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

by Bernard Cornwell

  Father Roubert was saving the best news till last. ‘But one of the two, my lord,’ he said excitedly, ‘was the beghard!’

  ‘The heretic girl?’

  ‘So God will be with you!’ Father Roubert said vehemently.

  Joscelyn smiled. ‘So your advice, Father Roubert, is what?’

  ‘Attack!’ the Dominican said. ‘Attack! And God will give us triumph!’ He might be a cautious man by nature, but the sight of Genevieve had stirred his soul to battle.

  And when Joscelyn reached the edge of the trees on the valley floor he saw that everything seemed to be exactly as the Dominican had promised. Beyond the river the English, apparently ignorant of the presence of enemies, had set no picquets to guard the road that came down from the ridge and instead were digging into the big mound of earth at the centre of the village. Joscelyn could see no more than ten men and the one woman. He dismounted briefly and let his squire tighten the buckles of his armour, then he heaved himself into the saddle again where he pulled on his great tournament helm with its yellow and red plume, leather padding, and cross shaped eye slits. He pushed his left arm through the loops of his shield, made sure his sword was loose in its scabbard, then reached down for his lance. Made of ash, it was sixteen feet long and painted in a spiral of yellow and red, the colours of his lordship at Béziers. Similar lances had broken the best tourney fighters in Europe, now this one would do God’s work. His men armed themselves with their own lances, some painted with Berat’s colours of orange and white. Their lances were mostly thirteen or fourteen feet long, for none of Berat’s men had the strength to carry a great lance like those Joscelyn used in tournaments. The squires drew their swords. Helmet visors were closed, reducing the world to bright slits of sunlight. Joscelyn’s horse, knowing it was riding to battle, pawed the ground. All was ready, the unsuspecting English were oblivious of the threat and Joscelyn, at long last, was off his uncle’s leash.

  And so, with his men-at-arms tight bunched to either side, and with Father Roubert’s prayer echoing in his head, he charged.

  —«»—«»—«»—

  Gaspard thought the hand of the Lord was on him, for the very first time he attempted to pour the gold into the delicate mould that had once held the wax model of his Mass cup, it worked. He had told his woman, Yvette, that it might take ten or eleven attempts, that he was not even sure he could make the cup for the detail of the filigree was so delicate that he doubted the molten gold would fill every cranny of the mould, but when, with a beating heart, he broke away the fired clay he found that his wax creation had been reproduced almost perfectly. One or two details were lumpish and in some places the gold had failed to make the twist of a leaf or the spine of a thorn, but those defects were soon put right. He filed away the rough edges, then polished the whole cup. That took a week, and when it was done he did not tell Charles Bessières that he had finished, instead he claimed there was still more work to do when in truth he simply could not relinquish the beautiful thing he had made. He reckoned it was the finest piece of goldsmithing ever achieved.

  So he made a lid for the cup. It was conical, like the cover of a font, and at its crown he placed a cross, and about its rim he hung pearls, and on its sloping sides he made the symbols of the four evangelists. A lion for St Mark, an ox for Luke, and angel for Matthew and an eagle for John. That piece, not quite as delicate as the cup itself, also came sweetly from the mould and he filed and polished it, then assembled the whole thing. The golden cup-holder, the ancient green glass cup itself and the new lid hung with pearls. Tell the Cardinal,’ he told Charles Bessières as the exquisite thing was packed in cloth, straw and boxes, ‘that the pearls stand for the tears of Christ’s mother.’

  Charles Bessières could not care what they stood for, but he grudgingly acknowledged that the chalice was a beautiful thing. ‘If my brother approves of it,’ he said, ‘then you’ll be paid and freed.’

  ‘We can go back to Paris?’ Gaspard asked eagerly.

  ‘You can go where you like,’ Charles lied, ‘but not till I tell you.’ He gave his men instructions that Gaspard and Yvette were to be well guarded while he was away, then took the chalice to his brother in Paris.

  The Cardinal, when the cup was unwrapped and the three pieces assembled, clasped his hands in front of his breast and just stared. For a long time he said nothing, then he leaned forward and peered at the ancient glass. ‘Does it seem to you, Charles,’ he asked, ‘that the cup itself has a tinge of gold?’

  ‘Haven’t looked,’ was the churlish reply.

  The Cardinal carefully removed the lid then lifted the old glass cup from the golden cradle and held it to the light and he saw that Gaspard, in a moment of unwitting genius, had put an almost invisible layer of gold leaf around the cup so that the common glass was given a heavenly sheen of gold. The real Grail,’ he told his brother, ‘is supposed to turn to gold when the wine of Christ’s blood is added. This would pass for that.’

  ‘So you like it?’

  The Cardinal reassembled the chalice. ‘It is gorgeous,’ he said reverentially. ‘It is a miracle.’ He stared at it. He had not expected anything half as good as this. It was a wonder, so much so that for a brief instant he even forgot his ambitions for the papal throne. ‘Perhaps, Charles’ - there was awe in his voice now - ‘perhaps it is the real Grail! Maybe the cup I bought was the true object. Perhaps God guided me to it!’

  ‘Does that mean,’ Charles said, unmoved by the cup’s beauty, ‘that I can kill Gaspard?’

  ‘And his woman,’ the Cardinal said without removing his gaze from the glorious thing. ‘Do it, yes, do it. Then you will go south. To Berat, south of Toulouse.’

  ‘Berat?’ Charles had never heard of the place.

  The Cardinal smiled. ‘The English archer has appeared. I knew he would! The wretched man has taken a small force to Castillon d’Arbizon, which I am told is close to Berat. He is a fruit ripe for the plucking, Charles, so I am sending Guy Vexille to deal with him and I want you, Charles, to be close to Guy Vexille.’

  ‘You don’t trust him?’

  ‘Of course I don’t trust him. He pretends to be loyal, but he is not a man who is comfortable serving any master.’ The Cardinal lifted the cup again, gazed at it reverentially, then lay it back in the sawdust-filled box in which it had been brought to him. ‘And you will take this with you.’

  ‘That!’ Charles looked appalled. ‘What in Christ’s name do I want with that?’

  ‘It is a heavy responsibility,’ the Cardinal said, handing his brother the box, ‘but legend insists the Cathars possessed the Grail, so where else must it be discovered but close to the last stronghold of the heretics?’

  Charles was confused. ‘You want me to discover it?’

  The Cardinal went to a prie-dieu and knelt there. ‘The Holy Father is not a young man,’ he said piously. In fact Clement was only fifty-six, just eight years older than the Cardinal, but even so Louis Bessières was racked by the thought that Pope Clement might die and a new successor be appointed before he had a chance to make his claim with the Grail. ‘We do not have the luxury of time and so I need the Grail.’ He paused. ‘I need a Grail now! But if Vexille knows that Gaspard’s cup exists then he will try to take it from you, so you must kill him when he has done his duty. His duty is to find his cousin, the English archer. So kill Vexille, then make that archer talk, Charles. Peel the skin from his flesh inch by inch, then salt him. He’ll talk, and when he has told you everything he knows about the Grail, kill him.’

  ‘But we have a Grail,’ Charles said, hefting the box.

  ‘There is a true one, Charles,’ the Cardinal said patiently, ‘and if it exists, and if the Englishman reveals where it is, then we shall not need the one you’re holding, shall we? But if the Englishman is a dry well, then you will announce that he gave you that Grail. You will bring it to Paris, we shall sing a Te Deum, and in a year or two you and I shall have a new home in Avignon. And then, in due time, we shall move the pap
acy to Paris and the whole world shall marvel at us.’

  Charles thought about his orders and considered them unnecessarily elaborate. ‘Why not produce the Grail here?’

  ‘No one will believe me if I find it in Paris,’ the Cardinal said, his eyes fixed on an ivory crucifix hanging on the wall. ‘They will assume it is a product of my ambition. No, it must come from a far place and rumours of its discovery must run ahead of its coming so that folk kneel in the street to welcome it.’

  Charles understood that. ‘So why not just kill Vexille now?’

  ‘Because he has the zeal to find the true Grail and if it exists, I want it. Men know his name is Vexille, and they know his family once possessed the Grail, so if he is involved in its discovery then it will be all the more convincing. And another reason? He’s well born. He can lead men and it will take all his force to prise that Englishman from his lair. Do you think forty-seven knights and men-at-arms will follow you?’ The Cardinal had raised Vexille’s force from his tenants, the lords who ruled the lands bequeathed to the Church in the hope that prayers would wipe away the sins of the men who granted the land. Those men would cost the Cardinal dear, for the lords would not pay rents for a year now. ‘You and I are from the gutter, Charles,’ the Cardinal said, ‘and men-at-arms would despise you.’

  ‘There must be a hundred lords who would seek your Grail,’ Charles suggested.

  ‘A thousand men would,’ the Cardinal agreed mildly, ‘but once they possessed the Grail they would take it to their King and that fool would lose it to the English. Vexille, so far as he is any man’s, is mine, but I know what he will do when he has the Grail. He will steal it. So you will kill him before he has a chance.’

  ‘He’ll be a hard man to kill,’ Charles worried.

  ‘Which is why I am sending you, Charles. You and your cut-throat soldiers. Don’t fail me.’

  That night Charles made a new receptacle for the fake Grail. It was a leather tube, of the sort crossbow-men used to carry their quarrels, and he packed the precious cup inside, padded the glass and gold with linen and sawdust, then sealed the tube’s lid with wax.

  And the next day Gaspard received his freedom. A knife slit his belly, then ripped upwards, so that he died slowly in a pool of blood. Yvette screamed so loudly that she was left voiceless, just gasping for breath, and showed no resistance as Charles cut the dress from her body. Ten minutes later, as a mark of gratitude for what he had just experienced, Charles Bessières killed her quickly.

  Then the tower was locked.

  And Charles Bessières, the crossbowman’s quiver safe at his side, led his hard men south.

  Chapter 5

  ‘In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, amen.’ Thomas said the words half aloud and crossed himself. Somehow the prayer did not seem sufficient and so he drew his sword, propped it up so the handle looked like a cross and dropped to one knee. He repeated the words in Latin. ‘In nomine patris, etfihi, et spintus sancti, amen.’ God spare me, he thought, and he tried to remember when he had last made confession.

  Sir Guillaume was amused by his piety. ‘I thought you said there were few of them?’

  ‘There are,’ Thomas said, standing and sheathing his sword. ‘But it doesn’t hurt to pray before a fight.’

  Sir Guillaume made a very sketchy sign of the cross, then spat. ‘If there’s only a few,’ he said, ‘we’ll murder the bastards.’

  If, indeed, the bastards were still coming. Thomas wondered if the horsemen had turned back towards Astarac. Who they were he did not know, and whether they were enemies he could not tell. They had certainly not been approaching from Berat for that lay northwards and the riders were coming from the east, but he was certain of one reassuring fact. He outnumbered them. He and Sir Guillaume commanded twenty archers and forty-two men-at-arms and Thomas had estimated the approaching horsemen at less than half those numbers. Many of Thomas’s new men-at-arms were routiers who had joined Castillon d’Arbizon’s garrison for the opportunity of plunder and they were pleased at the thought of a skirmish that could provide captured horses, weapons and armour, and even, perhaps, the prospect of prisoners to ransom.

  ‘You’re sure they weren’t coredors?’ Sir Guillaume asked him.

  ‘They weren’t coredors,’ Thomas said confidently. The men on the ridge top had been too well armed, too well armoured and too well mounted to be bandits. ‘They were flying a banner,’ he added, ‘but I couldn’t see it. It was hanging straight down.’

  ‘Routiers, perhaps?’ Sir Guillaume suggested.

  Thomas shook his head. He could not think why any band of routiers would be in this desolate place or why they would fly a banner. The men he had seen had looked like soldiers on a patrol and, before he had turned tail and galloped back to the village, he had clearly marked the lances bundled on packhorses. Routiers would not just have lances on their sumpter horses, but bundles of clothing and belongings. ‘I think,’ he suggested, ‘that Berat sent men to Astarac after we were there. Maybe they thought we’d go back for a second bite?’

  ‘So they’re enemies?’

  ‘Do we have any friends in these parts?’ Thomas asked.

  Sir Guillaume grinned. ‘You think twenty?’

  ‘Maybe a few more,’ Thomas said, ‘but no more than thirty.’

  ‘Perhaps you didn’t see them all?’

  ‘We’ll find out, won’t we?’ Thomas asked. ‘If they come.’

  ‘Crossbows?’

  ‘Didn’t see any.’

  ‘Then let’s hope they are coming here,’ Sir Guillaume said wolfishly. He was as eager as any man to make money. He needed cash, and a lot of it, to bribe and fight and so regain his fief in Normandy. ‘Maybe it’s your cousin?’ he suggested.

  ‘Sweet Jesus,’ Thomas said, ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ and he instinctively reached back and touched his yew bow because any mention of his cousin suggested evil. Then he felt a pulse of excitement at the thought that it might truly be Guy Vexille who rode unsuspecting towards the fight.

  ‘If it is Vexille,’ Sir Guillaume said, fingering the awful scar on his face, ‘then he’s mine to kill.’

  ‘I want him alive,’ Thomas said. ‘Alive.’

  ‘Best tell Robbie that,’ Sir Guillaume said, ‘because he’s sworn to kill him too.’ Robbie wanted that revenge for his brother.

  ‘Maybe it isn’t him,’ Thomas said, but he wanted it to be his cousin, and he especially wanted it now for the coming fight promised to be a straightforward trouncing. The horsemen could only approach the village by the ford unless they elected to ride up or downstream to discover another crossing place, and a villager, threatened with a sword held to his baby daughter’s eyes, said there was no other bridge or ford within five miles. So the horsemen had to come straight from the ford to the village street and, in the pastures between the two, they must die.

  Fifteen men-at-arms would protect the village street. For the moment those men were hidden in the yard of a substantial cottage, but when the enemy came from the ford they would emerge to bar the road, and Sir Guillaume had commandeered a farm cart that would be pushed across the street to make a barrier against the horsemen. In truth Thomas did not expect that the fifteen men would need to fight, for behind the orchard hedges on either side of the road he had deployed his archers. It was the bowmen who would do the initial killing and they had the luxury of readying their arrows, which they thrust point down in the roots of the hedges. Nearest them were the broad-heads, arrows that had a wedge-shaped blade at their tip, and each blade had deep tangs so that once it was imbedded in flesh it could not be pulled out. The archers honed the broad-heads on the whetstones they carried in their pouches to make sure they were razor sharp. ‘You wait,’ Thomas told them, ‘wait till they reach the field marker.’ There was a white painted stone by the road that showed where one man’s pasture ended and another’s began, and when the first horsemen reached the stone their destriers would be struck by the broad-heads
, which were designed to rip deep, to wound terribly, to drive the horses mad with pain. Some of the destriers would go down then, but others would survive and swerve about the dying beasts to continue the charge, so when the enemy was close the archers would switch to their bodkin arrows.

  The bodkins were made to pierce armour and the best of them had shafts made of two kinds of wood. The leading six inches of ash or poplar was replaced with heavy oak that was scarfed into place with hoof glue, and the oak was tipped with a steel head that was as long as a man’s middle finger, as slender as a woman’s little finger and sharpened to a point. That needle-like head, backed by the heavier oak shaft, had no barbs: it was just a smooth length of steel that punched its way through mail and would even penetrate plate armour if it hit plumb. The broad-heads were to kill horses, the bodkins to kill men, and if it took a minute for the horsemen to come from the field marker to the edge of the village, Thomas’s twenty archers could loose at least three hundred arrows and still have twice as many in reserve.

  Thomas had done this so many times before. In Brittany, where he had learned his trade, he had stood behind hedges and helped destroy scores of enemies. The French had learned the hard way and had taken to sending crossbowmen ahead, but the arrows just killed them as they reloaded their clumsy weapons and the horsemen then had no choice but to charge or retreat. Either way the English archer was king of the battlefield, for no other nation had learned to use the yew bow.

  The archers, like Sir Guillaume’s men, were hidden, but Robbie commanded the rest of the men-at-arms who were the lure. Most of them were apparently scattered on the mound which was just to the north of the village street. One or two dug, the rest simply sat as if they rested. Two others fed the village bonfire, making sure that the smoke beckoned the enemy onwards. Thomas and Genevieve walked to the mound and, while Genevieve waited at its foot, Thomas climbed up to look into the great hole Sir Guillaume had made. ‘Empty?’