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

by Bernard Cornwell

  Genevieve took the two cloaks from their sticks and bundled them up to keep the worst of the rain from their weave. ‘Most people don’t know God through the Church,’ she said. ‘They go and they listen to a language they don’t understand, and they say their confession and they bow to the sacraments and they want the priest to come to them when they are dying, but when they are really in trouble they go to the shrines the Church doesn’t know about. They worship at springs, at holy wells, in deep places among the trees. They go to wise women or to fortune-tellers. They wear amulets. They pray to their own God and the Church never knows about it. But God knows because God is everywhere. Why would the people need a priest when God is everywhere?’

  ‘To keep us from error,’ Thomas said.

  ‘And who defines the error?’ Genevieve persisted. ‘The priests! Do you think you are a bad man, Thomas?’

  Thomas thought about the question. The quick answer was yes because the Church had just expelled him and given his soul to the demons, but in truth he did not think he was bad and so he shook his head. ‘No.’

  ‘Yet the Church condemns you! A bishop says words. And who knows what sins that bishop does?’

  Thomas half smiled. ‘You are a heretic,’ he said softly.

  ‘I am,’ she said flatly. ‘I’m not a beghard, though I could be one, but I am a heretic, and what choice do I have? The Church expelled me, so if I am to love God I must do it without the Church. You must do the same now, and you will find that God still loves you however much the Church might hate you.’ She grimaced as the rain beat the last small flames out of their fire, then they retreated to the larch shelter where they did their best to sleep under layers of cloaks and mail coats.

  Thomas’s sleep was fitful. He dreamed of a battle in which he was being attacked by a giant who roared at him, then he woke with a start to find that Genevieve was gone and that the roaring was the bellow of thunder overhead. Rain seethed on the larch and dripped through to the bracken. A slither of lightning pierced the sky, showing the gaps in the branches that half sheltered Thomas, and he wriggled out from beneath the larch and stumbled in the dark to find the broken hovel’s doorway. He was about to shout Genevieve’s name when another crack of thunder tore the sky and echoed from the hills, so near and so loud that Thomas reeled sideways as if he had been struck by a war-hammer. He was bare-footed and wearing nothing but a long linen shirt that was sopping wet. Three lightning whips stuttered to the east and in their light Thomas saw the horses were white-eyed and trembling and so he crossed to them, patted their noses and made sure their tethers were still firm. ‘Genevieve!’ he shouted. ‘Genevieve!’

  Then he saw her.

  Or rather, in the instant glare of a splintering streak of lightning, he saw. a vision. He saw a woman, tall and silver and naked, standing with her arms raised to the sky’s white fire. The lightning went, yet the image of the woman stayed in Thomas’s head, glowing, and then the lightning struck again, slamming into the eastern hills, and Genevieve had her head back, her hair was unbound, and the water streamed from it like drops of liquid silver.

  She was dancing naked beneath the lightning.

  She did not like to be naked with him. She hated the scars that Father Roubert had seared into her arms and legs and down her back, yet now she danced naked, a slow dance, her face tilted back to the downpour, and Thomas watched in each successive lightning flash and he thought she was indeed a draga. She was the wild silver creature of the dark, the shining woman who was dangerous and beautiful and strange. Thomas crouched, gazing, thinking that his soul was in greater peril still for Father Medous had said the dragas were the devil’s creatures, yet he loved her too; and then the thunder filled the air to shake the hills and he squatted lower, his eyes fast closed. He was doomed, he thought, doomed, and that knowledge filled him with utter hopelessness.

  ‘Thomas.’ Genevieve was stooping in front of him now, her hands cradling his face. ‘Thomas.’

  ‘You’re a draga,’ he said, his eyes still closed.

  ‘I wish I was,’ she said. ‘I wish flowers would grow where I walked. But I’m not. I just danced under the lightning and the thunder spoke to me.’

  He shuddered. ‘What did it say?’

  She put her arms round him, comforting him. ‘That all will be well.’

  He said nothing.

  ‘All will be well,’ Genevieve said again, ‘because the thunder does not lie if you dance to it. It is a promise, my love, it is a promise. That all will be well.’

  —«»—«»—«»—

  Sir Guillaume had sent one of the captured men-at-arms to Berat to inform the Count that Joscelyn and thirteen other men were prisoners and that ransoms needed to be negotiated. Joscelyn had reported that his uncle had been at Astarac, but Sir Guillaume assumed the old man must have returned to his castle.

  Yet it seemed he had not, for four days after Thomas and Genevieve had left, a pedlar came to Castillon d’Arbizon and said that the Count of Berat was sick with the fever, perhaps dying, and that he was in the infirmary of Saint Sever’s monastery. The man-at-arms sent to Berat returned the next day with the same news and added that no one in Berat possessed the authority to negotiate Joscelyn’s freedom. All that Sir Henri Courtois, the garrison commander, could do for Joscelyn was send a message to Astarac and hope that the Count was well enough to cope with the news.

  ‘Now what do we do?’ Robbie asked. He sounded aggrieved for he was eager to see the ransom’s gold. He and Joscelyn sat in the great hall. They were alone. It was night. A fire burned in the hearth.

  Joscelyn said nothing.

  Robbie frowned. ‘I could sell you on,’ he suggested. That was done often enough. A man took a prisoner whose ransom would be considerable, but rather than wait for the money he would sell the prisoner to a richer man who would pay a lesser sum and then endure the long negotiations before realizing his profit.

  Joscelyn nodded. ‘You could,’ he agreed, ‘but you won’t make much money.’

  ‘The heir to Berat and Lord of Béziers?’ Robbie asked scornfully. ‘You’re worth a big ransom.’

  ‘Béziers is a pig field,’ Joscelyn said scornfully, ‘and the heir to Berat is worth nothing, but Berat itself is worth a fortune. A fortune.’ He stared at Robbie in silence for a few heartbeats. ‘My uncle is a fool,’ he went on, ‘but a very rich one. He keeps coins in his cellars. Barrel after barrel of coins, filled to the top, and two of those barrels are crammed with nothing but genoins.’

  Robbie savoured the thought. He imagined the money sitting in the dark, the two barrels filled with the marvellous coins of Genoa, coins made of pure gold, each tiny genoin sufficient to keep a man fed and clothed and armed for a year. Two barrels!

  ‘But my uncle,’ Joscelyn went on, ‘is also a mean man. He won’t spend money except on the Church. If he had a choice then he would rather that I was dead, that one of my brothers was his heir and that his coins were undiminished. At night, sometimes, he takes a lantern down to the castle cellars and stares at his money. Just stares at it.’

  ‘You’re telling me,’ Robbie said bitterly, ‘that you won’t be ransomed?’

  ‘I’m telling you,’ Joscelyn said, ‘that so long as my uncle is the Count, then so long will I be your prisoner. But if I was the Count?’

  ‘You?’ Robbie was not sure where the conversation was going and sounded puzzled.

  ‘My uncle is sick,’ Joscelyn said, ‘and perhaps dying.’

  Robbie thought about that and saw what Joscelyn was suggesting. ‘And if you were the Count,’ he said slowly, ‘then you could negotiate your own ransom?’

  ‘If I was Count,’ Joscelyn said, ‘I would ransom myself and my men. All of them. And I’d do it quickly.’

  Again Robbie thought. ‘How big are the barrels?’ he asked after a while.

  Joscelyn held a hand a couple of feet above the floor. ‘It is the biggest hoard of gold in Gascony,’ he said. ‘There are ducats and ecus, florins and agnos,
deniers and genoins, pounds and moutons.’

  ‘Moutons?’

  ‘Gold ones,’ Joscelyn said, ‘thick and heavy. More than enough for a ransom.’

  ‘But your uncle may live,’ Robbie said.

  ‘One prays so,’ Joscelyn said piously, ‘but if you would let me send two men to Astarac they could discover his state of health for us? And they could, perhaps, persuade him to offer a ransom?’

  ‘But you said he would never pay.’ Robbie was pretending not to understand, or perhaps he did not want to acknowledge what Joscelyn was suggesting.

  ‘He might be persuaded,’ Joscelyn said, ‘out of his lingering affection for me. But only if I send men to him.’

  ‘Two men?’

  ‘And if they fail,’ Joscelyn said innocently, ‘then of course they will return to their captivity here, so what can you lose? But you cannot let them travel unarmed. Not in a country beset by coredors.’

  Robbie stared at Joscelyn, trying to read his face in the firelight, then a question occurred to him. ‘What was your uncle doing at Astarac?’

  Joscelyn laughed. ‘The stupid old fool was looking for the Holy Grail. He thought I didn’t know, but one of the monks told me. The Holy goddamned Grail! He’s mad. But he thinks God will give him a son if he finds it.’

  ‘The Grail?’

  ‘God knows where he got the idea. He’s mad! Mad with piety.’

  The Grail, Robbie thought, the Grail. At times he had doubted Thomas’s search, thinking it a lunacy, but now it seemed that other men shared the madness, which confirmed that the Grail might truly exist. And the Grail, Robbie thought, should not go to England. Anywhere but England.

  Joscelyn seemed unaware of how his words had affected Robbie. ‘You and I,’ he said, ‘shouldn’t be on different sides. We’re both enemies of England. They’re the ones who caused the trouble. It was the English who came here,’ he tapped the table to emphasize his point, ‘and they started the killing, and for what?’

  For the Grail, Robbie thought, and he imagined taking the holy relic back to Scotland. He imagined the armed might of Scotland, given power by the Grail, sweeping in bloody triumph through England.

  ‘You and I should be friends,’ Joscelyn said, ‘and you can show me a gesture of friendship now.’ He looked up at his shield, which hung on the wall, but it had been hung upside down so that the red fist pointed downwards. Thomas had put it there as the symbol that the shield’s owner had been taken prisoner. ‘Take that down,’ Joscelyn said bitterly.

  Robbie glanced at Joscelyn, then walked to the wall and used his sword to dislodge the shield which fell with a clatter. He propped it, right way up, against the stones.

  ‘Thank you,’ Joscelyn said, ‘and remember, Robbie, that when I’m Count of Berat I’m going to need good men. You’re not sworn to anyone, are you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The Earl of Northampton?’

  ‘No!’ Robbie protested, remembering the Earl’s unfriendliness.

  ‘So think of serving me,’ Joscelyn said. ‘I can be generous, Robbie. Hell, I’ll start by sending a priest to England.’

  Robbie blinked, confused by Joscelyn’s words. ‘You’d send a priest to England? Why?’

  To carry your ransom, of course,’ Joscelyn said with a smile. ‘You’ll be a free man, Robbie Douglas.’ He paused, watching Robbie closely. ‘If I’m Count of Berat,’ he added, ‘I can do that.’

  ‘If you’re Count of Berat,’ Robbie said cautiously.

  ‘I can ransom every prisoner here,’ Joscelyn said expansively, ‘ransom you and hire as many of your men as want employment. Just let me send my two men to Astarac’

  Robbie talked with Sir Guillaume in the morning and the Norman saw no reason why two men-at-arms should not talk with the Count at Astarac so long as they swore to return to their captivity when their errand was done. ‘I just hope he’s well enough to listen to them,’ Sir Guillaume said.

  So Joscelyn sent Villesisle and his companion, his own sworn men. They rode in armour, with swords and with careful instructions.

  And Robbie waited to become rich.

  —«»—«»—«»—

  The weather cleared. The grey clouds dissipated into long streaks that were a beautiful pink in the evenings and next night they faded to a clear sky in which the wind went to the south and became warm.

  Thomas and’Genevieve stayed in the broken cottage for two days. They dried their clothes and let the horses eat the last of the year’s grass. They rested. Thomas felt no urge to reach Astarac quickly, for he did not expect to find anything there, but Genevieve was certain that the local folk would have tales to tell and, at the very least, they should listen. But for Thomas it was enough that he and Genevieve were alone for the first time. They had never really been alone even in the castle, for when they went behind the tapestry there was always the knowledge that others were sleeping in the hall just beyond. And Thomas had not realized until now how burdened he had been by decisions. Who to send out on raids, who to leave behind, who to watch, who to trust, who to keep apart, who needed the reward of a few coins if they were to stay loyal, and always, ever present, the worry that he had forgotten something, that his enemy might be planning some surprise that he had not foreseen. And all the time the real enemy had been close by: Robbie, seething with righteous indignation and tortured desire.

  Now Thomas could forget it all, but not for long, for the nights were cold and the winter was coming, and on the second day in their refuge he saw horsemen on the southern heights. There were half a dozen of them, ragged-looking men, two with crossbows slung on their shoulders. They did not look down into the valley where Thomas and Genevieve sheltered, but he knew that eventually someone would come here. It was the time of year when wolves and coredors came down from the high mountains to seek easier plunder in the foothills. It was time to go.

  Genevieve had questioned Thomas about the Grail, hearing how his father, the clever, half-mad priest, had perhaps stolen it from his own father who was the exiled Count of Astarac, but how Father Ralph had never once admitted the theft or the ownership, instead he had merely left a tangle of strange writings that only added to the mystery. ‘But your father,’ Genevieve said on the morning they were readying to leave, ‘wouldn’t have taken it back to Astarac, would he?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So it isn’t there?’

  ‘I don’t know if it even exists,’ Thomas said. They were sitting beside the stream. The horses were saddled and the arrow sheaves tied to the cantles. ‘I think the Holy Grail is a dream that men have, a dream that the world can be made perfect. And if it existed,’ he went on, ‘then we’d all know the dream can’t come true.’ He shrugged, then began scraping at a patch of rust on his mail.

  ‘You don’t think it exists, yet you look for it?’ Genevieve asked.

  Thomas shook his head. ‘I look for my cousin. I want to learn what he knows.’

  ‘Because you do believe in it, don’t you?’

  He paused in his work. ‘I want to believe. But if my father had it then it ought to be in England, and I’ve searched everywhere he might have hidden it. But I’d like to believe.’ He thought for a moment. ‘And if I found it,’ he went on, ‘then the Church must take us back.’

  Genevieve laughed. ‘You are like a wolf, Thomas, who dreams of nothing but joining the flock of sheep.’

  Thomas ignored that. He gazed up at the eastern skyline. ‘It’s all that’s left. The Grail. I’ve failed as a soldier.’

  Genevieve was scornful. ‘You will get your men back. You will win, Thomas, because you are a wolf. But I think you will find the Grail too.’

  He smiled at her. ‘Did you see that under the lightning?’

  ‘I saw darkness,’ she said vehemently, ‘a real darkness. Like a shadow that is going to cover the world. But you lived in it, Thomas, and you shone.’ She was gazing into the stream, an expression of solemnity on her long face. ‘Why should there not be a Grail? Perhaps th
at is what the world waits for, and it will sweep all the rottenness away. All the priests.’ She spat. ‘I don’t think your Grail will be at Astarac, but perhaps there will be answers to questions.’

  ‘Or more questions.’

  ‘Then let’s find out!’

  They rode eastwards again, climbing through trees to the high, bare uplands and always going cautiously, avoiding settlements, but late in the morning, to cross the valley of the Gers, they rode through the village where they had fought Joscelyn and his men. The villagers must have recognized Genevieve, but they made no trouble for no one ever interfered with armed riders, not unless they were soldiers themselves. Thomas saw a newly dug patch of earth next to one of the pear orchards and reckoned that was where the skirmish’s dead had been buried. Neither of them said anything as they passed the place where Father Roubert had died, though Thomas made the sign of the cross. If Genevieve saw the gesture she ignored it.

  They forded the river and climbed through the trees to the wide flat crest that overlooked Astarac. There were woods to their right and a jumbled summit of rocks on higher ground to the left and Thomas instinctively went towards the woods, seeking their cover, but Genevieve checked him. ‘Someone’s lit a fire,’ she said, and pointed to a tiny wisp of smoke coming from deep among the trees.

  ‘Charcoal-burners?’ Thomas suggested.

  ‘Or coredors,’ she countered, turning her horse away. Thomas followed, giving one reluctant glance at the wood. Just as he did, he saw a movement there, something furtive, the kind of motion he had learned to look for in Brittany, and he instinctively pulled his bow from the sheath that held it to his saddle.

  Then the arrow came.

  It was a crossbow bolt. Short, squat and black, and its ragged leather vane made a whirring noise as it flew and Thomas kicked his heels back and shouted a warning to Genevieve just as the bolt seared in front of his horse to thump her mare in the haunch. The mare bolted, blood red on its white hide and with the quarrel’s stub sticking from the wound.