The Grail Quest Books 1-3: Harlequin, Vagabond, Heretic (88 page)

Thomas felt strangely unsettled as the Pentecost slipped between the low rocky outcrops that marked the mouth of the River Jaudv. Was it a failure, he wondered, to be coming back to this small town? Or had God sent him because it was here that the enemies of the Grail would be seeking him? That was how Thomas thought of the mysterious de Taillebourg and his servant. Or perhaps, he told himself, he was merely nervous of seeing Jeanette again. Their history was too tangled, there was too much hate mixed with the love, yet he did want to see her and he was worried she would not want to see him. He tried and failed to conjure a picture of her face as the incoming tide carried the Pentecost into the river's mouth, where guillemots spread their ragged black wings to dry above rocks fretted with white foam. A seal raised its glistening head, stared indignantly at Thomas and then went back to the depths. The river-banks came closer, bringing the smell of land. There were boulders and pale grass and small wind-bent trees, while in the shallows there were sinuous fish traps made from woven willow stakes. A small girl, scarce more than six years old, used a stone to knock limpets from the rocks. 'It's a poor supper, that,' Will Skeat remarked.

'It is, Will, it is.'

'Ah, Tom!' Skeat smiled, recognizing the voice. 'You never had limpets for supper!'

'I did!' Thomas protested. 'And for breakfast too.'

'A man who speaks Latin and French? Eating limpets?' Skeat grinned. 'You can write, ain't that so, Tom?'

'Good as a priest, Will.'

'I reckon we should send a letter to his lordship,' Skeat said, meaning the Earl of Northampton, 'and ask for my men to be shipped here, only he won't do that without money, will he?'

'He owes you money,' Thomas said.

Skeat frowned at Thomas. 'He does?'

'Your men have been serving him these last months. He has to pay for that.'

Skeat shook his head. 'The Earl was never slow to pay for good soldiers. He'll be keeping their purses full, Ill be bound, and if I want them here I'll have to persuade him to let them go and I'll have to pay their passages too.' Skeat's men were contracted to fight for the Earl of Northampton who, after campaigning in Brittany, had joined the King in Normandy and now served him near Calais. 'I'll have to pay passage for men and horses, Thomas,' Skeat went on, 'and unless things have changed since I got slapped about the head that won't be cheap. Won't be cheap. And why would the Earl want them to leave Calais? They'll have a bellyful of fighting come springtime.'

The question was a good one, Thomas thought, for there surely would be some vicious fighting near Calais when the winter ended. So far as Thomas knew the town had not fallen, but the English had surrounded it and the French King was said to be raising a great army that would attack the besiegers in springtime.

'There'll be plenty of fighting here come spring,' Thomas said, nodding at the riverbank, which was very close now. The fields beyond the banks were fallow, but at least the barns and farmhouses still stood for these lands fed La Roche-Derrien's garrison and so they had been spared the pillage, rape and fire that had crackled across the rest of the dukedom.

'There'll be fighting here,' Skeat agreed, 'but more in Calais. Maybe you and I should go there, Tom?'

Thomas said nothing. He feared Skeat could no longer command a band of men-atarms and archers. His old friend was too prone to forgetfulness or to sudden bouts of vagueness and melancholy, and those attacks were made worse by the times when Skeat seemed like his old self – except he never was quite like the old Will Skeat who had been so swift in war, savage in decision and clever in battle. Now he repeated himself, became confused and was too frequently puzzled – as he was now by a guardboat flying England's red cross on its white field that pulled downstream towards the Pentecost. Skeat frowned at the small craft. 'Is he an enemy?'

'Flying our flag, Will.'

'He is?'

A mail-clad man stood up in the rowboat's bows and hailed the Pentecost. 'Who are you?'

'Sir William Skeat!' Thomas shouted back, using the name that would be most welcome in Brittany.

There was a pause, maybe of incredulity. 'Sir William Skeat?' the man called back. 'Will Skeat, you mean?'

'The King knighted him,' Thomas told the man.

'I keep forgetting that myself,' Skeat said.

The portside oarsmen backed water so that the guard boat turned in the tide alongside the Pentecost. 'What are you carrying?' the man asked.

'Empty!' Thomas shouted.

The man stared up at the ragged, scorched, doubled sail. 'You had trouble?'

'Off Normandy.'

'Time those bastards were killed once and for all,' the man grumbled, then gestured upriver to where Treguier's houses smeared the sky with their wood-smoke. 'Tie up outboard of the Edward,' he ordered them. 'There's a harbour fee you'll have to pay. Six shillings.'

'Six shillings?' Villeroy exploded when he was told. 'Six bloody shillings! Do they think we pull money off the seabed in nets?'

Thus Thomas and Will Skeat came back to Treguier where the cathedral had lost its tower after Bretons who supported Charles of Blois had fired crossbows at the English from its summit. In retaliation the English had pulled the tower down and shipped the stone to London. The little harbour town was scantily populated now for it had no walls and Charles of Blois's men sometimes raided the warehouses behind the quay. Small ships could go all the way upriver to La Roche-Derrien, but the
Pentecost
drew too much water and so she tied herself alongside the English cog and then a dozen men in red-crossed jupons came aboard to take the harbour fee and look for contraband or else a healthy bribe to persuade them to ignore whatever they might discover, but they found neither goods nor bribe. Their commander, a fat man with a weeping ulcer on his forehead, confirmed that Richard Totesham still commanded at La Roche-Derrien. 'He be there,' the fat man said, 'and Sir Thomas Dagworth commands in Brest.'

'Dagworth!' Skeat sounded pleased. 'He's a good one, he is. So's Dick Totesham,' he added to Thomas, then looked puzzled as Sir Guillaume emerged from the forecabin.

'It's Sir Guillaume,' Thomas said in a low voice. 'Course it is,' Skeat said.

Sir Guillaume dropped the saddlebags on the deck and the chink of coins drew an expectant gaze from the fat man. Sir Guillaume met his gaze and half drew his sword.

'Reckon I be going,' the fat man said.

'Reckon you do,' Skeat said with a chuckle.

Robbie heaved his baggage onto the deck, then stared across the waist of the Eduard to where four girls were gutting herrings and chucking the offal into the air where gulls snatched it in mid flight. The girls strung the gutted fish on long poles that would be placed in the smokers at the quay's end. 'Are they all as pretty as that?' Robbie asked.

'Prettier,' Thomas said, wondering how the Scot could see the girl's faces under their bonnets.

'I'm going to like Brittany,' Robbie said.

There were debts to be paid before they could leave. Sir Guillaume paid off Villeroy and added enough cash to buy a new sail. 'You might do well,' he advised the big man, 'to avoid Caen for a while.'

'We'll go on down to Gascony,' Villeroy said. 'There's always trade in Gascony. Maybe we'll even poke on down to Portugal?'

'Perhaps,' Mordecai spoke shyly, 'you would let me come?'

'You?' Sir Guillaume turned on the doctor. 'You hate goddamn ships.'

'I have to go south,' Mordecai said wearily, 'to Montpellier first of all. The further south a man is, the friendlier the people. I would rather suffer a month of sea and cold than meet Duke Charles's men.'

'Passage to Gascony' – Sir Guillaume offered Villeroy a gold coin – 'for a friend of mine.'

Villeroy glanced at Yvette, who shrugged, and that persuaded the big man to agree. 'You're welcome, doctor,' he said.

So they said farewell to Mordecai and then Thomas and Robbie, Will Skeat and Sir Guillaume and his two men-at-arms went ashore. A boat was going upstream to La Roche-Derrien, but not till later in the day and so the two men-at-arms were left with the baggage and Thomas led the others along the narrow track that fol-lowed the river's western bank. They wore mail and carried weapons for the local peasantry were not friendly to the English, but the only men they passed were a dozen drab labourers pitch-forking dung from two carts. The men paused to watch the soldiers pass, but said nothing. 'And by this time tomorrow,' Thomas commented, 'Charles of Blois will know we've arrived.'

'He'll be quaking in his boots,' Skeat said with a grin.

It began to rain as they reached the bridge which led into La Roche-Derrien. Thomas stopped under the arch of the protective barbican on the bank opposite the town and pointed upstream to the ramshackle quay where he and Skeat's other archers had sneaked into La Roche-Derrien on the night it first fell to the English. 'Remember that place. Will?' he asked.

"Course I remember,' Skeat said, though he looked vague and Thomas did not say more.

They crossed the stone bridge and hurried down the street to the house by the tavern that had always been Richard Totesham's headquarters and Totesham himself was just sliding out of his saddle as they arrived. He turned and scowled at the newcomers, then recognized Will Skeat and stared at his old friend as though he had seen a ghost. Skeat looked blankly back and his lack of recognition troubled Totesham. 'Will?' the garrison commander asked. 'Will? Is it you, Will?'

A look of astonished delight animated Skeat's face. 'Dick Totesham! Of all the folk to meet!'

Totesham was puzzled that Skeat should be surprised to meet him in a garrison he commanded, but then he saw the emptiness in his old friend's eyes and frowned. 'Are you well, Will?'

'I had a bash on the head,' Skeat said, 'but a doctor cobbled me together again. Things get blurred here and there, just blurred.'

The two clasped hands. They were both men who had been born penniless and become soldiers, then earned the trust of their masters and gained the profits of prisoners ransomed and property plundered until they were wealthy enough to raise their own bands of men, which they hired to the King or to a noble and so became richer still as they ravaged more enemy lands. When the troubadours sang of battle they named the King as the fighting hero, and extolled the exploits of dukes, earls, barons and knights, but it was men like Totesham and Skeat who did most of England's fighting.

Totesham clapped Skeat good-naturedly on the shoulder. 'Tell me you've brought your men, Will.'

'God knows where they are,' Skeat said. 'I haven't laid eyes on them in months.'

'They're outside Calais,' Thomas put in.

'Dear God.' Totesham made the sign of the cross. He was a squat man, grey-haired and broad-faced, who held La Roche-Derrien's garrison together by sheer force of character, but he knew he had too few men. Far too few men. 'I've a hundred and thirty-two men under orders,' he told Skeat, 'and half of those are sick. Then there's fifty or sixty mercenaries who might or might not stay till Charles of Blois arrives. Of course the townsfolk will fight for us, or most of them will.'

'They will?' Thomas interrupted, astonished at the claim. When the English had captured the town the previous year the town's people had fought bitterly to defend their walls, and when they had lost they had been subjected to rape and plunder, vet now they supported the garrison?

'Trade's good,' Totesham explained. 'They've never been so rich! Ships to Gascony, to Portugal, to Flanders and to England. Making money, they are. They don't want us to leave, so yes, some will fight for us and it'll help, but it's not like having trained men.'

The other English troops in Brittany were a long way to the west so when Charles of Blois came with his army, Totesham would have to hold the small town for two or three weeks before he could expect any relief and, even with the inhabitants' help, he doubted he could do it. He had sent a petition to the King at Calais begging that more men be sent to La Roche-Derrien. 'We are far from help,' his clerk had written to Tote-sham's dictation, 'and our enemies gather close about.' Totesham, seeing Will Skeat, had assumed that Skeat's men had arrived in answer to his petition and he could not hide his disappointment. 'You'll write to the King yourself?' Totesham asked Will.

'Tom here can write for me.'

'Ask for your men to be sent,' Totesham urged. 'I need three or four hundred more archers, but your fifty or sixty would help.'

'Tommy Dagworth can't send you any?' Skeat asked.

'He's as hard pressed as I am. Too much land to hold, too few men and the King won't hear of us surrendering a single acre to Charles of Blois.'

'So why doesn't he send reinforcements?' Sir Guillaume asked.

'Because he ain't got men to spare,' Totesham said, 'which is no reason for us not to ask.'

Totesham took them inside his house where a fire blazed in a big hearth and his servants brought jugs of mulled wine and plates of bread and cold pork. A baby lay in a wooden cradle by the fire and Totesham blushed when he admitted it was his. 'Newly married,' he told Skeat, then ordered a maid to take the baby away before it began crying. He flinched when Skeat took off his hat to reveal his scarred, thick-ridged scalp, then he insisted on hearing Will's story, and when it was told he thanked Sir Guillaume for the help the Frenchman had given his friend. Thomas and Robbie got a cooler welcome, the latter because he was Scottish and the former because Totesham remembered Thomas from the previous year. 'You were a bloody nuisance,' Totesham said bluntly, 'you and the Countess of Armorica.'