The Grail Quest Books 1-3: Harlequin, Vagabond, Heretic (144 page)

‘I will go and talk with them,’ Vexille said.

‘Why you?’
Joscelyn demanded.

‘Then you go, my lord,’ Vexille said deferentially.

But Joscelyn did not want to face the men who had held him prisoner. The next time he saw them he wanted them to be dead, and so he waved Vexille on his way. ‘But you’ll offer them nothing!’ he warned. ‘Not unless I agree to it.’

‘I will make no agreement,’ Vexille said, ‘without your permission.’

Orders were given that the crossbowmen were not to shoot and then Guy Vexille, bare-headed and without any weapons, walked up the main street past the smoking wreckage of the houses. A man was sitting in an alley and Vexille noticed that his face was sweating and blotched with dark lumps and his clothes were stained with vomit. Guy hated such sights. He was a fastidious man, scrupulously clean, and the stench and diseases of mankind repelled him: they were evidences of a sinful world, one that had forgotten God. Then he saw his cousin come onto the broken rampart and take the Grail away.

A moment later Thomas crossed the rubble that filled the gateway. Like Guy he wore no sword, nor had he brought the Grail. He wore his mail, which was rusting now, frayed at the hem and crusted with dirt. He had a short beard for he had long lost his razor and it gave him, Guy thought, a grim and desperate look. ‘Thomas,’ Guy greeted him,
then
gave a small bow, ‘cousin.’

Thomas looked past Vexille to see three priests watching from halfway down the street. ‘The last priests who came here excommunicated me,’ he said.

‘What the Church does,’ Guy said, ‘it can undo. Where did you find it?’

For a moment it looked as if Thomas would not answer, then he shrugged. ‘Under the thunder,’ he said, ‘at the lightning’s heart.’

Guy Vexille smiled at the evasion. ‘I do not even know,’ he said, ‘whether you have the Grail. Perhaps it is a trick? You put a golden cup on the wall and we just make an assumption. Suppose we are wrong? Prove it to me, Thomas.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Then show it to me,’ Guy begged. He spoke humbly.

‘Why should I?’

‘Because the Kingdom of Heaven depends on it.’

Thomas seemed to sneer at that answer,
then
he looked curiously at his cousin. ‘Tell me something first,’ he said.

‘If I can.’

‘Who was the tall, scarred man I killed at the mill?’

Guy Vexille frowned for it seemed a very strange question, but he could see no trap in it and he wanted to humour Thomas so he answered. ‘His name was Charles Bessières,’ he said cautiously, ‘and he was the brother of Cardinal Bessières. Why do you ask?’

‘Because he fought well,’ Thomas lied.

‘Is that all?’

‘He fought well, and he very nearly took the Grail from me,’ Thomas embroidered the untruth. ‘I just wondered who he was.’ He shrugged and tried to work out why a brother of Cardinal Bessières should have been carrying the Grail.

‘He was not a man worthy of having the Grail,’ Guy Vexille said.

‘Am I?’ Thomas demanded.

Guy ignored the hostile question. ‘Show it to me,’ he pleaded. ‘For the love of God, Thomas, show it to me.’

Thomas hesitated,
then
he turned and raised a hand and Sir Guillaume, armoured in captured plate from head to foot and with a drawn sword, came from the castle with Genevieve. She carried the Grail and had a wine skin tied to her belt. ‘Not too close to him,’ Thomas warned her,
then
looked back to Guy. ‘You remember Sir Guillaume d’Evecque?
Another man sworn to kill you?’

‘We are meeting under a truce,’ Guy reminded him,
then
he nodded at Sir Guillaume whose only response was to spit on the cobbles. Guy ignored the gesture, gazing instead at the cup in the girl’s hands.

It was a thing of ethereal, magical beauty.
A thing of lace-like delicacy.
A thing so far removed from this smoke-stinking town with its rat-chewed corpses that Guy had no doubts that this was the Grail. It was the most sought-after object in Christendom, the key to heaven itself, and Guy almost dropped to his knees in reverence.

Genevieve took off the pearl-hung lid and tipped the stemmed gold goblet over Thomas’s hands. A thick green glass cup fell out of the golden filigree and Thomas held it reverently. ‘This is the Grail, Guy,’ he said. ‘That golden confection was just made to hold it, but this is it.’

Guy watched it hungrily, but dared make no move towards it. Sir Guillaume wanted only the smallest excuse to lift his sword and ram it forward and Guy had no doubt that archers were watching him from behind the slits in the high tower. He said nothing as Thomas took the skin from Genevieve’s belt and poured some wine into the cup. ‘See?’ Thomas said, and Guy saw that the green had darkened with the wine, but that it also now possessed a golden sheen that had not been there before. Thomas let the wine skin drop to the ground and then, with his eyes on his cousin’s eyes, he lifted the cup and drained it.
‘“Hie est enim sanguis rneus,”’
Thomas said angrily. They were the words of Christ. ‘This is my blood.’ Then he gave the cup to Genevieve and she walked away with it, followed by Sir Guillaume. ‘A heretic drinks from the Grail,’ Thomas said, ‘and there’s worse to come.’

‘Worse?’ Guy asked gently.

‘We shall put it under the gate arch,’ Thomas said. ‘And when your cannon
brings
down the rest of the bastions then the Grail will be crushed. What you’ll get is a twisted piece of gold and some broken glass.’

Guy Vexille smiled. The Grail cannot be broken, Thomas.’

‘Then you risk that belief,’ Thomas said angrily and turned away.

‘Thomas! Thomas, I beg you,’ Guy called. ‘Listen to me.’

Thomas wanted to keep walking, but he reluctantly turned back for his cousin’s tone had been pleading. It had been the voice of a broken man, and what did it hurt Thomas if he heard more? He had made the threat. If the attack continued then the Grail would be broken. Now, he supposed, he must let his cousin make whatever offer he wanted, though he did not intend to make that easy. ‘Why should I listen,’ he asked, ‘to the man who killed my father? Who killed my woman?’

‘Listen to a child of God,’ Guy said.

Thomas almost laughed, but he stayed.

Guy took a breath, framing what he wanted to say. He stared up at the sky where low clouds threatened more rain. ‘The world is beset by evil,’ he said, ‘and the Church is corrupt, and the devil does his work unhindered. If we have the Grail we can change that. The Church can be
cleansed,
a new crusade can scour the world of sin. It will bring the Kingdom of Heaven to earth.’ He had been staring skywards as he spoke, but now looked at Thomas. ‘That is all I want, Thomas.’

‘So my father had to die for that?’

Guy nodded. ‘I wish it had not been necessary, but he was hiding the Grail. He was an enemy of God.’

Thomas hated Guy then, hated him more than ever, hated him even though his cousin was speaking low and reasonably, his voice filled with emotion. ‘Tell me,’ Thomas said, ‘what you want now.’

‘Your friendship,’ Guy said.

‘Friendship!’

‘The Count of Berat is evil,’ Guy said. ‘He’s a bully, a fool, a man who ignores God. If you lead your men out of the castle I will turn on him. By nightfall, Thomas, you and I will be lords of this place, and tomorrow we shall go to Berat and reveal the Grail and invite all men of God to come to us.’ Guy paused, watching Thomas’s hard face for any reaction to the words. ‘March north with me,’ he went on, ‘Paris will be next. We shall rid ourselves of that foolish Valois King. We shall take the world, Thomas, and open it to the love of God. Think of it, Thomas! All the grace and beauty of God poured onto the world. No more sadness, no more sin, just the harmony of God in a world of peace.’

Thomas pretended to think about it,
then
frowned. ‘I’ll attack Joscelyn with you,’ he said, ‘but I would want to talk with Abbot Planchard before I marched north.’

‘With Abbot Planchard?’
Guy could not hide his surprise. ‘Why?’

‘Because he’s a good man,’ Thomas said, ‘and I trust his advice.’

Guy nodded. ‘Then I shall send for him. I can have him here by tomorrow.’

Thomas felt such anger then that he could have attacked Guy with his bare fists, but he held the rage in check. ‘You can have him here by tomorrow?’ he asked instead.

‘If he’ll come.’

‘Doesn’t have much choice, does he?’ Thomas
said,
the fury in his voice now. ‘He’s dead, cousin, and you killed him. I was there, in the ossuary, hiding. I heard you!’

Guy looked astonished, then incensed, but he had nothing to say.

‘You lie like a child,’ Thomas said scornfully. ‘You lie about one good man’s death? Then you lie about everything.’ He turned and walked away.

‘Thomas!’ Guy called after him.

Thomas turned back. ‘You want the Grail, cousin? Then you fight for it.
Maybe just you and me?
You and your sword against me and my weapon.’

‘Your weapon?’
Guy asked.

‘The Grail,’ Thomas said curtly and, ignoring his cousin’s pleas, walked back to the castle.

—«»—«»—«»—

‘So what did he offer?’ Sir Guillaume asked.

‘All the kingdoms of the earth,’ Thomas said.

Sir Guillaume sniffed suspiciously. ‘I smell something holy in that answer.’

Thomas smiled. ‘The devil took Christ into the wilderness and offered him all the kingdoms of the earth if he would give up his mission.’

‘He should have accepted,’ Sir Guillaume said, ‘and saved us a pile of trouble. So we can’t leave?’

‘Not unless we fight our way out.’

‘The ransom money?’
Sir Guillaume asked hopefully.

‘I forgot to ask about it.’

‘Much bloody use you are,’ Sir Guillaume retorted in English,
then
he switched back to French and sounded more cheerful. ‘But at least we have the Grail, eh? That’s something!’

‘Do we?’ Genevieve asked.

The two men turned to her. They were in the upper hall, bare of furniture now because the table and stools had been taken down to reinforce the barricade in the courtyard. All that was left was the big iron-bound chest that had the garrison’s money inside and there was plenty of that after a season of raiding. Genevieve sat on the chest; she had the beautiful golden Grail with its green cup, but she also had the box that Thomas had brought from St Sever’s monastery, and now she took the cup from its golden nest and placed it in the box. The lid would not close because the glass cup was too big. The box, whatever it might have been made for, had not been made for this Grail. ‘Do we have the Grail?’ she asked, and Thomas and Sir Guillaume stared at her as she showed how the cup would not fit in the box.

‘Of course it’s the Grail,’ Sir Guillaume said dismissively.

Thomas went to Genevieve and took the cup. He turned it in his hands. ‘If my father did have the Grail,’ he asked, ‘how did it end up with Cardinal Bessières’s brother?’

‘Who?’
Sir Guillaume demanded.

Thomas stared at the green glass. He had heard that the Grail in Genoa Cathedral was made of green glass, and no one believed that was real. Was this the same grail? Or another green glass fake? ‘The man I took it from,’ he said, ‘was the brother of Cardinal Bessières, and if he already had the Grail, then what was he doing in Castillon d’Arbizon? He would have taken it to Paris, or to Avignon.’

‘Sweet Jesus Christ,’ Sir Guillaume said. ‘You mean that isn’t real?’

‘One way to find out,’ Thomas said, and he held the cup high. He saw the tiny specks of gold on the glass and he thought it was a beautiful thing, an exquisite thing, an old thing, but was it the real thing? And so he raised his hand higher, held the cup for another heartbeat and then let it drop to the floorboards.

Where the green glass shattered into a thousand fragments.

‘Sweet Jesus Christ,’ Sir Guillaume said, ‘sweet Jesus goddamned bloody Christ.’

It was on the morning after the fire had burned out so much of Castillon d’Arbizon that the first people died. Some died in the night, some at dawn, and the priests were busy carrying the consecrated wafers to houses where they would offer the last rites. The shrieks of bereaved families were loud enough to wake
Joscelyn
who snarled at his squire to go and silence the wretched noise, but the squire, who slept on straw in a corner of Joscelyn’s room, was shivering and sweating and his face had grown evil-looking dark lumps that made Joscelyn wince. ‘Get out!’ he shouted at the squire and then, when the young man did not move, he kicked him towards the door.
‘Out!
Out! Oh, Jesus! You shat yourself! Get out!’

Joscelyn dressed himself, pulling breeches and a leather coat over his linen shirt. ‘You’re not ill, are you?’ he said to the girl who had shared his bed.

‘No, lord.’

‘Then get me bacon and bread, and mulled wine.’

‘Mulled wine?’

‘You’re a serving girl, aren’t you? So damn well serve me,
then
clean up that damned mess.’ He pointed at the squire’s bed, then pulled on his boots and wondered why he had not been woken by the cannon which usually fired at cock-crow. The loam in the gun’s barrel set overnight and Signor Gioberti was of the opinion that the dawn shot did the most damage, yet this morning it had still not been fired. Joscelyn strode into the parlour of the house, shouting for the gunner.

‘He’s sick.’ It was Guy Vexille who answered. He was sitting in a corner of the room, sharpening a knife and evidently waiting for Joscelyn. ‘There is a contagion.’

Joscelyn strapped on his sword belt. ‘Gioberti’s sick?’

Guy Vexille sheathed the knife. ‘He’s vomiting, my lord, and sweating. He has swellings in his armpits and groin.’

‘His men can fire the damned gun, can’t they?’

‘Most of them are sick as well.’

Joscelyn stared at Vexille, trying to understand what he was hearing. ‘The gunners are sick?’

‘Half the town seems to be sick,’ Vexille said, standing. He had washed, put on clean black clothes and oiled his long black hair so that it lay sleek along his narrow skull. ‘I heard there was a pestilence,’ he said, ‘but I didn’t believe it. I was wrong, God forgive me.’

‘A pestilence?’
Joscelyn was scared now.

‘God punishes us,’ Vexille said calmly, ‘by letting the devil
loose,
and we could not hope for a clearer sign from heaven. We have to assault the castle today, lord, seize the Grail and thus end the plague.’

‘Plague?’
Joscelyn asked, then heard a timid knock on the door and hoped it was the serving girl bringing him food. ‘Come in, damn you,’ he shouted, but instead of the girl it was Father Medous who looked frightened and nervous.

The priest went on his knees to Joscelyn. ‘People are dying, lord,’ he said.

‘What in God’s name do you expect me to do?’ Joscelyn asked.

‘Capture the castle,’ Vexille said.

Joscelyn ignored him, staring at the priest. ‘Dying?’ he asked helplessly.

Father Medous nodded. There were tears on his face. ‘It is a pestilence, lord,’ he said. ‘They sweat, vomit, void their bowels, show black boils and they’re dying.’

‘Dying?’ Joscelyn asked again.

‘Galat Lorret is dead; his wife is ill. My own housekeeper has the sickness.’ More tears rolled down Medous’s face. ‘It is in the air, lord, a pestilence.’ He stared up at Joscelyn’s blank, round face, hoping that his lord could help. ‘It is in the air,’ he said again, ‘and we need doctors, my lord, and only you can command them to come from Berat.’

Joscelyn pushed past the kneeling priest, ducked out into the street and saw two of his men-at-arms sitting in the tavern door with swollen faces running with sweat. They looked at him dully and he turned away, hearing the wailing and screeching of mothers watching their children sweat and die. Smoke from the previous day’s fire drifted thin through the damp morning and everything seemed covered in soot. Joscelyn shivered,
then
saw Sir Henri Courtois, still healthy, coming from St Callic’s church and he almost ran and embraced the old man in his relief. ‘You know what’s happening?’ Joscelyn asked.

‘There is a pestilence, my lord.’

‘It’s in the air, yes?’ Joscelyn asked, snatching at what Father Medous had told him.

‘I wouldn’t know,’ Sir Henri said tiredly, ‘but I do know that more than a score of our men are sick with it, and three are already dead. Robbie Douglas is sick. He was asking for you, my lord. He begs you to find him a physician.’

Joscelyn ignored that request and sniffed the air instead. He could smell the remnants of the fires, the stench of vomit and dung and urine. They were the smells of any town, the everyday smells, yet somehow they seemed more sinister now. ‘What do we do?’ he asked helplessly.

‘The sick need help,’ Sir Henri said. ‘They need physicians.’ And gravediggers, he thought, but did not say it aloud.

‘It’s in the air,’ Joscelyn said yet again. The stink was rank now, besieging him, threatening him, and he felt a tremor of panic. He could fight a
man,
fight an army even, but not this silent insidious reek. ‘We go,’ he decided. ‘Any man untouched by the disease will leave now.
Now!’

‘Go?’ Sir Henri was confused by the decision.

‘We go!’ Joscelyn said firmly. ‘Leave the sick behind. Order the men to get ready and saddle their horses.’

‘But Robbie Douglas wants to see you,’ Sir Henri said. Joscelyn was Robbie’s lord and so owed him the duty of care, but Joscelyn was in no mood to visit the sick. The sick could damn well look after themselves and he would save as many men from the horror as he could.

They left within the hour. A stream of horsemen galloped out of the town, fleeing the contagion and riding for the safety of Berat’s great castle. Almost all of Joscelyn’s crossbowmen, abandoned by their knights and men-at-arms, followed and many of the townsfolk were also leaving to find
a refuge
from the pestilence. A good number of Vexille’s men vanished too, as did those few gunners who were not touched by the plague. They abandoned Hell Spitter, stole sick men’s horses and rode away. Of Joscelyn’s healthy men only Sir Henri Courtois stayed. He was middle-aged, he had lost his fear of death, and men who had served him for many years were lying in agony. He did not know what he could do for them, but what he could, he would.

Guy Vexille went to St Callic’s church and ordered the women who were praying to the image of the saint and to the statue of the Virgin Mary to get out. He wanted to be alone with God and, though he believed the church was a place where a corrupted faith was practised, it was still a house of prayer and so he knelt by the altar and stared at the broken body of Christ that hung above the altar. The painted blood flowed thick from the awful wounds and Guy gazed at that blood, ignoring a spider that span a web between the
lance
cut in the Saviour’s side and the outstretched left hand. ‘You are punishing us,’ he said aloud, ‘scourging us, but if we do your will then you will spare us.’ But what was God’s will? That was the dilemma, and he rocked back and forth on his knees, yearning for the answer. ‘Tell me,’ he told the man hanging on the cross, ‘tell me what I must do.’

Yet he knew already what he must do: he must seize the Grail and release its power; but he hoped that in the church’s dim interior, beneath the painting of God enthroned in the clouds, a message would come. And it did, though not as he had wanted. He had hoped for a voice in the darkness, a divine command that would give him surety of success, but instead he heard feet in the nave and when he looked round he saw that his men, those that remained and were not sick, had come to pray with him. They came one by one as they heard he was at the altar, and they knelt behind him and Guy knew that such good men could not be beaten. The time had come to take the Grail.

He sent a half-dozen men through the town with orders to find every soldier, every crossbowman, every knight and man-at-arms who could still walk. ‘They must arm themselves,’ he said, ‘and we meet by the gun in one hour.’

He went to his own quarters, deaf to the cries of the sick and their families. His servant had been struck by the sickness, but one of the sons of the house where Guy had his room was still fit and Guy ordered him to help with his preparations.

First he put on leather breeches and a leather jerkin. Both garments had been made tight-fitting so that Vexille had to stand still while the clumsy boy tied the laces at the back of the jerkin. Then the lad took handfuls of lard and smeared the leather so it was well greased and would let the armour move easily. Vexille wore a short mail haubergeon over the jerkin that provided extra protection for his chest, belly and groin, and that too needed greasing. Then, piece by piece, the black plate armour was buckled into place. First came the four cuisses, the rounded plates that protected the thighs, and beneath them the boy buckled the greaves that ran from knee to ankle. Vexille’s knees were protected by roundels and his feet by plates of steel attached to boots that were buckled to the greaves. A short leather skirt on which were rivetted heavy square plates of steel was fastened about his waist, and when that was adjusted Vexille lifted the plate gorget into place about his neck and waited as the youth did up the two buckles behind. Then the lad grunted as he lifted the breast- and backplates over Vexille’s head. The two heavy pieces were joined by short leather straps that rested on his shoulders and the plates were secured by more straps at his sides. Then
came
the rerebraces that protected his upper arms, and the vambraces that sheathed his forearms, the espaliers to cover his shoulders and two more roundels that armoured his elbow joints. He flexed his arms as the boy worked, making sure that the straps were not so tight that he could not wield a sword. The gauntlets were of leather that had been studded with overlapping steel plates that looked like scales; then
came
the sword belt with its heavy black scabbard holding the precious blade made in Cologne.

The sword was a whole ell in length, longer than a man’s arm, and the blade was deceptively narrow, suggesting the sword might be fragile, but it had a strong central rib that stiffened the long steel and made it into a lethal lunging weapon. Most men carried cutting swords that blunted themselves on armour, but Vexille was a master with the thrusting blade. The art was to look for a joint in the armour and ram the steel through. The handle was sheathed with maple wood and the pommel and handguard were of steel. It bore no decoration, no gold leaf,
no
inscriptions on the blade, no silver inlay. It was simply a workman’s tool, a killing Weapon, a fit thing for this day’s sacred duty.

‘Sir?’ the boy said nervously, offering Vexille the big tournament helm with its narrow eye slits.

‘Not that one,’ Vexille said. ‘I’ll take the bascinet and the coif.’ He pointed to what he wanted. The big tournament helm gave very restricted vision and Vexille had learned to distrust it in battle for it prevented him seeing enemies at his flanks. It was a risk to face archers without any visor, but at least he could see them, and now he pulled the mail coif over his head so that it protected the nape of his neck and his ears,
then
took the bascinet from the boy. It was a simple helmet, with no rim and with no faceplate to constrict his vision. ‘Go and look after your family,’ he told the boy, and then he picked up his shield, its willow boards covered with boiled, hardened leather on which was painted the yale of the Vexilles carrying its Grail. He had no talisman, no charm. Few men went to battle without such a precaution, whether it was a lady’s scarf or a piece of jewellery blessed by a priest, but Guy Vexille had only one talisman, and that was the Grail.

And now he went to fetch it.

—«»—«»—«»—

One of the
coredors
was the first to fall ill in the castle and by the night’s end there were more than a score of men and women vomiting, sweating and shivering. Jake was one of them. The cross-eyed archer dragged himself to a comer of the courtyard and propped his bow beside him and put a handful of arrows on his lap, and there he suffered. Thomas tried to persuade him to go upstairs, but Jake refused. ‘I’ll stay here,’ he insisted. ‘I’ll die in the open air.’

‘You won’t die,’ Thomas said. ‘Heaven won’t take you and the devil doesn’t need any competition.’ The small joke failed to raise a smile on Jake’s face, which was discoloured by small red lumps that were rapidly darkening to the colour of a bruise. He had taken down his breeches because he could not contain his bowels and the most he would let Thomas do for him was to bring him a bed of straw from the ruins of the stables.

Philin’s son also had the sickness. His face was showing pink spots and he was shivering. The disease seemed to have come from nowhere, but Thomas assumed it had been brought on the east wind that had fanned the flames in the town before the rain killed the fires. Abbot Planchard had warned him of this, of a pestilence coming from Lombardy, and here it was and Thomas was helpless. ‘We must find a priest,’ Philin said.

‘A physician,’ Thomas said, though he knew of none and did not know how one could be got into the castle even if he could be found.

‘A priest,’ Philin insisted. ‘If a child is touched by a consecrated wafer it cures him. It cures everything. Let me fetch a priest.’