The Grail Quest Books 1-3: Harlequin, Vagabond, Heretic (26 page)

The boy looked at Thomas. 'Did you really walk here from Brittany?' he asked in English, though, like many noblemen, his English was touched with a French accent.

'We both did, sire,' Thomas said in French.

'Why?' he demanded harshly.

'To seek the protection of the King of England,' Thomas said, 'who is the guardian of my lady's son, who has been treacherously taken prisoner by England's enemies.'

The boy looked at Jeanette with much the same wolfish appreciation that Scoresby had shown. He might not shave, but he knew a beautiful woman when he saw one. He smiled. 'You are most welcome, madame,' he said. 'I knew of your husband's reputation, I admired him, and I regret that I will never have a chance to meet him in combat.' He bowed to Jeanette, then untied his cloak and walked to her. He placed the green cape over her shoulders to cover the torn dress. 'I shall ensure, madame,' he said, 'that you are treated with the courtesy your rank demands and will vow to keep whatever promises England made on your son's behalf.' He bowed again.

Jeanette,
astonished and pleased by the young man's manner, put the question that Thomas had been wanting answered. 'Who are you, my lord?' she asked, offering a curtsey.

'I am Edward of Woodstock, madame,' he said, offering her his arm.

It meant nothing to Jeanette, but it astonished Thomas. 'He is the King's eldest son,' he whispered to her.

She dropped to one knee, but the smooth-cheeked boy raised her and walked her towards the priory. He was Edward of Woodstock, Earl of Chester, Duke of Cornwall and Prince of Wales. And the wheel of fate had once again spun Jeanette high.

—«»—«»—«»—

The wheel seemed indifferent towards Thomas. He was left alone, abandoned. Jeanette walked away on the Prince's arm and did not so much as glance back at Thomas. He heard her laugh. He watched her. He had nursed her, fed her, carried her and loved her, and now, without a thought, she had discarded him. No one else was interested in him. Scoresby and his men, cheated of a hanging, had gone to the village, and Thomas wondered just what he was supposed to do.

'Goddamn,' he said aloud. He felt conspicuously foolish in his tattered robe. 'Goddamn,' he said again. Anger, thick as the black humour that could make a man sick, rose in him, but what he could do? He was a fool in a ragged robe and the Prince was the son of a king.

The Prince had taken Jeanette to the low grassy ridge where the big tents stood in a colourful row. Each tent had a flagpole, and the tallest flew the quartered banner of the Prince of Wales, which showed the golden lions of England on the two red quarters and golden fleur-de-lis on the two blue. The fleur-de-lis were there to show the King's claim to the French throne while the whole flag, which was that of England's king, was crossed with a white-toothed bar to show that this was the banner of the King's eldest son. Thomas was tempted to follow Jeanette, to demand the Prince's help, but then one of the lower banners, the one furthest away from him, caught the small warm wind and sluggishly lifted its folds. He stared at it.

The banner had a blue field and was slashed diagonally with a white band. Three rampant yellow lions were emblazoned on either side of the bar, which was decorated with three red stars that had green centres. It was a flag Thomas knew well, but he scarcely dared believe that he was seeing it here in Normandy, for the arms were those of William Bohun, Earl of Northampton. Northampton was the King's deputy in Brittany, yet his flag was unmistakable and Thomas walked towards it, fearing that the wind-rippled flag would turn out to be a different coat of arms, similar to the Earl's, but not the same.

But it was the Earl's banner, and the Earl's tent, in contrast to the other stately pavilions on the low ridge, was still the grubby shelter made from two worn-out sails. A half-dozen men-at-arms wearing the Earl's livery barred Thomas's way as he neared the tent. 'Have you come to hear his lordship's confession or put an arrow in his belly?' one asked.

'I would speak to his lordship,' Thomas said, barely suppressing the anger provoked by Jeanette's abandonment of him.

'But will he talk to you?' the man asked, amused at the ragged archer's pretensions.

'He will,' Thomas said with a confidence he did not entirely feel. 'Tell him the man who gave him La Roche-Derrien is here,' he added.

The man-at-arms looked startled. He frowned, but just then the tent flap was thrown back and the Earl himself appeared, stripped to the waist to reveal a muscled chest covered in tight red curls. He was chewing on a goose-bone and peered up at the sky as though fearing rain. The man-at-arms turned to him, indicated Thomas,
then
shrugged as if to say he was not responsible for a madman showing up unannounced.

The Earl stared at Thomas. 'Good God,' he said after a while, 'have you taken orders?'

'No, my lord.'

The Earl stripped a piece of flesh from the bone with his teeth. 'Thomas, ain't that right?'

'Yes, my lord.'

'Never forget a face,' the Earl said, 'and I have cause to remember yours, though I hardly expected you to fetch up here. Did you walk?'

Thomas nodded. 'I did, my lord.' Something about the Earl's demeanour was puzzling, almost as though he was not really surprised to see Thomas in Normandy.

'Will
told
me about you,' the Earl said, 'told me all about you. So Thomas, my modest hero from La Roche-Derrien, is a murderer, eh?' He spoke grimly.

'Yes, my lord,' Thomas said humbly.

The Earl threw away the stripped bone,
then
snapped his fingers and a servant tossed him a shirt from within the tent. He pulled it on and tucked it into his hose. 'God's teeth, boy, do you expect me to save you from Sir Simon's vengeance? You know he's here?'

Thomas gaped at the Earl.
Said nothing.
Sir Simon Jekyll was here? And Thomas had just brought Jeanette to Normandy. Sir Simon could hardly hurt her so long as she was under the Prince's protection, but Sir Simon could harm Thomas well enough. And delight in it.

The Earl saw Thomas blanch and he nodded. 'He's with the King's men, because I didn't want him, but he insisted on travelling because he reckons there's more plunder to be had in Normandy than in Brittany and I dare say he's right, but what will truly put a smile on his face is the sight of you. Ever been hanged, Thomas?'

'Hanged, my lord?' Thomas asked vaguely. He was still reeling from the news that Sir Simon had sailed to Normandy. He had just walked all this way to find his enemy waiting?

'Sir Simon will hang you,' the Earl said with indecent relish. 'He'll let you strangle on the rope and there'll be no kindly soul tugging on your ankles to make it quick. You could last an hour, two hours, in utter agony. You could choke for even longer! One fellow I hanged lasted from matins till prime and still managed to curse me. So I suppose you want my help, yes?'

Thomas belatedly went onto one knee. 'You offered me a reward after La Roche-Derrien, my lord, Can I claim it now?'

The servant brought a stool from the tent and the Earl sat, his legs set wide. 'Murder is murder,' he said, picking his teeth with a sliver of wood.

'Half Will Skeat's men are murderers, my lord,' Thomas pointed out.

The Earl thought about that,
then
reluctantly nodded. 'But they're pardoned murderers,' he answered. He sighed. 'I wish Will was here,' he said, evading Thomas's demand. 'I wanted him to come, but he can't come until Charles of Blois is put back into his cage.' He scowled at Thomas. 'If I give you a pardon,' the Earl went on, 'then I make an enemy out of Sir Simon. Not that he's a friend now, but still, why spare you?'

'For La Roche-Derrien,' Thomas said.

'
Which is a great debt,' the Earl agreed, 'a very great debt.
We'd have looked bloody fools if we hadn't taken that town, miserable goddamn place though it
be
. God's teeth, boy, but why didn't you just walk south?
Plenty of bastards to kill in Gascony.'
He looked at Thomas for a
while,
plainly irritated by the undeniable debt he owed the archer and the nuisance of paying it. He finally shrugged. 'I'll talk to Sir Simon, offer him money, and if it's enough he'll pretend you're not here. As for you,' he paused, frowning as he remembered his earlier meetings with Thomas, 'you're the one who wouldn't tell me who your father was, ain't I right?'

'I didn't tell you, my lord, because he was a priest.'

The Earl thought that was a fine jest.
'God's teeth!
A priest?
So you're a devil's whelp, are you? That's what they say in Guyenne, that the children of priests are the devil's whelps.' He looked Thomas up and down, amused again at the ragged robe. 'They say the devil's whelps make good soldiers,' he said, 'good soldiers and better whores. I suppose you've lost your horse?'

'Yes, my lord.'

'All my archers are mounted,' the Earl said, then turned to one of his men-at-arms. 'Find the bastard a sway-backed
nag
till he can filch something better, then give him a tunic and offer him to John Armstrong.' He looked back to Thomas. 'You're joining my
archers, which means
you'll wear my badge. You're my man, devil's whelp, and perhaps that will protect you if Sir Simon wants too much money for your miserable soul.'

'I shall try to repay your lordship,' Thomas said.

'Pay me, boy, by getting us into Caen. You got us into La Roche-Derrien, but that little place is nothing compared to Caen. Caen is a true bastard. We go there tomorrow, but I doubt we'll see the backside of its walls for a month or more, if ever. Get us into Caen, Thomas, and I'll forgive you a score of murders.' He stood, nodded a dismissal and went back into the tent.

Thomas did not move. Caen, he thought, Caen. Caen was the city where Sir Guillaume d'Evecque lived, and he made the sign of the cross for he knew fate had arranged all this. Fate had determined that his crossbow arrow would miss Sir Simon Jekyll and it had brought him to the edge of Caen. Because fate wanted him to do the penance that Father Hobbe had demanded. God, Thomas decided, had taken Jeanette from him because he had been slow to keep his promise.

But now the time for the keeping of promises had come, for God had brought Thomas to Caen.

The Earl of Northampton had been summoned from Brittany to be one of the Prince of Wales's advisers. The Prince was just sixteen, though John Armstrong reckoned the boy was as good as any grown man. 'Ain't nothing wrong with young Edward,' he told Thomas.
'Knows his weapons.
Headstrong, maybe, but brave.'

That, in John Armstrong's world, was high praise. He was a forty-year-old man-at-arms who led the Earl's personal archers and was one of those hard, common men that the Earl liked so much. Armstrong, like Skeat, came from the
north country
and was said to have been fighting the Scots since he had been weaned. His personal weapon was a falchion, a curved sword with a heavy blade as broad as an axe, though he could draw a bow with the best of his troop. He also commanded three score of hobelars, light horsemen mounted on shaggy ponies and carrying spears.

'They don't look up to much,' he said to Thomas, who was gazing at the small horsemen, who all had long shaggy hair and bent legs, 'but they're rare at scouting. We send swarms of yon bastards into the Scottish hills to find the enemy. Be dead else.' Armstrong had been at La Roche-Derrien and remembered Thomas's achievement in turning the town's river flank and, because of that, he accepted Thomas readily enough. He gave him a lice-ridden hacqueton — a padded jacket that might stop a feeble sword cut — and a short surcoat, a jupon, that had the Earl's stars and lions on its breast and bore the cross of St George on its right sleeve. The hacqueton and
jupon,
like the breeches and arrow bag that completed Thomas's outfit, had belonged to an archer who had died of the fever shortly after reaching Normandy. 'You can find yourself better stuff in Caen,' Armstrong told him, 'if we ever get into Caen.'

Thomas was given a sway-backed grey mare that had a hard mouth and an awkward gait. He watered the beast, rubbed her down with straw,
then
ate red herrings and dry beans with Armstrong's men. He found a stream and washed his hair, then twisted the bowcord round the wet pigtail. He borrowed a razor and scraped off his beard, tossing the stiff hairs into the stream so that no one could work a spell on them. It seemed strange to spend the night in a soldiers' encampment and to sleep without Jeanette. He still felt bitter about her and that bitterness was like a sliver of iron in his soul when he was roused in the night's dark heart. He felt lonely, chill and unwanted as the archers began their march. He thought of Jeanette in the Prince's tent, and remembered the jealousy he had felt in Rennes when she had gone to the citadel to meet Duke Charles. She was like a moth, he thought, flying to the brightest candle in the room. Her wings had been scorched once, but the flame drew her still.