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

  ‘That is a bold, warlike answer, my lord, one that I find gladdens my heart – perhaps you and your knights would be gracious enough to spend a few days here in the castle as my guests – although I would prefer your common men-at-arms to remain in the water meadow for the time being. I believe that we may have things of mutual benefit to discuss.’

  The mercenaries stayed in the meadow, and ate and drank and slept, and more or less kept their discipline – Little John, Thomas, Nur and Gavin remained with them and Robin had repeated his three rules and even gone so far as to set up a semi-permanent makeshift gallows, a noose hung over the branch of an apple tree, as a reminder of the penalty for unruly behaviour. But Sir Nicholas, Roland, Robin, Tuck and myself – and Vim – were offered a floor to ourselves in the old, northernmost tower of the Castle of Foix, and the Count beamed and nodded at us and showed us the most lavish hospitality.

  The square room we shared was three storeys up, at the top of three steep sets of ladders – and with six big men sleeping in there, it was not spacious – but I was very grateful to be indoors and not sleeping in the open or under canvas in the meadow. We discovered that the weather in late April and early May so near the high mountains was very swift to change – one moment bright sunshine, the next a deluge of stinging rain or a fog as thick as a fleece.

  I was not present at the discussions of ‘mutual benefit’ that Robin had with the Count of Foix, but my lord related the gist of them to me, on the afternoon of the second day after our arrival, when we were standing on the flat roof of the tower, taking a little weak sunshine on our faces and admiring the view: to the south the snow-capped peaks of the Pyrenees, to the north the long valley of the Ariège, dotted with round green hills and crumbling rocky eminences. The Castle of Foix was a magnificent site for a fortification, one of the best I have seen, soaring high above the countryside and from which you could see a day’s ride in all directions.

  ‘The Master is now at a place called Montségur,’ said Robin quietly. ‘It is about twenty miles south-east of here, an old ruined castle on a mountaintop, which the previous count of Foix abandoned as too remote to bother with. Nine months ago, the Master came to Foix. He had only two retainers with him, a priest and a poor knight, and he begged the Count for permission to set up a retreat from the world at Montségur. He made it sound as if it would be a sort of hermitage – a place of contemplation for a handful of devout men who wished to venerate the Holy Mother of Our Lord, in their own quiet and humble way.

  ‘Somehow – and the Count is not quite sure exactly what happened – he found himself setting his seal to a formal charter that granted Montségur to the Master. The Count cannot clearly remember why he was persuaded to sign over Montségur – it may be a surfeit of drink, or his own feeble will, but he believes that his mind was clouded by a kind of enchantment. I know what I think.’

  Robin looked at me, but I looked away – I was embarrassed. I too had been susceptible to the Master’s strange charisma when he had been our prisoner in the Limousin at Château Chalus-Chabrol around the time King Richard had died.

  ‘But the Count was not too perturbed, at this point. He had deeded away a tiny tract of land to a religious institution – but his father had done something similar on a much grander scale, granting land for several abbeys to be built in Foix, where Masses for his soul are still being said. Montségur was little better than a ruin, and Raymond-Roger had given his word and set his seal on the document. What harm could a few devotees of the Virgin do down there on a remote mountaintop?

  ‘For some months, the Count ignored his new neighbours, and carried on with his affairs here in Foix. He is a man, I think, who desires a quiet life. But he began to hear strange tales about the place. The Master was swiftly rebuilding the walls of the old castle, the Count was told, using forced peasant labour. And the Master was recruiting fighting men – knights and men-at-arms from all over Europe – in significant numbers. In the space of six months, the ruined castle had been repaired and turned into a fortress – and the Count began to be alarmed. But even more troubling were the stories coming out of Montségur, tales of Satanic ceremonies involving a magical relic, a relic so holy that its merest touch could cure all disease, even hold back Death itself. More warriors were recruited to serve at Montségur – and the castle soon became powerful, manned by scores of knights in white mantels with a blue cross on their chests.

  ‘Our poor friend Raymond-Roger felt betrayed, he felt that he had been harbouring a cuckoo in his nest. A mighty castle had sprung up, almost overnight, in his own backyard, one that could even rival the Castle of Foix. Then it grew worse. Armed men rode out from Montségur and took what they wished from the local peasants; taxes, even tithes destined for the Church, all in the name of the Mother of God and this mysterious relic. They were acting more like bandits than men of the cloth. At this affront to his authority, and that of the Church, the Count of Foix was forced to act. About three weeks ago, he gathered his handful of knights and rode to Montségur to demand answers – indeed, he intended to rescind the charter and take back possession of the castle for himself.

  ‘The mountainside was too steep for horsemen – the Count and his knights, a dozen or so of them, and about a score of men-at-arms, puffed and panted their way up a winding path to the top and demanded entrance and an immediate audience with the Master.

  ‘Well, the Master defied the Count. He lined the battlements with his own blue-and-white-clad Knights of Our Lady – fifty of them, the Count saw, all armed and mailed and war-ready – and told the Count to depart at once and leave him in peace. This was his vassal, you understand, Alan, telling his own lord – a man who had granted him the castle in the first place – to get himself hence. And then, the oddest thing – the Count found himself retreating without a fight, without a murmur. He led his men all the way back to the foot of the mountain, without a blow being struck or an arrow loosed. Without even an angry word.

  ‘Afterwards, the Count reasoned to himself that he could not have taken the castle with the men he had, not if he besieged it for ten years, but he still went home humiliated. He sees himself as the laughing stock of the Languedoc – a lord who gave away a castle to a passing beggar, on a whim, and who cannot get it back.’

  ‘And then we arrived in Foix,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, then we came here with what the Count is pleased to call a small army.’ Robin was grinning at me, that devilish look he often wore before a bloody fight or a piece of sinful larceny.

  ‘And we have come to an accommodation, Count Raymond-Roger and myself. For a small consideration, a little something for Vim’s men, we shall evict the Master from Montségur and deliver him, bound and chastened, to this very Castle of Foix for suitable punishment. As well as the money, the Count will supply us with arms and food and a guide and will allow us free, unmolested passage through his lands. The Count shall have Montségur back, we shall have the Grail, and the Master shall be put to a horrible death here in Foix. What do you think of that?’

  ‘How much is he paying us?’

  ‘Never you mind about that, Alan – your share will be quite enough to rebuild Westbury when we get home, let’s leave it at that. Do you not like the arrangement?’

  To be honest, I was impressed. Robin seemed to have made a most satisfactory deal. I could not see a flaw – except for the obvious one. ‘If the Count was unable to take the castle from the Master – and you say it is a mighty fortress, a very tough nut – how are we going to manage it with fifty-odd men?’

  ‘I don’t know yet,’ said Robin. ‘One thing at a time – but we will manage it somehow, Alan. Trust me. We’ll find a way.’

  Raymond-Roger feasted us in his hall before we departed for Montségur. It was three days after my conversation with Robin and he had spent the intervening time seeing to the mercenaries – paying them a shilling a piece, money that he had promptly received from the Count, and checking that each man had adequate weapons, gear, clothing an
d five days’ supply of food. This was not the first time that Robin had outfitted a small force in preparation for a campaign – and he did it with his usual speed and thoroughness. He hanged a man, too, a noisy braggart who broke into the wine barrels in the store tent during a long, hot dull afternoon, drank his fill and then rampaged through the town with a drawn sword, stealing anything he could lay hands on and terrifying the local inhabitants. Then, whooping, he chased down and raped the pretty daughter of the town’s miller.

  Robin did not bother with a trial – once the man had been identified by the outraged miller, Little John and Gavin bound him, cursed him and hauled him up by his neck over the apple bough. I did not attend the execution – I have a particular distaste for hangings – but Thomas told me that the rest of the mercenaries took the punishment of their comrade well, looking on in grim silence as he kicked out his last moments on earth at the end of a rope. As I have said, they were a hard crew of cut-throats and thieves, who had doubtless seen and done a lot worse themselves.

  It was clear at the feast that Raymond-Roger loved his wine; he drank it beaker by beaker as a man who has fought a day-long battle drinks cool water. We were obliged to drink with him, for he was forever calling out toasts to the good health of Robin, Sir Roland and Sir Nicholas – whom he found the most respectable members of our Companions and so the most to his taste – and bidding us show our appreciation, too. The result, predictably, was that he became very drunk, very fast. None of us was sober by the time the last of the crumbs were swept away and his pages came by with ewers, bowls and towels to allow us to cleanse our fingers of grease. I had offered to play my vielle for the company, but the suggestion had been refused by the Count’s steward and, instead, a Foix man – who, we were told, owned a particularly amusing dancing bear – was admitted to the dim hall.

  The poor animal, moth-eaten and deprived of tooth and claw, shambled around the hall in evident terror of his master, who played a flute with scant regard to the laws of tone or rhythm while the animal shuffled about in a state of deep, agitated misery. I could hardly stand to watch the sad, capering beast and turned my attention to what the Count – now loose-limbed and garrulous with drink – was saying to Robin two places down from me.

  ‘… I am sorry that I even considered it, my friend,’ the Count was saying. ‘I am so, so sorry. You are clearly a noble man of great honour, and renown … and honour, and I am ashamed that I even considered detaining you.’

  My ears pricked up at this. But it was clear that Robin had heard it before. He nodded and laid a soothing hand on the Count’s shoulder. ‘My dear Raymond-Roger, think nothing of it. We are friends now. All’s well that ends well.’

  ‘It was despic-despicable of me to have even contemplated it. Despicable. You should despise me! You must despise me!’

  Robin saw me listening and gave me a narrow, piercing glare that told me to mind my own damn business. ‘I want you to despise me,’ the Count wailed, his sodden words audible even over the shrill tones of the bear-master’s execrable flute-playing. Robin soothed him with more wine. And, as soon as it was possible, I made my excuses and left the feast.

  It was not until much later, in the cramped room where we all were sleeping, that Robin told me what was behind the Count’s extraordinary words.

  But I had to push Robin hard to get him to tell me what it was all about. ‘If you must know,’ said my lord crossly – he had been forced to take more wine than he liked and it made him irritable – ‘you were right, oh wise Sir Alan. At the Maison des Consuls, Gilles de Mauchamps deliberately overplayed his hand with the Chapter. He knew that, with Tronc’s friendship and protection, the Consuls would not hand us over to him. He meant for us to escape Toulouse and come south. You remember that Templar friend of Tronc’s who told him that the Master had had dealings with Foix? Well, I think Tronc was fed that information deliberately. The Count here expected our visit – and he had orders to capture us and imprison us on our arrival. A Knight of Our Lady came to Foix a few days ago and told him, in unmistakable terms, that if he valued his life and his remaining lands, he should chain us up tightly and throw us into his deepest dungeon the moment we arrived. Happy now?’

  ‘What – explain.’

  Robin took a deep breath. ‘If I do, will you let me get some sleep? Well, then. Apparently, the Master is particularly keen to have you, Alan, and all your possessions, in safe custody. The knight said exactly that: “Make sure the trouvère Alan Dale is seized, and all of his goods made fast.” I don’t know why and neither does the Count. There is no point asking either of us.’

  ‘So why didn’t he do it? Why didn’t the Count seize us?’

  ‘Damn you, Alan – will you ever let me close my eyes? It’s quite simple. The Count saw the size of the force we brought with us – meeting the mercenaries on the road was a stroke of extremely good fortune, it seems – and he decided that here was his chance to rid himself of the Master once and for all.’

  ‘Do you think he will keep faith with us?’

  ‘I am certain he will not,’ said Robin. ‘The moment we leave he will send word to the Master that we are coming – the Count is a man who likes to play both ends against the middle, and then the middle against the middle. But I am too tired to worry about that now. I am going to sleep. And if you ask me any more questions tonight, Alan, I swear I’ll gut you like a fish.’

  Chapter Nineteen

  We left the next morning on a cheerful day in early May when the world was green and bright and the sun was the rightful monarch of the clear blue heavens. Robin seemed oddly subdued, almost morose, as we rode along – he claimed that Vim’s snoring had not allowed him to rest. But I was certain that, for all his bold front, he was worried about what awaited us.

  The Count of Foix had provided a guide – an old shepherd from the area around Montségur called Maury, a surly, malodorous brute in greasy sheepskins on a mule that was as ill-tempered as its master – and had insisted on giving us a long speech before our departure about the deep friendships that had been forged between us and the gratitude that he felt at our taking his side in this world-shaking contest between him and the Master.

  Nonetheless, we rode slowly, in full armour, our swords loose in their scabbards, each of us carrying a twelve-foot-long man-killing lance with a razor-keen leaf-shaped blade – gifts, selected by Robin from the Count’s armouries. Robin had told us that we must expect to be attacked from the moment we left the town of Foix behind us. So, we were all at our most vigilant and rode south beside the Ariège for half a mile before taking a rough dusty farm track east, following the pungent local guide and his ambling mule. Vim had put out scouts before and behind us and two on each flank, and the mercenaries showed that they were masters of lesser but equally crucial arts of warfare by reporting in at regular intervals and changing over the sentries to make sure the men riding on the perimeter were always fresh and alert.

  Robin was conferring with Little John at the column’s head, and Thomas had just been sent out to relieve one of the forward scouts, when I found myself walking my horse beside Sir Nicholas de Scras’s mount. The former Hospitaller did not look a happy man, his face was pinched and sour, although the cuts he had suffered at the Jealous Castle had healed and his bruises had faded to smears of yellow and brown. I asked him if he was quite well for he seemed to be sickening for something.

  ‘I am perfectly healthy in my body, Alan,’ he said in a low voice, a tone that would not be overheard by anyone nearby. ‘It is my soul that I have been worrying about. I sometimes ask myself what I am doing in this strange land, surrounded by heretics, devil-worshippers, Sodomites and killers-for-hire. Is this my lot in life – to be no more than a squalid treasure-hunter? Sometimes I feel that I’m no better than these hirelings, these Godless routiers. Is this what I have become? A sword for sale?’

  ‘The Grail is more than a treasure,’ I said, ‘and the quest to find it is a holy one, I think, blessed by God. Even if I did no
t need the Grail’s power to save Goody, I would like to see the Master deprived of it – for he is unworthy of its virtues.’

  ‘Yes, the Master is evil,’ my friend replied, ‘and even if we did not already know that, the unholy ceremony of initiation in the Jealous Castle proves it – did you know that the knights of his order planned to dismember me as part of it? God preserve us. But I fear that we have no moral advantage. Only those who are pure in the eyes of God are fit to possess the Grail. And we are seeking to take the Holy Grail from the Master only to give it over to another who is no better.’

  His words disturbed me. ‘Surely you do not think that Robin is evil?’ I said bristling and preparing to defend my lord.

  ‘I do not know if he is evil,’ said Sir Nicholas. ‘But he is a thief – you cannot deny that. He stole that five hundred livres of silver from the Paris Temple, that much is now clear. And he is a murderer – he killed our friend Sir Richard at Lea in the Holy Land – surely you remember? – and many more besides. And he does not pray or respect the Church, far from it. He is a Godless, murdering thief. Tell me, Alan, can you honestly say that he is a good and decent Christian?’

  I was feeling a little hot around the throat at Sir Nicholas’s words. But I could not deny any of the things that he had said. I knew Robin well by then, and while I knew that he was unswervingly loyal to his circle – the friends and family who served him, and that he would offer his life for them without hesitation – I also knew that he was indeed a thief, and a murderer, and no lover at all of Holy Mother Church.

  ‘Why then does a pure knight such as yourself continue to serve him?’ I asked Sir Nicholas, somewhat icily.