Vagabond

by Bernard Cornwell

  'Foreigners?' Thomas asked, knowing that Jake could well mean nothing more than that the strangers had come from the next parish.

  'A priest and his man,' Jake said, 'and if he hadn't been a priest I'd have loosed the dogs on him. I don't like foreigners, don't see no point to them. Those horses of yours looks hungry. So do the two of you. You want breakfast? Or are you going to stand there and spoil those damned hounds by patting them half to death?'

  They rode back to Down Mapperley, following the hounds through the tiny village. Thomas remembered the place as big, twice the size of Hookton, and as a child he had thought it almost a town, but now he saw how small it was. Small and low, so that on horseback he towered above the thatched cottages that had seemed so palatial when he was a child. The dung-heaps beside each cottage were as high as the thatch. Sir Giles Marriott's hall, just beyond the village, was also thatched, the moss-thick roof sweeping almost to the ground. 'He'll be pleased to see you,' Jake promised.

  And so Sir Giles was. He was an old man now, a widower who had once been wary of Thomas's wildness, but now greeted him like a lost son. 'You're thin, boy, too thin. Ain't good for a man to be thin. You'll have breakfast, the two of you? Pease pudding and small ale is what we've got. There was bread yesterday, but not today. When do we bake more bread, Gooden?' This was demanded of a servant.

  'Today's Wednesday, sir,' the servant said reprovingly.

  'Tomorrow then,' Sir Giles told Thomas. 'Bread tomorrow, no bread today. It's bad luck to bake bread on Wednesday. It poisons you, Wednesday's bread. I must have eaten Monday's. You say you're Scottish?' This was to Robbie.

  'I am, sir.'

  'I thought all Scotsmen had beards,' Sir Giles said. 'There was a Scotsman in Dorchester, wasn't there Gooden? You remember him? He had a beard. He played the gittern and danced well. You must remember him.'

  'He was from the Stilly Isles,' the servant said.

  'That's what I just said. But he had a beard, didn't he?'

  'He did. Sir Giles. A big one.'

  'There you are then,' Sir Giles spooned some pease pudding into a mouth that only had two teeth left. He was fat, white-haired and red-faced and at least fifty years old. 'Can't ride a horse these days, Thomas,' he admitted. 'Ain't good for anything now except sitting about the place and watching the weather. Did Jake tell you there be foreigners scuttling about?'

  'He did, sir.'

  'A priest! Black and white robes like a magpie. He wanted to talk about your father and I said there was nothing to talk about. Father Ralph's dead, I said, and God rest his poor soul.'

  'Did the priest ask for me, sir?' Thomas asked.

  Sir Giles grinned. 'I said I hadn't seen you in years and hoped never to see you again, and then his servant asked me where he might look for you and I told him not to talk to his betters without permission. He didn't like that!' he chuckled. 'So then the magpie asked about your father and I said I hardly knew him. That was a lie, of course, but he believed me and took himself off. Put some logs on that fire, Gooden. A man could freeze to death in his own hall if it was left to you.'

  'So the priest left, sir?' Robbie asked. It seemed unlike de Taillebourg just to accept a denial and meekly go away.

  'He was frightened of dogs,' Sir Giles said, still amused. 'I had some of the hounds in here and if he hadn't been dressed like a magpie I'd have let them loose, but it don't do to kill priests. There's always trouble afterwards. The devil comes and plays his games if you kill a priest. But I didn't like him and I told him I wasn't sure how long I could keep the dogs heeled. There's some ham in the kitchen. Would you like some ham, Thomas?'

  'No, sir.'

  'I do hate winter.' Sir Giles stared into the fire, which now blazed huge in his wide hearth. The hall had smoke blackened beams supporting the huge expanse of thatch. At one end a carved timber screen hid the kitchens while the private rooms were at the other end, though since his wife had died Sir Giles no longer used the small chambers, but lived, ate and slept beside the hall fire. 'I reckon this'll be my last winter, Thomas.'

  'I hope not, sir.'

  'Hope what you damned well like, but I won't last it through. Not when the ice comes. A man can't keep warm these days, Thomas. It bites into you, the cold does, bites into your marrow and I don't like it. Your father never liked it either.' He was staring at Thomas now. 'Your father always said you'd go away. Not to Oxford. He knew you didn't like that. Like whipping a destrier between the shafts, he used to say. He knew you'd run off and be a soldier. He always said you had wild blood in you.' Sir Giles smiled, remembering. 'But he also said you'd come home one day. He said you'd come back to show him what a fine fellow you'd become.'

  Thomas blinked back tears. Had his father really said that? 'I came back this time,' he said, 'to ask you a question, sir. The same question, I think, that the French priest wanted to ask you.'

  'Questions!' Sir Giles grumbled. 'I never did like questions. They need answers, see? Of course you want some ham! What do you mean, no? Gooden? Ask your daughter to unwrap that ham, will you?'

  Sir Giles heaved himself to his feet and shuffled across the hall to a great chest of dark, polished oak. He raised the lid and, groaning with the effort of bending over, began to rummage through the clothes and boots that were jumbled inside. 'I find now, Thomas,' he went on, 'that I don't need questions. I sit in the manor court every second week and I know whether they're guilty or innocent the moment they're fetched into the hall! Mind you, we have to pretend otherwise, don't we? Now, where is it? Ah!' He found whatever he sought and brought it back to the table. 'There, Thomas, damn your question and that's your answer.' He pushed the bundle across the table.

  It was a small object wrapped in ancient sacking. Thomas had an absurd premonition that this was the Grail itself and was ridiculously disappointed when he discovered the bundle contained a book. The book's front cover was a soft leather flap, four or five times larger than the pages, which could be used to wrap the volume that, when Thomas opened it, proved to be written in his father's hand. However, being by his father, nothing in it was straightforward. Thomas leafed through the pages swiftly, discovering notes written in Latin, Greek and a strange script which he thought must be Hebrew. He turned back to the first page where only three words were written and, reading them, felt his blood run cold. 'Calix meus inebrians.'

  'Is it your answer?' Sir Giles asked.

  'Yes, sir.'

  Sir Giles peered at the first page. 'It's Latin that, isn't it?'

  'Yes, sir.'

  'Thought it was. I looked, of course, but couldn't make head nor tail of it and I didn't like to ask Sir John,' — Sir John was the priest of St Peter's in Dorchester — 'or that lawyer fellow, what's his name? The one who dribbles when he gets excited. He speaks Latin, or he says he does. What does it mean?'

  '"My cup makes me drunk",' Thomas said.

  '"My cup makes me drunk"!' Sir Giles thought that was splendidly funny. 'Aye, your father's wits were well off the wind. A good man, a good man, but dear me! "My cup makes me drunk"!'

  'It's from one of the psalms,' Thomas said, turning to the second page, which was written in the script he thought was Hebrew, though there was something odd about it. One of the recurrent symbols looked like a human eye and Thomas had never seen that in a Hebrew script before though, in all honesty, he had seen little Hebrew. 'It's from the psalm, sir,' he went on, 'that begins by saying God is our shepherd.'

  'He's not my shepherd,' Sir Giles grumbled. 'I'm not some damned sheep.'

  'Nor me, sir,' Robbie declared.

  'I did hear' — Sir Giles looked at Robbie — 'that the King of Scotland was taken prisoner.'

  'He was, sir?' Robbie asked innocently.

  'Probably nonsense,' Sir Giles replied, then he began telling a long tale about meeting a bearded Scotsman in London, and Thomas ignored the story to look through the pages of his father's book. He felt a kind of strange disappointment because the book suggested that the search for the Grail
was justified. He wanted someone to tell him it was nonsense, to release him from the cup's thrall, but his father had taken it seriously enough to write this book. But his father, Thomas reminded himself, had been mad.

  Mary, Gooden's daughter, brought in the ham. Thomas had known Mary since they were both children playing in puddles and he smiled a greeting at her, then saw that Robbie was gazing at her as though she was an apparition from heaven. She had dark long hair and a full mouth and Thomas was sure Robbie would be discovering more than a few rivals in Down Mapperley. He waited until Mary had gone, then held up the book. 'Did my father ever talk to you about this, sir?'

  'He talked of everything,' Sir Giles said. 'Talked like a woman, he did. Never stopped! I was your father's friend, Thomas, but I was never much of a man for religion. If he talked of it too much, I fell asleep. He liked that.' Sir Giles paused to cut a slice of ham. 'But your father was mad.'

  'You think this is madness, sir?' Thomas held up the book again.

  'Your father was mad for God, but he was no fool. I never knew a man with so much common sense and I miss it. I miss the advice.'

  'Does that girl work here?' Robbie asked, gesturing at the screen behind which Mary had disappeared.

  'All her life,' Sir Giles said. 'You remember Mary, Thomas?'

  'I tried to drown her when we were both children,' Thomas said. He turned the pages of his father's book again though he had no time now to tease any meanings from the tangled words. 'You do know what this is, sir, don't you?'

  Sir Giles paused, then nodded. 'I know, Thomas, that many men want what your father claims to have possessed.'

  'So he did make that claim?'

  Another pause. 'He hinted at it,' Sir Giles said heavily, 'and I don't envy you.'

  'Me?'

  'Because he gave me that book, Thomas, and he said that if anything happened to him I was to keep it until you were old enough and man enough to take up the task. That's what he said.' Sir Giles stared at Thomas and saw his old friend's son flinch. 'But if the two of you want to stay for a while,' he said, 'then you'd be welcome. Jake Churchill needs help. He tells me he's never seen so many fox cubs and if we don't kill some of the bastards then there'll be some rare massacres among the lambs next year.'

  Thomas glanced at Robbie. Their task was to find de Taillebourg and avenge the deaths of Eleanor, Father Hobbe and Robbie's brother, but it was unlikely, he thought, that the Dominican would come back here. Robbie, however, plainly wanted to stay: Mary Gooden had seen to that. And Thomas was tired. He did not know where to seek the priest and so the chance to stay in this hall was welcome. It would be an opportunity to study the book and thus follow his father down the long, tortuous path of the Grail.

  'We'll stay, sir,' Thomas said.

  For a while.

  Chapter 6

  It was the first time that Thomas had ever lived like a lord. Not a great lord, perhaps, not as an earl or a duke with scores of men to command, but still in privilege, ensconced in the manor — even if the manor was a thatched timber hall with a beaten earth floor — the days his to wile away as other people did life's hard work of cutting firewood, drawing water, milking cows, churning butter, pounding dough and washing clothes. Robbie was more used to it, but reckoned life was much easier in Dorset. 'Back home,' he said, 'there's always some damn English raiders coming over the hill to steal your cattle or take your grain.'

  'Whereas you,' Thomas said, 'would never dream of riding south and stealing from the English.'

  'Why would I even think of such a thing?' Robbie asked, grinning.

  So, as winter closed down on the land, they hunted Sir Giles Marriott's acres to make the fields safe for the lambing season and to bring back venison to Sir Giles's table; they drank in the Dorchester taverns and laughed at the mummers who came for the winter fair. Thomas found old friends and told them stories of Brittany, Normandy and Picardy, some of which were true, and he won the golden arrow at the fair's archery competition and he presented it to Sir Giles who hung it in the hall and declared it the finest trophy he had ever seen. 'My son could shoot a good arrow. A very good arrow. I'd like to think he could have won this trophy himself.'

  Sir Giles's only son had died of a fever and his only daughter was married to a knight who held land in Devon and Sir Giles liked neither son-in-law nor daughter. 'They'll inherit the property when I die,' he told Thomas, 'so you and Robbie may as well enjoy it now.'

  Thomas persuaded himself that he was not ignoring the search for the Grail because of the hours he spent poring over his father's book. The pages were thick vellum, expensive and rare, which showed how important these notes had been to Father Ralph, but even so they made small sense to Thomas. Much of the book was stories. One told how a blind man, caressing the cup, had received his sight but then, disappointed in the Grail's appearance, lost it again. Another told how a Moorish warrior had tried to steal the Grail and been turned into a serpent for his impiety. The longest tale in the book was about Perceval, a knight of antiquity who went on crusade and discovered the Grail in Christ's tomb. This time the Latin word used to describe the grail was crater, meaning bowl, whereas on other pages it was calix, a cup, and Thomas wondered if there was any significance in the distinction. If his father had possessed the Grail, would he not have known whether it was a cup or a bowl? Or perhaps there was no real difference. Whatever, the long tale told how the bowl had sat on a shelf of Christ's tomb in plain view of all who entered the sepulchre, both Christian pilgrims and their pagan enemies, yet not till Sir Perceval entered the grotto on his knees was the Grail actually seen by anyone, for Sir Perceval was a man of righteousness and thus worthy of having his eyes opened. Sir Perceval removed the bowl, bringing it back to Christendom where he planned to build a shrine worthy of the treasure, but, the tale laconically recorded, 'he died'. Thomas's father had written beneath this abrupt conclusion: 'Sir Perceval was Count of Astarac and was known by another name. He married a Vexille.'

  'Sir Perceval!' Sir Giles was impressed. 'He was a member of your family, eh? Your father never mentioned that to me. At least I don't think he did. I did sleep through a lot of his tales.'

  'He usually scoffed at stories like this,' Thomas said.

  'We often mock what we fear,' Sir Giles observed sententiously. Suddenly he grinned. 'Jake tells me you caught that old dog fox by the Five Marys.' The Five Marys were ancient grave mounds that the locals claimed were dug by giants and Thomas had never understood why there were six of them.

  'It wasn't there,' Thomas said, 'but back of the White No the.'

  'Back of White Nothe? Up on the cliffs?' Sir Giles stared at Thomas, then laughed. 'You were on Holgate's land! You rascals!' Sir Giles, who had always complained mightily when Thomas, had poached from his land, now found this predation on a neighbour hugely amusing. 'He's an old woman, Holgate. So are you making head or tail of that book?'

  'I wish I knew,' Thomas said, staring at the name Astarac. All he knew was that Astarac was a fief or county in southern France and the home of the Vexille family before they were declared rebel and heretic. He had also learned that Astarac was close to the Cathar

  heartlands, close enough for the contagion to catch the Vexilles, and when, a hundred years before, the French King and the true Church had burned the heretics out of the land they had also forced the Vexilles to flee. Now it seemed that the legendary Sir Perceval was a Vexille? It seemed to Thomas that the further he penetrated the mystery the greater the entanglement. 'Did my father ever talk to you of Astarac, sir?' He asked Sir Giles.

  'Astarac? What's that?'

  'Where his family came from.'

  'No, no, he grew up in Cheshire. That's what he always said.'

  But Cheshire had merely been a refuge, a place to hide from the Inquisition: was that where the Grail was now hidden? Thomas turned a page to find a long passage describing how a raiding column had tried to attack the tower of Astarac and had been repulsed by the sight of the Grail. 'It dazzled them,' Fa
ther Ralph had written, 'so that 364 of them were cut down.' Another page recorded that it was impossible for a man to tell a lie while he held his hand on the Grail, 'or else he will be stricken dead'. A barren woman would be granted the gift of children by stroking the Grail and if a man were to drink from it on Good Friday he would be vouchsafed a glimpse of 'she whom he will take to wife in heaven'. Another story related how a knight, carrying the Grail across a wilderness, was pursued by heathens and, when it seemed he must be caught, God sent a vast eagle that caught him, his horse and the precious Grail up into the sky, leaving the pagan warriors howling in frustrated rage.

  One phrase was copied over and over in the pages of the book: 'Transfer calicem istem a me', and Thomas could feel his father's misery and frustration reaching through the repeated phrase. 'Take this cup from me,' the words meant and they were the same words Christ had spoken in the Garden of Gethsemane as he pleaded with God the Father to spare him the pain of hanging on the tree. The phrase was sometimes written in Greek, a language Thomas had studied but never mastered fully; he managed to decipher most of the Greek text, but the Hebrew remained a mystery.

  Sir John, the ancient vicar of St Peter's, agreed that it was a strange kind of Hebrew. 'I've forgotten all the Hebrew I ever learned,' he told Thomas, 'but I don't remember seeing a letter like that!' He pointed to the symbol that looked like a human eye. 'Very odd, Thomas, very odd. It's almost Hebrew.' He paused a while, then said plaintively, 'If only poor Nathan was still here.'

  'Nathan?'

  'He was before your time, Thomas. Nathan collected leeches and sent them to London. Physicians there prized Dorset leeches, did you know that? But, of course, Nathan was a Jew and he left with the others.' The Jews had been expelled from England almost fifty years before, an event still green in the priest's memory. 'No one has ever discovered where he found his leeches,' Sir John went on, 'and I sometimes wonder if he put a curse on them.' He frowned at the book. 'This belonged to your father?'