Heretic

  Vexille returned to the monastery. It was time to leave and he went there to gather the rest of his men. Charles Bessières had also assembled his few soldiers who were mounted on horses heavy with plunder. “And where are you going?” Vexille asked him.

  “Wherever you go, my lord,” Bessières said with sarcastic courtesy, “to help you find the Englishman. So where do we look?” He asked the question caustically, knowing that Guy Vexille had no ready answer.

  Vexille said nothing. The rain still fell steadily, turning the roads into quagmires. On the northern road, that led eventually to Toulouse, a group of travellers had appeared. They were all on foot, thirty or forty of them, and it was apparent that they were coming to seek shelter and help from the monastery. They looked like fugitives for they were pushing four handcarts loaded with chests and bundles. Three old people, too weak to struggle through the cloying mud, were riding on the carts. Some of Bessières’s men, hoping for more easy plunder, were spurring towards them and Guy Vexille headed them off. The folk, seeing Vexille’s lacquered armor and the prancing yale on his shield, knelt in the mud. “Where are you going?” Vexille demanded.

  “To the monastery, lord,” one of the men said, hauling off his hat and bowing his head.

  “And where are you from?”

  The man said they were from the valley of the Garonne, two days’ journey to the east, and further questioning elicited that they were four craftsmen and their families: a carpenter, a saddler, a wheelwright and a mason, all from the same town.

  “Is there trouble there?” Vexille wanted to know. He doubted it would concern him, for Thomas would surely not have travelled eastwards, but anything strange was of interest to him.

  “There is a plague, lord,” the man said. “People are dying.”

  “There’s always plague,” Vexille said dismissively.

  “Not like this, lord,” the man said humbly. He claimed that hundreds, maybe thousands, were dying and these families, at the very first onslaught of the contagion, had decided to flee. Others were doing the same, the man said, but most had gone north to Toulouse while these four families, all friends, had decided to look to the southern hills for their safety.

  “You should have stayed,” Vexille said, “and taken refuge in a church.”

  “The church is filled with the dead, lord,” the man said, and Vexille turned away in impatience. Some disease in the Garonne was not his business, and if common folk panicked, that was nothing unusual. He snarled at Charles Bessières’s men to leave the fugitives alone, and Bessières snapped back, saying that they were wasting their time. “Your Englishman’s gone,” he sneered.

  Vexille heard the sneer, but ignored it. Instead, he paused a moment, then gave Charles Bessières the courtesy of taking him seriously. “You’re right,” he said, “but gone where?”

  Bessières was taken aback by the mild tone. He leaned on his saddle pommel and stared at the monastery as he thought about the question. “He was here,” he said eventually, “he went, so presumably he found what he wanted?”

  Vexille shook his head. “He ran from us, that’s why he went.”

  “So why didn’t we see him?” Bessières asked belligerently. The rain dripped from the broad metal brim of his sallet, a piece of armor he had adopted to keep his head dry. “But he’s gone, and taken whatever he found with him. And where would you go if you were him?”

  “Home.”

  “Long way,” Bessières said. “And his woman’s wounded. If I was him I’d find friends and find them fast.”

  Vexille stared at the grim Charles Bessières and wondered why he was being so unusually helpful. “Friends,” Vexille repeated.

  “Castillon d’Arbizon,” Charles Bessières spelled it out.

  “They threw him out!” Vexille protested.

  “That was then,” Bessières said, “but what choices does he have now?” In truth Charles Bessières had no idea whether Thomas would go to Castillon d’Arbizon, but it was the most obvious solution, and Charles had decided he needed to find the Englishman fast. Only then, when he was certain that no true Grail had been discovered, could he reveal the fake chalice. “But if he hasn’t gone to his friends,” he added, “he’s certainly going west towards the other English garrisons.”

  “Then we’ll cut him off,” Vexille said. He was not convinced that Thomas would go to Castillon d’Arbizon, but his cousin would surely go west, and now Vexille had a new worry, one put there by Bessières, that Thomas had found what he sought.

  The Grail could be lost and the scent was cold, but the hunt must go on.

  They all rode west.

  IN THE DARK THE RAIN came like vengeance from heaven. A downpour that thrashed on the trees and dripped to the floor of the wood and soaked the fugitives and lowered their already low spirits. In one brief passage of unexpected violence the coredors had been broken apart, their leader killed and their winter encampment ruined. Now, in the utter blackness of the autumn night, they were lost, unprotected and frightened.

  Thomas and Genevieve were among them. Genevieve spent much of the night doubled over, trying to contain the pain of her left shoulder that had been exacerbated when the coredors tried and failed to strip her of the mail shirt, but when the first thin, damp light showed a path through the trees she stood and followed Thomas as he went westwards. At least a score of the coredors followed, including Philin, who was still carrying his son on his shoulders. “Where are you going?” Philin asked Thomas.

  “Castillon d’Arbizon,” Thomas said. “And where are you going?”

  Philin ignored the question, walking in silence for a few paces, then he frowned. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “What for?”

  “I was going to cut your fingers off.”

  “Didn’t have much choice, did you?”

  “I could have fought Destral.”

  Thomas shook his head. “You can’t fight men like that. They love fighting, feed on it. He’d have slaughtered you and I’d still have lost my fingers.”

  “I’m sorry, though.”

  They had worked their way across the highest part of the ridge and now could see the gray rain slashing all across the valley ahead, and across the next ridge and further valley. Thomas wanted to look at the landscape ahead before they descended the slope and so he ordered them all to rest, and Philin put his son down. Thomas turned to the tall man. “What did your boy say to you when he offered you the knife?”

  Philin frowned as if he did not want to answer, then shrugged. “He told me to cut off your fingers.”

  Thomas hit Galdric hard across the head, making the boy’s head ring and prompting a cry of pain. Thomas slapped him a second time, hard enough to hurt his own hand. “Tell him,” Thomas said, “to pick fights with people his own size.”

  Galdric began crying, Philin said nothing and Thomas looked back to the valley ahead. He could see no horsemen there, no riders on the roads or mailed soldiers patrolling the wet pastures, and so he led the group on downwards. “I heard”—Philin spoke nervously, his son back on his shoulders—“that the Count of Berat’s men are besieging Castillon d’Arbizon?”

  “I heard the same,” Thomas said curtly.

  “You think it’s safe to go there?”

  “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 honor, but Joscelyn ignored him. Instead he ordered the crossbow-men 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 saltpeter, 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 when 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 so
und 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 inquired, 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.