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

by Bernard Cornwell

  ‘How many archers do you have?’

  ‘Twelve who can pull a cord,’ Thomas said. ‘Men-at-arms?’

  ‘Fifteen.’ Sir Guillaume grimaced. The only consolation was that none of the garrison was tempted to flee for they were all stranded far from any friendly troops. Some of the coredors had gone when they learned from Philin that no besiegers were watching the castle, but Thomas did not regret their loss. ‘So what do we do?’ Sir Guillaume asked.

  ‘Stay here till our sick recover,’ Thomas said. ‘Or till they die,’ he added. ‘Then we go.’ He could not leave men like Jake to suffer alone. The least he could do was stay and keep them company on their passage to heaven or hell.

  Then he saw that passage to the next world might come quicker than he expected, for men-at-arms were gathering at the foot of the street. They carried swords, axes and shields, and their appearance meant only one thing. ‘They want the Grail,’ he said.

  ‘Jesus Christ, give it to them.’ Sir Guillaume said fervently. ‘Give them all the pieces.’

  ‘You think that will satisfy them?’

  ‘No,’ Sir Guillaume admitted.

  Thomas leaned over the battlements. ‘Archers!’ he shouted, then ran to pull on his mail coat and strap on his sword and gather his bow and arrow bag.

  For the siege was not done.

  —«»—«»—«»—

  Thirty-three knights and men-at-arms advanced up the street. The leading twelve, amongst whom was Guy Vexille, carried the pavises that should have sheltered the crossbowmen, but only six of those archers were left and Guy had ordered them to follow him, keeping a good ten paces behind, and so the vast crossbow shields, each taller than a man, served to protect his men-at-arms.

  They moved slowly, shuffling to keep close and to stay behind the thick, heavy pavises that were being pushed along the cobbles so that no arrow could fly beneath and pin a man’s ankle. Guy Vexille waited for the thudding of the arrows striking the wood, then realized that Thomas had either lost all his archers or, far more likely, was waiting for the moment when the pavises were dropped.

  They climbed through a town of the dying and the dead, a town stinking of fire and ordure. There was a man lying dead in a soiled sheet; they kicked his corpse aside and walked on. The men in the second rank held their shields aloft, protecting the three ranks from arrows shot from the castle’s high keep, but still no missiles came. Guy wondered if everyone in the castle was dead and he imagined walking its empty halls like a knight of old, a Grail-searcher come to his destiny, and he shuddered with pure ecstasy at the thought of claiming the relic; then the group of men were crossing the open space in front of the castle and Guy reminded them to stay close and to keep the pavises overlapping as they struggled over the mound of rubble thrown down by Hell Spitter. ‘Christ is our companion,’ he told his men, ‘God is with us. We cannot lose.’

  The only sounds were the cries of women and children in the town, the scrape of pavises and the clanking of armoured feet. Guy Vexille moved one of the heavy shields aside and glimpsed a makeshift barricade stretching across the courtyard, but he also saw archers bunched at the top of the steps which led into the keep and one of those men drew back his string and Guy hastily closed up the chink between the shields. The arrow struck the pavise and knocked it back and Guy was astonished by the arrow’s force, and even more astonished when he looked up and saw a hand’s breadth of needle-pointed arrow protruding through the pavise that was twice as thick as an ordinary shield. More arrows struck, their sound an irregular drumbeat, and the heavy pavises shook from the impact. A man cursed, wounded in the cheek by an arrow that had pierced the timber layers, but Guy steadied his men. ‘Stay together,’ he said, ‘go slow. When we’re through the gate we go to the barricade. We can pull it down. Then the front rank charges the steps. Keep hold of the pavises till we reach the archers.’ His own pavise jarred on a stone and he lifted the big wooden handle to hoist the shield over the small obstacle and an arrow immediately slammed into the rubble, missing his foot by an inch. ‘Stay firm,’ he told his men, ‘stay firm. God is with us.’ The pavise rocked back, struck high by two arrows, but Guy forced it upright, took another step, climbing now for he was crossing the rubble in the shattered gateway. They moved the big shields in small jerks, forcing them against the power of the arrow hits. It seemed there were no archers on the keep’s ramparts for no arrows came down from the sky, just from the front where they were stopped by the big shields. ‘Stay close,’ Guy told his men, ‘stay close and trust in God,’ and then, from where they had been hidden behind the remaining curtain wall to the right of the gate, Sir Guillaume’s men-at-arms howled and charged.

  Sir Guillaume had seen how the attackers were hiding behind the pavises and had reckoned those great shields would blind them, and so he had thrown down one end of the barricade and taken ten men to the corner of the yard behind the curtain wall, a place where the stable dungheap lay, and now, as Guy’s men appeared through the arch, Sir Guillaume attacked. It was the same tactic he had used to such effect against Joscelyn’s attack, only this time the plan was to charge, kill and wound, and immediately retreat. He had told his men that idea over and over again. Break the pavise wall, he had said, then let the archers do the rest of the slaughter while they got back to the gap in the barricade, and for an instant it all seemed to work. The onslaught did surprise the attackers, who reeled back in disarray. An English man-at-arms, a wild man who loved nothing better than a fight, split a skull with an axe while Sir Guillaume thrust his sword into another man’s groin, and the men holding the pavises instinctively turned towards the threat and that meant the shields turned with them and opened their left sides to the archers on the top of the steps.

  ‘Now!’ Thomas called, and the arrows flew.

  Guy had not foreseen this, but he was ready. In his rear rank was a man called Fulk, a Norman, who was loyal as a dog and fierce as an eagle. ‘Hold them, Fulk!’ Vexille shouted. ‘Front rank with me!’ An arrow had glanced off one of his rerebraces, wounding a man behind, and two of the front rank were staggering with arrows through their mail, but the rest followed Guy Vexille as he closed up the pavise wall and headed towards the gap at the end of the barricade. Sir Guillaume’s men should have retreated, but they were locked in battle now, lost in the excitement and terror of close combat; they were fending blows with their shields, trying to find chinks in enemy armour. Guy ignored them and went past the barricade, and then, with the heavy pavise still protecting him, he advanced on the steps. Five men went with him; the rest were attacking Sir Guillaume’s few men, who were now seriously outnumbered. The archers had turned on the six men coming to the steps and were wasting their arrows on the huge shields, and then the six crossbowmen, unnoticed in the confusion, appeared in the gateway and shot a volley that tore into the English bowmen. Three went down instantly; another found himself holding a broken bow that had been shattered by a quarrel.

  And Guy, shouting that God was with him, discarded the pavise and charged up the steps.

  ‘Back!’ Thomas shouted. ‘Back!’ There were three men-at-arms waiting to defend the stairway, but first his archers had to get through the door and Guy had trapped one man, tangling his legs with the sword so he fell, then making him scream when the long blade rammed up his groin. Blood cascaded down the steps. Thomas thrust his bowstave at Guy’s chest, pushing him back, then Sam seized Thomas and dragged him back into the doorway. After that it was a scramble up the stairs, always twisting to the right, past the three men-at-arms who waited at the top. ‘Hold them,’ Thomas said to the three. ‘Sam! Up top! Quick!’

  Thomas stayed on the stairs. Sam and the other seven archers who were left would know what to do once they reached the keep’s battlements, while for Thomas the most important thing was to stop Guy’s men climbing the steps up to the first hall. The attackers had to come with the stairway’s central spine on their right and that would restrict their sword arms, while Thomas’s men, fighting down
wards, would have more space to wield their weapons, except Guy’s first man up was left-handed and he carried a short-handled, broad-bladed axe that he chopped into a man-at-arm’s foot and brought him down in a clatter of shield, sword and mail. The axe fell again, there was a brief scream, then Thomas loosed an arrow at three paces’ range and the axeman was falling back, the shaft in his throat. A crossbow bolt followed, screeching along the curve of the wall, and Thomas saw Genevieve had collected four of the coredors’ bows and was waiting for another target.

  Sir Guillaume was now in desperate trouble. He was outnumbered and cornered. He shouted at his men to lock shields and to brace themselves against the yard’s corner where the dungheap obstructed him. Then Guy’s men came in a rush and the shields went up to meet swords and axes. Sir Guillaume’s men thrust the shields forward to rock the enemy back and lunged their swords at bellies or chests, but one of the enemy, a big man showing the symbol of a bull on his jupon, had a mace, a great ball of iron on a stout handle that he used to beat down an Englishman’s shield until it was nothing but splintered pieces of willow held together by the leather cover and the shield’s holder had a crushed forearm. Yet still the Englishman tried to ram the broken shield into his attacker’s face, until another Frenchman rammed a sword into his guts and he fell to his knees. Sir Guillaume seized the mace, hauled it towards him and the enemy came fast, tripping on his victim. Sir Guillaume hit him in the face with the hilt of his sword, the crosspiece sinking into an eye, but the man fought on, blood and jelly on his cheek, and two more enemy were coming behind him, prising the short line of defenders apart. An Englishman was on his knees, being hammered on the helmet by two swords, then he bent forward and vomited and one of the Frenchmen shoved the sword blade behind his backplate, in the gap between plate and helmet, and the Englishman screamed as his spine was flayed open.

  The man with the mace, one-eyed now, was trying to stand and Sir Guillaume kicked him in the face, kicked him again, and still he would not stay down so Sir Guillaume rammed his sword into the man’s breast, ripping through mail, but then a Frenchman thrust a sword at Sir Guillaume’s breast and the blow hurled him back onto the dungheap. ‘They’re dead men!’ Fulk shouted. ‘They’re dead men!’ And just then the first volley of arrows came from the keep’s battlements.

  The arrows slashed into the backs of Fulk’s men-at-arms. Some wore plate and the arrows, coming at a steep angle, glanced off that armour, but the bodkin points drove through mail and leather and suddenly four of the attackers were dead and three were wounded, and then the archers turned their bows on the crossbowmen in the gate. Sir Guillaume, unwounded, managed to stand. His shield was split and he threw it away, then the man with the bull on his jupon raised himself onto his knees and grappled with him, arms about his waist, trying to pull him down. Sir Guillaume used both hands to hammer the heavy pommel of his sword onto the man’s helmet, yet he was still hauled down, falling with a crash, and he let go of his sword as the big man tried to throttle him. Sir Guillaume felt with his left hand to find the bottom of the man’s breastplate, drew his dagger with his right and stabbed up into the big man’s belly. He felt the knife go through leather, then puncture skin and muscle and he worked the blade, ripping at the man’s guts as the coarse, sweat-reddened, bloodied, one-eyed face snarled at him.

  More arrows flew, thumping with a sickening thud into Fulk’s remaining men. ‘Here!’ Guy Vexille was in the doorway at the top of the steps. ‘Fulk! Here! Leave them! Here!’

  Fulk repeated the order in his roaring voice. So far as he could see only three of the defenders were alive in the corner of the courtyard, but if he stayed to finish them off then the archers on the tower would kill all his men. Fulk had an arrow in the thigh, but he felt no pain as he stumbled up the steps and into the big doorway where, at last, he was safe from the arrows. Guy now had fifteen men left. The others were dead or else still in the yard, wounded. One man, already struck by two arrows, tried to crawl to the steps and two more arrows thudded into his back, throwing him down. He twitched, and his mouth opened and closed in spasms until a last arrow broke his spine. An archer whom Guy had not noticed before, a man who had been lying on a bed of straw, struggled a few paces across the yard and used a knife to cut the throat of a wounded man-at-arms, but then a crossbow bolt flashed from the gate to strike the archer and throw him onto his victim’s body. The archer vomited, jerked for a few heartbeats and then was still.

  Sir Guillaume was helpless. He had two men left, not nearly enough to attack the doorway, and Sir Guillaume himself was bruised, bleeding and feeling strangely and suddenly weak. His stomach gave a heave and he retched emptily, then staggered back onto the wall. John Faircloth was lying on the dungheap, bleeding from the belly, unable to talk as he died. Sir Guillaume wanted to say something comforting to the dying Englishman, but a wave of nausea swept over him. He retched again, and his armour felt curiously heavy. All he wanted to do was lie down and rest. ‘My face,’ he said to one of the two survivors, a Burgundian, ‘look at my face,’ and the man obeyed and flinched when he saw the red blotches. ‘Oh, sweet Jesus,’ Sir Guillaume said, ‘sweet goddamn Jesus,’ and he slumped down by the wall and reached for his sword as if the familiar weapon would give him solace.

  ‘Shields,’ Guy said to his men. ‘Two of you with shields, hold them high, go up the stairs, and we’ll come behind and cut their legs out.’ That was the best way to take a stairway, to chop the vulnerable ankles of the defenders, but when they tried it they discovered the two remaining men-at-arms were using shortened lances that Sir Guillaume had placed on the landing to defend the steps, and they hammered the lances on the shields, driving the men back, and an arrow and a crossbow bolt took one man in the helmet so that blood spilled down from beneath its rim to sheet his face. He fell back and Guy pulled him down the steps and put him beside the corpse of the axeman he had dragged off the stairway.

  ‘We need crossbows,’ Fulk said. His blunt face was bruised and there was blood in his beard. He went to the doorway and bellowed for the crossbowmen to run to the steps. ‘Come fast!’ he shouted, then spat out a bloody tooth. ‘It’s safe! The archers are dead,’ he lied, ‘so come now!’

  The crossbowmen tried, but Sam and his archers on the battlements had been waiting for them and four of the six were hit by arrows. A loaded crossbow clattered across the stones, hit the barricade and tripped the pawl so that its bolt buried itself in a corpse. One crossbowman tried to run back through the arch and was hurled onto the rubble by an arrow, yet two of the bowmen managed to reach the steps unharmed.

  ‘There are few of them,’ Guy told his men, ‘and God is with us. We need one effort, just one, and the Grail is ours. Your reward will be glory or heaven. Glory or heaven.’ He had the best armour so he decided he would lead the next attack with Fulk beside him. The two crossbowmen would be immediately behind, ready to shoot the bowmen waiting behind the curve of the stairway. Once the stairway was clear Guy would hold the base of the keep. With luck, he thought, the Grail would be in whatever room they reached, but if it was another floor up then they must do it all again, but he was certain they would reach the prize and, once it was gained, he would fire the castle. The wooden floors would burn readily enough and the flames and smoke would kill the archers on the battlements and Guy would be victorious. He could leave, the Grail would be his and the world would be changed.

  Just one last effort.

  Guy took a small shield from one of his men-at-arms. It was scarcely bigger than a serving platter, intended only to fend off sword blows in a melee, and he began the attack by pushing it round the corner, hoping to draw the arrows and then rush the steps while the bowmen upstairs had empty strings, but the archers were not drawn by the ruse and so Guy nodded to Fulk who had snapped off the head and feathered end of the arrow in his thigh, leaving the shortened shaft sticking clean through the muscle. ‘I’m ready,’ Fulk said.

  ‘Then we go,’ Guy said, and the two men crouched behind
their shields and climbed the winding stair, treading on the blood of their comrades, and they turned the bend and Guy braced himself for an arrow’s strike. None came, and he peered over the shield and saw nothing but empty steps ahead and knew God had given him victory. ‘For the Grail,’ he told Fulk, and the two men hurried, just a dozen steps to go and the crossbowmen were behind them, and then Guy smelt the burning. He thought nothing of it. The stair turned and he could see the hallway opening up ahead and he shouted his war cry and then the fire came.

  It had been Genevieve’s idea. She had given her crossbow to Philin and gone up to the hall where the sick lay and she had seized one of the breastplates captured from Joscelyn’s assault and raked into its shallow bowl a bucket full of glowing embers from the fire. One of the coredor women helped her, scooping smouldering cinders and ash into a great cooking pot, and they carried the fire downstairs, the breastplate burning Genevieve’s hands, and when the first two men came into view they hurled the red hot scraps down the stairs. The ash did the greatest damage. It drifted, hot dust, and some got into the eyes of the crossbowman behind Fulk and he flinched away, his weapon dropped as he pawed the burning scraps from his face, and the crossbow struck the step, fired itself and the bolt went through Fulk’s ankle. Fulk fell into a scatter of red-hot embers and scrambled backwards to free himself of the pain and Guy was alone on the stairs, ash half blinding him, and he lifted the shield as though that would protect his eyes and it was struck by an arrow with such force that it threw him back. The arrow was half through the shield. A crossbow bolt cracked against the wall. Guy staggered, trying to gain his balance, trying to see through the ash-induced tears and the thick smoke, and then Thomas led his few men in a charge. Thomas carried one of the shortened lances that he rammed at Guy, throwing him all the way down the stairs, while the man-at-arms with Thomas stabbed a sword two-handed into Fulk’s neck.