thick-chested man with a face disfigured at the battle of Shrewsbury where a poleaxe had ripped open his helmet, crushed a cheekbone and sliced off an ear. ‘Bell ropes,’ he explained, tossing the heavy coils onto the ground. ‘Need them tied to the beam, and I’m not climbing any ladder.’ Sir Edward commanded Lord Slayton’s men-at-arms and he was as respected as he was feared. ‘Hook, you do it,’ Sir Edward ordered.
Hook climbed the ladder and tied the bell ropes to the beam. He used the knot with which he would have looped a hempen cord about a bowstave’s nock, though the ropes, being thicker, were much harder to manipulate. When he was done he shinned down the last rope to show that it was tied securely.
‘Let’s get this done and over,’ Sir Edward said sourly, ‘and then maybe we can leave this goddamned place. Whose ale is this?’
‘Mine, Sir Edward,’ Robert Perrill said.
‘Mine now,’ Sir Edward said, and drained the pot. He was dressed in a mail coat over a leather jerkin, all of it covered with the starry jupon. A sword hung at his waist. There was nothing elaborate about the weapon. The blade, Hook knew, was undecorated, the hilt was plain steel, and the handle was two grips of walnut bolted to the tang. The sword was a tool of Sir Edward’s trade, and he had used it to batter down the rebel whose poleaxe had taken half his face.
The small crowd had been herded by soldiers and priests into the centre of the marketplace where most of them knelt and prayed. There were maybe sixty of them, men and women, young and old. ‘Can’t burn them all,’ Sir Martin said regretfully, ‘so we’re sending most to hell at the rope’s end.’
‘If they’re heretics,’ Sir Edward grumbled, ‘they should all be burned.’
‘If God wished that,’ Sir Martin said with some asperity, ‘then God would have provided sufficient firewood.’
More people were appearing now. Fear still pervaded the city, but folk somehow sensed that the greatest moment of danger was over, and so they came to the marketplace and Sir Martin ordered the archers to let them pass. ‘They should see this for themselves,’ the priest explained. There was a sullenness in the gathering crowd, their sympathies plainly aligned with the prisoners and not the guards, though here and there a priest or friar preached an extemporary sermon to justify the day’s events. The doomed, the preachers explained, were enemies of Christ. They were weeds among the righteous wheat. They had been given a chance to repent, but had refused that mercy and so must face their eternal fate.
‘Who are they anyway?’ Hook asked.
‘Lollards,’ Sir Edward said.
‘What’s a Lollard?’
‘A heretic, you piece of slime,’ Snoball said happily, ‘and the bastards were supposed to gather here and start a rebellion against our gracious king, but instead they’re going to hell.’
‘They don’t look like rebels,’ Hook said. Most of the prisoners were middle-aged, some were old, while a handful was very young. There were women and girls among them.
‘Doesn’t matter what they look like,’ Snoball said, ‘they’re heretics and they have to die.’
‘It’s God’s will,’ Sir Martin snarled.
‘But what makes them heretics?’ Hook asked.
‘Oh, we are curious today,’ Sir Martin said sourly.
‘I’d like to know that too,’ Michael said.
‘Because the church says they’re heretics,’ Sir Martin snapped, then appeared to relent of his tone. ‘Do you believe, Michael Hook, that when I raise the host it turns into the most holy and beloved and mystical flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ?’
‘Yes, father, of course!’
‘Well, they don’t believe that,’ the priest said, jerking his head at the Lollards kneeling in the mud, ‘they believe the bread stays bread, which makes them turds-for-brains piss-shits. And do you believe that our blessed father the Pope is God’s vicar on earth?’
‘Yes, father,’ Michael said.
‘Thank Christ for that, or else I’d have to burn you.’
‘I thought there were two popes?’ Snoball put in.
Sir Martin ignored that. ‘Ever seen a sinner burn, Michael Hook?’ he asked.
‘No, father.’
Sir Martin grinned lasciviously. ‘They scream, young Hook, like a boar being gelded. They do scream so!’ He turned suddenly and thrust a long bony finger into Nick Hook’s chest. ‘And you should listen to those screams, Nicholas Hook, for they are the liturgy of hell. And you,’ he prodded Hook’s chest again, ‘are hell-bound.’ The priest whirled around, arms suddenly outspread, so that he reminded Hook of a great dark-winged bird. ‘Avoid hell, boys!’ he called enthusiastically, ‘avoid it! No tits on Wednesdays and Fridays, and do God’s work diligently every day!’
More ropes had been slung from other signposts about the marketplace, and now soldiers roughly divided the prisoners into groups that were pushed towards the makeshift gallows. One man began shouting to his friends, telling them to have faith in God and that they would all meet in heaven before this day was over, and he went on shouting till a soldier in royal livery broke his jaw with a mail-shod fist. The broken-jawed man was one of the two selected for the fires and Hook, standing apart from his comrades, watched as the man was hoisted onto the stone-and gravel-filled barrel and tied to the stake. More firewood was piled around his feet.
‘Come on, Hook, don’t dream,’ Snoball grumbled.
The growing crowd was still sullen. There were a few folk who seemed pleased, but most watched resentfully, ignoring the priests who preached at them and turning their backs on a group of brown-robed monks who chanted a song of praise for the day’s happy events.
‘Hoist the old man up,’ Snoball said to Hook. ‘We’ve got ten to kill, so let’s get the work done!’
One of the empty handcarts that had brought the firewood was parked beneath the beam and Hook was needed to lift a man onto the cart’s bed. The other six prisoners, four men and two women, waited. One of the women clung to her husband, while the second had her back turned and was on her knees, praying. All four prisoners on the cart were men, one of them old enough to be Hook’s grandfather. ‘I forgive you, son,’ the old man said as Hook twisted the thick rope around his neck. ‘You’re an archer, aren’t you?’ the Lollard asked and still Hook did not answer. ‘I was on the hill at Homildon,’ Hook’s victim said, looking up at the grey clouds as Hook tightened the rope, ‘where I shot a bow for my king. I sent shaft after shaft, boy, deep into the Scots. I drew long and I loosed sharp, and God forgive me, but I was good that day.’ He looked into Hook’s eyes. ‘I was an archer.’
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 armour, mounted on trapper-decked horses, but by archers. By ordinary men who built and ploughed 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
