The Lazarus Vault (39 page)

Near Lyons

Ellie reached her foot under her seat to make sure the bag was still there.

‘You think I’ve got the greatest legend in history sitting in a cardboard box under my chair?’

Doug nodded. The sheepishness had gone: his face was alight with purpose. She could see he’d convinced himself. For herself, she wasn’t sure she even believed it existed.

But what if it does?
a voice inside her demanded.
What if it’s all true, right there, in your bag? The greatest legend in history – and you’ve got it.

‘So what do we do with it?’ It seemed like such a feeble question.

‘Save the world? Achieve spiritual union with the Godhead?’ Doug tried to smile, but his tension was manifest.

Ellie slumped in her seat. The magnitude of it was overwhelming.

‘I stole it,’ she murmured, almost a whisper. ‘I went down there and I stole it.’

Another realisation: dark clouds rushing in, piling up like a thunderhead. ‘Monsalvat are never going to let us get away with this.’

‘We have to get it to the Brotherhood. If only we knew how.’

Ellie pushed back her chair – carefully. ‘To start with, let’s find an Internet café. Whatever else is in the bag, we’ve still got Joost’s camera, and he died to get those photographs out. The least we can do is send them on to his friends.’

*

The only Internet café they could find had big windows and bright fluorescent lights, which lit it up like a TV screen. Ellie and Doug paid three euros and took a machine near the back. It didn’t take long to find the Green Knights’ website. The homepage showed a scan of a legal firm’s cease-and-desist letter, with
FUCK YOU
scrawled over it in red crayon.

Doug took the memory card out of the camera and slid it into a slot on the computer. A folder opened on screen.

‘There’s a ton of stuff on here – lots of video, too. If we try to upload it we’ll be here until next Thursday.’

Ellie clicked through a few more pages on the Green Knights’ website. ‘There’s a post-office box in Utrecht listed. We can send them the card in the post.’

‘What about us? That card’s got the only pictures we’re likely to get of the chapel.’

A sign above the cash register advertised discs, memory sticks and other peripherals for sale. Doug bought a replacement memory card and started copying the files across. Ellie went to a newsagent across the road and bought a jiffy envelope. When she came back, Joost’s video of the chapel was playing silently across the computer screen. There she was, scrabbling away with the nail file. She was glad Joost had stayed behind the camera. The memory of his death was too raw.

The camera swooped around and zoomed in until the mosaic filled the screen: a sharp tangle of black lines. Doug hit pause and took a screen capture. Twenty cents bought him a printout of the image. He picked it up off the printer and stared at it. Ellie watched him.

‘What are you thinking?’ A crease had appeared above the right side of his mouth, a little tic Ellie had seen so often when
he was poring over some notes, or staring into space at the dinner table.

Doug looked up, caught in the act. ‘I was thinking of a woman called Annelise Stirt. She’s an expert on Chrétien and the Grail legend. When I was studying the poem for Mr Spencer, everything I read seemed to lead back to one of her books or articles.’

‘Did you contact her?’

‘I wanted to, but I’d signed Mr Spencer’s non-disclosure agreement.’ A rueful grin. ‘I don’t suppose it applies any more.’

‘Where can we find her?’

Doug tapped the computer. ‘The all-seeing eye of the Internet.’

He went to a search engine and typed two words.

Holy Grail.

The pointer hovered over the Search button.

‘If only it was that easy.’

He added ‘Annelise Stirt’ to the query and clicked Search. A couple more clicks brought up a page from the Literature Faculty at the Université de Reims Champagne-Ardennes. It listed an e-mail address and a phone number, beneath a photo of an owlish woman with round glasses and long grey hair.

Doug checked his watch. ‘Six o’clock. Let’s hope she works late.’

The café had headsets you could use to make phone calls over the Internet: Doug thought it would be pretty much untraceable. He bought some credit, hooked on the headset and was just about to dial when Ellie grabbed his arm.

‘Are you sure this is a good idea? You said she’s the world expert on Chrétien de Troyes. What if Monsalvat know about her?’

‘We’re running out of options.’ Doug turned out his wallet on the tabletop. ‘I’ve got seventy-seven euros and change. You?’

Ellie checked her purse. ‘About fifty.’

‘That’s a couple of tanks of petrol, or maybe a couple of nights in a hotel. And we need to eat. Unless we can find the Brotherhood soon, we’re going to end up out of money, out of time and out of luck. Then what do we do?’

Ellie thought, burrowing through her memories for any clue Harry might have given her. All she found were blank walls.

‘Mirabeau didn’t pan out,’ Doug said. ‘The box isn’t going to open any time soon. All we’ve got to go on is the poem.’

He squeezed her shoulder. ‘Look on the bright side. Monsalvat don’t know how desperate we are – they probably think we’re safe with the Brotherhood. This is the last thing they’ll be expecting.’

Reluctantly, Ellie nodded. Doug pressed the button and made the call.

‘Annelise Stirt.’

She sounded friendly enough. Perhaps it was the Scottish accent.

‘My name is Dr Douglas Cullum. I’m a fellow at St John’s College, Oxford.’

‘I don’t think I’m familiar with your work.’

‘I’m researching the poetry of Chrétien de Troyes. I’ve made a rather extraordinary discovery that I’d like to get your opinion on. I think you might like to see it too.’

A pause. ‘What is it?’

‘It would be easier to show you.’

‘Can you come by?’

‘We’re some distance from Reims at the moment.’ Doug
checked his watch. ‘We couldn’t be there before about ten o’clock tonight.’

‘Even I don’t work that late.’ She sounded amused. ‘But I’ll still be up. If what you have to show me is that important, why don’t you come to my house?’

Doug took down the address, printed off a map and disconnected. His eyes met Ellie’s. Somehow, through the tiredness, they managed to share a smile.

‘This is mad,’ she said.

‘I’m beginning to lose my ability to tell.’

Near Winchester, England, 1143

I almost get a dagger down my throat for my pains. When I go back to the inn, Hugh has me pinned to the wall virtually before I’ve stepped through the door.

‘Where were you?’

He thought I’d left him. He thought I’d betrayed him to Malegant again. After what I did on the Île de Pêche, I can’t blame him.

I wait for him to take his arm away, then tell him what I heard. His body relaxes, though his face grows grimmer.

‘I didn’t understand it,’ I confess. ‘One moment, Alberic was preaching war; the next he was talking about the king’s victory.’

Hugh strides round the room, putting his few possessions into a bag.

‘Does it make sense to you?’

‘It does.’

‘Then what are they doing?’

I don’t expect an answer – at best, another riddle. Instead, Hugh turns and looks me straight in the eye.

‘They want to kill the King.’

And now we’re riding through the night, borrowed horses on borrowed time. Four knights, two pack horses loaded with our armour – and me. The wind sings in my ears.

Somewhere in the depths of the night I find myself riding beside Hugh. We’re pushing our horses as fast as we dare, but there’s a long way to go – at the moment, our pace isn’t much more than a trot.

‘Why are we doing this? I thought we were hunting for Malegant.’

‘We are.’ Two battling lions are traced in brass on the bow of his saddle. Their outlines make an eerie glow riding beside me. ‘What Malegant stole is a weapon of extraordinary power. Now he wants to use it.’

‘To kill the King?’

‘Malegant hates order. He wants a lawless, broken world where his evil can flourish unchecked.’

‘Will killing the king do that?’

I wait. When Hugh speaks again, his voice is fainter, distant like a prophet.

‘Power flows through the world like water. Sometimes it evaporates; sometimes it pools in deep reservoirs. It accumulates in people, but also in objects. Some of those objects and people bind the fabric of our world together; others try to rip it apart. When two come together, in violence
…
The wounds never heal.’

He falls silent. Afterwards, I can’t quite be sure if I dreamed it.

At dawn we find ourselves riding through a broad valley. It looks familiar, and then it hits me with a great pang of loss. I’ve
been here before – years ago, a young squire fetching a bride for his lord. Then it was summer; now, a white hoar frost covers the hedgerows and the trees. In the darkness, I didn’t recognise it. Not so far from here must be the hall where I first met Ada, where she braided her hair with gold and carried a grail-dish like a servant.

The sun rises behind us, licking away the frost. Up on the ridge, it touches the flanks of a gleaming white horse carved into the hillside, as big as a church. I wonder who made it, who keeps it so white. I wonder if in the night I crossed the invisible boundary into a different world, a world of signs and marvels. I wonder if I’ll ever escape.

We reach a village, a wretched place near the river. Even the church is miserable: all that distinguishes it from the surrounding hovels is that its roof is intact. The other buildings languish half-open to the sky, as if someone started to rethatch them all at once and then abandoned it. But who thatches a house in January?

‘What happened to the roofs?’

‘They pulled the thatch off to feed their animals.’

I glance around. ‘I don’t see any livestock.’

‘Then maybe to feed themselves.’

It’s a town of living ghosts. As we ride in, villagers creep out of their homes to watch us pass. The clothes they wear aren’t nearly enough to keep out the January cold. Ahead, a knot of them spills into the road, blocking our path. I tighten my grip on the reins, but they don’t look hostile. They’re so thin, even my tired nag could skittle them out of the way.

‘Where are the women?’ Anselm murmurs.

He’s right. Their bodies are so thin it’s hard to tell, but when I look closer I realise all the villagers are men. Even the ones carrying children, some only babies: scrawny, whimpering
bundles barely distinguishable from the rags they’re wrapped in.

We halt in front of them. The sullen crowd eyes us in silence. One, with a fur-trimmed cap perched incongruously on his head, steps forward. I assume he’s the reeve, the headman.

‘Where are your women?’ Hugh asks.

It’s like throwing corn to geese. A torrent of answers erupts around us, all deference forgotten. I can’t hear the words for the noise.

Eventually, the headman quiets them. ‘The Earl took them. When we couldn’t provide him crops or tithes, he took our women instead. He put them to work spinning and sewing – he sells the clothes they make for a fortune, while he pays them nothing. If they don’t produce as much as he wants, he strips them and beats them. They live locked in a cattle stall. Three of them have died there already.’

‘Who is your earl?’

‘The Earl of Wantage. Jocelin de Hautfort.’

Perhaps I should have anticipated it. Perhaps I
have
crossed into a different realm – a world where my past comes to life and piles on top of me. Scar tissue accumulated over years falls away in an instant. My wounds are as raw as the day Ada died.

‘
Who?
’

‘Jocelin de Hautfort. His estate was in Normandy, but he lost it when the Angevins invaded. King Stephen compensated him with English lands that belonged to his stepmother, and an invented title.’

The headman’s eyes sidle to our pack horses. We’ve removed the points from our spears, but it doesn’t do much to disguise them. One of the sacks has pulled open, showing the dull metal of chain mail inside.

‘Are you knights?’

‘Travellers,’ says Hugh shortly. ‘And you’re blocking our way.’

A shiver goes through the peasants. They press closer around Hugh. Up on his horse, he’s an island in a sea of desperate faces. The headman takes the horse’s bridle and leans in. Hugh has to bend his head to listen.

‘These lands are exhausted – you can see for yourself. Jocelin gets nothing from them. The only fertile ground he has left is this road. He harrows it like he harrows us.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He watches the road. He’ll be waiting for you. Half a mile up this road, where it passes through a thick stand of trees, you’ll find a burned-out cart blocking the way. You’ll get down to clear it, but it’s loaded with river stones. More of you will dismount. The next thing you’ll know, you’ll have a dozen spears at your throats.’

‘Why are you telling us this?’

‘Look at us. There isn’t an ear of corn here that Jocelin hasn’t taken. There’s nothing left.’

Hugh tugs his bridle out of the headman’s hands. ‘If we stopped to right every wrong we passed on the road, we’d never have got out of London. We’ll find another way round.’

‘
Please
.’ The headman drops to his knees in the mud and flings his arms around the horse’s leg like a child hobbling its mother. It’s a piteous sight. He’s lucky the horse is too weary to kick him. ‘If you avoid his trap, Jocelin will know that we warned you. He’ll destroy us – and our women. There are worse things he can do than make them spin cloth.’

‘He doesn’t know we’re coming. Unless you told him?’

The headman bares his teeth, though half of them have fallen out from hunger.

‘He watches the road – I told you. He’s seen you. He rode through here fifteen minutes ago.’

We lace on our hauberks and devise a plan. I haven’t worn armour since I tore off my old coat on the Île de Pêche. A shudder convulses me as it slips over my head, swallowing me. A moment later it feels like my own skin.