“Yes, Sir John.”

Sir John grinned. “Tell me about the last one? How did you do it?”

“With a knife, Sir John.”

“How! Not what with! How?”

“Ripped his belly, Sir John,” Hook said, “straight up.”

“Did you get your hand wet, Hook?”

“Drenched, Sir John.”

“Wet with a Frenchman’s blood, eh?”

“He was an English knight, Sir John.”

“God damn your bollocks, Hook, but I love you!” Sir John exclaimed. “That’s how you do it!” he shouted at the archers, “you rip their bellies open, shove blades in their eyes, slice their throats, cut off their bollocks, drive swords up their arses, tear out their gullets, gouge their livers, skewer their kidneys, I don’t care how you do it, so long as you kill them! Isn’t that right, Father Christopher?”

“Our Lord and Savior could not have expressed the sentiment more eloquently, Sir John.”

“And next year,” Sir John said, glowering at his archers, “we might be going to war! Our king, God bless him, is the rightful King of France, but the French deny him his throne, and if God is doing what He’s supposed to do then He’ll let us invade France! And if that happens, we will be ready!”

No one was certain if war was coming or not. The French sent ambassadors to King Henry who sent emissaries back to France, and rumors swept England like the winter rains that seethed on the west wind. Sir John, though, was confident there would be war and he made a contract with the king as scores of other men were doing. The contract obliged Sir John to bring thirty men-at-arms and ninety archers to serve the king for twelve months, and in turn the king promised to pay wages to Sir John and his soldiers. The contract had been written in London and Hook was among the ten men who rode to Westminster when Sir John added his signature and pressed his lion seal into a blob of wax. The clerk waited for the wax to harden, then carefully cut the parchment into two unequal parts, not neatly, but zigzagging his blade randomly down the document’s length. He put one ragged part into a white linen bag, and gave the other to Sir John. Now, if anyone doubted the document’s provenance, the two uneven parts could be matched and neither party to the contract could forge the document and expect the forgery to go undiscovered. “The exchequer will advance you monies, Sir John,” the clerk said.

The king was raising money by taxes, by loans, and by pawning his jewels. Sir John received a bag of coins and a second bag that contained loose jewels, a golden brooch, and a heavy silver box. It was not enough to allow Sir John to raise the extra men and to buy the weapons and horses he needed, and so he borrowed more money from an Italian banker in London.

Men, horses, armor, and weapons had to be purchased. Sir John, his pages, squires, and servants needed over fifty horses between them. Each man-at-arms was expected to own at least three horses, including a properly trained destrier for fighting, while Sir John undertook to supply every archer with a riding horse. Hay was needed to feed all the horses and had to be purchased until the spring rains greened the pastures. The men-at-arms provided their own armor and weapons, though Sir John did order a hundred short lances for use by men fighting on foot. He had also equipped his ninety archers with mail coats, helmets, good boots, and a weapon to use in the close-quarter fighting when their bows were no longer useful. “Swords won’t help you much in battle,” he told his archers. “Your enemies will be in plate armor and you can’t cut plate armor with a sword. Use a poleax! Beat the bastards down! Then kneel on the arse-sucking scabs, lift their visors, and put a knife into one of their filthy eyes.”

“Unless they are wealthy,” Father Christopher put in mildly. The priest was the oldest man in Sir John’s company, over forty years old, with a round, cheerful face, a twisted smile, gray hair, and eyes that were both curious and mischievous.

“Unless the arse-licking scab is wealthy,” Sir John agreed, “in which case you take him prisoner and so make me rich!”

Sir John ordered a hundred poleaxes made for his archers. Hook, who knew how to shape wood, helped carve the long ash handles, while blacksmiths forged the heads. One side of each head was a heavy hammer, weighted with lead, which could be used to crush plate armor or, at the very least, knock an armored man off balance. The opposing side was an ax that, in the hands of an archer, could split a helmet as though it were made of parchment, while the head of the ax was a spike thin enough to pierce the slits of a knight’s visor. The upper shaft of each ax was sheathed in iron so an opponent could not cut through the handle. “Beautiful,” Sir John said when the first weapons were delivered. He stroked the iron-clad handle as though it were a woman’s flank. “Just beautiful.”

By late spring the news came that God had done His duty by persuading the king to make an invasion of France and so Sir John’s company marched south on roads lined with the white blossom of hawthorn hedges. Sir John was cheerful, animated by the prospect of war. He rode ahead, followed by his pages, his squire, and a standard-bearer who carried the flag of the crowned red lion with its golden star. Three carts bore provisions, short lances, armor, spare bowstaves, and sheaves of arrows. The road south led through woods that were thickly hazed with bluebells and past fields where the year’s first hay had already been cut and was laid to dry in long rows. Newly shorn sheep looked naked and thin in the meadows. More bands of men joined the road, all horsemen, all in strange livery, and all going toward the south coast where the king had summoned the men who had signed his jaggedly cut contracts. Most of the horsemen, Hook noted, were archers, outnumbering the men-at-arms by three to one. The long bows were stored in leather cases that were slung over their owners’ shoulders.

Hook was happy. Sir John’s men were his companions now. Peter Goddington, the centenar, was a fair man, tough with laggards, but warm in his approval of the men who shared his dream of creating the best company of archers in England. Thomas Evelgold was next in command and he, like Goddington, was an older man, almost thirty. He was a morose man, slower thinking than the centenar, but he was grudgingly helpful to the younger archers among whom Hook found his particular friends. There were the twins, Thomas and Matthew Scarlet, both a year younger than Hook, and Will of the Dale who could reduce the company to helpless laughter with his imitations of Sir John. The four drank together, ate together, laughed together, and competed against each other, though it was recognized among all the archers that none could outshoot Nicholas Hook. They had practiced with weapons all winter and now France was ahead and God was on their side. Father Christopher had assured them of that in a sermon preached the day before they rode. “Our lord the king’s quarrel with the French is just,” Father Christopher had said with unusual seriousness, “and our God will not abandon him. We go to right a wrong, and the forces of heaven will march with us!” Hook did not understand the quarrel except that somewhere in the king’s ancestry was a marriage that led Henry to the French throne, and perhaps he was the rightful king and perhaps he was not, but Hook did not care. He was just happy to wear the Cornewaille lion and star.

And he was happy that Melisande was one of the women chosen to ride with the company. She had a small, fine-boned mare that belonged to Sir John’s wife, the sister of the late king, and she rode it well. “We must take women with us,” Sir John had explained.

“God is merciful,” Father Christopher had murmured.

“We can’t wash our own clothes!” Sir John had said. “We can’t sew! We can’t cook! We must have women! Useful things, women. We don’t want to be like the French! Humping each other when a sheep isn’t available, so we’ll take women!” He liked Melisande to ride alongside him and chatted away to her in French, making her laugh.