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

by Bernard Cornwell

  ‘Probably not,’ Thomas said, ‘but there’s food in the castle, and warmth and friends.’

  ‘You could walk farther west?’ Philin suggested.

  ‘I came here for something,’ Thomas said, ‘and I haven’t got it.’ He had come for his cousin, and Guy Vexille was close; Thomas knew he could not double back on Astarac and face him because Vexille’s mounted men-at-arms held all the advantages in open country, but there was a small chance in Castillon d’Arbizon. A chance, at least, if Sir Guillaume was in command and Thomas’s friends were the men making up the shrunken garrison. And at least he would be back among archers, and so long as he had them by his side he believed he could offer his cousin a fight to remember.

  The rain poured on as they crossed the valley of the Gers, and became even harder as they climbed the next ridge through thick chestnuts. Some of the coredors fell behind, but most kept up with Thomas’s quick pace. ‘Why are they following me?’ Thomas asked Philin. ‘Why are you following me?’

  ‘We need food and warmth too,’ Philin said. Like a dog that had lost its master he had attached himself to Thomas and Genevieve, and the other coredors were following him, and so Thomas stopped on the ridge’s top and stared at them. They were a band of thin, ragged, hungry and beaten men, with a handful of bedraggled women and miserable children. ‘You can come with me,’ he said, and waited for Philin to translate, ‘but if we get to Castillon d’Arbizon you become soldiers. Proper soldiers! You’ll have to fight. Fight proper. Not skulk in the woods and run away when it gets hard. If we get into the castle you’ll have to help defend it, and if you can’t face that, then go away now.’ He watched them as Philin interpreted: most looked sheepish, but none turned away. They were either brave, Thomas thought, or so hopeless that they could think of no alternative but to follow him.

  He walked on towards the next valley. Genevieve, her hair plastered to her skull, kept pace with him. ‘How will we get into the castle?’ she asked.

  ‘Same way I did before. Across the weir and up to the wall.’

  They won’t guard that?’

  Thomas shook his head. ‘Too close to the ramparts. If they put men on that slope they’ll be picked off by archers. One by bloody one.’ Which did not mean that the besiegers might not have occupied the mill, but he would face that problem once he reached Castillon d’Arbizon.

  ‘And when we’re inside?’ she asked. ‘What then?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Thomas said honestly.

  She touched his hand as if to indicate that she was not criticizing, but merely curious. ‘It seems to me,’ she said, ‘that you are like a hunted wolf, and you’re going back to your lair.’

  ‘True,’ Thomas said.

  ‘And the huntsmen will know you are there. They will trap you.’

  ‘Also true,’ Thomas said.

  ‘Then why?’ she asked.

  He did not answer for a while, then he shrugged and tried to tell her the truth. ‘Because I’ve been beaten,’ he said, ‘because they killed Planchard, because I’ve got nothing to bloody lose, because if I’m on those ramparts with a bow then I can kill some of them. And I bloody will. I’ll kill Joscelyn; I’ll kill my cousin.’ He slapped the yew shaft, which was unstrung to preserve the cord from the rain. ‘I’ll kill them both. I’m an archer, and a bloody good one, and I’d rather be that than a fugitive.’

  ‘And Robbie? You’ll kill him?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Thomas said, unwilling to consider the question.

  ‘So the wolf,’ she said, ‘will kill the hounds? Then die?’

  ‘Probably,’ Thomas said. ‘But I’ll be with friends.’ That was important. Men he had brought to Gascony were under siege and, if they would take him back, he would stay with them to the end. ‘And you don’t have to come,’ he added to Genevieve.

  ‘You goddamn fool,’ she said, her anger matching his. ‘When I was going to die, you came. You think I will leave you now? Besides, remember what I saw under the thunder.’

  Darkness and a point of light. Thomas smiled in grim amusement. ‘You think we’ll win?’ he asked. ‘Maybe. I do know I’m on God’s side now, whatever the Church thinks. My enemies killed Planchard and that means they’re doing the devil’s work.’

  They were going downhill, coming towards the end of the trees and the first of the vineyards and Thomas paused to search the landscape ahead. The coredors straggled in behind him, dropping exhausted on the wet forest floor. Seven carried crossbows, the rest had a variety of weapons, or none at all. One woman, red-haired and snub-nosed, carried a falchion, a broad-bladed, curved sword, and she looked as if she knew how to use it.

  ‘Why are we stopping?’ Philin asked, though he was grateful for the respite because his son was a heavy burden.

  ‘To look for the hunters,’ Thomas said, and he stared a long time at the vineyards, meadows and small woods. A stream glinted between two pastures. There was no one in sight. There were no serfs digging ditches or herding pigs towards the chestnuts and that was worrying. Why would serfs stay home? Only because there were armed men around and Thomas looked for them.

  ‘There,’ Genevieve said, pointing, and to the north, by a bend in the glistening stream, Thomas saw a horseman in the shadow of a willow.

  So the hunters were waiting for him and once he was out of the trees they would surround him, chop down his companions and take him to his cousin.

  It was time to hide again.

  —«»—«»—«»—

  Joscelyn loved the gun. It was a thing of ugly beauty; a solid, bulbous, thunderous lump of clumsy killing machine. He wanted more of them. With a dozen such devices, he thought, he could be the greatest lord of Gascony.

  It had taken five days to drag the gun to Castillon d’Arbizon where Joscelyn had discovered that the siege, if it could even be called that, was going nowhere. Sir Henri claimed he had contained the garrison by penning them into the castle, but he had made no effort to attack. He had built no scaling ladders, nor positioned his crossbowmen close enough to pick the English archers off the ramparts. ‘Been dozing, have you?’ Joscelyn snarled.

  ‘No, lord.’

  ‘Paid you off, did they?’ Joscelyn demanded. ‘Bribed you perhaps?’ Sir Henri bridled at such an affront to his honour, but Joscelyn ignored him. Instead he ordered the crossbowmen to advance halfway up the main street and find windows or walls from where they could shoot at the men on the castle ramparts, and five of the crossbowmen were dead and another six were wounded by the long English arrows before the day ended, but Joscelyn was content. ‘Got them worried,’ he claimed, ‘and tomorrow we’ll begin slaughtering them.’

  Signor Gioberti, the Italian master gunner, decided to place his cannon just inside the town’s west gate. There was a convenient stretch of level cobbles there, and on them he put the two vast baulks of timber that supported the wooden frame that cradled the jar-shaped weapon. The spot was a good twenty yards outside the range of the English archers, so his men were safe and, better still, the gate’s archway, ten paces behind the gun, provided shelter from the intermittent showers so his men could mix the gunpowder safely.

  It took all morning to emplace the gun and its frame, which had to be lifted from the wagon by a crane that Gioberti’s men constructed from stout pieces of oak. The runners beneath the frame had been greased with pig lard, and Gioberti placed a tub of the white fat beside the gun so that the runners could be kept lubricated as the frame recoiled whenever the gun was fired.

  The cannon’s missiles were carried on a separate wagon and each needed two men to lift it from their bed. The missiles were iron bolts, four feet long; some were shaped like arrows with stubby metal vanes while the rest were simple bars, each as thick across as a man’s upper arm. The powder came in barrels, but it needed stirring because the heavy saltpetre, which made up about two-thirds of the mix, had sunk to the bottom of the tubs while the lighter sulphur and charcoal had risen to the top. The stirring was done with a long wooden spoon, and whe
n Signor Gioberti was satisfied, he ordered eight cupfuls to be placed in the dark recess of the gun.

  That breech, where the explosion would take place, was contained by the great jar-like bulge of the cannon’s rear. That bulbous piece of iron was painted on one side with an image of St Eloi, the patron saint of metal, and on the other with St Maurice, the patron of soldiers, while below the saints was the gun’s name, Hell Spitter. ‘She’s three years old, lord,’ Gioberti told Joscelyn, ‘and as well behaved as a properly beaten woman.’

  ‘Well behaved?’

  ‘I’ve seen them split, lord.’ Gioberti indicated the bulbous breech and explained that some guns tore themselves apart when they were fired, shattering scraps of hot metal to decimate the crew. ‘But Hell Spitter? She’s as sound as a bell. And that’s who made her, lord, bell-founders in Milan. They’re hard to cast right, very hard.’

  ‘You can do it?’ Joscelyn enquired, imagining a cannon foundry in Berat.

  ‘Not me, lord. But you can hire good men. Or find bell-founders. They know how to do it, and there’s a way of making sure they do a proper job.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Joscelyn asked eagerly.

  ‘You make the gun’s makers stand by the breech when the first shot is fired, my lord. That concentrates them on their work!’ Gioberti chuckled. ‘I had Hell Spitter’s founders standing by her and they didn’t flinch. Proves she’s well made, my lord, well made.’

  A fuse, made from linen soaked with a mix of oil and gunpowder and protected by a sewn linen sheath, was placed with one end in the powder and the other trailing through the gun’s narrow neck where the missile would be placed. Some gunners, Gioberti said, preferred a hole drilled through the big breech, but he was of the opinion that such a hole dissipated part of the gun’s force and he preferred to light the fuse from the gun’s mouth. The white linen tube was held in place by a handful of wet loam slapped into the narrow neck, and only when that loam had set slightly did Gioberti allow two of his men to bring one of the arrow-shaped bolts, which was lifted up to the flaring mouth and carefully pushed back so that its long black length rested in the cannon’s narrow neck. Now more loam was brought, newly mixed from river water and from sand and clay that were carried in the third wagon, and the loam was packed all around the missile to make a tight seal. ‘It holds in the explosion, lord,’ Gioberti said, and explained that without the loam to seal the barrel much of the powder’s explosive force would waste itself as it vented past the missile. ‘Without the loam,’ he said, ‘it just spits the bolt out. No force at all.’

  ‘You will let me fire the fuse?’ Joscelyn asked, as eager as a small child with a new toy.

  ‘So you should, my lord,’ Gioberti said, ‘but not yet. The loam must set hard.’

  That took almost three hours, but then, as the sun sank behind the town and lit the eastern face of the castle, Gioberti declared everything was ready. The barrels of powder were safely stored in a nearby house where no trace of fire could reach them, the gunners had taken shelter in case the breech burst, and the thatch in front of the gun on either side of the street had been wetted down by men with buckets. The cannon had been wedged upwards so that it was pointing at the top of the castle’s entrance arch, but the bolt, the Italian said, should fall slightly as it flew and thus strike the very centre of the gate. He ordered one of his men to bring a lighted brand from the hearth of the Bear and Butcher tavern and when he had been given the fire and he was sure all had been done that should be done, he bowed to Joscelyn and held out the burning wood. A priest said a prayer of blessing, then scuttled into the alley beside the tavern. ‘Just touch the fire to the fuse, my lord,’ Gioberti said, ‘then you and I can go to the gate rampart and watch.’

  Joscelyn looked at the thick black arrow head protruding from the barrel to fill the gun’s flared mouth, then at the fuse beneath, and he touched the fire to the linen sleeve and the powder inside began to fizz. ‘Back, lord, if you please,’ Gioberti said. A little trail of smoke was coming from the linen sleeve, which shrivelled and turned black as it shrank towards the throat. Joscelyn wanted to watch the fire vanish into the gun’s neck, but Signor Gioberti dared to pull his lordship’s sleeve in his urgency and Joscelyn meekly followed the Italian up to the gate rampart from where he stared at the castle. Up on the keep the Earl of Northampton’s flag stirred in the small wind, but not for much longer, Joscelyn thought.

  Then the world shook. The noise was such that Joscelyn thought he stood in the heart of thunder, a thunder that gave a palpable blow to his eardrums so sudden and strong he involuntarily jumped, and then the whole street ahead of him, all the space between the walls and the dampened thatch, filled with smoke in which bright shards of charcoal and shattered scraps of loam, all trailing fire like comets, arched and fell. The town’s gateway shuddered, and the noise of the explosion echoed back from the castle to drown the screech of Hell Spitter’s ponderous frame recoiling on its greased runners. Dogs began howling in the shuttered houses and a thousand startled birds took to the sky. ‘Sweet God!’ Joscelyn said, amazed, his ears ringing from the thunder that still rolled about the valley. ‘Dear Christ!’ The grey-white smoke drifted away from the street and with it came a stench so hideous, so rotten, that Joscelyn almost gagged. Then, through the foul-smelling smoke’s remnants, he could see that one leaf of the castle’s gates was hanging askew. ‘Do it again,’ he ordered, his voice sounding muffled to himself because his ears were full of echoes.

  ‘Tomorrow, lord,’ Gioberti said. ‘It takes time to set the loam. We’ll load tonight and shoot at daybreak.’

  Next morning the gun fired three shots, all of them solid bars of rusted iron that succeeded in tearing the castle’s gates off their hinges. It began to rain and the drops hissed and steamed when they hit Hell Spitter’s metal. The townsfolk cowered in their houses, flinching every time the massive noise of the gun shook their window shutters and made their kitchen pots rattle.

  The castle’s defenders had vanished from the battlements and that emboldened the crossbowmen who moved even closer.

  The gate was gone, though Joscelyn could still not see into the castle’s courtyard for that lay higher than the gun, but he assumed the garrison would know that an assault must come through the gate and doubtless they were preparing defences. ‘The trick of it,’ he declared at midday, ‘is not to give them time.’

  ‘They’ve had time,’ Sir Henri Courtois pointed out. ‘They’ve had all morning.’

  Joscelyn ignored Sir Henri who he thought was nothing but a timid old man who had lost his appetite for battle. ‘We attack this evening,’ Joscelyn decreed. ‘Signor Gioberti will fire an iron into the courtyard and we shall follow while the noise still cows them.’

  He picked forty men-at-arms, the best he had, and he ordered them to be ready at sunset and, to ensure that the defenders had no warning of his attack, he had men hack holes in the house walls so that the attackers could approach the castle through the town’s buildings. By going through the walls, sneaking from house to house, the attackers could get within thirty paces of the gate without being seen and, as soon as the gun fired, they were to erupt from their hiding place and charge the castle’s archway. Sir Henri Courtois offered to lead the attack, but Joscelyn refused. ‘It needs young men,’ he said, ‘men without fear.’ He glanced at Robbie. ‘Will you come?’

  ‘Of course, my lord.’

  ‘We’ll send a dozen crossbowmen first,’ Joscelyn decreed. ‘They can shoot a volley into the courtyard and then get out of our way.’ They would also, he hoped, draw the arrows of any English archers who might be waiting.

  Sir Henri drew a diagram on a kitchen table with a scrap of charcoal to show Joscelyn what lay inside the courtyard. The stables, he said, were to the right and should be avoided for they led nowhere. ‘Facing you, lord,’ he said, ‘are two doorways. The one on the left leads down to the dungeons and, once down there, there is no other way out. The one on the right is at the top of a dozen steps a
nd that leads to the halls and battlements.’

  ‘So that’s the one we want?’

  ‘Indeed, lord.’ Sir Henri hesitated. He wanted to warn Joscelyn that Sir Guillaume was an experienced soldier, that he would be ready. The siege proper had only just begun, the gun had been working for less than a day, and that was when a garrison was at its most alert. Sir Guillaume would be waiting, but Sir Henri knew that any caution would only incur Joscelyn’s dismissive scorn and so he said nothing.

  Joscelyn ordered his squire to prepare his armour, then gave Sir Henri a careless glance. ‘When the castle is taken,’ he said, ‘you will be castellan again.’

  ‘Whatever your lordship orders,’ Sir Henri said, taking the insult of his demotion calmly.

  The attackers gathered in St Callic’s church where a Mass was said and a blessing given to the men in their mail coats, and afterwards they filed through the crude doorways hacked in the house walls, climbing the hill, going secretly to a wheelwright’s shop that opened onto the square in front of the castle. They crouched there, weapons ready. Men pulled on helmets, said their silent prayers and waited. Most had shields, but some preferred to go without, claiming they could move faster. Two had huge axes, weapons to strike terror in a small space. They touched their talismans, said more prayers and waited impatiently for the roar of the huge gun. None peered around the doorway for Joscelyn was watching them and he had given strict orders that they were to stay hidden until the gun fired. ‘There is still a reward for every archer taken alive,’ he reminded them, ‘but I’ll give it for dead archers too.’

  ‘Keep your shields up,’ Robbie put in, thinking of the long English arrows.

  ‘They’ll be dazed,’ Joscelyn said, ‘and cowering from the noise. We just go in and kill them.’

  Pray God that was true, Robbie thought, and he felt a twinge of guilt that he was fighting against Sir Guillaume, whom he liked, but he had sworn his new allegiance and he was convinced he was fighting for God, for Scotland and for the true faith.