The Grail Quest Books 1-3: Harlequin, Vagabond, Heretic (110 page)

‘It’s all I’m good for, my lord.
Shooting a bow.’
Thomas spoke in Norman French, the language of England’s aristocracy and the language his father had taught him. ‘And I have money, my lord.’ He meant that he could now recruit archers
,_
equip them with horses and take them on the Earl’s service, which would cost the Earl nothing, but the Earl could then take one-third of everything they plundered.

That was how Will Skeat, common born, had made his name. The Earl liked such men, profited from them, and he nodded approvingly. ‘But lead them where?’ he asked. ‘I hate truces.’

The young priest intervened from his table by the window. ‘The King would prefer it if the Grail were found.’

‘His name’s John Buckingham,’ the Earl said of the priest, ‘and he’s Chamberlain of the Receipt of the Exchequer, which may not sound much to you, young Thomas, but it means he serves the King and he’ll probably be Archbishop of Canterbury before he’s thirty.’

‘Hardly, my lord,’ the priest said.

‘And of course the King wants the Grail found,’ the Earl said, ‘we all want that. I want to see the damn thing in Westminster Abbey! I want the King of damned France crawling on his bloody knees to say prayers to it. I want pilgrims from all Christendom bringing us their gold. For God’s sake, Thomas, does the bloody thing exist? Did your father have it?’

‘I don’t know, my lord,’ Thomas said.

‘Much bloody use you are,’ the Earl grumbled.

John Buckingham looked at his notes. ‘You have a cousin, Guy Vexille?’

‘Yes,’ Thomas said.

‘And he seeks the Grail?’

‘By seeking me,’ Thomas said. ‘And I don’t know where it is.’

‘But he was searching for the Grail before he knew you existed,’ the young priest pointed out, ‘which suggests to me that he possesses some knowledge denied to us. I would advise, my Lord, that we seek this Guy Vexille.’

‘We’d be two dogs chasing each other’s tails,’ Thomas put in sourly.

The Earl waved Thomas to silence. The priest looked back at his notes. ‘And, opaque though these writings are,’ he said disapprovingly, ‘there is one thread of light. They seem to confirm that the Grail was at Astarac. That it was hidden there.’

‘And taken away again!’
Thomas protested.

‘If you lose something valuable,’ Buckingham said patiently, ‘where do you begin your search? At the place where it was last seen. Where is Astarac?’

‘Gascony,’ Thomas said, ‘in the fief of Berat.’

‘Ah!’ the Earl said, but then was silent.

‘And have you been to Astarac?’ Buckingham asked. He might have been young, but he had an authority that came from more than his job with the King’s Exchequer.

‘No.’

‘Then I suggest you go,’ the priest said, ‘and see what you can learn. And if you make enough noise in your searching then your cousin may well come looking for you, and you can find him and discover what he knows.’ He smiled, as if to suggest that he had solved the problem.

There was silence except that one of the Earl’s hunting dogs scratched itself in a corner of the room and on the quays a sailor let loose a stream of profanities that might have brought a blush to the devil’s face. ‘I can’t capture Guy by myself,’ Thomas protested, ‘and Berat offers no allegiance to our King.’

‘Officially,’ Buckingham said, ‘Berat offers allegiance to the Count of Toulouse, which today means the King of France. The Count of Berat is definitely an enemy.’

‘No truce is signed yet,’ the Earl offered hesitantly.

‘And won’t be for days, I suspect,’ Buckingham agreed.

The Earl looked at Thomas. ‘And you want archers?’

‘I’d like Will Skeat’s men, sire.’

‘And no doubt they’d serve you,’ the Earl said, ‘but you can’t lead men-at-arms, Thomas.’ He meant that Thomas, not nobly born and still young, might have the authority to command archers, but men-at-arms, who considered themselves of higher rank, would resent his leadership. Will Skeat, worse born than Thomas,
had
managed it, but Will had been much older and far more experienced.

‘I can lead men-at-arms,’ one of the two men by the wall announced.

Thomas introduced the two. The one who had spoken was an older man, scarred, one eye missing, hard as mail. His name was Sir Guillaume d’Evecque, Lord of Evecque, and he had once held a fief in Normandy until his own King turned against him and now he was a landless warrior and Thomas’s friend. The other, younger man was also a friend. He was a Scot, Robbie Douglas, taken prisoner at Durham the year before. ‘Christ’s bones,’ the Earl said when he knew Robbie’s circumstances, ‘but you must have raised your ransom by now?’

‘I raised it, my lord,’ Robbie admitted, ‘and lost it.’

‘Lost it!’

Robbie stared at the floor, so Thomas explained in one curt word.
‘Dice.’

The Earl looked disgusted,
then
turned again to Sir Guillaume. ‘I have heard of you,’ he said, and it was a compliment, ‘and
know
you can lead men-at-arms, but whom do you serve?’

‘No man, my lord.’

Then you cannot lead my men-at-arms,’ the Earl said pointedly, and waited.

Sir Guillaume hesitated. He was a proud man, thirty-five years old, experienced in war, with a reputation that had first been made by fighting against the English. But now he possessed no land, no master, and as such he was little more than a vagabond and so, after a pause, he walked to the Earl and knelt before him and held up his hands as though in prayer. The Earl put his own hands round Sir Guillaume’s. ‘You promise to do me service,’ he asked, ‘to be my liege man, to serve no other?’

‘I do so promise,’ Sir Guillaume said earnestly and the Earl raised him and the two men kissed on the lips.

‘I’m honoured,’ the Earl said, thumping Sir Guillaume’s shoulder,
then
turned to Thomas again. ‘So you can raise a decent force. You’ll
need,
what?
Fifty men?
Half archers.’

‘Fifty men in a distant fief?’
Thomas said. ‘They won’t last a month, my lord.’

‘But they will,’ the Earl said, and explained his previous, surprised reaction to the news that Astarac lay in the county of Berat. ‘Years ago, young Thomas, before you were off your mother’s tit, we owned property in Gascony. We lost it, but we never formally surrendered it, so there are three or four strongholds in Berat over which I have a legitimate claim.’ John Buckingham, reading Father Ralph’s notes again, raised an eyebrow to suggest that the claim was tenuous at best, but he said nothing. ‘Go and take one of those castles,’ the Earl said, ‘make raids, make money, and men will join you.’

‘And men will come against us,’ Thomas observed quietly.

‘And Guy Vexille will be one,’ the Earl said, ‘so that’s your opportunity. Take it, Thomas, and get out of here before the truce is made.’

Thomas hesitated for a heartbeat or two. What the Earl suggested sounded close to insanity. He was to take a force into the deep south of French territory, capture a fortress, defend it, hope to capture his cousin, find Astarac, explore it,
follow
the Grail. Only a fool would accept such a charge, but the alternative was to rot away with every other unemployed archer. ‘I shall do it, my lord,’ he said.

‘Good. Be off with you, all of you!’ The Earl led Thomas to the door, but once Robbie and Sir Guillaume were on the stairs, he pulled Thomas back for a private word. ‘Don’t take the Scotsman with you,’ the Earl said.

‘No, my lord?
He’s a friend.’

‘He’s a damned Scot and I don’t trust them. They’re all goddamned thieves and liars.
Worse than the bloody French.
Who holds him prisoner?’

‘Lord Outhwaite.’

‘And Outhwaite let him travel with you? I’m surprised. Never mind, send your Scottish friend back to Outhwaite and let him moulder away until his family raises the ransom. But I don’t want a bloody Scotsman taking the Grail away from England. You understand?’

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘Good man,’ the Earl said and clapped Thomas’s back. ‘Now go and prosper.’

Go and die, more like. Go on a fool’s errand, for Thomas did not believe the Grail existed. He wanted it to exist, he wanted to believe his father’s words, but his father had been mad at times and mischievous at others, and Thomas had his own ambition, to be a leader as good as Will Skeat.
To be an archer.
Yet the fool’s errand gave him a chance to raise men, lead them and follow his dream. So he would pursue the Grail and see what came.

He went to the English encampment and beat a drum. Peace was coming, but Thomas of Hookton was raising men and going to war.

The Count of Berat was old, pious and learned. He had lived sixty-five years and liked to boast that he had not left his fiefdom for the last forty of them. His stronghold was the great castle of Berat. It stood on a limestone hill above the town of Berat, which was almost surrounded by the River Berat that made the county of Berat so fertile. There were olives, grapes, pears, plums, barley and women. The Count liked them all. He had married five times, each new wife younger than the last, but none had provided him with a child. He had not even spawned a bastard on a milkmaid though, God knew, it was not for lack of trying.

That absence of children had persuaded the Count that God had cursed him and so in his old age he had surrounded himself with priests. The town had a cathedral and eighteen churches, with a bishop, canons and priests to fill them, and there was a house of Dominican friars by the east gate. The Count blessed the town with two new churches and built a convent high on the western hill across the river and beyond the vineyards. He employed a chaplain and, at great expense, he purchased a handful of the straw that had lined the manger in which the baby Jesus had been laid at his birth. The Count encased the straw in crystal, gold and gems, and placed the reliquary on the altar of the castle’s chapel and prayed to it each day, but even that sacred talisman did not help. His fifth wife was seventeen and plump and healthy and, like the others, barren.

At first the Count suspected that he had been cheated in his purchase of the holy straw, but his chaplain assured him that the relic had come from the papal palace at Avignon and produced a letter signed by the Holy Father himself guaranteeing that the straw was indeed the Christ-child’s bedding. Then the Count had his new wife examined by four eminent doctors and those worthies decreed that her urine was clear, her parts whole and her appetites healthy, and so the Count employed his own learning in search of an heir. Hippocrates had written of the effect of pictures on conception and so the Count ordered a painter to decorate the walls of his wife’s bedchamber with pictures of the Virgin and child; he ate red beans and kept his rooms warm. Nothing worked. It was not the Count’s fault, he knew that. He had planted barley seeds in two pots and watered one with his new wife’s urine and one with his own, and both pots had sprouted seedlings and that, the doctors said, proved that both the Count and Countess were fertile.

Which meant, the Count had decided, that he was cursed.
So he turned more avidly to religion because he knew he did not have much time left. Aristotle had written that the age of seventy was the limit of a man’s ability, and so the Count had just five years to work his miracle. Then, one autumn morning, though he did not realize it at the time, his prayers were answered.

Churchmen came from Paris. Three priests and a monk arrived at Berat and they brought a letter from Louis Bessières, Cardinal and Archbishop of Livorno, Papal Legate to the Court of France, and the letter was humble, respectful and threatening. It requested that Brother Jerome, a young monk of formidable learning, be allowed to examine the records of Berat. ‘It is well known to us,’ the Cardinal Archbishop had written in elegant Latin, ‘that you possess a great love of all manuscripts, both pagan and Christian, and so entreat you, for the love of Christ and for the furtherance of His kingdom, to allow our Brother Jerome to examine your muniments.’
Which was fine, so far as it went, for the Count of Berat did indeed possess a library and a manuscript collection that was probably the most extensive in all Gascony, if not in all southern Christendom, but what the letter did not make clear was why the Cardinal Archbishop was so interested in the castle’s muniments.
As for the reference to pagan works, that was a threat. Refuse this request, the Cardinal Archbishop was saying, and I shall set the holy dogs of the Dominicans and the Inquisitors onto your county and they will find that the pagan works encourage heresy. Then the trials and the burnings would begin, neither of which would affect the Count directly, but there would be indulgences to buy if his soul was not to be damned. The Church had a glutton’s appetite for money and everyone knew the Count of Berat was rich. So the Count did not want to offend the Cardinal Archbishop, but he did want to know why His Eminence had suddenly become interested in Berat.
Which was why the Count had summoned Father Roubert, the chief Dominican in the town of Berat, to the great hall of the castle, which had long ceased to be a place of feasting, but instead was lined with shelves on which old documents mouldered and precious handwritten books were wrapped in oiled leather.

Father Roubert was just thirty-two years old. He was the son of a tanner in the town and had risen in the Church thanks to the Count’s patronage. He was very tall, very stern, with black hair cut so short that it reminded the Count of the stiff-bristled brushes the armourers used to burnish the coats of mail. Father Roubert was also, this fine morning, angry. ‘I have business in Castillon d’Arbizon tomorrow,’ he said, ‘and will need to leave within the hour if I am to reach the town in daylight.’

The Count ignored the rudeness in Father Roubert’s tone. The Dominican liked to treat the Count as an equal, an impudence the Count tolerated because it amused him. ‘You have business in Castillon d’Arbizon?’ he asked, then remembered. ‘Of course you do. You are burning the beghard, are you not?’

Tomorrow morning.’

‘She will burn with or without you, father,’ the Count said, ‘and the devil will take her soul whether you are there to rejoice or not.’ He peered at the friar. ‘Or is it that you like to watch women burn?’

‘It is my duty,’ Father Roubert said stiffly.

‘Ah yes, your duty.
Of course.
Your duty.’
The Count frowned at a chessboard on the table, trying to work out whether he should advance a pawn or retract a bishop. He was a short, plump man with a round face and a clipped beard. He habitually wore a woollen cap over his bald head and, even in summer, was rarely without a fur-lined gown. His fingers were perpetually ink-stained so that he looked more like a fussy clerk than the ruler of a great domain. ‘But you have a duty to me, Roubert,’ he chided the Dominican, ‘and this is it.’ He gave the Cardinal Archbishop’s letter to the Dominican and watched as the friar read the long document. ‘He writes a fine Latin, does
he
not?’ the Count said.

‘He employs a secretary who is properly educated,’ Father Roubert said curtly, then he examined the great red seal to make certain the document was genuine. ‘They say
,
’ the friar sounded respectful now, ‘that Cardinal Bessières is regarded as a possible successor to the Holy Father.’

‘So not a man to offend?’

‘No churchman should ever be offended,’ Father Roubert answered stiffly.

‘And certainly not one who might become Pope,’ the Count concluded. ‘But what is it he wants?’

Father Roubert went to a window screened with a lead lattice supporting scraped horn panes that let a diffuse light into the room, but kept out rain, birds and some of winter’s cold winds. He lifted the lattice from its frame and breathed the air which, this high up in the castle’s
keep
, was wonderfully free of the latrine stink in the lower town. It was autumn and there was the faint smell of pressed grapes in the air. Roubert liked that smell. He turned back to the Count. ‘Is the monk here?’

‘In a guest room,’ the Count said. ‘He’s resting. He’s young, very nervous. He bowed to me very properly, but refused to say what the Cardinal wants.’

A great clash in the yard below prompted Father Roubert to peer through the window again. He had to lean far forward for even here, forty feet up the
keep,
the walls were nearly five feet thick. A horseman in full plate armour had just charged the quintain in the yard and his lance had struck the wooden shield so hard that the whole contraption had collapsed. ‘Your nephew plays,’ he said as he straightened from the window.

‘My nephew and his friends practise,’ the Count corrected the friar.

‘He would do better to look to his soul,’ Father Roubert said sourly.

‘He has no soul, he’s a soldier.’

‘A tournament soldier,’ the friar said scornfully.

The Count shrugged. ‘It is not enough to be wealthy, father. A man must also be strong and Joscelyn is my strong arm.’ The Count said it forcibly, though in truth he was not sure that his nephew was the best heir for Berat, but if the Count had no son then the fief must pass to one of his nephews and Joscelyn was probably the best of a bad brood. Which made it all the more important to have an heir. ‘I asked you here,’ he said, choosing to use the word ‘asked’ rather than ‘ordered’, ‘because you might have some insight into His Eminence’s interest.’

The friar looked at the Cardinal’s letter again. ‘Muniments,’ he said.

‘I noticed that word too,’ the Count said. He moved away from the open window. ‘You’re causing a draught, father.’

Father Roubert reluctantly replaced the horn screen. The Count, he knew, had deduced from his books that for a man to be fertile he must be warm and the friar wondered how folk in cold northern countries ever managed to breed. ‘So the Cardinal isn’t interested in your books,’ the Dominican said, ‘but only in the county’s records?’

‘So it would seem. Two hundred years of tax rolls?’ The Count chuckled. ‘Brother Jerome will enjoy deciphering those.’

The friar said nothing for a while. The sound of clashing swords echoed from the castle’s curtain wall as the Count’s nephew and his cronies practised their weapons in the yard. Let Lord Joscelyn inherit here, the friar thought, and these books and parchments would all be put to the flames. He moved closer to the hearth in which, though it was not cold outside, a great fire burned and he thought of the girl who must be burned to death next morning in Castillon d’Arbizon. She was a heretic, a foul creature, the devil’s plaything, and he remembered her agony as he had tortured the confession from her. He wanted to see her burn and hear the screams that would announce her arrival at the gates of hell, and so the sooner he answered the Count the sooner he could leave.

‘You’re hiding something, Roubert,’ the Count prompted him before the friar could speak.

The friar hated being called by his simple Christian name, a reminder that the Count had known him as a child and had paid for his elevation. ‘I hide nothing,’ he protested.

‘So tell me why a cardinal archbishop would send a monk to Berat?’

The friar turned from the fire. ‘Do I need to remind you,’ he said, ‘that the county of Astarac is now a part of your domain?’

The Count stared at Father Roubert,
then
realized what the friar was saying. ‘Oh, dear God, no,’ the Count said. He made the sign of the cross and returned to his chair. He peered at the chessboard, scratched an itch beneath his woollen cap and turned back to the Dominican. ‘Not that old story?’

‘There have been rumours,’ Father Roubert said loftily. ‘There was a member of our order, a fine man, Bernard de Taillebourg, who died this year in Brittany. He was pursuing something, we were never told what, but the rumours say that he made common cause with a member of the Vexille family.’

‘Good Christ Almighty,’ the Count said. ‘Why didn’t you tell me this before?’ **

‘You wish me to bother you with every vaporous story that gets told in the taverns?’ Father Roubert retorted.

The Count did not answer. Instead he was thinking of the Vexilles. The old Counts of Astarac. They had been powerful once, great lords of wide lands, but the family had become entangled with the Cathar heresy and when the Church burned that plague from the land the Vexille family had fled to its last stronghold, the castle of Astarac, and there they had been defeated. Most had been killed, but some had succeeded in running away, even, the Count knew, as far as England, while ruined Astarac, home to ravens and foxes, had been swallowed into the fiefdom of Berat and with the ruined castle had come a persistent story that the defeated Vexilles had once held the fabled treasures of the Cathars in their keeping, and that one of those treasures was the Holy Grail itself. And the reason, of course, that Father Roubert had made no mention of the new stories was because he wanted to find the Grail before anyone else discovered it. Well, the Count would forgive him that. He looked across the wide room. ‘So the Cardinal Archbishop believes the Grail will be found among those things?’ He gestured at his books and papers.

‘Louis Bessières,’ the friar said, ‘is a greedy man, a violent man and an ambitious man. He will turn the earth upside down to find the Grail.’

The Count understood then.
Understood the pattern of his life.
‘There was a story, wasn’t there,’ he mused aloud, ‘that the keeper of the Grail would be cursed until he gave the cup back to God?’

‘Stories,’ Father Roubert sneered.

‘And if the Grail is here, father, even if it is hidden, then I am its keeper.’

‘If,’ the Dominican sneered again.

‘And so God cursed me,’ the Count said in wonderment, ‘because all unknowingly I hold his treasure and have not valued it.’
He shook his head. ‘He has withheld a son from me because I have withheld his son’s cup from him.’ He shot a surprisingly harsh look at the young friar. ‘Does it exist, father?’

Father Roubert hesitated,
then
gave a reluctant nod. ‘It is possible.’