“A thousand and a thousand men would,” the Cardinal agreed mildly, “but once they possessed the Grail they would take it to their King and that fool would lose it to the English. Vexille, so far as he is any man’s, is mine, but I know what he will do when he has the Grail. He will steal it. So you will kill him before he has a chance.”
“He’ll be a hard man to kill,” Charles worried.
“Which is why I am sending you, Charles. You and your cut-throat soldiers. Don’t fail me.”
That night Charles made a new receptacle for the fake Grail. It was a leather tube, of the sort crossbowmen used to carry their quarrels, and he packed the precious cup inside, padded the glass and gold with linen and sawdust, then sealed the tube’s lid with wax.
And the next day Gaspard received his freedom. A knife slit his belly, then ripped upwards, so that he died slowly in a pool of blood. Yvette screamed so loudly that she was left voiceless, just gasping for breath, and showed no resistance as Charles cut the dress from her body. Ten minutes later, as a mark of gratitude for what he had just experienced, Charles Bessières killed her quickly.
Then the tower was locked.
And Charles Bessières, the crossbowman’s quiver safe at his side, led his hard men south.
IN THE NAME OF THE Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, amen.” Thomas said the words half aloud and crossed himself. Somehow the prayer did not seem sufficient and so he drew his sword, propped it up so the handle looked like a cross and dropped to one knee. He repeated the words in Latin. “In nomine patris, et filii, et spiritus sancti, amen.” God spare me, he thought, and he tried to remember when he had last made confession.
Sir Guillaume was amused by his piety. “I thought you said there were few of them?”
“There are,” Thomas said, standing and sheathing his sword. “But it doesn’t hurt to pray before a fight.”
Sir Guillaume made a very sketchy sign of the cross, then spat. “If there’s only a few,” he said, “we’ll murder the bastards.”
If, indeed, the bastards were still coming. Thomas wondered if the horsemen had turned back towards Astarac. Who they were he did not know, and whether they were enemies he could not tell. They had certainly not been approaching from Berat for that lay northwards and the riders were coming from the east, but he was certain of one reassuring fact. He outnumbered them. He and Sir Guillaume commanded twenty archers and forty-two men-at-arms and Thomas had estimated the approaching horsemen at less than half those numbers. Many of Thomas’s new men-at-arms were routiers who had joined Castillon d’Arbizon’s garrison for the opportunity of plunder and they were pleased at the thought of a skirmish that could provide captured horses, weapons and armor, and even, perhaps, the prospect of prisoners to ransom.
“You’re sure they weren’t coredors?” Sir Guillaume asked him.
“They weren’t coredors,” Thomas said confidently. The men on the ridge top had been too well armed, too well armored and too well mounted to be bandits. “They were flying a banner,” he added, “but I couldn’t see it. It was hanging straight down.”
“Routiers, perhaps?” Sir Guillaume suggested.
Thomas shook his head. He could not think why any band of routiers would be in this desolate place or why they would fly a banner. The men he had seen had looked like soldiers on a patrol and, before he had turned tail and galloped back to the village, he had clearly marked the lances bundled on packhorses. Routiers would not just have lances on their sumpter horses, but bundles of clothing and belongings. “I think,” he suggested, “that Berat sent men to Astarac after we were there. Maybe they thought we’d go back for a second bite?”
“So they’re enemies?”
“Do we have any friends in these parts?” Thomas asked.
Sir Guillaume grinned. “You think twenty?”
“Maybe a few more,” Thomas said, “but no more than thirty.”
“Perhaps you didn’t see them all?”
“We’ll find out, won’t we?” Thomas asked. “If they come.”
“Crossbows?”
“Didn’t see any.”
“Then let’s hope they are coming here,” Sir Guillaume said wolfishly. He was as eager as any man to make money. He needed cash, and a lot of it, to bribe and fight and so regain his fief in Normandy. “Maybe it’s your cousin?” he suggested.
“Sweet Jesus,” Thomas said, “I hadn’t thought of that,” and he instinctively reached back and touched his yew bow because any mention of his cousin suggested evil. Then he felt a pulse of excitement at the thought that it might truly be Guy Vexille who rode unsuspecting to-wards the fight.
“If it is Vexille,” Sir Guillaume said, fingering the awful scar on his face, “then he’s mine to kill.”
“I want him alive,” Thomas said. “Alive.”
“Best tell Robbie that,” Sir Guillaume said, “because he’s sworn to kill him too.” Robbie wanted that revenge for his brother.
“Maybe it isn’t him,” Thomas said, but he wanted it to be his cousin, and he especially wanted it now for the coming fight promised to be a straightforward trouncing. The horsemen could only approach the village by the ford unless they elected to ride up or downstream to discover another crossing place, and a villager, threatened with a sword held to his baby daughter’s eyes, said there was no other bridge or ford within five miles. So the horsemen had to come straight from the ford to the village street and, in the pastures between the two, they must die.
Fifteen men-at-arms would protect the village street.
For the moment those men were hidden in the yard of a substantial cottage, but when the enemy came from the ford they would emerge to bar the road, and Sir Guillaume had commandeered a farm cart that would be pushed across the street to make a barrier against the horsemen. In truth Thomas did not expect that the fifteen men would need to fight, for behind the orchard hedges on either side of the road he had deployed his archers. It was the bowmen who would do the initial killing and they had the luxury of readying their arrows, which they thrust point down in the roots of the hedges. Nearest them were the broad-heads, arrows that had a wedge-shaped blade at their tip, and each blade had deep tangs so that once it was imbedded in flesh it could not be pulled out. The archers honed the broad-heads on the whetstones they carried in their pouches to make sure they were razor sharp. “You wait,” Thomas told them, “wait till they reach the field marker.” There was a white painted stone by the road that showed where one man’s pasture ended and another’s began, and when the first horsemen reached the stone their destriers would be struck by the broad-heads, which were designed to rip deep, to would terribly, to drive the horses mad with pain. Some of the destriers would go down then, but others would survive and swerve about the dying beasts to continue the charge, so when the enemy was close the archers would switch to their bodkin arrows.
The bodkins were made to pierce armor and the best of them had shafts made of two kinds of wood. The leading six inches of ash or poplar was replaced with heavy oak that was scarfed into place with hoof glue, and the oak was tipped with a steel head that was as long as a man’s middle finger, as slender as a woman’s little finger and sharpened to a point. That needle-like head, backed by the heavier oak shaft, had no barbs: it was just a smooth length of steel that punched its way through mail and would even penetrate plate armor if it hit plumb. The broad-heads were to kill horses, the bodkins to kill men, and if it took a minute for the horsemen to come from the field marker to the edge of the village, Thomas’s twenty archers could loose at least three hundred arrows and still have twice as many in reserve.
Thomas had done this so many times before. In Brittany, where he had learned his trade, he had stood behind hedges and helped destroy scores of enemies. The French had learned the hard way and had taken to sending crossbowmen ahead, but the arrows just killed them as they reloaded their clumsy weapons and the horsemen then had no choice but to charge or retreat. Either way the English archer was king o
f the battlefield, for no other nation had learned to use the yew bow.
The archers, like Sir Guillaume’s men, were hidden, but Robbie commanded the rest of the men-at-arms who were the lure. Most of them were apparently scattered on the mound which was just to the north of the village street. One or two dug, the rest simply sat as if they rested. Two others fed the village bonfire, making sure that the smoke beckoned the enemy onwards. Thomas and Genevieve walked to the mound and, while Genevieve waited at its foot, Thomas climbed up to look into the great hole Sir Guillaume had made. “Empty?”
“Lots of pebbles,” Robbie said, “but none of them gold.”
“You know what to do?”
Robbie nodded cheerfully. “Wait till they’re in chaos,” he said, “then charge.”
“Don’t go early, Robbie.”
“We’ll not go early,” an Englishman called John Faircloth answered. He was a man-at-arms, much older and more experienced than Robbie, and although Robbie’s birth entitled him to the command of the small force, Robbie knew well enough to take the older man’s advice.
“We’ll not let you down,” the Scot said happily. His men’s horses were picketed just behind the mound. As soon as the enemy appeared they would run down from the small height and mount up, and when the enemy was scattered and broken by the arrows, Robbie would lead a charge that would curl round their rear and so trap them.
“It might be my cousin coming,” Thomas said. “I don’t know that,” he added, “but it might be.”
“He and I have a quarrel,” Robbie said, remembering his brother.
“I want him alive, Robbie. He has answers.”
“But when you have your answers,” Robbie said, “I want his throat.”
“Answers first, though,” Thomas said, then turned as Genevieve called him from the foot of the mound.
“I saw something,” she said, “in the chestnut woods.”
“Don’t look!” Thomas called to those of Robbie’s men who had overheard her, then, making a great play of stretching his arms and looking bored, he slowly turned and stared across the stream. For a few heartbeats he could see nothing except two peasants carrying bundles of stakes across the ford and he thought, for a second, Genevieve must have meant those men, then he looked beyond the river and saw three horsemen half hidden by a thicket of trees. The three men probably thought they were well concealed, but in Brittany Thomas had learned to spot danger in thick woods. “They’re taking a look at us,” he said to Robbie. “Not long now, eh?” He strung his bow.
Robbie stared at the horsemen. “One’s a priest,” he said dubiously.
Thomas stared. “Just a black cloak,” he guessed. The three men had turned and were riding away. They were soon lost to sight in the thicker woods.
“Suppose it’s the Count of Berat?” Robbie asked.
“Suppose it is?” Thomas sounded disappointed. He wanted the enemy to be his cousin.
“If we capture him,” Robbie said, “there’ll be a rare ransom.”
“True.”
“So would you mind if I stayed until it’s paid?”
Thomas was disconcerted by the question. He was used to the idea that Robbie was leaving and so ridding his men of the rancor caused by his jealousy. “You’d stay with us?”
“To get my share of the ransom,” Robbie said, bridling. “Is there anything wrong with that?”
“No, no.” Thomas hurried to soothe his friend. “You’ll get your share, Robbie.” He thought maybe he could pay Robbie’s share from his existing stock of cash and so spur the Scotsman on his penitential way, but this was not the time to make the suggestion. “Don’t charge too early,” he warned Robbie again, “and God be with you.”
“It’s time we had a good fight,” Robbie said, his spirits restored. “Don’t let your archers kill the rich ones. Leave some for us.”
Thomas grinned and went back down the mound. He strung Genevieve’s bow, then walked with her to where Sir Guillaume and his men were concealed. “Not long now, lads,” he called, climbing onto the farm wagon to see across the yard’s wall. His archers were concealed in the pear orchard’s hedge beneath him, their bows strung and the first broad-heads resting on their strings.
He joined them and then waited. And waited. Time stretched, slowed, crawled to a halt. Thomas waited so long that he began to doubt any enemy would come, or worse, he feared the horsemen had smelt out his ambush and were circling far up or down stream to ambush him. His other worry was that the town of Masseube, which was not so very far away, might send men to find out why the villagers had lit their warning pyre.
Sir Guillaume shared the anxiety. “Where the hell are they?” he asked when Thomas came back to the yard to climb onto the wagon so he could see across the river.
“God knows.” Thomas gazed into the far chestnuts and saw nothing to alarm him. The leaves had just started to change color. Two pigs were rooting among the trunks.
Sir Guillaume was wearing a full-length hauberk, the mail covering him from shoulder to ankle. He had a scarred breastplate that was tied in place with rope, one plate vambrace that he buckled on his right forearm, and a plain sallet for a helmet. The sallet had a wide sloping brim to deflect downward sword blows, but it was a cheap piece of armor with none of the strength of the best helmets. Most of Thomas’s men-at-arms were similarly protected with bits and pieces of armor they had scavenged from old battlefields. None had full plate armor, and all of their mail coats were patched, some with boiled leather. Some carried shields. Sir Guillaume’s was made of willow boards covered with leather on which his coat of arms, the three yellow hawks on a blue field, had faded almost to invisibility. Only one other man-at-arms had a device on his shield, in his case a black axe on a white field, but he had no idea whose badge it was. He had taken the shield off a dead enemy in a skirmish near Aiguillon, which was one of the principal English garrisons in Gascony. “Has to be an English shield,” the man reckoned. He was a Burgundian mercenary who had fought against the English, been discharged at the truce after the fall of Calais and was now hugely relieved that the yew bows were on his side. “Do you know the badge?” the man asked.
“Never seen it,” Thomas said. “How did you get the shield?”
“Sword into his spine. Under the back plate. His buckles had got cut and the back plate was flapping around like a broken wing. Christ, but he screamed.”
Sir Guillaume chuckled. He took half a loaf of dark bread from beneath his breastplate and tore off a chunk, then swore as he bit into it. He spat out a scrap of granite that must have broken off the stone when the grain was milled, felt his broken tooth and swore again. Thomas glanced up to see that the sun lay low in the sky. “We’ll be late home,” he grumbled. “It’ll be dark.”
“Find the river and follow it,” Sir Guillaume said, then flinched with the pain from his tooth. “Jesus,” he said, “I hate teeth.”
“Cloves,” the Burgundian said. “Put cloves in your mouth. Stops the pain.”
Then the two pigs among the distant chestnuts raised their heads, stood for a heartbeat and lumbered south in ungainly haste. Something had alarmed them and Thomas held up a warning hand as if the voices of his companions might disturb any approaching horsemen, and just at that moment he saw a gleam of reflected sunlight from the trees across the river and he knew it must come from a piece of armor. He jumped down. “We’ve got company,” he said, and ran to join the other archers behind the hedge. “Wake up,” he told them, “the little lambs are coming for their slaughter.”
He took his place behind the hedge and Genevieve stood beside him, an arrow on her string. Thomas doubted she would hit anyone, but he grinned at her. “Stay hidden till they reach the field marker,” he told her, then peered over the hedge.
And there they were. The enemy, and almost as soon as they appeared Thomas saw that his cousin was not there for the flag, spread now as its carrier trotted from the trees, showed the orange and white leopard badge of Berat instead of t
he yale of Vexille. “Keep your heads down!” Thomas warned his men as he tried to count the enemy. Twenty? Twenty-five? Not many, and only the first dozen carried lances. The men’s shields, each showing the orange leopard on its white field, confirmed what the banner said, that these were the Count of Berat’s horsemen, but one man, mounted on a huge black horse that was hung with armor, had a yellow shield with a red mailed fist, a device unknown to Thomas, and that man was also in a full harness of plate and had a red and yellow plume flying high on his helm. Thomas counted thirty-one horsemen. This would not be a fight, it would be a massacre.
And suddenly, oddly, it all seemed unreal to him. He had expected to feel excitement and some fear, but instead he watched the horsemen as though they had nothing to do with him. Their charge was ragged, he noted. When they had first come from the trees they had been riding boot to boot, as men should, but they quickly spread out. Their lances were held upright and would not drop to the killing position until the horsemen were close to their enemy. One lance was tipped with a ragged black pennant. The horses’ trappers flapped. The sound was of hooves and the clash of armor as pieces of plate rapped each other. Great clods of earth were slung up behind the hooves; one man’s visor went up and down, up and down as his horse rose and fell. Then the onrush of horsemen narrowed as they all tried to cross the ford at its narrowest point and the first white splashes of water rose as high as the saddles.
They came out of the ford. Robbie’s men had vanished and the horsemen, thinking that it was now a pursuit of a panicked enemy, touched spurs to destriers and the big horses thumped up the road, stringing out, and then the first of them were at the field marker and Thomas heard a trundling noise as the farm cart was pushed out to block the road.
He stood and instinctively took a bodkin arrow instead of a broad-head. The man with the yellow and red shield rode a horse that had a great protective skirt of mail sewn onto leather and Thomas knew the broad-heads would never pierce it, and then he drew his arm back, the cord was past his ear and the first arrow flew. It wavered as it left the bow, then the air caught the goose-feather fledging and it sped low and fast to bury itself in the black horse’s chest and Thomas had a second bodkin on the string, drew, loosed, and a third, drew and loosed and he saw the other arrows flying and was astonished, as ever, that the first arrows seemed to do so little damage. No horses were down, none even slowed, but there were feathered shafts jutting from trappers and armor and he pulled again, released, felt the string whip along the bracer on his left forearm, snatched up a new arrow, then saw the first horses go down. He heard the sound of metal and flesh crashing on the ground and he sent another bodkin at the big black horse and this one drove through the mail and leather to bury itself deep and the horse began frothing blood from its mouth and tossing its head, and Thomas sent his next arrow at the rider and saw it thump into the shield to throw the man back against his high cantle.