‘To hell,’ the archers agreed and the men-at-arms, privileged to be admitted to this archers’ ritual, echoed the words. All but Robbie, who stood apart. He had taken to wearing a silver crucifix about his neck, hanging it above his mail coat to make it obvious that it was there to ward off evil.
‘That was a good bow,’ Thomas said, watching the embers, but the new one was just as good, maybe better, and two days later Thomas carried it when he led his biggest raid yet.
He took all his men except the handful needed to guard the castle. He had been planning this raid for days and he knew it would be a long ride and so he left long before dawn. The sound of the hooves echoed from the house fronts as they clattered down to the western arch where the watchman, now carrying a staff decorated with the Earl of Northampton’s badge, hurriedly pulled apart the gates, then the horsemen trotted across the bridge and vanished into the southern trees. The English were riding, no one knew where.
They were riding east, to Astarac. Riding to the place where Thomas’s ancestors had lived, to the place where perhaps the Grail had once been hidden. ‘Is that what you expect to find?’ Sir Guillaume asked him. ‘You think we’ll trip over it?’
‘I don’t know what we’ll find,’ Thomas admitted.
‘There’s a castle there, yes?’
‘There was,’ Thomas said, ‘but my father said it had been slighted.’ A slighted castle was one that had been demolished and Thomas expected to find nothing but ruins.
‘So why go?’ Sir Guillaume asked.
‘The Grail,’ Thomas answered curtly. In truth he was going because he was curious, but his men, who did not know what he sought, had detected there was something unusual in this raid. Thomas had merely said they were going to a distant place because they had plundered everything that was close, but the more thoughtful of the men had noticed Thomas’s nervousness.
Sir Guillaume knew the significance of Astarac, as did Robbie, who now led the advance guard of six archers and three men-at-arms who rode a quarter-mile ahead to guard against ambush. They were guided by a man from Castillon d’Arbizon who claimed to know the road and who led them up into the hills where the trees were low and scanty and the views unrestricted. Every few minutes Robbie would wave to signify that the way ahead was clear. Sir Guillaume, riding bare-headed, nodded at the distant figure. ‘So that friendship’s over?’ he asked.
‘I hope not,’ Thomas said.
‘You can hope what you bloody like,’ Sir Guillaume said, ‘but she came along.’ Sir Guillaume’s face had been disfigured by Thomas’s cousin, leaving the Norman with only his right eye, a scarred left cheek and a streak of white where the sword had cut into his beard. He looked fearsome, and so he was in battle, but he was also a generous man. He looked now at Genevieve who rode her grey mare a few yards to the side of the path. She was in her silver armour, her long legs in pale grey cloth and brown boots. ‘You should have burned her,’ he said cheerfully.
‘You still think that?’ Thomas asked.
‘No,’ Sir Guillaume admitted. ‘I like her. If Genny’s a beghard then let’s have more of them. But you know what you should do with Robbie?’
‘Fight him?’
‘Christ’s bones, no!’ Sir Guillaume was shocked that Thomas should even suggest such a thing. ‘Send him home. What’s his ransom?’
‘Three thousand florins.’
‘Christ in his bucket, that’s cheap enough! You must have that much coin in the chests, so give it to him and send him packing. He can buy his freedom and go and rot in Scotland.’
‘I like him,’ Thomas said, and that was true. Robbie was a friend and Thomas hoped that their old closeness could be restored.
‘You might like him,’ Sir Guillaume retorted tartly, ‘but you don’t sleep with him, and when it comes to a choice, Thomas, men always choose the one who warms their bed. It may not give you a longer life, but it will certainly be a happier one.’ He laughed, then turned to search the lower ground for any enemy. There was none. It appeared that the Count of Berat was ignoring the English garrison that had so suddenly taken a part of his territory, but Sir Guillaume, who was older in war than Thomas, suspected that was only because the Count was marshalling his forces. ‘He’ll attack when he’s ready,’ the Norman said. ‘And have you noticed that the coredors are taking an interest in us?’
‘I have,’ Thomas said. On every raid he had been aware of the ragged bandits watching his men. They did not come close, certainly not within bowshot, but they were there and he expected to see them in these hills very soon.
‘Not like bandits to challenge soldiers,’ Sir Guillaume said.
‘They haven’t challenged us yet.’
‘They’re not watching us for amusement,’ Sir Guillaume added drily.
‘I suspect,’ Thomas replied, ‘that there’s a price on our heads. They want money. And they’ll get brave one day. I hope so.’ He patted the new bow, which was holstered in a long leather tube sewn to his saddle.
By midmorning the raiders were crossing a succession of wide fertile valleys separated by high rocky hills that ran north and south. From the summit of the hills Thomas could see dozens of villages, but once they descended and were among the trees again, he could see none. They saw two castles from the heights, both small, both with flags flying from their towers, but both were too far away to distinguish the badge on the flags, which Thomas assumed would be that of the Count of Berat. The valleys all had rivers running north, but they had no trouble crossing them for the bridges or fords were not guarded. The roads, like the hills and valleys, went north and south and so the lords of these rich lands did not guard against folk travelling east or west. Their castles stood sentinel over the valley entrances where the garrisons could skim taxes from the merchants on the roads.
‘Is that Astraac?’ Sir Guillaume asked when they crossed yet another ridge. He was staring down at a village with a small castle.
‘Astarac’s castle is ruined,’ Genevieve answered. ‘It’s a tower and some walls on a crag, nothing like that.’
‘You’ve been there?’ Thomas asked.
‘My father and I always went for the olive fair.’
‘Olive fair?’
‘On the feast of St Jude,’ she said. ‘Hundreds of folk came. We made good money.’
‘And they sold olives?’
‘Jars and jars of the first pressing,’ she said, ‘and in the evening they soaked young pigs with the oil and people tried to catch them. There was bull-fighting and dancing.’ She laughed at the memory, then spurred on. She rode well, straight-backed and with her heels down, while Thomas, like most of his archers, rode a horse with all the grace of a sack of wheat.
It was just past midday when they rode down into Astarac’s valley. The coredors had seen them by now and a score of the ragged bandits were dogging their footsteps, but not daring to come close. Thomas ignored them, staring instead at the black outline of the broken castle that stood on its rocky knoll a half-mile south of a small village. Farther north, in the distance, he could see a monastery, probably Cistercian for its church had no tower. He looked back at the castle and knew his family had once held it, that his ancestors had ruled these lands, that his badge had flown from that broken tower, and he thought he ought to feel some strong emotion, but instead there was only a vague disappointment. The land meant nothing to him, and how could something as precious as the Grail belong to that pathetic pile of shattered stone?
Robbie rode back. Genevieve moved aside and he ignored her. ‘Doesn’t look like much,’ Robbie said, his silver crucifix shining in the autumn sun.
‘It doesn’t,’ Thomas agreed.
Robbie twisted in his saddle, making the leather creak. ‘Let me take a dozen men-at-arms to the monastery,’ he suggested. ‘They might have full storerooms.’
‘Take a half-dozen archers with you as well,’ Thomas suggested, ‘and the rest of us will ransack the village.’
Robbie nodded, then looked back
at the distant coredors. ‘Those bastards won’t dare attack.’
‘I doubt it,’ Thomas agreed, ‘but my suspicion is that there’s a price on our heads. So keep your men together.’
Robbie nodded and, still without even glancing at Genevieve, spurred away. Thomas ordered six of his archers to go with the Scotsman, then he and Sir Guillaume rode down to the village where, as soon as the inhabitants saw the approaching soldiers, a great fire was lit to spew a plume of dirty smoke into the cloudless sky. ‘A warning,’ Sir Guillaume said. ‘That’ll happen everywhere we go now.’
‘A warning?’
‘The Count of Berat has woken up,’ Sir Guillaume said. ‘Everyone will be ordered to light a beacon when they see us. It warns the other villagers, tells them to hide their livestock and lock away their daughters. And the smoke will be seen in Berat. It tells them where we are.’
‘We’re a long damn way from Berat.’
‘They won’t ride today. They’ll never catch us,’ Sir Guillaume agreed.
The purpose of the visit, so far as Thomas’s men was concerned, was to plunder. In the end, they believed, such depredations would bring out the forces of Berat and so they would have a chance to fight a proper battle in which, if God or the devil favoured them, they would take some valuable prisoners and so make themselves even richer, but for now they simply stole or destroyed. Robbie rode to the monastery, Sir Guillaume led the other men into the village while Thomas and Genevieve turned south and climbed the rough path to the ruined castle.
It was ours once, Thomas was thinking. It was here that his ancestors had lived, yet still he could feel nothing. He did not think of himself as a Gascon, let alone a Frenchman. He was English, yet still he gazed at the ruined walls and tried to imagine when the castle was whole and his family had been its masters.
He and Genevieve picketed their horses at the broken gate, then stepped over fallen stone into the old courtyard. The curtain wall was almost entirely gone, its stones carried away to make houses or barns. The biggest remnant was the tower keep, but even that was half shattered, its southern side open to the wind. A hearth showed halfway up the northern wall and there were great stones jutting from the inner flank to show where the joists supporting the floors had once been. A broken stair wound up the eastern side, leading to nothing.
Beside the tower, sharing the highest part of the rock crag, were the remnants of a chapel. Its floor was flagstones and on one of them was Thomas’s badge. He put his bow down and crouched by the stone, trying to feel some sense of belonging.
‘One day,’ Genevieve was standing on the broken southern wall, staring south down the valley, ‘you’ll tell me why you’re here.’
‘To raid,’ Thomas said shortly.
She took off her helmet and shook out her hair, which she wore loose, like a young girl. The blonde strands lifted in the wind as she smiled. ‘Do you take me for a fool, Thomas?’
‘No,’ he said warily.
‘You travel a long way,’ she said, ‘from England, and you come to a little town called Castillon d’Arbizon, and then you ride here. There were a dozen places we could have raided on the way, but it is here we come. And here there is the same badge as the one you carry on your bow.’
‘There are many badges,’ Thomas said, ‘and they often resemble each other.’
She shook her head dismissively. ‘What is that badge?’
‘A yale,’ he said. A yale was a beast invented by the heralds, all teeth, claws, scales and threat. Thomas’s badge, the one pinned to his bow, showed the yale holding a cup, but the yale on the flagstone held nothing in its taloned paw.
Genevieve looked past Thomas to where Sir Guillaume’s men were herding livestock into a pen. ‘We used to hear so many stories,’ she said, ‘my father and I, and he liked stories so he tried to remember them, and in the evenings he would tell them to me. Tales of monsters in the hills, of dragons flying across the rooftops, reports of miracles at holy springs, of women giving birth to monsters. A thousand tales. But there was one story we heard again and again whenever we came to these valleys.’ She paused.
‘Go on,’ Thomas said. The wind gusted, lifting the long fine strands of her hair. She was more than old enough to tie it up, to mark herself as a woman, but she liked it unbound and Thomas thought it made her look still more like a draga.
‘We heard,’ Genevieve said, ‘about the treasures of the Perfect.’
The Perfect had been forerunners of the beghards, heretics who had denied the authority of the Church, and their evil had spread through the south until the Church, with the help of the French King, had crushed them. The fires of their deaths had died a hundred years ago, yet still there were echoes of the Cathars, as the Perfect had been called. They had not spread into this part of Gascony, though some churchmen claimed the heresy had infested all Christendom and was still hidden away in its remotest parts. ‘The treasures of the Perfect,’ Thomas said tonelessly.
‘You come to this little place,’ Genevieve said, ‘from far away, yet you carry a badge that comes from these hills. And whenever my father and I came here we heard stories of Astarac. They still tell them here.’
‘Tell what?’
‘How a great lord fled here for refuge and brought the treasures of the Perfect with him. And the treasures, they say, are still here.’
Thomas smiled. ‘They would have dug them up long ago.’
‘If a thing is hidden well,’ Genevieve said, ‘then it is not found easily.’
Thomas looked down at the village where bellows and screeches and beatings came from the pen where the livestock was being slaughtered. The best cuts of bleeding, fresh meat would be tied to the saddles and taken back for salting or smoking, while the villagers could have the horns, offal and hides. ‘They tell stories everywhere,’ he said dismissively.
‘Of all the treasures,’ Genevieve said softly, ignoring his disparagement, ‘there is one that is prized above all the others. But only a Perfect can find it, they say.’
‘Then God alone can find it,’ Thomas said.
‘Yet that doesn’t stop you looking, Thomas, does it?’
‘Looking?’
‘For the Grail.’
The word was said, the ridiculous word, the impossible word, the name of the thing that Thomas feared did not exist, yet which he sought. His father’s writings suggested he had possessed the Grail, and Thomas’s cousin, Guy Vexille, was certain that Thomas knew where the relic was, and so Vexille would follow Thomas to the ends of the earth. Which was why Thomas was here, in Astarac, to draw his murderous cousin within range of the new bow. He looked up at the tower’s ragged top. ‘Sir Guillaume knows why we are here,’ he told her, ‘and Robbie knows. But none of the others do, so don’t tell them.’
‘I won’t,’ she said, ‘but do you think it exists?’
‘No,’ he said with far more certainty than he felt.
‘It does,’ Genevieve said.
Thomas went to stand beside her and he stared southwards to where a stream twisted soft through meadows and olive groves. He could see men there, a score of them, and he knew they were coredors. He would have to do something about them, he thought, if his men were not to be dogged by the ragged bands through the winter. He did not fear them, but he did fear that one of his men would wander off the path and be seized, so it would be better to frighten the bandits off before that happened.
‘It does exist,’ Genevieve insisted.
‘You can’t know that,’ Thomas said, still watching the ragged men who watched him.
‘The Grail is like God,’ Genevieve said. ‘It is everywhere, all around us, obvious, but we refuse to see it. Men think they can only see God when they build a great church and fill it with gold and silver and statues, but all they need do is look. The Grail exists, Thomas, you just need to open your eyes.’
Thomas strung his bow, took one old arrow from his bag, then pulled the cord back as far as it would go. He could feel the muscles in his ba
ck aching from the unexpected strain of the new bow. He held the arrow low, level with his waist, and cocked his left hand high so that when he released the string the arrow flew into the sky, the white feathers getting smaller and smaller, and then it plummeted to earth, thumping into the stream bank over three hundred yards away. The coredors understood the message and backed away.
‘Waste of a good arrow,’ Thomas said. Then he took Genevieve’s arm and went to find his men.
—«»—«»—«»—
Robbie marvelled at the monastery’s lands, all tended by white-robed Cistercians who gathered up their skirts and ran when they saw his mailed men ride out from the village. Most of the fields were given over to vines, but there was a pear orchard and an olive grove, a pasture of sheep and a fishpond. It was, he thought, a fat land. For days now he had been hearing how the harvest in southern Gascony had been poor, yet it seemed to him that this was a very heaven compared to the hard, thin lands of his northern home. A bell began to toll its alarm from the monastery.
‘They’ve got to have a treasure house.’ Jake, one of his archers, spurred alongside Robbie and nodded at the monastery. ‘And we’ll kill him,’ he spoke of a solitary monk who had come from the monastery gatehouse and now walked calmly towards them, ‘then the rest won’t be no trouble.’
‘You’ll kill no one,’ Robbie snapped. He motioned his men to stop their horses. ‘And you’ll wait here,’ he told them, then he swung out of his saddle, threw his reins to Jake and walked towards the monk, who was very tall, very thin and very old. He had wispy white hair about his tonsure, and a long, dark face that somehow conveyed wisdom and gentleness. Robbie, striding in his coat of mail with his shield slung on his back and his uncle’s long sword at his side, felt clumsy and out of place.
The right sleeve of the monk’s white robe was smeared with ink, making Robbie wonder if the man was a scrivener. He had plainly been sent to negotiate with the raiders, perhaps buy them off or try to persuade them to respect God’s house, and Robbie thought how he had helped plunder the great priory of the Black Canons at Hexham, just across the English border, and he remembered the friars pleading with the invaders, then threatening God’s vengeance, and how the Scots had laughed at them, then stripped Hexham bare. But God had wreaked his vengeance by letting the English army win at Durham, and that memory, the sudden realization that perhaps the desecration of Hexham had led directly to the defeat at Durham, gave Robbie pause so that he stopped, frowned and wondered what exactly he would say to the tall monk, who now smiled at him. ‘You must be the English raiders?’ the monk said in very good English.
The Grail Quest Books 1-3: Harlequin, Vagabond, Heretic Page 91