Grail Knight: Number 5 in series (Outlaw Chronicles) (21 page)

‘But see, Alan,’ he said, ‘look there! A single candle remains burning – that is the hope of Jesus Christ, and tomorrow on Easter Day we shall celebrate the Resurrection of Our Lord. That is the omen you should take from the Tenebrae. The promise of Goody’s resurrection to full health from her illness through Christ’s love, and by the power of the sacred vessel that we seek.’

He was deliberately trying to bolster my courage, this I knew perfectly well, but as I stared at the single candle burning like a bright hole in the total darkness, I was convinced by his analogy:
Goody still lives,
I thought,
and by the power of Christ she will be saved!

On Easter morning, after a short night’s sleep, we gathered again outside the cathedral in the chill hour before dawn, to await the rising of the sun, and to sing hymns to celebrate Our Saviour rising from the grave. And, as we sang those jubilant words with full hearts that radiant, freshly-scrubbed morning, and praised God for having overcome Death itself, I felt tears of joy flowing freely.
Goody lives
, I told myself with a sureness that could only have been inspired by the Son of God himself,
and she will be saved
.

There was a bustle at the far side of the crowd, and a festive burst of trumpets announced the arrival for Mass of the ducal party. The crowd parted and I saw Queen Eleanor herself, in a deep-red robe embroidered with golden threads, still slim and straight as an arrow after nearly four score years, striding towards the cathedral door with all the bounce of a young girl. Her fine silver hair was held in place under her elaborate white headdress by a circlet of gold and a jewelled crucifix glittered at the throat; her face was solemn but her crisp blue eyes twinkled with life. She was surrounded by a gaggle of high-born ladies, each in blood-red gowns that matched the Queen’s – although my friend Marie-Anne, Countess of Locksley, was nowhere to be seen – and she was followed by a mass of noblemen and knights talking and jesting and laughing, proud as male peacocks in silks and satins of blue and green and scarlet.

But there was one man in that crowd of cheerful popinjays who stood out like a dog turd in a fruit bowl. He was dressed entirely in shabby black, with roughly cut black hair, dark eyes, and swarthy features bisected with a yellow scar from eyebrow to chin. It was a face that I knew of old – the face of a man whom I had encountered on more than a few unhappy occasions, and whom I thoroughly detested. It was the Lionheart’s merciless old hunting-dog, a butcher of men, women and children – it was the dark lord of war who called himself Mercadier.

I felt Roland, who was standing beside me, clutch at my arm, as he caught sight of the man in black. My cousin had clearly not forgotten his treatment at the hands of Mercadier and his men after the battle of Gisors. Then the mercenary was swallowed in the crowd of nobles, his drab weeds drowned in their gaudy plumage, his darkness extinguished by their light.

The Easter Mass was a joyous occasion, and I gave thanks to God for His blessed son’s triumph over Death and for all the mercies that He had granted to me. I said a prayer, too, for Goody and our unborn child, and although I was not completely at peace – indeed, the worry was ever-present like a sickness in my stomach – I did feel the comfort of God’s love and I reminded myself of Sir Nicholas’s words of the night before.

After the Mass, we joined in a great and solemn procession around the city, with the Archbishop carrying the huge Easter candle around the inside of Bordeaux’s tall walls, and the rest of us following and singing hosannahs. And then we all sat down to an enormous public feast in the market square, with food and drink provided for free by the bounty of Queen Eleanor and the wealthiest burgesses of that great trading city. Each guest at the feast, and there must at the very least have been five hundred at the rough-hewn plank tables, was given an egg, beautifully decorated with gold foil and painted with an image of Our Saviour, and we feasted on whole grilled lambs and vats of rabbit stew with bacon, and beef and pork in vast golden pies, and game birds roasted on spits, and cheeses and tansy pudding, and fruit and nuts and sweetmeats until we were close to bursting. Rose-coloured wine from the local vineyards flowed like a river all afternoon, and we were entertained by jongleurs, tumblers and beast-masters and magicians, fire-eaters and dancing dwarfs.

It was a glorious day, with much bawdy hilarity from Little John and Gavin, with Thomas quietly smiling and eating like a starving wolf – he was at the age when his belly seemed to have an infinite capacity and I knew that the strictures of Lent had been hard on him. Nur, too, put her face low to the table, lifted her veil and ate as if she might never eat again. Sir Nicholas ate sparingly, but drank a good deal of the delicious light red wine, and favoured me with a genial smile from time to time. Robin had absented himself again and was with his beloved Marie-Anne somewhere in the ducal palace, Little John told us, and we wished the reunited couple joy with many a cup. Only Roland seemed remote from the festivities, and he left us before we had finished our meal with a threadbare excuse about having to go and see a man about a horse.

That night, as I lay in my cot in the Abbey dormitory with a groaning belly and a head giddy from too much wine, my cousin sat down on a little stool by my bed and looked down at me.

‘I must ask you for a service, Sir Alan,’ said Roland formally, his face drawn and serious. I focused on his features with some difficulty. ‘I do not like to ask it of you but I have no choice. There is a task that I must perform and I cannot do it alone – and I believe you are the best man to help me.’

I sat up in bed, suddenly sober. ‘Of course, cousin, anything. What do you want me to do?’

‘It is a grave matter. And you should not agree too readily; there may be a great deal of peril involved.’

‘You want me to help you murder Mercadier,’ I said.

Roland looked stunned. ‘How did you know?’

‘We are more alike than you might think, cousin.’

Roland dropped his eyes. ‘When I think back to that night in Dangu, his men standing over me with the hot coals poised over my eyes, and your good self bargaining with that bastard for my sight … It was the most humiliating episode in my entire life, and the most shameful. I was in dread, I was in trembling terror of the pain, and fearful for my eyes. I lost my courage that night; that man put me in fear and showed me to myself as a coward…’

‘You are no coward,’ I said. ‘Any man alive would fear to lose his eyes – and in that horrible manner…’

‘Nevertheless, I must kill him, don’t you see? I must wipe out the foul stain on my honour caused by that night; and it can only be done with his death at my own hands. Will you help me, cousin? I humbly beg this service, this great boon of you.’

I did not consider his request for long. Roland was blood of my blood, and he was my loyal friend as well. Mercadier was one of the most unpleasant men I had ever encountered: cruel and utterly merciless. He had blinded a dozen or so knights and hundreds of men-at-arms who had surrendered to him during the wars with Philip Augustus; he and his
routiers
had ravaged vast territories – ours and theirs alike – with an almost demonic savagery, killing and mutilating women, children, priests and nuns – with no regard for the rules of war or even common decency. The world would be a far better place without Mercadier in it.

‘How do you want to do this?’ I said.

We left the Abbey at first light and made our way out of the city by the western gate. We told no one where we were going – I did not want to have to argue the case for a cold-blooded assassination to Sir Nicholas de Scras, who I was sure would disapprove, or to involve Thomas in a crime as black as this, or explain to Little John why he could not come along on this mission of revenge, which was a deeply personal one for Roland. Gavin I felt I did not yet know well enough to ask to commit a murder, and Robin was busy with Marie-Anne and his sons. We decided that we two would do it, alone. The fewer people involved, the easier it would be to keep secret, and for all his reputation, Mercadier was but one man, after all.

By casually questioning the revellers at the Easter feast in the market square, Roland had discovered that Mercadier’s troops – fifty war-wise, hard-bitten
routiers
– were billeted out of Bordeaux a dozen miles to the south-west and their captain would be rejoining them after the Easter Day celebrations; then he and his men would escort Queen Eleanor and young Blanche of Castile north to Poitiers.

Accordingly, Roland and I set out as soon as the city gates were open on Easter Monday, having hired two riding horses from a sleepy groom at a livery stable nearby, and we rode half a dozen miles south-west on the narrow dusty road through neatly planted vineyards towards a small fortified manor known as the Château de Rouillac. We reined in long before reaching this place and stepped off our horses in a small but dense copse of yew trees beside the straight road that ran south-west out of Bordeaux at the edge of a neat vineyard filled with rows of thick, sinuous, waist-high vines. In the cool of the copse, we were out of sight to anyone travelling the highway, but we could see any horsemen approaching from the north-east.

We did not have long to wait. A fat clergyman on a mule heading towards Bordeaux trotted past without noticing us. A pair of vineyard labourers, gnarled sun-browned men with mattocks across their shoulders, trudged along the road without raising their heads. And then, a little before mid-morning, I nudged Roland – a swift moving cloud of dust approaching our stand of trees indicated a horseman. Or horsemen. For as it drew closer, I could see that it was not Mercadier travelling alone, as we had assumed it would be. I could make out five steeds.

Five riders.

It was the moment to make a hard decision. Five against two. Now this was no quietly efficient ambush, a sudden rush from our hiding place to take an outnumbered foe by surprise, followed by a cut or two with our swords and Mercadier lying dead in the dust. We were looking at a mêlée, and a far more uncertain outcome.

‘We can still do this, Alan, I know we can,’ pleaded Roland. ‘You and I together – who can stand against us?’ The desperate look in his eyes tugged at my heart. I weighed the odds. The sensible thing to do would be to sit tight and allow the more numerous enemy to ride past unmolested. The proper, the right thing to do would be to do nothing, to go home and make another, better plan. Recklessness, Robin had told me many times, is a grave failing for anyone who considers himself a serious soldier.

‘Come on, then, cousin,’ I said, a mad grin nearly splitting my face, and we swung up into the saddle, drew our swords, booted our horses in the ribs and charged out of that copse – straight into the path of the five startled mercenaries.

But our horses were not the destriers that we were used to riding into battle, merely hired hacks from a common stable and they refused to charge into the flanks of the enemy horses – in all fairness, they had not been trained to – instead, they shied away at the last moment and passed alongside at just over a sword’s length away. My first strike from Fidelity, which had I been astride Shaitan would certainly have cut the head off the outermost mercenary on that side, whistled through the air a good two inches from his face as I thundered past.

I saw that Roland had been more skilful; he had managed to strike and wound a short, squat mercenary in the shoulder as he galloped by, but the man, bleeding and cursing foully, was still in the saddle. I heard Mercadier’s familiar stony voice with its faint Gascon twang order his men to wheel, and engage us again, and then five hardened
routiers
were upon us.

And just like that, we were now the prey.

I exchanged a ringing cut with one very skinny man, whose gaunt, snarling face seemed familiar. But before I could remember where I had seen him last, Mercadier loomed to my left, bellowing something and hacking down at my head with his sword. I took the blow on my shield, but felt the manic force of it shudder through my upper arm. I could sense rather than see a third man behind me, and then a lance grazed past the waist of my hauberk, snagging and ripping my red surcoat, its vicious point thrusting out in the space between my hip bone and elbow. I blocked another sword swipe from the man on my right and desperately turned the horse – the animal was very frightened and confused, near panicked, by the shouting and the clash of steel – and spurred it off the road and into the vines. I did not seek to escape, to cravenly abandon Roland to his fate – I swear it on my honour – but I had to get out of that awkward triangle or I would have been a dead man. As I galloped into the rows of vines, I heard the urgent pounding of hoofbeats behind. I reached the end of the lane and turned the horse with some difficulty, and raced back down the next row, back towards the road, a line of thick stubby vines between me and the oncoming horseman. It was the lance-man, a long-haired villain with a flat-topped metal cap and a furious scowl – and I cursed my luck. His weapon, a twelve-foot spear, couched between his elbow and ribs and aimed at my chest, had a far longer reach than my sword. But I was committed. We closed, his lance seeming to stretch out towards me as if eager to pierce my heart. And at the last moment, I twitched my sword and flipped the lance aside, out of its line, and safely over my right shoulder, and as his horse flashed past me I hacked backwards with Fidelity, timing it perfectly, and crunching the long blade into the back of his neck, cutting through the long greasy hair below his helmet and seeing the blood spurt red. I snatched a quick look backwards and saw him flop in the saddle and then crumple slowly from his cantering mount. And then I was back on the road.

One body lay in the dust – a victim of Roland’s skill. But my cousin was in the same position I had been, with three horsemen surrounding him and raining down blow upon blow. He was desperately fending them off with sword and shield.

I screamed, ‘Westbury!’ and spurred my horse forward into the mêlée. A squat horseman, alerted by my war cry, peeled away and came at me, yelling, whirling a long sword above his head. But I saw that his shield was drooping on his wounded shoulder. This was the man Roland had struck in our first disastrous attack. He was open, his guard was weak, and as our horses closed, Fidelity snaked out, a tongue of sharp steel, and skewered his throat before he could ever land his blow. He gave a despairing blood-choked cough and flopped back in his saddle. And now the battle was two against two.