Grail Knight: Number 5 in series (Outlaw Chronicles) Page 10

  The wise woman from the village came to see her almost daily and she clucked and bustled around the bedside but although she managed to calm the fever with her steaming, foul-smelling herbal infusions, the wrenching cough and the nausea persisted. And one day the old biddy came to me and told me with much sadness in her rheumy eyes that she feared the baby might be lost if Goody did not recover soon. This had also occurred to me – indeed I prayed to God most earnestly that if He must take a life, it should be mine – but if it came to a choice between Goody and the baby, He should take the baby, so long as He let my beloved live. We were young, we would be able to have other children.

  If Goody lived.

  In a black fog of desperation, I had Father Arnold come to the bedchamber and try to counter the curse, if curse it was, with holy water and prayer. He came and dutifully mumbled away in bad Latin and splashed my beloved with a few freezing drops – but once again it had no effect. Goody coughed and hacked, day after day, and vomited up all that we gave her to eat. She did not complain, but she sometimes wept a little from the frustration of her constant ill-health. Yet she did not curse God nor the Devil nor even Nur for her condition, and she always wore a thin, brave smile on her wan face when I came to sit with her.

  The nights were the worst. By day, Goody would sometimes force herself to rise and go about the hall, and even occasionally into the courtyard if the weather was mild, and she would sit by the hearth for an hour or so, if she felt strong enough, and talk to Ada a little about the doings of the village or chat with Roland about his family. But at night – lying in our big sweat-soaked bed, cough-cough-coughing her life away with myself beside her, sitting on a stool, holding her pale hand and feeding her spoonfuls of honeyed water – I think she must have had a taste of what Hell might be like.

  But God moves in mysterious ways, as my old friend Father Tuck always used to tell me – for it was Goody’s illness that saved my life and hers. Indeed, it saved a good few souls at Westbury. For one dark night in mid-February, I was fully dressed and wide awake, even though it was long past midnight, and reading a poem about King Arthur and Queen Guinevere aloud to her, when the Knight of Our Lady, Gilles de Mauchamps, returned to Westbury.

  Chapter Seven

  The first I heard of the attack was a scream and a thump. The sentry who patrolled the palisade of Westbury had been shot from the darkness below by a crossbowman, I was told later. The man, whose name was Rinc, God rest his soul, must have been gathering wool in his mind as he paced up and down the windswept walkway – either that or the attackers were particularly skilled at making a silent, unseen approach – for he apparently saw nothing and gave no warning of the assault.

  However, Rinc did his duty with his death cry. Swept off the walkway and back into the courtyard by a bolt to the chest, he had enough time to give a wild howl of pain before he smashed to the floor ten feet below and never made another sound in this world. And that was enough to give me warning. By God’s grace, I was fully dressed in tunic and hose, and well shod in a pair of stout riding boots, and when I heard Rinc’s scream, I jumped up from the stool beside Goody’s bed and snatched up my sword from the corner of the room. I ran out of the bedchamber at the eastern end of the hall, through the main living space, leaping over the now stirring bodies of sleeping servants, and burst out of the main hall door into the courtyard. It was a freezing night with a clear, starry sky and there was enough light from a sliver of moon to make out the humped black shapes of men coming over the top of the palisade, and to see a knot of indistinct figures by the main gate lifting the massive locking bar from its brackets. A cold hand gripped my heart and I thought: God save us, they are already inside the walls. We are lost! But I had no time for fearful thoughts or useless recriminations.

  ‘Westbury! To arms, to arms!’ I bellowed and rushed forward across the courtyard. But I was far, far too late, the big double gates, our doughty defences, were swinging slowly open and I could see the red light of torches and a press of armed, mounted men outside. As the gates swung open, the enemy outside it gave a roar and surged forward. I felt a bloody glow of unthinking, bestial rage bloom behind my eyes, as if I was seeing the world through red-tinted glass – these filthy creatures were invading my home; these invaders were threatening Goody, they were threatening my family. They must be destroyed – all of them – right now. And I charged towards the gates alone, all caution abandoned, my long sword whirling around my head, a scream of furious wordless defiance on my lips. But before I could throw myself, undoubtedly to my doom, on the incoming tide of foemen, a man-at-arms already inside the courtyard rushed to intercept me and we met in a bone-jarring crash of steel on steel. He knew his business, my enemy, and he skilfully parried my furious blows as I tried to cut him down and reach the gate in time to stem the flow of attackers. But he blocked my blizzard of sword blows with a rare skill and even made me duck under a lightning lunge to my face. But that was his downfall. It unbalanced him and, even as I ducked, I took out his knee with a simple low sweep and left him crouched, shouting in pain as I pushed past and hurtled towards the gate.

  It was wide open by now, and there were mounted men spurring their destriers through the gap, the huge beasts’ warm breath pluming like dragon’s smoke in the cold air, and a pack of yelling footmen following in their wake. Westbury had come abruptly to life: there was a light showing in the guest hall where Roland was lodged, and I heard running footsteps behind me, and a young voice crying, ‘Westbury! Westbury! Come to Sir Alan’s aid, men. Rally to our lord!’ And Thomas was at my shoulder, half-dressed but with a sword in his fist.

  There were two big fellows before me now: one wielding a large axe, the other a spearman. The axeman was slow, so very slow; he pulled back his weapon in a mighty backswing ready to cut me in half – and I danced forward and flicked the razor tip of Fidelity under his chin, slicing open his throat and leaving him stumbling, jetting blood, and toppling backwards with the weight of his own swung blade. The spearman jabbed at me in the same moment, but I twisted my body and he missed, the spear shaft sliding over my shoulder – and Thomas stepped in and half-severed his neck with a vicious backhand.

  A man with a blazing torch swung its fiery end at my face and I rocked back out of reach, came forward again and with Fidelity grasped in both hands hacked down hard, splitting his helmeted skull. There were strange men-at-arms all around by now and enemy horsemen galloping across the courtyard towards the storehouses against the eastern wall. I saw one of my dairy maids running in panic, her skirts bunched up in her hands; then a rider gave chase, caught her and with a low looping sword blow, sheared off the top of her head. I saw one of my greyhounds, the bitch of the pair, speared through her skinny ribs by a laughing enemy horseman. But I had my own concerns: I attacked a man to my left with a pair of swinging lateral cuts, then disembowelled him with a straight lunge into his belly and savage twist of Fidelity. A molten rage seethed through my veins: these men had come to burn my hall and kill and maim the people – and the animals – that I loved. I realized that I was roaring foul curses and shouting, ‘Die, you filth, die, die, you sons of swine’, as I swung my sword almost blindly into the wall of men that seemed to spring up from nowhere before me. Two men went down to two huge sweeps of the sword, like corn before the scythe. I killed another, and another; blood sprayed warm on my face, something knocked hard against my leg, and I killed again with a lunge. I was the deadly whirlwind, slaying all in my path. I was dimly aware that Thomas was fighting close by with two of my men-at-arms, and that Roland was beside me, sword in his hand, barefoot and clad in nothing but a dirty chemise, pale and ghostly in the night. He exchanged cuts with a man-at-arms, killed him with the second stroke, but he was yelling madly at me between sword blows.

  ‘Alan, Alan, we must retreat to the hall. Alan, the hall – we cannot fight them all here.’ A crossbow bolt flickered between us. The yelling crowd of men-at-arms in front of me suddenly dispersed and revealed a horseman, a sergean
t in a dark surcoat with a white cross on the breast, mailed, steel-helmeted, with a couched lance. And he was charging towards me. He held the lance in his right hand and tucked under his elbow. I could feel the hoofbeats of his heavy horse vibrating the ground through my boot soles, and he bore down on me, the long weapon’s killing-tip winking in the moonlight and aimed straight at my chest. There was no point in running – I could not outdistance that huge beast and its metal-masked rider. At the last moment I took a fast, desperate leap to my right, to his shield side, across his line of attack, rolled, rose and hacked down with Fidelity at the horse’s left hind leg as it swept past, snapping through the brittle bone with my blade. The animal’s muscular hindquarter caught me a glancing blow as it passed and spun me back to the ground, but a moment later horse and mount somersaulted and smashed into the dirt with a rattling crash of metal on wood amid a cacophony of shouted human oaths and equine screams of pain. The rider had one leg trapped beneath the horse’s bulk and was trying to wriggle free, but Roland jumped forward and buried his sword edge in the struggling man’s helmet, and even while he was tugging the blade free from the limp and jiggling corpse, he was still yelling at me, ‘Alan, Alan, we must get back to the hall. We must get to Goody and the others.’

  His words snapped me out of my rage; I felt the red mist before my eyes dissolve and the night was filled with hellish screaming, and the clang of steel and dancing flickers of yellow torchlight. I parried a cut at my head from a stocky sword-wielding man-at-arms who ran at me out of the darkness, kicked him hard in the stomach, and he went down; I stamped on his chest, feeling his ribs crack like kindling, then I fled for the safety of the hall, with Roland panting at my back.

  Enemy men-at-arms, on foot and mounted, swarmed all over the place, scores of them; I could see a dozen corpses lying in the dirt, some of them recognizable as my own people; most of the scatter of buildings on the eastern side, the wine store, the blacksmith’s forge and the pigsty, were already smashed open and ablaze. The dim, freezing courtyard rang with the victorious shouts of the enemy, the squeals of escaped pigs and the crackle of burning thatch. There were men, strangers all around me, but they kept their distance from Fidelity’s gory blade, and in a few moments I was hammering on the door with the silver pommel ring, with Thomas and Roland at either shoulder, and screaming through the wood for entry.

  We tumbled through the door of the hall and slammed it behind us, right in the faces of a pack of yelling pursuers. I slid the locking bar home and leaned with my back to the stout door, catching my breath and feeling the buffets transmitted through the oak as our enemies hurled themselves against it and hacked futilely at the seasoned planks. I found I was looking at a dozen terrified faces, wide eyes and open mouths, gathered by the door and staring at me as if they had never seen me before. I realized that I was slathered in blood, from crown to toe, with a naked blade in my right hand. Some of the Westbury folk were weeping, some were shocked into silence. All looked to me to save them. Baldwin was in the front rank, his hands grasped together in front of his chest as if he were pleading for something. Thomas was kneeling beside him strapping a sword belt on my steward’s slim middle and speaking low, lying words of encouragement. ‘Everything will be all right, Dwin. Sir Alan is here now. Everything will be fine. You’ll see.’

  ‘No time to lose,’ I said to Roland. ‘I want everybody armed, dressed and ready to go as quickly as possible.’

  ‘Where will we go?’ quavered Baldwin. He was clearly very frightened; and who could blame him. He was no warrior and his home was now overflowing with a horde of brutal enemy soldiery intent on rape, loot and slaughter.

  ‘We cannot stay here,’ I said briskly, my words accompanied by a furious bout of hammering on the door. ‘They will burn us out in less than half an hour. We must make our way to the stables, if we can, find ourselves mounts and break out of Westbury. We will shelter in the forest – I know a place where we will be safe.’

  I tried to sound confident but my heart was in my boots: our chances of survival were very slim indeed. There must have been more than fifty enemies running riot in the courtyard – and I had no doubt in my mind at all that they were Gilles de Mauchamps’s men – and we no more than four or five fighting men and a gaggle of terrified women and servants.

  Still, no good ever comes of despair.

  ‘Thomas,’ I said, ‘be so good as to help Sir Roland get everybody ready. Warm clothes and weapons only – no personal possessions.’ And I slapped my squire on the shoulder and went into the solar to fetch Goody.

  As I walked through the door, a long, wicked blade lanced towards my face, and it was only by God’s grace, that I managed to rock my head an inch or two out of its path and avoid losing an eye. I seized my attacker, throwing my arms around a slim torso, and struggling to subdue its manic writhing – and found myself face to face with my beautiful beloved who was clenching my own misericorde in her small white fist and still trying to stab me with it.

  Goody was already dressed. She had heard the awful clamour of battle in the courtyard, the screams and shouts and the clash of steel, and had drawn conclusions.

  ‘I thought you were dead, Alan,’ she sobbed, her face as pale as milk. ‘I thought you were one of them. Oh God…’

  I kissed her and released her, and told her that we had to leave, right now, and she asked no questions and made no comments – she was a woman in ten thousand – just busied herself finding a warm woollen gown and changing her light slippers to outdoor shoes. I knew I would not have time to dress in full mail but I slung the cuir bouilli chest-and-back plates over my neck, with the lance dagger in its sheath, and struggled unaided into my knee-length hauberk. I found Fidelity’s sheath, strapped it over the top and slipped my blade home, and tucked my mace into the belt at the back. I plucked two cloaks from the back of the solar door, draped one around Goody and slung the other from my shoulders.

  Time to go.

  I led my wife by the hand back into the hall. Between them, Roland and Thomas seemed to have wrought some calm from the frightened chaos. Half a dozen servants, including Baldwin and Ada and three men-at-arms, were dressed and the men had been issued with whatever weapons and armour we could find, from one or two of my old swords and a kindling axe to a long kitchen carving knife. One man, a kitchen servant known as Alfie, had only two heavy, round-bellied cooking pots, one in each hand. I caught his eye and he grinned. ‘I’ll give ’em Hell with these two ladies, sir,’ he said, lightly tapping the two iron pots together with a clang. ‘Don’t you worry, sir, we’ll make ’em rightly sorry they disturbed our sleep.’

  I was about to applaud his attitude with some bold jest or other, when I heard a commanding voice shouting in French outside the wall, the chunk of axes and the splintering of wood at the main door. So I saved my breath and, keeping Goody close by, I led my little band to the western end of the hall to the wide screen that hid the scullery and servants’ work benches, cupboards, buckets of water and so on from view at feasts. Behind the screen was the hall’s other door, which allowed cooked food from the kitchens just beyond to be brought to table while it was still hot. It was barred shut at night, and as I pressed my ear to it, I could hear nothing from outside. But I could smell smoke, and the wood felt horribly warm against my cheek.

  It was then, I believe, that I truly realized that I was going to lose Westbury – and that it was entirely due to my lack of vigilance and my underestimation of the threat the French Templars represented to my happiness. I knew we were going to have to abandon our home – but I had not understood till then that I would never see the hall and the buildings as they now were again. To shut out this dolorous image, I drew my sword and cautiously unbarred the door. Opening it and thrusting my head through the gap, I peered out on to an inferno. The flimsy kitchen hut and the square brick oven beside it where we baked our bread each day were both raging with flame. The heat, even five yards away inside the hall, was like a physical blow. But there were no
enemies to be seen. Perhaps they did not know about this back door, or perhaps they were so engaged in battering down the front one – or more likely in looting the wine store – that they were indifferent to us.

  I herded everyone outside into the roaring heat, keeping Goody by my far side, and we hustled to the narrow scorching space behind the burning kitchen by the southern wall of Westbury. I could feel the flames roasting my face. But so far we had been lucky. I counted heads: twelve souls and me. To our left, forty yards away, was the stable block, the broad door open and a light coming from the inside – likely not a light made by a friend, I thought grimly. Across on the other side, the north side, was Roland’s guest hall, its thatched roof merrily burning, the wattle and daub walls smoking and blistering in the heat. I gave the word and we ran towards the stable, a crowd of frightened people tripping over their own feet, bumping into each other in the darkness, with myself in the rear, holding Goody’s hand, trying to urge greater speed without making a sound.

  And at that point our luck ran out.