‘I do so promise,’ Sir Guillaume said earnestly and the Earl raised him and the two men kissed on the lips.
‘I’m honoured,’ the Earl said, thumping Sir Guillaume’s shoulder, then turned to Thomas again. ‘So you can raise a decent force. You’ll need, what? Fifty men? Half archers.’
‘Fifty men in a distant fief?’ Thomas said. ‘They won’t last a month, my lord.’
‘But they will,’ the Earl said, and explained his previous, surprised reaction to the news that Astarac lay in the county of Berat. ‘Years ago, young Thomas, before you were off your mother’s tit, we owned property in Gascony. We lost it, but we never formally surrendered it, so there are three or four strongholds in Berat over which I have a legitimate claim.’ John Buckingham, reading Father Ralph’s notes again, raised an eyebrow to suggest that the claim was tenuous at best, but he said nothing. ‘Go and take one of those castles,’ the Earl said, ‘make raids, make money, and men will join you.’
‘And men will come against us,’ Thomas observed quietly.
‘And Guy Vexille will be one,’ the Earl said, ‘so that’s your opportunity. Take it, Thomas, and get out of here before the truce is made.’
Thomas hesitated for a heartbeat or two. What the Earl suggested sounded close to insanity. He was to take a force into the deep south of French territory, capture a fortress, defend it, hope to capture his cousin, find Astarac, explore it, follow the Grail. Only a fool would accept such a charge, but the alternative was to rot away with every other unemployed archer. ‘I shall do it, my lord,’ he said.
‘Good. Be off with you, all of you!’ The Earl led Thomas to the door, but once Robbie and Sir Guillaume were on the stairs, he pulled Thomas back for a private word. ‘Don’t take the Scotsman with you,’ the Earl said.
‘No, my lord? He’s a friend.’
‘He’s a damned Scot and I don’t trust them. They’re all goddamned thieves and liars. Worse than the bloody French. Who holds him prisoner?’
‘Lord Outhwaite.’
‘And Outhwaite let him travel with you? I’m surprised. Never mind, send your Scottish friend back to Outhwaite and let him moulder away until his family raises the ransom. But I don’t want a bloody Scotsman taking the Grail away from England. You understand?’
‘Yes, my lord.’
‘Good man,’ the Earl said and clapped Thomas’s back. ‘Now go and prosper.’
Go and die, more like. Go on a fool’s errand, for Thomas did not believe the Grail existed. He wanted it to exist, he wanted to believe his father’s words, but his father had been mad at times and mischievous at others, and Thomas had his own ambition, to be a leader as good as Will Skeat. To be an archer. Yet the fool’s errand gave him a chance to raise men, lead them and follow his dream. So he would pursue the Grail and see what came.
He went to the English encampment and beat a drum. Peace was coming, but Thomas of Hookton was raising men and going to war.
PART ONE
Devil’s Plaything
Chapter 1
The Count of Berat was old, pious and learned. He had lived sixty-five years and liked to boast that he had not left his fiefdom for the last forty of them. His stronghold was the great castle of Berat. It stood on a limestone hill above the town of Berat, which was almost surrounded by the River Berat that made the county of Berat so fertile. There were olives, grapes, pears, plums, barley and women. The Count liked them all. He had married five times, each new wife younger than the last, but none had provided him with a child. He had not even spawned a bastard on a milkmaid though, God knew, it was not for lack of trying.
That absence of children had persuaded the Count that God had cursed him and so in his old age he had surrounded himself with priests. The town had a cathedral and eighteen churches, with a bishop, canons and priests to fill them, and there was a house of Dominican friars by the east gate. The Count blessed the town with two new churches and built a convent high on the western hill across the river and beyond the vineyards. He employed a chaplain and, at great expense, he purchased a handful of the straw that had lined the manger in which the baby Jesus had been laid at his birth. The Count encased the straw in crystal, gold and gems, and placed the reliquary on the altar of the castle’s chapel and prayed to it each day, but even that sacred talisman did not help. His fifth wife was seventeen and plump and healthy and, like the others, barren.
At first the Count suspected that he had been cheated in his purchase of the holy straw, but his chaplain assured him that the relic had come from the papal palace at Avignon and produced a letter signed by the Holy Father himself guaranteeing that the straw was indeed the Christ-child’s bedding. Then the Count had his new wife examined by four eminent doctors and those worthies decreed that her urine was clear, her parts whole and her appetites healthy, and so the Count employed his own learning in search of an heir. Hippocrates had written of the effect of pictures on conception and so the Count ordered a painter to decorate the walls of his wife’s bedchamber with pictures of the Virgin and child; he ate red beans and kept his rooms warm. Nothing worked. It was not the Count’s fault, he knew that. He had planted barley seeds in two pots and watered one with his new wife’s urine and one with his own, and both pots had sprouted seedlings and that, the doctors said, proved that both the Count and Countess were fertile.
Which meant, the Count had decided, that he was cursed. So he turned more avidly to religion because he knew he did not have much time left. Aristotle had written that the age of seventy was the limit of a man’s ability, and so the Count had just five years to work his miracle. Then, one autumn morning, though he did not realize it at the time, his prayers were answered.
Churchmen came from Paris. Three priests and a monk arrived at Berat and they brought a letter from Louis Bessières, Cardinal and Archbishop of Livorno, Papal Legate to the Court of France, and the letter was humble, respectful and threatening. It requested that Brother Jerome, a young monk of formidable learning, be allowed to examine the records of Berat. ‘It is well known to us,’ the Cardinal Archbishop had written in elegant Latin, ‘that you possess a great love of all manuscripts, both pagan and Christian, and so entreat you, for the love of Christ and for the furtherance of His kingdom, to allow our Brother Jerome to examine your muniments.’ Which was fine, so far as it went, for the Count of Berat did indeed possess a library and a manuscript collection that was probably the most extensive in all Gascony, if not in all southern Christendom, but what the letter did not make clear was why the Cardinal Archbishop was so interested in the castle’s muniments. As for the reference to pagan works, that was a threat. Refuse this request, the Cardinal Archbishop was saying, and I shall set the holy dogs of the Dominicans and the Inquisitors onto your county and they will find that the pagan works encourage heresy. Then the trials and the burnings would begin, neither of which would affect the Count directly, but there would be indulgences to buy if his soul was not to be damned. The Church had a glutton’s appetite for money and everyone knew the Count of Berat was rich. So the Count did not want to offend the Cardinal Archbishop, but he did want to know why His Eminence had suddenly become interested in Berat. Which was why the Count had summoned Father Roubert, the chief Dominican in the town of Berat, to the great hall of the castle, which had long ceased to be a place of feasting, but instead was lined with shelves on which old documents mouldered and precious handwritten books were wrapped in oiled leather.
Father Roubert was just thirty-two years old. He was the son of a tanner in the town and had risen in the Church thanks to the Count’s patronage. He was very tall, very stern, with black hair cut so short that it reminded the Count of the stiff-bristled brushes the armourers used to burnish the coats of mail. Father Roubert was also, this fine morning, angry. ‘I have business in Castillon d’Arbizon tomorrow,’ he said, ‘and will need to leave within the hour if I am to reach the town in daylight.’
The Count ignored the rudeness in Father Roubert’s tone. The Dominican l
iked to treat the Count as an equal, an impudence the Count tolerated because it amused him. ‘You have business in Castillon d’Arbizon?’ he asked, then remembered. ‘Of course you do. You are burning the beghard, are you not?’
Tomorrow morning.’
‘She will burn with or without you, father,’ the Count said, ‘and the devil will take her soul whether you are there to rejoice or not.’ He peered at the friar. ‘Or is it that you like to watch women burn?’
‘It is my duty,’ Father Roubert said stiffly.
‘Ah yes, your duty. Of course. Your duty.’ The Count frowned at a chessboard on the table, trying to work out whether he should advance a pawn or retract a bishop. He was a short, plump man with a round face and a clipped beard. He habitually wore a woollen cap over his bald head and, even in summer, was rarely without a fur-lined gown. His fingers were perpetually ink-stained so that he looked more like a fussy clerk than the ruler of a great domain. ‘But you have a duty to me, Roubert,’ he chided the Dominican, ‘and this is it.’ He gave the Cardinal Archbishop’s letter to the Dominican and watched as the friar read the long document. ‘He writes a fine Latin, does he not?’ the Count said.
‘He employs a secretary who is properly educated,’ Father Roubert said curtly, then he examined the great red seal to make certain the document was genuine. ‘They say,’ the friar sounded respectful now, ‘that Cardinal Bessières is regarded as a possible successor to the Holy Father.’
‘So not a man to offend?’
‘No churchman should ever be offended,’ Father Roubert answered stiffly.
‘And certainly not one who might become Pope,’ the Count concluded. ‘But what is it he wants?’
Father Roubert went to a window screened with a lead lattice supporting scraped horn panes that let a diffuse light into the room, but kept out rain, birds and some of winter’s cold winds. He lifted the lattice from its frame and breathed the air which, this high up in the castle’s keep, was wonderfully free of the latrine stink in the lower town. It was autumn and there was the faint smell of pressed grapes in the air. Roubert liked that smell. He turned back to the Count. ‘Is the monk here?’
‘In a guest room,’ the Count said. ‘He’s resting. He’s young, very nervous. He bowed to me very properly, but refused to say what the Cardinal wants.’
A great clash in the yard below prompted Father Roubert to peer through the window again. He had to lean far forward for even here, forty feet up the keep, the walls were nearly five feet thick. A horseman in full plate armour had just charged the quintain in the yard and his lance had struck the wooden shield so hard that the whole contraption had collapsed. ‘Your nephew plays,’ he said as he straightened from the window.
‘My nephew and his friends practise,’ the Count corrected the friar.
‘He would do better to look to his soul,’ Father Roubert said sourly.
‘He has no soul, he’s a soldier.’
‘A tournament soldier,’ the friar said scornfully.
The Count shrugged. ‘It is not enough to be wealthy, father. A man must also be strong and Joscelyn is my strong arm.’ The Count said it forcibly, though in truth he was not sure that his nephew was the best heir for Berat, but if the Count had no son then the fief must pass to one of his nephews and Joscelyn was probably the best of a bad brood. Which made it all the more important to have an heir. ‘I asked you here,’ he said, choosing to use the word ‘asked’ rather than ‘ordered’, ‘because you might have some insight into His Eminence’s interest.’
The friar looked at the Cardinal’s letter again. ‘Muniments,’ he said.
‘I noticed that word too,’ the Count said. He moved away from the open window. ‘You’re causing a draught, father.’
Father Roubert reluctantly replaced the horn screen. The Count, he knew, had deduced from his books that for a man to be fertile he must be warm and the friar wondered how folk in cold northern countries ever managed to breed. ‘So the Cardinal isn’t interested in your books,’ the Dominican said, ‘but only in the county’s records?’
‘So it would seem. Two hundred years of tax rolls?’ The Count chuckled. ‘Brother Jerome will enjoy deciphering those.’
The friar said nothing for a while. The sound of clashing swords echoed from the castle’s curtain wall as the Count’s nephew and his cronies practised their weapons in the yard. Let Lord Joscelyn inherit here, the friar thought, and these books and parchments would all be put to the flames. He moved closer to the hearth in which, though it was not cold outside, a great fire burned and he thought of the girl who must be burned to death next morning in Castillon d’Arbizon. She was a heretic, a foul creature, the devil’s plaything, and he remembered her agony as he had tortured the confession from her. He wanted to see her burn and hear the screams that would announce her arrival at the gates of hell, and so the sooner he answered the Count the sooner he could leave.
‘You’re hiding something, Roubert,’ the Count prompted him before the friar could speak.
The friar hated being called by his simple Christian name, a reminder that the Count had known him as a child and had paid for his elevation. ‘I hide nothing,’ he protested.
‘So tell me why a cardinal archbishop would send a monk to Berat?’
The friar turned from the fire. ‘Do I need to remind you,’ he said, ‘that the county of Astarac is now a part of your domain?’
The Count stared at Father Roubert, then realized what the friar was saying. ‘Oh, dear God, no,’ the Count said. He made the sign of the cross and returned to his chair. He peered at the chessboard, scratched an itch beneath his woollen cap and turned back to the Dominican. ‘Not that old story?’
‘There have been rumours,’ Father Roubert said loftily. ‘There was a member of our order, a fine man, Bernard de Taillebourg, who died this year in Brittany. He was pursuing something, we were never told what, but the rumours say that he made common cause with a member of the Vexille family.’
‘Good Christ Almighty,’ the Count said. ‘Why didn’t you tell me this before?’ **
‘You wish me to bother you with every vaporous story that gets told in the taverns?’ Father Roubert retorted.
The Count did not answer. Instead he was thinking of the Vexilles. The old Counts of Astarac. They had been powerful once, great lords of wide lands, but the family had become entangled with the Cathar heresy and when the Church burned that plague from the land the Vexille family had fled to its last stronghold, the castle of Astarac, and there they had been defeated. Most had been killed, but some had succeeded in running away, even, the Count knew, as far as England, while ruined Astarac, home to ravens and foxes, had been swallowed into the fiefdom of Berat and with the ruined castle had come a persistent story that the defeated Vexilles had once held the fabled treasures of the Cathars in their keeping, and that one of those treasures was the Holy Grail itself. And the reason, of course, that Father Roubert had made no mention of the new stories was because he wanted to find the Grail before anyone else discovered it. Well, the Count would forgive him that. He looked across the wide room. ‘So the Cardinal Archbishop believes the Grail will be found among those things?’ He gestured at his books and papers.
‘Louis Bessières,’ the friar said, ‘is a greedy man, a violent man and an ambitious man. He will turn the earth upside down to find the Grail.’
The Count understood then. Understood the pattern of his life. ‘There was a story, wasn’t there,’ he mused aloud, ‘that the keeper of the Grail would be cursed until he gave the cup back to God?’
‘Stories,’ Father Roubert sneered.
‘And if the Grail is here, father, even if it is hidden, then I am its keeper.’
‘If,’ the Dominican sneered again.
‘And so God cursed me,’ the Count said in wonderment, ‘because all unknowingly I hold his treasure and have not valued it.’ He shook his head. ‘He has withheld a son from me because I have withheld his son’s cup from him.’ He shot
a surprisingly harsh look at the young friar. ‘Does it exist, father?’
Father Roubert hesitated, then gave a reluctant nod. ‘It is possible.’
‘Then we had best give the monk permission to search,’ the Count said, ‘but we must also make sure that we find what he is looking for before he does. You will go through the muniments, Father Roubert, and only pass on to Brother Jerome those records that do not mention treasures or relics or grails. You understand?’
‘I will seek the permission of my regent to perform that duty,’ Father Roubert responded stiffly.
‘You will seek nothing but the Grail!’ The Count slapped the arm of his chair. ‘You will start now, Roubert, and you will not stop till you have read every parchment on those shelves. Or would you rather I evicted your mother, your brothers and sisters from their houses?’
Father Roubert was a proud man and he bridled, but he was not a foolish man and so, after a pause, he bowed. ‘I will search the documents, my lord,’ he said humbly.
‘Starting now,’ the Count insisted.
‘Indeed, my lord,’ Father Roubert said, and sighed because he would not see the girl burn.
‘And I will help you,’ the Count said enthusiastically. Because no Cardinal Archbishop would take from Berat the holiest treasure on earth or in heaven. The Count would find it first.
The Dominican friar arrived at Castillon d’Arbizon in the autumn dusk, just as the watchman was shutting the western gate. A fire had been kindled in a big brazier that stood inside the gate’s arch to warm the town’s watchmen on what promised to be the first chill night of the waning year. Bats were flickering above the town’s half-repaired walls and about the tower of the high castle which crowned Castillon d’Arbizon’s steep hill.
The Grail Quest Books 1-3: Harlequin, Vagabond, Heretic Page 84