Grail Knight: Number 5 in series (Outlaw Chronicles) (26 page)

‘This is a serious blow,’ said Robin, he looked half-angry. ‘But Westbury is so far away … Still, I should have considered the possibility that someone could recognize Sir Nicholas’ – he was thinking furiously – ‘a mistake. My mistake…’ Robin gathered himself. ‘Can you tell us more, Nur?’

‘Father Tuck made some enquiries as soon as Sir Nicholas was taken. As a man of God, he has the freedom to go where he will in Casteljaloux. He talked to some of the guards there and this afternoon he told me that Sir Nicholas has been accused of being a spy in the pay of their enemies. He is being held in the castle, in the dungeon below the tower. And they have been questioning him.’

I felt a shudder ripple down my spine at that word and memories of my own time under ‘questioning’ came flooding back – a time when red-hot irons had been applied to my tenderest regions. The recollection of that agony made my gorge rise.

‘We must get him out of there immediately,’ I said. ‘He is a Companion of the Grail and we cannot leave him to the mercy of the Master. It is our duty to rescue him as soon as we can.’

There was a growl of agreement from the gathered men.

‘Yes,’ said Robin. ‘The sooner we rescue him, the less likely he is to reveal our presence here.’

‘Sir Nicholas would never willingly give you away!’ I was outraged by Robin’s suggestion that our friend would betray us.

‘Maybe. I do not think he cares for me overmuch,’ said Robin. ‘But, no matter, all men, even the very bravest, talk under torture. It is merely a question of time. It is my fault that he is in this predicament, and I must get him out. We go in tonight.’

Two hours after sunset, we were all crouched on the edge of the forest, a mere hundred yards from the walls of the town of Casteljaloux, each Companion more or less behind the trunk of a pine tree. The smell of resin was strong and clean in my nose, and a bead of sweat ran down my spine, but my belly felt hollow, light and cold, as it often does before an action.

The town itself lurked before us, a mass of darkness against the skyline, but with a faint orange-pinkish glow above it. Although most townsfolk would have retired to their homes at that hour, light from hearth fires, tapers and tallow candles leaked from the shutters of their windows to lighten the darkness ever so slightly above their habitations. I could just make out the square bulk of the high tower that stood guard over the castle courtyard – and wondered if the look-out was asleep or drunk, or wide wake and even now gazing in our direction, and frowning at the unusual humped shapes that he could see against the darkness of the forest. I shivered, ducked down further behind the tree trunk, and took a firm hold of my sword hilt.

We had left all the horses, our mounts and the three laden packhorses, securely fastened to a fallen tree about fifty yards behind us. And Little John had marked a path to them through the forest by stripping a small section of the bark from a dozen trees with his axe so that, even at night, if the bright three-quarter moon and the cloudless star-filled sky lasted, we’d be able to find our way by following the white flash of the naked wood.

Robin had little in the way of a plan, but the little he had he had explained concisely to us after we had packed up the camp. Tuck would let us in by a postern gate in the south-western corner of the wall of the town – that much had been arranged that afternoon between Tuck and Nur. We would cover our weapons and mail in the loose robes of Benedictine monks, which Tuck would provide for us having stolen them from the Abbey. We would then proceed, led by Tuck, to the castle where we would affect an entrance by guile, or if that failed, by brute force. We would then locate Sir Nicholas and free him. We would fire the castle, the keep and as many of the houses of the town as we could and, in the confusion, we would make our escape out of the same postern gate and back to our horses.

‘If we encounter the Master or the Grail – we may change our plans accordingly,’ said Robin. ‘But the priority is to get Sir Nicholas out and safely away. We all need to stay together. If anybody becomes separated from the rest of us, he is to exit the town by the postern gate, or any other way he can, and make his way back to the horses. Does everybody understand?’

It was a threadbare plan, I privately noted. There was much that depended on chance and much that could easily go wrong. But if we all stayed together, there was a slim chance of success. And I had to admit that I could not think of a better plan at such short notice. The longer Sir Nicholas was in the hands of our enemies, the more dangerous our situation would become. We had to act, put our trust in our fighting skills and our lives in the hands of God.

Robin had also decreed that every Companion should accompany him on the rescue attempt. ‘If we have to battle our way out, and I think we might, we’ll need every blade we have,’ he said grimly.

‘What about Nur?’ asked Roland. ‘Surely the lady should not be exposed to the dangers of battle?’

Robin simply asked Nur if she wished to come with us, or remain in the forest with the horses, and when she said that she wished to come, he overruled Roland’s objections. Later, in the last, low gleams of daylight, just before we left the campsite and started towards Casteljaloux, I noticed Little John offering her a choice of weapons, and saw the witch choose a vicious hatchet, which she fingered for a moment, feeling the edge of the wedge-shaped blade with her thumb, before tucking it in her belt.

Guided by Nur, we had made our way for two miles through the dim forest towards the western side of the town. She led us with total self-assurance through the tangled undergrowth and between the tall trees, and we followed in single file, on foot and leading our horses, all of us linked by a long rope and trying to be as quiet as possible. Even though it was not a pitch dark night, I never discovered exactly how Nur knew how to pick the right path through the trees like that – and I asked myself once again whether she might truly have some other-worldly power – but she did it, and by the time we had secured the horses, and that big three-quarter moon was high above the tree tops, we found ourselves peering out from the wall of scented pines at a dark, forbidding portion of the town walls.

We did not wait there long. At Robin’s whispered command, we crept slowly forwards, first through some scrubland and then stumbling over a knee-high wattle fence into a large kitchen garden, freshly planted with tender shoots of leeks and onions. I tried my best not to break the delicate plants beneath my earth-clotted boots, for I reckoned that some poor husbandman and his family might be depending upon this very crop for survival – but, from time to time, the sharp, homely smell of crushed alliums wafted up, pungent in the darkness.

Then, a flare of light to the right of our line of march, a square candle-lantern, seeming to spring out from the blackness of the walls. I could see a squat round body and a large round head behind it, the features made weird and demonic by the guttering yellow light. It was Father Tuck, and we hurried towards him, greeted him in excited whispers, and he pulled us through a small, narrow door, the postern gate, and inside the walls of Casteljaloux.

As we passed through, Tuck handed each one of us a thick black woollen robe and a cowl from two soft heaps on the ground, and we all wrapped them around us as quickly as we could, tied them with a length of knotted rope and pulled the shapeless, scratchy cowls over our heads. We were in a small square with tall timbered houses on three sides and a narrow alleyway leading north. The square stank of ancient piss, and worse, but the houses were locked up dark and quiet and there was not a townsman or an enemy man-at-arms in sight. Nevertheless, I found that my pulse was banging loudly in my ears and my mouth was dry and chalky.

The robes were extremely voluminous, which was good fortune for Little John and his vast frame but less so for Nur. She held the enormous garment up to her skinny chest and it still puddled around her feet on the cobblestones. So she contemptuously tossed it aside and simply pulled the cowl over her head and shoulders. Her own sombre everyday dress was close enough to our new clerkly attire to pass in the darkness of the streets.

Tuck bolted the door behind us and pushed us into in a double column, two files of four, the formation that genuine monks used while travelling. Just before we moved off, as we stood looking at each other in our new robes, I was able to catch a glimpse of the faces of all the Companions, and I can remember that brief glance at my friends quite vividly to this day – Robin looking stern and noble; Little John openly grinning with delight at the prospect of the battle; Gavin seeming apprehensive and thin-faced, but hiding his fears like a good soldier; Roland’s visage grim and purposeful as befits a man with a hard task ahead; Thomas radiating a quiet calm and the unyielding solidity of an oak stump; Tuck’s mien was eager, almost boyish; and Nur – her dark, blank eyes looked out at us with the implacability of an executioner.

The streets of Casteljaloux were deserted at that hour, perhaps nine of the clock, as we hurried north in our double column behind Tuck and Robin – the town eerily quiet save for the muffled tolling of a church bell and the lonely calls of a watchman some streets away, calling out to all the sleeping burghers that all was well.

After no more than a hundred paces, Tuck led us out of the narrow streets and we turned into a large market square. It was a vast black space, now empty of the myriad stalls and carts that must have filled it by day, and on its far side I could make out the block-like shape of the castle itself. There were a few slim, vertical lights showing through the arrows slits in the walls in the high tower and I could see the silhouette of a single man-at-arms walking on the battlements. As we approached the main gate, to my surprise, it opened and half a dozen men-at-arms in the white surcoats of the Knights of Our Lady came out striding purposefully, three of them carrying bright pine-wood torches. They did not wear mail but soft tunics of fine material under their surcoats, and each had a long sword hung around his waist. We were walking directly towards them, and I confess that my heart was pounding so wildly I almost missed my step – I did not know what to do. Should we pause and let them pass, or fumble through our robes and pull our weapons? I was walking directly behind Tuck, in the second rank, and I was utterly shocked by his loud hail of ‘God bless you, good sirs, and keep you in His grace!’ when the Knights of Our Lady were within only a few yards of us.

The men-at-arms returned with a chorus of ‘God be with you, Brothers’, and they briskly walked away without giving us a second glance. I began to relax – in our black robes and cowls, and with Tuck’s utter self-confidence as our blazon, it was quite clear that we eight interlopers were easily accepted as rightful denizens of Casteljaloux.

And, better still, the gate of the castle was wide open before us. As we approached, I saw that another group of soldiers – four men this time, likewise also in the surcoats of our enemies – were about to leave the courtyard of the castle, striding out in their fine clothes with torches in their hands and swords on their hips, and a total disregard for the security of their citadel. Our black cowls pulled well forward, we crossed paths with them on the very threshold of the castle, Tuck calling out a jolly salutation as the two bodies of men passed each other, one going in and one going out. And we were inside. I could hardly believe it. If only the tower, looming on the far side, the north-eastern side of the castle, would prove as easy to penetrate.

Yet we were challenged, after a fashion, as we walked across the courtyard towards the keep, still in our double column. A man-at-arms, a small balding fellow in a red and gold tunic who was clearly drunk, stumbled into our path and, after greeting Tuck like an old and trusted friend, asked him in passable French if we had seen a big bastard of a sergeant called Fournier. Tuck greeted him in a friendly way and informed him courteously that he had not and, in turn, asked the man whether the Captain of the Tower was to be found at his post.

‘Not him,’ slurred the man in a reasonable approximation of Tuck’s French. ‘He’s gone to St Mary’s with all the other bigwigs. They’re all there for the initiation ceremony – all those high and mighty foreign knights are there, along with our good Seigneur. It’s not right, Father, not right at all. I’ve heard they get up to all manner of ungodly tricks at these initiations, blasphemy, trampling the Cross … begging your pardon, Father, but I think it’s a sinful debauch that—’

‘So who is holding the Tower, then?’ Robin interrupted from inside his deep cowl.

‘Oh, it’s only old Guilhabert, the turnkey,’ the man said.

‘Would you be good enough to take us to him?’ Tuck asked. ‘We need to speak to him on a matter of the gravest importance.’

It really was that simple. We were a gaggle of harmless-looking Benedictine monks, led by a roly-poly, happy-faced priest who was personally known to one of the castle’s men-at-arms. We were in.

The friendly and slightly drunken man-at-arms – Tuck called him Sabatier – happily escorted us to the base of the tower and hammered on an arched wooden door reinforced with iron studs.

‘Hey, Guilhabert, wake up,’ shouted the man. ‘I have some mos’ distinguished guests for you…’ He winked at me in the second rank, and I smiled back at him in a suitably pious manner.

There was no response from inside, and our friend hammered again, and again, and bawled out the same message until, finally, the door opened a crack and a grizzled head poked out and I found I was looking into the face of an astoundingly ugly old man, who had evidently just been awakened.

‘What do you want, Sabatier, you dog?’ growled the man. ‘I’ve had enough of your tomfoolery for today. Go away and sleep it off.’ He caught sight of the eight cowled figures behind the man-at-arms and his eyes opened fully in surprise.

In half a heartbeat, Robin was through the door. He had the shocked old jailer in an armlock and was forcing him backwards into the dim interior of the tower. The man was beginning to squawk in alarm, when I stepped into him and seized his lean, unshaven jaw in my left hand, cutting off his attempts at speech. My right held my long misericorde with its needle tip pressed into the pouched, grey skin below his eye.