he had identified the sound Hook was surprised no one else could hear the rhythmic thunk of picks striking chalk. The garrison was making a counter-mine, driving their own tu

“That’s what I thought,” Dafydd ap Traharn said, “but I wasn’t sure. The ears play tricks underground, they do.”

“Busy little bastards, aren’t they?” Sir John said vengefully. He looked at Dafydd ap Traharn. “How far to go?”

“Twenty paces, Sir John, say two days. Another two to make the chamber. One to fill it with incendiaries.”

“They’re still a long way off,” Sir John said. “Maybe they won’t find this tu