The Grail Quest Books 1-3: Harlequin, Vagabond, Heretic

by Bernard Cornwell

  Skeat looked up at the sky. 'Looks like rain, don't you think? And we could do with a drop. Fields are right dry and streams are low.'

  Sir Simon reached out and gripped Skeat's arm, forcing the older man to turn to him. 'He has fifty knights,' Sir Simon spoke of Sir Geoffrey de Pont Blanc, 'and I have twenty. Give me thirty men and I'll take him prisoner. Just give me twenty!' He was pleading, all arrogance gone, for this was a chance for Sir Simon to fight a proper skirmish, horseman against horseman, and the winner would have renown and the prize of captured men and horses.

  But Will Skeat knew everything about men, horses and renown. 'I'm not out here to play games,' he said, shaking his arm free, 'and you can order me till the cows sprout wings, but you'll not have a man of mine.'

  Sir Simon looked anguished, but then Sir Geoffrey de Pont Blanc decided the matter. He saw how his men-at-arms outnumbered the English horsemen and so he ordered thirty of his followers to ride back and join the crossbowmen. Now the two troops of horsemen were evenly matched and Sir Geoffrey rode forward on his big black stallion that was swathed in its blue and white trapper and had a boiled leather mask for face armour, a chanfron. Sir Simon rode to meet him in his new armour, but his horse had no padded trapper and no chanfron, and he wanted both, just as he wanted this fight. All winter he had endured the misery of a peasant's war, all muck and murder, and now the enemy was offering honour, glory and the chance to capture some fine horses, armour and good weapons. The two men saluted each other by dipping their lances, then exchanged names and compliments.

  Will Skeat had joined Thomas in the woods. 'You might be a woolly-headed fool, Tom,' Skeat said, 'but there's plenty more stupid than you. Look at the daft bastards! Not a brain between either of them. You could shake them by the heels and nothing would drop out of their ears but dried muck.' He spat.

  Sir Geoffrey and Sir Simon agreed on the rules of the fight. Tournament rules, really, only with death to give the sport spice. An unhorsed man was out of the fight, they agreed, and would be spared, though such a man could be taken prisoner. They wished each other well then turned and rode back to their men.

  Skeat tied his horse to a tree and strung his bow. 'There's a place in York,' he said, 'where you can watch the mad folk. They keep them caged up and you pay a farthing to go and laugh at them. They should put those two silly bastards in with them.'

  'My father was mad for a time,' Thomas said.

  'Don't surprise me, lad, don't surprise me at all.' Skeat said. He looped his bowcord onto a stave that had been carved with crosses.

  His archers watched the men-at-arms from the edge of the woods. As a spectacle it was wondrous, like a tournament, only on this spring meadow there were no marshals to save a man's life. The two groups of horsemen readied themselves. Squires tightened girths, men hefted lances and made sure their shield straps were tight. Visors clanged shut, turning the horsemen's world into a dark place slashed with slitted daylight. They dropped their reins, for from now on the well-trained destriers would be guided by the touch of spur and the pressure of knees; the horsemen needed both hands for their shields and weapons. Some men wore two swords, a heavy one for slashing and a thinner blade for stabbing, and they made certain the weapons slid easily from their scabbards. Some gave their lances to squires to leave a hand free to make the sign of the cross, then took the lances back. The horses stamped on the pasture, then Sir Geoffrey lowered his lance in a signal that he was ready and Sir Simon did the same, and the forty men spurred their big horses forward. These were not the light-boned mares and geldings that the archers rode, but the heavy destriers, stallions all, and big enough to carry a man and his armour. The beasts snorted, tossed their heads and lumbered into a trot as the riders lowered their long lances. One of Sir Geoffrey's men made the beginner's mistake of lowering the lance too much so that the point struck the dry turf and he was lucky not be unhorsed. He left the lance behind and drew his sword. The horsemen spurred into the canter and one of Sir Simon's men swerved to the left, probably because his horse was ill trained, and it bumped the next horse and the ripple of colliding horses went down the line as the spurs rowelled back to demand the gallop. Then they struck.

  The sound of the wooden lances striking shields and mail was a crunch like splintering bones. Two horsemen were rammed back out of their high saddles, but most of the lance thrusts had been parried by shields and now the horsemen dropped the shivered weapons as they galloped past their opponents. They sawed on the reins and drew their swords, but it was plain to the watching archers that the enemy had gained an advantage. Both of the unhorsed riders were English, and Sir Geoffrey's men were much more closely aligned so that when they turned to bring their swords to the mêlée they came as a disciplined group that struck Sir Simon's men in a clangour of sword against sword. An Englishman reeled from the mêlée with a missing hand. Dust and turf spewed up from hoofs. A riderless horse limped away. The swords clashed like hammers on anvils. Men grunted as they swung. A huge Breton, with no device on his plain shield, was wielding a falchion, a weapon that was half sword and half axe, and he used the broad blade with a terrible skill. An English man-at-arms had his helmet split open and his skull with it, so that he rode wavering from the fight, blood pouring down his mail coat. His horse stopped a few paces from the turmoil and the man-at-arms slowly, so slowly, bent forward and then slumped down from the saddle. One foot was trapped in a stirrup as he died but his horse did not seem to notice. It just went on cropping the grass.

  Two of Sir Simon's men yielded and were sent back to be taken prisoner by the French and Breton squires. Sir Simon himself was fighting savagely, turning his horse to beat off two opponents. He sent one reeling out of the fight with a useless arm, then battered the other with swift cuts from his stolen sword. The French had fifteen men still fighting, but the English were down to ten when the great brute with the falchion decided to finish Sir Simon off. He roared as he charged, and Sir Simon caught the falchion on his shield and lunged his sword into the mail under the Breton's armpit. He yanked the sword free and there was blood pouring from the rent in the enemy's mail and leather tunic. The big man twitched in the saddle and Sir Simon hammered the sword onto the back of his head, then turned his horse to beat off another assailant, before wheeling back to drive his heavy weapon in a crushing blow against the big Breton's adam's apple. The man dropped his falchion and clutched his throat as he rode away.

  'He's good, isn't he?' Skeat said flatly. 'Got suet for brains, but he knows how to fight.'

  But, despite Sir Simon's prowess, the enemy was winning and Thomas wanted to advance the archers. They only needed to run about thirty paces and then would have been in easy range of the rampaging enemy horsemen, but Will Skeat shook his head. 'Never kill two Frenchmen when you can kill a dozen, Tom,' he said reprovingly.

  'Our men are getting beat,' Thomas protested.

  'Then that'll teach 'em not to be bloody fools, won't it?' Skeat said. He grinned. 'Just wait, lad, just wait, and we'll skin the cat proper.'

  The English men-at-arms were being beaten back and only Sir Simon was fighting with spirit. He was indeed good. He had driven the huge Breton from the fight and was now holding off four of the enemy, and doing it with a ferocious skill, but the rest of his men, seeing that their battle was lost and that they could not reach Sir Simon because there were too many enemy horsemen around him, turned and fled.

  'Sam!' Will shouted across the road. 'When I give you the word, take a dozen men and run away! You hear me, Sam?'

  'I'll run away!' Sam shouted back.

  The English men-at-arms, some bleeding and one half falling from his tall saddle, thundered back down the road towards La Roche-Derrien. The French and Bretons had surrounded Sir Simon, but Sir Geoffrey of the WhiteBridge was a romantic fellow and refused to take the life of a brave opponent, and so he ordered his men to spare the English knight.

  Sir Simon, sweating like a pig under the leather and iron plate, pushed up the snoutlike vis
or of his helmet. 'I don't yield,' he told Sir Geoffrey. His new armour was scarred and his sword edge chipped, but the quality of both had helped him in the fight. 'I don't yield,' he said again, 'so fight on!'

  Sir Geoffrey bowed in his saddle. 'I salute your bravery, Sir Simon,' he said magnanimously, 'and you are free to go with all honour.' He waved his men-at-arms aside and Sir Simon, miraculously alive and free, rode away with his head held high. He had led his men into disaster and death, but he had emerged with honour.

  Sir Geoffrey could see past Sir Simon, down the long road that was thick with fleeing men-at-arms and, beyond them, the captured livestock and the heaped carts of plunder that were being escorted by Skeat's men. Then Will Skeat shouted at Sam and suddenly Sir Geoffrey could see a bunch of panicked archers riding northwards as hard as they could. 'He'll fall for it,' Skeat said knowingly, 'you just see if he don't.'

  Sir Geoffrey had proved in the last few weeks that he was no fool, but he lost his wits that day. He saw a chance to cut down the hated hellequin archers and recapture three carts of plunder and so he ordered his remaining thirty men-at-arms to join him and, leaving his four prisoners and nine captured horses in the care of his crossbowmen, waved his knights forward. Will Skeat had been waiting weeks for this.

  Sir Simon turned in alarm as he heard the sound of hooves. Nearly fifty armoured men on big destriers charged towards him and, for a moment, he thought they were trying to capture him and so he spurred his horse towards the woods only to see the French and Breton horsemen crash past him at full gallop. Sir Simon ducked under branches and swore at Will Skeat, who ignored him. He was watching the enemy.

  Sir Geoffrey de Pont Blanc led the charge and saw only glory. He had forgotten the archers in the woods, or else believed they had all fled after the defeat of Sir Simon's men. Sir Geoffrey was on the cusp of a great victory. He would take back the plunder and, even better, lead the dreaded hellequin to a fiery fate in Lannion's marketplace.

  'Now!' Skeat shouted through cupped hands. 'Now!'

  There were archers on both sides of the road and they stepped out from the new spring foliage and loosed their bowstrings. Thomas's second arrow was in the air before the first even struck. Look and loose, he thought, do not think, and there was no need to aim, for the enemy was a tight group and all the archers did was pour their long arrows into the horsemen so that in an eyeblink the charge was reduced to a tangle of rearing stallions, fallen men, screaming horses and splashing blood. The enemy had no chance. A few at the back managed to turn and gallop away, but the majority were trapped in a closing ring of bowmen who drove their arrows mercilessly through mail and leather. Any man who even twitched invited three or four arrows. The pile of iron and flesh was spiked with feathers, and still the arrows came, cutting through mail and driving deep into horseflesh. Only the handful of men at the rear and a single man at the very front of the charge survived.

  That man was Sir Geoffrey himself. He had been ten paces in front of his men and maybe that was why he was spared, or perhaps the archers had been impressed by the manner in which he had treated Sir Simon, but for whatever reason he rode ahead of the carnage like a charmed soul. Not an arrow flew close, but he heard the screams and clatter behind and he slowed his horse then turned to see the horror. He watched with disbelief for an instant, then walked his stallion back towards the arrow-stuck pile that had been his men. Skeat shouted at some of his bowmen to turn and face the enemy's crossbowmen, but they, seeing the fate of their men-at-arms, were in no mood to face the English arrows. They retreated southwards.

  There was a curious stillness then. Fallen horses twitched and some beat at the road with their hooves. A man groaned, another called on Christ and some just whimpered. Thomas, an arrow still on his bowstring, could hear larks, the call of plovers and the whisper of wind in the leaves. A drop of rain fell, splashing the dust on the road, but it was a lone outrider of a shower that went to the west. Sir Geoffrey stood his horse beside his dead and dying men as if inviting the archers to add his corpse to the heap that was streaked with blood and flecked with goose feathers.

  'See what I mean, Tom?' Skeat said. 'Wait long enough and the bloody fools will always oblige you. Right, lads! Finish the bastards off!' Men dropped their bows, drew their knives and ran to the shuddering heap, but Skeat held Thomas back. 'Go and tell that stupid white bridge bastard to make himself scarce.'

  Thomas walked to the Frenchman, who must have thought he was expected to surrender for he pulled off his helmet and extended his sword handle. 'My family cannot pay a great ransom,' he said apologetically.

  'You're not a prisoner,' Thomas said.

  Sir Geoffrey seemed perplexed by the words. 'You release me?'

  'We don't want you,' Thomas said. 'You might think about going to Spain,' he suggested, 'or the Holy Land. Not too many hellequin in either place.'

  Sir Geoffrey sheathed his sword. 'I must fight against the enemies of my king so I shall fight here. But I thank you.' He gathered his reins and just at that moment Sir Simon Jekyll rode out of the trees, pointing his drawn sword at Sir Geoffrey.

  'He's my prisoner!' he called to Thomas. 'My prisoner!'

  'He's no one's prisoner,' Thomas said. 'We're letting him go.'

  'You're letting him go?' Sir Simon sneered. 'Do you know who commands here?'

  'What I know,' Thomas said, 'is that this man is no prisoner.' He thumped the trapper-covered rump of Sir Geoffrey's horse to send it on its way. 'Spain or the Holy Land!' he called after Sir Geoffrey.

  Sir Simon turned his horse to follow Sir Geoffrey, then saw that Will Skeat was ready to intervene and stop any such pursuit so he turned back to Thomas. 'You had no right to release him! No right!'

  'He released you,' Thomas said.

  'Then he was a fool. And because he is a fool, I must be?' Sir Simon was quivering with anger. Sir Geoffrey might have declared himself a poor man, hardly able to raise a ransom, but his horse alone was worth at least fifty pounds, and Skeat and Thomas had just sent that money trotting southwards. Sir Simon watched him go, then lowered the sword blade so that it threatened Thomas's throat. 'From the moment I first saw you,' he said, 'you have been insolent. I am the highest-born man on this field and it is I who decides the fate of prisoners. You understand that?'

  'He yielded to me,' Thomas said, 'not to you. So it don't matter what bed you were born in.'

  'You're a pup!' Sir Simon spat. 'Skeat! I want recompense for that prisoner. You hear me?'

  Skeat ignored Sir Simon, but Thomas did not have enough sense to do the same.

  'Jesus,' he said in disgust, 'that man spared you, and you'd not return the favour? You're not a bloody knight, you're just a bully. Go and boil your arse.'

  The sword rose and so did Thomas's bow. Sir Simon looked at the glittering arrow point, its edges feathered white through sharpening and he had just enough wit not to strike with his sword. He sheathed it instead, slamming the blade into the scabbard, then wheeled his destrier and spurred away.

  Which left Skeat's men to sort out the enemy's dead. There were eighteen of them and another twenty-three grievously wounded. There were also sixteen bleeding horses and twenty-four dead destriers, and that, as Will Skeat remarked, was a wicked waste of good horseflesh.

  And Sir Geoffrey had been taught his lesson.

  Chapter 4

  There was a fuss back in La Roche-Derrien. Sir Simon Jekyll complained to Richard Totesham that Will Skeat had failed to support him in battle, then also claimed to have been responsible for the death or wounding of forty-one enemy men-at-arms. He boasted he had won the skirmish, then returned to his theme of Skeat's perfidy, but Richard Totesham was in no mood to endure Sir Simon's querulousness. 'Did you win the fight or not?'

  'Of course we won!' Sir Simon blinked indignantly. 'They're dead, ain't they?'

  'So why did you need Will's men-at-arms?' Totesham asked.

  Sir Simon searched for an answer and found none. 'He was impertinent,' he complained.r />
  'That's for you and him to settle, not me,' Totesham said in abrupt dismissal, but he was thinking about the conversation and that night he talked with Skeat.

  'Forty-one dead or wounded?' he wondered aloud. 'That must be a third of Lannion's men-at-arms.'

  'Near as maybe, aye.'

  Totesham's quarters were near the river and from his window he could watch the water slide under the bridge arches. Bats flittered about the barbican tower that guarded the bridge's further side, while the cottages beyond the river were lit by a sharp-edged moon. 'They'll be short-handed, Will,' Totesham said.

  'They'll not be happy, that's for sure.'

  'And the place will be stuffed with valuables.'

  'Like as not,' Skeat agreed. Many folk, fearing the hellequin, had taken their belongings to the nearby fortresses, and Lannion must be filled with their goods. More to the point, Totesham would find food there. His garrison received some food from the farms north of La Roche-Derrien and more was brought across the Channel from England, but the hellequin's wastage of the countryside had brought hunger perilously close.

  'Leave fifty men here?' Totesham was still thinking aloud, but he had no need to explain his thoughts to an old soldier like Skeat.

  'We'll need new ladders,' Skeat said.

  'What happened to the old ones?'

  'Firewood. It were a cold winter.'

  'A night attack?' Totesham suggested.

  'Full moon in five or six days.'

  'Five days from now, then,' Totesham decided. 'And I'll want your men, Will.'

  'If they're sober by then.'

  'They deserve their drink after what they did today,' Totesham said warmly, then gave Skeat a smile. 'Sir Simon was complaining about you. Says you were impertinent.'

  'That weren't me, Dick, it was my lad Tom. Told the bastard to go and boil his arse.'

  'I fear Sir Simon was never one for taking good advice,' Totesham said gravely.

  Nor were Skeat's men. He had let them loose in the town, but warned them that they would feel rotten in the morning if they drank too much and they ignored that advice to make celebration in La Roche-Derrien's taverns. Thomas had gone with a score of his friends and their women to an inn where they sang, danced and tried to pick a fight with a group of Duke John's white rats, who were too sensible to rise to the provocation and slipped quietly into the night. A moment later two men-at-arms walked in, both wearing jackets with the Earl of Northampton's badge of the lions and the stars. Their arrival was jeered, but they endured it with patience and asked if Thomas was present.