Lions of the Grail

by Tim Hodkinson

  Savage gave a grunt. It looked for a moment like he was about to spit into the water.

  ‘This surprises you?’ Mortimer said.

  Savage shook his head, his long, soaking hair scattering water drops around him.

  ‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘I competed in the jousting tournament held to celebrate their marriage. It was just before I left Ireland.’

  He swallowed, as though the memory troubled his mind.

  ‘We need to know if de Burgh’s family ties will prove more powerful than loyalty to his king,’ Lancaster said. ‘De Burgh assures us this is not the case but is he actually intending to switch sides and let the Scots walk in? What about the knights and barons of his feudal levy? If they intend to join the Scots’ side, then de Burgh will have no army to fight with anyway. This is crucial information to us. We cannot afford to commit troops to Ireland to fight the Scots there unless we absolutely have to. That is what we want you to find out.’

  ‘I’d like to get out,’ Savage said, suddenly feeling vulnerable in the water surrounded by these three wolfish men. He needed to play for time to think about what they were asking him to do.

  The king and the two lords shrugged to show they did not care what he did. Savage raised himself from the water and stepped out of the tub. He stood shivering and suddenly very conscious of his nakedness as he bent to pick up the pathetic remnants of what remained of his clothes.

  ‘My dear syr, please forget about those rags.’ The king lifted a large fur rug and passed it to Savage. ‘Wrap yourself in this. We will make sure you get new clothes.’

  As he released the fur onto Savage’s shoulders, the king let his hand fall on the knight’s arm, letting it trail a little too long on the sinewy muscles of his bicep.

  ‘He’s in surprisingly good shape, considering such a long stay in prison,’ he said.

  Mortimer and Lancaster now also cast their eyes over Savage’s body, but their gazes were more curious and lacked the hunger that was in the king’s eyes. Savage’s flesh was a ghastly grey and spoke of someone who had not seen the light of day for years. He was gaunt, his cheeks hollow and his body had not a spare ounce of fat, but he did not have the usual withered, enfeebled look of a man who had been incarcerated for years. Instead, the grey skin was pulled taut over wiry, sinuous muscles so the knight’s body looked like a skinned rabbit.

  ‘After a few years in a dungeon, most men are feeble wretches, hardly able to stand by themselves,’ Mortimer said. ‘How did you manage to avoid that?’

  ‘I walked. Constantly. Up and down the cell,’ Savage replied. ‘All day, every day. I pulled myself up on the window bars, stood on my head, anything to keep myself fit.’ Uncomfortable with the men’s scrutiny of him, Savage wrapped himself in the fur.

  ‘You want me to be a spy? A cloak-and-dagger man?’ His voice betrayed his distaste.

  ‘Sometimes we must do things that we find a little unpleasant,’ the king said with a nasty smile. ‘If you are successful you will be rewarded well.’

  ‘Why me?’ Savage asked.

  ‘You are Irish, so you will draw less suspicion,’ the king explained. ‘Normally a messenger from the king delivers his message and leaves straight away. You, however, have family ties to Ulster. You have a reason to stay around for a while. As a Knight Templar, you were trained in the use of codes and ciphers. You can send back messages to us in secret writing so that if they are intercepted by prying eyes, their import cannot be divined. In short: you are perfect for the job. When we stopped here on our journey and heard that there was an Irish Templar in the dungeon we couldn’t believe our luck.’

  ‘And if I refuse?’ Savage asked, a little half-heartedly.

  ‘You can go back and rot in prison,’ Lancaster stated. ‘Alternatively you can hang. Your only way out of jail is by royal pardon and the only way you will get that is by agreeing to work for us. The choice is yours.’

  Savage shrugged. ‘What choice do I have? I’ll do it.’

  ‘Excellent!’ The king beamed. ‘Guards! Guards!’ He banged the table loudly. The two soldiers who had dragged Savage up from the dungeon entered the room and stood stiffly to attention.

  ‘By the way, Savage,’ Mortimer said. ‘Just in case you are thinking that once you are out of England you are out of our influence. We have other agents in the country, and we are very sure of their allegiance. They will be told of your mission. If you decide to abandon it and disappear into a bog somewhere, they will find you and you will die as the traitorous dog you are.’

  His threat hung in the air like a noxious fart for several moments before the king interjected. ‘I’m sure it won’t come to that. Guards, take Syr le Savage to the kitchens and get him a good dinner, then make sure he gets a haircut. Arrange a room for him and I’ll send the royal steward to make sure he gets some new clothes.’

  Savage suppressed a smile at the look of astonishment on the face of the guard with the broken teeth.

  ‘Don’t just stand there, man! Get on with it!’ Lancaster thundered.

  ‘This way… em, sire.’ The guard held the door open. Savage gave him a provocative grin as he was ushered out the door.

  ‘One last thing, Savage,’ the king called after him. Savage stopped and turned to face him again. ‘Do you know who Hugo de Montmorency is?’

  Savage’s face lit up with an expression of cold rage. ‘He is the Judas bastard who betrayed us at Garway.’

  ‘That’s one way of putting it,’ the king replied. ‘He did indeed see the error of his heretical ways and informed Sheriff Pimlot of the gathering of Templar conspiracists at Garway, which led to your arrest. After renouncing the Temple, he was welcomed into the Order of St John, the Knights Hospitaller. He has done rather well for himself. Hugo de Montmorency is now Knight Marshal of the Order of St John in Ireland. I believe he is currently advising the Earl of Ulster on defensive tactics and we don’t trust him one little bit. Perhaps this extra piece of information will whet your appetite for this task.’

  Savage nodded, then he turned once more and left the room.

  The door closed behind them, leaving the king, the Earl of Lancaster and Earl Mortimer alone.

  King Edward mused: ‘We’ve probably just sent him to his death. If Montmorency recognises Savage and our suspicions are correct, he’ll kill him. If de Burgh is in league with Bruce, he will also get rid of him.’

  Lancaster shrugged. ‘Does it matter? If they kill him then we’ll know where they stand straight away. In the meantime, if he can find out any information of use to us it will also be helpful. I should not need to remind you, gentlemen, that we are desperate. He will probably end up dead either way. Who cares as long as we get what we need?’

  10

  Richard Savage stood on the forecastle of the Mary. Below him, the prow of the ship sliced cleanly through the grey-green water. The boat surged up on the waves then dipped into the troughs, throwing up a spray that spat cold, salty drops across his face. Astern was the open sea. Before him lay the coast of Ireland.

  A fortnight of proper food and rest, the attentions of the royal steward and the king’s personal surgeon had effected an enormous change in Savage. The hungry gauntness of his cheeks had begun to fill out and the grey dungeon pallor of his skin was now tinged with pink. His ragged clothes were gone, replaced by a fine pair of soft buckskin hunting boots that came up past his knees, woollen leggings, a dark green tunic and a heavy black woollen hooded cloak. His unkempt beard had been trimmed to a respectable goatee and while the royal barber had wanted to cut his wild mane of hair into a fashionable shoulder-length bob, Savage had insisted on a close crop. Old habits died hard; while a Templar he had not been allowed to grow his hair. Besides, long hair was a paradise for lice.

  He had boarded the ship in Bristol and paid the reprobate captain for his passage in gold. The crew had looked with greedy eyes at his purse, but the presence of his sword, kidney dagger and the royal seal on the scroll he carried had been enough to dete
r thieving hands during the journey.

  The voyage had taken the best part of two days. Savage had spent the first day in the grip of abject terror. He had never liked sailing, but after being so long in the dungeon his previous unease had changed to an irrational panic. The sky seemed impossibly big and the sunlight hurt his eyes. He was painfully aware that the boat was merely suspended over unknown black depths. At any second he expected the ship to split asunder, plunging into the water, sinking down to a freezing, completely inescapable death.

  When evening on the first day had arrived and this still had not occurred, it began to dawn on Savage that he could either spend all the rest of the journey huddling down beneath the deck, or he could get over it.

  After that revelation he began to find the experience enjoyable, even exhilarating. He spent most of the second day up on the bow, watching the waters skim by, enjoying the wind in his face and the feeling of speed and freedom that came with it.

  The Isle of Man had just been retaken from the Scots but the seas around it still had to be skirted with care. The Mary was a cog: a squat, clinker-built cargo ship with a square-rigged sail and castellated platforms were built onto her prow and stern. This particular cog spent its time shuttling across the Irish Sea between Bristol and Dublin, Bristol and Drogheda or Bristol and Carrickfergus. She ferried wine, furs and other luxuries on the way out and returned with a hold of grain, wolf skins or the big shaggy hunting dogs Ireland was famous for breeding.

  After pitching and rolling on the open sea, whipped by wind or huddling for shelter under the canvas tarpaulin that provided the only cover on board, Savage was looking forward to getting onto dry land.

  The swell of the sea was calming as they surged up the sea lough towards Carrickfergus, the Capital of the Earldom of Uladh, or “Ulster” as the Normans had named it.

  As the Mary approached the harbour, Savage could already smell the stench of the town. Carrickfergus was cloaked in a misty shroud of filthy smoke and noxious fumes. Its air was thick with the miasma of wood fires, the hoppy fragrance of beer malting, the smell of cooking food and the odours that arise from so many people living packed close together. While it was not as bad as the reek of the dungeon he had spent the last seven years in, after several days in the clear fresh air of the open sea the smell was a touch overpowering.

  Carrickfergus Castle, a massive stone fortress, loomed menacingly over the harbour. At the sight of it Savage mused how ironic it was that his return to Ireland should be at Carrickfergus. Thirteen years before, he had sailed out from that very harbour, vowing never to return. He had travelled far: to the very ends of the known world. Now here he was back in the same place.

  As he gazed down into the dark waters of the lough he wondered what ghosts were waiting to rise up to greet him from the murky depths of his past. He had forsaken much when he had left home to join the Templars.

  The memory of a smiling young woman surfaced in his mind and he felt the old pangs of regret. He closed his eyes tight shut to dispel the memory. Where had that come from? He thought he had managed to successfully push it out of his mind during the years in prison. He had made his decision and accepted the consequences. There would be no going back.

  Except that now he had come back.

  He had no illusions about how dangerous his task was. Ireland was a rat’s nest of intrigue, alliances and counter-alliances. Nothing here was as it seemed and nobody could really be trusted.

  And where did his own allegiance lie? A Scottish invasion would be a disaster for the people of Ireland, but he had abandoned the island years ago. What was it to him? Then again, what was Edward of England’s cause to him either? Now the order was gone, was there anything left for him to follow?

  At the very least, he consoled himself with the fact that he was now away from England and the reach of Sheriff Pimlot. He could still simply forget about his mission and disappear, but then he would have to deal with the other royal agents Mortimer would send after him.

  Lancaster had told him the names of some of the other agents. Two were knights: de Sandal and Talbot. There was a third person called either le Poer or Powers, but all he had been told about him was that he would contact Savage when the time was right. Until he came up with a better one, his immediate plan was to deliver the message to the earl, then try to make contact with Talbot or de Sandal to get an idea of how the land lay.

  The Mary hove around the mouth of the harbour to tie up at the quay. Around it, the busy harbour was full of vessels of all sizes and descriptions. Crews bustled away either embarking or disembarking cargoes. Among the more mundane ships such as merchants’ trading galleys up from Dublin or the cogs loading up with corn bound for England, Savage spotted a Portuguese galley that was probably trading pottery and wine, and a boat that looked very like a Hebridean warship. The sight of the Scottish vessel immediately made him uneasy.

  ‘You’ll be leaving us then.’ The captain grinned at him. The man was an experienced old sea dog who had spent years navigating the Irish Sea. The long, ragged scar that slithered down his left cheek was a testament to the fact that crossings were not always as uneventful as the one they had just completed. Attack from pirates was an occupational hazard for sailors and from the demeanour of the captain and crew of the Mary, Savage suspected that they were not averse to supplementing their income with a bit of piracy themselves.

  Savage nodded. ‘I have a message to deliver to the earl,’ he explained.

  ‘Well he won’t be too hard to find,’ the captain replied, pointing at the massive bulk of the castle that overlooked the harbour. ‘That’s his house.’

  Savage began collecting his belongings.

  ‘Will you be wanting us to wait on you for the return journey then?’ the captain enquired.

  Savage shook his head. ‘I’ll arrange my passage back to England when I’ve completed my business here. If you’re still in port I’ll bear you in mind.’

  ‘We’re leaving as soon as the cargo is switched. You’re not the first royal emissary we’ve brought to Ireland lately, you know,’ the captain said. His grin had a nasty edge to it. ‘Never brought any of them back, though. The last one was about a month ago. He just vanished. Like a ship in the fog. He got off our boat right here in this harbour and we never heard of him again.’

  Despite the uneasy churning in his guts, Savage fixed the captain with a steely glare but did not respond. Instead he slung his bag across his back, scrambled up onto the quay and set off along the harbour towards the castle.

  From the battlements of the fortress, a black-cloaked figure watched his approach with interest.

  11

  Carrickfergus Castle was built on a rocky outcrop with an ancient and dark history. Carraig na Feargus – “the Rock of Fergus” – jutted out from the shore into the cold, choppy waters of a wide, deep sea lough in north-east Ireland. It was named after Fergus MacErc, an ancient king who met his end when his ship floundered on the rock during a storm.

  The massive, squat stone fortress had been constructed so skilfully on the promontory it looked like it had been carved out of the black rock rather than built on it. An unmistakable symbol of Anglo-Norman power, the square keep and imposing curtain wall of the castle dominated the town and the whole lough. No matter where you stood on the lough shore you could not miss the ominous facade of the stern fortress.

  The double-towered front gate was newly built and a portcullis hovered over the entranceway like a row of jagged teeth from some savage beast. As he approached up the hill from the harbour, it reminded Savage of the maw of Hell that he had seen used as a backdrop for a mystery play, ‘The Harrowing of Hell’.

  A sullen Irishman stood on guard at the castle gate. Savage knew he was Irish from the clothes he wore. His upper body was covered by a long, saffron-coloured padded linen tunic that reached down to his knees – the léine croich: a sort of cloak-cum-armour worn by Irish warriors. This was decorated with stripes and heavily pleated to protect from s
word cuts. The léine was belted in the middle and a wicked-looking Irish knife hung from the broad leather belt, along with a pouch to hold his belongings. His hair was shaved at the back and sides but grew long at the front in the Irish style and as Savage approached, he lowered the spear he carried so that its tip faced the newcomer.

  ‘Who might you be?’ the Irishman wondered, regarding Savage with a laconic eye. The man was a member of the Bonnaught of Ulster: locally recruited Irish soldiers who made up the Earl of Ulster’s garrisons. Though hardy, reliable warriors, Savage recalled from the days of his youth that these men had an attitude to authority that could best be described as “sceptical”.

  Savage produced the scroll that bore the heavy seal of the Lions of England and showed it to the gate guard. ‘Richard le Savage,’ he said, ‘emissary of the king. I have an urgent message for the earl.’

  ‘Really?’ The gate guard seemed unimpressed. ‘Which king would that be now?’

  Savage was well aware that in Ireland “the king” did not necessarily mean Edward Plantagenet. The title could refer to any one of the number of rulers that were scattered around the various provinces and petty kingships across the island. He was also well aware that the gate guard was being deliberately obtuse.

  ‘King Edward the Second: King of England, Wales, Scotland and Lord of Ireland,’ he said.

  The gate guard raised an eyebrow and smirked. ‘I hear Robert de Bruce has taken away at least one of those titles,’ he said.

  Savage felt a frisson of anger. Apart from the fact that the man was being deliberately provocative, to further annoy Savage they were carrying out their conversation in Irish, a language that Savage was out of practice in. He consoled himself that at least it was not English, a tongue he found particularly uncouth.

  Suddenly a commotion erupted from within the castle. Behind the guard, through the castle gate, Savage could see a riderless horse standing placidly in the cobbled courtyard that lay between the outer curtain wall and the older inner wall. The irate owner of the horse had just burst through the gate in the inner wall. He wore the tattered, dirty russet cassock of a pilgrim. His wildly bearded face was flushed a deep scarlet and his brows knitted in a terrible glower. To Savage’s surprise, the pilgrim leapt athletically straight onto his waiting horse without the use of the stirrups.