Grail Knight: Number 5 in series (Outlaw Chronicles) Read online

  ‘But you are far too late,’ said my new friend. ‘It is St George’s Day and the day of the great fair – all Toulouse is filled with merchants and travellers, pilgrims, revellers and folk from the villages hereabouts. All the cots in the dormitory will have been taken long before now. You must stay with me.’

  I looked uncertainly at Robin, who merely shrugged, and said, ‘That is most kind of you, Master Tronc, but I am sure that we would be far too much of an inconvenience to your household.’

  ‘Nonsense, masses of room, and of course the servants will see to everything – but it might be best if you did not call me Master Tronc. Just Tronc will do or, if you insist on being absurdly formal, you may call me my lord.’

  ‘“My lord”?’

  It was my turn to goggle at him.

  ‘Well, um, yes, actually, didn’t you know? I am Raymond-Roger de Trencavel, Viscount of Carcassonne, lord of Beziers, Albi and the Razès. But as practically everybody who is anybody around these parts is called Raymond or Roger or Raymond-Roger, all my friends call me by my family’s name – Trencavel – or Tronc, for short.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  As we rode away from the tavern, with Tronc walking beside my horse’s head, I discovered a little more about our noble friend. While he spent much of his time at his own court at Carcassonne, he told me that the Trencavel family had long maintained an inn in Toulouse for convenience when visiting the city. They were the vassals of the Count of Toulouse, Raymond, the sixth of that name, who also happened to be Tronc’s uncle, and the family were frequently called upon to serve the Count at the Château Narbonnais, his fortress on the southern edge of the city. So Tronc led us through the crowded streets with the familiarity of a native Toulousain, through a guard post in the wall that divided the Cité from the Bourg, and north about five hundred yards towards the pink bulk of the cathedral of St-Sernin.

  The oval space around the brick-built cathedral was almost as crowded as the market square where we had spent the afternoon, but this part of the town was mostly inhabited by travellers and pilgrims of the poorer kind, with a large proportion of the city’s beggars taking refuge in the shade provided by the cathedral. I realized that Tronc had been right about St-Sernin – we would indeed have had a great deal of difficulty in finding even the meanest accommodation within its precincts.

  Our new friend’s rather grand inn was on a quiet street a mere fifty yards from the pink walls on the eastern side of the city, but before we reached it, I observed a curious sight. Not far from the inn’s stout gate, a small crowd had formed around two women. They were dressed in rough black robes, belted at the waist with a thick leather-bound book dangling from the belt, their pale, thin faces seemingly shining with some inner goodness. As we approached, they spread their arms wide as if in benediction and almost all of the members of the crowd around them, some thirty people, prostrated themselves before the two dark figures and lay full length in the mud and filth of the street. The women began to recite the Pater Noster over the prone bodies of their followers:

  Our Father, which art in Heaven,

  Hallowed be thy name.

  Thy kingdom come,

  Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.

  Give us this day our supplementary bread,

  And remit our debts as we forgive our debtors.

  And keep us from temptation and free us from evil.

  Thine is the kingdom, the power and glory for ever and ever.

  Amen.

  The Lord’s Prayer that these strange women spoke was subtly different from the Pater Noster that I am sure all of the Companions (save for Nur, of course) had been saying since we could first speak – but that was not what shocked me the most.

  ‘Women priests?’ I said to Tronc. ‘You have women priests here?’ I cannot remember when I have been so astonished.

  ‘They are Good Women,’ replied Tronc with a smile.

  ‘No doubt, but are they also priests, in holy orders?’

  ‘No, Sir Alan, that is what they call themselves: Good Women and Good Men, or sometimes Good Christians. We call them Perfects, and their followers are called Believers – and they are Christians too … after a fashion.’

  I heard Sir Nicholas, who was directly behind me, mutter savagely, ‘They bloody well are not. They’re nothing but damned heretics.’

  ‘And the Church – and the Count of Toulouse – they allow them to preach here quite freely?’ I said.

  ‘They do nobody any harm,’ said Tronc. ‘They are genuinely holy folk – they eschew meat and sexual coupling and oaths and money and … and, well, all worldly evils. Besides, they have many followers – even some of the lesser nobility are Believers. It would not be, ah, politic for the Church or the Count to act against them. We do things a little differently here in the Languedoc, Alan, as you will discover if you remain with us. Live and let live, we say, and let each man and woman find his or her own path to God.’

  While I was still digesting this extraordinary laxity in matters of the Faith, we entered into the courtyard of the inn and my mind was diverted by the sight of a dozen servants in yellow and white livery who debouched from a large three-storey building to take our horses’ bridles and lead us inside.

  The hospitality of the Viscount of Carcassonne, the lord of Beziers, Albi and the Razès, was lavish. Servants were dispatched to fire the cauldrons in the bathhouse and for the first time in weeks I was able to soak in the luxury of a great wooden tub, with a sheet draped over the top to protect my modesty, while the male Companions made use of the half dozen other tubs. Nur disappeared temporarily and we men splashed and chatted and laughed at our good fortune – this was so much better than a flea-infested cathedral dormitory – and allowed the gallons of hot soapy water to wash away the cares of the long journey.

  Then, clean, refreshed, dressed in new clothes, and hungry once more, we met at dusk in the great hall where our host Raymond-Roger de Trencavel had caused a ‘light’ supper of pigeon pie, smoked ham, roasted capons, grilled trout, ragout of beef, coddled eggs, onion soup, five kinds of cheese and many bowls of fruit to be laid out for our delectation.

  As we ate heartily, I gave Tronc a limited explanation for our presence in the Languedoc. I made no mention of the Grail, for Robin had told me privately to keep that part back, but I gave him a good deal of truth. We were seeking a former monk named Michel, who now called himself the Master, and who led a band of soldiers calling themselves the Knights of Our Lady. He could be easily identified because of the strange deformity that he had been born with: two thumbs on his left hand, twin miniature digits where only one should be. We sought him because he was a thief and a murderer, who had been responsible for the death or my father Henry and also of a good friend of mine called Hanno. We sought revenge, I said, on the Master and we suspected that he might even now be in Toulouse, perhaps staying with powerful friends in the Church or the nobility, or might have passed through in the past few days.

  Tronc’s young brow furrowed at my words. ‘I believe I have heard rumours of this Master and his Knights of Our Lady – but I have not heard of his presence here in Toulouse.’ He paused and looked keenly at me. ‘I have also heard that he had some magical trinket, a golden cup studded with fabulous jewels, an object of enormous value, priceless indeed, that was supposed to be able to make a man immortal or perform other such wonders.’

  I said nothing, not wanting to lie to him, but noting privately that this Trencavel, for all his youth and enthusiasm, was no fool.

  ‘Well, no matter,’ said Tronc. ‘I shall make enquiries in the city tomorrow with a number of people and see if I can bring you any news of this evil fellow, this three-thumbed Master.’

  We had all finished eating by this point and were lingering at the table over the wine, when Robin said, ‘Those extraordinary women priests we saw outside this afternoon, the Perfects, I think you called them, and you named their followers Believers – what do they believe?’

&nbs
p; ‘But where shall I begin,’ said Tronc. ‘I have several friends in Albi and Carcassonne who are Believers – indeed, a large proportion of the people in my own lands, perhaps a third of them, perhaps even as many as half, follow this path to God.’

  I filled his wine cup from the jug on the table, and he smiled his thanks. Tuck was leaning forward from the end of the table in an attempt to hear Tronc’s words more clearly.

  ‘These people are commonly called Cathars, but they think of themselves as Christians, in that they believe that Christ was the son of God who was sent to Earth by his Father and appeared in the illusion of a fleshly form. However, they do not believe that God, the essence of Goodness, has total dominion over the universe; he shares it with another deity. The world, as they see it, was made by the Devil, or Rex Mundi, as they call him, the King of the World, and he has power over all material things; God, in contrast, is manifested in immaterial things, the holy, invisible things of the spirit, and so they reject all the things of the world, things of the flesh, as works of the Devil. They despise wealth, for example, and the eating of meat, and the making of oaths, and carnal relations between men and women, even married men and women desiring to procreate, of which the Church, of course, thoroughly approves.’

  I was looking at Tuck’s face as Tronc spoke and far from being offended by what he heard, he seemed fascinated. Robin too was absorbed by our host’s lecture. But Sir Nicholas de Scras, his face flushed with wine, was scowling at the table in general. Then he spoke: ‘How can they possibly believe that the Devil made the world and has dominion over it? What rubbish! We know that God made the world and everything in it – it says so in the Bible.’ He took a deep breath, seeming to make an effort of commanding himself. ‘Surely these wretches are heretics of the vilest sort – a foul poison inside the community of Christians.’

  ‘Yes, they are heretics – and they are condemned by the Church,’ Tronc replied. ‘Nonetheless there is a certain logic to their argument, I would say. If God made the world and He is omnipotent why does He allow evil to exist? Disease, war, famine, pain … Why does God stand idly by and allow wickedness to flourish? Is it not reasonable to suggest that the Devil rules the world and the body of a man or a woman – and that God rules the spirit, the soul that is imprisoned inside that body, and it therefore follows that the only way to God is through a renunciation of the evil world and all the corruption that our flesh contains?’

  ‘It is not our place to question the actions of God,’ said Tuck reproachfully. ‘We cannot know His plan – if He allows evil to exist, it must be because of some ineffable scheme…’

  But Sir Nicholas was clearly boiling with fury by this point, the dark bruises on his face making him seem inordinately ugly. He glared at our host and said, ‘You seem to know a good deal about these God-damned heretics. Perhaps you are one yourself!’

  Tronc looked steadily, coolly, at Sir Nicholas, a man seasoned by more than forty years of life. Our host said nothing, just looked at the former Hospitaller, apparently unperturbed by his extraordinary rudeness. But I could feel Robin gathering himself to rebuke Sir Nicholas. And then, to my great surprise, Sir Nicholas himself suddenly dropped his angry gaze to the table and said, ‘Forgive me, my lord, for my gross and vile discourtesy. I believe I may have taken too much of your good Toulousain wine. I retract my boorish remarks and I beg your leave to retire from the board and seek my bed.’

  ‘You have my leave to retire, certainly, but before you go I will answer your question. No, I am not a heretic. In my minority, after my father died, my tutor Bertrand de Saissac naturally instructed me in the theology of the Cathars, since he was a Believer himself. But he left me free to choose my own religion – and I am a faithful son of Holy Mother Church. However, I cannot hate the Cathars, whatever the bishops might decree. While their beliefs do not coincide with my own, this is the Languedoc, and we know that there are good men and women to be found in all creeds. My father’s senechal, for example, was a Jew, and a very fine man just the same. No, Sir Nicholas, I am no God-damned heretic, as you put it, but neither am I the enemy of heretics.’

  ‘I will thank you, my lord, for this fine feast and bid you good night, then,’ said Sir Nicholas rising from his seat. ‘I apologise again for my discourtesy; I am deeply ashamed of my inexcusable behaviour.’

  At Sir Nicholas’s departure, most of the rest of the Companions also took their leave – trooping out of the hall and across the courtyard to the guest hall that had been prepared by Tronc’s legion of servants. But Robin and Tuck and I remained at the table. ‘If it does not tax your good nature, sir, may I enquire a little more about these strange Cathars,’ said Robin. ‘Do they have their own churches, sacrifices and rituals?’

  I looked at my lord – I had long known that he had little love for the true Church, and that he had indulged in some unspeakable pagan rites in the past, but I had always believed that, at heart, he was largely indifferent to spiritual matters. Now he seemed to be burning with curiosity about these southern heretics. Tuck was also looking at Robin, with a worried frown wreathing his already wrinkled brow.

  Tronc said, ‘I will tell you a little more, but I do not wish this pleasant evening to be burdened with too much talk of faith. It divides men, I find, and leads to disharmony, even violence and unnecessary deaths. And, furthermore, my heart yearns to hear some of Alan’s famous music before we sleep. But I shall tell you a little more about them, if you will it, so that you may come to a better understanding of these matters…

  ‘So, you asked about Cathar churches – no, they do not have churches as such, merely houses where the Perfects gather and minister to their Believers. And as for rituals, there is but one main one, called the consolamentum, and roughly equivalent to our baptism, except that it occurs, usually, towards the end of a man’s life and transforms a Believer into a Perfect. Before receiving the consolamentum, a Believer is not expected to follow the tenets of their faith: avoiding meat, milk and eggs, and so on. But, once a Believer is made into a Perfect, he or she must avoid the temptations of the world, fleshly love, for example, and the coveting of money. A Perfect must keep himself pure until the day of his death, when his immaculate soul can be taken up out of this evil world and into the arms of God.’

  ‘And what if a Perfect were to die unclean?’ asked Robin.

  ‘There are some who say that an unclean soul of a Perfect will go into another body, of a newborn baby or perhaps even an animal, and so it is reincarnated again and again until the soul has been purified … But that is quite enough of these solemn matters – Sir Alan, I beg you, will you not take up my vielle and give us some of your wonderful music?’

  For the rest of the evening and long into the night we sang and played and gave ourselves up to the pleasures of poetry. I found that my bowing skills were a little creaky from disuse, but I was surprised by Tronc’s dexterity with words – for his own poems and cansos, though a little unsophisticated, were most pleasing to the ear. We even induced Robin to sing, some of the old English country songs, although Tuck declined to take any role except that of entranced listener, and so we played and sang and ended the night in good fellowship and perfect harmony.

  Tronc left early in the morning with a small retinue of men-at-arms – and the Companions took the opportunity to wallow in the Viscount’s lavish hospitality. We tended to our hurts, and slept, and ate another huge meal at noon prepared by his many servants and, afterwards, I spent a few hours working on a tune that I picked out on Tronc’s old vielle, a eulogy to the lord of Trencavel and his generosity, which I hoped to play for our kind host later.

  I also stepped out to visit the cathedral of St-Sernin, a mere hundred yards to the west, and there I prayed for Goody and asked God to preserve her until I could take possession of the Grail.

  Prayer is a strange thing. Sometimes, in a quiet and holy place, a man can feel that he is genuinely speaking to God and that the Almighty is listening to his every word. And sometimes a
prayer, no matter how heartfelt, can feel as if it is falling on empty space. At the cathedral of St-Sernin, I had no sense at all that God was attending to my entreaties. I stayed on my knees on the stone floor for some hours, my eyes screwed shut, holding a picture of my beloved in my mind, and earnestly beseeching the Lord to keep her safe. But, the image of my lovely wife, her face white as bone, her violet-blue eyes huge and infinitely sad, kept slipping away, and I found my mind wandering without direction. Instead of Goody, an image of the Grail came unbidden into my head – a shining golden cup, lavishly bejewelled and glowing with holy power. And then the image changed to that of the Master: I could clearly see his thin pock-marked face and cloying eyes; I saw his deformed thumb; I could actually hear his voice – he has mocking me for my impotence to help Goody. He was laughing at me…

  I pushed aside that evil image with some difficulty and opened my eyes to see the monks of the cathedral file into their places in the choir and begin to chant the service of Vespers. As I listened to the grave, deep, familiar cadences, my mind was calmed and I rose from my station, giving relief to my aching knees, and I made my way out.

  As I was leaving, I paused at a stall that offered a variety of items to pilgrims – for the cathedral had long been a popular place of pilgrimage. I fingered the little tin medals depicting images of the saints, looked at roughly carved walking staffs and cheap linen shoulder bags, and finally made a purchase of a pear-shaped leather water bottle, the outside stamped with an image of the martyrdom of St Sernin – he was dragged to death by a bull through the streets of Toulouse many hundreds of years ago. I bought it, not because I harbour a particularly deep veneration for the saint, but merely because I thought an extra water container might be useful on our travels, and perhaps as a sort of money offering to the cathedral itself, perhaps even to God, in an effort to persuade him to hear my prayers.

  Tronc returned a little after dark with bad news. He had spent the day visiting a good many of his friends – some of them from the noblest families in the Languedoc – and, once he had gathered us all in the hall of the inn, he told us that not one of his many and varied acquaintances had heard even a whisper that the Master was in Toulouse.