Lions of the Grail

by Tim Hodkinson

  It was sobbing.

  Intrigued, Savage moved closer. Wondering if this was the person he was supposed to meet, but still wary of attack, he gave a slight cough to indicate his presence.

  The kneeling figure froze, then turned his head to look at Savage, who saw that it was in fact the parish priest who had presided over Mass the day before. Now, he appeared gaunt, dark-eyed, his bald head pale while tears streamed from his eyes.

  ‘What do you want?’ he demanded.

  ‘What ails you, Father?’ Savage enquired. ‘Why are you crying?’

  The priest stood up and approached Savage, a strangely forlorn look on his face. ‘We have been abandoned,’ he wailed.

  Savage was puzzled. What did this man mean? Saint Nicholas’ was both a parish church and a pro-cathedral for the diocese of Down, and Savage knew the earl had chased the bishop out of the earldom in a dispute over land, but surely the priest was not crying about that.

  ‘By who?’ he asked.

  ‘By God!’ the priest moaned, the wan light of despair in his eyes. There was something more there too. In the dim light Savage saw the gleam of fanaticism and further, he experienced that moment of realisation in which somehow he knew that the man he spoke to possessed a mind unhinged.

  He decided to humour him.

  ‘Abandoned by God?’ Savage remarked. ‘That’s a bit drastic isn’t it?’

  ‘It is true.’ The priest shook his head. ‘Because of our sins, because of our hypocrisy, because of our whoring!’

  ‘How do you know?’ Savage asked, wondering if the priest was the one who had sent him the invitation. If so, he knew something and Savage had to find out what, regardless of the man’s apparent insanity.

  ‘Because I pray to him.’ The priest shook his head sadly. ‘And the only reply is silence. He ignores our pleas. This island is cursed because of the evils of the people – and they know!’ Suddenly the fire in the priest’s eyes flared again as he seized upon this topic with fervour. ‘Haven’t you wondered why everyone here is so devout in their religion? It’s desperation! They carry on their lives hoping God will recognise their cries once more. But he ignores us. He is blind to us now. We are beyond help. We lapse into strife, wars and chaos.’

  As if in echo of the priest’s turmoil a loud rattle of thunder rumbled over the church. Savage started somewhat, but the effect on the priest was more dramatic. He flinched down to a crouching position, eyes wide with terror and pointing finger raised towards the roof.

  ‘There!’ he cried. ‘There is the voice of his anger. He roars his disapproval from the heavens! Ireland has been abandoned by God. Its people are wicked. Its churchmen conspire with heathen killers. Self-seeking greed rages throughout the land. The wolves of misfortune run wild across this country. We have been delivered into the hands of our enemies. The storm approaches. The Lord has let slip the Four Horsemen and their Apocalypse will be visited on the land. War, Famine, Plague and behind them the pale rider on the pale horse: Death! And Hell follows him!’ The priest had risen once more to his feet as he approached his ranting crescendo.

  ‘What did you say?’ Savage seized the priest by the wrist. ‘What do you mean about churchmen conspiring with heathen killers? Do you know something about the Franciscans and the Saracen assassins?’

  The priest frowned and looked a little confused, then a strange look of surprise came upon his face. Savage was about to press him further when he realised the priest stared not at him, but over his shoulder.

  Instinctively he leapt sideways, just in time.

  The blade of a knife, meant for his back, cleaved thin air instead. The weapon was propelled by a wiry, swarthy-skinned man with thick curly black hair. Savage had been right. The man was a Saracen. An assassin was here in Ireland. It was a trap after all.

  Savage now had the problem of staying alive long enough to let anyone else know. He brought his sword up and readied himself for defence. As he did so a second assassin entered the chapel, this one bearing a big, curved sword, the deadly Saracen scimitar. His nose was swollen and both his eyes were blackened. This was obviously the assailant MacHuylin had head-butted on the battlements the night before. Both assassins were clad in long, hooded blue cloaks that were wet from the rain. There had been no need to disguise their dark skins in the bandages of lepers today as no one would look twice at anyone swathed in a cloak on a rainy day.

  Savage realised he had been outwitted. He had expected someone to be waiting for him in the church, but the assassins had waited until he had entered Saint Nicholas’ and he was now trapped within. They had crept in after him through the only door in or out. Now he had to fight both of them.

  ‘No!’ the mad priest shouted. ‘You must not kill in the church. You must not shed blood in a holy place. I will not allow it!’

  With a roar Savage swung the sword at the man with the scimitar. The assassin raised his own weapon to counter the blow and the swords met in a shower of sparks. To Savage’s horror his blade snapped in two.

  Another trick. The deliberately weakened sword had been left on the altar, designed to tempt him to pick it up and use it, and like a fool he had. He cursed himself for being so stupid, realising now that he had no time to draw his own dagger before the assassin with the knife struck.

  Instead of drawing his weapon Savage smashed his fist into the knife-wielding assassin’s face then ducked beneath his companion’s scimitar. As he did so, he threw himself sideways, ducking out of the side chapel into the transept of the church. The assassins rushed after him, pausing only to shove the priest aside.

  Suddenly the door of the church banged open. Henry de Thrapston rushed in. To Savage’s astonishment, he was accompanied by Alys de Logan. Behind her was the bright-eyed little girl Galiene.

  ‘Good God!’ de Thrapston exclaimed at the sight of the assassins. ‘You were right, Savage.’

  The assassins shouted ‘Allahu Akbar!’ and charged up the aisle. The man with the knife went for Savage while the assassin with the scimitar charged past him to go for de Thrapston who was desperately trying to unsheath his dagger.

  ‘Galiene, stay back!’ Alys shouted and stepped forward in front of her daughter. Fast as lightning she whipped the throwing knife from its sheath and sent it flying towards the approaching assassin. The assassin was too quick. He raised the blade of the scimitar in a sweeping arc that caught the throwing knife in mid-air. With a loud clang the blade was sent tumbling away from its intended target of the man’s neck.

  Savage jumped sideways to avoid the other assassin’s knife thrust. He dropped to his right knee and swept his left leg around, connecting with the off-balance assassin’s shins and sending him toppling forwards. Finally with a spare second to draw his own weapon, Savage ripped it from its sheath.

  Inside him, a calm voice said that they needed to capture the assassins alive, so they could be questioned, but all he could think of was that the other assassin was about to attack Alys and every second counted. Without further thought he drove the blade of the dagger through the fallen assassin’s spine at the base of the neck, separating the bones there, killing him instantly. Old Sergeant Gaston would have been proud.

  Fumbling with his left hand, de Thrapston had just managed to get his knife out of its sheath when the other assassin swung the scimitar at him. De Thrapston managed to block the blow but his smaller blade was unable to counter the weight of the sword and he went staggering backwards to fall on his backside. The only person standing between the assassin and escape via the door of the church was now Alys.

  ‘Galiene run!’ Alys shouted, deliberately putting herself between the assassin and her daughter. The assassin raised the blade to cut her down. Savage had scrambled to his feet but he knew he could not reach her in time.

  The assassin brought the blade down but a howling, screaming creature came from nowhere and latched on to his sword arm, its weight making him miss his intended target of Alys’s head.

  It was the little girl, Gal
iene. Her legs locked round the assassin’s torso, her fingers tore at the man’s hair, his cheeks, his eyes. Her teeth sank deep into his forearm, cutting into the flesh and drawing blood up.

  The assassin screamed, as much from surprise as pain. He quickly recovered though, and grasped Galiene by the hair. Her strength was no match for his and he drew her teeth out of his arm, then violently tossed her away like a rag. Galiene tumbled before hitting the ground hard, her head giving a loud crack as it met the stone floor.

  Enraged by the pain in his arm, the assassin momentarily forgot Alys, his intended victim and stabbed down at the little girl on the ground. The blade of the scimitar entered her flesh just as Savage hit him from behind.

  He was running at full speed, bent over. Savage’s shoulder connected with the centre of the assassin’s back, sending him rocketing forwards. He released the scimitar and sprawled forwards, both hands out in front of him to break his fall. They both landed heavily but Savage landed on top of the assassin, his weight driving the breath from the other’s body. Savage was up on his knees behind the assassin instantly. One hand grabbed a handful of the man’s hair and pulled back his head; the other wrenched the blade of the knife across his throat.

  There was a brief explosion of blood as the assassin’s severed arteries spouted his lifeblood up the aisle but in a couple of heartbeats the torrent slowed to a steady gush. Savage let go of his hair and the dead assassin dropped face first into the widening pool of his own blood.

  Savage got to his feet. His nostrils were flared, a pitiless snarl curled his lips and his eyes blazed in a cold, baleful glare. De Thrapston, a veteran of several battles, recognised the signs of the killing rage that descends on some warriors in the heat of battle. The Vikings thought these people were special individuals blessed with a divine rage. In reality they were just natural-born killers.

  A howl of anguish rent the air as Alys ran to the still body of her child. The sound seemed to break Savage’s trance and a spark of humanity returned to his eyes. He seemed slightly confused, then ran over to where Alys was kneeling beside the little girl.

  Alys moved quickly but purposefully as with expert hands she opened the insensible girl’s dress to examine the wound the scimitar had inflicted. She listened to the girl’s breathing, then lifted her eyelids to examine the pupils of her eyes.

  ‘Is she all right?’ Savage asked.

  Alys’s head dipped and her shoulders seemed to sag. For a second Savage feared the worst, then he realised it was from relief.

  ‘Yes, thank the Lord,’ Alys said. ‘She’s had a bad knock to the head but I am sure she has just been knocked unconscious. She will come round soon and have a sore head for a few days. The sword wound has only pierced flesh. None of her innards have been hurt. With proper care it will heal.’ She took out a handkerchief and began to bind the wound.

  ‘She’s a very brave little girl,’ Savage commented. ‘Quite headstrong too, I’d warrant. She went after him like a leopard, even though you told her to stay behind you. Won’t do what she’s told and thinks she knows better. Sometimes a good thing.’ He gave a wry smile and laid a hand on Alys’s shoulder. ‘She takes after her mother, no doubt.’

  ‘No.’ Alys dashed Savage’s hand off her shoulder. She rose to her feet and turned to face him. Her face bore an expression that was a strange mixture of anger, defiance and also somehow relief. Tears were streaking down her face.

  ‘Her father. She takes after her father, Richard,’ Alys said through gritted teeth. ‘Galiene is your daughter.’

  39

  Savage did not know what to do or say. He just looked from Alys to Galiene and back, his mouth open in astonishment.

  Alys’s shoulders dropped, her mouth turned down and she sobbed loudly, uncontrollably, dissolving into a paroxysm of tears. She leaned her head forward until it rested on Savage’s shoulder.

  Awkwardly, Savage put his arms round her. He could feel her tears soaking through his shirt as her chest heaved in massive sobs.

  ‘You don’t know what it was like, Richard,’ Alys said through her tears. ‘Trying to hide the truth. Insisting Galiene was eleven, not twelve. Bringing her up on my own, trying to hang on to my lands to give her some sort of future. Trying to explain to her why she didn’t have a father like everyone else. All the while you were riding about the deserts of the east on some mystical quest.’

  Her anger returned. She raised her fists and began beating his chest with disconcertingly hard blows. Savage sensed she needed to vent her rage but her blows were hard enough to rock him backwards on his feet and he had to grasp her wrists to stop her. She went limp and collapsed against him again.

  ‘And all the while, all that time, lying to myself,’ Alys continued. ‘Telling myself that you were not worth it. Knowing you thought more of some mythical holy relic than me. Telling myself and anyone who would listen that I hoped you got yourself killed but really hoping that one day you would come back. Because I still…’ she looked up at him, an expression of sudden realisation and disbelief on her face ‘…still, despite it all, against everything in my head that tells me how stupid it is, how stupid I am… I still love you.’

  Savage was stunned. He looked down into Alys’s eyes. Emotions he had not felt for years flooded into his chest and he felt confused, unsure. Something seemed to grasp his throat that made it difficult to talk. He suddenly recognised in her eyes what he had been searching for all these years. Something deep inside him realised that he had gone to the ends of the earth in search of meaning, of mystery and something to give reason to his life. In fact those were the very things he had left behind at home.

  ‘For God’s sake kiss her, man,’ de Thrapston said with a weary sigh.

  And he did. At first Alys responded fiercely, pressing her lips against his, then after a second or so she pushed herself away from him.

  ‘Galiene,’ she said, her voice filled with concern as she turned to kneel beside the unconscious child.

  ‘We need to get her to the castle,’ Savage commented. ‘The earl has a good physician.’ He looked at the bodies of the dead assassins. ‘It’s probably safer there, too,’ he added.

  Suddenly a terrible wail echoed around the church as the priest rushed over to the corpse of one of the assassins and fell to his knees, beating the inert body with despairing fists. Appalled by the scene that had been played before him, he glared in horror at the blasphemous spectacle of spilt blood in his church.

  ‘You devil!’ he shouted at Savage, pointing an accusing finger at him. ‘You will burn in Hell for what you have done. You have killed in a church.’

  ‘They deserved it,’ Savage said. ‘What did you want me to do? Turn the other cheek? We’d all be dead. I doubt God would disagree.’

  ‘This is blasphemy!’ the priest raved. ‘King Robert Bruce may have murdered Red Comyn at the altar in Dumfries kirk, but God has shown his forgiveness for that deed. You are no Bruce.’

  Savage suddenly recalled the point his conversation with the priest had reached just before the assassin struck. He strode down the aisle towards the cleric, whose mad eyes still betrayed enough sense to show he realised he had perhaps said something he should not have. He began to back away but Savage grabbed him by the throat with one hand, pushing the point of his dagger into the man’s cheek with his other. The blade dug into the flesh but not far enough in to draw blood.

  ‘Steady on, Savage,’ de Thrapston called from behind.

  ‘What did you say about Bruce?’ Savage growled at the priest. ‘You knew about these Saracens being here, didn’t you? Now you talk about Bruce? What is this “sign” of God’s forgiveness?’

  Panic flooded into the priest’s eyes as he struggled to pull Savage’s hand away from his throat. ‘I don’t know what you mean—’ he began.

  Savage thrust the point of the dagger harder and a little drop of blood welled up from the priest’s cheek and ran down the runlet in the centre of the blade. ‘Surely you don’t want me to
offend God any further by spilling more blood in your church?’ he said.

  The priest looked at the dagger point that was an inch below his left eye. ‘God has delivered the Holy Grail into the hands of King Robert Bruce.’ He gasped.

  ‘What?’ Savage was astonished.

  ‘The Grail. God has shown he favours the cause of Robert Bruce. He has allowed the Grail to fall into the hands of the Scottish King,’ the priest breathed.

  Savage was so astonished he let go of the priest, who fell back and staggered off down the aisle, holding his throat. ‘The Grail. It is impossible,’ Savage whispered.

  ‘Mother?’ Galiene’s soft voice interrupted his thoughts. The little girl opened her eyes and looked around. ‘Where are those awful men?’ she said.

  ‘Hush, Galiene.’ Alys stroked the little girl’s hair. ‘They are gone. You are hurt.’

  ‘Come on. Let’s get to the castle,’ Savage said. ‘I’ll carry her.’

  He knelt down beside the girl and immediately she flinched away from him. ‘Get away from me,’ she squealed. Savage looked at Alys, unsure what to do now.

  ‘Galiene, you are hurt,’ Alys stated. ‘We need to get you to the castle where a doctor will treat your wound. You cannot walk as you will bleed. Be a good girl and let this knight carry you. I know he doesn’t smell too good but right now we need his help.’

  The little girl nodded but as Savage picked her up in his arms she continued to glare at him with a mixture of suspicion and hostility.

  Alys laid a hand on Savage’s shoulder and gave a little mischievous smile. ‘And when you are feeling a little better,’ she said to the girl, ‘Syr Savage has something important to tell you.’

  40

  As they made their way back to Carrickfergus Castle, Alys recounted what had happened at her own castle the day before.