Grail Knight: Number 5 in series (Outlaw Chronicles) (8 page)

Beyond my lord, twenty yards away, the first helmeted heads were appearing through the wreckage of the gate. And there were white robes and tonsures too, and men bearing torches, spilling out with shouts and oaths, pointing at our retreating backs.

Robin and I ducked around the north-western corner of St James Church, which formed the outside wall of the Abbey and paused for a heartbeat, our backs against the stone wall, panting madly, trying to get our bearings. I sheathed my misericorde and tucked the mace securely in my belt; and pulled the irritating leather eye patch off my face and hurled it into the darkness. We turned and looked east. There was just enough moonlight to make out the bulk of the church to our right-hand side, and a dark smear of forest in front of us. To our left nothing but deep blackness. But the shouted commands and indignant rage were coming closer behind us, and we pushed off the wall and sprinted onwards, due east, following the line of the church wall towards the forest and our friends.

We had not run thirty yards when the torches erupted around the corner of the church; a horde of men, many scores of them, mostly white-garbed canons brandishing simple wooden staves, but a few men-at-arms mixed in too, with swords and spears; a couple of men had crossbows, I noticed. We ran, Robin and I, we ran for our lives. A hundred yards, two hundred, and I tripped and fell headlong into a patch of boggy grass, my face splashing down into foulness. Robin who was a few yards ahead of me came back and grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and hauled me upright. It was then that I noticed that he still had the woollen sack in his right hand, the sack containing a rich man’s ransom in gold.

‘This is no time to be taking a nap, Alan,’ said my lord, chuckling, dragging me by the elbow as we splashed through a shallow stream and up on to the bank on the other side. ‘We have an appointment to keep.’ And I coughed up a little foul marsh water with my own near-hysterical laughter.

Our pursuers were only fifty yards behind us, and the tree line a scant thirty yards away, when the first arrows began to fly out of the forest. And good shooting it was, too, for night-time. The shafts arced over our heads, fine grey lines in the blackness, and lanced mercilessly into our pursuers, thudding into white-robed canon and man-at-arms alike, and dropping both in moaning, bleeding heaps on the dark grass. The yard-long shafts, mounted with man-killing bodkin tips, skimmed out of the trees as fast as Robin’s men could loose them and thunked relentlessly into human flesh, with the sound of a butcher’s cleaver on a slab of pork, transfixing limbs and piercing mail and thick wool habits with equal ease. The night was alive with the desperate yells of the wounded. One man-at-arms screamed a foul insult and loosed a crossbow bolt at the black wall of the forest in defiance – then the Abbey folk fled, back to the safety of their walls, dragging their hurt with them, and pursued by the pale killing shafts of the outlaws’ barrage.

Little John and Robin’s three bowmen might have seen off the Abbey folk for the moment but we did not assume that Abbot Richard would fail to rally his troops, roust out more armed men and attempt to follow us. So we saddled up, as soon as we made it to the tree line and joined our friends, and threaded our way south through the dark forest as quickly as we dared.

And it was not long before we heard the sounds of horsemen and the fear-emboldened calls of pursuers, and saw through the black trees the red blossoming of scores of torches. We could not move fast, a low hanging branch, unseen in the darkness, might crack a skull or sweep one of us from the saddle. And neither could we make light to see by. Instead we slowly walked our horses forward between the pillars of the trees, heads ducked low against their warm necks, and prayed that our pursuers might soon become lost or disheartened.

They did not.

Over the next quarter of an hour, the number of torches seemed to multiply until there was almost a sea of bobbing, ruddy flashes behind us, and the noise of our oncoming enemies had risen to the rumble of a multitude, with the occasional high shout breaking out against the background hubbub. We were being hunted like beasts by a huge pack of enemies. The Abbot appeared to have mustered more than a hundred horse and footmen for the pursuit, and very swiftly too, and against that number of foes we would have no chance in a fight. They were determined, well organized and seemingly unafraid of the wild forest in the depths of a midsummer midnight. And so the tide of fire-bearing hunters came on swiftly, more swiftly than we could progress. And soon, it seemed almost to be lapping at our heels and, as I nervously snatched another glance behind me, I could by now make out the silhouettes of the Abbot’s hired men-at-arms and catch brief glimpses of others in white robes with tonsured heads.

I told myself that their burning torches would ruin their night-vision and that while I could make out their forms they would surely not be able to see us. But the ice snake of fear slithered in my stomach and I tried not to imagine our fate if we were taken: humiliation, disgrace and a long agonizing dance at the end of a rope.

Finally, Robin gave a low order and we urged our horses into a nervous trot, but after no more than a dozen heartbeats, my left knee cracked agonizingly against a protruding branch, and it was only with great difficulty that I avoided yelling out in surprised pain. I heard the sound of ripping cloth and a stifled oath ahead of me. Then came the unmistakable sharp thump of wood on bone – and my horse’s nose was bumping on the rump of Little John’s beast ahead of me.

‘It’s no good running,’ whispered the blond giant. ‘Dismount and pass the order on.’ I turned to Gavin behind me and relayed the message, and then I found myself leading my horse by the bridle along a narrow track away to the left, almost at right angles to our original path, and heading roughly eastwards, as far as I could tell. We stopped after no more than forty paces, and Robin’s face was right by mine, and whispering, ‘We stay here, and let them pass. For all our sakes, keep your horse quiet.’ Then he was past me and speaking to Gavin, who stood at his mount’s head a pace or two away.

Robin had chosen an excellent hiding place. By luck? Or from his knowledge of these woods? I could not tell. We were grouped together below a stand of half a dozen skinny ash trees, growing close together, their thin branches swooping and curling around our bodies, the thick black foliage hiding us from sight even a few yards away. Even in daylight I think we six fugitives might have been well cloaked. I had my right hand clamped over the nostrils of my horse, willing her not to make a sound as the horrible red sea of firelight advanced towards us. At one point, I could clearly make out a helmeted horseman, twenty paces away, a tall man on a big horse, a blazing torch in his right hand, a white shield slung across his back. And when I heard him call out loudly to his fellow man-hunters, I confess my whole torso was sweat-slick and my heart was clogging my throat.

‘Stay alert, men. Stay alert! A gold bezant for the first man to see the dogs.’ It was the French knight, the man with the mole. And my thought was, oddly: That man has fought in the Holy Land. Who else has bezants to give away?

And then he was past me, still riding on the original line of march that Robin had taken, and the shouts and noise of excited men and horses was diminishing and the sea of bobbing lights beyond him was flowing away south into the ink-black forest, extinguished one by one by the bulk of the trees.

We waited a half hour in the safety of our clump of ash trees before remounting and heading on further east at a very cautious walk. After a mile or so we turned south again but we saw no more sign of our pursuers that night; and at the first light of dawn Robin led us to an abandoned hunting lodge on his brother’s lands. We dismounted gratefully in the roofless space, rubbed down our horses, fed and watered them, and sat down ourselves for a bite of bread, cheese and ale, all of us exhausted but grateful to be alive and at liberty. I felt more wrung-out than I had in an age and I was just rolling myself into a heavy cloak for a few hours of blissful sleep, when I heard Little John quietly ask Robin what he thought had gone wrong, and I levered my sleepy lids open once more.

‘They were waiting for us, John,’ my lord said. He had an ugly purple-red bruise on his forehead and a smear of green lichen across it that made him look unusually wicked in that cold dawn. ‘They obviously knew we were coming and had recruited scores of fighting men in the hope of taking us. A not-very-subtle trap was set and, I am ashamed to say, we walked straight into it.’

I reflected tiredly that I’d tried to warn Robin that something was wrong, but there seemed little point in reminding him.

‘We should ride over to Lincoln and pay our good friend Malloch Baruch a little visit one of these days,’ growled John. And just from his tone, an icy trickle of fear slid down my spine.

I told Goody what had happened at Welbeck and, predictably, she was furious at our narrow escape from an ignominious death. But I did not mention it to Sir Nicholas de Scras – it was not that I did not trust him to be silent about the matter, it was merely from a sense of delicacy. I did not want to admit to him that I had been undertaking larcenous adventures in search of an abbot’s gold when I had only just convinced him that I had not, in fact, stolen a hoard of silver from the Templars. Better that he should not know.

Sir Nicholas and I enjoyed several days hunting red deer together across my lands in the next few weeks. The right to hunt beasts of venery, as these fleet creatures are called, came with the manor, and had been confirmed by William the Bastard himself as a favour to a comrade after he and his ferocious Norman knights had conquered this land. I had been much away at the wars since I had taken possession of Westbury a decade ago, and, as one of my huntsmen put it, the deer had multiplied and were now as thick as fleas on a dog’s back. It was only a slight exaggeration: Sir Nicholas approached hunting with all the ruthless skill and determination that he brought to war and we killed half a dozen fat bucks with my pack of hounds in a fortnight. Some of the meat we salted and smoked for the winter, some I gave to the villagers of Westbury, to my tenants and to Arnold the priest, a funny little man who had a nervous habit of blinking his huge eyes constantly like a sleepy owl – but we did not stint ourselves in the hall either. Many a day we feasted on venison from noon till dusk – Goody, myself, Thomas my squire, Baldwin the steward, and Nicholas de Scras – regaling ourselves like royalty at their ease.

The weather was golden and a nagging fear that I might have been identified after the botched robbery at Welbeck Abbey receded with day after day of scrambling exhilaration in the woods and fields around Westbury as we chased down the nimble deer with our dogs and our spears, and nights drinking good red wine and playing backgammon by the hearth with Sir Nicholas or remembering old friends and refighting old battles of the Great Pilgrimage. I was happy in that time, perhaps as happy as I have been before or since. And when we retired to bed, Goody and I made the most of our married state, and tried energetically night and morn to put a baby in her womb.

It was a joyous, warm, sun-filled season, but not without its dark clouds. It was a week past Lammas Day – and the main summer wheat crop had been gathered in and the sheaves were drying safely in a dozen barns across the manor – when a woman in the village went mad. She was found naked at noon in one of the wheat barns at the eastern edge of the village, covered in blood and scratches and preaching a sermon to the sheaves on the wiles of the Devil.

It was Father Arnold who came to me with the news.

‘Katelyn the alewife has been possessed by an evil spirit!’ the priest told me, his mouth slightly open with excitement and his large owl eyes blinking rapidly. He found me in the stables with Shaitan, where I had been inspecting the healed scar on my destrier’s back with the head groom and discussing whether he was ready to take the weight of a saddle and rider.

The story came tumbling out. The day before, Katelyn – a woman who was as famous for the strength of the ale she brewed as she was for her frequent violent drunkenness – had been gathering herbs for the ale vats, alone, in the little copse on the knoll a mile or so north of the village, when she had come face to face with a demon: a ghastly creature, dressed all in black, leaning on a great staff, with a skull for a face and burning coals for eyes. The demon had cursed her in the vilest terms in some foul, Satanic language, had stolen her food, a parcel of bread and cheese and a leather bottle of strong ale, and had flown into the wood on great flapping black wings, cackling insanely.

Katelyn had been badly shaken by the encounter, but worse, that very night the demon or witch, or whatever the fell creature was, had come to her in her cottage, entered her bed and taken away her reason. The poor woman had arisen at dawn, naked as a babe, and run three times around the church, laughing and shouting wild curses and taunts, before falling into a patch of brambles and then staggering, scratched and bleeding, to the nearest shelter – a barn, where she had begun to lecture the stalks of grain on abstinence as a means of avoiding the snares of the Evil One.

Father Arnold related this tale with a good deal of relish, lingering on the fact that the woman was naked, and then proudly informing me that he had personally exorcised the demon with a bucket of Holy Water, drawn from the well, blessed and then cast over the woman’s plump white body.

‘She is sleeping now, thanks be to God,’ said Father Arnold, ‘but I have high hopes that in time she may recover her wits and do a penance for her sins.’

There seemed to be nothing that I was required to do for the unfortunate alewife Katelyn, and so I dismissed the priest with praise and thanks for his efforts and went back to examining Shaitan’s long pink scar. However, this episode – although I was convinced it was largely a fantasy born of a surfeit of ale – made me deeply uneasy. Goody and I had been troubled by a witch, or a crazy woman who claimed to be one, for some years now – and the ‘demon’ discovered by Katelyn put me in mind of her. Her name was Nur and she hailed from Outremer.