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

by Bernard Cornwell

  ‘The English, sire,’ one of the monks answered. ‘They came yesterday.’

  ‘By Christ, but they’ll die a hundred deaths for this,’ the Count declared.

  ‘And I’ll inflict them,’ Joscelyn said savagely.

  ‘I’m almost minded to let you go to them,’ the Count said, ‘but what can we do against their castle?’

  ‘Guns,’ Joscelyn said.

  ‘I have sent for the gun in Toulouse,’ the Count said angrily, then he scattered a few small coins among the villagers before spurring his horse past them. He paused to stare at the ruins of the castle on its crag, but he did not ride to the old fortress because it was late, the night was near and the air was cold. The Count was also tired and saddle-sore, and the unfamiliar armour he wore was chafing his shoulders and so, instead of climbing the long path to the shattered fortress he went on towards the dubious comforts at the Cistercian abbey of St Sever.

  White-robed monks were trudging home from their work. One carried a great bundle of kindling, while others had hoes and spades. The last grapes were being harvested and two monks led an ox pulling a wagon loaded with baskets of deep purple fruit. They pulled the wagon aside as the Count and his thirty men-at-arms clattered past towards the plain, undecorated buildings. No one in the monastery had been expecting visitors, but the monks greeted the Count without fuss and efficiently found stabling for the horses and provided bedding among the wine presses for the men-at-arms. A fire was lit in the visitors’ quarters where the Count, his nephew and Father Roubert would be entertained. ‘The abbot will greet you after compline,’ the Count was told, then he was served a meal of bread, beans, wine and smoked fish. The wine was the abbey’s own and tasted sour.

  The Count dismissed Joscelyn and Father Roubert to their own rooms, sent his squire to wherever the lad could find a bed, then sat alone by the fire. He wondered why God had sent the English to plague him. Was that another punishment for ignoring the Grail? It seemed likely, for he had convinced himself that God had indeed chosen him and that he must perform one great last task and then he would be rewarded. The Grail, he thought, almost in ecstasy. The Grail, the holiest of all holy things, and he had been sent to discover it; he fell to his knees by the open window and listened to the voices of the monks chanting in the abbey church and prayed that his quest would be successful. He went on praying long after the chanting had stopped and thus Abbot Planchard discovered the Count on his knees. ‘Do I interrupt?’ the abbot asked gently.

  ‘No, no.’ The Count winced with pain from his cramped knees as he climbed to his feet. He had discarded his armour and wore a fur-lined gown and his customary woollen cap. ‘I am sorry, Planchard, most sorry to impose on you. No warning, I know. Most inconvenient, I’m sure.’

  ‘The devil alone inconveniences me,’ Planchard said, ‘and I know you are not sent by him.’

  ‘I do pray not,’ the Count said, then sat and immediately stood again. By rank he was entitled to the room’s one chair, but the abbot was so very old that the Count felt constrained to offer it to him.

  The abbot shook his head and sat on the window ledge instead. ‘Father Roubert came to compline,’ he said, ‘and talked with me afterwards.’

  The Count felt a pulse of alarm. Had Roubert told Planchard why they were here? He wanted to tell the abbot himself.

  ‘He is very upset,’ Planchard said. He spoke French, an aristocrat’s French, elegant and precise.

  ‘Roubert’s always upset when he’s uncomfortable,’ the Count said, ‘and it was a long journey and he’s not used to riding. Not born to it, you see? He sits his horse like a cripple.’ He paused, staring open-eyed at the abbot, then let out an explosive sneeze. ‘Dear me,’ he said, his eyes watering. He wiped his nose with his sleeve. ‘Roubert slouches in his saddle. I keep telling him to sit up, but he won’t take advice.’ He sneezed again.

  ‘I do hope you’re not catching an ague,’ the abbot said. ‘Father Roubert was not upset because of weariness, but because of the beghard.’

  ‘Ah, yes, of course. The girl.’ The Count shrugged. ‘I rather think he was looking forward to seeing her burn. That would have been a fitting reward for all his hard work. You know he questioned her?’

  ‘With fire, I believe,’ Planchard said, then frowned. ‘How odd that a beghard should be this far south. Their haunt is the north. But I suppose he is sure?’

  ‘Entirely! The wretched girl confessed.’

  ‘As would I if I were put to the fire,’ the abbot said acidly. ‘You know she rides with the English?’

  ‘I heard as much,’ the Count said. ‘A bad business, Planchard, a bad business.’

  ‘At least they spared this house,’ Planchard said. ‘Is that why you came, my lord? To protect us from a heretic and from the English?’

  ‘Of course, of course,’ the Count said, but then moved a little closer to the truth of his journey. ‘There was another reason too, Planchard, another reason altogether.’ He expected Planchard to ask what that reason was, but the abbot stayed silent and, for some reason, the Count felt uncomfortable. He wondered if Planchard would scoff at him. ‘Father Roubert did not tell you?’ he asked.

  ‘He talked of nothing but the beghard.’

  ‘Ah,’ the Count said. He did not quite know how to phrase his quest and so, instead, he plunged into the centre of it to see whether Planchard would understand what he was talking about. ‘“Calix Meus Inebrians”,’ he announced, then sneezed again.

  Planchard waited until the Count had recovered. ‘The psalms of David. I love that particular one, especially that wonderful beginning. ‘“The Lord rules me and denies me nothing.”‘

  ‘“Calix Meus Inebrians”,’ the Count said, ignoring the abbot’s words, ‘was carved above the gate of the castle here.’

  ‘Was it?’

  ‘You had not heard it?’

  ‘One hears so many things in this small valley, my lord, that it is necessary to distinguish between fears, dreams, hopes and reality.’

  ‘“Calix Meus Inebrians”,’ the Count repeated stubbornly, suspecting that the abbot knew exactly what he was talking about, but wanted to cloud the issue.

  Planchard looked at the Count in silence for a while, then nodded. ‘The tale is not new to me. Nor to you, I suspect?’

  ‘I believe,’ the Count said awkwardly, ‘that God sent me here for a purpose.’

  ‘Ah, then you are fortunate, my lord!’ Planchard sounded impressed. ‘So many folk come to me seeking God’s purposes and all I can tell them is to watch, work and pray, and by doing so I trust they will discover the purpose in their own time, but it is rarely given openly. I envy you.’

  ‘It was given to you,’ the Count retorted.

  ‘No, my lord,’ the abbot said gravely. ‘God merely opened a gate onto a field full of stones, thistles and weeds and left me to till it. It has been hard work, my lord, hard work, and I approach my end with most of it still to be done.’

  ‘Tell me of the story,’ the Count said.

  ‘The story of my life?’ Planchard countered.

  ‘The story,’ the Count said firmly, ‘of the cup that makes us drunk.’

  Planchard sighed and, for a moment, looked very old. Then he stood. ‘I can do better than that, my lord,’ he said, ‘I can show you.’

  ‘Show me?’ The Count was astonished and elated.

  Planchard went to a cupboard and took out a horn lantern. He lit its wick with a brand from the fire, then invited the excited Count to follow him through a dark cloister and into the abbey church where a small candle burned beneath a plaster statue of St Benedict, the only decoration in the austere building.

  Planchard took a key from under his robe and led the Count to a small door which opened from an alcove that was half hidden by a side altar on the church’s north side. The lock was stiff, but at last it gave way and the door creaked open. ‘Be careful of the steps,’ the abbot warned, ‘they are worn and very treacherous.’

  The lan
tern bobbed as the abbot went down a steep flight of stone stairs which turned sharp right into a crypt lined’with great pillars between which bones were stacked almost to the arched ceiling. There were leg bones, arm bones and ribs stacked like firewood, and between them, like lines of boulders, lay empty-eyed skulls. The brothers?’ the Count asked.

  ‘Awaiting the blessed day of resurrection,’ Planchard said and went on to the farthest end of the crypt, stooping under a low arch and so into a small chamber where there was an ancient bench and a wooden chest reinforced with iron. He found some half-burned candles in a niche and lit them so that the small room flickered with light. ‘It was your great-grandfather, God be praised, who endowed this house,’ he said, taking another key from a pouch under his black robe. ‘It was small before that and very poor, but your ancestor gave us land to thank God for the fall of the House of Vexille, and those lands are sufficient to support us, but not to make us wealthy. That is good and proper, but we do possess a few small things of value and this, such as it is, is our treasury.’ He bent to the chest, turned the massive key and lifted the lid.

  At first the Count was disappointed for he thought there was nothing inside, but when the abbot brought one of the candles closer the Count saw the chest contained a tarnished silver paten, a leather bag and a single candlestick. The abbot pointed to the bag. ‘That was given to us by a grateful knight whom we healed in the infirmary. He swore to us it contains St Agnes’s girdle, but I confess I have never even opened the bag. I remember seeing her girdle in Basle, but I suppose she could have had two? My mother had several, but she was no saint, alas.’ He ignored the two pieces of silver and lifted out an object that the Count had not noticed in the chest’s deep shadows. It was a box that Planchard placed on the bench. ‘You must look at it closely, my lord. It is old and the paint has long faded. I am quite surprised that we did not burn it long ago, but for some reason we keep it.’

  The Count sat on the bench and lifted the box. It was square, but not deep, big enough to hold a man’s glove, but nothing much larger. It was hinged with rusting iron and, when he lifted the lid, he saw it was empty. ‘This is all?’ he asked, his disappointment palpable.

  ‘Look at it, my lord,’ Planchard said patiently.

  The Count looked again. The interior of the wooden box was painted yellow and that paint had lasted better than the exterior surfaces, which were very faded, but the Count could see that the box had once been black and that a coat of arms had been painted on the lid. The arms were unfamiliar to him and so aged that it was hard to see them, but he thought there was a lion or some other beast rearing upright with an object held in its outstretched claws. ‘A yale,’ the abbot said, ‘holding a chalice.’

  ‘A chalice? The Grail, surely?’

  ‘The arms of the Vexille family,’ Planchard ignored the Count’s question, ‘and local legend says the chalice was not added until just before Astarac’s destruction.’

  ‘Why would they add a chalice?’ the Count asked, feeling a small pulse of excitement.

  Again the abbot ignored the question. ‘You should look, my lord, at the front of the box.’

  The Count tipped the box until the candlelight glossed the faded paint and he saw that words had been painted there. They were indistinct and some letters had been rubbed clear away, but the words were still obvious. Obvious and miraculous. Calix Meus Inebrians. The Count stared at them, heady with the implications, so heady he could not speak. His nose was running, so he cuffed it impatiently.

  The box was empty when it was found,’ Planchard said, ‘or so I was told by Abbot Loix, God rest his soul. The story goes that the box was in a reliquary of gold and silver that was found on the altar of the castle’s chapel. The reliquary, I am sure, was taken back to Berat, but this box was given to the monastery. As a thing of no value, I suppose.’

  The Count opened the box again and tried to smell the interior, but his nose was foully blocked. Rats scuttled among the bones in the neighbouring crypt, but he ignored the sound, ignored everything, just dreamed of what this box meant. The Grail, an heir, everything. Except, he thought, the box was too small to hold the Grail. Or maybe not? Who knew what the Grail looked like?

  The abbot reached for the box, intending to return it to the chest, but the Count clutched it tight. ‘My lord,’ the abbot said sternly, ‘the box was empty. Nothing was found in Astarac. That is why I brought you here, to see for yourself. Nothing was found.’

  ‘This was found!’ the Count insisted. ‘And it proves the Grail was here.’

  ‘Does it?’ the abbot asked sadly.

  The Count pointed to the faded words on the box’s side. ‘What else does this mean?’

  ‘There is a Grail in Genoa,’ Planchard said, ‘and the Benedictines at Lyons once claimed to own it. It is said, God let it not be true, that the real one is in the treasury of the Emperor at Constantinople. It was once reported to be in Rome, and again at Palermo, though that one, I think, was a Saracen cup captured from a Venetian vessel. Others say that the archangels came to earth and took it to heaven, though some insist it still lies in Jerusalem, protected by the flaming sword that once stood sentinel over Eden. It has been seen in Cordoba, my lord, in Nimes, in Verona and a score of other places. The Venetians claim it is preserved on an island that appears only to the pure of heart, while others say it was taken to Scotland. My lord, I could fill a book with stories of the Grail.’

  ‘It was here.’ The Count ignored everything Planchard had said. ‘It was here,’ he said again, ‘and may still be here.’

  ‘I would like nothing more,’ Planchard admitted, ‘but where Parsifal and Gawain failed, can we hope to succeed?’

  ‘It is a message from God,’ the Count averred, still clutching the empty box.

  ‘I think, my lord,’ Planchard said judiciously, ‘that it is a message from the Vexille family. I think they made the box and painted it and they left it to mock us. They fled and let us think they had taken the Grail with them. I think that box is their revenge. I should burn it.’

  The Count would not relinquish the box. ‘The Grail was here,’ he maintained.

  The abbot, knowing he had lost the box, closed the chest and locked it. ‘We are a small house, my lord,’ he said, ‘but we are not entirely severed from the greater Church. I receive letters from my brethren and I hear things.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Cardinal Bessières is searching for a great relic,’ the abbot said.

  ‘And he is looking here!’ the Count said triumphantly. ‘He sent a monk to search my archives.’

  ‘And if Bessières is looking,’ Planchard warned, ‘then you may be sure he will be ruthless in God’s service.’

  The Count would not be warned. ‘I have been given a duty,’ he asserted.

  Planchard picked up the lantern. ‘I can tell you nothing more, my lord, for I have heard nothing that tells me the Grail is at Astarac, but I do know one thing and I know it as surely as I know that my bones will soon rest with the brethren in this ossuary. The search for the Grail, my lord, drives men mad. It dazzles them, confuses them, and leaves them whimpering. It is a dangerous thing, my lord, and best left to the troubadours. Let them sing about it and make their poems about it, but for the love of God do not risk your soul by seeking it.’

  But if Planchard’s warning had been sung by a choir of angels the Count would not have heard it.

  He had the box and it proved what he wanted to believe.

  The Grail existed and he had been sent to find it. So he would.

  —«»—«»—«»—

  Thomas never intended to escort Robbie all the way to Astarac. The valley where that poor village lay had already been plundered, and so he meant to stop in the next valley where a slew of plump settlements were strung along the road south from Masseube, and then, when his men were busy about their devil’s business, he and a few men would ride with Robbie to the hills overlooking Astarac and, if there were no coredors or other en
emies in sight, let the Scotsman ride on alone.

  Thomas had again taken his whole force except for a dozen men who guarded Castillon d’Arbizon’s castle. He left most of his raiders in a small village beside the River Gers and took a dozen archers and as many men-at-arms to escort Robbie the last few miles. Genevieve stayed with Sir Guillaume who had discovered a great mound in the village that he swore was the kind of place where the old people, the ones who had lived before Christianity lit the world, hid their gold and he had commandeered a dozen shovels and begun to dig. Thomas and Robbie left them to their search and climbed the eastern hills on a winding trail that led through groves of chestnuts where peasants cut staves to support the newly planted vines. They saw no coredors; indeed they had seen no enemies all morning, though Thomas wondered how long it would be before the bandits saw the great plume of smoke boiling up from the warning pyre in the village where Sir Guillaume dug into his dreams.

  Robbie was in a nervous mood that he tried to cover with careless conversation. ‘You remember that stilt-walker in London?’ he asked. ‘The one who juggled when he was up on his sticks? He was good. That was a rare place, that was. How much did it cost to stay in that tavern in London?’

  Thomas could not remember. ‘A few pennies, perhaps.’

  ‘I mean, they’ll cheat you, won’t they?’ Robbie asked anxiously.

  ‘Who will?’

  ‘Tavern-keepers.’

  ‘They’ll drive a bargain,’ Thomas said, ‘but they’d rather take a penny off you than get nothing. Besides, you can lodge in monasteries most nights.’

  ‘Aye, that’s true. But you have to give them something, don’t you?’

  ‘Just a coin,’ Thomas said. They had emerged onto the bare summit of the ridge and Thomas looked about for enemies and saw none. He was puzzled by Robbie’s odd questions, then realized that the Scotsman, who went into battle with apparent fearlessness, was nevertheless nervous at the prospect of travelling alone. It was one thing to journey at home, where folk spoke your language, but quite another to set off for hundreds of miles through lands where a dozen strange tongues were used. ‘The thing to do,’ Thomas said, ‘is find some other folk going your way. There’ll be plenty and they all want company.’