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 armor, 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. Whom to send out on raids, whom to leave behind, whom to watch, whom to trust, whom 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 that 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 w
ound.
Genevieve somehow stayed in the saddle as her horse bolted northwards, spraying blood as it went. Two more quarrels flew past Thomas, then he twisted in his saddle to see four horsemen and at least a dozen men on foot coming from the wood. “Go for the rocks!” he shouted at Genevieve. “The rocks!” He doubted their horses could outrun the coredors, not with Genevieve’s mare pumping out blood with every stride.
He could hear the pursuing horses. He could hear their hooves drumming on the thin turf, but then Genevieve was among the rocks and she swung herself out of the saddle and scrambled up the boulders. Thomas dismounted beside her horse, but instead of following her he strung his bow and snatched an arrow from his bag. He shot once, shot again, the arrows whipping low, and one rider was falling back from his horse and the second man was dead with an arrow in his eye and the other two swerved away so violently that one horse lost its footing and spilled its rider. Thomas flicked an arrow at the surviving horseman, missed, and sent his fourth at the unsaddled man, sticking the bodkin high on the man’s back.
The men on foot were following as fast as they could, but they were still some way off and that gave Thomas time to pull all his spare arrows and his purse of money from his horse’s saddle. He rescued Genevieve’s bag from her mare, tied the two horses’ reins together and looped the knot over a boulder in the hope it would hold them, then climbed up the steep jumble of rocks. Two crossbow bolts banged on stone near him, but he was scrambling fast and knew only too well how hard it was to hit a moving man. He found Genevieve in a gully near the top. “You killed three!” she said in wonderment.
“Two,” he said. “The others are just wounded.” He could see the man he had hit in the back crawling towards the distant woods. He looked around and reckoned Genevieve had found the best refuge possible. Two vast boulders formed the sides of the gully, their massive flanks touching at the back, while in front was a third boulder that served as a parapet. It was time, Thomas thought, to teach these bastards the power of the yew bow and he stood up behind the makeshift parapet and hauled back the cord.
He drove his arrows with a cold fury and a terrible skill. The men had been coming in a bunch and Thomas’s first half-dozen arrows could not miss, but slashed into the ragged coredors one after the other, and then they had the sense to scatter, most turning and running away to get out of range. They left three men on the ground and another two limping. Thomas sent a final arrow at a fugitive, missing the man by an inch.
Then the crossbows were released and Thomas ducked down beside Genevieve as the iron quarrels clanged and cracked on the gully’s boulders. He reckoned there were four or five crossbows and they were shooting at a range just outside the reach of his bow; he could do nothing except peer round the boulder and watch through a crack that was little more than a hand’s breadth wide. After a few moments he saw three men running towards the rocks and he loosed an arrow through the crack, then stood and shot two more shafts before ducking fast as the quarrels hammered on the high boulders and tumbled to fall beside Genevieve. His arrows had driven the three men away, though none had been hit. “They’ll all go away soon,” Thomas said. He had seen no more than twenty men pursuing and he had killed or wounded nearly half of them, and while that would doubtless make them angry, it would also make them cautious. “They’re just bandits,” Thomas said, “and they want the reward for capturing an archer.” Joscelyn had confirmed to him that the Count had indeed offered such a reward, and Thomas was sure that bounty was on the minds of the coredors, but they were discovering just how difficult it would be to earn it.
“They’ll send for help,” Genevieve said bitterly.
“Maybe there aren’t any more of them,” Thomas suggested optimistically, then he heard one of the horses whinny and he guessed that a coredor, one he had not seen, had reached the two animals and was untying their reins. “God damn them,” he said, and jumped over the boulder and began leaping from stone to stone down the front of the hill. A crossbow bolt slammed just behind him while another drove a spark from a boulder in front, then he saw a man leading both horses away from the rocks and he paused and drew. The man was half hidden by Genevieve’s mare, but Thomas loosed anyway and the arrow flashed beneath the mare’s neck to strike the man’s thigh. The coredor fell, still holding the reins, and Thomas turned and saw one of the four crossbowmen was aiming up at Genevieve. The man shot and Thomas loosed in return. He was at the limit of his big bow’s range, but his arrow went perilously close to the enemy and that near escape persuaded all the crossbowmen to back away. Thomas, his arrow bag banging awkwardly against his right thigh, knew they were terrified of his bow’s power and so, instead of returning to his eyrie in the high rocks, he ran towards them. He shot two more arrows, feeling the strain in his back muscles as he hauled the string far back, and the white-feathered shafts arched through the sky to plummet down around the crossbowmen. Neither shaft hit, but the men backed off still farther and Thomas, when he was sure they were at a safe range, turned back to rescue the horses.
It had not been a man he wounded, but a boy. A snub-nosed child, maybe ten or eleven, who was lying on the turf with tears in his eyes and a scowl on his face. He gripped Thomas’s reins as though his life depended on it, and in his left hand there was a knife that he waved in feeble threat. The arrow was through the boy’s right thigh, high up, and the pain on his victim’s face made Thomas think that the bodkin point had probably broken the bone.
Thomas kicked the knife out of the boy’s hand. “Do you speak French?” he asked the lad, and received a gob of spittle in reply. Thomas grinned, took the reins back then hauled the boy to his feet. The child cried out with pain as the arrow tore at his wound, and Thomas looked at the surviving coredors and saw that all the fight had gone from them. They were staring at the boy.
Thomas guessed the boy had come with the three men who had run to the rocks while he was crouched behind the boulder. They had doubtless been hoping to steal the two horses for that, at least, would give them some small profit on what had turned out to be a disastrous foray. Thomas’s arrows had turned the men back, but the boy, smaller, nimbler and faster, had reached the rocks and tried to be a hero. Now, it seemed, he was a hostage, for one of the coredors, a tall man in a leather coat and with a cracked sallet crammed onto his wildly tangled hair, held out both hands to show he carried no weapons and walked slowly forwards.
Thomas kicked the boy down to the ground when the man was thirty paces away, then he half drew the bow. “Far enough,” he told the man.
“My name is Philin,” the man said. He was broad in the chest, long-legged, with a sad, thin face that had a knife or sword scar running across his forehead. He had a knife sheathed at his belt, but no other weapons. He looked like a bandit, Thomas thought, yet there was something about Philin’s eyes which spoke of better times, even of respectability. “He is my son,” Philin added, nodding at the boy.
Thomas shrugged as if he did not care.
Philin took off his cracked helmet and stared briefly at the dead men on the pale grass. There were four of them, all killed by the long arrows, while two more were wounded and groaning. He looked back to Thomas. “You are English?”
“What do you think this is?” Thomas asked, hefting the bow. Only the English carried the long war bow.
“I have heard of the bows.” Philin admitted. He spoke a badly accented French and sometimes hesitated as he searched for a word. “I have heard of them,” he went on, “but I had not seen one until today.”
“You’ve seen one now,” Thomas said vengefully.
“I think your woman is wounded,” Philin said, nodding up to Genevieve’s hiding place.
“And you think I’m a fool,” Thomas said. Philin wanted him to turn his back so that the crossbows could creep near again.
“No,” Philin said. “What I think is that I want my boy to live.”
“What do you offer for him?” Thomas asked.
“Your life,” Philin said. ?
??If you keep my son then we shall bring other men here, many men, and we shall surround you and wait for you. You will both die. If my son dies then you will die in such agony, Englishman, that all the torments of hell will seem a relief afterwards. But let Galdric live and you both live. You and the heretic.”
“You know who she is?” Thomas was surprised.
“We know everything that happens between Berat and the mountains,” Philin said.
Thomas glanced back up the mound of rocks, but Genevieve was hidden. He had planned to beckon her down, but instead he stepped away from the boy. “You want me to take out the arrow?” he asked Philin.
“The monks at Saint Sever’s will do that,” Philin said.
“You can go there?”
“Abbot Planchard will always take a wounded man.”
“Even a coredor?”
Philin looked scornful. “We are just landless men. Evicted. Accused of crimes we did not do. Well,” he smiled suddenly and Thomas almost smiled back, “some we did not do. What do you think we should have done? Gone to the galleys? Been hanged?”
Thomas knelt beside the boy, put his bow down and drew his knife. The boy glared at him, Philin called out in alarm, but then went silent as he saw that Thomas meant the child no harm. Instead Thomas cut the arrow head from the shaft and put the precious scrap of metal into his haversack. Then he stood. “Swear on your boy’s life,” he ordered Philin, “that you will keep your word.”
“I swear it,” Philin said.
Thomas gestured towards the high rocks where Genevieve sheltered. “She is a draga,” he said. “Break your oath, Philin, and she will make your soul shriek.”
“I will not harm you,” Philin said gravely, “and they,” he looked at the other coredors, “will not harm you either.”
Thomas reckoned he had little choice. It was either trust Philin or resign himself to a siege in a high place where there was no water and so he stepped away from the boy. “He’s yours.”