Genevieve came with him on the day after the bone-setter had made her scream. She could walk well enough, though she was still weak and could scarcely move her left arm. Yet the arrow had missed her lungs and that, Thomas decided, was why she had lived. That and Brother Clement’s care. ‘I thought I was going to die,’ she confessed to Thomas.
He remembered the coming plague. He had heard no more about it and, for the moment, he did not tell Genevieve. ‘You won’t die,’ he told her, ‘but you must move the arm.’
‘I can’t. It hurts.’
‘You must,’ he said. When his own arms and hands had been scarred by the torturer he had thought he would never use them again, but his friends, Robbie chief among them, had forced him to practise with the bow. It had seemed hopeless at first, yet little by little the ability had come back. He wondered where Robbie was now, whether he had stayed at Castillon d’Arbizon, and that thought frightened him. Would Robbie seek him here at Astarac? Had friendship really turned to hate? And if not Robbie, who else might come? The news of his presence in the monastery would spread in the unseen way such news always did, tales told in taverns, pedlars carrying the gossip from one village to the next, and soon enough someone in Berat would take notice. ‘We have to go soon,’ he told Genevieve.
‘Where?’
‘A long way away. England, perhaps?’ He knew he had failed. He would not find the Grail here and, even if his cousin did come, how could Thomas defeat him? He was one man with only a wounded woman to help him and Guy Vexille travelled with a whole conroi of men-at-arms. The dream was over and it was time to go.
‘I’m told it’s cold in England,’ Genevieve said.
‘The sun always shines,’ Thomas said gravely, ‘the harvest never fails and fish jump straight from the rivers into the frying pan.’
Genevieve smiled. ‘Then you must teach me English.’
‘You know some already.’
‘I know goddamn,’ she said, ‘and I know goddamn bloody, bloody goddamn and Christ goddamn bloody help us.’
Thomas laughed. ‘You’ve learned archers’ English,’ he said, ‘but I’ll teach you the rest.’
He decided they would leave next day. He made a bundle of his arrows, then he cleaned the caked blood from Genevieve’s coat of mail. He borrowed a pair of pincers from the monastery’s carpenter and did his best to mend the mail where the crossbow bolt had pierced it, bending and closing the shattered links until at least they were crudely joined, though the rent was still obvious. He tethered the horses in the olive grove to let them graze and then, because it was still early in the afternoon, he walked south to the castle. He was determined to have one last glimpse of the stronghold where his ancestors had been lords.
He met Philin as he left the monastery. The coredor had brought his son from the infirmary and, with the boy’s leg firmly splinted with a half-dozen of the chestnut stakes used to hold the monastery’s vines, he had put him on a horse and was leading him southwards. ‘I don’t want to stay here too long,’ he told Thomas. ‘I’m still wanted for murder.’
Tlanchard would give you sanctuary,’ Thomas insisted.
‘He would,’ Philin agreed, ‘but that wouldn’t stop my wife’s family sending men to kill me. We’re safer in the hills. His leg will mend there as well as anywhere. And if you’re looking for refuge . . . ?’
‘Me?’ Thomas was surprised by the offer.
‘We can always use a good archer.’
‘I think I’ll go home. Home to England.’
‘God look after you anyway, my friend,’ Philin said, then he struck off to the west and Thomas walked south through the village where some of the folk made the sign of the cross which was evidence enough that they knew who he was, but none tried to take revenge on him for the harm his men had caused. They might have wanted such a revenge, but he was tall, strong and wearing a long sword at his belt. He climbed the path to the ruins and noticed that three men had followed him. He paused to face them, but they made no hostile move, just watched him from a safe distance.
It was a good place for a castle, Thomas thought. Certainly better than Castillon d’Arbizon. Astarac’s stronghold was built on a crag and could only be approached by the narrow path he had climbed to the broken gate. Once past the gate the crag had originally been topped by a curtain wall encircling the courtyard, though that was now nothing more than heaps of mossy stone that were never higher than a man’s waist. An oblong of broken walls with a semi-circular extension at their eastern end showed where the chapel had been and Thomas, walking the wide flagstones beneath which his ancestors were buried, saw that those stones had been disturbed recently. Raw marks betrayed where they had been prised up. He thought of trying to raise one of the flagstones himself, but knew he had neither the time nor the tools, and so he walked on to the western side of the crag where the old keep had stood, a broken tower now, hollow to the wind and rain. He turned when he reached the old tower and saw how his three followers had lost interest in him when he left the chapel. Were they there to guard something? The Grail? That thought seethed like a bolt of fire in his veins, but then he dismissed it. There was no Grail, he thought. It was his father’s madness that had touched him with its hopeless dream.
A shattered stair was built into one flank of the tower and Thomas took it as far as he could climb, which was only to where the missing first floor had spanned the hollow shaft. There was a great gaping hole in the tower wall there, a wall that was over five feet thick, and Thomas could walk into the space. He stared down the valley, following the line of the stream with his eyes and he tried once more to feel some sense of belonging. He tried to snare the echoes of his ancestors, but there was nothing. He had felt emotion when he went back to Hookton, the little of it that remained, but here, nothing. And the thought that Hookton, like this castle, was in ruins made him wonder if there was a curse on the Vexilles. The country folk here claimed that dragas, the devil’s women, left flowers where they walked, but did the Vexilles leave ruins? Maybe the Church was right after all. Maybe he deserved to be excommunicated. He turned to look west in the direction he must travel if he was to go home.
And saw the horsemen.
They were on the western ridge, way to the north of him, coming, he thought, from the direction of Berat. There was a large band of them, and they were soldiers right enough for what had caught his eye was the glint of light reflecting from a helmet or mail coat.
He stared, not wanting to believe what he saw, and then, coming to his senses, he ran. He went down the stairs, across the weed-thick courtyard, out through the ruined gate where he barged past the three men, and then down the path. He ran through the village and then northwards and he was out of breath by the time he banged on the gate of the lazar house. Brother Clement opened it and Thomas pushed past him. ‘Soldiers,’ he said in curt explanation, then he went into the hut and picked up his bow, the bundled arrows, their cloaks and mail and bags. ‘Come quick,’ he told Genevieve, who was carefully ladling some of Brother Clement’s newly gathered honey into small jars. ‘Don’t ask,’ he told her, ‘just come. Bring the saddles.’
They went back outside to the olive grove, but Thomas, looking around, saw soldiers on the road in the valley north of St Sever’s. Those men were still some way off, but if they saw two people riding from the monastery they would be bound to follow, which meant there could be no escape now, just concealment. He hesitated, thinking.
‘What is it?’ Genevieve asked.
‘Soldiers. Probably from Berat.’
‘There, too.’ She was looking south, towards the castle, and Thomas saw the villagers hurrying towards the monastery for refuge and that surely meant there were armed men approaching their houses.
He swore. ‘Leave the saddles,’ he told her and, when she had dropped them, he pulled her round the back of the monastery, following the lepers’ path to the church. Someone had begun to toll the monastery bell to warn the brethren that armed strangers had come to their va
lley.
And Thomas knew why. Knew that if they were found they would both burn in the holy fire and so he ran into the lepers’ part of the church and climbed the short flight of stairs to the window that overlooked the altar. He pushed his bow through, sent the arrows after it, then the rest of the baggage, and clambered up himself. It was a tight fit, but he squeezed through and dropped clumsily and painfully onto the flagstones. ‘Come on!’ he urged Genevieve. People were coming into the church, thronging the door at the far end of the nave.
Genevieve hissed with pain as she scrambled through the small window. She looked frightened at the drop, but Thomas was beneath and he caught her. ‘This way.’ He picked up his bow and bags and led her down the side of the choir and then behind the side altar where the statue of St Benedict stared sadly towards the frightened villagers.
The door in the alcove was locked as Thomas expected it to be, but they were hidden here and he did not think anyone had noticed them slip through the shadowed choir. He raised his right leg and kicked his heel against the lock. The noise was huge, a drum bang echoing in the church, and the door shook violently, but did not open. He kicked again, harder, then a third time and was rewarded by a splintering noise as the lock’s tongue tore out the old wood of the frame. “Tread carefully,’ he warned her, and he led her down the stairs into the darkness of the bone house. He groped his way to the eastern end, where the arched niche was only half full of bones, and he threw his belongings to the back of the pile, then hoisted Genevieve up. ‘Go to the back,’ he told her, ‘and start digging.’
He knew he could not climb up himself without spilling dozens of ribs and thigh bones and arm bones, and so he went along the cellar and pulled down stacks of bones. Skulls bounced and rolled, arms and legs clattered, and when the cellar was a mess of scattered skeletons he went back to Genevieve, scrambled up and helped her delve down into the old bones closest to the wall. They made a hole there, pulling the rib cages and pelvises and shoulder-blades apart, scrabbling ever deeper until at last they had made a deep, dark hiding place among the dead.
And there, in the blackness, cradled by the bones, they waited.
And heard the broken door squeal on its hinges.
Saw the small flickering light of a lantern cast grotesque shadows on the arched ceiling.
And heard the mailed footsteps of the men who had come to find them, to take them, and to kill them.
Chapter 8
Sir Henri Courtois was ordered to take thirty-three crossbowmen and forty-two men-at-arms to Castillon d’Arbizon where he was to lay siege to the castle. Sir Henri accepted the orders glumly. ‘I can lay siege,’ he told Joscelyn, ‘but I can’t capture the castle. Not with that small force.’
‘The English managed it,’ Joscelyn said acidly.
‘Your uncle’s garrison was sleeping,’ Sir Henri said, ‘but Sir Guillaume d’Evecque will not be so obliging. He’s got a reputation, a good one.’ Sir Henri knew who commanded at Castillon d’Arbizon because Robbie had told him, and had also told him how many men were under Sir Guillaume’s command.
Joscelyn jabbed a finger into the older man’s chest. ‘I do not want one more archer raiding my territory. Stop them. And give the bastards this.’ He handed Sir Henri a sealed parchment. ‘It gives them two days to leave the castle,’ Joscelyn explained airily, ‘and if they agree to its terms, you can let them go.’
Sir Henri took the parchment, but paused before putting it in his pouch. ‘And the ransom?’ he asked.
Joscelyn glared at him, but honour decreed that Sir Guillaume should receive a third of the money that had ransomed the new Count and Sir Henri’s question was therefore a proper one and so Joscelyn answered it, but curtly. The ransom’s there,’ he said, nodding at the parchment, ‘all there.’
‘It’s here?’ Sir Henri asked, astonished, for the message plainly contained no coins.
‘Just go!’ Joscelyn snapped.
Sir Henri left the same day that Guy Vexille took his own men to Astarac. Joscelyn was glad to see the back of the Harlequin, for Vexille was an uncomfortable presence even though his men-at-arms were a welcome addition to the Count’s forces. Vexille had brought forty-eight soldiers, all well mounted, well armoured and well armed, and he had surprised Joscelyn by not demanding a single ecu as payment. ‘I have my own funds,’ he had said coldly.
‘Forty-eight men-at-arms?’ Joscelyn wondered aloud. ‘That takes money.’
‘They were a heretic family, my lord,’ his uncle’s old chaplain had maintained, as if that explained the Harlequin’s wealth, but Vexille had come equipped with a letter from Louis Bessières, Cardinal Archbishop of Livorno, and that proved he was no heretic. Not that Joscelyn would have cared if Vexille worshipped wooden idols every night and sacrificed weeping virgins at each dawn. He was far more worried by the fact that the Vexilles had once been the lords of Astarac. He confronted Vexille with that, unable to hide his fear that the black-dressed knight had come to reclaim his ancestral lands.
The Harlequin had merely looked bored. ‘Astarac has been in your lordship’s fief for a hundred years,’ he said, ‘so how could I hold that honour?’
‘Then why are you here?’ Joscelyn demanded.
‘I fight for the Church now,’ Vexille said, ‘and my task is to hunt a fugitive who must be taken to justice. And when he is found, my lord, we shall leave your domain.’ He turned because a sword had just been drawn, the sound of the blade scraping on the scabbard’s throat unnaturally loud in the great hall.
Robbie Douglas had just entered the room. He now pointed the drawn weapon at Vexille. ‘You were in Scotland,’ he said threateningly.
Vexille looked the young man up and down and seemed unworried by the blade. ‘I have visited many countries,’ he said coldly, ‘including Scotland.’
‘You killed my brother.’
‘No!’ Joscelyn placed himself between the two men. ‘You swore my oath, Robbie.’
‘I swore an oath to kill that bastard!’ Robbie said.
‘No,’ Joscelyn said again, and he took Robbie’s blade in his hand and forced it down. In truth Joscelyn would not have been upset if Robbie had died, but if Guy Vexille was killed his black-cloaked men-at-arms might take vengeance on Joscelyn and his men. ‘You can kill him when he’s finished here. That is a promise.’
Vexille smiled at the promise. He and his men left next morning, and Joscelyn was pleased to be rid of them. It was not just Guy Vexille he found chilling, but also his companions, especially the one who did not carry a lance or shield. His name was Charles, a man of startling ugliness, who looked as though he had been plucked from some dark gutter, brushed down, given a knife and released to spread fear. Charles led his own smaller band of a dozen men-at-arms who all rode with Vexille when he went south to Astarac.
So Sir Henri had gone to rid the county of the impudent English garrison at Castillon d’Arbizon and Vexille was hunting his heretic in Astarac, which left Joscelyn free to enjoy his inheritance in Berat. Robbie Douglas was one of his many companions, and for the next few days they simply enjoyed themselves. There was money to be spent on clothes, weapons, horses, wine, women, anything that caught Joscelyn’s fancy, but some things could not be purchased in Berat itself and so a craftsman was summoned to the castle. The man’s usual job was making plaster saints that were sold to churches, convents, and monasteries, but his task in the castle was to make casts of Joscelyn’s body. He wrapped the Count’s arms in greased muslin, coated them with plaster, then did the same for Joscelyn’s legs and trunk. A tailor had also been summoned and he made measurements of the Count’s body that were noted down by a clerk. So many inches from shoulder to hip bone, from hip bone to knee, from shoulder to elbow, and when the measurements were taken they were copied onto a parchment and sealed in a great box in which the plaster casts were packed in sawdust, and the box was dispatched under the guard of four men-at-arms to Milan where Antonio Givani, the finest armourer in Christendom, was commanded to mak
e a complete set of plate armour. ‘Let it be a masterpiece,’ Joscelyn dictated the letter to a clerk, ‘the envy of all other knights,’ and he sent a generous payment in genoins with a promise of many more if the armour arrived before spring.
He had paid Robbie his ransom in the same coins, but on the night that the men-at-arms left for Turin, Robbie was foolish enough to admire a set of ivory dice that Joscelyn had purchased in the town. ‘You like them?’ Joscelyn asked. ‘I’ll roll you for them. Highest number keeps the dice.’
Robbie shook his head. ‘I’ve sworn an oath to keep from gambling,’ he explained.
Joscelyn thought that the funniest thing he had heard in months. ‘Women make oaths,’ he said, ‘and monks have to, but warriors only make oaths of brotherhood for battle.’
Robbie blushed. ‘I promised a priest,’ he said.
‘Oh, sweet Jesus!’ Joscelyn leaned back in his chair. ‘You can’t face risk, is that it? Is that why the Scots lose to the English?’ Robbie’s temper flared, but he had the sense to curb it and said nothing. ‘Risk,’ Joscelyn said airily, ‘is the soldier’s fate. If a man can’t abide risk he can’t be a soldier.’
‘I’m a soldier,’ Robbie said flatly.
‘Then prove it, my friend,’ Joscelyn said, rolling the dice across the table.
So Robbie played and lost. And lost the next night. And the next. And on the fourth night he gambled the money that was supposed to be sent to England to purchase his ransom and he lost that too, and next day Joscelyn heard that the Italian gunners, whom his uncle had summoned from Toulouse, had come to the castle with their machine and Joscelyn paid them their fee out of the money he had won from Robbie. ‘How soon can you go to Castillon d’Arbizon?’ he demanded of the Italians.
‘Tomorrow, sire?’
‘The thing is ready?’ Joscelyn asked, walking round the wagon on which the gun, shaped like a flask with a narrow neck and a bulbous body, was lashed.
‘It’s ready,’ the Italian, whose name was Gioberti, confirmed.
The Grail Quest Books 1-3: Harlequin, Vagabond, Heretic Page 105