Grail Knight: Number 5 in series (Outlaw Chronicles) (45 page)

I found Robin with Roland and a pale-faced Sir Nicholas by the door of the little chapel by the main entrance to the castle. Before I could tell him about Tuck, my lord said, ‘Good, you’re back, Alan – you should be here for this. Come inside’, and he held open the door of the chapel and we all filed through into a small wooden room, not much bigger than a solar in a modest hall.

From the moment I had seen Robin holding open the door of the chapel, a voice inside my head had been calling insistently, urgently: ‘He’s found it, he’s found the Grail. The blessed Holy Grail. I shall at last behold its wonder – and my beloved Goody, my poor, sick, dying Goody, shall be saved.’

At the end of the chapel was a wooden altar of smoothed beech planks covered with a white cloth, supporting a plain silver crucifix, a pair of iron candlesticks and a medium-sized box of some dark wood. Robin unbarred and pushed open a shutter set in the wall and allowed the grey light of day to seep into that dark space. Then he walked over to the box and threw back its lid.

I think, in my heart, I expected a fanfare of trumpets or a brilliant, blinding light or the sound of a Heavenly choir of angels all singing Hosannas. Instead, there was a dull clunk as the box lid hit the silver crucifix behind it, and we all craned our necks forward to try and make out the object contained within.

Even Robin seemed a little nervous. He took a hank of his cloak, wrapped it around his hand and reached into the box, pulling out a smallish round object, which he placed on the pure white cloth of the altar. Roland, Sir Nicholas and I all took a step forward to examine it more closely in the dim light. It was a bowl about nine inches in diameter, and two inches in depth, perfectly round and made of a light honey-brown, almost golden wood, perhaps Mediterranean cedar. It was darkened with ancient dirt at the rim and on the outside by the touch of many hands, and I could see a few faint patches of what looked like white paint on the outside. The bowl was also slightly cracked in two places. It was clearly very old. Indeed, it looked extremely … ordinary. An old kitchen bowl. One that many a conscientious goodwife might have thrown away as a piece of rubbish.

I must confess, I was a little disappointed. Ever since I had first heard that the Grail might be a real object half a dozen years previously, I had been imagining what it might have looked like. In my mind, it had blossomed into a magnificent golden vessel, intricately carved, and set with precious stones, a vast bejewelled chalice radiating blinding light, an item more dazzlingly beautiful than any that had ever been crafted by the hand of Man.

And before me was merely an old cracked wooden bowl.

‘It doesn’t look like much, does it?’ said Robin, voicing my thoughts exactly. ‘Is this truly the Holy Grail?’

He sounded deeply disappointed.

‘This is exactly the kind of bowl in which they would have mixed the wine at the feast – the last meal that Our Lord Jesus ate with his Apostles,’ said Sir Nicholas, his voice filled with an almost greedy reverence. ‘Christ and his disciples were not men of material wealth. Our Lord would not seek to flaunt the riches of this world. He preached poverty and humility. This must be that blessed vessel, used at the Last Supper, and which also held the blood of Our Lord which he shed for us on the Cross. Can you not see it, my friends? Can you not feel its holy power? This is the Holy Grail! I’m as certain of it as I am of Salvation! This is the blessed Grail that we have so long searched for!’

Sir Nicholas fell to his knees and began to pray. I looked at Roland and we both knew that Sir Nicholas’s words were no more than the pure truth. Christ would never have used an enormous, gaudily bejewelled golden cup at his Last Supper – he was the son of a poor carpenter. My cousin and I were of one mind, evidently. We, too, fell to our knees at the same moment and began to praise God with all our hearts. Only Robin remained standing. He had cocked his head on one side and was looking at the three of us on our knees before the altar. He was frowning.

But if my lord could not feel in his heart the holy power of this wondrous object before us, I felt only pity for him, as I pitied any human soul that is closed to the love of God. I shut my eyes and sent up a heartfelt paean to the Almighty for allowing me, by His boundless grace, to set my unworthy eyes on this divine artefact. Then I heard Sir Nicholas begin to say aloud those familiar words, that joyous litany that had been engraved on our hearts since childhood: ‘Our Father, which art in Heaven…’

Roland and I joined him in saying the Lord’s Prayer, and I felt our souls open like flowers in the spring and receive the blessings of God. When it was done we all fell into a deep and peaceful silence – I recalled my many sins, and humbly asked for God’s forgiveness, and I prayed silently for Goody that she might live long enough to receive the blessing of health from this most Holy Grail. I opened my eyes and looked once more on the Grail – its simple purity, its venerable age, its sheer, unquestionable Godliness were all manifestly apparent. I felt hot tears, tears of joy, springing to my eyes and I saw that Nicholas was weeping, too.

I do not know how long we knelt there – praying, weeping and staring at that miraculous bowl, the ancient yellow-brown cedar wood glowing like the gold of my imagination in the drab daylight of the chapel – but it felt as if we had been there in that chapel all of our lives, and yet no more than a few moments as well. At some point I saw that Robin was gone – he had slipped out without a word or a noise, and without disturbing our meditations. Only we three Christian knights, we three Grail Knights, knelt before that holy vessel and worshiped the Lord of Hosts with all our hearts. Finally, Roland spoke. ‘We must take it to the wounded,’ he said, his voice thick and furred with emotion.

And he was right, for there were wounded men who must be allowed to drink from the Grail without delay.

I went in search of water, found it in the cistern behind the keep and returned with a brimming bucket. Sir Nicholas, careful not to touch the Grail with his naked fingers, filled the bowl with a few splashes from the bucket and, holding it with his cloak, blessed it with a long prayer and in turn, gave it to each wounded man to drink, while Roland supported the drinker’s head, if he could not raise it himself. I maintained order in the line of men waiting to receive the Grail’s blessing, and led away those, many of them on shaking legs, who had received the sacrament. And so, we three knights ministered to the wounded and hurt that afternoon, in imitation of our blessed Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Robin looked on as we distributed the Grail water to all of our wounded men, standing there by the castle wall with a faint smile on his face, his arms folded, but he said absolutely nothing. Sir Nicholas, who had been the first to drink, prayed loudly over every man who drank, and intoned that by God’s power and the power of the Grail each man would now be made whole.

The atmosphere that day was extraordinary – Nur’s thick mists of the morning had rolled away and once more bright sunshine filled the air with hope and joy. We had won our battle, and by an extraordinary feat of arms we had conquered an ‘impossible’ castle, and even our half dozen wounded seemed to be buoyed beyond their pain by our possession of the wondrous Grail – for word had spread fast among those who had not known our true mission. And after drinking just a sip or two, each wounded mercenary confessed to being filled with light and grace, all of them claiming to feel happier, stronger and more spiritually whole.

I must set this down for all to know, for this is the true miracle of that miraculous day – not one of the seven men who had been wounded, some severely with blades deeply puncturing their bodies, subsequently perished of his wounds. Not one. I truly believe that the power of the Grail saved their lives that day. I swear this to you on my honour as a knight: not one of those men died of their wounds.

When it came to my turn, when all the other men in our company, including Robin, had drunk, I found I was shaking with happiness. The draft of water that I sipped from that plain old wooden bowl tasted like cool, liquid silver as it slid down my throat. I could feel the blessed liquor spreading its holy balm throughout my body. The bandaged wound in my right calf seemed to throb suddenly as that draft of holy water pooled in my belly. It was as if the hurt had been touched with a cauterizing iron – but cold, rather than hot. The deep cut seemed to flare under its bloody cloth swaddling as if touched by an icy blade and I could feel the healing power of the Holy Grail begin its work. Of course, I was not instantly healed but the pain became noticeably less. My whole body seemed lighter and filled with a strange and holy joy.

To the delight of Vim and his men and, I suspect, to Robin’s great relief, Thomas discovered a strongbox filled with silver coins in the keep. There were also various other items of value: a pair of jewelled broaches, a fine ivory statue of the Virgin and Child, some bolts of expensive silk cloth from far beyond the Saracen lands and a bag of gold and silver finger rings. When I asked Robin where these treasures might have come from, he gave me a sly, contented smile.

‘Long as I’ve known him, the Master has always loved material wealth. For all his vaunted piety, he really only seeks money and power – just like everybody else,’ Robin said. ‘I doubt he was here for a month before he had his men pillaging these lands for taxes or contributions to support the dignity of the Knights of Our Lady or whatever he might have called it. Count Raymond of Foix admitted as much to me, so I knew he must have more than a little silver and a bauble or two tucked away.’

Robin took possession of the strongbox but immediately distributed a generous reward in silver to each of the surviving mercenaries, and ordered that a cask of wine – we had found several in the castle store rooms along with a cache of javelins, shields, swords and other spare armaments – be opened and served out to all of us. We ate and drank and admired our silver and our treasures, feeling the warmth of pride in a task well accomplished.

Sir Nicholas insisted that a holy service of thanksgiving be said in the courtyard, the chapel being too small, and, with himself officiating – and the Grail prominently displayed – we all gave our thanks to God for the victory and lifted our voices in song.

Towards eventide, Robin and I paid a visit to Tuck’s corpse in the now empty cave below the castle. I brought with me a beaker of Grail water, carried carefully on our descent so as not to spill its holy contents, which Sir Nicholas had blessed. The Grail itself had been replaced in the chapel, set there between two lighted candelabra, so that those who wished to pray before it might be afforded the opportunity.

When Robin and I reached the bottom of the mountain, and had made our way into the cave, dusk was falling. Tuck’s body was in exactly the same position as when I had last seen it – lying on the stone altar, and by the guttering light of pine torches, Robin and I tipped a little of the Grail water into our friend’s slack mouth, and used the rest to wash his torn head.

Alone with Robin, I took this opportunity to ask him when we might depart the castle. We had the Grail and I was afire to fetch it home to Goody. But my lord seemed distracted, perhaps by his grief for Tuck, and the best I could extract from him was a promise that we would begin our homeward journey soon.

Alas, Robin and I did not see a further miracle that night – Tuck was not raised from the dead by the magic of the Grail. Although, in honest truth, I had not expected it. I did not doubt that the Grail had enormous power but I reasoned that after God had called a soul into Heaven, that happy being would not willingly return to Earth at the command of mortal men. And no one had claimed that the Grail could bring men back to life as Jesus did with Lazarus.

I knelt by the altar on which Tuck slept, and said a prayer for his soul, with Robin looking on from the shadows of the cave.

‘We should leave him here when we return to England,’ said my lord after a little time had passed. ‘We cannot take him with us and this would make a more than fitting tomb for our friend, bigger than the death vault of a duke. There’s something about this place, something special, that I think would befit Tuck. What do you say, Alan? Shall we let him rest here until the end of time?’

‘Until Judgment Day,’ I said, correcting Robin’s unchristian phrase without thinking. But I knew my lord was right. I had sensed it from the first and it had unsettled me even then – this cavern was no mountain womb, as Nur had called it, it was a natural tomb.

I was eager to leave Montségur as soon as we were able to do so. The next morning was, by my rough calculations, the seventh or eighth day of May, and I felt the pressing need to bring the Grail back to Goody as soon as possible. In my head, I figured that I had to begin the return journey by the ides of May, the middle of that month, to have a reasonable chance of getting home before the curse was fulfilled. Yet a sea voyage back to England was a chancy thing – who knew how long it might take in adverse weather. Or when a ship might be available to take us back home. And the alternative – to ride up through the territory of France could take just as long or longer and would mean travelling through the war-torn areas where Prince Arthur and King John were contesting for mastery.

So I wanted to depart immediately, and tried my best to persuade Robin of this course. But my lord went through the calculations of the journey with me and persuaded me that we could spare a few more days at Montségur, perhaps three or four more, to allow the wounded to rest a little longer before they were forced to endure the pain and disruption of a horseback journey.

While the Grail, I was quite certain, had saved many of their lives, holding back Death as we had been promised it would, the deep sword cuts suffered by our men did not magically close, and neither did broken limbs suddenly mend. And the wound on my calf was still bloody, although it did indeed feel much better. But I was still bone tired – we had been riding and fighting hard for weeks now with little rest or sleep – and I allowed Robin to persuade me that we could afford to spare a little time in recuperation before we began the arduous return. It was, he said, more than the fighting men’s due. I could not but agree with him.