Grail Knight: Number 5 in series (Outlaw Chronicles)

by Donald, Angus

  She looked up when I came barging in and she eyed the big bundle that I was holding in my right hand. The grey cloth of it was stained with gore and, as I set it on the table before her, a little red fluid oozed from the bottom.

  ‘This is a gift for you, Nur,’ I said, and then relapsed into silence as the witch began to untie the knotted linen at the top of the bundle and peel back the sticky cloth to reveal her prize. It was the Master’s severed head, freshly hacked off moments after that evil creature had breathed his last.

  Nur cooed over it as if it were a newborn.

  ‘Oh Alan, you always were a kind boy,’ she said happily. ‘The things I can do with this! You have no idea of the power of this fresh head – its eyes, and brains, the skull itself, of course…’

  ‘Don’t speak to me about power,’ I said. Then realizing that I had sounded harsh, I smiled tightly at her. ‘And I have something else to say to you…’ But I stopped, for I had no idea how to express what needed to be said.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, and stopped again. Then, all in a rush, I said, ‘I am deeply sorry about the way that I treated you after you were so cruelly hurt by my enemies in Outremer. I behaved dishonourably, perhaps even in a cowardly manner, and I am truly sorry. I did love you for a time, but after, but after…’

  Then I ran dry of words.

  Nur was looking at me intently, her brown eyes glowing almost golden above her habitual black covering. ‘You found that you could not love me after this had happened,’ she said it for me. Then she reached to the side of her face and untied a string, pulling the veil away from her face to reveal its awful destruction.

  I stared at the ruin of her features, the nose gone, and the ears, the lips cropped to display her teeth, now mostly rotten or missing, but I found that I could look at her without flinching, or feeling horror or disgust, or even pity – this was only Nur, a young woman whom I had once loved. Our eyes met and I looked deeply into the infinite sadness of her soul – and saw my own reflection.

  ‘How could you love me, Alan?’ she said softly. ‘How could you love me when I looked like this. No man could. But we shared a little happiness, for a time, you and I, and now I have a new life. The spirits guard me, and I have found myself an honoured place as their servant. Perhaps our love was never meant to be, perhaps it was the spirits who chose me and took me away from you.’

  I felt a wave of relief wash through my whole body, from the top of my head to my toes, and I felt clean, renewed, whole. I smiled with deep, joyous gratitude at the young woman I had so sorely wronged.

  ‘And Goody?’ I ventured.

  ‘I cannot lift the curse, Alan – with great regret, I cannot lift it. The curse is a law unto itself. But we have the Grail now, so, go, take it to her, let her drink from it and she will surely recover.’

  ‘You are certain that she still lives?’

  Nur reached into the neckline of her robe and pulled out the leather bag that always hung there on a thong. She cleared a space on the wooden table and emptied the contents on the surface. A cascade of tiny grey-white bones clattered on to the wood. The witch peered intently at the pattern that had been created. For a long while she said nothing. Then…

  ‘She lives, Alan. Goody yet lives – but her doom is near!’

  I felt my heart give a skip – a feeling of intense relief mingled with fear.

  ‘You are certain?’ I said.

  Nur looked at me. ‘Do you know what these bones are?’ she said. ‘Do you know what power of divination they possess?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Do you remember our love aboard that ship? With the King? On the sea journey to Outremer?’

  I nodded – and I knew with a horrible creeping dread exactly what she was about to say.

  ‘We made a baby, Alan – the spirits granted us a child, which began to grow in my womb the day we made love below decks.’

  I could not speak, my throat had closed itself like a fist.

  ‘It died – when you took your love away, it died. It was born dead a few months after you left me and that accursed land. A boy. A tiny perfect boy. My grief was like a madness and before I buried the child, our son, I took his little right hand, I cut it off and held it in mine. All the while when I journeyed, over mountain and desert, suffering, starving – following you, Alan. Walking in your footsteps. For all of that terrible trek, I had the hand of our child in mine. When I did not know which way to go, I asked our child and his spirit guided me to the right path. When I was in doubt or in fear, I asked our son and he showed me the way. He still shows me the way, he still speaks to me, even now … and he tells me that your Goody yet lives.’

  The skin on my neck was crawling at her words. My heart was an autumn gale of emotions: horror, pity, remorse, disgust…

  ‘He has forgiven you, Alan,’ said Nur looking intently into my face. ‘Our son forgives you. All is well, and all will be well.’

  I could look at her no longer, nor could I look at the pathetic scatter of childish finger bones on the table. I turned to go, but as I reached the door, I heard Nur say behind me, ‘Thank you, Alan…’ She coughed, seeming to have something caught in her throat. ‘I thank you for your gift.’

  I went in search of fresh air – and Robin – and found both at the foot of the mountain, where my lord was overseeing the burial of our dead. As half a dozen mercenaries thudded into the turf with pick and shovel, I told him what had happened with the Master, how he had taken the lance-dagger and ended himself, and humbly begged my lord’s pardon. He was, in fact, not particularly angry with me.

  ‘At least you did not kill him yourself,’ he said. ‘My word has not been broken. But whatever possessed you to give him that old weapon, I will never understand. Are you soft in the head? Still, it saves us having to hand him over to the Count of Foix for torture and execution – and who knows, he might have been able to weasel out of that fate, somehow. No, I’m content that he’s no more; good riddance to him.’

  Nur’s words were preying on my mind – about Goody’s doom being near – and my own words to the Master were also echoing in my head – and I asked Robin when we might begin our journey home.

  ‘All right, all right, Alan, I know you’re very keen to set off – shall we say the day after tomorrow? We’ll give the wounded one more day of rest, and ourselves time to pack our traps, and still have plenty of time to get back to Goody before the first day of July. Would that satisfy you?’

  It would. I returned to the castle lighter of heart in the sure knowledge that we would very soon be heading home.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  I awoke from a deep slumber a little after midnight. Something was very wrong. I had been sleeping on the ground floor of the keep, near the door, and I disturbed nobody as I grabbed my sword belt and slung it with its heavy scabbard over my shoulder and went out into the courtyard in my chemise, my legs feeling the chill of the May night air. All was quiet as the grave. By the faint starlight and a sliver of moon, I could see a huddle of sleeping men under an awning by the kitchens, and a few over by the store rooms. I ran my eye over the crenellated line of the battlements, east, south, west, noticed nothing, stopped and looked again. In the dim light, I could just make out what looked like a small round lump on the southern part of the western wall between two perfectly square tooth-like shapes of the fortifications. For an instant, the gap between the ‘teeth’ was completely filled, and then it disappeared – was that a body, a person? The smaller lump seemed to still be there. Had it been merely a trick played by my midnight eyes? It crossed my mind to sound the alarm but I hesitated; fear that I had made a mistake silenced me, I think, and the certain knowledge that we had no foes around for miles – and the sight, if my eyes had not deceived me, of someone going out of the castle, and not trying to come in. All these factors meant that I did not rouse the garrison. Instead, I trotted over to the stone steps and bounded up them to the walkway below the parapet, determined to look again at this st
range gap between the fortifications’ teeth, that had filled and then mysteriously emptied.

  I found myself looking down at a man, hanging from a knotted rope attached to one of Little John’s war hooks. He was climbing slowly down the outside of the castle walls. I must have been still fuddled by sleep for it took three heartbeats before I realized that the man now looking up at me from the bottom of the rope was my old friend and comrade Sir Nicholas de Scras.

  The former Hospitaller was just reaching the ground. He looked up, released the rope and put a finger to his lips and made a shushing noise. I was intrigued. Where could he be going at this time of night? He beckoned me wordlessly to come down to him and, stepping through the crenellations and with Fidelity in its scabbard slung across my shoulders, I clambered down. Sir Nicholas had moved away from the wall, down the steep slope a score or so paces on to a flattish patch of the mountainside about the size of a moderate riding cloak. As I scrambled down the rocky ground to join him, I saw with a feeling in my gut like water draining out of a gutter that he had baggage beside him, a bedroll, a bundle of weapons, a sack of food, and a cloth bag of thin material which showed the edges of a square box inside.

  I stared at the cloth-wrapped box and then looked up at Sir Nicholas’s face. The thin moon was high behind his right shoulder and his familiar features were hidden in deep shadow.

  ‘You are stealing it,’ I said incredulously. ‘In God’s name, are you seriously attempting to make away with the Holy Grail?’

  Sir Nicholas spoke: ‘Come with me, Alan – leave this place, leave your evil lord and come with me. You are better than this.’

  I still could not quite compass what Sir Nicholas was doing.

  ‘You are trying to take the Grail from Robin – from Robin?’ I said stupidly. ‘The Grail is his; we all agreed, right from the very beginning, that he should have it in his sole possession.’

  ‘He is not worthy of it.’ The words came out as a hiss. ‘He is a thief and a murderer, Alan – a Godless man of corruption. We both know this, and how you can serve him, I do not understand. Come with me, Alan, I beg you – leave this villainous so-called Earl, come with me and serve the blessed Grail for the glory of God.’

  I said, as calmly as I could, ‘You cannot do this, Sir Nicholas. You cannot. Let us go back inside the castle, we will return the Grail to its place in the chapel and we will forget this happened.’

  ‘He is not worthy of the Grail,’ Sir Nicholas said. ‘He is a dirty thief – he stole the Templars’ silver. I know it. You know it.’

  ‘You call him a thief and claim some kind of moral superiority,’ I said, ‘and then use this moral superiority as a reason to steal from him. Which makes you equally a thief.’

  But while I was saying this, a part of me was thinking that Sir Nicholas did not sound quite himself. He sounded to me like another man altogether, and his hidden face added to this illusion.

  ‘The Earl of Locksley does not understand the power of the Grail. He cannot even see its true holiness. Why should a man like that have it in his possession? He does not love God. He does not worship Him. He respects none of God’s laws; he takes what he wishes and does whatever he likes, regardless of the teachings of the Church. He is evil and it is the duty of all good Christians to stand in his way, to impede him in all his Devilish designs. The thought of allowing him – him! – to be the keeper of the Grail, the cup of Christ itself, is an abomination. But you, Alan, you are a good Christian, you know how he is – you can be saved from his evil. Come with me; follow me and leave that wicked man. The Grail will save us both!’

  A chill ran down my spine at Sir Nicholas’s words. I knew that tone now: he sounded, more than anything else, like the pock-marked man whose tonsured head I had hacked off that very morning, a man who had also asked me to join him in his dreams of power. Could the Master’s evil soul have somehow entered this good and true knight’s living body and infected him with his own peculiar madness? Or did the Grail itself drive people to madness?

  ‘I cannot let you take the Grail,’ I said flatly.

  ‘Stand aside, Alan, for I will have it,’ Sir Nicholas said.

  And suddenly we both had our swords in our hands.

  Yet both had a reluctance to strike the first blow.

  ‘Let us go back,’ I pleaded. ‘See – the rope still hangs there. We will return the Grail to the chapel, go to our beds and never speak of this meeting again. Nicholas, my old friend, please, I beg you, let us unmake this evil night before it is too late.’

  ‘Stand aside, Sir Alan.’ The knight spoke through gritted teeth.

  ‘I will not.’

  ‘Then to Hell with you!’ he said. And struck.

  He was dressed in mail, I in a flimsy chemise; he was angry and disgusted with Robin, and I think more than a little mad – but I was determined that he should not make away with the object of our quest, the prize that had cost the lives of Tuck and Gavin, the prize that I must have in order to save Goody’s life. So I struck back.

  There was not much to tell between us as swordsmen. My youth and speed were balanced against his battle experience, but I think the wound in his left side, an axe blow into his ribs from one of the Knights of Our Lady as he came over the wall, turned the tables in my favour.

  His first strike, a double-handed overhand vertical blow at my head came unbelievably fast, and I was slow, but just speedy enough to sweep it away as it came down towards my skull, stumbling two steps to my right down the rocky slope and almost losing my footing altogether. My right calf muscle protested at the sudden jar, but that stumble saved me, too, for it made me duck my head to find my balance and in his next blow the steel came whistling no more than an inch above my blond locks. But then I forgot that Sir Nicholas was my friend and saw him, through a film of sweaty battle-fear, as the man who might very well end my life in the next two or three heartbeats.

  I blocked his next slice with my cross-guard, and thrust Fidelity’s point at his eyes, making him take a fast step back up the slope. I saw that he was feeling his wound, favouring his left side. And I used that weakness without the slightest scruple – attacking that side relentlessly, hard blow after blow aimed at his ribs, all of which he parried, but which made him wince in pain with every blocked strike. I could see that the wound had opened and blood, black in the moonlight, was blooming on his surcoat. I could also see that our battle cries and the sharp ringing of steel had roused the castle and dark heads were appearing, and red torches too, at the battlements. He saw them as well and knew that he was lost – for now there could be no silent, secret escape for him with the Grail box slung over his back. But even though he knew that he must lose – Robin’s men would be out of the gates in a few moments – he still did his best to cut me down. He still tried to kill me.

  But, in the finish, with his wounded side, he was no match for me, and I killed him before Robin’s men came within ten paces. He stumbled on the uneven slope, went down on one knee, tired, bleeding, and was a fraction of an instant slow to block my swinging strike at his unprotected head. Fidelity smashed into his blade and such was the power of my blow that it carried on, burying itself two inches into his skull, just above the ear.

  And he was dead.

  God have mercy on my soul, and his – for I killed one good friend in the service of another that night. Sir Nicholas de Scras was a fine warrior and a true knight, a good man, and I will remember him as such, not as the skulking thief who, driven mad by the lure of the Grail, tried to cheat Robin and do me to death. I can feel the tears rising as I write, and remember him as the man he truly was.

  I have killed men, so many men, in war and out of it – for spite, for duty, by accident, and very occasionally for the pleasure of seeing the light go out in their eyes. Their shades know me and sometimes they form up in squadrons, dress their ranks, lower their lances and charge me in my dreams. I did not wish to kill Sir Nicholas de Scras – but I did so. I killed him for Robin, for a principle, but main
ly, I swear, just to prevent him from killing me.

  I must lay down my quill for a little while now.

  The dawn, when it came, was warm and bright and Robin decreed that we would be leaving the very next day. I was glad – the death of Sir Nicholas lay heavily on my soul, and I still grieved sorely for Tuck as well. This quest, this strange adventure, may have been successful in that we now possessed the Grail and the Master was dead and his knights killed or scattered – but the toll had been a crushingly heavy one. I wanted to be home with Goody with no more delay. Thomas and I spent the morning packing our weapons and belongings into waterproof leather sacks in preparation for the long journey – and I spent a good deal of time praying in the chapel before the Grail, which had been restored to its place there and now was flanked by two armed guards on either side of the altar.

  I was on my knees, trying to ignore the bored, much-scarred and slightly odiferous mercenaries, and focus on an image in my head of my beloved wife, when I heard the sentry calling for Robin from the roof of the keep. There was an urgency in his voice, almost a note of panic, that made me straighten up, abandon my prayers and run out into the sunny courtyard.

  Robin and Little John and half a dozen mercenaries were already standing on the flat roof of the keep when I reached the top of the wooden ladder that was its only method of access. And looking west, I felt the water in my bladder chill. For coming along the track around the small hill to the north-west of our refuge was an army – more than a hundred, perhaps two hundred men, mostly in black surcoats over mail, but a score or so in white cloaks, well equipped for war, riding well-trained horses.

  The Templars had come to Montségur.

  I looked over at Robin, who was wearing the particularly serene expression I knew so well, and which meant he was deeply troubled, and said, ‘We’re not leaving tomorrow, are we?’

  He looked over to me and smiled warmly. ‘Let’s just see what they want with us before we start despairing, shall we?’