take her! Not you, you cloth-brained shit-puddling idiot! Just take that girl to the tavern stables! I want to pray with her.’
‘Oh! You want to pray!’ Michael said, smiling.
‘You want to pray with her, father?’ Snoball asked with a snide chuckle.
‘If she repents,’ Sir Martin said piously, ‘she can live.’ The priest was shivering and Hook did not think it was the cold. ‘Christ in His loving mercy allows that,’ Sir Martin said, his eyes darting from the girl to Snoball, ‘so let us see if we can make her repent? Sir Edward?’
‘Father?’
‘I shall pray with the girl!’ Sir Martin called, and Sir Edward did not answer. He was still gazing at the nearest unlit pyre where the Lollard leader was ignoring the priest’s words and looking up at the sky.
‘Take her, young Hook,’ Sir Martin ordered.
Nick Hook watched his brother take the girl’s elbow. Michael was almost as strong as Nick, yet he had a gentleness and a sincerity that reached past the girl’s terror. ‘Come on, lass,’ he said softly, ‘the good father wants to pray with you. So let me take you. No one’s going to hurt you.’
Snoball sniggered as Michael led the unresisting girl through the yard gate and into the stable where the archers’ horses were tethered. The space was cold, dusty and smelt of straw and dung. Nick Hook followed the pair. He told himself he followed so he could protect his brother, but in truth he had been prompted by the dying archer’s words, and when he reached the stable door he looked up to see a window in the far gable and suddenly, out of nowhere, a voice sounded in his head. ‘Take her away,’ the voice said. It was a man’s voice, but not one that Nick Hook recognised. ‘Take her away,’ the voice said again, ‘and heaven will be yours.’
‘Heaven?’ Nick Hook said aloud.
‘Nick?’ Michael, still holding the girl’s elbow, turned to his elder brother, but Nick Hook was gazing at that high bright window.
‘Just save the girl,’ the voice said, and there was no one in the stable except the brothers and Sarah, but the voice was real, and Hook was shaking. If he could just save the girl. If he could take her away. He had never felt anything like this before. He had always thought himself cursed, hated even by his own name-saint, but suddenly he knew that if he could save this girl then God would love him and God would forgive whatever had made Saint Nicholas hate him. Hook was being offered salvation. It was there, beyond the window, and it promised him a new life. No more of being the cursed Nick Hook. He knew it, yet he did not know how to take it.
‘What in God’s name are you doing here?’ Sir Martin snarled at Hook.
He did not answer. He was staring at the clouds beyond the window. His horse, a grey, stirred and thumped a hoof. Whose voice had he heard?
Sir Martin pushed past Nick Hook to stare at the girl. The priest smiled. ‘Hello, little lady,’ he said, his voice hoarse, then he turned to Michael. ‘Strip her,’ he ordered curtly.
‘Strip her?’ Michael asked, frowning.
‘She must appear naked before her God,’ the priest explained, ‘so our Lord and Saviour can judge her as she truly is. In nakedness is truth. That’s what the scripture says, in nakedness is our truth.’ Nowhere did the scriptures say that, but Sir Martin had often found the invented quote useful.
‘But …’ Michael was still frowning. Nick’s younger brother was notoriously slow in understanding, but even he knew that something was wrong in the winter stable.
‘Do it!’ the priest snarled at him.
‘It’s not right,’ Michael said stubbornly.
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake,’ Sir Martin said angrily and he pushed Michael out of the way and grabbed the girl’s collar. She gave a short, desperate yelp that was not quite a scream, and she tried to pull away. Michael was just watching, horrified, but the echo of a mysterious voice and a vision of heaven were still in Nick Hook’s head and so he stepped one quick pace forward and drove his fist into the priest’s belly with such strength that Sir Martin folded over with a sound of half pain and half surprise.
‘Nick!’ Michael said, aghast at what his brother had done.
Hook had taken the girl’s elbow and half turned towards that far window. ‘Help!’ Sir Martin shouted, his voice rasping from breathlessness and pain, ‘help!’ Hook turned back to silence him, but Michael stepped between him and the priest.
‘Nick!’ Michael said again, and just then both the Perrill brothers came running.
‘He hit me!’ Father Martin said, sounding astonished. Tom Perrill grinned, while his younger brother Robert looked as confused as Michael. ‘Hold him!’ the priest demanded, straightening with a look of pain on his long face, ‘just hold the bastard!’ His voice was a half-strangled croak as he struggled for breath. ‘Take him outside!’ he panted, ‘and hold him.’
Hook let himself be led into the stable yard. His brother followed and stood unhappily staring at the hanged men just beyond the open gate where a thin cold rain had begun to slant across the sky. Nick Hook was suddenly drained. He had hit a priest, a well-born priest, a man of the gentry, Lord Slayton’s own kin. The Perrill brothers were mocking him, but Hook did not hear their words, instead he heard Sarah’s smock being torn and heard her scream and heard the scream stifled and he heard the rustling of straw and he heard Sir Martin grunting and Sarah whimpering, and Hook gazed at the low clouds and at the woodsmoke that lay over the city as thick as any cloud and he knew that he was failing God. All his life Nick Hook had been told he was cursed and then, in a place of death, God had asked him to do just one thing and he had failed. He heard a great sigh go up from the marketplace and he guessed that one of the fires had been lit to usher a heretic down to the greater fires of hell, and he feared he would be going to hell himself because he had done nothing to rescue a blue-eyed angel from a black-souled priest, but then he told himself the girl was a heretic and he wondered if it had been the devil who spoke in his head. The girl was gasping now, and the gasps turned to sobs and Hook raised his face to the wind and the spitting rain.
Sir Martin, grinning like a fed stoat, came out of the stable. He had tucked his robe high about his waist, but now let it fall. ‘There,’ he said, ‘that didn’t take long. You want her, Tom?’ he spoke to the older Perrill brother, ‘she’s yours if you want her. Juicy little thing she is, too! Just slit her throat when you’re done.’
‘Not hang her, father?’ Tom Perrill asked.
‘Just kill the bitch,’ the priest said. ‘I’d do it myself, but the church doesn’t kill people. We hand them over to the lay power, and that’s you, Tom. So go and hump the heretic bitch then open her throat. And you, Robert, you hold Hook. Michael, go away! You’ve nothing to do with this, go!’
Michael hesitated. ‘Go,’ Nick Hook told his brother wearily, ‘just go.’
Robert Perrill held Hook’s arms behind his back. Hook could have pulled away easily enough, but he was still shaken by the voice he had heard and by his stupidity in striking Sir Martin. That was a hanging offence, yet Sir Martin wanted more than just his death and, as Robert Perrill held Hook, Sir Martin began hitting him. The priest was not strong, he did not have the great muscles of an archer, but he possessed spite and he had sharp bony knuckles that he drove viciously into Hook’s face. ‘You piece of bitch-spawned shit,’ Sir Martin spat, and hit again, trying to pulp Hook’s eyes. ‘You’re a dead man, Hook,’ the priest shouted. ‘I’ll have you looking like that!’ Sir Martin pointed at the nearest fire. Smoke was thick around the stake, but flames were bright at the pile’s base and, through the grey smoke, a figure could be seen straining like a bent bow. ‘You bastard!’ Sir Martin said, hitting Hook again, ‘your mother was an open-legged whore and she shat you like the whore she was.’ He hit Hook again and then a flare of fire streaked in the pyre’s smoke and a scream sounded in the marketplace like the squeal of a boar being gelded.
‘What