Grail Knight: Number 5 in series (Outlaw Chronicles) (16 page)

I liked the second voice a good deal more than the first. It reminded me of my mother’s voice, calm, loving, reassuring. It was how I imagined the voice of Mary, the Mother of God, would sound – and then I checked that thought. I remembered that the Master and his knights claimed to serve this same Queen of Heaven – and the Master, too, had heard the voice of Our Lady, which had told him to go forth and do murder in her holy name.

That notion snapped me out of my reverie. I took a sip of wine and looked at the flushed, excited faces around the table. These men would be my companions over the coming weeks as we journeyed to far-off lands and braved unknown dangers. We had all made an agreement that, while Robin would shoulder the expenses of the journey, we would all share in any booty that we accrued along the way, and that Robin would also have possession of the Grail, if we found it, to do with as he willed. We were due to leave London the next day on a ship belonging to Ivo of Shoreham and we would sail south to Aquitaine as his guests. In the ancient city of Bordeaux we would begin our quest to discover the Master and the Grail.

I did not expect it to be an easy task to find our enemy and overcome him, but my companions were some of the best men I had ever encountered, in battle and out of it. Seven men, seven of the best men I had ever known; we seven bold men would succeed in this quest for the Grail – or perish in the attempt.

To my left, at the head of the long table, sat my lord, my old friend and benefactor, Robin of Locksley, bubbling with high spirits, his eyes sparkling silver in the candlelight. He was joking with the man on his left, Little John, who, with his big red mouth open in his big red face, was roaring with mirth at some quip of my lord’s. Beside John, Gavin – the only man at the table that I did not know well – gazed up at Little John’s battered visage seemingly lost in admiration for his huge friend. Robin had vouched for Gavin and named him as a thief of uncommon skill, particularly when it came to defeating iron locks, but also praising him for his prowess as a bowman. He had mentioned, too, that John had said that he would not come without him. I caught Gavin’s eye and he smiled happily at me, inclining his handsome curly head and lifting his exquisite wine glass towards me. I had no doubt that if I were to fall in battle, he would be the first to claim ownership of my sword Fidelity – for I had seen an unmistakably larcenous look whenever he eyed my blade – but if Robin and Little John trusted him, then I was content to do so, too.

To Gavin’s left, at the other end of the table sat Sir Nicholas de Scras. It had not taken much persuading to entice the former Hospitaller to join us on this quest. When I had ridden to his lands at Horsham to suggest it, I had found him bored and feeling a little uncomfortable at his family hearth. He wished very much to see the Grail, he told me, and to hold it, if only once, in his hands. From what I’d told him of the Master, he seemed to think that destroying him was a task sanctioned by God.

‘It is a most worthy endeavour,’ Sir Nicholas had said. ‘This Master and his knights have perverted the True Faith with their crimes and their false worship of the Virgin. It is our Christian duty to stamp these heretics out.’

At the end of long table, there was an empty place, but I saw that Sir Nicholas, ignoring this position at the head of the board, was deep in conversation directly across the polished oak with Roland d’Alle who was seated on my side of the wood. It had not been difficult to persuade my cousin to join us either – he had grown fond of Goody during his time at Westbury and was convinced that the Grail would save her life. That was reason enough, he said, to join our number, but I knew, too, that his acceptance of my offer had as much to do with his own urge for adventure and his lust to win gold and glory, as it had to do with saving the life of my lady.

The final member of our company of seven sat beside me, directly to my right: Thomas ap Lloyd, my faithful squire, a young man of extraordinary courage and skill, and seemingly unlimited devotion to me. I had not needed to ask him whether he wished to come on this quest: when I had told him that I would be accompanying Robin overseas, he had merely nodded and begun to gather our few remaining possessions together at the caves, and the only question he asked was about the horses. After a short discussion with Robin, we decided that it was impractical to take them with us on the long sea journey. And so, reluctantly, I left Shaitan and the other two beasts – the only cattle I now possessed – in the care of Baldwin and Kit and Robin’s men in Sherwood.

Seven men, seven friends, seven bold warriors, sat around that long table in the wine merchant’s house on the night before our departure for Aquitaine. I pushed back my stool and came to my feet. I rapped on the table with my knuckles to capture the attention of everyone present and said, ‘My friends, if I may, I would like to say a few words before we embark on the arduous journey that lies ahead.’

There was a general rumble of assent, and every eye on the room was on me. ‘My friends, we are gathered here with a common purpose to seek out the murderous villain who calls himself the Master and crush him. It is true that I seek vengeance for the burning of my home – and also for the provocations that have been given to my lord, the Earl of Locksley – but our primary goal is to take from him the sacred vessel that once cradled the lifeblood of Our Saviour. We are all equal companions in that noble endeavour; we are indeed a fellowship in this quest – this quest for the Holy Grail. I therefore propose that we swear an oath as Companions of the Grail that we will be loyal and true to each other, that we will honour each other and protect each other in battle, that we will never leave a wounded man to his fate, nor turn our backs on a comrade in danger, until that task is done…’

There was another general murmur of assent, which was broken by a loud knock at the door. We all turned to look and, through the arched panelled door behind Robin’s back, the head of a servant appeared. He looked nervously at Robin and said, ‘Sir, I beg your pardon, sir, for this intrusion, but that … er, woman … the, er … the lady you mentioned is here to see you. May I show her in directly?’

‘Please do,’ said Robin. And I felt a flash of irritation. Why did he have to bring his guests into the hall at this very moment? Couldn’t she wait? I wished to make it a solemn affair among men, among warriors, with powerful oaths and the forging of a bond. I could not do that if Robin introduced some passing London slattern into our company.

‘We seven men,’ I said loudly, ‘we seven Companions of the Grail shall make a mighty vow this night. We shall…’

But I had lost the attention of my audience. Robin had risen from his throne-like chair at the head of the table and was walking towards the door. For it had opened and a short figure dressed in a long black robe had entered the room. Her hair was covered by a black headdress, her face by a heavy veil. The only visible features were a pair of liquid brown eyes that seemed to glow with a strange inner fire.

Robin said, ‘I beg your pardon, Alan’ – he had taken the woman’s white hand on his arm and was leading her towards the far end of the table to the empty place between Sir Nicholas and Roland – ‘but you are mistaken. We shall not be seven
men
embarking on this quest. We shall not be
seven
Companions undertaking this perilous journey. We shall be eight.’

Robin seated the black-clad figure on the stool at the end of the table.

I looked into the blazing eyes above the veil, and with a volcanic upwelling of rage and fear and hatred and plain dumbfounded disbelief, I recognized the new arrival.

It was Nur.

Father Anselm must believe that I am a particularly wealthy man – or a particularly gullible one: he has asked me to purchase a golden casket with a clear glass top to house the Flask of St Luke the Evangelist, so that the faithful may flock to see this holy relic, and pray before it, but will not be tempted to sully its saintly leather with the touch of their hands.

I told him no, and had some difficulty in keeping my temper. I am not a pauper, it is true, and Westbury has been bountiful in the past few years, but I will not throw good money away on this ridiculous form of ostentation – and for a fake as well.

By God’s mercy, I managed to restrain myself from telling him the true base nature of his absurd ‘relic’ – but I sent him away from my hall with a few choice expressions of my wrath ringing in his ears.

However, yesterday, on All Saints’ Day, that bouncing tonsured puppy preached a long homily in church all about the flask and the blessed St Luke and the power of prayer. He exhorted the villagers to pray before it and ask for whatever they wished and, he said, if they had sufficient faith in miracles, St Luke would help them.

Then he had the God-damned effrontery to lead the congregation in a prayer for a casket to house the flask. He said that God would surely grant us this gaudy trinket – which would cost no more than twelve pounds – if we prayed hard enough and believed with all our hearts that the miracle would occur. I was standing there right in front of him, blushing in my best clothes, and thankfully unarmed, while he begged St Luke to intercede with the Almighty and persuade Him to send us a suitable container for the flask. If I’d had a sword with me, I might have run him through. If he had made some slighting mention of my refusal to pay for this golden extravagance, I might well have slaughtered him. No, I tell a lie, I would not have done that – my killing days are undoubtedly over – but I was tempted to duck his head in his own font, and I could certainly do that, I warrant, even at my advanced age.

Worse, the villagers have taken his words to heart. When I returned to the church this very evening to pray for the soul of my wife Godifa – as the day after All Saints, it is, of course, All Souls’ Day, and I come each year to light a candle for her and sit quietly alone and remember the happiness we once shared – I was greeted by a piteous sight. Two of my tenants from the village, a devoted couple called Martha and Geoffrey, were praying before the altar where the flask is displayed. These two had found each other late in life – she is a plain, hard-working woman who will never see forty again and he is almost as old as I am – and yet they seem to be as enamoured of each other as a pair of giggling twenty-year-olds. Martha and Geoffrey had been there since the service the day before, on their knees at the altar, taking neither food nor drink, never moving, and praying continuously for St Luke to grant them a child. At their age! That would indeed be a miracle.

I lit a candle for Goody, and said a prayer, but I did not linger.

I leaped on to the wine merchant’s table in a single bound and took three fast steps down its full length, heedlessly crushing costly glasses, and scattering dirty plates, fish bones, scraps of bread and jugs of good red wine. I hurled myself at Nur, my fifteen stones of muscle and bone smashing her slight form from the stool and on to the reed-strewn floor. I had no weapon – all my war gear was in the sleeping chamber on the first storey of the house – and I had not paused for a moment. I saw her; I flung myself at her. We crashed to the floor and I reached for her throat, gripped, locked my hands and began to squeeze…

I think that if there had been lesser men seated at the table that evening, the witch would have died there and then. I could feel her tiny neck like a twig beneath my palms, and the swordsman’s muscles in my heavy arms writhed – a few more moments and I would have snapped her spine as easily as a farmer dispatches a dove. But Nicholas and Thomas were on me almost as soon as I had Nur in my grasp and with their considerable combined strength pulling my wrists away from the woman, and with Robin on my back, choking my neck with his left forearm and shouting in my ear that I must release her immediately or I would suffer the consequences, I soon found myself separated from the woman in black, my vision blurring and helplessly pinned by three friends against the solid edge of the table. Roland swam into my field of view; he was saying, ‘Alan, give the Earl your word that you will not attack this lady and you will be released. Alan, you
must
give your word.’

I mumbled something through a clogged and swollen throat, and Robin released his grip a fraction. ‘Do you swear on your soul that if I release you, you will not attack the lady Nur again? Do you swear on Goody’s life?’

I struggled futilely for a moment or two, growling like a mastiff in my half-crushed throat.

‘Do you swear that you will not harm her?’

I managed to cough out the word: ‘Swear.’

‘I am serious, Alan – do
not
attack Nur again tonight.’ Robin removed his forearm from my neck, allowing me to take a ragged breath, but Nicholas and Thomas still had my arms in their grip.

I stared at my victim. My sudden assault had ripped the veil from her face and I looked into a gaunt visage that would have terrified the Devil himself. The lip-less mouth seemed to be permanently grinning, mocking me, the nose was a truncated snout, no more than two gaping red-rimmed holes in the centre of her face. I caught a glimpse of the mass of scarring where her right ear had been and a frill of remaining earlobe – and her eyes burned with an unquenchable demonic hatred as she hastily rearranged her headdress to cover her ugliness from the world.

‘I swear that I will not kill that Hell-spawned hag this night – but I make no promises about the morrow and there had better be a God-damned good reason why you sprung her on me like that, Robin, and why you seem to be inviting her to join our sacred quest. And I want to know that reason right now – or
you
will suffer the fucking consequences.’

It hurt me a good deal to speak but I do not remember when I have been so angry. The sight of Nur, that vile agent of Goody’s illness, seemed to have ignited something powerful inside me. I was fully prepared in that instant to make an enemy of Robin – and my lord must have sensed this.

‘First of all let us sit down and compose ourselves, and take a deep breath,’ Robin said. ‘Gavin, would you kindly run through to the servant’s quarters and ask them to bring us some more wine.’