The Grail Quest 2 - Vagabond tgq-2

by Bernard Cornwell

  Thomas unlooped the string of his bow so that the stave straightened. Some archers liked to leave their weapons permanently strung until the stave had taken on the curve of a tensioned bow, and were said to have followed the string; the curve was supposed to show that the bow was well used and thus that its owner was an experienced soldier, but Thomas reckoned a bow that had followed the string was weakened and so he unstrung his as often as he could. That also helped to preserve the cord. It was difficult to fashion a cord of exactly the right length, and inevitably it stretched, but a good hempen string, soaked with glue, could last the best part of a year if it was kept dry and not subjected to constant tension. Like many archers, Thomas liked to reinforce his bowcords with women's hair because that was meant to protect the strings from snapping in a fight. That and praying to St Sebastian. Thomas let the string hang from the top of the bow, then squatted in the grass where he took the arrows from his bag one by one and span them between his fingers to detect any_ warping in their shafts.

  'The bastards will be back!' A man with a silver crescent on his surcoat strode down the line. 'They'll be back for more! But you've done well!' The silver crescent was half obscured by blood. An archer spat and another impulsively stroked his unstrung bow. Thomas thought that if he lay down he would probably sleep, but he was assailed by the ridiculous fear that the other archers would retreat and leave him there, sleeping, and the Scots would find and kill him. The Scots, though, were resting like the English. Some men were bent over as if they caught their breath, others were sitting on the grass while a few clustered round a barrel of water or ale. The big drums were silent, but Thomas could hear the scrape of stone on steel as men sharpened blades blunted by the battle's first clash. No insults were being shouted on either side now, men just eyed each other warily. Priests knelt beside dying men, praying their souls into heaven, while women shrieked because their husbands, lovers or sons were dead. The English right wing, its numbers thinned by the ferocity of the Scottish attack, had moved back to its original place and behind them were scores of dead and dying men. The Scottish casualties left behind by the precipitate retreat were being stripped and searched and a fight broke out between two men squabbling over a handful of tarnished coins. Two monks carried water to the wounded. A small child played with broken rings from a mail coat while his mother attempted to prise a broken visor off a pike that she reckoned would make a good axe. A Scotsman, thought dead, suddenly groaned and turned over and a man-at-arms stepped to him and stabbed down with his sword. The enemy stiffened, relaxed and did not move again. 'Ain't resurrection day yet, you bastard,' the man-at-arms said as he dragged his sword free. 'Goddamn son of a whore,' he grumbled, wiping his sword on the dead man's ragged surcoat, 'waking up like that! Gave me a turn!' He was not speaking to anyone in particular, but just crouched beside the man he had killed and began searching his clothes.

  The cathedral towers and castle walls were thick with spectators. A heron flew beneath the ramparts, following the looping river that sparkled prettily under the autumn sun. Thomas could hear corncrakes down the slope. Butterflies, surely the last of the year, flew above the blood-slicked grass. The Scots were standing, stretching, pulling on helmets, pushing their forearms into their shield loops and hefting newly sharpened swords, pikes and spears. Some glanced over to the city and imagined the treasures stored in the cathedral crypt and castle cellars. They dreamed of chests crammed with gold, vats overflowing with coin, rooms heaped with silver, taverns running with ale and streets filled with women. 'In the name of the Father and of the Son,' a priest called, 'and of the Holy Ghost. St Andrew is with you. You fight for your King! The enemy are godless imps of Satan! God is with us!'

  'Up, boys, up!' an archer called on the English side. Men stood, strung their bows and took the first arrow from the bag. Some crossed themselves, oblivious that the Scots did the same.

  Lord Robert Stewart, mounted on a fresh grey stal-lion, pushed his way towards the front of the Scottish left wing. 'They'll have few arrows left,' he promised his men, 'few arrows. We can break them!' His men had so nearly broken the damned English last time. So nearly, and surely another howling rush would obliterate the small defiant army and open the road to the opulent riches of the south.

  'For St Andrew!' Lord Robert called and the drummers began their beating, 'for our King! For Scotland!' And the howling began again.

  Bernard de Taillebourg went to the cathedral when his business in the monastery's small hospital was finished. His servant was readying the horses as the Dominican strode down the great nave between the vast pillars painted in jagged stripes of red, yellow, green and blue. He went to the tomb of St Cuthbert to say a prayer. He was not certain that Cuthbert was an important saint – he was certainly not one of the blessed souls who commanded the ear of God in heaven – but he was much revered locally, and his tomb, thickly decorated with jewels, gold and silver, testified to that devotion. At least a hundred women were gathered about the grave, most of them crying, and de Taillebourg pushed some out of his way so he could get close enough to touch the embroidered pall that shrouded the tomb. One woman snarled at him, then realized he was a priest and, seeing his bloodied, bruised face, begged his forgiveness. Bernard de Taillebourg ignored her, stoop-ing instead to the tomb. The pall was tasselled and the women had tied little shreds of cloth to the tassels, each scrap a prayer. Most prayers were for health, for the restoration of a limb, for the gift of sight, or to save a child's life, but today they were begging Cuthbert to bring their menfolk safely down from the hill. Bernard de Taillebourg added his own prayer. Go to St Denis, he beseeched Cuthbert, and ask him to speak to God. Cuthbert, even if he could not hold God's attention, could certainty find St Denis who, being French, was bound to be closer to God than Cuthbert. Beg Denis to pray that God's speed attend my errand and that God's blessing be upon the search and that God's grace give it success. And pray God to forgive us our sins, but know that our sins, grievous though they be, are committed only in God's service. He moaned at the thought of this day's sins, then he kissed the pall and took a coin from the purse under his robe. He dropped the coin in the great metal jar where pilgrims gave what they_ could to the shrine and then he hurried back down the cathedral's nave. A crude building, he thought, its coloured pillars so fat and gross and its carvings as clumsy as a child's scratchings, so unlike the new and graceful abbeys and churches that were rising in France. He dipped his fingers in the holy water, made the sign of the cross and went out into the sunlight where his servant was waiting with their mounts.

  'You could have left without me,' he said to the servant.

  'It would be easier,' the servant said, 'to kill you on the road and then go on without you.'

  'But you won't do that,' de Taillebourg said, 'because the grace of God has come into your soul.'

  'Thanks be to God,' the servant said.

  The man was not a servant by birth, but a knight and gently born. Now, at de Taillebourg's pleasure, he was being punished for his sins and for the sins of his family. There were those, and Cardinal Bessieres was among them, who thought the man should have been stretched on the rack, that he should have been pressed by great weights, that the burning irons should have seared into his flesh so that his back arched as he screamed repentance at the ceiling, but de Taillebourg had persuaded the Cardinal to do nothing except show this man the instruments of the Inquisition's torture. 'Then give him to me,'

  de Taillebourg had said, 'and let hint lead me to the Grail.'

  'Kill him afterwards,' the Cardinal had instructed the Inquisitor.

  'All will be different when we have the Grail,' de Taillebourg had said evasively. He still did not know whether he would have to kill this thin young man with the sun-dark skin and the black eyes and the nar-row face who had once called himself the Harlequin. He had adopted the name out of pride because harlequins were lost souls, but de Taillebourg believed he might well have saved this harlequin's soul. The Harlequin's real name was Guy
Vexille, Count of Astarac, and it had been Guy Vexille whom de Taillebourg had been describing when he spoke to Brother Collimore about the man who had come from the south to fight for France in Picardy. Vexille had been seized after the battle when the French King had been looking for scapegoats and a man who dared display the crest of a family declared heretic and rebel had made a good scapegoat. Vexille had been given to the Inquisition in the expectation that they would torture the heresy out of him, but de Taillebourg had liked the Harlequin. He had recognized a fellow soul, a hard man, a dedicated man, a man who knew that this life meant nothing because all that counted was the next, and so de Taillebourg had spared Vexille the agonies. He had merely shown him the chamber where men and women screamed their apologies to God, and then he had questioned him gently and Vexille had revealed how he had once sailed to England to find the Grail and, though he had killed his uncle, Thomas's father, he had not found it. Now, with de Taillebourg, he had listened to Eleanor tell Thomas's story. 'Did you believe her?' the Dominican now asked.

  'I believed her,' Vexille said.

  'But was she deceived?' The Inquisitor wondered. Eleanor had told them that Thomas had been charged to seek the Grail, but that his faith was weak and his search halfhearted. 'We shall still have to kill him,' de Taillebourg added.

  'Of course.'

  De Taillebourg frowned. 'You do not mind?' 'Killing?' Guy Vexille sounded surprised that de Taillebourg should even ask. 'Killing is my job, father,' the Harlequin said. Cardinal Bessieres had decreed that everyone who sought the Grail should be killed, all except those who sought it on the Cardinal's own behalf, and Guy Vexille had willingly become God's murderer. He certainly had no qualms about slitting his cousin Thomas's throat.

  'You want to wait here for him?' he asked the Inquisitor. 'The girl said he would be in the cathedral after the battle.'

  De Taillebourg looked across to the hill. The Scots would win, he was sure, and that made it doubtful that Thomas of Hookton would come to the city. More likely he would flee southwards in panic. 'We shall go to Hookton.'

  'I searched Hookton once,' Guy Vexille said.

  'Then you will search it again,' de Taillebourg snapped.

  'Yes, father.' Guy Vexille humbly lowered his head. He was a sinner; it was required of him that he show penitence and so he did not argue. He just did de Taillebourg's bidding and his reward, he had been promised, would be reinstatement. He would be given back his pride, allowed to lead men to war again and forgiven by the Church.

  'We shall leave now,' de Taillebourg said. He wanted to go before William Douglas came in search of them and, even more urgently, before anyone discovered the three bodies in the hospital cell. The Dominican had closed the door on the corpses and doubtless the monks would believe Collimore was sleeping and so would not disturb him, but de Taillebourg still wanted to be free of the city when the bodies were found and so he pulled himself into the saddle of one of the horses they had stolen from Jamie Douglas that morning. It seemed a long time ago now. He pushed his shoes into the stirrups, then kicked a beggar away. The man had been clawing at de Taillebourg's leg, whining that he was hungry, but now reeled away from the priest's savage thrust. The noise of battle swelled. The Dominican looked at the ridge again, but the fight was none of his business. If the English and the Scots wished to maul each other then let them. He had greater matters on his mind, matters of God and the Grail and of heaven and hell. He had sins on his conscience too, but they would be shriven by the Holy Father and even heaven would understand those sins once he had found the Grail. The gates of the city, though strongly guarded, were open so that the wounded could be brought inside and food and drink carried to the ridge. The guards were older men and had been ordered to make certain that no Scottish raiders tried to enter the city, but they had not been charged to stop anyone leaving and so they took no notice of the haggard priest with the bruised face mounted on a warhorse, nor of his elegant servant. So de Taillebourg and the Harlequin rode out of Durham, turned towards the York road, put back their heels and, as the sound of battle echoed from the city's crag, rode away southwards. It was mid-afternoon when the Scots attacked a second time, but this assault, unlike the first, did not come hard on the heels of fleeing archers. Instead the archers were drawn up ready to receive the charge and this time the arrows flew thick as starlings. Those on the Scottish left who had so nearly broken the English line were now faced by twice as many archers, and their charge, which had begun so confidently, slowed to a crawl and then stopped altogether as men crouched behind shields. The Scottish right never advanced at all, while the King's central sheltron was checked fifty paces from the stone wall behind which a crowd of archers sent an incessant shower of arrows. The Scots would not retreat, they could not advance, and for a time the long-shafted arrows thumped onto shields and into carelessly ex-posed bodies, then Lord Robert Stewart's men edged back out of range and the King's sheltron followed and so another pause came over the red-earthed battlefield. The drums were silent and no more insults were being shouted across the littered pastureland. The Scottish lords, those who still lived, gathered under their King's saltire banner and the Archbishop of York, seeing his enemies in council, called his own lords together. The Englishmen were gloomy. The enemy, they reasoned, would never expose themselves to what the Archbishop described as a third baptism of arrows. 'The bastards will slink off northwards,' the Archbishop predicted,

  'God damn their bloody souls.'

  'Then we follow them,' Lord Percy said.

  'They move faster than us,' the Archbishop said. He had taken off his helmet and its leather liner had left an indentation in his hair, circling his skull.

  'We'll slaughter their foot,' another lord said wolfishly.

  'Damn their infantry,' the Archbishop snapped, impatient with such foolery. He wanted to capture the Scottish lords, the men mounted on the swiftest and most expensive horses, for it was their ransoms that would make him rich, and he especially wanted to capture those Scottish nobles like the Earl of Menteith who had sworn fealty to Edward of England and whose presence in the enemy army proved their treachery. Such men would not be ransomed, but would be executed as an example to other men who broke their oaths, but if the Archbishop was victorious today then he could lead this small army into Scotland and take the traitors' estates. He would take everything from them: the timber from their parks, the sheets from their beds, the beds themselves, the slates off their roofs, their pots, their pans, their cattle, even the rushes from their streambeds. 'But they won't attack again,' the Archbishop said.

  'Then we shall have to be clever,' Lord Outhwaite put in cheerfully. The other lords looked suspiciously at Outhwaite. Cleverness was not a quality they prized for it hunted no boars, killed no stags, enjoyed no women and took no prisoners. Churchmen could be clever, and doubtless there were clever fools at Oxford, and even women could be clever so long as they did not flaunt it, but on a battlefield? Cleverness?

  'Clever?' Lord Neville asked pointedly.

  'They fear our archers,' Lord Outhwaite said, 'but if our archers are seen to have few arrows, then that fear will go and they might well attack again.'

  'Indeed, indeed ...' the Archbishop began and then stopped, for he was quite as clever as Lord Outhwaite, clever enough, indeed, to hide how clever he was. 'But how would we convince them?' he asked.

  Lord Outhwaite obliged the Archbishop by explain-ing what he suspected the Archbishop had already grasped. 'I think, your grace, that if our archers are seen scavenging the field for arrows then the enemy will draw the correct conclusion.'

  'Or, in this case,' the Archbishop laid it on broadly for the benefit of the other lords,

  'the incorrect conclusion.'

  'Oh, that's good,' one of those other lords said warmly.

  'It could be made even better, your grace,' Lord Outhwaite suggested diffidently, 'if our horses were brought forward? The enemy might then assume we were readying ourselves to flee?'

  The Arc
hbishop did not hesitate. 'Bring all the horses up,' he said.

  'But ...' A lord was frowning.

  'Archers to scavenge for arrows, squires and pages to bring up the horses for the menat-arms,' the Arch-bishop snapped, understanding completely what Lord Outhwaite had in mind and eager to put it into effect before the enemy decided to withdraw northwards. Lord Outhwaite gave the orders to the bowmen him-self and, within a few moments, scores of archers were out in the space between the armies where they gathered spent arrows. Some of the archers grumbled, call-ing it tomfoolery because they felt exposed to the Scottish troops who once again began to jeer them. One archer, farther forward than most, was struck in the chest by a crossbow quarrel and he fell to his knees, a look of astonishment on his face, and choked up blood into his cupped palm. Then he began weeping and that only made the choking worse and then a second man, going to help the first, was hit in the thigh by the same crossbow. The Scots were howling their derision at the wounded men, then cowered as a dozen English archers loosed arrows at the lone crossbowman. 'Save your arrows! Save your arrows!' Lord Outhwaite, mounted on his horse, roared at the bowmen. He galloped closer to them. 'Save your arrows! For God's sake! Save them!' He was bellowing loud enough for the enemy to hear him, then a group of Scotsmen, tired of sheltering from the archers, ran forward in an evident attempt to cut off Lord Outhwaite's retreat and all the English scampered for their own line. Lord Outhwaite put back his spurs and easily evaded the rush of men who contented themselves with butchering the two wounded archers. The rest of the Scots, seeing the English run, laughed and jeered. Lord Outhwaite turned and gazed at the two dead bowmen. 'We should have brought those lads in,' he chided himself. No one answered. Some of the archers were looking resentfully at the men-at-arms, supposing that their horses had been brought up to aid their flight, but then Lord Outhwaite barked at groups of archers to get behind the men-at-arms. 'Line up at the back!