Martyr's Fire (5 page)

With Robert of Uleran’s help, Thomas had dyed his skin several shades darker with the juice of boiled bark. This, he hoped, would give him the rough texture and appearance of a person who spent too much time outside in the bitter cold wind or the baking sun.

Thomas had cut his hair short in ragged patches and scraped dark grease repeatedly with his hands to impact the filth beneath his fingernails. He planned to spend at least two days among the peasants of Magnus, and only the blindest of fools would fail to notice clean hands on a street beggar.

But how should he disguise his features?

Robert of Uleran had suggested an eye patch. Many in the land were disfigured or crippled, and many of those by necessity were forced to beg or die. True, it was not common, yet it was not remarkable for a beggar with one eye to appear among the poor.

Thus disguised, Thomas let his shoulders sag and added a limp as he
slipped unnoticed through the great banquet hall among the crowds of morning visitors.

As he forced his way through the dizzying noise, smells, and sights, he felt a degree of shame for how quickly he’d begun to believe that he was above all those in the shadows of his castle.

“Step aside, scum!” bellowed a large man guiding a mule loaded with leather. When Thomas did not react fast enough for the man’s taste, he was shoved back into a crowd of people on the side of the street.

“Watch yourself!” another shouted at Thomas. Hands grasped and pulled at him, while other hands pushed him away in disgust. One well-placed kick to the back of his knee pitched Thomas forward, and when he stood upright again, he knew he’d no longer need to fake his limp.

Thomas moved ahead, handicapped by the lack of depth of vision forced upon him by using only one eye.

Still, he refused to be downcast. He’d entered Magnus as a penniless orphan and had felt no shame for it. In fact, the experience served as a reminder that he needed to be true to himself, not to what the trappings of lordship gave him.

The scene, of course, looked identical to his first time in Magnus. Shops crowded the streets so tightly that the more crooked of the buildings actually leaned into neighboring roofs. Space among the people who bustled in front of him was equally difficult to find.

Thomas did not let his renewed sightseeing stop him from carefully placing each limped footstep. Avoiding the mess of emptied chamber pots and the waste of sheep, calf, or pig innards thrown out by the butchers demanded one’s full attention.

Pigs squealed, donkeys brayed in protest against heavy carts, and dogs barked, all a backdrop of noise against the hum of people busy in the sunshine.

Thomas sighed and turned backward to squint against that sunshine as he gazed at the large keep of Magnus that dominated the center of the village. If he didn’t return, would it matter? What if he walked away, lived as a fighting man, and traveled across the land? Magnus would continue to exist. People would continue living as if he’d never been.

He had enough silver to travel. To confirm that, Thomas reached for his hidden pouch containing two silver coins. Beggar or not, he did not relish going hungry in the eve or on the morrow—

Thomas groaned.

Only five minutes away from the castle and he had been picked as clean as a country fool by those grasping hands in the crowd.

“ ’Tis our good fortune the weather holds,” the old woman cackled to Thomas. “Or the night would promise us much worse than empty bellies. The roof leaks horribly in any rain at all!”

Thomas grunted.

The old woman chose to accept his grunt as one of agreement. She moved herself closer to Thomas and snuggled against his side in the straw.

Which was worse—the cloying barnyard smell of the dirty stable straw, or the stale, unwashed odor of the old woman who sought him for warmth? His skin prickled; already he could feel, or imagine he felt, the fleas transferring from the old woman to him. The piece of fat he wore around his neck in a tiny cage to lure the biting bugs would be covered in no time.

Besides, Thomas did not know if he agreed with her or not. It had been so long since he had felt hunger he thought he might have preferred a rainy, cold night for the sake of being fed.

He stared into the darkness around him. Vague shapes moved; those horses, at least, were content.

The old woman burped, releasing a sour gas that did little to improve the immediate situation.

“I wonder,” he asked, “why there are not more of us seeking shelter here in the stables. Do others fear the soldiers of Magnus?”

Thomas, however, knew well they did not. As lord, he had commanded his men not to harry the poor who commonly used the stables as a last resort. So why were they empty?

The old woman snorted. “The others choose the church as sanctuary.”

“Ah,” Thomas said. He maintained his role as a wandering beggar, freshly arrived in Magnus. “I had heard the priest of Magnus would give food and a roof to any who pledged work the following day.”

Thomas smiled quickly to himself as he finished his words. After all, he and Gervaise had set that policy themselves, to allow the penniless their pride and to stop the abuse of charity by the lazy.

Much to his surprise, the old woman laughed cruelly. “No longer! Have you not heard? That priest has been replaced by the men of the Holy Grail.”

“Indeed?” Thomas asked.

“Indeed. They brought miracles with them—a weeping statue, if you can believe it, boy! The people of Magnus fell all over themselves to see it and the blood of St. Thomas the Apostle. The Priests of the Holy Grail banished the former priest from his very own church!”

“I understand little, then,” Thomas admitted. “You say the former priest is not in the church. Where, then, do the less fortunate stay each night, if not here in the stables or at the church?”

The old woman shifted, heedless of the elbow that forced a gasp from Thomas.

“I did not say the church was empty,” she told him. “Only that the poor need not pledge a day’s services in exchange for food and lodging. Instead, the Priests of the Holy Grail demand an oath of loyalty.”

“What!” Thomas bolted upright and bumped the woman solidly. He almost forgot himself in his outrage. He forced himself to relax again.

“Lad,” the old woman admonished, “give warning the next time. My old bones cannot take such movement.”

“I beg pardon,” Thomas said, much more quietly. “It seems such a strange requirement, pledging an oath.” He fought to keep his voice curious instead of angry. “I had thought that an oath of loyalty could only be pledged to those who rule.”

The old woman cackled again. “Are you so fresh from the countryside that your good eye and both your ears are still plugged with manure? These priests have promised the Holy Grail to those who follow. With such power, how could they not soon rule?”

Once again, Thomas fought frustration at the invincibility of his opponents. When he felt he could speak calmly again, he pretended little interest.

“What do you know of this Grail?” he asked casually. “And its power therein?”

The old woman clutched Thomas tighter as the evening chill settled upon them.

“Had you no parents, lad? No one to instruct you in common legends?”

She reacted instantly to his sudden stillness.

“It is my turn to beg pardon,” she said softly. “There are too many orphans in the land.”

“ ’Tis nothing.” Thomas waved a hand in the darkness, as if brushing away memories.

She patted his chest as if to soothe him before speaking again. “The Holy Grail,” she repeated. “A story to pass the time of any night.”

Her voice became oddly beautiful as it dropped into a storytelling chant. As Thomas listened, the stable around him seemed far away. He no longer sucked the air carefully between his teeth to lessen the stench. The straw no longer stabbed him with tiny pinpricks. And the burden of the woman leaning against him lessened. Thomas let himself be carried away by her voice, back through lost centuries to the Round Table of King Arthur’s court.

“Long ago,” she said softly, “at Camelot, there was a fellowship of knights so noble …”

The Holy Grail, she told Thomas, was the cup that Christ had used at the Last Supper, the night before He was to be crucified. This cup was later obtained by a wealthy Jew, Joseph of Arimathaea, who undertook to care for Christ’s body before burial. When Christ’s body disappeared after the third day in the tomb, Joseph was accused of stealing it and was thrown into prison and deprived of food.

“It was in that prison cell that Christ Himself appeared in a blaze of light and entrusted the cup to Joseph’s care! It was then that Christ instructed Joseph in the mystery of the Lord’s Supper and in certain other secrets! It is these secrets that make the Holy Grail so powerful!”

“These secrets?” Thomas interrupted.

“No one knows,” she admitted. “But it matters little. How can these secrets not help but be marvelous?”

Only because people want them to be marvelous
, Thomas thought.

She told him the rest of the legend in awed tones, as if whispered words in the black of the stable might reach those priests of power.

Joseph was miraculously kept alive by a dove that entered his cell every day and deposited a wafer into the cup. After he was released, he was joined by his sister and her husband and a small group of followers. They traveled overseas into exile, careful to guard the cup on their journey, and formed the First Table of the Holy Grail.

“This table was meant to represent the Table of the Last Supper,” the old woman said with reverence. “One seat was always empty, the seat of Judas, the betrayer. A member of the company once tried sitting there and was swallowed up!”

Thomas marveled at the woman’s unwavering superstitious belief.

“Go on,” he said gently. “This takes place long before King Arthur, does it not?”

“Oh yes,” she said quickly. “Joseph of Arimathaea sailed here to our
great island and set up both the first Christian church at Glastonbury and, somewhere nearby, the Grail Castle.”

She sighed. “Alas, in time the Grail Keeper lost his faith, and the entire land around the castle became barren and known as the Waste Land, and strangely, could not be reached by travelers. The land—and the Grail—remained lost for many generations.”

The woman settled deeper against him. Her silence continued for so long that Thomas suspected she had fallen asleep.

“Until King Arthur?” he prompted.

“No need to hurry me,” she said crossly. “I had closed my eyes to see in my mind those noble knights of yesteryear. Too few are pleasant thoughts for an old, forgotten woman.”

Then, as if remembering the impatience of youth, she patted Thomas’s arm in forgiveness. “Yes, lad. Until King Arthur. At the Round Table, the Holy Grail appeared once, floating in a beam of sunlight. Those great knights pledged themselves to go in search of it.”

Thomas settled back for a long story. Many were the escapades of King Arthur and his men, many the adventures in search of the Holy Grail, and many were the hours passed by people in its telling and retelling.

Thomas heard again of the perilous tests faced by Sir Lancelot, and his son, Sir Galahad, and Sir Bors, Sir Percival, and the others. Thomas heard again how Sir Percival, after wandering for five years in the wilderness, found the Holy Grail and healed the Grail Keeper, making the Waste Land once again flower. Thomas heard again how Percival, Galahad, and Bors continued their journey until reaching a holy city in the East, where they learned the mysterious secrets of the Grail and saw it taken into heaven.

She told it well, this legend that captured all imaginations. But she did not finish where the legend usually ended.

“And now,” she said, “these priests offer to us the blood of a martyr of
ancient times, blood that clots, then unclots after their prayer. They offer us the weeping statue of the Mother Mary. And they speak intimately of the Holy Grail, returned rightfully to them, with its powers to be shared among their followers!”

Thomas felt his chest grow tight. Indeed, these were the rumors he had feared. “These followers,” he said cautiously, “what must they do to receive the benefits of the Holy Grail?”

The old woman clucked. “The same as the poor must do to receive shelter. Pledge an oath of loyalty, one that surpasses loyalty to the Lord of Magnus, or any other earthly lord.”

These were the rumors that had not yet reached him, the rumors he had sought by leaving his castle keep. How much time, upon his return, did he have left to combat these priests?

Another thought struck Thomas.

“Yet you are here,” Thomas said into the darkness to the woman curled against his side. “Here in the stable and not at the church. Why have you not pledged loyalty to this great power for the benefits of food and lodging?”

The old woman sighed. “An oath of loyalty is not to be pledged lightly. And many years ago, when I had beauty and dreams, I pledged mine to the former lord of Magnus.”

“Y-yet”—Thomas stammered suddenly at her impossible words—“was that not the lord who oppressed Magnus so cruelly, the one whom Lord Thomas so recently overcame?”