The Grail Quest Books 1-3: Harlequin, Vagabond, Heretic

by Bernard Cornwell

  'Brace yourselves!' Cobham shouted.

  The horses were on top of them, vast and high, lances reaching, the noise of the hooves and the rattle of mail overwhelming. Frenchmen were shouting victory as they leaned into the lunge.

  'Now kill them!' Cobham shouted.

  The lances struck the shields and Thomas was hurled back and a hoof thumped his shoulder, but a man behind pushed him upright so he was forced hard against the enemy horse. He had no room to use the sword and the shield was crushed against his side. There was the stench of horse sweat and blood in his nostrils. Something struck his helmet, making his skull ring and vision darken, then miraculously the pressure was gone and he glimpsed a patch of daylight and staggered into it, swinging the sword to where he thought the enemy was. 'Shield up!' a voice screamed and he instinctively obeyed, only to have the shield battered down, but his dazed vision was sharpening and he could see a bright-coloured trapper and a mailed foot in a big leather stirrup close to his left. He rammed his sword through the trapper and into the horse's guts and the beast twisted away. Thomas was dragged along by the trapped blade, but managed to give it a violent tug that jerked it free so sharply that its recoil struck an English shield.

  The charge had not broken the line, but had broken against it like a sea wave striking a cliff. The horses recoiled and the English men-at-arms advanced to hack at the horsemen who were relinquishing lances to draw their swords. Thomas was pushed aside by the men-at-arms. He was panting, dazed and sweat-blinded. His head was a blur of pain. An archer was lying dead in front of him, head crushed by a hoof. Why had the man no helmet? Then the men-at-arms were reeling back as more horsemen filed through the dead to thicken the fight, all of them pushing towards the Prince of Wales's high banner. Thomas banged his shield hard into a horse's face, felt a glancing blow on his sword and skewered the blade down the horse's flank. The rider was fighting a man on the other side of his horse and Thomas saw a small gap between the saddle's high pommel and the man's mail skirt, and he shoved the sword up into the Frenchman's belly, heard the man's angry roar turn into a shriek, then saw the horse was falling towards him. He scrambled clear, pushing a man out of his path before the horse collapsed in a crash of armour and beating hooves. English men-at-arms swarmed over the dying beast, going to meet the next enemy. A horse with an iron garro deep in its haunch was rearing and striking with its hooves. Another horse tried to bite Thomas and he struck it with the shield, then flailed at its rider with his sword, but the man wheeled away and Thomas looked desperately for the next enemy.

  'No prisoners!' the Earl screamed, seeing a man trying to lead a Frenchman out of the mêlée. The Earl had discarded his shield and was wielding his sword with both hands, hacking it like a woodman's axe and daring any Frenchman to come and challenge him. They dared. More and more horsemen pushed into the horror; there seemed no end of them. The sky was bright with flags and streaked with steel, the grass was gouged by iron and slick with blood. A Frenchman rammed the bottom edge of his shield down onto an Englishman's helmet, wheeled the horse, lunged a sword into an archer's back, wheeled again and struck down at the man still dazed by the shield blow. 'Montjoie St Denis!' he shouted.

  'St George!' The Earl of Northampton, visor up and face streaked with blood, rammed his sword through a gap in a chanfron to take a horse's eye. The beast reared and its rider fell to be trampled by a horse behind. The Earl looked for the Prince and could not see him, then could not search more, for a fresh conroi with white crosses on black shields was forging through the mêlée, pushing friend and foe alike from their path as they carried their lances towards the Prince's standard.

  Thomas saw a baffled lance coming at him and he threw himself to the ground where he curled into a ball and let the heavy horses crash by.

  'Montjoie St Denis! ' the voices yelled above him as the Count of Astarac's conroi struck home.

  —«»—«»—«»—

  Sir Guillaume d'Evecque had seen nothing like it. He hoped he never saw it again. He saw a great army breaking itself against a line of men on foot.

  It was true that the battle was not lost and Sir Guillaume had convinced himself it could yet be won, but he was also aware of an unnatural sluggishness in himself. He liked war. He loved the release of battle, he relished imposing his will on an enemy and he had ever profited from combat, yet he suddenly knew he did not want to charge up the hill. There was a doom in this place, and he pushed that thought away and kicked his spurs back. 'Montjoie St Denis!' he shouted, but knew he was just pretending the enthusiasm. No one else in the charge seemed afflicted by doubts. The knights were beginning to jostle each other as they strove to aim their lances at the English line. Very few arrows were flying now, and none at all were coming from the chaos ahead where the Prince of Wales's banner flew so high. Horsemen were now charging home all along the line, hacking at the English ranks with swords and axe, but more and more men were angling across the slope to join the fury on the English right. It was there, Sir Guillaume told himself, that the battle would be won and the English broken. It would be hard work, of course, and bloody work, hacking through the prince's troops, but once the French horsemen were in the rear of the English line it would collapse like rotted wood, and no amount of reinforcements from the top of the hill could stop that panicked rout. So fight, he told himself, fight, but there was still the nagging fear that he was riding into disaster. He had never felt anything like it and he hated it, cursing himself for being a coward!

  A dismounted French knight, his helmet's face-piece torn away and blood dripping from a hand holding a broken sword, while his other hand gripped the remnants of a shield that had been split into two, staggered down the hill, then dropped to his knees and vomited. A riderless horse, stirrups flapping, galloped white-eyed across the line of the charge with its torn trapper trailing in the grass. The turf here was flecked by the white feathers of fallen arrows that looked like a field of flowers.

  'Go! Go! Go!' Sir Guillaume shouted at his men, and knew he was shouting at himself. He would never tell men to go on a battlefield, but to come, to follow, and he cursed himself for using the word and stared ahead, looking for a victim for his lance, and he watched for the pits and tried to ignore the mêlée that was just to his right. He planned to widen the mêlée by boring into the English line where it was still lightly engaged. Die a hero, he told himself, carry the damned lance right up the hill and let no man ever say that Sir Guillaume d'Evecque was a coward.

  Then a great cheer sounded from his right and he dared look there, away from the pits. He saw the Prince of Wales's great banner was toppling into the struggling men. The French were cheering and Sir Guillaume's gloom lifted magically for it was a French banner that pressed ahead, going over the place where the Prince's flag had flown, and then Sir Guillaume saw the banner. He saw it and stared at it. He saw a yale holding a cup and he pressed his knee to turn his horse and shouted at his men to follow him. 'To war!' he shouted. To kill. And there was no more sluggishness and no more doubts. For Sir Guillaume had found his enemy.

  —«»—«»—«»—

  The King saw the enemy knights with the white-crossed shields pierce his son's battle and then he watched his son's banner fall. He could not see his son's black armour. Nothing showed on his face.

  'Let me go!' the Bishop of Durham demanded.

  The King brushed a horsefly from his horse's neck. 'Pray for him,' he instructed the bishop.

  'What the hell use will prayer be?' the bishop demanded, and hefted his fearful mace. 'Let me go, sire!'

  'I need you here,' the King said mildly, 'and the boy must learn as I did.' I have other sons, Edward of England told himself, though none like that one. That son will be a great king one day, a warrior king, a scourge of our enemies. If he lives. And he must learn to live in the chaos and terror of battle. 'You will stay,' he told the bishop firmly, then beckoned a herald. 'That badge,' he said, pointing to the red banner with the yale, 'whose is it?'

 
; The herald stared at the banner for a long time, then frowned as if uncertain of his opinion.

  'Well?' the King prompted him.

  'I haven't seen it in sixteen years,' the herald said, sounding dubious of his own judgement, 'but I do believe it's the badge of the Vexille family, sire.'

  'The Vexilles?' the King asked.

  'Vexilles?' the bishop roared. 'Vexilles! Damned traitors. They fled from France in your great-grandfather's reign, sire, and he gave them land in Cheshire. Then they sided with Mortimer.'

  'Ah,' the King said, half smiling. So the Vexilles had supported his mother and her lover, Mortimer, who together had tried to keep him from the throne. No wonder they fought well. They were trying to avenge the loss of their Cheshire estates.

  'The eldest son never left England,' the bishop said, staring down at the widening struggle on the slope. He had to raise his voice to be heard above the din of steel. 'He was a strange fellow. Became a priest! Can you credit it? An eldest son! Didn't like his father, he claimed, but we locked him up all the same.'

  'On my orders?' the King asked.

  'You were very young, sire, so one of your council made sure the Vexille priest couldn't cause trouble. Sealed him up in a monastery, then beat and starved him till he was convinced he was holy. After that he was harmless so they put him into a country parish to rot. He must be dead by now.' The bishop frowned because the English line was bending backwards, pushed by the conroi of Vexille knights. 'Let me go down, sire,' he pleaded, 'I pray you, let me take my men down.'

  'I asked you to pray to God rather than to me.'

  'I have a score of priests praying,' the bishop said, 'and so do the French. We're deafening God with our prayers. Please, sire, I beg you!'

  The King relented. 'Go on foot,' he told the bishop, 'and with only one conroi.'

  The bishop howled in triumph, then slid awkwardly off his destrier's back. 'Barratt!' he shouted to one of his men-at-arms. 'Bring your fellows! Come on!' The bishop hefted his wickedly spiked mace, then ran down the hill, bellowing at the French that the time of their death had come.

  The herald counted the conroi that followed the bishop down the slope. 'Can twenty men make a difference, sire?' he asked the King.

  'It will make small difference to my son,' the King said, hoping his son yet lived, 'but a great difference to the bishop. I think I would have had an enemy in the Church for ever if I'd not released him to his passion.' He watched as the bishop thrust the rear English ranks aside and, still bellowing, waded into the mêlée. There was still no sign of the prince's black armour, nor of his standard.

  The herald backed his palfrey away from the King, who made the sign of the cross, then twitched his ruby-hilted sword to make certain the day's earlier rain had not rusted the blade into the scabbard's metal throat. The weapon moved easily enough and he knew he might need it yet, but for now he crossed his mailed hands on his saddle's pommel and just watched the battle.

  He would let his son win it, he decided. Or else lose his son.

  The herald stole a look at his king and saw that Edward of England's eyes were closed. The King was at prayer.

  —«»—«»—«»—

  The battle had spread along the hill. Every part of the English line was engaged now, though in most places the fighting was light. The arrows had taken their toll, but there was none left and so the French could ride right up to the dismounted men-at-arms. Some Frenchmen tried to break through, but most were content to shout insults in the hope of drawing a handful of the dismounted English out of the shield wall. But the English discipline held. They returned insult for insult, inviting the French to come and die on their blades.

  Only where the Prince of Wales's banner had flown was the fighting ferocious, and there, and for a hundred paces on either side, the two armies had become inextricably tangled. The English line had been torn, but it had not been pierced. Its rear ranks still defended the hill while the front ranks had been scattered into the enemy where they fought against the surrounding horsemen. The Earls of Northampton and Warwick had tried to keep the line steady, but the Prince of Wales had broken the formation by his eagerness to carry the fight to the enemy and the Prince's bodyguards were now down the slope near to the pits where so many horses lay with broken legs. It was there that Guy Vexille had lanced the Prince's standard-bearer so that the great flag, with its lilies and leopards and gilded fringe, was being trampled by the iron-shod hoofs of his conroi.

  Thomas was twenty yards away, curled into the bloody belly of a dead horse and flinching every time another destrier trod near him. Noise overwhelmed him, but through the shrieks and hammering he could hear English voices still shouting defiance and he lifted his head to see Will Skeat with Father Hobbe, a handful of archers and two men-at-arms defending themselves against French horsemen. Thomas was tempted to stay in his blood-reeking haven, but he forced himself to scramble over the horse's body and run to Skeat's side. A French sword glanced off his helmet, he bounced off the rump of a horse, then stumbled into the small group.

  'Still alive, lad?' Skeat said.

  'Jesus,' Thomas swore.

  'He ain't interested. Come on, you bastard! Come on!' Skeat was calling to a Frenchman, but the enemy preferred to carry his unbroken lance towards the battle raging about the fallen standard. 'They're still coming,' Skeat said in tones of wonderment. 'No end to the goddamn bastards.'

  An archer in the prince's green and white livery, without a helmet and bleeding from a deep shoulder wound, lurched towards Skeat's group. A Frenchman saw him, casually wheeled his horse and chopped down with a battle-axe.

  'The bastard!' Sam said, and, before Skeat could stop him, he ran from the group and leaped up onto the back of the Frenchman's horse. He put an arm round the knight's neck then simply fell backwards, dragging the man from the high saddle. Two enemy men-at-arms tried to intervene, but the victim's horse was in their way.

  'Protect him!' Skeat shouted, and led his group to where Sam was beating fists at the Frenchman's armour. Skeat pushed Sam away, lifted the Frenchman's breastplate just enough to let a sword enter, then slid his blade into the man's chest. 'Bastard,' Skeat said. 'Got no right to kill archers. Bastard.' He twisted the sword, rammed it in further, then yanked it free.

  Sam lifted the battle-axe and grinned. 'Proper weapon,' he said, then turned as the two would-be rescuers came riding in. 'Bastards, bastards,' Sam shouted as he chopped the axe at the nearer horse. Skeat and one of the men-at-arms were flailing swords at the other beast. Thomas tried to protect them with his shield as he stabbed up at the Frenchman and felt his sword deflected by shield or armour, then the two horses, both bleeding, wheeled away.

  'Stay together,' Skeat said, 'stay together. Watch our backs, Tom.'

  Thomas did not answer.

  'Tom!' Skeat shouted.

  But Thomas had seen the lance. There were thousands of lances on the field, but most of them were painted in spiralling colours, and this one was black, warped and feeble. It was the lance of St George that had hung in the cobwebs of his childhood nave and now it was being used as the pole of a standard and the flag that hung from the silver blade was red as blood and embroidered with a silver yale. His heart lurched. The lance was here! All the mysteries he had tried so hard to avoid were on this battlefield. The Vexilles were here. His father's killer was probably here.

  'Tom!' Skeat shouted again.

  Thomas just pointed at the flag. 'I have to kill them.'

  'Don't be a fool, Tom,' Skeat said, then whipped back as a horseman crashed in from the lower slope. The man tried to veer away from the group of infantry, but Father Hobbe, the only man still carrying a bow, thrust the weapon into the horse's front legs, tangling them and snapping the bow. The horse collapsed with a crash by their side and Sam whacked the axe into the screaming knight's spine.

  'Vexille!' Thomas shouted as loud as he could. 'Vexille!'

  'Lost his bloody head,' Skeat said to Father Hobbe.

  'He h
asn't,' the priest said. He was without a weapon now, but when Sam had finished chopping his new axe through mail and leather, the priest took the dead Frenchman's falchion that he hefted appreciatively.

  'Vexille! Vexille!' Thomas screamed.

  One of the knights about the yale standard heard the shout and turned his pig-snouted helmet. It seemed to Thomas that the man stared at him through the snout's eye-slits for a long time, though it could only have been for a heartbeat or two because the man was assailed by footmen. He was defending himself skilfully, his horse dancing the battle steps to keep itself from being hamstrung, but the rider beat down one Englishman's sword and slashed his left spur across the face of the other before turning the quick horse and killing the first man with a lunge of his sword. The second man reeled away and the pig-snouted knight turned and trotted straight at Thomas.

  'Asking for bloody trouble,' Skeat growled, but went to Thomas's side. The knight swerved at the last moment and beat down with his sword. Thomas parried and was shocked by the force of the man's blow that stung his shield arm to his shoulder. The horse was gone, turned, came back and the knight beat at him again. Skeat lunged at the horse, but the destrier had a mail coat under its trapper and the sword slid away. Thomas parried again and was half beaten to his knees. Then the horseman was three paces away, the destrier was swivelling fast and the knight raised his sword hand and pushed up his pig-snout, and Thomas saw it was Sir Simon Jekyll.

  Anger rose in Thomas like bile and, ignoring Skeat's warning shout, he ran forward, sword swinging. Sir Simon parried the blow with contemptuous ease, the trained horse sidestepped delicately and Sir Simon's blade was coming back fast. Thomas had to twist aside and even so, fast as he was, the blade clanged against his helmet with stunning force.