‘All I’m doing,’ Thomas said, ‘is asking the abbot some questions. I don’t want to frighten the man. We go, we ask and we leave.’
‘That’s what you said at Montpellier,’ Genevieve said tartly.
‘These are monks,’ Thomas said, ‘just monks. We question them and we leave again.’
‘With la Malice?’ Genevieve asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Thomas said. ‘I don’t even know if la Malice exists.’ He kicked his heels to reach the gate before the sun vanished behind the western skyline. He cantered across a pasture where a herd of goats was being guarded by a small boy and a big dog who both watched the riders pass in silence. A fine stone bridge spanned the river beyond the pasture and, on the bridge’s far side, the road forked. The left-hand road led into the village, and the right to the monastery. Thomas could see that the monastery was half surrounded by a channel of the river that had been diverted to make a kind of wide moat, maybe so the monks could keep fish. He could also see two robed figures walking towards the open gate, and he spurred again. The two monks saw him coming and waited. ‘You’re here for the pilgrims?’ one of them called in greeting.
Thomas opened his mouth to ask the man what he meant, then had the sense to nod instead. ‘We are,’ he said.
‘They arrived an hour ago. They’ll be glad of protection, they think the English are close.’
‘We didn’t see any English,’ Thomas said.
‘They’ll still be glad to see you,’ the monk said. ‘It’s a dangerous time to be on pilgrimage.’
‘All times are dangerous,’ Thomas said, and led his followers beneath the high arch. The sound of their hooves echoed from the stone walls as the bell’s tolling stopped. ‘Where are they?’ Thomas called back.
‘In the abbey!’ the monk shouted.
‘Someone’s waiting for us?’ Genevieve asked.
‘They’re not waiting for us,’ Thomas said.
‘Who?’ she asked urgently.
‘Just pilgrims.’
‘Send for the archers.’
Thomas glanced at his three Gascons, at Robbie and the Sire Roland. ‘I think we’re safe from a band of pilgrims,’ he said drily.
The horses filled the small space between the walls and the abbey church. Thomas swung down from the saddle and instinctively checked that his sword was running free in its scabbard. He heard the monastery gates crash shut, then the thump as the locking bar was dropped into place. It was almost dark now and the monastery’s buildings were black against a faintly luminous sky in which the first stars shone. A becketed torch burned between two stone houses that might have been dormitories, while two more blazed bright at the abbey steps. A cobbled street ran in front of the abbey and at its far end, where another gate through the monastery’s high wall was still open, Thomas could see a mass of saddled horses and four sumpter ponies being held by servants. He dismounted, turning towards the abbey steps where the torches’ sparks flickered and died by the open door through which Thomas could hear monks chanting, the sound slow and beautiful, deep and rhythmic, ebbing and flowing like the tides of the sea. He climbed the steps slowly, and gradually the interior of the building revealed itself, a glory of bright candles and painted stone and carved pillars and shining altars. So many candles! And the long nave was filled with black-cowled monks, chanting and genuflecting, and it struck Thomas that the sound was threatening now, as if the swelling tide was breaking into deep waves of menace. He could distinguish the words as he stepped into the light of the candles and he recognised them as coming from a psalm. ‘Quoniam propter te mortificamur tota die,’ the male voices chanted, drawing out the long syllables, ‘aestimati sumus sicut oves occisionis.’
‘What is it?’ Genevieve whispered.
‘For your sake we look on death all day,’ Thomas translated softly, ‘and we are judged as sheep to be slaughtered.’
‘I don’t like it,’ she said nervously.
‘I just need to speak with the abbot,’ Thomas reassured her. ‘We’ll wait for the service to end.’
He gazed into the lofty choir where he could just see a great wall painting of Christ in judgement. Sinners were tumbling to a fiery hell on one side, their ranks surprisingly filled with gowned priests and mantled monks. Closer, in the nave, was a painting of Jonah and the whale, which struck Thomas as a strange subject for a monastery so far inland, but reminded him of his father telling him that old tale and how as a small boy he had gone down to the shingle beach at Hookton and stared in hope of seeing a great whale that might swallow a man. Opposite Jonah, and half shadowed by pillars, was another painting that Thomas realised was Saint Junien. It showed the monk kneeling in a patch of land cleared of snow and gazing upwards in rapture towards an arm that reached down from heaven to offer him a sword. ‘That’s it!’ he said in wonderment.
The monks standing at the back of the nave heard him and most of them turned to see Genevieve and Bertille. ‘Women!’ one of them hissed in alarm.
A second monk hurried towards Thomas. ‘Pilgrims can only come to the church between Matins and None,’ he said indignantly, ‘not now! All of you, leave!’
Robbie, Keane, Sire Roland and the three Gascons had followed Thomas into the church, and the indignant monk spread his arms as if to drive them all away. ‘You’re wearing swords!’ the man protested. ‘You must leave!’ More monks turned, and the chanting was interrupted by a growl, and Thomas remembered his father saying that a pack of monks was more frightening than any band of brigands. ‘Folk think they’re nothing but gelded milksops,’ Father Ralph had said, ‘but they’re not, by God they’re not! They can fight like savages!’ These monks were spoiling for a fight, and there had to be at least two hundred of them. They must have reckoned that no man-at-arms would dare draw a sword inside the abbey, and the monk closest to Thomas had to believe that because he thrust a meaty hand hard against Thomas’s chest just as a bell rang from the high altar. It rang frantically, and was reinforced by the sound of a staff being beaten on the stone floor. ‘Let them stay!’ a great voice bellowed. ‘I order them to remain!’ The remnants of the chant drained away raggedly, finally fading to nothing. The monk still had his hand on Thomas’s chest.
‘Take it away,’ Thomas said softly. The man looked at him with hostile eyes, and Thomas reached up and took hold of the hand. He bent it backwards, using the strength that comes from hauling back a war bow’s cord. The monk resisted, then his eyes widened in fear as he felt the archer’s strength. He tried to pull his hand away and Thomas bent it harder until he felt the wrist bones fracture. ‘I told you to take it away,’ he said.
‘Thomas!’ Genevieve gasped.
Thomas looked at the high altar and saw a figure rising there, a massive man swathed in red, gross and tall and commanding. The pilgrims were led by Cardinal Bessières. And he was not alone. There were crossbowmen at the edges of the nave and Thomas heard
the clicks as their cords were caught by the trigger mechanisms. There were at least a dozen archers, all wearing the livery of a green
horse on a white field, and with them were men-at-arms, and there, beside the cardinal at the top of the altar steps, was the Count of Labrouillade. ‘You were right,’ Thomas said softly, ‘I should have brought the archers.’
‘Bring them here!’ Bessières ordered. The cardinal was smiling, and no wonder; his enemies had come straight to him and he had them at his mercy, and Cardinal Bessières, Archbishop of Livorno and Papal Legate to the throne of France, had no mercy. Father Marchant, tall and grim, stood just behind the cardinal, and Thomas, as he was forced up the nave between the monks who parted to let them through, could see more men-at-arms in the shadows at the abbey’s edges. ‘Welcome,’ the cardinal said, ‘Guillaume d’Evecque.’
‘Thomas of Hookton,’ Thomas said defiantly.
‘Le Bâtard,’ Father Marchant said.
‘And his heretic whore of a wife!’ the cardinal said.
‘My wife too,’ Labrouillade mut
tered.
‘Two whores!’ the cardinal said, sounding amused. ‘Keep them there!’ He snarled that order to the crossbowmen who were guarding Thomas. ‘Thomas of Hookton,’ he said, ‘le Bâtard. So why are you here in this place of prayer?’
‘I was given a task,’ Thomas said.
‘A task! And what was that?’ The cardinal spoke in mock kindness, as though he indulged a small child.
‘To prevent a sacred relic from falling into evil hands.’
The cardinal’s mouth twitched in a half-smile. ‘What relic, my son?’
‘La Malice.’
‘Ah! And what hands?’
‘Yours,’ Thomas said.
‘You see what infamy le Bâtard is capable of!’ The cardinal was addressing the whole abbey now. ‘He has taken it upon himself to deny Holy Mother Church one of her most sacred relics! He is an excommunicate already! He has been declared outside of salvation, and yet he dares come here, bringing his whores into this most holy place to steal what God has given to his faithful servants.’ He raised a hand and pointed at Thomas. ‘Do you deny that you are an excommunicate?’
‘I plead guilty to only one thing,’ Thomas said.
The cardinal frowned. ‘And that is?’
‘You had a brother,’ Thomas said. The cardinal’s face darkened and the outstretched finger quivered, then dropped. ‘You had a brother,’ Thomas said, ‘and he is dead.’
‘What do you know of that?’ the cardinal asked in a dangerous tone.
‘I know he was killed with an arrow shot by a devil’s whelp,’ Thomas said. He could have begged for his life, but he knew that would achieve nothing. He was trapped, surrounded by crossbows under tension and by men-at-arms, and all that was left was defiance. ‘I know he was killed by an arrow cut from an ash tree at sundown,’ he went on, ‘killed by an arrow peeled of its bark with a woman’s knife, tipped by steel that was forged in a starless night and fledged with feathers taken from a goose killed by a white wolf. And I know that the arrow was shot from a bow that had lain for a week in church.’
‘Witchcraft,’ the cardinal whispered.
‘They must all die, Your Eminence,’ Father Marchant spoke for the first time, ‘and not just the whores and excommunicates, but those men too!’ He pointed at Robbie and the Sire Roland. ‘They have broken their oaths!’
‘An oath to a man who tortures women?’ Thomas sneered. He could hear horses’ hooves in the cobbled yards outside the abbey. There were voices there and they were angry.
The cardinal had also heard the voices and he glanced towards the abbey’s door, but saw nothing menacing there. ‘They will die,’ he said, looking back to Thomas. ‘They will die by la Malice.’ He snapped his fingers.
There had been a dozen monks standing beside the high altar, but they now moved aside, and Thomas saw a friar there. He was an older man, and he had been beaten so that his white robe was spattered with blood that had dripped from his broken lip and nose. And beyond him, in the shadows behind the altar, there was a tomb. It was a stone casket, carved and painted, resting on two stone pedestals that stood in a niche of the apse. The lid of the casket had been slid aside and now a familiar figure came from the shadows. It was the Scotsman, Sculley, the bones tangled in his long hair clicking as he walked to the tomb and reached inside. He had more bones attached to his beard that knocked against the breastplate he wore over his mail coat. ‘You lied to me,’ he called to Robbie, ‘you made me fight for the goddamned English, and your uncle says you must die, that you’re a weak fart of a man. You’re not worthy of the name Douglas. You’re a piece of dog shite is what you are.’
And from the tomb he drew a sword. It was nothing like the swords in the wall paintings. This sword looked like a falchion, one of those cheap blades that could serve as a hay knife as well as a weapon. It had a thick curved blade, widening towards its tip, a weapon for crude hacking rather than piercing. The blade itself looked old and uncared for, it was pitted, darkened, and crude, yet still Thomas had an urge to fall to his knees. Christ himself had looked on that sword, he had maybe touched it, and on the night before his agony he had refused to let that weapon save him. It was the sword of the fisherman.
‘Kill them,’ the cardinal said.
‘Blood should not be shed,’ a tall grey-bearded monk protested. He had to be the abbot.
‘Kill them,’ the cardinal repeated, and the crossbowmen raised their weapons. ‘Not with arrows!’ Bessières called. ‘Let la Malice do her duty and serve the church as she is intended to serve. Let her do her glorious work!’
And the archer loosed, and the arrow flew.
Twelve
The arrow struck Sculley plumb on his breastplate. The missile was tipped with a bodkin, an arrowhead made to pierce armour. Bodkins were forged from steel. They were long, slim and pointed arrowheads without tangs, and this arrow’s leading inches of ashwood had been replaced with a short length of heavier oak. If any arrow could slide through steel it was a heavy bodkin that concentrated the arrow’s weight and impetus onto one small point, but this arrowhead crumpled like cheap iron. Few blacksmiths knew how to make good steel, and some smiths cheated, sending iron bodkins instead of steel, but though the bodkin had failed to pierce Sculley’s breastplate, the force of the arrow’s strike was sufficient to throw him three staggering paces backwards so that he tripped on the altar steps and sat down heavily. He picked up the arrow that had struck him, looked at the bent head and grinned.
‘If anyone does any killing in this damned church,’ a voice shouted from the back of the abbey, ‘it will be me. Now what the damned hell is happening here?’
Thomas turned. The back of the abbey was filling with men-at-arms and archers, all of them wearing the same badge: a golden lion rampant against a background of golden fleurs-de-lys on a blue field. It was the same badge Benjamin Rymer wore, the livery of the Earl of Warwick, and the snarl of the voice and the confidence of the newcomer suggested it had to be the earl himself who now strode up the nave. He was wearing a suit of fine mud-spattered armour that clinked as he walked, and his steel-shod boots crashed brutally loud on the nave’s stones. He wore no jupon, so displayed no badge, though his status was proclaimed by a short, thick chain of gold that hung over a blue silk scarf. He was a few years older than Thomas, thin-faced, unshaven, and with unruly brown hair that had been compressed by the helmet that was now held by a squire. He scowled. His quick eyes darted around the abbey and seemed to scorn everything he saw. A second man, older and with grizzled grey hair, a short beard and wearing much-battered armour, followed him, and there was something familiar to Thomas about the man’s blunt, sun-darkened face.
The cardinal slammed his staff on the altar steps. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded.
The earl, if it was the earl, ignored him. ‘Who the devil is killing who here?’ he asked.
‘This is a church matter,’ the cardinal said loftily, ‘and you will leave.’
‘I will leave when I’m goddamned ready to leave,’ the newcomer said, then turned fast as a scuffle sounded at the back of the abbey. ‘If there is any damned trouble in here I shall have my men clear the goddamned lot of you out of the monastery altogether. You want to spend the night in the goddamned fields? Who are you?’
This last question was directed at Thomas, who, assuming it was the earl, went to one knee. ‘Sir Thomas Hookton, sire, pledged to the Earl of Northampton.’
‘Sir Thomas was at Crécy, my lord,’ the man with grizzled grey hair said quietly, ‘one of Will Skeat’s men.’
‘You’re a bowman?’ the earl demanded.
‘Yes, my lord.’
‘And knighted?’ He sounded both surprised and disapproving.
‘Indeed, my lord.’
‘Deservedly knighted, my lord,’ the second man said firmly, and Thomas remembered him then. He was Sir Reginald Cobham, a man renowned as a soldier.
‘We were at the ford together, Sir Reginald,’ Thomas said.
‘Blanch
etaque!’ Cobham said, remembering the ford’s name. ‘Oh my sweet God, but that was a rare fight!’ He grinned. ‘You had a priest fighting with you, yes? Bastard was splitting French heads with an axe.’
‘Father Hobbe,’ Thomas said.
‘You two have finished?’ the earl snarled.
‘Nowhere near, my lord,’ Cobham said happily, ‘we could reminisce for another few hours.’
‘Damn your bloody guts,’ the earl said, though without rancour. He might be an earl of England, but he knew well that he had better listen to the advice of men like Sir Reginald Cobham. Such men were attached to all the great lords, appointed by the king as advisers. A man could be born to wealth, rank, title, and privilege, but that did not make him a soldier, and so the king made sure his nobles were advised by lesser men who knew more. The earl might command, but if he was wise then he only commanded after Sir Reginald had decided. The Earl of Warwick was experienced, he had fought at Crécy, yet he was also wise enough to listen to advice. At this moment, though, he seemed too angry to be prudent, and his anger grew when he saw the red heart on Sculley’s grubby jupon. ‘Is that the crest of Douglas?’ he asked in a dangerous voice.
‘It is the most sacred heart of Christ,’ the cardinal answered before Sculley had a chance to speak. Not that Sculley had understood the question, which had been asked in French. The Scotsman had got to his feet and was now glowering at Warwick so fiercely that the cardinal, thinking the bone-hung Sculley might start a fight, pushed him back into the small crowd of monks who stood by the altar. ‘These men,’ Bessières gestured at the crossbowmen and men-at-arms wearing the livery of Labrouillade, ‘are serving the church. We are on a mission for His Holiness the Pope, and you,’ he raised a threatening finger to point at the earl, ‘are hindering our duties.’
‘I’m hindering goddamned nothing!’
‘Then leave this precinct and allow our devotions to continue,’ the cardinal demanded grandly.
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