Grail Knight: Number 5 in series (Outlaw Chronicles) (20 page)

Instead, Nur wrapped one arm tightly around the mast and began to curse the storm.

I could not hear exactly what threats and imprecations she uttered, the noise of the tempest drowned all but a few snatches of sound, nor could I tell in what language she damned the elements, but her mouth moved and her free arm waved, and her long bony fingers made intricate patterns in the air as she sang her songs and shrieked her threats. On and on, she cursed, seemingly filled with an energy, a demonic rage that was quite unquenchable; the wind howled, the witch howled back at it; the black rain thrashed her body, her long, white arm seemed to lash back at the deluge itself.

I believe that every man on that ship marvelled at her courage, as she raved and screamed at the sky, challenging the storm, riding it like a wild stallion, and seeking in her madness to make it submit to her will. A deafening crack of thunder overhead and a blue-white spear of lightning reminded me of the true risk she ran – she was defying God himself, begging him to strike her down. But the Almighty, in His wisdom, chose not to, and after less than an hour – incredibly – the tempest began to subside, cowed by the fearsome ranting of the witch.

I knew that it could not truly have been her power that brought the storm to heel yet I felt a touch of awe. And magical or not, it was a courageous performance – and when she finally climbed down from her high perch, mother naked, the ship by now rocked only by a gentle swell, and moistened by drizzle, every man on board cheered and applauded. And even I could not prevent myself from granting her a tight smile as she put her customary black robes back on. Before she reattached the veil that covered her face I looked at that poor ravaged head: the bone-white skin and pinky-yellow old scars, the cropped grey hair, and I felt a change within me. For the first time since I had seen her mutilation, I was not repulsed by it. She was still the ugliest woman I had ever laid eyes on, and evil too, I hastily reminded myself, responsible for poor Goody’s plight, but I found that I could look upon her devastated features without the sense of disgust and horror that I had always felt before.

Just as Samuel had promised, we entered the mouth of the mighty Gironde Estuary in the middle of Holy Week, on the Wednesday before Easter, the fifth day of the month of April in the Year of the Incarnation twelve hundred. We had been some three weeks aboard
The Goose
by then, and I was heartily sick of her. I was sick of being damp, cramped and immobile all day long; I was sick of eating stale bread, salt fish and pickled vegetables – I could not wait for Easter Day, the end of Lenten restrictions, and the chance to eat meat and eggs and cheese once again – but most of all I was sick of the sight of so many of my comrades treating Nur as if she were a family member, a favourite sister or a beloved young aunt.

Since the day of her story, and more so since the day of the storm, the witch had been slyly working to capture the hearts of the men. Clearly she had been a good pupil in that delightful garden of women – for, even without her former beauty, she knew how to beguile and seduce a man. She made Little John a battle-charm for his axe by holding it over a candle flame until a layer of soot had formed on the metal, and then scratching weird shapes and patterns with a seagull feather. She told Little John that he would be invincible in battle as a result. Was it true magic? I have no idea. But the big man seemed delighted by her charm and I saw him gazing at it for hours on end, twisting his axe so that the blade caught and reflected the watery sunlight.

Occasionally she would cast the contents of her little sack on to the deck near the men. As she squatted down beside it, I realized with horror that the fragments were not wooden, as I had supposed, but the bones from a tiny human hand. A baby’s hand. The bones were grey-white and perfectly dry. Cleaned of all flesh. Immaculate. She would stare at the bones and mutter to herself for a while, before gathering them reverently and replacing them in her bag.

‘What is she doing?’ I asked Robin uneasily, the first time I saw this up close. I was having difficulty fighting down a growing sense of fear, a coldness around my shoulders.

‘She is divining,’ said my lord, who was watching her intently from my side. ‘She is seeking out the Grail for us. I asked her to use all of her powers to locate the Master and his men.’

‘She is using magic?’ I was surprised at how much this act disturbed me. ‘Do you believe she can really find it like that?’

‘We shall see,’ said Robin, ‘we shall see.’

Nur used no magic at all to mend a tear in Gavin’s tunic, just a plain needle and thread – but that handsome lad seemed pleased to have the motherly care of a woman, even one as hideous as Nur. And that was her scheme, I saw. By keeping on her veil all of the time – though it must have been irksome to her as we sailed south and the weather grew warmer – the Companions became used to her masked features and were rarely reminded of the ruin of her face.

The only man who seemed resistant to her wiles, apart from me, of course, was Sir Nicholas de Scras. He spoke seldom to her and then only if it was absolutely necessary. When he did choose to speak to her, he was abruptly formal, as if attempting through some notion of politeness to conceal a deep contempt and hatred for her. He prayed aloud each evening before bedtime – something that set Gavin and Little John to sniggering like boys – and on more than one occasion I heard him beseeching the Almighty to shine the light of his grace on Nur, to wash her clean of sin and bring her to the path of Our Lord Jesus Christ. But he and I were the only ones, by then, who did not seem to think of Nur as a welcome addition to the fellowship of the Companions.

She became especially close to Roland during those weeks on
The Goose
. She mixed a salve for his burn-scarred cheek from seaweed and fish oil that, rubbed in daily, was supposed to make the disfiguration grow less noticeable. To my disgust, my cousin was sickeningly grateful – I had not realized that he was so vain. For me, I noticed no change at all in the shiny pink patch on his cheek, despite his rubbing that foul-smelling goo into it day and night. And what are looks to a warrior? Nothing.

At a little before noon, on that Wednesday, the two of them were standing on the fore-castle – the slight witch and the tall blond warrior – as we glided past a series of daunting white cliffs off the larboard bow and turned in towards the harbour of Royan on the northern shore of the Gironde. Only just visible two miles in the distance on the starboard side was the southern lip of the estuary, a low barren marshland where a few scrawny sheep took their nourishment from the salty grasses. Samuel the Governor had told us that we must stop at Royan to pay a customs duty on the load of coal that he carried, and to find ourselves a pilot for the treacherous tidal waters of the estuary and to take us up the Garonne River to Bordeaux. As it happened, Royan’s small stone harbour was crammed to overflowing with shipping when
The Goose
nosed around the point in the middle of the afternoon, and we were obliged to crunch the ship’s bottom on the broad sandy expanse of the beach beside the harbour. As Robin and Samuel trudged across the strand, heading towards the castle high above the beach, the rest of us gratefully disembarked and were able, with a great sense of luxury, to stretch our legs properly for the first time in days.

We made a fire and Gavin set a pot near to the blaze to cook a thin fish stew for our daily meal. Then we passed an hour or so in weapons practice, happy to have the opportunity in full daylight to loosen our cramped muscles and raise a little healthy sweat. Little John set up a man-sized paling in the sand of the beach, hammering a driftwood pole deep with the flat of his axe blade, and we took turns to swing and jab our swords against it in the classic patterns, imagining that the length of vertical wood was an enemy knight, while the sailors watched us and applauded or jeered according to their whim. By mid-afternoon the food was ready and we were settling down to eat when Robin returned with Samuel.

The Earl of Locksley was beaming all over his long handsome face when he sat down next to me by the fire and accepted a bowl of stew from Gavin. But my lord said nothing for a good long while, blowing exaggeratedly on his brimming horn spoon to cool its contents and grinning like a madman.

‘Did everything go well at the castle?’ I asked. Clearly something had made Robin happy, and it cannot have been the task of handing over the toll of silver coins to the customs men.

‘I picked up a little news,’ he said, slurping down the spoonful and popping a hunk of bread in his mouth before chewing like a thoughtful cow. He looked at me out of the corner of his eye and smiled. ‘It seems that Bordeaux will be rather crowded when we get there. Lot of visitors this time of year.’

I waited for him to elaborate on this statement, but he said nothing more for a long while. Finally, when he had swallowed the last of the stew and wiped his bowl with a crust, chewed and swallowed it, he said, ‘It seems that no less a personage than Queen Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine, will be gracing her capital city when we arrive. She has been in Spain fetching her beauteous grand-daughter Blanche – apparently she wants to marry the unfortunate chit off to Louis, Philip of France’s idiot son – and she’s on her way back up north to Poitiers with a mercenary force. But the Queen herself and the unlucky Princess will be spending Easter Week in Bordeaux.’ He grinned at me. ‘Which means—’

I finished Robin’s sentence for him. ‘That Marie-Anne and the boys will be there at Easter too.’

And I beamed at my lord. He smiled happily back at me. ‘Is there any more of that stew? It really is delicious.’

By noon on Good Friday,
The Goose
was moored at the docks in the deep bend in the River Garonne before the great walled city of Bordeaux. Although it was a holy day, the very day on which twelve hundred years ago Our Lord Jesus Christ out of love for this sinful world suffered crucifixion on the hill of Calvary, the quay was abustle with sailors and merchants securing their ships and cargos and preparing for the celebrations of Easter Week.

Robin’s cheerful excitement at the prospect of seeing his Countess and his two sons had lifted the spirits of all of our party, and we wasted little time bidding farewell to Samuel and the sailors of
The Goose
and heading towards the Abbey of St Andrew, where we planned to seek lodgings for a few days.

We were warmly welcomed at the lovely old Abbey, although the place was filled almost to overflowing with visitors who had flocked to the city for the Easter celebrations at its cathedral, and the hosteller managed to find us seven cots in the men’s dormitory, and a straw-filled corner for Nur in the women’s quarters. Robin could, if he chose, have presented himself at the ducal palace and demanded that the servants of Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine find lodgings for himself and his party. But we wanted as little official notice as possible taken of our visit. There might have been a certain amount of awkwardness between the mother of the new King and the outlawed Earl who had so staunchly supported his dead brother. And while I knew that Eleanor was privately fond of Robin – indeed, she had provided a haven for his wife and children among her ladies-in-waiting – she was bound to support King John, her only living son, in public against any nobleman who, rightly or wrongly, had incurred his displeasure.

There was also the matter of our quest: we did not want to broadcast the objective of our journeying in these southern lands and wanted to keep our movements as quiet as possible. If questioned we had agreed to say that we were making for Montpellier to consult one of the learned doctors there about Goody’s condition. It was a feeble lie, and anyone who looked closely at our party, seven oak-hard warriors and a deformed witch, would have questions to ask. But the story would serve as long as we remained in the guise of humble travellers. Staying at the ducal palace as Eleanor’s guests would mean announcing Robin’s rank to the world and that, he felt, would draw unwelcome attention. So we lodged as pilgrims in the dormitory of the abbey and were content to do so. Indeed I’d have been happy to roost anywhere – a pig sty or a palace – that was not the damp, cold heaving deck of a crowded, merchant’s ship.

Once we were settled in the Abbey, Robin disappeared almost completely for the whole of Good Friday and Holy Saturday – we assumed he was spending his time with his wife and his two sons Miles and Hugh. The rest of us joined the throngs of people milling about the city on the last day of Lent or attended one of the many services in the vast cathedral.

I caught sight of Robin only once during that time, walking hand in hand on a path by the broad River Garonne with Marie-Anne, dark-haired Hugh who would then have been about ten, running on ahead and then coming back to urge his parents on. Robin had Miles on his shoulders and the four-year-old blond lad was squawking excitedly at the assorted river craft that passed by. The sight of them squeezed my heart and I wondered if Goody and I and our unborn children would ever know such carefree happiness. England, home and Goody seemed so far away, the task ahead of me seemed so daunting, and I was conscious that I had already wasted nearly three weeks aboard that ship; when I thought about the little time I had in which to find the Grail and carry it back, my spirit quailed.

Sir Nicholas, Roland, Thomas and I attended Tenebrae in the cathedral at midnight on Holy Saturday. We were latecomers to this service of shadows – the most moving of all the holy rites – and stood at the back joining in the prayers and psalms with the rest. In the centre of the church, in the place of most honour, was the Tenebrae stand – a candelabrum holding fifteen candles, which were gradually extinguished, one by one, during the service. But despite the comfort of the presence of my friends, and the soothing familiarity of the Tenebrae, I felt an awful, creeping premonition there in that vast cathedral, one I could not shake from my mind: I felt that the candelabrum represented the life force of my lovely wife, growing dimmer and dimmer as the candles were extinguished and the rite ground on. I felt a cold lump grow in my throat – perhaps Goody was already dead, perhaps she had been dead for weeks. I muttered something along these lines to Sir Nicholas who was standing beside me in the gloom.