The Grail Quest Books 1-3: Harlequin, Vagabond, Heretic (121 page)

‘With that beard?
I doubt it,’ the Count said, ‘though I did once see a bearded woman. It was in Tarbes, at the Easter fair. I was very young then, but I distinctly remember her. A great long beard, she had. We paid a couple of coins to see her, of course, and if you paid more you were allowed to tug the beard, which I did, and it was the true thing, and if you paid more still they revealed her breasts which destroyed any suspicion that she was really a man. They were very nice breasts, as I recall.’ He looked at the stonemason’s contract again and at the Latin word that had caught his eye.
Calix.
A memory from his childhood stirred, but would not come.

‘Thirty men!’
Joscelyn pleaded.

The Count let the document rest. ‘What we will do, Joscelyn, is what Sir Henri suggests. We shall hope to catch the Englishmen when they are away from their lair. We shall negotiate for the gun at Toulouse. We are already offering a bounty for every English archer captured alive. A generous bounty, so I have no doubt every routier and
coredor
in Gascony will join the hunt and the English will find themselves surrounded by enemies. It won’t be a pleasant life for them.’

‘Why alive?’ Joscelyn wanted to know. ‘Why not dead English archers?’

The Count sighed. ‘Because then, my dear Joscelyn, the
coredors
will bring in a dozen corpses a day and claim they are Englishmen. We need to talk to the archer before we kill him to make sure he is the real thing. We must, so to speak, inspect the breasts to ensure the beard is real.’ He stared at the word,
calix,
willing the memory to surface. ‘I doubt we’ll capture many archers,’ he went on, ‘they hunt in packs and are dangerous, so we shall also do what we always do when the
coredors
become too impudent. Wait patiently and ambush them when they make a mistake. And they will, but they think we shall make the mistake first. They want you to attack them, Joscelyn, so they can riddle you with arrows, but we have to fight them when they are not expecting a fight. So ride with Sir Henri’s men and make sure the beacons are laid and, when the time comes, I will release you. That is a promise.’

The beacons were being laid in every village and town of the county. They were great heaps of wood which, when fired, would send a signal of smoke to say that the English raiders were in the vicinity. The beacons warned other nearby communities and also told the watchmen on the tower of Berat’s castle where the English were riding. One day, the Count believed, they would come too close to Berat, or be in a place where his men could ambush them, and so he was content to wait until they made that mistake. And they would make it,
coredors
always did, and these English, though they flew the badge of Northampton’s Earl, were no better than common bandits. ‘So go and practise your weapons, Joscelyn,’ he told his nephew, ‘because you will use them soon enough. And take that breastplate with you.’

Joscelyn left. The Count watched as Father Roubert fed the fire with new logs,
then
he looked again at the document. The Count of Astarac had hired a stonemason to carve
‘Calix Meus Inebrians’
above the gate of Astarac’s castle and specified that the date on the contract was to be added to the legend. Why? Why would any man want the words ‘My Cup Makes Me Drunk’ decorating his castle? ‘Father?’ he said.

‘Your nephew will get himself killed,’ the Dominican grumbled.

‘I have other nephews,’ the Count said.

‘But Joscelyn is right,’ Father Roubert said. They have to be fought, and fought soon. There is a beghard to be burned.’ Father Roubert’s anger kept him awake at night. How dare they spare a heretic? He lay in his narrow bed, imagining the girl’s screams as the flames consumed her dress. She would be naked when the cloth had burned and Father Roubert remembered her pale body tied to his table. He had understood temptation then, understood it and hated it and there had been such pleasure in drawing the hot iron up the tender skin of her thighs.

‘Father!
You’re half-asleep,’ the Count remonstrated. ‘Look at this.’ He pushed the stonemason’s contract across the table.

The Dominican frowned as he tried to make out the faded handwriting,
then
nodded as he recognized the phrase. ‘From the psalms of David,’ he said.

‘Of course!
How stupid of me. But why would a man carve
“Calix Meus Inebrians”
over his gateway?’

‘The Church Fathers,’ the priest said, ‘doubt that the psalmist means drunk, not as we mean it. Suffused with joy, perhaps? “My cup delights me”?’

‘But what cup?’ the Count asked pointedly. There was silence except for the sound of rain and the crackle of logs,
then
the friar looked again at the contract, pushed back his chair and went to the Count’s shelves. He took down a great chained book that he placed carefully on the lectern, unclasped the cover and opened the huge, stiff pages. ‘What book is that?’ the Count enquired.

‘The annals of St Joseph’s monastery,’ Father Roubert said. He turned the pages, seeking an entry. ‘We know
,
’ he went on, ‘that the last Count of Astarac was infected with the Cathar heresy. It’s said that his father sent him to be a squire to a knight in Carcassonne and thus he became a sinner. He eventually inherited Astarac and lent his support to the heretics, and we know he was among the last of the Cathar lords.’ He paused to turn another page. ‘Ah! Here it is. Montsegur fell on St Joevin’s day in the twenty-second year of the reign of Raymond VII.’ Raymond had been the last great Count of Toulouse, dead now almost a hundred years.

Father Roubert thought for a second. ‘That would mean Montsegur fell in 1244.’

The Count leaned over the table and picked up the contract. He peered at it and found what he wanted. ‘And this is dated the eve of St Nazarius of the same year. Saint Nazarius’s feast is at the end of July, yes?’

‘It is,’ Father Roubert confirmed.

‘And St Joevin’s day is in March,’ the Count said, ‘which proves that the Count of Astarac didn’t die in Montsegur.’

‘Someone ordered the Latin carved,’ the Dominican allowed. ‘Maybe it was his son?’ He turned the big pages of the annals, flinching at the crudely illuminated capitals, until he found the entry he wanted. ‘“And in the year of our Count’s death, when there was a great plague of toads and vipers,”’ he read aloud, ‘“the Count of Berat took Astarac and slew all that were inside.”’

‘But the annals do not say that Astarac himself died?’

‘No.’

‘So what if he lived?’ The Count was excited now and had left his chair to start pacing up and down. ‘And why would he desert his comrades in Montsegur?’

‘If he did,’ Father Roubert sounded dubious.

‘Someone did.
Someone with authority to hire a mason.
Someone who wanted to leave a message in stone.
Someone who ...’ The Count suddenly stopped. ‘Why would they describe the date as the eve of St Nazarius’s feast?’ he asked.

‘Why not?

‘Because that is St Pantaleon’s day, why not call it that?’

‘Because,’ Father Roubert was about to explain that St Nazarius was a good deal better known than St Pantaleon, but the Count interrupted him.

‘Because it is the Seven Sleepers’ Day!
There were seven of them, Roubert! Seven survivors! And they wanted the date inscribed to make that obvious!’

The friar thought the Count was stretching the evidence exceedingly thin, but he said nothing. ‘And think of the story!’ The Count urged him.
‘Seven young men under threat of persecution, yes?
They flee the city, which was it? Ephesus, of course, and hide in a cave! The Emperor, Dedus wasn’t it? I’m sure it was, and he ordered every cave sealed and years later, over a hundred years later if I remember rightly, the seven young men are found there, and not one of them has aged a day.
So seven men, Roubert, fled Montsegur!’

Father Roubert replaced the annals. ‘But a year later,’ he pointed out, ‘your ancestor defeated them.’

‘They could have survived,’ the Count insisted, ‘and everyone knows that members of the Vexille family fled. Of course they survived! But think, Roubert,’ he was unconsciously calling the Dominican by his childhood name, ‘why would a Cathar lord leave the last stronghold if not to take the heretics’ treasures to safety? Everyone knows the Cathars possessed great treasures!’

Father Roubert tried not to get caught up in the Count’s excitement. ‘The family,’ he said, ‘would have taken the treasures with them.’

‘Would they?’ the Count demanded. ‘There are seven of them. They go their different ways.
Some to Spain, others to northern France, one at least to England.
Suppose you are hunted, wanted by the Church and by every great lord. Would you take a great treasure with you? Would you risk that it falls into your enemies’ hands? Why not hide it and hope that one day whoever of the seven survives can return to recover it?’

The evidence was now stretched impossibly thin and Father Roubert shook his head. ‘If there was treasure in Astarac,’ he said, ‘it would have been found long ago.’

‘But the Cardinal Archbishop is looking for it,’ the Count said. ‘Why else does he want to read our archives?’ He picked up the stonemason’s contract and held it over a candle so that the three Latin words and the demand to cut the date in the stone were scorched out of existence. He stamped his fist on the charred, glowing edge to extinguish the fire, then put the damaged parchment into the basket of documents that would be given to the monk. ‘What I should do,’ he said, ‘is go to Astarac.’

Father Roubert looked alarmed at such hot-headedness. ‘It is wild country, my lord,’ he warned, ‘infested with
coredors.
And not that many miles from the English in Castillon d’Arbizon.’

‘Then I shall take some men-at-arms.’ The Count was excited now. If the Grail was in his domain then it made sense that God had placed the curse of barrenness on his wives as a punishment for failing to search for the treasure. So he would put it right. ‘You can come with me,’ he told Father Roubert, ‘and I’ll leave Sir Henri, the crossbowmen and most of the men-at-arms to defend the town.’

‘And your nephew?’

‘Oh, I’ll take him with me! He can command my escort. It will give him the illusion that he’s useful.’ The Count frowned. ‘Isn’t St Sever’s near Astarac?’

‘Very close.’

‘I’m sure Abbot Planchard will give us accommodation,’ the Count said, ‘and he’s a man who might very well help us!’

Father Roubert thought Abbot Planchard was more likely to tell the Count he was an old fool, but he could see that the Count was caught up in the enthusiasm. Doubtless he believed that if he found the Grail then God would reward him with a son, and perhaps he was right? And perhaps the Grail needed to be found to put the whole world right, and so the friar fell to his knees in the great hall and prayed that God would bless the Count, kill the heretic and reveal the Grail.

At Astarac.

Thomas and his men left Astarac in the early afternoon, riding horses that were weighed down with cuts of meat, cooking pots, anything at all that was of value and that could be sold in Castillon d’Arbizon’s marketplace. Thomas kept looking back, wondering why he felt nothing for this place, but also knowing he would be back. There were secrets in Astarac and he must unlock them.

Robbie alone rode a horse that was not encumbered with plunder. He had been the last to join the raiders, coming from the monastery with a strangely contented expression. He offered no explanation for his lateness,
nor
why he had spared the Cistercians. He just nodded at Thomas and fell into the column as it started westwards.

They would be late home. It would probably be dark, but Thomas was not concerned. The
coredors
would not attack, and if the Count of Berat had sent forces to intercept their homeward journey then they should see those pursuers from the ridge tops and so he rode without worries, leaving behind misery and smoke in a shattered village.

‘So did you find what you were looking for?’ Sir Guillaume asked.

‘No.’

Sir Guillaume laughed. ‘A fine Sir Galahad you are!’ He glanced at the things hanging from Thomas’s saddle. ‘You go for the Holy Grail and come back with a heap of goatskins and a haunch of mutton.’

‘That’ll roast well with vinegar sauce,’ Thomas said.

Sir Guillaume looked behind to see a dozen
coredors
had followed them up onto the ridge. ‘We’re going to have to teach those bastards a lesson.’

‘We will,’ Thomas said, ‘we will.’

There were no men-at-arms waiting to ambush them. Their only delay occurred when a horse went lame, but it was nothing more than a stone caught in its hoof. The
coredors
vanished as the dusk approached. Robbie was again riding in the vanguard, but when they were halfway home and the sun was a sinking red ball before them, he turned back and fell in beside Thomas. Genevieve was off to one side and she pointedly moved her mare farther away, but if Robbie noticed he made no comment. He glanced at the goatskins draped behind Thomas’s saddle. ‘My father once had a cloak of horseskin,’ he said by way of breaking the silence that had lasted too long between them, and then, without adding any more details of his father’s curious taste in clothing, he looked embarrassed. ‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said.

‘A dangerous occupation,’ Thomas answered lightly.

‘Lord Outhwaite let me come with you,’ Robbie said, ‘but would he mind if I left you?’

‘Left me?’ Thomas was surprised.

‘I’ll go back to him, of course,’ Robbie said, ‘eventually.’

‘Eventually?’
Thomas asked, suspicious. Robbie was a prisoner and his duty, if he was not with Thomas, was to go back to Lord Outhwaite in northern England and wait there until his ransom was paid.

‘There are things I have to do,’ Robbie explained, ‘to put my soul straight.’

‘Ah,’ Thomas said, embarrassed
himself
now. He glanced at the silver crucifix on his friend’s chest.

Robbie was staring at a buzzard that quartered the lower hill, looking for small game in the dying light. ‘I was never one for religion,’ he said softly. ‘None of the men in our family are. The women care, of course, but not the Douglas men. We’re good soldiers and bad Christians.’ He paused, plainly uncomfortable, then shot a swift glance at Thomas. ‘You remember that priest we killed in Brittany?’

‘Of course I do,’ Thomas said. Bernard de Taillebourg had been a Dominican friar and the Inquisitor who had tortured Thomas. The priest had also helped Guy Vexille kill Robbie’s brother, and together Thomas and Robbie had chopped him down in front of an altar.

‘I wanted to kill him,’ Robbie said.

‘You said,’ Thomas reminded him, ‘that there was no sin that some priest could not undamn, and that, I assume, includes killing priests.’

‘I was wrong,’ Robbie said. ‘He was a priest and we shouldn’t have killed him.’

‘He was the bastard turd of the devil,’ Thomas said vengefully.

‘He was a man who wants what you want,’ Robbie said firmly, ‘and he killed to get it, but we do the same, Thomas.’

Thomas made the sign of the cross. ‘Are you worried about my soul,’ he asked caustically, ‘or yours?’

‘I was talking to the abbot in Astarac,’ Robbie said, ignoring Thomas’s question, ‘and I told him about the Dominican. He said I’d done a dreadful thing and that my name was on the devil’s list.’ That had been the sin Robbie had confessed, though Abbot Planchard was a wise enough man to know that something else worried the young Scot and that the something else was probably the beghard. But Planchard had taken Robbie at his word and become stern with him. ‘He ordered me to do a pilgrimage,’ Robbie went on. ‘He said I had to go to Bologna and pray at the blessed Dominic’s
tomb,
and that I would be given a sign if St Dominic forgives me for the killing.’

Thomas, after his earlier conversation with” Sir Guillaume, had already decided that it would be best if Robbie went, and now Robbie was making it easy for him. Yet he pretended to be reluctant. ‘You can stay through the winter,’ he suggested.

‘No,’ Robbie said firmly. ‘I’m damned, Thomas, unless I do something about it.’

Thomas remembered the Dominican’s death, the fire flickering on the tent walls, the two swords chopping and stabbing at the writhing friar who twitched in his dying blood. ‘Then I’m damned too, eh?’

‘Your soul is your concern,’ Robbie said, ‘and I can’t tell you what to do. But the abbot told me what I should do.’

‘Then go to Bologna,’ Thomas said and hid his relief that Robbie had decided to leave.

It took two days to discover how best Robbie could make the journey, but after talking to a pilgrim who had come to worship at St Sardos’s tomb in the town’s upper church they decided he would do best to go back to Astarac and from there strike south to St Gaudens. Once at St Gaudens he would be on a well-travelled road where he would find companies of merchants travelling together and they would welcome a young, strong man-at-arms to help protect their convoys. ‘From St Gaudens you should go north to Toulouse,’ the pilgrim said, ‘and make sure you stop at the shrine of St Sernin and ask for his protection. The church has one of the whips used to scourge our Lord and if you pay they will let you touch it and you will never suffer blindness. Then you must continue to Avignon. Those roads are well patrolled, so you should be safe. And at Avignon you must seek the Holy Father’s blessing and ask someone else how to journey farther east.’

The most dangerous part of the journey was the first and Thomas promised he would escort Robbie to within sight of Astarac to make sure he was not troubled by any
coredors.
He also gave him a bag of money from the big chest in the hall. ‘It’s more than your share,’ Thomas told him.

Robbie weighed the bag of gold. ‘It’s too much.’

‘Christ, man, you have to pay in taverns. Take it. And for God’s sake don’t gamble it away.’

‘I’ll not do that,’ Robbie said. ‘I promised Abbot Planchard I’d give up gambling and he made me take an oath in the abbey.’

‘And lit a candle, I hope?’ Thomas asked.

‘Three,’ Robbie said, then made the sign of the cross. ‘I’m to give up all sins, Thomas, until I’ve prayed to Dominic. That’s what Planchard said.’ He paused,
then
smiled sadly. ‘I’m sorry, Thomas.’

‘Sorry?
For what?’

Robbie shrugged. ‘I’ve not been the best companion.’ He sounded embarrassed again and he said no more, but that night, when they all ate together in the hall to say farewell to Robbie, the Scotsman made a great effort to be courteous to Genevieve. He even gave her a portion of his mutton, a succulent piece, spiking it on his knife and insisting she let him put it on her plate. Sir Guillaume rolled his surviving eye in astonishment, Genevieve was gracious in her thanks and, next morning, under the lash of a cold north wind, they left to escort Robbie away.

The Count of Berat had only visited Astarac once and that had been many years before, and, when he saw the village again, he hardly recognized it. It had always been small, malodorous and poor, but now it had been ravaged. Half the village’s thatch had been burned, leaving walls of scorched stone, and a great smear of blood scattered with bones, feathers and offal showed where the villagers’ livestock had been butchered. Three Cistercian monks were distributing food from a handcart when the Count arrived, but that charity did not prevent a rush of ragged folk surrounding the Count, dragging off their hats, kneeling and holding out their hands for alms.

‘Who did this?’ the Count demanded.

‘The English, sire,’ one of the monks answered. ‘They came yesterday.’

‘By Christ, but they’ll die a hundred deaths for this,’ the Count declared.

‘And I’ll inflict them,’ Joscelyn said savagely.

‘I’m almost minded to let you go to them,’ the Count said, ‘but what can we do against their castle?’

‘Guns,’ Joscelyn said.

‘I have sent for the gun in Toulouse,’ the Count said angrily, then he scattered a few small coins among the villagers before spurring his horse past them. He paused to stare at the ruins of the castle on its crag, but he did not ride to the old fortress because it was late, the night was near and the air was cold. The Count was also tired and saddle-sore, and the unfamiliar armour he wore was chafing his shoulders and so, instead of climbing the long path to the shattered fortress he went on towards the dubious comforts at the Cistercian abbey of St Sever.

White-robed monks were trudging home from their work. One carried a great bundle of kindling, while others had hoes and spades. The last grapes were being harvested and two monks led an ox pulling a wagon loaded with baskets of deep purple fruit. They pulled the wagon aside as the Count and his thirty men-at-arms clattered past towards the plain, undecorated buildings. No one in the monastery had been expecting visitors, but the monks greeted the Count without fuss and efficiently found stabling for the horses and provided bedding among the wine presses for the men-at-arms. A fire was lit in the visitors’ quarters where the Count, his nephew and Father Roubert would be entertained. ‘The abbot will greet you after compline,’ the Count was told, then he was served a meal of bread, beans, wine and smoked fish. The wine was the abbey’s own and tasted sour.

The Count dismissed Joscelyn and Father Roubert to their own rooms, sent his squire to wherever the lad could find a bed,
then
sat alone by the fire. He wondered why God had sent the English to plague him. Was that another punishment for ignoring the Grail? It seemed
likely,
for he had convinced himself that God had indeed chosen him and that he must perform one great last task and then he would be rewarded. The Grail, he thought, almost in ecstasy. The Grail, the holiest of all holy things, and he had been sent to discover it; he fell to his knees by the open window and listened to the voices of the monks chanting in the abbey church and prayed that his quest would be successful. He went on praying long after the chanting had stopped and thus Abbot Planchard discovered the Count on his knees. ‘Do I interrupt?’ the abbot asked gently.

‘No, no.’ The Count winced with pain from his cramped knees as he climbed to his feet. He had discarded his armour and wore a fur-lined gown and his customary woollen cap. ‘I am sorry, Planchard, most sorry to impose on you. No warning, I know. Most inconvenient, I’m sure.’

‘The devil alone inconveniences me,’ Planchard said, ‘and I know you are not sent by him.’

‘I do pray not,’ the Count said, then sat and immediately stood again. By rank he was entitled to the room’s one chair, but the abbot was so very old that the Count felt constrained to offer it to him.

The abbot shook his head and sat on the window ledge instead. ‘Father Roubert came to compline,’ he said, ‘and talked with me afterwards.’

The Count felt a pulse of alarm. Had Roubert told Planchard why they were here? He wanted to tell the abbot himself.

‘He is very upset,’ Planchard said. He spoke French, an aristocrat’s French, elegant and precise.

‘Roubert’s always upset when he’s uncomfortable,’ the Count said, ‘and it was a long journey and he’s not used to riding. Not born to it, you see? He sits his horse like a cripple.’ He paused, staring open-eyed at the abbot,
then
let out an explosive sneeze. ‘Dear me,’ he said, his eyes watering. He wiped his nose with his sleeve. ‘Roubert slouches in his saddle. I keep telling him to sit up, but he won’t take advice.’ He sneezed again.

‘I do hope you’re not catching an ague,’ the abbot said. ‘Father Roubert was not upset because of weariness, but because of the beghard.’

‘Ah, yes, of course.
The girl.’
The Count shrugged. ‘I rather think he was looking forward to seeing her burn. That would have been a fitting reward for all his hard work. You know he questioned her?’

‘With fire, I believe,’ Planchard said,
then
frowned.
‘How odd that a beghard should be this far south.
Their haunt is the north. But I suppose he is sure?’

‘Entirely!
The wretched girl confessed.’

‘As would I if I were put to the fire,’ the abbot said acidly. ‘You know she rides with the English?’