The Grail Quest Books 1-3: Harlequin, Vagabond, Heretic (135 page)

A shattered stair was built into one flank of the tower and Thomas took it as far as he could climb, which was only to where the missing first floor had spanned the hollow shaft. There was a great gaping hole in the tower wall there, a wall that was over five feet thick, and Thomas could walk into the space. He stared down the valley, following the line of the stream with his eyes and he tried once more to feel some sense of belonging. He tried to snare the echoes of his ancestors, but there was nothing. He had felt emotion when he went back to Hookton, the little of it that remained, but here, nothing. And the thought that Hookton, like this castle, was in ruins made him wonder if there was a curse on the Vexilles. The country folk here claimed that
dragas,
the devil’s women, left flowers where they walked, but did the Vexilles leave ruins? Maybe the Church was right after all. Maybe he deserved to be excommunicated. He turned to look west in the direction he must travel if he was to go home.

And saw the horsemen.

They were on the western ridge, way to the north of him, coming, he thought, from the direction of Berat. There was a large band of them, and they were
soldiers
right enough for what had caught his eye was the glint of light reflecting from a helmet or mail coat.

He stared, not wanting to believe what he saw, and then, coming to his senses, he ran. He went down the stairs, across the weed-thick courtyard, out through the ruined gate where he barged past the three men, and then down the path. He ran through the village and then northwards and he was out of breath by the time he banged on the gate of the lazar house. Brother Clement opened it and Thomas pushed past him. ‘Soldiers,’ he said in curt explanation,
then
he went into the hut and picked up his bow, the bundled arrows, their cloaks and mail and bags. ‘Come quick,’ he told Genevieve, who was carefully ladling some of Brother Clement’s newly gathered honey into small jars. ‘Don’t ask,’ he told her, ‘just come. Bring the saddles.’

They went back outside to the olive grove, but Thomas, looking around, saw soldiers on the road in the valley north of St Sever’s. Those men were still some way off, but if they saw two people riding from the monastery they would be bound to follow, which meant there could be no escape now, just concealment. He hesitated, thinking.

‘What is it?’ Genevieve asked.

‘Soldiers.
Probably from Berat.’

‘There, too.’
She was looking south, towards the castle, and Thomas saw the villagers hurrying towards the monastery for refuge and that surely meant there were armed men approaching their houses.

He swore. ‘Leave the saddles,’ he told her and, when she had dropped them, he pulled her round the back of the monastery, following the lepers’ path to the church. Someone had begun to toll the monastery bell to warn the brethren that armed strangers had come to their valley.

And Thomas knew why. Knew that if they were found they would both burn in the holy fire and so he ran into the lepers’ part of the church and climbed the short flight of stairs to the window that overlooked the altar. He pushed his bow through, sent the arrows after it, then the rest of the baggage, and clambered up himself. It was a tight fit, but he squeezed through and dropped clumsily and painfully onto the flagstones. ‘Come on!’ he urged Genevieve. People were coming into the church, thronging the door at the far end of the nave.

Genevieve hissed with pain as she scrambled through the small window. She looked frightened at the drop, but Thomas was beneath and he caught her.
‘This way.’
He picked up his bow and bags and led her down the side of the choir and then behind the side altar where the statue of St Benedict stared sadly towards the frightened villagers.

The door in the alcove was locked as Thomas expected it to be, but they were hidden here and he did not think anyone had noticed them slip through the shadowed choir. He raised his right leg and kicked his heel against the lock. The noise was
huge,
a drum bang echoing in the church, and the door shook violently, but did not open. He kicked again, harder, then a third time and was rewarded by a splintering noise as the lock’s tongue tore out the old wood of the frame. “Tread carefully,’ he warned her, and he led her down the stairs into the darkness of the bone house. He groped his way to the eastern end, where the arched niche was only half full of bones, and he threw his belongings to the back of the pile,
then
hoisted Genevieve up. ‘Go to the back,’ he told her, ‘and start digging.’

He knew he could not climb up himself without spilling dozens of ribs and thigh bones and arm bones, and so he went along the cellar and pulled down stacks of bones. Skulls bounced and
rolled,
arms and legs clattered, and when the cellar was a mess of scattered skeletons he went back to Genevieve, scrambled up and helped her delve down into the old bones closest to the wall. They made a hole there, pulling the rib cages and pelvises and shoulder-blades apart, scrabbling ever deeper until at last they had made a deep, dark hiding place among the dead.

And there, in the blackness, cradled by the bones, they waited.

And heard the broken door squeal on its hinges.

Saw the small flickering light of a lantern cast grotesque shadows on the arched ceiling.

And heard the mailed footsteps of the men who had come to find them, to take them, and to kill them.

Sir Henri Courtois was ordered to take thirty-three crossbowmen and forty-two men-at-arms to Castillon d’Arbizon where he was to lay siege to the castle. Sir Henri accepted the orders glumly. ‘I can lay siege,’ he told Joscelyn, ‘but I can’t capture the castle. Not with that small force.’

‘The English managed it,’ Joscelyn said acidly.

‘Your uncle’s garrison was sleeping,’ Sir Henri said, ‘but Sir Guillaume d’Evecque will not be so obliging. He’s got a reputation, a good one.’ Sir Henri knew who commanded at Castillon d’Arbizon because Robbie had told him, and had also told him how many men were under Sir Guillaume’s command.

Joscelyn jabbed a finger into the older man’s chest. ‘I do not want one more archer raiding my territory. Stop them. And give the bastards this.’ He handed Sir Henri a sealed parchment. ‘It gives them two days to leave the castle,’ Joscelyn explained airily, ‘and if they agree to its terms, you can let them go.’

Sir Henri took the parchment, but paused before putting it in his pouch. ‘And the ransom?’ he asked.

Joscelyn glared at him, but honour decreed that Sir Guillaume should receive a third of the money that had ransomed the new Count and Sir Henri’s question was therefore a proper one and so Joscelyn answered it, but curtly. The ransom’s there,’ he said, nodding at the parchment, ‘all there.’

‘It’s here?’ Sir Henri asked, astonished, for the message plainly contained no coins.

‘Just go!’ Joscelyn snapped.

Sir Henri left the same day that Guy Vexille took his own men to Astarac. Joscelyn was glad to see the back of the Harlequin, for Vexille was an uncomfortable presence even though his men-at-arms were a welcome addition to the Count’s forces. Vexille had brought forty-eight soldiers, all well mounted, well armoured and well armed, and he had surprised Joscelyn by not demanding a single ecu as payment. ‘I have my own funds,’ he had said coldly.

‘Forty-eight men-at-arms?’
Joscelyn wondered aloud. ‘That takes money.’

‘They were a heretic family, my lord,’ his uncle’s old chaplain had maintained, as if that explained the Harlequin’s wealth, but Vexille had come equipped with a letter from Louis Bessières, Cardinal Archbishop of Livorno, and that proved he was no heretic. Not that Joscelyn would have cared if Vexille worshipped wooden idols every night and sacrificed weeping virgins at each dawn. He was far more worried by the fact that the Vexilles had once been the lords of Astarac. He confronted Vexille with that, unable to hide his fear that the black-dressed knight had come to reclaim his ancestral lands.

The Harlequin had merely looked bored. ‘Astarac has been in your lordship’s fief for a hundred years,’ he said, ‘so how could I hold that honour?’

‘Then why are you here?’ Joscelyn demanded.

‘I fight for the Church now,’ Vexille said, ‘and my task is to hunt a fugitive who must be taken to justice. And when he is found, my lord, we shall leave your domain.’ He turned because a sword had just been drawn, the sound of the blade scraping on the scabbard’s throat unnaturally loud in the great hall.

Robbie Douglas had just entered the room. He now pointed the drawn weapon at Vexille. ‘You were in Scotland,’ he said threateningly.

Vexille looked the young man up and down and seemed unworried by the blade. ‘I have visited many countries,’ he said coldly, ‘including Scotland.’

‘You killed my brother.’

‘No!’ Joscelyn placed himself between the two men. ‘You swore my oath, Robbie.’

‘I swore an oath to kill that bastard!’ Robbie said.

‘No,’ Joscelyn said again, and he took Robbie’s blade in his hand and forced it down. In truth Joscelyn would not have been upset if Robbie had died, but if Guy Vexille was killed his black-cloaked men-at-arms might take vengeance on Joscelyn and his men. ‘You can kill him when he’s finished here. That is a promise.’

Vexille smiled at the promise. He and his men left next morning, and Joscelyn was pleased to be rid of them. It was not just Guy Vexille he found chilling, but also his companions, especially the one who did not carry a lance or shield. His name was Charles, a man of startling ugliness, who looked as though he had been plucked from some dark gutter, brushed down, given a knife and released to spread fear. Charles led his own smaller band of a dozen men-at-arms who all rode with Vexille when he went south to Astarac.

So Sir Henri had gone to rid the county of the impudent English garrison at Castillon d’Arbizon and Vexille was hunting his heretic in Astarac, which left Joscelyn free to enjoy his inheritance in Berat. Robbie Douglas was one of his many companions, and for the next few days they simply enjoyed themselves. There was money to be spent on clothes, weapons, horses, wine, women, anything that caught Joscelyn’s fancy, but some things could not be purchased in Berat itself and so a craftsman was summoned to the castle. The man’s usual job was making plaster saints that were sold to churches, convents, and monasteries, but his task in the castle was to make casts of Joscelyn’s body. He wrapped the Count’s arms in greased muslin, coated them with plaster,
then
did the same for Joscelyn’s legs and trunk. A tailor had also been summoned and he made measurements of the Count’s body that were noted down by a clerk. So many inches from shoulder to hip bone, from hip bone to knee, from shoulder to elbow, and when the measurements were taken they were copied onto a parchment and sealed in a great box in which the plaster casts were packed in sawdust, and the box was dispatched under the guard of four men-at-arms to Milan where Antonio Givani, the finest armourer in Christendom, was commanded to make a complete set of plate armour. ‘Let it be a masterpiece,’ Joscelyn dictated the letter to a clerk, ‘the envy of all other knights,’ and he sent a generous payment in genoins with a promise of many more if the armour arrived before spring.

He had paid Robbie his ransom in the same coins, but on the night that the men-at-arms left for Turin, Robbie was foolish enough to admire a set of ivory dice that Joscelyn had purchased in the town. ‘You like them?’ Joscelyn asked. ‘I’ll roll you for them. Highest number keeps the dice.’

Robbie shook his head. ‘I’ve sworn an oath to keep from gambling,’ he explained.

Joscelyn thought that the funniest thing he had heard in months. ‘Women make oaths,’ he said, ‘and monks have to, but warriors only make oaths of brotherhood for battle.’

Robbie blushed. ‘I promised a priest,’ he said.

‘Oh, sweet Jesus!’
Joscelyn leaned back in his chair. ‘You can’t face risk, is that it? Is that why the Scots lose to the English?’ Robbie’s temper flared, but he had the sense to curb it and said nothing. ‘Risk,’ Joscelyn said airily, ‘is the soldier’s fate. If a man can’t abide risk he can’t be a soldier.’

‘I’m a soldier,’ Robbie said flatly.

‘Then prove it, my friend,’ Joscelyn said, rolling the dice across the table.

So Robbie played and lost.
And lost the next night.
And the next.
And on the fourth night he gambled the money that was supposed to be sent to England to purchase his ransom and he lost that too, and next day Joscelyn heard that the Italian gunners, whom his uncle had summoned from Toulouse, had come to the castle with their machine and Joscelyn paid them their fee out of the money he had won from Robbie. ‘How soon can you go to Castillon d’Arbizon?’ he demanded of the Italians.

‘Tomorrow, sire?’

‘The thing is ready?’ Joscelyn asked, walking round the wagon on which the gun, shaped like a flask with a narrow neck and a bulbous body, was lashed.

‘It’s ready,’ the Italian, whose name was Gioberti, confirmed.

‘You have powder?’

Gioberti gestured at the second wagon, loaded perilously high with kegs.

‘And missiles?
Balls?’

‘Bolts, my lord,’ Gioberti corrected him, and pointed at yet another wagon. ‘We have more than enough.’

‘Then we shall all go!’ Joscelyn said enthusiastically. He was fascinated by the cannon, a thing as ugly as it was impressive. It was nine feet long, four feet across the bulbous breech, and had a squat, evil air. It looked devilish, an unnatural thing, and he was tempted to demand a demonstration right there in the castle’s courtyard, but he understood that such a demonstration would take precious time. Better to watch the device in action against the stubborn fools in Castillon d’Arbizon.

Sir Henri Courtois was already beginning that siege. When he reached the town he left his crossbowmen and men-at-arms outside the western gate and rode to the castle with only a young priest for company. He called up to the sentinels on the wall and, when Sir Guillaume saw it was only a single man-at-arms and a priest who wanted entrance he gave permission for the gates to be opened.

Sir Guillaume met the two men in the courtyard where Sir Henri dismounted and named himself. Sir Guillaume returned the courtesy,
then
the two men sized each other up. Each recognized the other as a soldier like himself. ‘I come from the Count of Berat,’ Sir Henri said formally.

‘Bring the money, did you?’ Sir Guillaume demanded.

‘I brought what I was ordered to bring and I doubt it will make you happy,’ Sir Henri said, then he took a long professional look at the archers and men-at-arms who had come to see the visitors. Tough bastards, he thought, before looking back to Sir Guillaume. ‘I’m tired,’ he said.
‘Been riding all day.
Do you have any wine in this place?’

‘Berat’s short of wine, is he?’ Sir Guillaume asked.

‘He’s short of sense,’ Sir Henri said, ‘but not of wine.’

Sir Guillaume smiled. ‘Inside,’ he said, then led his guest up the keep stairs to the upper hall and, because this conversation would affect the destiny of
all the
garrison, he allowed those men who were not on guard to follow and listen.

Sir Guillaume and Sir Henri sat either side of the long table. The priest, who was there as a token that Sir Henri meant no harm, sat as well, while the men-at-arms and archers stood against the wall. The fire was revived, wine and food served, and as that was being done Sir Henri unlooped the shield from about his neck, unbuckled his breastplate and backplate and laid them all on the floor. He stretched,
then
nodded thanks for the wine which he drained. Finally he took the sealed parchment from his pouch and pushed it across the table.

Sir Guillaume lifted the seal with his knife, unfolded the document and read it. He did so slowly, for he was not a good reader, and when he had read it twice he looked angrily at Sir Henri. ‘What the hell does this mean?’

‘I’ve not seen it,’ Sir Henri confessed. ‘May I?’ He reached for the parchment and the watching men of the garrison made a low threatening noise, sensing Sir Guillaume’s fury.

Sir Henri could not read so he gave the parchment to the priest who tilted it towards one of the high narrow windows. The priest was a very young man and nervous. He read it, glanced at the horribly scarred Sir Guillaume and looked even more nervous.

‘Tell us what it says,’ Sir Henri said. ‘No one’s going to kill you.’

‘It says two things,’ the priest said. ‘That Sir Guillaume and his men have two days to leave Castillon d’Arbizon unmolested.’

‘The other thing,’ Sir Guillaume snarled.

The priest frowned. ‘It is a draft of money from a man called Robert Douglas,’ he explained to Sir Henri, ‘and if Sir Guillaume presents it to Jacques Fournier then he will be paid six thousand, six hundred and sixty florins.’ He put the document onto the table as though it was smeared with poison.

‘Who, in Christ’s name,’ Sir Guillaume asked, ‘is Jacques Fournier?’

‘A goldsmith in Berat,’ Sir Henri explained, ‘and I doubt Jacques has that much cash in his cellars.’

‘Robbie arranged this?’ Sir Guillaume asked angrily.

‘Robbie Douglas is sworn to the Lord of Berat now,’ Sir Henri said. He had watched the brief ceremony when Robbie had sworn his allegiance, he had seen the kisses exchanged and noticed the look of triumph on Joscelyn’s face. ‘This is my lord’s doing.’

‘He thinks we’re fools?’

‘He thinks you won’t dare show your faces in Berat,’ Sir Henri said.

‘Cheated!
Jesus Christ! We’ve been cheated!’ Sir Guillaume glared at his visitors. ‘Is this what passes for honour in Berat?’ he demanded, and when Sir Henri offered no answer, Sir Guillaume thumped the table. ‘I could hold you two
prisoner
!’ The men around the walls growled their agreement.

‘You could,’ Sir Henri agreed equably, ‘and I wouldn’t blame you. But the Count won’t ransom me and he certainly won’t ransom
him.’
He nodded at the timid priest. ‘We’ll just be two more mouths to feed.’

‘Or two more corpses to bury,’ Sir Guillaume retorted.

Sir Henri shrugged. He knew that the offer of money from the goldsmith’s cellars was dishonourable, but it was not of his doing.

‘So you can tell your master,’ Sir Guillaume said, ‘that we’ll leave this castle when we have six thousand, six hundred and sixty florins. And every week you make us wait the price goes up by another hundred.’

His men murmured approval. Sir Henri did not seem surprised by the decision. ‘I’m here,’ he told Sir Guillaume, ‘to make sure you don’t leave.
Unless you wish to go today or tomorrow?’