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

  The main battle was over. The only combatants in that yard were Robin and the Master. Every other man in the castle – unless dead, unconscious or grievously wounded – was watching the duel. Two men, two swords, in a circle of expectant blood-spattered faces. It was a fight to the death.

  And Robin was losing.

  The Master swung; Robin caught the powerful blow on his cross-guard, their blades locked, their bodies only inches apart…

  I limped forward and hefted my sword. This was pointless – I would not allow my lord to die at the hands of this creature. I shoved a watching mercenary out of my way and stepped in…

  ‘Stand back, Alan. Stand back, I tell you – that is an order!’ My lord was nose to nose with the Master, his sword locked against his enemy’s blade; they were panting spittal-breath into each other’s faces, and yet he was speaking to me across ten yards of courtyard. ‘This is my fight – I claim it. I will allow no man to come between us. Get back, Alan. That is a direct order!’

  And Robin gave a mighty heave and hurled the Master away, forcing the monk to stagger back across the open space.

  Then the Earl of Locksley showed his true quality.

  He came on like a wild cat, a whirl of steel and speed, his sword lancing everywhere, probing at the Master’s defences, and forcing his enemy to parry and block for his life. The Master seemed quite shocked by this sudden counterattack from Robin, but he rallied, he kept my lord at bay, and when Robin seemed to lose his footing and slip down on to his left knee, he rushed forward and pounded his blade savagely down at Robin’s unguarded head.

  It was a blow that my lord had clearly anticipated, for his sword swept up and across to his left, clanging against the Master’s blade and forcing it out to thud harmlessly into the sand. Robin’s body followed the direction of the parry that pushed the Master’s sword aside. His weight transferred to his left knee; his right leg kicked out at the same time and swept across in front of him, parallel with the earth. His mailed right foot crashed into the Master’s back foot an inch or so above the sand, followed through, and swept his enemy completely off his feet. The Master’s legs flew up in the air, exposing bare, skinny shanks, and he crashed onto his back, just as Robin pulled in his leg and leaped to his feet. My lord stepped in and paced his sword tip, with exquisite delicacy, beneath the Master’s chin, the point resting on his Adam’s apple.

  Both men were still for a dozen heartbeats – the only sound in the courtyard was their ragged breathing.

  Then Robin spoke: ‘If you surrender, you will not be harmed – but I will deliver you up to the Count of Foix for his judgment. Surrender now or you will die. I give you my word on that.’

  The Master, sprawled on the sandy floor, glanced anxiously left and right. A dozen of Robin’s armed men were within striking distance, blood-stained mercenaries, grim Companions, all with the hard glow of victory in their eyes. The Knights of Our Lady and their men-at-arms were nowhere to be seen – all dead, badly wounded or fled. The Master still held his sword in his hand, but wide of his body. It was clear that Robin could lunge forward and skewer his throat before he had time to strike. Yet still the Master hesitated.

  ‘Surrender, right now, or die,’ said Robin.

  ‘Very well,’ the Master mumbled. ‘I shall take your word. I yield.’ And he let the sword slip to the floor, and flopped down on his back, like a dead man.

  The Castle of Montségur was ours but the fight for it had taken a heavy toll. Gavin had perished and Little John was inconsolable, his battered face streaming with tears as he wrapped his friend’s corpse up tightly in a cloak and laid him with our other dead outside the main castle gate. Before he covered his dead friend’s face with the cloak – I saw that iron-tough warrior bend down and swiftly, lightly, kiss the lips of the corpse. I shed a tear, too, at the sight.

  Olivier was dead, as were another half dozen of his fellow mercenaries. Sir Nicholas had been wounded in the side, an axe blow had smashed several of his ribs early in the fight on the parapet, and although the knight’s mail had kept the blade from his body, the iron links had been broken and twisted and had cut through the gambeson he wore under them and into his skin. The former Hospitaller was stoic under the pain, although the lines on his face seemed more deeply cut. ‘It’s a scratch, Alan, no more,’ he said. ‘I have taken worse and lived to laugh about it. We took the castle – that is what is important.’

  My own wounded leg was on fire. As soon as the castle was secured, I asked Thomas to clean and rebandage it. It had stopped bleeding by then, but I feared that my exertions – I had scaled two stone walls and killed half a dozen men in the past half hour – had permanently damaged the muscle. Thomas washed it with water and wine, packed a cobwebby mess of Nur’s into the wound and bound it very tightly with fresh linen. And I found that I could, with only a modicum of agony, walk about the courtyard. I took a moment to pray and give thanks St Michael, the warrior archangel, that I was not among the scores of dead and mortally wounded.

  For me, though, the hardest blow I received that day was the discovery that Tuck’s soul had left his body. Hobbling very slowly, I had led a party of mercenaries down to the cave to retrieve our belongings, and when I got there I found the empty shell of my friend on the altar at the back, his once-ruddy face white as milk against his dark robe. The young mercenary Anthony, who had been tending to him, told me that he had died a little before dawn. Tuck had just quietly stopped breathing and then the man had stripped and washed the body as well as he could and covered it with a blanket. I could not bear to move my old friend from the stone altar and so I left him there, with a final kiss on his broad, lined forehead, as we gathered up our belongings, spare weapons and food – and the mercenaries bore it all on their backs up the hill to the castle. The tears rolled down my cheeks as I limped up that hellish slope once again.

  By the time I made it back to the courtyard, something like good order had been restored after the chaos of battle. The dead had been placed outside by the main gate. They would be carried down to the saddle of land west of Montségur the next day, where we planned to bury them after a service conducted by Sir Nicholas. The wounded were being tended to by Thomas and Nur in the ground floor of the keep. The Master had been bound at the wrists and shut in an empty grain store room on the eastern side of the courtyard, with a stout oak bar across the door and a veteran mercenary on guard outside, a steady man, to make sure that the Master did not try to slip his bonds and use his tricks to escape.

  I found Robin with Roland and a pale-faced Sir Nicholas by the door of the little chapel by the main entrance to the castle. Before I could tell him about Tuck, my lord said, ‘Good, you’re back, Alan – you should be here for this. Come inside’, and he held open the door of the chapel and we all filed through into a small wooden room, not much bigger than a solar in a modest hall.

  From the moment I had seen Robin holding open the door of the chapel, a voice inside my head had been calling insistently, urgently: ‘He’s found it, he’s found the Grail. The blessed Holy Grail. I shall at last behold its wonder – and my beloved Goody, my poor, sick, dying Goody, shall be saved.’

  At the end of the chapel was a wooden altar of smoothed beech planks covered with a white cloth, supporting a plain silver crucifix, a pair of iron candlesticks and a medium-sized box of some dark wood. Robin unbarred and pushed open a shutter set in the wall and allowed the grey light of day to seep into that dark space. Then he walked over to the box and threw back its lid.

  I think, in my heart, I expected a fanfare of trumpets or a brilliant, blinding light or the sound of a Heavenly choir of angels all singing Hosannas. Instead, there was a dull clunk as the box lid hit the silver crucifix behind it, and we all craned our necks forward to try and make out the object contained within.

  Even Robin seemed a little nervous. He took a hank of his cloak, wrapped it around his hand and reached into the box, pulling out a smallish round object, which he placed on the pure white cloth
of the altar. Roland, Sir Nicholas and I all took a step forward to examine it more closely in the dim light. It was a bowl about nine inches in diameter, and two inches in depth, perfectly round and made of a light honey-brown, almost golden wood, perhaps Mediterranean cedar. It was darkened with ancient dirt at the rim and on the outside by the touch of many hands, and I could see a few faint patches of what looked like white paint on the outside. The bowl was also slightly cracked in two places. It was clearly very old. Indeed, it looked extremely … ordinary. An old kitchen bowl. One that many a conscientious goodwife might have thrown away as a piece of rubbish.

  I must confess, I was a little disappointed. Ever since I had first heard that the Grail might be a real object half a dozen years previously, I had been imagining what it might have looked like. In my mind, it had blossomed into a magnificent golden vessel, intricately carved, and set with precious stones, a vast bejewelled chalice radiating blinding light, an item more dazzlingly beautiful than any that had ever been crafted by the hand of Man.

  And before me was merely an old cracked wooden bowl.

  ‘It doesn’t look like much, does it?’ said Robin, voicing my thoughts exactly. ‘Is this truly the Holy Grail?’

  He sounded deeply disappointed.

  ‘This is exactly the kind of bowl in which they would have mixed the wine at the feast – the last meal that Our Lord Jesus ate with his Apostles,’ said Sir Nicholas, his voice filled with an almost greedy reverence. ‘Christ and his disciples were not men of material wealth. Our Lord would not seek to flaunt the riches of this world. He preached poverty and humility. This must be that blessed vessel, used at the Last Supper, and which also held the blood of Our Lord which he shed for us on the Cross. Can you not see it, my friends? Can you not feel its holy power? This is the Holy Grail! I’m as certain of it as I am of Salvation! This is the blessed Grail that we have so long searched for!’

  Sir Nicholas fell to his knees and began to pray. I looked at Roland and we both knew that Sir Nicholas’s words were no more than the pure truth. Christ would never have used an enormous, gaudily bejewelled golden cup at his Last Supper – he was the son of a poor carpenter. My cousin and I were of one mind, evidently. We, too, fell to our knees at the same moment and began to praise God with all our hearts. Only Robin remained standing. He had cocked his head on one side and was looking at the three of us on our knees before the altar. He was frowning.

  But if my lord could not feel in his heart the holy power of this wondrous object before us, I felt only pity for him, as I pitied any human soul that is closed to the love of God. I shut my eyes and sent up a heartfelt paean to the Almighty for allowing me, by His boundless grace, to set my unworthy eyes on this divine artefact. Then I heard Sir Nicholas begin to say aloud those familiar words, that joyous litany that had been engraved on our hearts since childhood: ‘Our Father, which art in Heaven…’

  Roland and I joined him in saying the Lord’s Prayer, and I felt our souls open like flowers in the spring and receive the blessings of God. When it was done we all fell into a deep and peaceful silence – I recalled my many sins, and humbly asked for God’s forgiveness, and I prayed silently for Goody that she might live long enough to receive the blessing of health from this most Holy Grail. I opened my eyes and looked once more on the Grail – its simple purity, its venerable age, its sheer, unquestionable Godliness were all manifestly apparent. I felt hot tears, tears of joy, springing to my eyes and I saw that Nicholas was weeping, too.

  I do not know how long we knelt there – praying, weeping and staring at that miraculous bowl, the ancient yellow-brown cedar wood glowing like the gold of my imagination in the drab daylight of the chapel – but it felt as if we had been there in that chapel all of our lives, and yet no more than a few moments as well. At some point I saw that Robin was gone – he had slipped out without a word or a noise, and without disturbing our meditations. Only we three Christian knights, we three Grail Knights, knelt before that holy vessel and worshiped the Lord of Hosts with all our hearts. Finally, Roland spoke. ‘We must take it to the wounded,’ he said, his voice thick and furred with emotion.

  And he was right, for there were wounded men who must be allowed to drink from the Grail without delay.

  I went in search of water, found it in the cistern behind the keep and returned with a brimming bucket. Sir Nicholas, careful not to touch the Grail with his naked fingers, filled the bowl with a few splashes from the bucket and, holding it with his cloak, blessed it with a long prayer and in turn, gave it to each wounded man to drink, while Roland supported the drinker’s head, if he could not raise it himself. I maintained order in the line of men waiting to receive the Grail’s blessing, and led away those, many of them on shaking legs, who had received the sacrament. And so, we three knights ministered to the wounded and hurt that afternoon, in imitation of our blessed Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

  Robin looked on as we distributed the Grail water to all of our wounded men, standing there by the castle wall with a faint smile on his face, his arms folded, but he said absolutely nothing. Sir Nicholas, who had been the first to drink, prayed loudly over every man who drank, and intoned that by God’s power and the power of the Grail each man would now be made whole.

  The atmosphere that day was extraordinary – Nur’s thick mists of the morning had rolled away and once more bright sunshine filled the air with hope and joy. We had won our battle, and by an extraordinary feat of arms we had conquered an ‘impossible’ castle, and even our half dozen wounded seemed to be buoyed beyond their pain by our possession of the wondrous Grail – for word had spread fast among those who had not known our true mission. And after drinking just a sip or two, each wounded mercenary confessed to being filled with light and grace, all of them claiming to feel happier, stronger and more spiritually whole.

  I must set this down for all to know, for this is the true miracle of that miraculous day – not one of the seven men who had been wounded, some severely with blades deeply puncturing their bodies, subsequently perished of his wounds. Not one. I truly believe that the power of the Grail saved their lives that day. I swear this to you on my honour as a knight: not one of those men died of their wounds.

  When it came to my turn, when all the other men in our company, including Robin, had drunk, I found I was shaking with happiness. The draft of water that I sipped from that plain old wooden bowl tasted like cool, liquid silver as it slid down my throat. I could feel the blessed liquor spreading its holy balm throughout my body. The bandaged wound in my right calf seemed to throb suddenly as that draft of holy water pooled in my belly. It was as if the hurt had been touched with a cauterizing iron – but cold, rather than hot. The deep cut seemed to flare under its bloody cloth swaddling as if touched by an icy blade and I could feel the healing power of the Holy Grail begin its work. Of course, I was not instantly healed but the pain became noticeably less. My whole body seemed lighter and filled with a strange and holy joy.

  To the delight of Vim and his men and, I suspect, to Robin’s great relief, Thomas discovered a strongbox filled with silver coins in the keep. There were also various other items of value: a pair of jewelled broaches, a fine ivory statue of the Virgin and Child, some bolts of expensive silk cloth from far beyond the Saracen lands and a bag of gold and silver finger rings. When I asked Robin where these treasures might have come from, he gave me a sly, contented smile.

  ‘Long as I’ve known him, the Master has always loved material wealth. For all his vaunted piety, he really only seeks money and power – just like everybody else,’ Robin said. ‘I doubt he was here for a month before he had his men pillaging these lands for taxes or contributions to support the dignity of the Knights of Our Lady or whatever he might have called it. Count Raymond of Foix admitted as much to me, so I knew he must have more than a little silver and a bauble or two tucked away.’

  Robin took possession of the strongbox but immediately distributed a generous reward in silver to each of the surviving mercena
ries, and ordered that a cask of wine – we had found several in the castle store rooms along with a cache of javelins, shields, swords and other spare armaments – be opened and served out to all of us. We ate and drank and admired our silver and our treasures, feeling the warmth of pride in a task well accomplished.

  Sir Nicholas insisted that a holy service of thanksgiving be said in the courtyard, the chapel being too small, and, with himself officiating – and the Grail prominently displayed – we all gave our thanks to God for the victory and lifted our voices in song.

  Towards eventide, Robin and I paid a visit to Tuck’s corpse in the now empty cave below the castle. I brought with me a beaker of Grail water, carried carefully on our descent so as not to spill its holy contents, which Sir Nicholas had blessed. The Grail itself had been replaced in the chapel, set there between two lighted candelabra, so that those who wished to pray before it might be afforded the opportunity.

  When Robin and I reached the bottom of the mountain, and had made our way into the cave, dusk was falling. Tuck’s body was in exactly the same position as when I had last seen it – lying on the stone altar, and by the guttering light of pine torches, Robin and I tipped a little of the Grail water into our friend’s slack mouth, and used the rest to wash his torn head.