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

by Bernard Cornwell

  But it was the Earl's banner, and the Earl's tent, in contrast to the other stately pavilions on the low ridge, was still the grubby shelter made from two worn-out sails. A half-dozen men-at-arms wearing the Earl's livery barred Thomas's way as he neared the tent. 'Have you come to hear his lordship's confession or put an arrow in his belly?' one asked.

  'I would speak to his lordship,' Thomas said, barely suppressing the anger provoked by Jeanette's abandonment of him.

  'But will he talk to you?' the man asked, amused at the ragged archer's pretensions.

  'He will,' Thomas said with a confidence he did not entirely feel. 'Tell him the man who gave him La Roche-Derrien is here,' he added.

  The man-at-arms looked startled. He frowned, but just then the tent flap was thrown back and the Earl himself appeared, stripped to the waist to reveal a muscled chest covered in tight red curls. He was chewing on a goose-bone and peered up at the sky as though fearing rain. The man-at-arms turned to him, indicated Thomas, then shrugged as if to say he was not responsible for a madman showing up unannounced.

  The Earl stared at Thomas. 'Good God,' he said after a while, 'have you taken orders?'

  'No, my lord.'

  The Earl stripped a piece of flesh from the bone with his teeth. 'Thomas, ain't that right?'

  'Yes, my lord.'

  'Never forget a face,' the Earl said, 'and I have cause to remember yours, though I hardly expected you to fetch up here. Did you walk?'

  Thomas nodded. 'I did, my lord.' Something about the Earl's demeanour was puzzling, almost as though he was not really surprised to see Thomas in Normandy.

  'Will told me about you,' the Earl said, 'told me all about you. So Thomas, my modest hero from La Roche-Derrien, is a murderer, eh?' He spoke grimly.

  'Yes, my lord,' Thomas said humbly.

  The Earl threw away the stripped bone, then snapped his fingers and a servant tossed him a shirt from within the tent. He pulled it on and tucked it into his hose. 'God's teeth, boy, do you expect me to save you from Sir Simon's vengeance? You know he's here?'

  Thomas gaped at the Earl. Said nothing. Sir Simon Jekyll was here? And Thomas had just brought Jeanette to Normandy. Sir Simon could hardly hurt her so long as she was under the Prince's protection, but Sir Simon could harm Thomas well enough. And delight in it.

  The Earl saw Thomas blanch and he nodded. 'He's with the King's men, because I didn't want him, but he insisted on travelling because he reckons there's more plunder to be had in Normandy than in Brittany and I dare say he's right, but what will truly put a smile on his face is the sight of you. Ever been hanged, Thomas?'

  'Hanged, my lord?' Thomas asked vaguely. He was still reeling from the news that Sir Simon had sailed to Normandy. He had just walked all this way to find his enemy waiting?

  'Sir Simon will hang you,' the Earl said with indecent relish. 'He'll let you strangle on the rope and there'll be no kindly soul tugging on your ankles to make it quick. You could last an hour, two hours, in utter agony. You could choke for even longer! One fellow I hanged lasted from matins till prime and still managed to curse me. So I suppose you want my help, yes?'

  Thomas belatedly went onto one knee. 'You offered me a reward after La Roche-Derrien, my lord, Can I claim it now?'

  The servant brought a stool from the tent and the Earl sat, his legs set wide. 'Murder is murder,' he said, picking his teeth with a sliver of wood.

  'Half Will Skeat's men are murderers, my lord,' Thomas pointed out.

  The Earl thought about that, then reluctantly nodded. 'But they're pardoned murderers,' he answered. He sighed. 'I wish Will was here,' he said, evading Thomas's demand. 'I wanted him to come, but he can't come until Charles of Blois is put back into his cage.' He scowled at Thomas. 'If I give you a pardon,' the Earl went on, 'then I make an enemy out of Sir Simon. Not that he's a friend now, but still, why spare you?'

  'For La Roche-Derrien,' Thomas said.

  'Which is a great debt,' the Earl agreed, 'a very great debt. We'd have looked bloody fools if we hadn't taken that town, miserable goddamn place though it be. God's teeth, boy, but why didn't you just walk south? Plenty of bastards to kill in Gascony.' He looked at Thomas for a while, plainly irritated by the undeniable debt he owed the archer and the nuisance of paying it. He finally shrugged. 'I'll talk to Sir Simon, offer him money, and if it's enough he'll pretend you're not here. As for you,' he paused, frowning as he remembered his earlier meetings with Thomas, 'you're the one who wouldn't tell me who your father was, ain't I right?'

  'I didn't tell you, my lord, because he was a priest.'

  The Earl thought that was a fine jest. 'God's teeth! A priest? So you're a devil's whelp, are you? That's what they say in Guyenne, that the children of priests are the devil's whelps.' He looked Thomas up and down, amused again at the ragged robe. 'They say the devil's whelps make good soldiers,' he said, 'good soldiers and better whores. I suppose you've lost your horse?'

  'Yes, my lord.'

  'All my archers are mounted,' the Earl said, then turned to one of his men-at-arms. 'Find the bastard a sway-backed nag till he can filch something better, then give him a tunic and offer him to John Armstrong.' He looked back to Thomas. 'You're joining my archers, which means you'll wear my badge. You're my man, devil's whelp, and perhaps that will protect you if Sir Simon wants too much money for your miserable soul.'

  'I shall try to repay your lordship,' Thomas said.

  'Pay me, boy, by getting us into Caen. You got us into La Roche-Derrien, but that little place is nothing compared to Caen. Caen is a true bastard. We go there tomorrow, but I doubt we'll see the backside of its walls for a month or more, if ever. Get us into Caen, Thomas, and I'll forgive you a score of murders.' He stood, nodded a dismissal and went back into the tent.

  Thomas did not move. Caen, he thought, Caen. Caen was the city where Sir Guillaume d'Evecque lived, and he made the sign of the cross for he knew fate had arranged all this. Fate had determined that his crossbow arrow would miss Sir Simon Jekyll and it had brought him to the edge of Caen. Because fate wanted him to do the penance that Father Hobbe had demanded. God, Thomas decided, had taken Jeanette from him because he had been slow to keep his promise.

  But now the time for the keeping of promises had come, for God had brought Thomas to Caen.

  Part Two

  Normandy

  Chapter 7

  The Earl of Northampton had been summoned from Brittany to be one of the Prince of Wales's advisers. The Prince was just sixteen, though John Armstrong reckoned the boy was as good as any grown man. 'Ain't nothing wrong with young Edward,' he told Thomas. 'Knows his weapons. Headstrong, maybe, but brave.'

  That, in John Armstrong's world, was high praise. He was a forty-year-old man-at-arms who led the Earl's personal archers and was one of those hard, common men that the Earl liked so much. Armstrong, like Skeat, came from the north country and was said to have been fighting the Scots since he had been weaned. His personal weapon was a falchion, a curved sword with a heavy blade as broad as an axe, though he could draw a bow with the best of his troop. He also commanded three score of hobelars, light horsemen mounted on shaggy ponies and carrying spears.

  'They don't look up to much,' he said to Thomas, who was gazing at the small horsemen, who all had long shaggy hair and bent legs, 'but they're rare at scouting. We send swarms of yon bastards into the Scottish hills to find the enemy. Be dead else.' Armstrong had been at La Roche-Derrien and remembered Thomas's achievement in turning the town's river flank and, because of that, he accepted Thomas readily enough. He gave him a lice-ridden hacqueton — a padded jacket that might stop a feeble sword cut — and a short surcoat, a jupon, that had the Earl's stars and lions on its breast and bore the cross of St George on its right sleeve. The hacqueton and jupon, like the breeches and arrow bag that completed Thomas's outfit, had belonged to an archer who had died of the fever shortly after reaching Normandy. 'You can find yourself better stuff in Caen,' Armstrong told him, 'if we ever get
into Caen.'

  Thomas was given a sway-backed grey mare that had a hard mouth and an awkward gait. He watered the beast, rubbed her down with straw, then ate red herrings and dry beans with Armstrong's men. He found a stream and washed his hair, then twisted the bowcord round the wet pigtail. He borrowed a razor and scraped off his beard, tossing the stiff hairs into the stream so that no one could work a spell on them. It seemed strange to spend the night in a soldiers' encampment and to sleep without Jeanette. He still felt bitter about her and that bitterness was like a sliver of iron in his soul when he was roused in the night's dark heart. He felt lonely, chill and unwanted as the archers began their march. He thought of Jeanette in the Prince's tent, and remembered the jealousy he had felt in Rennes when she had gone to the citadel to meet Duke Charles. She was like a moth, he thought, flying to the brightest candle in the room. Her wings had been scorched once, but the flame drew her still.

  The army advanced on Caen in three battles, each of about four thousand men. The King commanded one, the Prince of Wales the second while the third was under the orders of the Bishop of Durham, who much preferred slaughter to sanctity. The Prince had left the encampment early to stand his horse beside the road where he could watch his men pass in the summer dawn. He was in black armour, with a lion crest on his helm, and escorted by a dozen priests and fifty knights. As Thomas approached, he saw Jeanette was among those green-and-white-blazoned horsemen. She was wearing the same colours, a dress of pale green cloth with white cuffs, hems and bodice, and was mounted on a palfrey that had silver curb chains, green and white ribbons plaited into its mane and a white saddle cloth embroidered with the lions of England. Her hair had been washed, brushed and coiled, then decorated with cornflowers, and as Thomas came nearer he thought how ravishing she looked. There was a radiant happiness on her face and her eyes were bright. She was just to one side of the Prince and a pace or so behind him, and Thomas noted how often the boy turned to speak to her. The men in front of Thomas were pulling off their helmets or caps to salute the Prince, who looked from Jeanette to them, sometimes nodding or calling out to a knight he recognized.

  Thomas, riding his borrowed horse that was so small his long legs hung almost to the ground, raised a hand to greet Jeanette. She stared into his smiling face, then looked away without showing any expression. She spoke with a priest who was evidently the Prince's chaplain. Thomas let his hand drop. 'If you're a bloody prince,' the man beside Thomas said, 'you get the cream, don't you? We get lice and he gets that.'

  Thomas said nothing. Jeanette's dismissal had left him embarrassed. Had the last weeks been a dream? He twisted in his saddle to look at her and saw she was laughing at some comment of the Prince's. You are a fool, Thomas told himself, a fool, and he wondered why he felt so hurt. Jeanette had never declared any love for him, yet her abandonment bit his heart like a snake. The road dropped into a hollow where sycamore and ash grew thick and Thomas, turning again, could not see Jeanette.

  There'll be plenty of women in Caen,' an archer said with relish.

  'If we ever get in,' another commented, using the five words that were always spoken whenever the city was named.

  The previous night Thomas had listened to the campfire talk that had all been about Caen. It was, he gathered, a huge city, one of the biggest in France, and protected by a massive castle and a great wall. The French, it seemed, had adopted a strategy of retreating into such citadels rather than face England's bowmen in the open fields, and the archers feared they could be stranded in front of Caen for weeks. The city could not be ignored, for if it was left untaken its huge garrison would threaten the English supply lines. So Caen had to fall and no one believed it would be easy, though some men reckoned the new guns that the King had fetched to France would knock down the city's ramparts as easily as Joshua's trumpets had felled the walls of Jericho.

  The King himself must have been sceptical of the guns' power for he had decided to scare the city into surrender by the sheer numbers of his army. The three English battles moved eastward on every road, track or stretch of meadow that offered a path, but an hour or two after dawn the men-at-arms who served as marshals began halting the various contingents. Sweaty horsemen galloped up and down the masses of men, shouting at them to move into a rough line. Thomas, wrestling with his stubborn mare, understood that the whole army was being formed into a huge crescent. A low hill lay in front and a hazy smear beyond the hill betrayed the thousands of cooking fires in Caen. When the signal was given the whole clumsy crescent of mailed men would be advanced to the hilltop so that the defenders, instead of seeing a few English scouts trickle from the woods, would be presented with an overwhelming host and, to make the army seem double its real size, the marshals were pushing and shouting the camp followers into the curved line. Cooks, clerks, women, masons, farriers, carpenters, scullions, anyone who could walk, crawl, ride or stand was being added to the crescent, and a host of bright flags were raised over those bemused masses. It was a hot morning and the leather and mail made men and horses sweat. Dust blew in the wind. The Earl of Warwick, Marshal of the Host, was galloping up and down the crescent, red-faced and cursing, but slowly the cumbersome line formed to his satisfaction.

  'When the trumpet sounds,' a knight shouted at Armstrong's men, 'advance to the hilltop. When the trumpet sounds! Not before!'

  That army of England must have looked like twenty thousand men when the trumpets tore the summer sky with their massed defiance. To Caen's defenders it was a nightmare. One moment the horizon was empty, even though the sky beyond had long been blanched by the dust kicked up by hoofs and boots, and then there was a sudden host, a horde, a swarm of men glinting iron-hard in the sun and topped by a forest of raised lances and flags. The whole north and east of the city was ringed with men who, when they saw Caen, gave a great roar of incoherent scorn. There was plunder ahead of them, a whole rich city waiting to be taken.

  It was a fine and famous city, bigger even than London and that was the biggest city in England. Caen, indeed, was one of the great cities of France. The Conqueror had endowed it with the wealth he stole from England, and it still showed. Within the city walls the church spires and towers stood as close as the lances and flags in Edward's army, while on either side of the city were two vast abbeys. The castle lay to the north, its ramparts, like the pale stone of the city's high walls, hung with war banners. The English roar was answered with a defiant cheer from the defenders, who clustered thick on the ramparts. So many crossbows, Thomas thought, remembering the heavy bolts thumping from La Roche-Derrien's embrasures.

  The city had spread beyond its walls, but instead of placing the new houses beside the ramparts, as most towns did, here they had been built on a sprawling island that lay to the south of the old city. Formed by a maze-like tangle of tributaries that fed the two main rivers which flowed by Caen, the island had no walls, for it was protected by the waterways. It needed such protection, for even from the hilltop Thomas could see that the island was where the wealth of Caen lay. The old city within its high walls would be a labyrinth of narrow alleys and cramped houses, but the island was filled with large mansions, big churches and wide gardens. But even though it appeared to be the wealthiest part of Caen, it did not seem to be defended. No troops were visible there. Instead they were all on the ramparts of the old city. The town's boats had been moored on the island's bank, opposite the city wall, and Thomas wondered if any of them belonged to Sir Guillaume d'Evecque.

  The Earl of Northampton, released from the Prince's entourage, joined John Armstrong at the head of the archers and nodded towards the city walls.

  'Brute of a place, John!' the Earl said cheerfully.

  'Formidable, my lord,' Armstrong grunted.

  'The island's named for you,' the Earl said glibly.

  'For me?' Armstrong sounded suspicious.

  'It's the Ile St Jean,' the Earl said, then pointed to the nearer of the two abbeys, a great monastery that was surrounded by its own ramparts, whic
h were joined to the city's higher walls. 'The Abbaye aux Hommes,' the Earl said. 'You know what happened when they buried the Conqueror there? They left him in the abbey for too long and when the time came to put him in the vault he was rotted and swollen. His body burst and they reckon the stench of it drove the congregation out of the abbey.'

  'God's vengeance, my lord,' Armstrong said stoically.

  The Earl gave him a quizzical look. 'Maybe,' he said uncertainly.

  'There's no love of William in the north country,' Armstrong said.

  'Long time ago, John.'

  'Not so long that I won't spit on his grave,' Armstrong declared, then explained himself. 'He might have been our king, my lord, but he were no Englishman.'

  'I suppose he wasn't,' the Earl allowed.

  'Time for revenge,' Armstrong said loudly enough for the nearest archers to hear. 'We'll take him, we'll take his city and we'll take his goddamn women!'

  The archers cheered, though Thomas did not see how the army could possibly take Caen. The walls were huge and well-buttressed with towers, and the ramparts were thick with defenders who looked as confident as the attackers. Thomas was searching the banners for the one showing three yellow hawks on a blue field, but there were so many flags and the wind was stirring them so briskly that he could not pick Sir Guillaume d'Evecque's three hawks from the other gaudy ripples that swirled beneath the embrasures.

  'So what are you, Thomas?' The Earl had dropped back to ride beside him. His horse was a big destrier so that the Earl, despite being much shorter than Thomas, towered above him. He spoke in French. 'English or Norman?'

  Thomas grimaced. 'English, my lord. Right to my sore arse.' It had been so long since he had ridden that his thighs were chafed raw.