cross of Burgundy too, and he began to tear at the surcoat, trying to rid himself of the symbol as he looked desperately for an escape, any escape, then he scrambled over a stone wall into an alley shadowed by the overhanging houses, but in the dark he saw an open door and ran to it.
The door led into a large empty room where a guttering lantern showed a dead man sprawled across a cushioned wooden bench. The man’s blood had sheeted across the flagstones. A tapestry hung on one wall and there were cupboards and a long table holding an abacus and sheets of parchment that were speared on a tall spike. Hook reckoned the dead man must have been a merchant. In one corner a ladder climbed to a higher floor and Hook went up quickly to find a plastered chamber that held a wooden bed with a pallet and blankets. A second ladder led into the attic and he clambered up and pulled the ladder into the space beneath the rafters and cursed himself for not having done the same with the first ladder. Too late now. He dared not drop back into the house and so he crouched in the bat droppings beneath the thatch. He was still shaking. Men were shouting in the houses beneath him, and for a time it seemed he must be discovered, and that discovery seemed imminent when someone climbed into the room where the bed stood, but the man only glanced briefly about before leaving, and the rest of the searchers grew bored or else found other quarry, for after a while their excited shouting died. The screaming went on, indeed the screaming became louder and it seemed to Hook, listening in puzzlement, that a whole group of women were just outside the house, all shrieking, and he flinched at the sound. He thought of Sarah in London, of Sir Martin the priest, and of the men he had just seen who had looked so bored as they raped their two silent victims.
The screaming turned into sobbing, broken only by men’s laughter. Hook was shivering, not with cold, but with fear and guilt, and then he shrank into the small space under the sloping rafters because the room beneath was suddenly lit by a lantern. The light leaked through the attic’s crude floorboards that were loosely laid over untrimmed beams. A man had climbed into the room and was shouting down the ladder to other men, and then a woman cried and there was the sound of a slap.
‘You’re a pretty one,’ the man said, and Hook was so frightened that he did not even notice that the man spoke English.
‘Non,’ the woman whimpered.
‘Too pretty to share. You’re all mine, girl.’
Hook peered through a crack in the boards. He could see a wide-brimmed helmet that half obscured the man’s shoulders, and then he saw that the woman was a white-robed nun who crouched in a corner of the room. She was whimpering. ‘Jésus,’ she cried, ‘Marie, mère de Dieu!’ And the last word turned into a scream as the man drew a knife. ‘Non!’ she shouted. ‘Non! Non! Non!’ and the helmeted man slapped her hard enough to silence her as he pulled her upright. He put the knife at her neck, then slashed so that her habit was sliced down the front. He ripped the blade further and, despite her struggles, tore the white robe away from her and then cut at her undergarments. He threw her ruined clothes down to the lower floor and, when she was naked, pushed her onto the pallet where she curled into a ball and sobbed.
‘Oh, I’m sure God was delighted with that day’s work!’ the voice said, though no one spoke aloud because the voice was in Hook’s head. The words were those John Wilkinson had used to Hook in the cathedral, but the voice did not belong to the old archer. It was a richer, deeper voice, full of warmth, and Hook had a sudden vision of a white-robed man, smiling and carrying a tray heaped with pears and apples. It was Crispinian, the saint to whom he had addressed most of his prayers in Soissons, and now those prayers were being answered in Hook’s head, and in Hook’s head Crispinian looked sadly at him, and Hook understood that heaven had given him a chance to make amends. The nun in the room below had cried to Christ’s mother, and the Virgin must have spoken to the saints of Soissons who now spoke to Hook, but Hook was frightened. He was hearing voices again. He did not know it, but he was kneeling. And no wonder. God was speaking to him through Saint Crispinian.
And Nicholas Hook, outlaw and archer, did not know what to do when God spoke to him. He was filled with terror.
The man in the room below threw down his helmet. He unbuckled his sword belt and tossed it aside, then he growled something at the girl before starting to haul his mail coat and its covering surcoat over his head. Hook, peering between the crude floorboards, recognised the badge on the surcoat as Sir Roger Pallaire’s three hawks on a green field. What was that badge doing here? It was the victorious besiegers, not the defeated garrison, who were raping and ransacking the city, yet the three hawks were unmistakably Sir Roger’s arms.
‘Now,’ Saint Crispinian said.
Hook did not move.
‘Now!’ Saint Crispin snarled in Hook’s head. Saint Crispin was not as friendly as Crispinian and Hook flinched when the saint snapped the word.
The man, Hook was not sure whether it was Sir Roger himself or one of his men-at-arms, was struggling with the heavy leather-lined mail coat that was half over his head and constricting his arms.
‘For God’s sake!’ Crispinian appealed to Hook.
‘Do it, boy,’ Saint Crispin said harshly.
‘Save your soul, Nicholas,’ Crispinian said gently.
And Hook saved his soul.
He dropped through the hole in the attic floor. He forgot his sword, instead drawing the thick-bladed knife that he had once used to eviscerate deer carcasses. He fell just behind the man who could not see because his mail coat was over his head, but he heard Hook’s arrival and he turned just as Hook’s blade ripped across his belly. Nicholas Hook gutted the man. The strength of an archer’s right arm was in the cut and the blade went deep and the guts slithered out like wet eels sliding from a slit sack as the man gave a strangulated cry that was muffled by the heavy coat shrouding his head, and he cried again as the knife gave a second cut, upwards this time as Hook pushed his knife hand deep into the man’s ruined belly to drive the blade up under the ribcage to find and puncture the would-be rapist’s heart.
The man dropped back onto the bed and was dead before he hit the pallet.
And Hook, blood-wet to his elbow, stared down at his victim.
He realised later that the down-filled pallet had saved his life for it soaked up the blood that otherwise would have dripped through the floorboards to alarm the men beneath. There were two of them, both wearing Sir Roger’s livery, but Hook, standing in fear over his victim, noticed that the dead man’s surcoat was made of finely woven linen, much finer than the usual cheap surcoat. He moved away from the hatch in the floor. The two men were ransacking a store cupboard and seemed oblivious of the killing that had just occurred above their heads.
The dead man’s mail coat was tight-linked and polished, studded with the buckles that had anchored his plate armour. Hook crouched and tugged the coat clear of the man’s head and saw that he had killed Sir Roger Pallaire. Sir Roger, ostensibly a Burgundian ally, had been left alive to rape and steal, which surely meant that Sir Roger had been secretly on the side of the French. Hook tried to comprehend that betrayal, while the naked girl stared at him with eyes and mouth wide open. She looked scared and Hook feared she was about to scream and so he put a finger to his lips, but she shook her head and suddenly began to make small desperate noises, half moans, half gasps, and Hook frowned at first, then understood that silence was more suspicious than the noise of her distress. That was clever of her, he thought. He nodded at her, then cut away a blood-drenched purse attached to Sir Roger’s belt. He also pulled Sir Roger’s surcoat clear of the mail coat and tossed it with the purse into the attic, then reached up and gripped one of the beams. He pulled himself into the roof space, then stretched his right arm for the girl.
She
