Grail Knight: Number 5 in series (Outlaw Chronicles) Page 12

  I congratulated him on his survival and told him that he had done exactly the right thing in the circumstances.

  I was very glad that he yet lived, but I was drowning in a sense of shame and failure. The primary duty of a lord is to protect his people. Yet a great many of those who had looked to me for their protection were now dead. As we walked slowly together down the slope towards my now blackened and smoke-stinking property, I pictured the faces of the fallen, so many fallen. My servants, my soldiers, my friends … For of the thirty-two people who had once called the manor home, only seven now remained on this earth.

  As a place of human habitation, Westbury was no more. The hall, the stables, Roland’s guest hall, the store rooms – every structure had been deliberately torched and was no more than a collection of half-burned blackened timbers that had collapsed in on themselves. Our dead lay where they had fallen: men-at-arms, the women of Westbury, even a couple of innocent children lay in the pathetic attitudes of death, their bodies blackened with soot and sprawled like discarded dolls on the hoof-churned, blood-soaked earth. Baldwin wept openly as we bent together to the task of gathering the corpses of our friends and companions, many cruelly burned or mutilated, and carried them out of the reeking compound and on to the green turf of the sheep-pasture to line them up in rows for a Christian burial.

  We were joined after an hour or so by Father Arnold, who popped up, a little soot-blackened but apparently otherwise unharmed, and told me blinking his owlish eyes a little more madly than usual that the village too had been ravaged by the marauders. However, only two or three houses had been destroyed, and, while several folk had suffered slight injuries at the hands of the enemy, only one man had been killed. Many of the village folk had seen Westbury burning and overrun by enemy soldiers, and had escaped by hiding in the woods nearby.

  I passed on Robin’s offer of help to the little priest and gave instructions for a Mass for the dead as soon as it was possible. I also charged Baldwin with beginning the rebuilding of the manor, as Robin had so accurately put it, from the ground up. Father Arnold assured me that the village men would be only too glad to help with the reconstruction of my home under Baldwin’s supervision, and I promised that suitable payment would be forthcoming for their efforts.

  It was a desperately sad day, but a busy one. There was so much to do that I felt that I was drowning in decisions. But, even while giving dozens of detailed instructions to Baldwin and Arnold, and greeting villagers who emerged from a wide variety of hiding places to offer their condolences and help with the clearing up, I was distracted by grief and worry. I found it hard to focus on my labours, many and onerous as they were, for one most urgent question hammered away in my heart: did Goody yet live?

  It was late in the evening when I returned to Robin’s Caves, more tired than I had been for months, and I discovered that my beloved’s condition had not changed. She appeared still to be in a deep unnatural sleep, her breathing only the faintest whiff of air, her pulse feeble and uneven. She had been moved from her bearskin by the fire into a small cave all of her own and Ada was tending to her, feeding an iron brazier with billets of wood and sitting beside her lest she wake.

  Ada told me in a hushed voice that the notorious witch Brigid of the Wood had been to visit and had examined her closely all over and declared that the malaise that Goody was suffering from was magical in its nature – and furthermore that it was a powerful spell that could not easily be countered. Brigid feared for Goody’s life, Ada told me, and even more for the life of the baby inside her. However, the witch had agreed that she would use all her skill to cure my girl, and that she had returned to her home in the forest to brew up the most powerful medicines at her disposal.

  ‘It will be tongue of toad, and a hanged man’s member, all boiled together in a cauldron of fresh baby’s blood, I expect,’ said Ada, with a good deal of relish. She was a devoted servant to Goody, and had nursed her tenderly, but I could not help but feel that she seemed to be enjoying the drama of her mistress’s illness a little too much. I did not like to dwell on what witchy charms and cures Brigid might be concocting. An image of the finger-cropped goldsmith Malloch leaped into my mind; and I shuddered at the knowledge that he was in Brigid’s blood-stained hands. But I was too worn out for true outrage at Robin’s hellish exchange. Would I have killed Malloch to save Goody’s life? Would I allow an enemy, a man who had tried to have me killed, a treacherous fellow who had asked for my help, and been generously offered it, and then had tried to trap me – would I allow this man to be murdered by a pagan priestess to save my beloved and my unborn baby? I could make that decision in a single heartbeat. There was no question about it at all.

  I sat beside Goody in her cave for an hour or so, holding her hand and staring at her still white face in the flickering light of the brazier while Ada bustled about making a broth. I prayed silently once again: offering myself to God if he would allow her to live. But I took little comfort from my attempt to commune with the Almighty. My thoughts turned to Nur – the foul bitch who, I was truly beginning to believe, had somehow caused this vile sickness to come down on my beloved. If I could kill her, I thought, surely that would lift the curse on Goody. And if, God forbid, Goody should die, I would kill her anyway, slowly, for what she had done. Finally, I put away these dark thoughts and rose to my feet. I kissed Goody’s cold brow, tucked the blankets tight around her unresponsive body and went in search of Robin.

  My lord of Locksley took one look at me and sat me down at a stool by the table and poured me a large cup of wine, and moments later Thomas appeared with a hot bowl of venison stew and some bread. As I ate and drank, Robin looked hard at me. Then he spoke. ‘If you will permit me, Alan,’ he began, ‘I would like to outline your position. May I do so in full honesty as an old and trusted friend?’

  I was too tired to comment so merely nodded and spooned some more of the venison into my mouth; it had been a while since I had had anything so good to eat.

  ‘Your wife is dying, and with her your unborn baby.’

  I flinched but said nothing. It was the cold truth.

  ‘Your home has been burned to the ground by an agent of the Master, our old enemy. And we can be certain that the Master, or minions such as Gilles de Mauchamps, will continue to attack you – and me – without warning whenever he can until he has destroyed us. Or until we have destroyed him.’

  It was clear to me what Robin was aiming at; in fact I had known what he wanted from me since I rose that morning and I had already decided my answer – but, for reasons that I cannot fully express, I remained silent.

  ‘We know also that the Master possesses a holy vessel, a sacred relic that many have claimed can cure all hurts, wipe away all disease, even hold back death itself.’

  I nodded but I seemed to have lost the power of speech. I had washed down the stew with plenty of wine yet my tongue seemed glued to the roof of my mouth.

  ‘Is your path not clear to you? You must come with me to the south. We will track the Master together, we will hunt him down and kill him and prise the Grail from his dead hands, and we will use it to cure Goody of her malaise, and save her and your baby. Will you not come with me, my friend, and help me to accomplish this task? To help me and to save Goody’s life.’

  My tongue unstuck itself at last. ‘Yes, my lord,’ I said. ‘I will come with you.’

  A week later, I found myself once again seated at a table with friends and drinking wine. It was long past nightfall, and I was in the hall of a wine merchant’s house – a grand place of black timber, white plaster and red tiles owned by one Ivo of Shoreham – a hundred yards to the east of the royal dockyard of Queen’s Hythe in the City of London. The hall was large for a townhouse in a crowded port, even a little larger than my burned-out country hall at Westbury, and sumptuously decorated with brightly patterned wall hangings and tapestries. The long table at which we sat was two-inch-thick English oak polished to a high shine with beeswax; the wine was the clear
ruby-coloured juice of ancient Aquitainian vines, fermented, casked and blended by masters in the art from the area around the city of Bordeaux, and shipped to England by Master Ivo. We had dined simply, for it was Lent, on fish and boiled vegetables with bread, and a fruit pudding to follow – but the wine, served in egg shell-thin, beautifully-engraved and gilded glasses, had been of the finest quality, a rich, smooth, crimson nectar. Beneath my feet I could feel the rumble of huge iron-hooped wooden barrels, each heavier than three men, being rolled around the stone floor of the undercroft. A delivery of fresh wine had arrived from Queen Eleanor’s homeland that afternoon and it was being trundled only now into its storage position in the cellars by gangs of porters, servants of the wine merchant, our host.

  Master Ivo had been presented to me the day before as an old friend of Robin’s. But I did not believe he had much love for the Earl of Locksley – indeed, wealthy and powerful as he must be, he seemed to stand in fear of my lord, almost to go out of his way, without offending, to shun Robin’s company. I did not ask what dealings Robin and Ivo of Shoreham had had in the past – but I could well imagine some sordid tale of black murder or brutal persuasion, of a crucial favour done and repayment subsequently demanded by Robin. Whatever had passed between them, Ivo clearly stood in Robin’s debt – and urgently wished to redeem himself. The merchant – although he had excused himself gracefully shortly after our arrival – had indeed been more than generous with his wine and food. And, on this second day of our sojourn in his house, I had recovered some of my spirits.

  Were it not for my stomach-grinding concern for Goody and the baby – I had left her still unconscious at Robin’s Caves in the care of Ada and under the protection of Baldwin and Kit – I might have felt the embers of excitement. We were about to embark on a grand adventure, a quest to find the most fabulous object in Christendom.

  The cup of Christ, the Holy Grail.

  One voice in my head argued stridently, even a little shrilly, that this quest was futile; the Grail could not possibly be what some claimed it to be – it could not be the vessel that had been used at the Last Supper and that had held Our Saviour’s holy blood at the Crucifixion – it just could not. How could an earthly object encapsulate the sacred life fluid of God Himself? Was it not far more likely that this object was merely some gaudy trinket, the focus of a collection of lies, half-truths and fables designed to enrich an unscrupulous seller of such sacred oddments? Was it not far more likely, the grating voice whined, that I was wasting precious time that could be spent with Goody, perhaps her last days on this earth? That this so-called Grail was no more than a tool for gulling the credulous?

  But another voice, a calm, clear, soothing voice told me a different tale. Have faith, it said. Have faith in a loving and merciful God whose designs you cannot possibly fathom. This miraculous cup of Christ will be given to you – and Goody will be cured by its holy power, if only you have sufficient faith. Seek out this Grail, said the voice; overcome the evil men who pollute it with their touch and use its power for good; use its power to save Goody and the baby.

  I liked the second voice a good deal more than the first. It reminded me of my mother’s voice, calm, loving, reassuring. It was how I imagined the voice of Mary, the Mother of God, would sound – and then I checked that thought. I remembered that the Master and his knights claimed to serve this same Queen of Heaven – and the Master, too, had heard the voice of Our Lady, which had told him to go forth and do murder in her holy name.

  That notion snapped me out of my reverie. I took a sip of wine and looked at the flushed, excited faces around the table. These men would be my companions over the coming weeks as we journeyed to far-off lands and braved unknown dangers. We had all made an agreement that, while Robin would shoulder the expenses of the journey, we would all share in any booty that we accrued along the way, and that Robin would also have possession of the Grail, if we found it, to do with as he willed. We were due to leave London the next day on a ship belonging to Ivo of Shoreham and we would sail south to Aquitaine as his guests. In the ancient city of Bordeaux we would begin our quest to discover the Master and the Grail.

  I did not expect it to be an easy task to find our enemy and overcome him, but my companions were some of the best men I had ever encountered, in battle and out of it. Seven men, seven of the best men I had ever known; we seven bold men would succeed in this quest for the Grail – or perish in the attempt.

  To my left, at the head of the long table, sat my lord, my old friend and benefactor, Robin of Locksley, bubbling with high spirits, his eyes sparkling silver in the candlelight. He was joking with the man on his left, Little John, who, with his big red mouth open in his big red face, was roaring with mirth at some quip of my lord’s. Beside John, Gavin – the only man at the table that I did not know well – gazed up at Little John’s battered visage seemingly lost in admiration for his huge friend. Robin had vouched for Gavin and named him as a thief of uncommon skill, particularly when it came to defeating iron locks, but also praising him for his prowess as a bowman. He had mentioned, too, that John had said that he would not come without him. I caught Gavin’s eye and he smiled happily at me, inclining his handsome curly head and lifting his exquisite wine glass towards me. I had no doubt that if I were to fall in battle, he would be the first to claim ownership of my sword Fidelity – for I had seen an unmistakably larcenous look whenever he eyed my blade – but if Robin and Little John trusted him, then I was content to do so, too.

  To Gavin’s left, at the other end of the table sat Sir Nicholas de Scras. It had not taken much persuading to entice the former Hospitaller to join us on this quest. When I had ridden to his lands at Horsham to suggest it, I had found him bored and feeling a little uncomfortable at his family hearth. He wished very much to see the Grail, he told me, and to hold it, if only once, in his hands. From what I’d told him of the Master, he seemed to think that destroying him was a task sanctioned by God.

  ‘It is a most worthy endeavour,’ Sir Nicholas had said. ‘This Master and his knights have perverted the True Faith with their crimes and their false worship of the Virgin. It is our Christian duty to stamp these heretics out.’

  At the end of long table, there was an empty place, but I saw that Sir Nicholas, ignoring this position at the head of the board, was deep in conversation directly across the polished oak with Roland d’Alle who was seated on my side of the wood. It had not been difficult to persuade my cousin to join us either – he had grown fond of Goody during his time at Westbury and was convinced that the Grail would save her life. That was reason enough, he said, to join our number, but I knew, too, that his acceptance of my offer had as much to do with his own urge for adventure and his lust to win gold and glory, as it had to do with saving the life of my lady.

  The final member of our company of seven sat beside me, directly to my right: Thomas ap Lloyd, my faithful squire, a young man of extraordinary courage and skill, and seemingly unlimited devotion to me. I had not needed to ask him whether he wished to come on this quest: when I had told him that I would be accompanying Robin overseas, he had merely nodded and begun to gather our few remaining possessions together at the caves, and the only question he asked was about the horses. After a short discussion with Robin, we decided that it was impractical to take them with us on the long sea journey. And so, reluctantly, I left Shaitan and the other two beasts – the only cattle I now possessed – in the care of Baldwin and Kit and Robin’s men in Sherwood.

  Seven men, seven friends, seven bold warriors, sat around that long table in the wine merchant’s house on the night before our departure for Aquitaine. I pushed back my stool and came to my feet. I rapped on the table with my knuckles to capture the attention of everyone present and said, ‘My friends, if I may, I would like to say a few words before we embark on the arduous journey that lies ahead.’

  There was a general rumble of assent, and every eye on the room was on me. ‘My friends, we are gathered here with a common purpos
e to seek out the murderous villain who calls himself the Master and crush him. It is true that I seek vengeance for the burning of my home – and also for the provocations that have been given to my lord, the Earl of Locksley – but our primary goal is to take from him the sacred vessel that once cradled the lifeblood of Our Saviour. We are all equal companions in that noble endeavour; we are indeed a fellowship in this quest – this quest for the Holy Grail. I therefore propose that we swear an oath as Companions of the Grail that we will be loyal and true to each other, that we will honour each other and protect each other in battle, that we will never leave a wounded man to his fate, nor turn our backs on a comrade in danger, until that task is done…’

  There was another general murmur of assent, which was broken by a loud knock at the door. We all turned to look and, through the arched panelled door behind Robin’s back, the head of a servant appeared. He looked nervously at Robin and said, ‘Sir, I beg your pardon, sir, for this intrusion, but that … er, woman … the, er … the lady you mentioned is here to see you. May I show her in directly?’

  ‘Please do,’ said Robin. And I felt a flash of irritation. Why did he have to bring his guests into the hall at this very moment? Couldn’t she wait? I wished to make it a solemn affair among men, among warriors, with powerful oaths and the forging of a bond. I could not do that if Robin introduced some passing London slattern into our company.