Heretic

  The sword was a whole ell in length, longer than a man’s arm, and the blade was deceptively narrow, suggesting the sword might be fragile, but it had a strong central rib that stiffened the long steel and made it into a lethal lunging weapon. Most men carried cutting swords that blunted themselves on armor, but Vexille was a master with the thrusting blade. The art was to look for a joint in the armor and ram the steel through. The handle was sheathed with maple wood and the pommel and hand-guard were of steel. It bore no decoration, no gold leaf, no inscriptions on the blade, no silver inlay. It was simply a workman’s tool, a killing weapon, a fit thing for this day’s sacred duty.

  “Sir?” the boy said nervously, offering Vexille the big tournament helm with its narrow eye slits.

  “Not that one,” Vexille said. “I’ll take the bascinet and the coif.” He pointed to what he wanted. The big tournament helm gave very restricted vision and Vexille had learned to distrust it in battle for it prevented him seeing enemies at his flanks. It was a risk to face archers without any visor, but at least he could see them, and now he pulled the mail coif over his head so that it protected the nape of his neck and his ears, then took the bascinet from the boy. It was a simple helmet, with no rim and with no faceplate to constrict his vision. “Go and look after your family,” he told the boy, and then he picked up his shield, its willow boards covered with boiled, hardened leather on which was painted the yale of the Vexilles carrying its Grail. He had no talisman, no charm. Few men went to battle without such a precaution, whether it was a lady’s scarf or a piece of jewelry blessed by a priest, but Guy Vexille had only one talisman, and that was the Grail.

  And now he went to fetch it.

  ONE OF THE COREDORS was the first to fall ill in the castle and by the night’s end there were more than a score of men and women vomiting, sweating and shivering. Jake was one of them. The cross-eyed archer dragged himself to a corner of the courtyard and propped his bow beside him and put a handful of arrows on his lap, and there he suffered. Thomas tried to persuade him to go upstairs, but Jake refused. “I’ll stay here,” he insisted. “I’ll die in the open air.”

  “You won’t die,” Thomas said. “Heaven won’t take you and the devil doesn’t need any competition.” The small joke failed to raise a smile on Jake’s face, which was discolored by small red lumps that were rapidly darkening to the color of a bruise. He had taken down his breeches because he could not contain his bowels and the most he would let Thomas do for him was to bring him a bed of straw from the ruins of the stables.

  Philin’s son also had the sickness. His face was showing pink spots and he was shivering. The disease seemed to have come from nowhere, but Thomas assumed it had been brought on the east wind that had fanned the flames in the town before the rain killed the fires. Abbot Planchard had warned him of this, of a pestilence coming from Lombardy, and here it was and Thomas was helpless. “We must find a priest,” Philin said.

  “A physician,” Thomas said, though he knew of none and did not know how one could be got into the castle even if he could be found.

  “A priest,” Philin insisted. “If a child is touched by a consecrated wafer it cures him. It cures everything. Let me fetch a priest.”

  It was then Thomas realized the gun had not fired and that no bored crossbowman had clattered a quarrel against the castle’s stones, and so he let Philin go out of the ruined gateway in search of Father Medous or one of the other priests in the town. He did not expect to see the tall man again, yet Philin returned within half an hour to say that the town was as badly stricken as the castle and that Father Medous was anointing the sick and had no time to come to the enemy garrison. “There was a dead woman in the street,” Philin told Thomas, “just lying there with her teeth clenched.”

  “Did Father Medous give you a wafer?”

  Philin showed him a thick piece of bread, then carried it up to his son who was in the upper hall with most of the sick. A woman wept that her husband could not receive the last rites and so, to console her and to give hope to the ill, Genevieve carried the golden cup around the pallets and touched it to the hands of the sick and told them it would work a miracle.

  “We need a goddamned miracle,” Sir Guillaume said to Thomas. “What the hell is it?” The two had gone to the castle’s tower from where, unthreatened by any crossbows, they gazed down at the abandoned gun.

  “There was a plague in Italy,” Thomas said, “and it must have come here.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Sir Guillaume said. “What kind of plague?”

  “God knows,” Thomas said. “A bad one.” For a moment he was assailed with the fear that the pestilence was a punishment for breaking the green-glass Grail, then he remembered that Planchard had warned him of the disease long before he had found the cup. He watched a man wrapped in a bloody sheet stagger into the main street and fall down. He lay still, looking as though he were already in his winding sheet.

  “What in God’s name is happening?” Sir Guillaume asked, making the sign of the cross. “Have you ever seen anything like it?”

  “It’s God’s wrath,” Thomas said, “punishing us.”

  “For what?”

  “For being alive,” Thomas said bitterly. He could hear wailing from the town, and he saw the people fleeing the pestilence. They had their goods in wheelbarrows or handcarts and they pushed past the gun, out of the gate, across the bridge and off to the west.

  “Pray for snow,” Sir Guillaume said. “I’ve often noticed that snow stops sickness. Don’t know why.”

  “It doesn’t snow here,” Thomas said.

  Genevieve joined them, still holding the golden cup. “I fed the fire,” she said. “It seems to help.”

  “Help?”

  “The sick,” she said. “They like the warmth. It’s a huge fire.” She pointed to the smoke coming from the vent in the keep’s side. Thomas put an arm around her and searched her face for any signs of the reddish spots, but her pale skin was clear. They stood watching the people cross the bridge and take the westwards road and, while they watched, they saw Joscelyn lead a stream of mounted men-at-arms away to the north. The new Count of Berat did not look back, he just rode as if the devil himself was on his heels.

  And perhaps he was, Thomas thought, and he looked for any sign of his cousin among the disappearing horsemen, but did not see him. Perhaps Guy was dying?

  “Is the siege over?” Sir Guillaume wondered aloud.

  “Not if my cousin lives,” Thomas said.

  “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, among whom was Guy Vexille, carried the pavises that should have sheltered the crossbow-men,
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 armored 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 armor. 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 Guil-laume’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 downwards, 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 ch
eek, and two more enemy were coming behind him, prizing 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 back-plate, 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 armor, 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.