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

  The Consul was standing now, panting and glaring at Gilles like an angry, miniature bull. Then he turned towards Robin and said, ‘Get out, get out of here, all of you and leave us to our own counsels. We will summon you in a day or two when we have reached a decision.’

  And so we left that hot-blooded chamber and went back to the comfort of the inn with Tronc.

  Over the noon day meal, the mood was tense. Tronc seemed to be deeply embarrassed, and, although our host was as generous and affable as always, I caught him giving Robin some strange looks across the board. I wondered fleetingly if he would tell his servants to count the silver spoons after the meal. When we had finished eating, the Viscount of Carcassonne addressed us all: ‘My friends, I must be about the city. I need to speak with friends and relatives and see what can be done about these Templars and their accusations. While I am gone, I beg you to remain inside the precincts of the inn. I swear that you will not be molested here. You will be quite safe, on my honour.’

  And he left us to stew in the lavish comfort of his home.

  Robin gathered us after Tronc had left and said, ‘I believe that we are safe for the moment under the Viscount’s protection. But I do not know how long that will last. It may be that we shall have to leave Toulouse in a hurry. So, I say, eat as much as you can, pack your belongings and be ready to depart at a moment’s notice.

  ‘And go where?’ asked Sir Nicholas.

  Robin had no reply. He almost seemed embarrassed – and I realized that for once in his life he was unsure of his plans. Then he smiled broadly at us all, and gave a light chuckle and a shrug. ‘Sometimes, Sir Nicholas, it is the going from that is the crucial element in a journey, not the going to…’

  We kicked our heels in the inn all the rest of that day, our bags and baggage packed, our horses saddled, but when dusk fell, there was still no sign of Tronc. An hour or so after the bells had rung for Vespers, the servants brought out soup and bread and cheese and wine, but few of us had much of an appetite. We were keyed up for action, half-expecting to have a horde of angry Templars crashing through the gates at any moment, yet no enemy came, the night seemed utterly tranquil. Only Nur seemed to be calm, and with great gusto she set to a steaming bowl of leek soup with a fistful of bread and a lump of cheese.

  At an hour or so after midnight, the gates of the inn creaked open and a lone horsemen entered the courtyard. It was Tronc.

  Robin woke those who had been asleep and we gathered to hear what our host had learned.

  ‘Well, my friends,’ said the young lord, ‘it has been a great pleasure to have you as my guests, but I fear that you must be gone as swiftly as you can. The Templars are coming at dawn, a conroi at the very least, perhaps thirty men; with or without the permission of the Chapter, they mean to take Robin and anyone who stands with him and hold them prisoner in their preceptory in the south of the city. I had this information from impeccable sources – from a friend who is himself a senior Templar knight, but who feels that his Order should not ride roughshod over the wishes of the Consuls.’

  ‘We could fight them,’ said Little John. ‘This place looks very defensible, we could hold them off for days easily…’

  Tronc, I noticed, looked pained but said nothing.

  It was Robin who answered his huge lieutenant. ‘We could fight them, John, yes, but what toll would that take on our host’s house, and on his servants? I cannot ask the Viscount to risk the lives of his men or the destruction of his home for me. We will leave as soon as we are able, and take our chances on the road.’

  ‘Thank you, my lord, I do not fear the Templars but—’

  ‘This is not your fight,’ Robin said. ‘You have done more than enough for us and we will not forget your kindness.’

  ‘I do have some information that may be of some little use for you,’ said Tronc. ‘My Templar friend told me that he has heard of the fellow that you seek, the man with three thumbs. He has heard that this Master has had some dealings with the Count of Foix recently. But I’m afraid that is all that he could tell…’

  ‘It is enough, I think,’ said Robin, ‘and once again I thank you from the bottom of my heart. We shall pay the Count of Foix a call, I believe, and see if he can enlighten us any further.’

  ‘I can at least give you an introduction to the Count,’ said Tronc smiling. ‘He has known my family for generations. He is a strange man, and not one I would care to trust very far, but perhaps he may be willing to help you. It is in God’s hands. First, however, we must get you safely out of Toulouse…’

  The Lord of Carcassonne, Beziers, Albi and the Razès made us generous gifts before we left less than an hour later. From his kitchens he gave us an ample supply of smoked hams and roasted ducks and chickens, dried meat and fish, fruit and cheeses, fresh and twice-baked bread; from his cellars two small barrels of new wine; and to each of the Companions he gave a fine grey woollen cloak, but to me alone he made a particularly fine gift. It was a vielle made in Toulouse by a master craftsman, the body carved from polished yellow pear wood, the neck a strip of ebony – in all a beautiful instrument engraved with images of leaves and fruit.

  ‘But Tronc,’ I protested, shocked and surprised, ‘you badly need a new vielle yourself. That old tuneless one you have now is no instrument for a man with your musical taste.’

  ‘Oh, it will serve well enough until I am a better player. In truth, I did buy this pear wood one for myself, but I would be honoured if you would accept it. It has been a great pleasure to have known you and to have heard your music – I adored my eulogy – and I will take great pride in knowing that, with my gift, you will bring pleasure to many, many people.’

  Our parting was brusquely interrupted by a servant. He came into the hall, breathless, red-faced. ‘Horsemen sir, there are horsemen at the gates demanding entrance. They are Templars.’

  ‘God be with you, Alan,’ said Tronc and he grasped my hand. ‘I will delay the Templars while my men escort you to the city gates in the eastern wall.’

  It was a good two hours yet before dawn, by my reckoning. ‘Surely the gates will be locked tight at this hour,’ I said.

  ‘A little silver makes a wonderful key, my old father used to tell me,’ said Tronc with a smile. ‘But you must all be away – Arnald here will lead you out through the back entrance. Go swiftly, and God keep you safe!’

  I could hear the angry calls of the Templars from the street outside the inn, and a hammering on the main gate, as Tronc’s servant Arnald led us speedily through a stone passage at the back of the stables barely wider than a horse and out via a low wooden door into a stinking alley. There was no sign of our enemies, and Arnald took us east into a broader street, without incident. We walked our horses no more than a hundred yards to a strong-looking tower in the city wall. The Viscount’s servant spoke briefly with the sleepy sergeant in charge, then disappeared inside the gatehouse with him, while we waited, fidgeting in our saddles and looking up at the high brick walls and listening out for any sign of the conroi of Templars. I heard an angry exchange of words in the local dialect coming from inside the building, plainly a refusal, and then more soothing tones, and in a few moments Arnald emerged and nodded at us. Then the sergeant and one of his men-at-arms grumpily lifted the bar from the wide double gate, and allowed us to pass through. The Trencavel retainer wished us luck, and set us on a road that ran directly north-east towards Gaillac and Albi, before slipping away back to the gate and leaving us to our fate.

  Mercifully, there was just enough moon and starlight to make out the road, and we put spurs to our horses and rode forth boldly into the darkness. I could not help feeling a deep regret that I had not been able to spend more time with Tronc, yet at the back of my mind I knew that we had wasted several more days, and we were still no nearer confronting the Master and taking possession of the Grail. While I had been enjoying myself and making music with my new friend, far to the north, my darling Goody was slowly slipping away.

  A dozen miles l
ater, the sky in the east had lightened into a beautiful milky grey and we turned south-east down a narrow farm track, eager to be off the road when and if the Templars gave chase. After a couple of miles, in the full light of morning, we stepped off our mounts in an abandoned grain barn, blackened with fire and with half the roof missing.

  Despite my guilt about the time wasted there, my heart was full at having escaped the wrath of Gilles de Mauchamps and his Templars, but I was concerned that Tronc might suffer as a result.

  ‘For all his tender years, he is one of the most powerful men in the Languedoc,’ Robin told me. ‘He has nothing to fear from a pack of Templars, nor from the Consuls; they would not risk offending him and they’ll be pleased to see the back of us.’

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘Oh yes, despite their bombast, the Consuls merely seek a quiet life in which they can trade and prosper. They do not want strife and bloodshed, and private feuds on their doorstep. They will be quite content to see us gone, I guarantee you that.’

  ‘How do you think that Gilles de Mauchamps happened to discover that you were in Toulouse?’ I asked Robin. I had been pondering that question a good deal.

  ‘Tronc’s enquiries after the Master must have found their way to his ears. Our host mentioned having a friend who was a Templar – indeed, he said it was this man who warned him that they were coming for us. I think we can assume that Tronc spoke to this man when we arrived and it was he who revealed to Gilles de Mauchamps that we were in Toulouse.’

  Robin stopped speaking, as if he had been listening to his own words with fresh ears, and frowned. ‘Why do you ask this, Alan?’

  ‘I have a strange feeling about all this; we have been manoeuvred out of Toulouse in a hurry, told that the Master is not there, and set on the road towards Foix. I feel a little as if I were being driven somewhere, like cattle.’

  ‘You think Tronc has betrayed us? That he is a disciple of the Master?’ Robin seemed genuinely shocked.

  ‘I don’t know. I think not. He had us in his inn for several days – if he meant to do us harm, we were completely in his power then. But there is something wrong – that performance by Gilles de Mauchamps, all that shouting and rudeness, the lack of evidence, that public disrespect of Tronc in front of the Consuls. Did it not seem out of character for a Templar? They are seldom clumsy, loudmouthed fools. Do you think he really wanted to take you into custody? Or was his true aim to drive us south towards Foix? Have we escaped, I wonder, or are we being subtly guided into a trap?’

  Robin shrugged. ‘Well, no doubt we shall find out – in time.’

  The next day, we circled around Toulouse, keeping a respectful ten miles or so from the city, and then struck the main highway towards Foix. We made camp at mid-afternoon in a rare wooded hollow, but the moment we had dismounted, Nur came striding over to Robin and I and, rudely interrupting our conversation about the potential stamina of our second-class horses, she said bluntly that we were being pursued.

  ‘Have you seen anybody?’ asked my lord.

  ‘No,’ said the witch, ‘but my thumbs were pricking as we rode, and I have cast the bones, too, since then. There are men behind us for certain, men of ill-will. We are being followed.’

  Robin sent out Thomas and Sir Nicholas discreetly behind us. They came back after an hour and reported that they could see nobody on our back trail.

  ‘There is nothing there,’ said Sir Nicholas, his face now a rainbow of hues from the beating he had received in Casteljaloux. ‘The witch is wrong; she may be merely lying to make herself seem important.’

  ‘We will stop here this night,’ said Robin.

  The next morning we set off a little after dawn, and rode a mile or two without incident. Then Nur gave a harsh shriek and called out, ‘They are coming, they are coming up behind us.’ But nobody apart from the woman in black could make out anything, except for a few drifting shreds of dust that could have been made by the wind. However, after another dozen miles, I could make out a dense cloud on our back trail that could only be caused by a large body of horses – perhaps forty or more – being ridden hard.

  We were in wide, open, rolling countryside, with scarcely a tree in sight. We were travelling almost due south by then, with the green foothills of Foix ahead, the wide River Ariège to our right and the shadowy forms of the snow-capped mountains of the Pyrenees in the far, far distance.

  ‘Do you think it is the Templars?’ I asked Robin.

  ‘Maybe – I don’t want to find out.’

  We put our heels back and urged our horses into a raggedy gallop. But after a mile or so, the beasts began to show the signs of tiredness. Despite another hour of pounding our saddles, the sweat running in rivers from man and mount alike, it was clear that the horsemen were catching up – by now perhaps only a mile or two behind us. A mile later, Roland’s horse went lame, while Gavin’s mount was moving very oddly, weaving from side to side, and I could feel that mine was nearly finished, too.

  ‘Enough!’ panted Little John, hauling on his reins, his face scarlet with anger and exertion. ‘Enough running. Let us fight them here. Let us stand on our own two feet and face them.’

  ‘It would do us no good, John,’ said Robin, wheeling his horse, ‘we have four bowmen and four swordsmen, and they…’ My lord made a gesture with his hand and we could all clearly see, a mass of horsemen, more than forty, perhaps even fifty strong, cantering down a gentle slope towards us no more than three-quarters of a mile away. It was clear by then that they were not disciplined Templars – it was worse than that. They were Mercadier’s mercenaries, routiers now unchecked in their savagery by any lord. And they were plainly looking for us.

  ‘I don’t give an angel’s pink, puckered hole how many they are,’ growled John, ‘fifty, a hundred, five hundred. This is just as good a place as any to die.’

  ‘Let us go down by the river,’ Sir Nicholas said. ‘The water will make it harder for them to come at us and it never hurts to have something cool to drink in a hard fight.’

  We guided our tired mounts down the steep slope to the river and found a shallow fordable place where we carefully led them over. Gavin and Thomas tethered them to a line of scrubby trees that fringed a large pool and Robin set us in a double line, with the river in front and facing the slope beyond it that led to the road: four swordsmen with shields to the front – myself, with Thomas at one shoulder and Roland at the other and beyond him Sir Nicholas de Scras, who was shaking his arms to loosen the muscles and whistling to himself happily as if he had not a care in the world.

  The ground was marshy and littered with boulders, some the size of a prize Nottinghamshire bull. This would be good for men on foot fighting against mounted foes; the horses would have to negotiate the river – which could not be done at speed, and then fight us among the big, impeding stones with treacherous boggy ground beneath their hooves. But there were just too many of the enemy to make the outcome uncertain. This is where I would die, I reflected, here by this cold river, with my boots sunk up to the ankles in black mud, far away from Goody and Westbury. I felt a wave of frustrated fury flood my veins. It seemed such an absurd place in which to meet my end; such a silly death. I’d not even set eyes on the Master, nor glimpsed the Grail. I prayed that Goody and I would be reunited in Heaven.

  Robin, who was lining up the four bowmen behind me – himself, John, Tuck and Gavin – saw my glum face and actually laughed.

  ‘We are not quite dead yet, Alan,’ he said. ‘And with a band of fighting men such as ours – who can defeat us? Little John here has personally killed more men than the red plague; Sir Nicholas, once the pride of the Hospitallers, will not allow himself to fall to a pack of gutter-born, greasy mercenaries. Will you, sir? And Sir Roland – the flower of French chivalry; one of the finest knights that noble land has ever produced – he is not afraid of anything. Look at us – we eight, we eight men of war. We are such warriors that legends are made of – we cannot be killed. Not by a hundred enemi
es, not by a thousand. Indeed, I worry that we shall live for ever.’

  I looked at my cousin and saw that Robin’s absurd speech seemed to have cheered him and, to be honest, I felt better myself. Bring on the battle, I thought. Bring on the fight, you bastards, and I will show you how an Englishman fights and dies. I felt a warm glow at the top of my spine and down the length of my arms. And, I swear, the heavy shield and sword felt lighter in my hands.

  ‘Where is Nur?’ I asked Roland, who was fiddling with a strap at the top of his left chausse, his mail legging, that attached it to the belt under his mail shirt. I had lost my chausses at Westbury, and fought only in knee-length hauberk, helmet and thick leather riding boots – although I did have the reinforced breast-and-back plate under my mail, holding the lance-dagger between my shoulder blades.

  ‘She’s behind us in that little spinney, over there,’ my cousin told me, ‘brewing up a spell to bring a thick mist. Like a huge cloud coming down to earth, she says, that will shield us from the sight of our enemies and allow us to escape unseen.’

  I looked up at the sky: it was a bowl of palest blue, with a few delicate wisps in the far south. A magic mist? I thought. My chilly arse.

  ‘At least she’ll be hidden,’ I said, ‘when the horsemen come.’

  And at that moment, a lone rider, a thin raggedy man armed with spear and shield appeared on the lip of the slope above us. He was some fifty yards away, on the far side of the rushing river, but I recognized him. He had been the one who ran away from the fight with Mercadier outside Bordeaux. By some freak of the wind, I heard him shout in rough French as clearly as if he were standing next to me, ‘Here they are, Vim! They are here! Down there by the river.’

  I heard the wooden creaking sound of a war bow being drawn, and Robin’s voice saying, ‘Hold fast, Gavin; hold a little longer. Let’s just see if these scum have anything worth saying before we start wasting our good arrows on them.’

  A few moments later the eastern skyline was filled with the shapes of the massed horsemen – a long line of mounted men arrayed for war on the slope above, menacing as a storm, malevolent, dark and as bleakly immobile as statues. It felt as if we Companions were no more than a huddle of children standing under a vast black cliff, which at any moment would crumble, slide and crash down on our heads.