Grail Knight: Number 5 in series (Outlaw Chronicles)

by Donald, Angus

  Mercadier’s mercenaries had finally caught us.

  Part Three

  Chapter Eighteen

  The Lord moves in mysterious ways, as my old friend Tuck never tired of telling me. Westbury has had its first miracle – and, of course, Father Anselm has given the credit for it solely to the power of the Flask of St Luke. Incredibly, the pious old couple of Westbury village that I mentioned before, Martha and Geoffrey, have found themselves with child. Happy Martha has all the signs of being pregnant. Three months ago, at the Feast of All Saints she and her husband prayed before the flask for three days and three nights without food, drink or rest, begging the Lord that they might be blessed with a baby despite their advanced age – and God Almighty, in His infinite wisdom, has heeded them.

  A month after Christmas, my daughter-in-law Marie told me in wondering tones that Martha was expecting, and that she was planning to wrap up some of her old baby clothes and a few carved wooden toys as a gift for the newborn when it arrives.

  I do not know what to think of this – I know for certain that the flask is the same one I purchased in the cathedral of St-Sernin, a perfectly ordinary piece of pilgrim’s kit, and yet God has seen fit to grant a miracle in its name. Why? Does an old leather bottle hold the same power as a true relic? Is God indifferent to the authenticity of sacred objects blessed by the Church? I cannot understand it.

  Alas, the fame of the Flask of St Luke is spreading; and people are coming from as far away as Sheffield to pray in front of it in our little church. For my part, I pray that the enthusiasm for this false relic will quickly die out – but I fear otherwise. I have encountered a dozen pilgrims on the paths around Westbury in the past few weeks, even in this inclement winter season. And when I stopped each of them and asked their business on my desmesne, I discovered that they were foreigners from other counties, women from Yorkshire and Derbyshire mostly, who had walked here to pray at our church for a child. Is the whole world planning to make a pilgrimage to my door? What if more miracles are announced? We would have no peace at all.

  But I must confess there is another fear that lurks just beyond my thoughts. Was it truly God who sanctioned this miracle – or could it perhaps have been some other power? For the flask is not quite as ordinary an object as I often like to tell myself. In my most secret heart, I know that it once held a liquor that might well be a source of great power, but could also be a conduit for evil.

  For that flask once held the blood of a witch.

  There were forty-seven men and horses lined up above us – I know that because I had time to count each of them. Forty-seven iron-hard mercenaries – the scum of Christendom, men whose names were a byword for rapacity, cruelty and reckless slaughter. Our little group of eight Companions, standing straddle-foot in the rock-strewn valley of the River Ariège, grimly determined, gripping our weapons in sweat-damp hands, did not move: we waited for their attack.

  Which did not come.

  A lone man, gently waving a big, pale grubby rag – the closest they had to a white flag, I presumed – walked his horse slowly down the slope. He was a big-shouldered, brawny routier, square-faced and grey-blond, scarred and immensely tough-looking. His horse, a raw-boned bay with a black mane, seemed almost as exhausted as our own nags. The beast picked its way carefully, tiredly, through the boulders down to the opposite side of the river, some twenty paces from us, and there the rider halted it.

  ‘I seek the Earl of Locksley,’ said the man, in rough Norman French with, I swear, a touch of a Germanic accent.

  Robin pushed his way past my shoulder and took a pace out in front of our little formation. He had a strung bow in his hands, an arrow bag at his hip, but his sword remained sheathed.

  ‘I am Locksley,’ he said, cool as morning dew, ‘who are you and how may I serve you?’

  ‘It is I – or rather we – who wish to serve you,’ said the man, with a faint smile. ‘I am Wilhelmus of Mechlin, though my men call me Vim, and we are a company of free lances, soldiers of the road, good men all and doughty fighters. But we have no lord, we are masterless men. We had a bold captain – and he was strong and wise in the ways of battle – but he is dead now. So we would take service with you, my lord, for a season and for a generous fee, and we will swear to accept all your commands faithfully and do your bidding in all things.’

  ‘You are Mercadier’s men?’

  ‘We were. Now we are nobody’s men.’

  ‘What do you know of Mercadier’s death?’

  The blond mercenary laughed. ‘We know how he died. Like a warrior, in battle, as we would all wish to die. And we know who killed him.’ He inclined his head towards me. ‘Olivier up there saw the fight; barely escaped with his own life.’

  The familiar-looking man on the slope above lifted his left hand to me in a wary greeting. ‘We do not seek vengeance, if that is what concerns you,’ Vim said. ‘There is no gain in it for us – as God above is my witness – we merely seek a lord, a captain under whose banner we can fight for pay and profit. Your name is known to us, as is your reputation – as a generous lord and man who knows the value of a bag of silver and how to get hold of one. We would serve you – Robin Hood. Would you have us?’

  The mercenaries came down from the slope and one by one they each crossed the Ariège, bared their heads, put aside their many and varied weapons in a great, clanking pile by the river bank, and swore an oath of fealty to Robin, kneeling before him and placing their right hands on a tattered Bible that Tuck hastily produced from his baggage. They swore that they would never harm their lord and would faithfully serve him for a period of one year and one day from the day of the oath. Robin, in turn, gave each man a single silver penny as a token that he would, in due course, reward them richly for their service – although I knew that Robin must be running short of funds by then and wondered where the hoard of silver required to pay the mercenaries was to come from. Then, right there by the river side, not ten yards from the spot where I had believed a few hours earlier that I would be slaughtered, we sat down to break bread with these men.

  We ate and drank from the stores that Tronc had furnished us with, cracking open a barrel of wine, and unwrapping whole hams and cold roast ducks and many cheeses, and I believe this impressed the hungry mercenaries. But I mused privately that their attitude might well change when the silver ran out and we were forced to eat rotten cabbage soup and drink rainwater.

  As we ate, the Companions kept their distance from the routiers – Roland in particular seemed to be particularly suspicious of them, and he eyed them keenly as he ate. Nur crouched beside him, watching my cousin with a proprietorial air and, I noted to myself, perhaps rather meanly, that the weather remained glorious, the sun was shining, there was barely a cloud in the sky – no sign at all of the promised life-saving magic mist. But I was able – just – to restrain myself from asking her why this miraculous change in the weather had not occurred.

  Robin had been making a round of the mercenaries, greeting them, making the odd jest and getting to know them by name, but he finally grabbed a piece of bread and a duck leg and came over to sit beside me.

  We ate in contented silence for a while and then my lord said quietly, in a tone that would carry no further, ‘Well, Alan, what do you make of them?’

  I shrugged. ‘They are a hard crew but I think we can trust them. They had us at their mercy and instead of slaughtering us they swore an oath of fealty to you. I think they genuinely do seek a lord. A mercenary must have a paymaster. The only thing that concerns me is the money. They will have to be paid handsomely. These kind of men do not fight for nothing. Can you afford it?’

  ‘No,’ said Robin. ‘I can’t. I have almost no silver left, and I must have coin for these men. No matter, a little money trouble is a good deal better than being dead.’

  ‘What about Baruch’s gold?’ I asked.

  ‘I pawned a good deal of it in London and Bordeaux to pay our expenses. I do have a couple of trinkets left but I cannot
divide up, say, a tiny golden censer, with delicate silver filigree work, and share it out among fifty horny-handed men-at-arms. No, I must have silver coin, and plenty of it, before long.’

  We camped by the river, mercenaries and Companions still keeping their distance, and at dusk Robin gathered all of us together and gave a speech. He told the routiers that we sought a three-thumbed monk who called himself the Master, who was our enemy, and who was somewhere in the County of Foix, and then told them that we aimed to take revenge on him. Robin did not mention the Grail at all; instead he implied that the Master had great riches in his possession and that, once he was dead, we’d all share in the loot. At that, the mercenaries gave a rousing cheer.

  Once the Master was dead, Robin said, sounding as plausible as a courtroom cleric, we would ride north to Anjou and take up arms on the side of Arthur, Duke of Brittany, against the throne-stealing John of England, and when the usurper was dead or humbled, we would all be richly rewarded by the young, generous duke.

  The mercenaries dutifully cheered once more. Then Robin gave his three rules of behaviour, the three unbreakable rules that I had heard him outline before on the Great Pilgrimage, as a measure to keep discipline in the ranks of his men. ‘No man under my command steals so much as a penny, desecrates a church, or beds any woman without her consent – unless I give them my permission. And I will hang from the nearest tree any man who breaks these rules. No trial, no excuses, just a quick final dance at the end of a rope. Is that clear to everyone?’

  The men looked sober at this but not one ventured to protest at the promise of such rough justice. They were, after all, veteran soldiers, men used to warfare with harsh rules.

  As I washed my face in the river before bed that night, I found myself kneeling next to Olivier, who was making his own ablutions beside me. He smiled nervously, and I greeted him with a curt but civil ‘God save you!’

  An uncomfortable pause, then he said, ‘So you did for old Mercadier, eh?’

  I didn’t know how to respond to that and so I said nothing.

  ‘I knew you and he was enemies, like,’ the man continued. ‘He hated your guts, truth be told. Hated you from the first moment he saw you in Normandy, all those years ago – told me so himself. But you fixed him good and proper, sir, in the end.’

  I felt obliged to say something; the man was trying to be friendly, but I was still struggling with an appropriate answer.

  ‘It was not on my own account that we fought – it was for my cousin Roland, that blond man over there. Mercadier would have blinded him at Dangu – worse, my cousin was humiliated, and put in fear. In truth, we killed him for that humiliation.’

  ‘Yes, I remember that night, after the battle near Gisors – we took a score of Frenchies prisoner, if I remember rightly. Blinded most of ’em. Would have done your cousin, too, if the Earl hadn’t come in at the last minute with two dirty great chests of silver. I said to myself: that Earl, he’s an open-handed gent, he’s a lord who’d be generous to those who served him.’

  ‘You were there? You blinded all those men?’ I found that I had recoiled from the lean, grinning fellow. ‘That is monstrous. A crime against God – you should be ashamed of yourself…’

  ‘We don’t make the rules,’ said Olivier quickly. ‘We’re humble folk. We was just following orders. Mercadier’s orders – do that, he says, and we do it. And old King Richard knew about it, too. Oh yes, the Lionheart turned a blind eye to all of it. Blind eye – ha-ha. But war’s war, as old Mercadier often used to say to me; it’s not a child’s game. Our task is to win, and win any-which-way.’

  I opened my mouth to rebuke him and then closed it. I did not want to debate the morality of the battlefield with a fellow who killed for pay and blinded his prisoners. I was about to tell him there would be none of that sort of disgusting and immoral behaviour under Robin’s command, when I thought of Malloch, the Jew, and the bloody stumps of his severed fingers, and found I had nothing to say after all. So I stiffly bade him good night and went to join the Companions.

  Roland came to me as I was preparing to bed down. ‘I don’t like it, Alan,’ he said quietly. ‘I don’t trust these … people. They could murder us all in our sleep.’

  ‘They could have killed us this afternoon, if they’d wished. But they did not. I think they will prove to be loyal – after all, a man must have a lord,’ I said. ‘Mustn’t he? Besides, Robin seems to trust them.’

  Roland grunted something rude, seemingly unmollified, and went back to his bedroll.

  In spite of my words, I slept fitfully – the misericorde gripped in my hand.

  We left just after dawn – riding south, through Pamiers and other villages, beside the rushing waters of the Ariège, and coming into the green hill country at the base of the mighty Pyrenees. Around mid-afternoon we rounded the shoulder of a mountain and saw the castle of the Counts of Foix standing proud on an isolated hilltop before us. Its sight drew a gasp from me.

  It was a noble fortification: two square stone towers with a long, low stone hall joining them to each other, surrounded by a high curtain wall and all of it atop an almost sheer outcrop of grey rock that lunged upwards hundreds of feet above the surrounding river valley. At the foot of the mass of the castle rock, between that stark citadel and the place where the Arget river joined the Ariège, nestled the ancient Abbey of St Volusianus. The town, a stinking warren of craftsman’s and tradesman’s houses, was slightly to the south and squeezed between the abbey and the steep sides of the ancestral fortress of the Count of Foix.

  We made our camp about five hundred yards to the south-east of the castle, in the water meadows by the Ariège, and we were not unobserved. Indeed, our passage along the banks of the river was punctuated by the brisk sound of slamming wooden shutters as the townsfolk began to barricade themselves into their dwellings. I could make out the figures of a dozen men-at-arms or knights in bright red-and-gold-striped surcoats on the battlements of the castle, and a stream of townsfolk making their way up the winding path to it, burdened with cloth-wrapped bundles. And no wonder, with the addition of the mercenaries, we were now a sizeable force – and when more than fifty dirty, raggedy, unshaven yet heavily armed men arrive unexpectedly in your town, you lock up your house, bury your coin and get your wife and children up to the castle as quick as your legs will carry you, if you are a wise man.

  As the mercenaries set up camp in the water meadow, under the watchful gaze of the crowd on the battlements, I hunted out my best clothes and, with Thomas’s help, managed to find a cleanish pair of grey hose and a blue tunic trimmed with silk that was only lightly stained. With my hair combed, my face more or less clean, my sword belted around my waist but without armour or shield, I accompanied Robin and Vim through the narrow streets of the town, past the locked gate of the abbey and up the steep, serpentine road to the castle and its main entrance, a barred double door set in a stone arch.

  We were challenged fifty feet from the gate, and when Robin announced himself, the portal swung open and we were escorted by a dozen men-at-arms in their gaudy gold-and-red-striped attire, to the hall of the castle, and ushered into the august presence of Raymond-Roger, the fifth Count of Foix of that name.

  We bowed and Robin handed over a letter from another Raymond-Roger, our friend Tronc, which briefly introduced us as peaceful travellers and commended us to his care. The Count – a fat, angry-looking man nearing fifty, with a weak, petulant mouth – read the letter quickly, standing by his hearth, and then scowled at us. He took a long pull from a jewelled goblet, wiped a trickle of wine from his lips with his embroidered sleeve and said, ‘So you are the Earl of Locksley – the outlawed Earl of Locksley, if I’m not mistaken, also known as Robin Hood.’

  ‘I am,’ said Robin, smiling genially, though I saw a glint of steel in his gaze.

  It was clear that the Count had his own sources of information.

  ‘And you were chased out of Toulouse and have decided to come south to visit my lands �
� with a small army at your back; an army that I see is now encamped outside my peaceful little town.’

  The Count gestured violently at a small barred window set high in the stone wall of his low-ceilinged hall. ‘What am I to make of you? The infamous Robin Hood – here in my castle. How would you respond if I were to come to your lands in England – Yorkshire, isn’t it? – under similar circumstances? Would you welcome me with open arms? Feast me, fall on my neck and rejoice to the heavens at my coming? I very much doubt it.’

  ‘We mean no harm to you, my lord,’ said Robin with a frank and winning smile. ‘We seek a powerful man, a former monk, who goes by the name of the Master and who has an extra thumb on his left hand. We were told that you had had some dealings with him and we would be grateful for a little information. That is all.’

  ‘And what would you do if you were to encounter this man, this Master?’ asked the Count, tilting his head on one side and squeezing one eye shut. I realized then that the man was extremely drunk.

  For a moment, Robin did not answer. He seemed to be weighing his words carefully. Then he said coldly, formally, like a man pronouncing a sentence in law, ‘I would kill him; I would slit his belly, pull out his steaming entrails, roast them and feed them to him. I would cut off his head, but slowly, sawing through his neck with an old and rusty blade, and bear his ugly, severed poll, dripping, all the way back to Yorkshire on my spear-point. I would slaughter him, dismember him, turn him into fox-food – and I would destroy any man, any man, who seeks to protect him.’

  The Count seemed rather taken aback by Robin’s answer, and the naked threat that it contained. He was silent for several long moments. I wondered if he would order his men-at-arms to fall on us, and I readied myself. But he remained still and silent, and a range of expressions flickered across his wine-sodden face: outrage, anger, fear, calculation, wonderment – and was that last expression a look of relief? Then he gave Robin a sly smile, which broadened into a wide grin.