Vagabond
Bernard Cornwell
The eagerly anticipated follow-up to the bestselling Harlequin, this is the second instalment in Bernard Cornwell's Grail Quest series.In Harlequin, Thomas of Hookton travelled to France as an archer and there discovered a shadowy destiny, which linked him to a family of heretical French lords who sought Christendom's greatest relic.Having survived the battle of Crécy, Thomas is sent back to England, charged with finding the Holy Grail. But Thomas is an archer and when a chance comes to fight against an army invading northern England he jumps at it. Plunged into the carnage of Neville's Cross, he is oblivious to other enemies who want to destroy him. He discovers too late that he is not the only person pursuing the grail, and that his rivals will do anything to thwart him.After hunting and wounding him, Thomas's enemies turn him into a fugitive. Fleeing England, he travels to Normandy, determined to rescue Will Skeat, his old commander from Harlequin. Finally Thomas leads his enemies back to Brittany, where he goes to discover an old love and where his pursuers at last trap their reluctant pilgrim.Vagabond is a vivid and realistic portrait of England at a time when the archer was king of Europe's battlefields.
VAGABOND
BERNARD CORNWELL
Copyright
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2002
Copyright © Bernard Cornwell 2002
Map © John Gilkes 2013
Bernard Cornwell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it, while at times based on historical figures, are the work of the author’s imagination.
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Source ISBN: 9780007310319
Ebook Edition © JULY 2009 ISBN: 9780007338795
Version: 2018-08-16
VAGABOND
is for June and Eddie Bell
in friendship and gratitude
CONTENTS
Cover (#u28909743-6779-5ea5-af76-a05b3c869a5c)
Title Page (#u046d8db2-b78f-5ac0-82d0-f65f4d348667)
Copyright (#udbb17659-b46a-59f2-8d86-fdbc13511874)
Dedication (#u6d5b8248-b1c5-50ba-9382-15b670c58825)
Map (#u0b4bef4a-0058-5a46-b4e0-2bf9754a32a6)
Part One: ARROWS ON THE HILL (#uae1a9757-189e-5ed6-87fc-49ad8adfc74f)
It was October … (#u695d2c74-6721-58ee-aa13-f926849682fd)
A rush of … (#ua015f744-b6a2-553e-9965-5085c8ca46e7)
Thomas, Father Hobbe … (#u23e1c5ef-da24-54cd-993d-18cc932a0b91)
Sir William Douglas … (#litres_trial_promo)
Part Two: THE WINTER SIEGE (#litres_trial_promo)
It was dark … (#litres_trial_promo)
It was the … (#litres_trial_promo)
A single short … (#litres_trial_promo)
The English had … (#litres_trial_promo)
Part Three: THE KING’S CUPBEARER (#litres_trial_promo)
Jeanette Chenier, Comtesse … (#litres_trial_promo)
Lodewijk – he insisted … (#litres_trial_promo)
Thomas lay shivering … (#litres_trial_promo)
The first stone … (#litres_trial_promo)
Richard Totesham watched … (#litres_trial_promo)
Historical Note (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Praise (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by Bernard Cornwell (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
PART ONE
England, October 1346
Arrows on the Hill
It was October, the time of the year’s dying when cattle were being slaughtered before winter and when the northern winds brought a promise of ice. The chestnut leaves had turned golden, the beeches were trees of flame and the oaks were made from bronze. Thomas of Hookton, with his woman, Eleanor, and his friend, Father Hobbe, came to the upland farm at dusk and the farmer refused to open his door, but shouted through the wood that the travellers could sleep in the byre. Rain rattled on the mouldering thatch. Thomas led their one horse under the roof that they shared with a woodpile, six pigs in a stout timber pen and a scattering of feathers where a hen had been plucked. The feathers reminded Father Hobbe that it was St Gallus’s day and he told Eleanor how the blessed saint, coming home in a winter’s night, had found a bear stealing his dinner. ‘He told the animal off!’ Father Hobbe said. ‘He gave it a right talking-to, he did, and then he made it fetch his firewood.’
‘I’ve seen a picture of that,’ Eleanor said. ‘Didn’t the bear become his servant?’
‘That’s because Gallus was a holy man,’ Father Hobbe explained. ‘Bears wouldn’t fetch firewood for just anyone! Only for a holy man.’
‘A holy man,’ Thomas put in, ‘who is the patron saint of hens.’ Thomas knew all about the saints, more indeed than Father Hobbe. ‘Why would a chicken want a saint?’ he enquired sarcastically.
‘Gallus is the patron of hens?’ Eleanor asked, confused by Thomas’s tone. ‘Not bears?’
‘Of hens,’ Father Hobbe confirmed. ‘Indeed of all poultry.’
‘But why?’ Eleanor wanted to know.
‘Because he once expelled a wicked demon from a young girl.’ Father Hobbe, broad-faced, hair like a stickleback’s spines, peasant-born, stocky, young and eager, liked to tell stories of the blessed saints. ‘A whole bundle of bishops had tried to drive the demon out,’ he went on, ‘and they had all failed, but the blessed Gallus came along and he cursed the demon. He cursed it! And it screeched in terror’ – Father Hobbe waved his hands in the air to imitate the evil spirit’s panic – ‘and then it fled from her body, it did, and it looked just like a black hen – a pullet. A black pullet.’
‘I’ve never seen a picture of that,’ Eleanor remarked in her accented English, then, gazing out through the byre door, ‘but I’d like to see a real bear carrying firewood,’ she added wistfully.
Thomas sat beside her and stared into the wet dusk, which was hazed by a small mist. He was not sure it really was St Gallus’s day for he had lost his reckoning while they travelled. Perhaps it was already St Audrey’s day? It was October, he knew that, and he knew that one thousand, three hundred and forty-six years had passed since Christ had been born, but he was not sure which day it was. It was easy to lose count. His father had once recited all the Sunday services on a Saturday and he had had to do them again the next day. Thomas surreptitiously made the sign of the cross. He was a priest’s bastard and that was said to bring bad luck. He shivered. There was a heaviness in the air that owed nothing to the setting sun nor to the rain clouds nor to the mist. God help us, he thought, but there was an evil in this dusk and he made the sign of the cross again and said a silent prayer to St Gallus and his obedient bear. There had been a dancing bear in London, its teeth nothing but rotted yellow stumps and its brown flanks matted with blood from its owner’s goad. The street dogs had snarled at it, slunk about it and shrank back when the bear swung on them.
‘How far to Durham?’ Eleanor asked, this time speaking French, her native language.
‘Tomorrow, I think,’ Thomas answered, still gazing north to where the heavy dark was shrouding the land. ‘She asked,’ he explained in English to Father Hobbe, ‘when we would reach Durham.’
‘Tomorrow, pray God,’ the priest said.
‘Tomorrow you can rest,’ Thomas promised Eleanor in French. She was pregnant with a child that, God willing, would be born in the springtime. Thomas was not sure how he felt about being a father. It seemed too early for him to become responsible, but Eleanor was happy and he liked to please her and so he told her he was happy as well. Some of the time, that was even true.
‘And tomorrow,’ Father Hobbe said, ‘we shall fetch our answers.’
‘Tomorrow,’ Thomas corrected him, ‘we shall ask our questions.’
‘God will not let us come this far to be disappointed,’ Father Hobbe said, and then, to keep Thomas from arguing, he laid out their meagre supper. ‘That’s all that’s left of the bread,’ he said, ‘and we should save some of the cheese and an apple for breakfast.’ He made the sign of the cross over the food, blessing it, then broke the hard bread into three pieces. ‘We should eat before nightfall.’
Darkness brought a brittle cold. A brief shower passed and after it the wind dropped. Thomas slept closest to the byre door and sometime after the wind died he woke because there was a light in the northern sky.
He rolled over, sat up and he forgot that he was cold, forgot his hunger, forgot all the small nagging discomforts of life, for he could see the Grail. The Holy Grail, the most precious of all Christ’s bequests to man, lost these thousand years and more, and he could see it glowing in the sky like shining blood and about it, bright as the glittering crown of a saint, rays of dazzling shimmer filled the heaven.
Thomas wanted to believe. He wanted the Grail to exist. He thought that if the Grail were to be found then all the world’s evil would be drained into its depths. He so wanted to believe and that October night he saw the Grail like a great burning cup in the north and his eyes filled with tears so that the image blurred, yet he could see it still, and it seemed to him that a vapour boiled from the holy vessel. Beyond it, in ranks rising to the heights of the air, were rows of angels, their wings touched by fire. All the northern sky was smoke and gold and scarlet, glowing in the night as a sign to doubting Thomas. ‘Oh, Lord,’ he said aloud and he threw off his blanket and knelt in the byre’s cold doorway, ‘oh, Lord.’
‘Thomas?’ Eleanor, beside him had awoken. She sat up and stared into the night. ‘Fire,’ she said in French, ‘c’est un grand incendie.’ Her voice was awed.
‘C’est un incendie?’ Thomas asked, then came fully awake and saw there was indeed a great fire on the horizon from where the flames boiled up to light a cup-shaped chasm in the clouds.
‘There is an army there,’ Eleanor whispered in French. ‘Look!’ She pointed to another glow, farther off. They had seen such lights in the sky in France, flamelight reflected from cloud where England’s army blazed its way across Normandy and Picardy.
Thomas still gazed north, but now in disappointment. It was an army? Not the Grail?
‘Thomas?’ Eleanor was worried.
‘It’s just rumour,’ he said. He was a priest’s bastard and he had been raised on the sacred scriptures and in Matthew’s Gospel it had been promised that at the end of time there would be battles and rumours of battles. The scriptures promised that the world would come to its finish in a welter of war and blood, and in the last village, where the folk had watched them suspiciously, a sullen priest had accused them of being Scottish spies. Father Hobbe had bridled at that, threatening to box his fellow priest’s ears, but Thomas had calmed both men down, and then spoken with a shepherd who said he had seen smoke in the northern hills. The Scots, the shepherd said, were marching south, though the priest’s woman scoffed at the tale, claiming that the Scottish troops were nothing but cattle raiders. ‘Bar your door at night,’ she advised, ‘and they’ll leave you alone.’
The far light subsided. It was not the Grail.
‘Thomas?’ Eleanor frowned at him.
‘I had a dream,’ he said, ‘just a dream.’
‘I felt the child move,’ she said, and she touched his shoulder. ‘Will you and I be married?’
‘In Durham,’ he promised her. He was a bastard and he wanted no child of his to carry the same taint. ‘We shall reach the city tomorrow,’ he reassured Eleanor, ‘and you and I will marry in a church and then we shall ask our questions.’ And, he prayed, let one of the answers be that the Grail did not exist. Let it be a dream, a mere trick of fire and cloud in a night sky, for else Thomas feared it would lead to madness. He wanted to abandon this search; he wanted to give up the Grail and return to being what he was and what he wanted to be: an archer of England.
Bernard de Taillebourg, Frenchman, Dominican friar and Inquisitor, spent the autumn night in a pig pen and when dawn came thick and white with fog, he went to his knees and thanked God for the privilege of sleeping in fouled straw. Then, mindful of his high task, he said a prayer to St Dominic, begging the saint to intercede with God to make this day’s work good. ‘As the flame in thy mouth lights us to truth’ – he spoke aloud – ‘so let it light our path to success.’ He rocked forward in the intensity of his emotion and his head struck against a rough stone pillar that supported one corner of the pen. Pain jabbed through his skull and he invited more by forcing his forehead back against the stone, grinding the skin until he felt the blood trickle down to his nose. ‘Blessed Dominic,’ he cried, ‘blessed Dominic! God be thanked for thy glory! Light our way!’ The blood was on his lips now and he licked it and reflected on all the pain that the saints and martyrs had endured for the Church. His hands were clasped and there was a smile on his haggard face.
Soldiers who, the night before, had burned much of the village to ash and raped the women who failed to escape and killed the men who tried to protect the women, now watched the priest drive his head repeatedly against the blood-spattered stone. ‘Dominic,’ Bernard de Taillebourg gasped, ‘oh, Dominic!’ Some of the soldiers made the sign of the cross for they recognized a holy man when they saw one. One or two even knelt, though it was awkward in their mail coats, but most just watched the priest warily, or else watched his servant who, sitting outside the sty, returned their gaze.
The servant, like Bernard de Taillebourg, was a Frenchman, but something in the younger man’s appearance suggested a more exotic birth. His skin was sallow, almost as dark as a Moor’s, and his long hair was sleekly black which, with his narrow face, gave him a feral look. He wore mail and a sword and, though he was nothing but a priest’s servant, he carried himself with confidence and dignity. His dress was elegant, something strange in this ragged army. No one knew his name. No one even wanted to ask, just as no one wanted to ask why he never ate or chatted with the other servants, but kept himself fastidiously apart. Now the mysterious servant watched the soldiers and in his left hand he held a knife with a very long and thin blade, and once he knew enough men were looking at him, he balanced the knife on an outstretched finger. The knife was poised on its sharp tip, which was prevented from piercing the servant’s skin by the cut-off finger of a mail glove that he wore like a sheath. Then he jerked the finger and the knife span in the air, blade glittering, to come down, tip first, to balance on his finger again. The servant had not looked at the knife once, but kept his dark-eyed gaze fixed on the soldiers. The priest, oblivious to the display, was howling prayers, his thin cheeks laced with blood. ‘Dominic! Dominic! Light our path!’ The knife span again, its wicked blade catching the foggy morning’s small light. ‘Dominic! Guide us! Guide us!’
‘On your horses! Mount up! Move yourselves!’ A grey-haired man, a big shield slung from his left shoulder, pushed through the onlookers. ‘We’ve not got all day! What in the name of the devil are you all gawking at? Jesus Christ on His goddamn cross, what is this, Eskdale bloody fair? For Christ’s sake, move! Move!’ The shield on his shoulder was blazoned with the badge of a red heart, but the paint was so faded and the shield’s leather cover so scarred that the badge was hard to distinguish. ‘Oh, suffering Christ!’ The man had spotted the Dominican and his servant. ‘Father! We’re going now. Right now! And I don’t wait for prayers.’ He turned back to his men. ‘Mount up! Move your bones! There’s devil’s work to be done!’
‘Douglas!’ the Dominican snapped.
The grey-haired man turned back fast. ‘My name, priest, is Sir William, and you’ll do well to remember it.’
The priest blinked. He seemed to be suffering a momentary confusion, still caught up in the ecstasy of his pain-driven prayer, then he gave a perfunctory bow as if acknowledging his fault in using Sir William’s surname. ‘I was talking to the blessed Dominic,’ he explained.
‘Aye, well, I hope you asked him to shift this damn fog?’
‘And he will lead us today! He will guide us!’
‘Then he’d best get his damn boots on,’ Sir William Douglas, Knight of Liddesdale, growled at the priest, ‘for we’re leaving whether your saint is ready or not.’ Sir William’s chain mail was battle-torn and patched with newer rings. Rust showed at the hem and at the elbows. His faded shield, like his weather-beaten face, was scarred. He was forty-six now and he reckoned he had a sword, arrow or spear scar for each of those years that had turned his hair and short beard white. Now he pulled open the sty’s heavy gate. ‘On your trotters, father. I’ve a horse for you.’
‘I shall walk,’ Bernard de Taillebourg said, picking up a stout staff with a leather thong threaded through its tip, ‘as our Lord walked.’
‘Then you’ll not get wet crossing the streams, eh, is that it?’ Sir William chuckled. ‘You’ll walk on water will you, father? You and your servant?’ Alone among his men he did not seem impressed by the French priest or wary of the priest’s well-armed servant, but Sir William Douglas was famously unafraid of any man. He was a border chieftain who employed murder, fire, sword and lance to protect his land and some fierce priest from Paris was hardly likely to impress him. Sir William, indeed, was not overfond of priests, but his King had ordered him to take Bernard de Taillebourg on this morning’s raid and Sir William had grudgingly consented.
All around him soldiers pulled themselves into their saddles. They were lightly armed for they expected to meet no enemies. A few, like Sir William, carried shields, but most were content with just a sword. Bernard de Taillebourg, his friar’s robes mud-spattered and damp, hurried alongside Sir William. ‘Will you go into the city?’
‘Of course I’ll not go into the bloody city. There’s a truce, remember?’
‘But if there’s a truce …’
‘If there’s a bloody truce then we leave them be.’
The French priest’s English was good, but it took him a few moments to work out what Sir William’s last three words had meant. ‘There’ll be no fighting?’
‘Not between us and the city, no. And there’s no goddamned English army within a hundred miles so there’ll be no fighting. All we’re doing is looking for food and forage, father, food and forage. Feed your men and feed your animals and that’s the way to win your wars.’ Sir William, as he spoke, climbed onto his horse, which was held by a squire. He pushed his boots into the stirrups, plucked the skirts of his mail coat from under his thighs and gathered the reins. ‘I’ll get you close to the city, father, but after that you’ll have to shift for yourself.’
‘Shift?’ Bernard de Taillebourg asked, but Sir William had already turned away and spurred his horse down a muddy lane that ran between low stone walls. Two hundred mounted men-at-arms, grim and grey on this foggy morning, streamed after him, and the priest, buffeted by their big dirty horses, struggled to keep up. The servant followed with apparent unconcern. He was evidently accustomed to being among soldiers and showed no apprehension, indeed his demeanour suggested he might be better with his weapons than most of the men who rode behind Sir William.
The Dominican and his servant had travelled to Scotland with a dozen other messengers sent to King David II by Philip of Valois, King of France. The embassy had been a cry for help. The English had burned their way across Normandy and Picardy, they had slaughtered the French King’s army near a village called Crécy and their archers now held a dozen fastnesses in Brittany while their savage horsemen rode from Edward of England’s ancestral possessions in Gascony. All that was bad, but even worse, and as if to show all Europe that France could be dismembered with impunity, the English King was now laying siege to the great fortress harbour of Calais. Philip of Valois was doing his best to raise the siege, but winter was coming, his nobles grumbled that their King was no warrior, and so he had appealed for aid to Scotland’s King David, son of Robert the Bruce. Invade England, the French King had pleaded, and thus force Edward to abandon the siege of Calais to protect his homeland. The Scots had pondered the invitation, then were persuaded by the French King’s embassy that England lay defenceless. How could it be otherwise? Edward of England’s army was all at Calais or else in Brittany or Gascony, and there was no one left to defend England, and that meant the old enemy was helpless, it was asking to be raped and all the riches of England were just waiting to fall into Scottish hands.
And so the Scots had come south.
It was the largest army that Scotland had ever sent across the border. The great lords were all there, the sons and grandsons of the warriors who had humbled England in the bloody slaughter about the Bannockburn, and those lords had brought their men-at-arms who had grown hard with incessant frontier battles, but this time, smelling plunder, they were accompanied by the clan chiefs from the mountains and islands: chiefs leading wild tribesmen who spoke a language of their own and fought like devils unleashed. They had come in their thousands to make themselves rich and the French messengers, their duty done, had sailed home to tell Philip of Valois that Edward of England would surely raise his siege of Calais when he learned that the Scots were ravaging his northern lands.
The French embassy had sailed for home, but Bernard de Taillebourg had stayed. He had business in northern England, but in the first days of the invasion he had experienced nothing except frustration. The Scottish army was twelve thousand strong, larger than the army with which Edward of England had defeated the French at Crécy, yet once across the frontier the great army had stopped to besiege a lonely fortress garrisoned by a mere thirty-eight men, and though the thirty-eight had all died, it had wasted four days. More time was spent negotiating with the citizens of Carlisle who had paid gold to have their city spared, and then the young Scottish King frittered away three more days pillaging the great priory of the Black Canons at Hexham. Now, ten days after they had crossed the frontier, and after wandering across the northern English moors, the Scottish army had at last reached Durham. The city had offered a thousand golden pounds if they could be spared and King David had given them two days to raise the money. Which meant that Bernard de Taillebourg had two days to find a way to enter the city, to which end, slipping in the mud and half blinded by the fog, he followed Sir William Douglas into a valley, across a stream and up a steep hill. ‘Which way is the city?’ he demanded of Sir William.
‘When the fog lifts, father, I’ll tell you.’
‘They’ll respect the truce?’
‘They’re holy men in Durham, father,’ Sir William answered wryly, ‘but better still, they’re frightened men.’ It had been the monks of the city who had negotiated the ransom and Sir William had advised against acceptance. If monks offered a thousand pounds, he reckoned, then it would have been better to have killed the monks and taken two thousand, but King David had overruled him. David the Bruce had spent much of his youth in France and so considered himself cultured, but Sir William was not thus hampered by scruples. ‘You’ll be safe if you can talk your way into the city,’ Sir William reassured the priest.
The horsemen had reached the hilltop and Sir William turned south along the ridge, still following a track that was edged with stone walls and which led, after a mile or so, to a deserted hamlet where four cottages, so low that their shaggy thatched roofs seemed to swell out of the straggling turf, clustered by a crossroads. In the centre of the crossroads, where the muddy ruts surrounded a patch of nettles and grass, a stone cross leaned southwards. Sir William curbed his horse beside the monument and stared at the carved dragon encircling the shaft. The cross was missing one arm. A dozen of his men dismounted and ducked into the low cottages, but they found no one and nothing, though in one cottage the embers of a fire still glowed and so they used the smouldering wood to fire the four thatched roofs. The thatch was reluctant to catch the fire for it was so damp that mushrooms grew on the mossy straw.
Sir William took his foot from the stirrup and tried to kick the broken cross over, but it would not shift. He grunted with the effort, saw Bernard de Taillebourg’s disapproving expression and scowled. ‘It’s not holy ground, father. It’s only bloody England.’ He peered at the carved dragon, its mouth agape as it stretched up the stone shaft. ‘Ugly bastard thing, isn’t it?’
‘Dragons are creatures of sin, things of the devil,’ Bernard de Taillebourg said, ‘so of course it is ugly.’
‘A thing of the devil, eh?’ Sir William kicked the cross again. ‘My mother,’ he explained as he gave the cross a third futile kick, ‘always told me that the bloody English buried their stolen gold beneath dragons’ crosses.’
Two minutes later the cross had been heaved aside and a half-dozen men were peering disappointedly into the hole it had left. Smoke from the burning roofs thickened the fog, swirled over the road and vanished into the greyness of the morning air. ‘No gold,’ Sir William grunted, then he summoned his men and led them southwards out of the choking smoke. He was looking for any livestock that could be driven back to the Scottish army, but the fields were empty. The fire of the burning cottages was a hazed gold and red in the fog behind the raiders, a glow that slowly faded until only the smell of the fire was left and then, suddenly, hugely, filling the whole world with the alarm of its noise, a peal of bells clanged about the sky. Sir William, presuming the sound came from the east, turned through a gap in the wall into a pasture where he checked his horse and stood in the stirrups. He was listening to the sound, but in the fog it was impossible to tell where the bells were or how far away they were being tolled and then the sound stopped as suddenly as it had began. The fog was thinning now, shredding away through the orange leaves of a stand of elms. White mushrooms dotted the empty pasture where Bernard de Taillebourg dropped to his knees and began to pray aloud. ‘Quiet, father!’ Sir William snapped.
The priest made the sign of the cross as though imploring heaven to forgive Sir William’s impiety in interrupting a prayer. ‘You said there was no enemy,’ he complained.
‘I’m not listening for any bloody enemy,’ Sir William said, ‘but for animals. I’m listening for cattle bells or sheep bells.’ Yet Sir William seemed strangely nervous for a man who sought only livestock. He kept twisting in his saddle, peering into the fog and scowling at the small noises of curb chains or hooves stamping on damp earth. He snarled at the men-at-arms closest to him to be silent. He had been a soldier before some of these men had even been born and he had not stayed alive by ignoring his instincts and now, in this damp fog, he smelt danger. Sense told him there was nothing to fear, that the English army was far away across the sea, but he smelt death all the same and, quite unaware of what he was doing, he pulled the shield off his shoulder and pushed his left arm through its carrying loops. It was a big shield, one made before men began adding plates of armour to their mail, a shield wide enough to screen a man’s whole body.
A soldier called out from the pasture’s edge and Sir William grasped his sword’s hilt, then he saw that the man had only exclaimed at the sudden appearance of towers in the fog which was now little more than a mist on the ridge’s top, though in the deep valleys either side the fog flowed like a white river. And across the eastern river, way off to the north where they emerged from the spectral whiteness of another hill crest, was a great cathedral and a castle. They towered through the mist, vast and dark, like buildings from some doom-laden wizard’s imagination, and Bernard de Taillebourg’s servant, who felt he had not seen civilization in weeks, stared entranced at the two buildings. Black-robed monks crowded the tallest of the cathedral’s two towers and the servant saw them pointing at the Scottish horsemen.
‘Durham,’ Sir William grunted. The bells, he reckoned, must have been summoning the faithful to their morning prayers.
‘I have to go there!’ The Dominican climbed from his knees and, seizing his staff, set off towards the mist-shrouded city.
Sir William spurred his horse in front of the Frenchman. ‘What’s your hurry, father?’ he demanded, and de Taillebourg tried to dodge past the Scotsman, but there was a scraping sound and suddenly a blade, cold and heavy and grey, was in the Dominican’s face. ‘I asked you, father, what the hurry was?’ Sir William’s voice was as cold as his sword; then, alerted by one of his men, he glanced over and saw that the priest’s servant had half drawn his own weapon. ‘If your bastard man doesn’t sheathe his blade, father’ – Sir William spoke softly, but there was a terrible menace in his voice – ‘I’ll have his collops for my supper.’
De Taillebourg said something in French and the servant reluctantly pushed the blade fully home. The priest looked up at Sir William. ‘Have you no fear for your mortal soul?’ he asked.
Sir William smiled, paused and looked about the hilltop, but he saw nothing untoward in the shredding fog and decided his earlier nervousness had been the result of imagination. The result, perhaps, of too much beef, pork and wine the previous night. The Scots had feasted in the captured home of Durham’s prior and the prior lived well, judging by his larder and cellar, but rich suppers gave men premonitions. ‘I keep my own priest to worry about my soul,’ Sir William said, then raised the tip of his sword to force de Taillebourg’s face upwards. ‘Why does a Frenchman have business with our enemies in Durham?’ he demanded.
‘It is Church business,’ de Taillebourg said firmly.
‘I don’t give a damn whose business it is,’ Sir William said, ‘I still wish to know.’
‘Obstruct me,’ de Taillebourg said, pushing the sword blade away, ‘and I shall have the King punish you and the Church condemn you and the Holy Father send your soul to eternal perdition. I shall summon—’
‘Shut your goddamned bloody face!’ Sir William said. ‘Do you think, priest, that you can frighten me? Our King is a puppy and the Church does what its paymasters tell it to do.’ He moved the blade back, this time resting it against the Dominican’s neck. ‘Now tell me your business. Tell me why a Frenchman stays with us instead of going home with his countrymen. Tell me what you want in Durham.’
Bernard de Taillebourg clutched the crucifix that hung about his neck and held it towards Sir William. In another man the gesture might have been taken as a display of fear, but in the Dominican it looked rather as though he threatened Sir William’s soul with the powers of heaven. Sir William merely gave the crucifix a hungry glance as if appraising its value, but the cross was of plain wood while the little figure of Christ, twisted in death’s agony, was only made of yellowed bone. If the figure had been made of gold then Sir William might have taken the bauble, but instead he spat in derision. A few of his men, fearing God more than their master, made the sign of the cross, but most did not care. They watched the servant closely, for he looked dangerous, but a middle-aged cleric from Paris, however fierce and gaunt he might be, did not scare them. ‘So what will you do?’ de Taillebourg asked Sir William scornfully. ‘Kill me?’
‘If I must,’ Sir William said implacably. The presence of the priest with the French embassy had been a puzzle, and his staying on when the others left only compounded the mystery, but a garrulous man-at-arms, one of the Frenchmen who had brought two hundred suits of plate armour as a gift to the Scots, had told Sir William that the priest was pursuing a great treasure and if that treasure was in Durham then Sir William wanted to know. He wanted a share. ‘I’ve killed priests before,’ he told de Taillebourg, ‘and another priest sold me an indulgence for the killings, so don’t think I fear you or your Church. There’s no sin that can’t be bought off, no pardon that can’t be purchased.’
The Dominican shrugged. Two of Sir William’s men were behind him, their swords drawn, and he understood that these Scotsmen would indeed kill him and his servant. These men who followed the red heart of Douglas were border ruffians, bred to battle as a hound was raised to the chase and the Dominican knew there was no point in continuing to threaten their souls for they gave no thought to such things. ‘I am going into Durham,’ de Taillebourg said, ‘to find a man.’
‘What man?’ Sir William asked, his sword still at the priest’s neck.
‘He is a monk,’ de Taillebourg explained patiently, ‘and an old man now, so old that he may not even be alive. He is a Frenchman, a Benedictine, and he fled Paris many years ago.’
‘Why did he run?’
‘Because the King wanted his head.’
‘A monk’s head?’ Sir William sounded sceptical.
‘He was not always a Benedictine,’ de Taillebourg said, ‘but was once a Templar.’
‘Ah.’ Sir William began to understand.
‘And he knows,’ de Taillebourg continued, ‘where a great treasure is hidden.’
‘The Templar treasure?’
‘It is said to be hidden in Paris,’ de Taillebourg said, ‘hidden for all these years, but it was only last year that we discovered the Frenchman was alive and in England. The Benedictine, you see, was once the sacrist of the Templars. You know what that is?’
‘Don’t patronize me, father,’ Sir William said coldly.
De Taillebourg inclined his head to acknowledge the justice of the reproof. ‘If any man knows where the Templar treasure is,’ he went on humbly, ‘it is the man who was their sacrist, and now, we hear, that man lives in Durham.’
Sir William took the sword away. Everything the priest said made sense. The Knights Templar, an order of monkish soldiers who were sworn to protect the pilgrims’ roads between Christendom and Jerusalem, had become rich beyond the dreams of kings, and that was foolish for it made kings jealous and jealous kings make bad enemies. The King of France was just such an enemy and he had ordered the Templars destroyed: to which end a heresy had been cooked up, lawyers had effortlessly distorted truths and the Templars had been suppressed. Their leaders had been burned and their lands confiscated, but their treasures, the fabled treasures of the Templars, had never been found and the order’s sacrist, the man responsible for keeping those treasures safe, would surely know their fate, ‘When were the Templars disbanded?’ Sir William asked.
‘Twenty-nine years ago,’ de Taillebourg answered.
So the sacrist could yet be alive, Sir William thought. He would be an old man, but alive. Sir William sheathed his sword, utterly convinced by de Taillebourg’s tale, yet none of it was true except that there was an old monk in Durham, but he was not French and he had never been a Templar and, in all probability, knew nothing of any Templar treasure. But Bernard de Taillebourg had spoken persuasively, and the story of the missing hoard was one that echoed through Europe, spoken of whenever men gathered to exchange tales of marvels. Sir William wanted the story to be true and that, more than anything, persuaded him it was. ‘If you find this man,’ he said to de Taillebourg, ‘and if he lives, and if you then find the treasure, then it will be because we made it possible. It will be because we brought you here, and because we protected you on your journey to Durham.’
‘True, Sir William,’ de Taillebourg said.
Sir William was surprised by the priest’s ready agreement. He frowned, shifted in his saddle and stared down at the Dominican as if gauging the priest’s trustworthiness. ‘So we must share in the treasure,’ he demanded.
‘Of course,’ de Taillebourg said instantly.
Sir William was no fool. Let the priest go into Durham and he would never see the man again. Sir William twisted in his saddle and stared north towards the cathedral. The Templar treasure was said to be the gold from Jerusalem, more gold than men could dream of, and Sir William was honest enough to know that he did not possess the resources to divert some of that golden trove to Liddesdale. The King must be used. David II might be a weak lad, scarce breeched and too softened by having lived in France, but kings had resources denied to knights and David of Scotland could talk to Philip of France as a near equal, while any message from William Douglas would be ignored in Paris. ‘Jamie!’ he snapped at his nephew who was one of the two men guarding de Taillebourg. ‘You and Dougal will take this priest back to the King.’
‘You must let me go!’ Bernard de Taillebourg protested.
Sir William leaned from his saddle. ‘You want me to cut off your priestly balls to make myself a purse?’ He smiled at the Dominican, then looked back to his nephew. ‘Tell the King this French priest has news that concerns us and tell him to hold him safe till I return.’ Sir William had decided that if there was an ancient French monk in Durham then he should be questioned by the King of Scotland’s servants and the monk’s information, if he had any, could then be sold to the French King. ‘Take him, Jamie,’ he commanded, ‘and watch that damned servant! Take his sword.’
James Douglas grinned at the thought of a mere priest and his servant giving him trouble, but he still obeyed his uncle. He demanded that the servant yield his sword and, when the man bridled at the order, Jamie half drew his own blade. De Taillebourg sharply instructed his servant to obey and the sword was sullenly handed over. Jamie Douglas grinned as he hung the sword from his own belt. ‘They’ll not bother me, uncle.’
‘Away with you,’ Sir William said and watched as his nephew and his companion, both well mounted on fine stallions captured from the Percy lands in Northumberland, escorted the priest and his servant back towards the King’s encampment. Doubtless the priest would complain to the King and David, so much weaker than his great father, would worry about the displeasure of God and the French, but David would worry a great deal more about Sir William’s displeasure. Sir William smiled at that thought, then saw that some of his men on the far side of the field had dismounted. ‘Who the devil told you to unhorse?’ he shouted angrily, then he saw they were not his men at all, but strangers revealed by the shredding mist, and he remembered his instincts and cursed himself for wasting time on the priest.
And as he cursed so the first arrow flickered from the south. The sound it made was a hiss, feather in air, then it struck home and the noise was like a pole-axe cleaving flesh. It was a heavy thump edged with the tearing of steel in muscle and ending with the harsh scrape of blade on bone, and then a grunt from the victim and a heartbeat of silence.
And after that the scream.
Thomas of Hookton heard the bells, deep-toned and sonorous, not the sound of bells hung in some village church, but bells of thunderous power. Durham, he thought, and he felt a great weariness for the journey had been so long.
It had begun in Picardy, on a field stinking of dead men and horses, a place of fallen banners, broken weapons and spent arrows. It had been a great victory and Thomas had wondered why it left him dulled and nervous. The English had marched north to besiege Calais, but Thomas, duty bound to serve the Earl of Northampton, had received the Earl’s permission to take a wounded comrade to Caen where there was a doctor of extraordinary skill. Then, however, it was decreed that no man could leave the army without the King’s permission and so the Earl approached the King and thus Edward Plantagenet heard of Thomas of Hookton and how his father had been a priest who had been born to a family of French exiles called Vexille, and how it was rumoured that the Vexille family had once possessed the Grail. It was only a rumour, of course, a wisp of a story in a hard world, yet the story was of the Holy Grail and that was the most precious thing that had ever existed, if indeed it had existed; and the King had questioned Thomas of Hookton and Thomas had tried to scorn the truth of the Grail story, but then the Bishop of Durham, who had fought in the shield wall that broke the French assaults, told how Thomas’s father had once been imprisoned in Durham. ‘He was mad,’ the bishop explained to the King, ‘wits flown to the winds! So they locked him up for his own good.’
‘Did he talk of the Grail?’ the King asked, and the Bishop of Durham had answered that there was one man left in his diocese who might know, an old monk called Hugh Collimore who had nursed the mad Ralph Vexille, Thomas’s father. The King might have dismissed the tales as so much churchly gossip had not Thomas recovered his father’s heritage, the lance of St George, in the battle that had left so many dead on the green slope above the village of Crécy. The battle had also left Thomas’s friend and commander Sir William Skeat wounded and he wanted to take Skeat to the doctor in Normandy, but the King had insisted that Thomas go to Durham and speak with Brother Collimore. So Eleanor’s father had taken Sir William Skeat to Caen and Thomas, Eleanor and Father Hobbe had accompanied a royal chaplain and a knight of King Edward’s household to England, but in London the chaplain and the knight had both fallen sick with an early winter fever and so Thomas and his companions had travelled north alone and now they were close to Durham, on a foggy morning, listening to the cathedral’s bells. Eleanor, like Father Hobbe, was excited for she believed that discovering the Grail would bring peace and justice to a world that stank of burned cottages. There would be no more sorrow, Eleanor thought, and no more war, and perhaps even no more sickness.
Thomas wanted to believe it. He wanted his night vision to be real, not flame and smoke, yet if the Grail existed at all he thought that it would be in some great cathedral, guarded by angels. Or else it was gone from this world, and if there was no Grail on earth then Thomas’s faith was in a war bow made of Italian yew, painted black, strung with hemp, that drove an arrow made of ash, fledged with goose feathers and tipped with steel. On the bow’s belly, where his left hand gripped the yew, there was a silver plate engraved with a yale, a fabulous beast of claws and horns and tusks and scales that was the badge of his father’s family, the Vexilles. The yale held a cup and Thomas had been told it was the Grail. Always the Grail. It beckoned him, mocked him, bent his life, changed all, yet never appeared except in a dream of fire. It was a mystery, just as Thomas’s family was a mystery, but perhaps Brother Collimore could cast light on that mystery and so Thomas had come north. He might not learn of the Grail, but he expected to discover more about his family and that, at least, made the journey worthwhile.
‘Which way?’ Father Hobbe asked.
‘God knows,’ Thomas said. Fog shrouded the land.
‘The bells sounded that way.’ Father Hobbe pointed north and east. He was energetic, full of enthusiasm, and naïvely trusting in Thomas’s sense of direction, though in truth Thomas did not know where he was. Earlier they had come to a fork in the road and he had randomly taken the left-hand track that now faded to a mere scar on the grass as it climbed. Mushrooms grew in the pasture, which was wet and heavy with dew so that their horse slipped as it climbed. The horse was Thomas’s mare and it was carrying their small baggage and in one of the sacks hanging from the saddle’s pommel was a letter from the Bishop of Durham to John Fossor, the Prior of Durham. ‘Most beloved brother in Christ,’ the letter began, and went on to instruct Fossor to allow Thomas of Hookton and his companions to question Brother Collimore concerning Father Ralph Vexille, ‘whom you will not remember for he was kept closed up in your house before you came to Durham, indeed before I came to the See, but there will be some who know of him and Brother Collimore, if it pleases God that he yet lives, will have certain knowledge of him and of the great treasure that he concealed. We request this in the name of the King and in the service of Almighty God who has blessed our arms in this present endeavour.’
‘Qu’est-ce que c’est?’ Eleanor asked, pointing up the hill where a dull reddish glow discoloured the fog.
‘What?’ Father Hobbe, the only one who did not speak French, asked.
‘Quiet,’ Thomas warned him, holding up his hand. He could smell burning and see the flicker of flames, but there were no voices. He took his bow from where it hung from the saddle and he strung it, bending the huge stave to loop the hemp string over the piece of nocked horn. He pulled an arrow from the bag and then, motioning Eleanor and Father Hobbe to stay where they were, he edged up the track to the shelter of a deep hedge where larks and finches flitted through the dying leaves. The fires were roaring, suggesting they were newly set. He crept closer, the bow half drawn, until he could see there had been three or four cottages about a crossroads and their rafters and thatch were well ablaze and sending sparks whirling up into the damp grey. The fires looked recent, but there was no one in sight: no enemy, no men in mail, so he beckoned Eleanor and Father Hobbe forward and then, over the sound of the fire, he heard a scream. It was far off, or perhaps it was close but muffled by fog, and Thomas stared through the smoke and the fog and past the seething flames and suddenly two men in mail, both mounted on black stallions, cantered into view. The horsemen had black hats, black boots and black scabbarded swords and they were escorting two other men who were on foot. One was a priest, a Dominican judging by his black and white garb, and he had a bloodied face, while the other man was tall, dressed in mail, and had long black hair and a narrow, intelligent face. The two followed the horsemen through the smoky fog, then paused at the crossroads where the priest dropped to his knees and made the sign of the cross.
The leading horseman seemed irritated by the priest’s prayer for he turned his horse back and, drawing his sword, prodded the blade at the kneeling man. The priest looked up and, to Thomas’s astonishment, suddenly rammed his staff up into the stallion’s throat. The beast twitched away and the priest slammed the staff hard at the rider’s sword arm. The horseman, unbalanced by his stallion’s jerking motion, tried to cut down across his body with his long blade. The second horseman was already unsaddled, though Thomas had not seen him fall, and the black-haired man in mail was astride his body with a long knife drawn. Thomas just stared in puzzlement for he was convinced that neither the two horsemen nor the priest nor the black-haired man had uttered the scream, yet no other folk were in sight. One of the two horsemen was already dead and the other now fought the priest in silence and Thomas had a sense that the conflict was unreal, that he was dreaming, that in truth this was a morality play in dumb show: the black-clad horseman was the devil and the priest was God’s will and Thomas’s doubts about the Grail were about to be resolved by whoever won and then Father Hobbe seized the great bow from Thomas. ‘We must help!’
Yet the priest hardly needed help. He used the staff like a sword, parrying his opponent’s cut, lunging hard to bruise the rider’s ribs, then the man with the long black hair rammed a sword up into the horseman’s back and the man arched, shivered, and his own sword dropped. He stared down at the priest for a moment, then he fell backwards from his saddle. His feet were momentarily trapped in the stirrups and the horse, panicking, galloped uphill. The killer wiped the blade of his sword, then took a scabbard from one of the dead men.
The priest had run to secure the other horse and now, sensing he was being watched, he turned to see two men and a woman in the fog. One of the men was a priest who had an arrow on a bowstring. ‘They were going to kill me!’ Bernard de Taillebourg protested in French. The black-haired man turned fast, the sword rising in threat.
‘It’s all right,’ Thomas said to Father Hobbe and he took the black bow away from his friend and hung it on his shoulder. God had spoken, the priest had won the fight and Thomas was reminded of his night vision when the Grail had loomed in the clouds like a cup of fire. Then he saw that under the bruises and blood the strange priest’s face was hard and lean, a martyr’s face, with the look of a man who had hungered for God and achieved an evident saintliness and Thomas almost fell to his knees. ‘Who are you?’ he called to the Dominican.
‘I am a messenger.’ Bernard de Taillebourg snatched at any explanation to cover his confusion. He had escaped from his Scottish escort and now he wondered how he was to escape from the tall young man with the long black bow, but then a flight of arrows hissed from the south and one thumped into a nearby elm trunk while a second skidded along the wet grass, and a horse shrieked nearby and men were shouting in disorder. Father de Taillebourg called to his servant to catch the second horse, which was trotting uphill and, by the time it was caught, de Taillebourg saw that the stranger with the bow had forgotten him and was staring south to where the arrows flew.
So he turned towards the city, called his servant to follow him and kicked back his heels.
For God, for France, for St Denis and for the Grail.
Sir William Douglas cursed. Arrows were hissing all about him. Horses were screaming and men were lying dead or injured on the grass. For a heartbeat he felt bewildered, then he realized that his forage party had blundered into an English force, but what kind of force? There was no English army nearby! The whole English army was in France, not here! Which meant, surely, that the citizens of Durham had broken their truce and that thought filled Sir William with a terrible anger. Christ, he thought, but there would not be one stone left on another when he had finished with the city, and he tugged the big shield to cover his body and spurred south towards the bowmen who were lining a low hedge. He reckoned there were not so many of them, maybe only fifty, and he still had nearly two hundred men mounted and so he roared the order to charge. Swords scraped from scabbards. ‘Kill the bastards!’ Sir William shouted. ‘Kill them!’ He was savaging his horse with his spurs and thrusting other confused horsemen aside in his eagerness to reach the hedge. He knew the charge would be ragged, knew some of his men must die, but once they were over the blackthorn and in among the bastards they would kill them all.
Bloody archers, he thought. He hated archers. He especially hated English archers and he detested traitorous, truce-breaking Durham archers above all others. ‘On! On!’ he shouted. ‘Douglas! Douglas!’ He liked to let his enemies know who was killing them, and who would be raping their wives when they were dead. If the city had broken the truce, then God help that city for he would sack, rape and burn the whole of it. He would fire the houses, plough the ashes and leave the bones of its citizens to the winter blight, and for years men would see the bare stones of the ruined cathedral and watch the birds nesting in the castle’s empty towers and they would know that the Knight of Liddesdale had worked his revenge.
‘Douglas!’ he shouted, ‘Douglas!’ and he felt the thump of arrows smacking into his shield and then his horse screamed and he knew more arrows must have driven deep into its chest for he could feel the beast stumbling. He kicked his feet from the stirrups as the horse slewed sideways. Men charged past him, screaming defiance, then Sir William threw himself out of the saddle and onto his shield that slid along the wet grass like a sledge, and he heard his horse screaming in pain, but he himself was unhurt, hardly even bruised and he pushed himself up, found his sword that he had dropped when he fell and ran on with his horsemen. A rider had an arrow sticking from his knee. A horse went down, eyes white, teeth bared, blood flecking from the arrow wounds. The first horsemen were at the hedge and some had found a gap and were spurring through and Sir William saw that the damned English bowmen were running away. Bastards, he thought, cowardly bloody English rotten whoreson bastards, then more bows sounded harsh to his left and he saw a man fall from a horse with an arrow through his head and the fog lifted enough to show that the enemy archers had not run away, but had merely joined a solid mass of dismounted men-at-arms. The bowstrings sounded again. A horse reared in pain and an arrow sliced into its belly. A man staggered, was struck again and fell back with a crash of mail.
Sweet Christ, Sir William thought, but there was a damned army here! A whole damned army! ‘Back! Back!’ he bellowed. ‘Haul off! Back!’ He yelled till he was hoarse. Another arrow drove into his shield, its point whipping through the leather-covered willow and, in his rage, he slapped at it, breaking the ash shaft.
‘Uncle! Uncle!’ a man shouted and Sir William saw it was Robbie Douglas, one of his eight nephews who rode with the Scottish army, bringing him a horse, but a pair of English arrows struck the beast’s quarter and, enraged by pain, it broke away from Robbie’s grasp.
‘Go north!’ Sir William shouted at his nephew. ‘Go on, Robbie!’
Instead Robbie rode to his uncle. An arrow struck his saddle, another glanced off his helmet, but he leaned down, took Sir William’s hand and dragged him northwards. Arrows followed them, but the fog swirled thick and hid them. Sir William shook off his nephew’s grip and stumbled north, made clumsy by his shield stuck with arrows and by his heavy mail. God damn it, God damn it!
‘Mind left! Mind left!’ a Scottish voice cried and Sir William saw some English horsemen coming from the hedgerow. One saw Sir William and thought he would be easy pickings. The English had been no more ready for battle than the Scotsmen. A few wore mail, but none were properly armoured and none had lances. But Sir William reckoned they must have detected his presence long before they loosed their first arrows, and the anger at being so ambushed made him step towards the horseman who was holding his sword out like a spear. Sir William did not even bother to try and parry. He just thrust his heavy shield up, punching it into the horse’s mouth, and he heard the animal whinny in pain as he swept his sword at its legs and the beast twisted away and the rider was flailing for balance and was still trying to calm his horse when Sir William’s sword tore up under his mail and into his guts. ‘Bastard,’ Sir William snarled and the man was whimpering as Sir William twisted the blade, and then Robbie rode up on the man’s far side and chopped his sword down onto his neck so that the Englishman’s head was all but severed as he fell from the saddle. The other horsemen had mysteriously shied away, but then arrows flew again and Sir William knew the fickle fog was thinning. He dragged his sword free of the corpse, scabbarded the wet blade and hauled himself into the dead man’s saddle. ‘Away!’ he shouted at Robbie who seemed inclined to take on the whole English force single-handed. ‘Away, boy! Come on!’
By God, he thought, but it hurt to run from an enemy, yet there was no shame in two hundred men fleeing six or seven hundred. And when the fog lifted there could be a proper battle, a murderous clash of men and steel, and Sir William would teach these bastard English how to fight. He kicked his borrowed horse on, intent on carrying news of the English to the rest of the Scottish army, but then saw an archer lurking in a hedge. A woman and a priest were with the man and Sir William put a hand to his sword hilt and thought about swerving aside to take some revenge for the arrows that had ripped into his forage party, but behind him the other Englishmen were shouting their war cry: ‘St George! St George!’ and so Sir William left the isolated archer alone. He rode on, leaving good men on the autumn grass. They were dead and dying, wounded and frightened. But he was a Douglas. He would come back and he would have his revenge.
A rush of panicked horsemen galloped past the hedge where Thomas, Eleanor and Father Hobbe crouched. Half a dozen horses were riderless while at least a score of others were bleeding from wounds out of which the arrows jutted with their white goose feathers spattered red. The riders were followed by thirty or forty men on foot, some limping, some with arrows stuck in their clothes and a few carrying saddles. They hurried past the burning cottages as a new volley of arrows hastened their retreat, then the thump of hooves made them look back in panic and some of the fugitives broke into a clumsy run as a score of mail-clad horsemen thundered from the mist. Great clods of wet earth spewed up from the horses’ hooves. The stallions were being curbed, forced to take brief steps as their riders took aim at their victims, then the spurs went back as the horses were released to the kill and Eleanor cried aloud in anticipation of the carnage. The heavy swords chopped down. One or two of the fugitives dropped to their knees and held their hands up in surrender, but most tried to escape. One dodged behind a galloping horseman and fled towards the hedge, saw Thomas and his bow and turned straight back into the path of another rider who drove the edge of his heavy sword into the man’s face. The Scotsman went onto his knees, mouth open as though he would scream, but no sound came, only blood seeping between the fingers that were clasped over his nose and eyes. The horseman, who had no shield or helmet, turned his stallion and then leaned out of the saddle to chop his sword into his victim’s neck, killing the man as if he were a cow being pole-axed and that was oddly appropriate because Thomas saw that the mounted killer was wearing the badge of a brown cow on his jupon, which was a short jerkin-like coat half covering his mail hauberk. The jupon was torn, bloodstained and the cow badge had faded so that at first Thomas thought it was a bull. Then the horseman swerved towards Thomas, raised his bloody sword in threat and then noticed the bow and checked his horse. ‘English?’
‘And proud of it!’ Father Hobbe answered for Thomas.
A second horseman, this one with three black ravens embroidered on his white jupon, reined in beside the first. Three prisoners were being pushed towards the two horsemen. ‘How the devil did you get this far in front?’ the newly arrived man asked Thomas.
‘In front?’ Thomas asked.
‘Of the rest of us.’
‘We walked,’ Thomas said, ‘from France. Or at least from London.’
‘From Southampton!’ Father Hobbe corrected Thomas with a pedantry that was utterly out of place on this smoke-stinking hilltop where a Scotsman writhed in his death agonies.
‘France?’ The first man, tangle-haired, brown-faced, and with a northern accent so thick that Thomas found it hard to understand, sounded as if he had never heard of France. ‘You were in France?’ he asked.
‘With the King.’
‘You’re with us now,’ the second man said threateningly, then looked Eleanor up and down. ‘Did you bring the doxie back from France?’
‘Yes,’ Thomas replied curtly.
‘He lies, he lies,’ a new voice said and a third horseman pushed himself forward. He was a lanky man, maybe thirty years old, with a face so red and raw that it looked as though he had scraped his skin off with the bristles when he shaved his sunken cheeks and long jaw. His dark hair was worn long and tied at the nape of his neck with a leather lace. His horse, a scarred roan, was as thin as the rider and had white nervous eyes. ‘I hate goddamn liars,’ the man said, staring at Thomas, then he turned and gave a baleful glance at the prisoners, one of whom wore the red heart badge of the Knight of Liddesdale on his jupon. ‘Almost as much as I hate goddamn Douglases.’
The newcomer wore a padded gambeson in place of a hauberk or haubergeon. It was the kind of protection an archer might wear if he could afford nothing better, yet this man plainly outranked archers for he wore a gold chain about his neck, a mark of distinction reserved for the gentry and above. A battered pig-snouted helmet, as scarred as the horse, hung from his saddle’s pommel, a sword, plainly scabbarded in leather was at his hip, while a shield, painted white with a black axe, hung from his left shoulder. He also had a coiled whip hanging at his belt. ‘The Scots have archers,’ the man said, looking at Thomas, then his unfriendly gaze moved on to Eleanor, ‘and they have women.’
‘I’m English,’ Thomas insisted.
‘We’re all English,’ Father Hobbe said firmly, forgetting that Eleanor was a Norman.
‘A Scotsman would say he was English if it stopped him from being gutted,’ the raw-faced man said caustically. The other two horsemen had fallen back, evidently wary of the thin man who now uncoiled the leather whip and, with a casual skill, flicked it so that the tip snaked out and cracked the air an inch or so from Eleanor’s face. ‘Is she English?’
‘She’s French,’ Thomas said.
The horseman did not answer straightaway, but just stared at Eleanor. The whip rippled as his hand trembled. He saw a fair, slight girl with golden hair and large, frightened eyes. Her pregnancy did not show yet and there was a delicacy to her that spoke of luxury and rare delight. ‘Scot, Welsh, French, what does it matter?’ the man asked. ‘She’s a woman. Do you care where a horse was born before you ride it?’ His own scarred and thin horse became frightened just then because the veering wind blew a sour gust of smoke to its nostrils. It stepped sideways in a series of small, nervous steps until the man drove his spurs back so savagely that he pierced the padded trapper and made the destrier stand shivering in fear. ‘What she is’ – the man spoke to Thomas and pointed his whip handle at Eleanor – ‘don’t matter, but you’re a Scot.’
‘I’m English,’ Thomas said again. A dozen other men wearing the badge of the black axe had come to gaze at Thomas and his companions. The men surrounded the three Scottish prisoners who seemed to know who the horseman with the whip was and did not like the knowledge. More bowmen and men-at-arms watched the cottages burning and laughed at the panicked rats that scrambled from what was left of the collapsed mossy thatch.
Thomas took an arrow from his bag and immediately four or five archers wearing the black-axe livery put arrows on their own strings. The other men in the axe livery grinned expectantly as if they knew this game and enjoyed it, but before it could be played out the horseman was distracted by one of the Scottish prisoners, the man wearing Sir William Douglas’s badge who, taking advantage of his captors’ interest in Thomas and Eleanor, had broken free and run northwards. He had not gone twenty paces before he was ridden down by one of the English men-at-arms and the thin man, amused by the Scotsman’s desperate bid for freedom, pointed at one of the burning cottages. ‘Warm the bastard up,’ he ordered. ‘Dickon! Beggar!’ He spoke to two dismounted men-at-arms. ‘Look after those three.’ He nodded towards Thomas. ‘Watch ’em close!’
Dickon, the younger of the two, was round-faced and grinning, but Beggar was an enormous man, a shambling giant with a face so bearded that his nose and eyes alone could be seen through the tangled, crusted hair beneath the brim of the rusted iron cap that served as a helmet. Thomas was six feet in height, the length of a bow, but he was dwarfed by Beggar whose vast chest strained at a leather jerkin studded with metal plates. At the giant’s waist, suspended by two lengths of rope, were a sword and a morningstar. The sword had no scabbard and its edge was chipped, while one of the spikes on the big metal ball of the morningstar was bent and smeared with blood and hair. The weapon’s three-foot haft banged against the giant’s bare legs as he lurched towards Eleanor. ‘Pretty,’ he said, ‘pretty.’
‘Beggar! Down, boy! Down!’ Dickon ordered cheerfully and Beggar dutifully twitched away from Eleanor, though he still gazed at her and made a low growling noise in his throat. Then a scream made him look towards the nearest burning cottage where the Scotsman, stripped naked now, had been thrust in and out of the fire. The prisoner’s long hair was alight and he frantically beat at the flames as he ran in panicked circles to the amusement of his English captors. Two other Scottish prisoners were squatting nearby, held on the ground by drawn swords.
The thin horseman watched as an archer swathed the prisoner’s hair in a piece of sacking to extinguish the flames. ‘How many of you are there?’ the thin man asked.
‘Thousands!’ the Scotsman answered defiantly.
The horseman leaned on his saddle’s pommel. ‘How many thousands, cully?’
The Scotsman, his beard and hair smoking and his naked skin blackened by embers and lacerated by cuts, did his best to look defiant. ‘More than enough to take you back home in a cage.’
‘He shouldn’t say that to Scarecrow!’ Dickon said, amused. ‘He shouldn’t say that!’
‘Scarecrow?’ Thomas asked. It seemed an appropriate nickname for the horseman with the black-axe badge was lean, poor and frightening.
‘He be Sir Geoffrey Carr to you, cully,’ Dickon said, watching the Scarecrow admiringly.
‘And who is Sir Geoffrey Carr?’ Thomas asked.
‘He be Scarecrow and he be Lord of Lackby,’ Dickon said in a tone which suggested everyone knew who Sir Geoffrey Carr was, ‘and he be having his Scarecrow games now!’ Dickon grinned because Sir Geoffrey, the whip coiled at his waist again, had dropped down from his horse and with a drawn knife, approached the Scottish prisoner.
‘Hold him down,’ Sir Geoffrey ordered the archers, ‘hold him down and spread his legs.’
‘Non!’ Eleanor cried in protest.
‘Pretty,’ Beggar said in his voice that rumbled deep inside his huge chest.
The Scotsman screamed and tried to pull himself away, but he was tripped, then held down by three archers while the man evidently known throughout the north as the Scarecrow knelt between his legs. Somewhere in the clearing fog a raven cawed. A handful of archers was staring north in case the Scots returned, but most were watching the Scarecrow and his knife. ‘You want to keep your shrivelled collops?’ Sir Geoffrey asked the Scotsman. ‘Then tell me how many there are of you.’
‘Fifteen thousand? Sixteen?’ The Scotsman was suddenly eager to talk.
‘He means ten or eleven thousand,’ Sir Geoffrey announced to the listening archers, ‘which is more than enough for our few arrows. And is your bastard King here?’
The Scotsman bridled at that, but a touch of the knife blade to his groin reminded him of his predicament. ‘David Bruce is here, aye.’
‘Who else?’
The desperate Scotsman named his army’s other leaders. The King’s nephew and heir to his throne, Lord Robert Stewart, was with the invading army, as were the Earls of Moray, of March, of Wigtown, Fife and Menteith. He named others, clan chiefs and wild men from the wastelands of the far north, but Carr was more interested in two of the earls. ‘Fife and Menteith?’ he asked. ‘They’re here?’
‘Aye, sir, they are.’
‘But they swore fealty to King Edward,’ Sir Geoffrey said, evidently disbelieving the man.
‘They march with us now,’ the Scotsman insisted, ‘as does Douglas of Liddesdale.’
‘That ripe bastard,’ Sir Geoffrey said, ‘that shit of hell.’ He stared northwards through the fog shredding from the ridge, which was being revealed as a narrow and rocky plateau running north and south. The pasture on the plateau was thin and the ridge’s weathered stone protruded through the grass like the ribs of a starving man. Off to the north-east, beyond the valley of mist, the cathedral and castle of Durham reared up on their river-lapped crag, while to the west were hills and woods and stone-walled fields cut with small streams. Two buzzards sailed above the ridge, going towards the Scottish army that was still concealed by the fog which lingered to the north, but Thomas was thinking that it would not be long before troops came to find the men who had run their fellow Scots away from the crossroads.
Sir Geoffrey leaned back and went to return his knife to its scabbard, then seemed to remember something and grinned at the prisoner. ‘You were going to take me back to Scotland in a cage, is that right?’
‘No!’
‘But you were! And why would I want to see Scotland? I can peer down a jakes whenever I want.’ He spat at the prisoner then nodded at the archers. ‘Hold him.’
‘No!’ the Scotsman shouted, then the shout turned to a terrible scream as Sir Geoffrey leaned forward with the knife again. The prisoner twitched and heaved as the Scarecrow, the front of his padded gambeson now sheeted with blood, stood up. The prisoner was still screaming, hands clutched to his bloody groin, and the sight brought a smile to the Scarecrow’s lips. ‘Throw the rest of him into the fire,’ he said, then turned to look at the other two Scottish prisoners. ‘Who is your master?’ he demanded of them.
They hesitated, then one licked his lips. ‘We serve Douglas,’ he said proudly.
‘I hate Douglas. I hate every Douglas that ever dropped out of the devil’s backside.’ Sir Geoffrey shuddered, then turned to his horse. ‘Burn them both,’ he ordered.
Thomas, looking away from the sudden blood, had seen a stone cross fallen at the crossroad’s centre. He stared at it, not seeing the carved dragon, but hearing the echoes of the noise and then the new screams as the prisoners were hurled into the flames. Eleanor ran to him and held his arm tight.
‘Pretty,’ Beggar said.
‘Here, Beggar, here!’ Sir Geoffrey called. ‘Hoist me!’ The giant made a step with his hands and Sir Geoffrey used it to climb into his saddle, then he kicked the horse towards Thomas and Eleanor. ‘I’m always hungry,’ Sir Geoffrey said, ‘after a gelding.’ He turned to watch the fire where one of the Scotsmen, hair flaming, tried to escape, but was prodded back into the inferno by a dozen bowstaves. The man’s howl was abruptly cut short as he collapsed. ‘I’m in the mood to geld and burn Scotsmen today,’ Sir Geoffrey said, ‘and you look like a Scot to me, boy.’
‘I’m not a boy,’ Thomas said, the anger rising in him.
‘You look like a bloody boy to me, boy. A Scots boy, maybe?’ Sir Geoffrey, plainly amused by Thomas’s temper, grinned at his newest victim who did indeed look young, though Thomas was twenty-two summers old and had fought for the last four of them in Brittany, Normandy and Picardy. ‘You look Scots, boy,’ the Scarecrow said, daring Thomas to defy him again. ‘All the Scots are black!’ he appealed to the crowd to judge Thomas’s complexion, and it was true that Thomas had a sun-darkened skin and black hair, but so did a score or more of the Scarecrow’s own archers. And though Thomas looked young he also looked hard. His hair was cropped close to his skull and four years of war had hollowed his cheeks, but there was still something distinctive in his looks, a handsomeness that attracted the eye and served to spur Sir Geoffrey Carr’s jealousy. ‘What’s on your horse?’ Sir Geoffrey jerked his head towards Thomas’s mare.
‘Nothing of yours,’ Thomas said.
‘What’s mine is mine, boy, and what’s yours is mine if I want it. Mine to take or mine to give. Beggar! You want that girl?’
Beggar grinned behind his beard and jerked his head up and down. ‘Pretty,’ he said. He scratched at the lice in his beard. ‘Beggar likes pretty.’
‘I reckon you can have the pretty when I’m through with her,’ Sir Geoffrey said with a grin and he took the whip from where it hung at his waist and cracked it in the air. Thomas saw that the long leather thong had a small iron claw at its end. Sir Geoffrey grinned at Thomas again, then drew back the whip as a threat. ‘Strip her, Beggar,’ he said, ‘let’s give the boys a bit of pleasure,’ and he was still grinning as Thomas swung his heavy bowstave hard into the teeth of Sir Geoffrey’s horse and the animal reared up, screaming, as Thomas knew it would, and the Scarecrow, unready for the motion, fell backwards, flailing for balance, and his men, who should have protected him, were so intent on the burning Scottish prisoners that not one drew a bow or a blade before Thomas had dragged Sir Geoffrey down from the saddle and had him on the ground with a knife at his throat.
‘I’ve been killing men for four years,’ Thomas said, ‘and not all of them were Frenchmen.’
‘Thomas!’ Eleanor screamed.
‘Take her, Beggar! Take her!’ Sir Geoffrey shouted. He heaved up, but Thomas was an archer and years of drawing his big black bow had given him extraordinary strength in the arms and chest and Sir Geoffrey could not budge him, so he spat at Thomas instead. ‘Take her, Beggar!’ he yelled again.
The Scarecrow’s men ran towards their master, but checked when they saw that Thomas had a knife at his captive’s throat.
‘Strip her, Beggar! Strip the pretty! We’ll all have her!’ Sir Geoffrey bawled, apparently oblivious of the blade at his gullet.
‘Who reads here? Who reads?’ Father Hobbe bellowed. The odd question checked everyone, even Beggar who had already snatched off Eleanor’s hat and now had his huge left arm around her neck while his right hand gripped the neckline of her frock. ‘Who in this company can read?’ Father Hobbe demanded again as he brandished the parchment he had taken from one of the sacks on the back of Thomas’s horse. ‘This is a letter from my lord the Bishop of Durham who is with our lord the King in France and it is sent to John Fossor, Prior of Durham, and only Englishmen who have fought with our King would carry such a letter. We have brought it from France.’
‘It proves nothing!’ Sir Geoffrey shouted, then spat at Thomas again as the blade was pressed hard into his throat.
‘And in what language is this letter written?’ A new horseman had spurred through the Scarecrow’s men. He wore no surcoat or jupon, but the badge on his battered shield was a scallop shell on a cross and it proclaimed that he was not one of Sir Geoffrey’s followers. ‘What language?’ he asked once more.
‘Latin,’ Thomas said, his knife still pressing hard into Sir Geoffrey’s neck.
‘Let Sir Geoffrey up,’ the newcomer commanded Thomas, ‘and I shall read the letter.’
‘Tell him to let my woman go,’ Thomas snarled.
The horseman looked surprised at being given an order by a mere archer, but he did not protest. Instead he urged his horse towards Beggar. ‘Let her go,’ he said and, when the big man did not obey, he half drew his sword. ‘You want me to crop your ears, Beggar? Is that it? Two ears gone? Then your nose, then your cock, is that what you want, Beggar? You want to be shorn like a summer ewe? Trimmed down like an elf?’
‘Let her go, Beggar,’ Sir Geoffrey said sullenly.
Beggar obeyed and stepped back and the horseman leaned down from his saddle to take the letter from Father Hobbe. ‘Let Sir Geoffrey go,’ the newcomer ordered Thomas, ‘for we shall have peace between Englishmen today, at least for a day.’
The horseman was an old man, at least fifty years old, with a great shock of white hair that looked as though it had never been close to a brush or comb. He was a large man, tall and big-bellied, on a sturdy horse that had no trapper, but only a tattered saddle cloth. The man’s full-length mail coat was sadly rusted in places and torn in others, while over the coat he had a breastplate that had lost two of its straps. A long sword hung at his right thigh. He looked to Thomas like a yeoman farmer who had ridden to war with whatever equipment his neighbours could lend him, but he had been recognized by Sir Geoffrey’s archers who had snatched off their hats and helmets when he appeared and who now treated him with deference. Even Sir Geoffrey seemed cowed by the white-haired man who frowned as he read the letter. ‘Thesaurus, eh?’ He was speaking to himself. ‘And a fine kettle of fish that is! A thesaurus indeed!’ Thesaurus was Latin, but the rest of his words were spoken in Norman French and he was evidently confident that no archer would understand him.
‘Mention of treasure’ – Thomas used the same language, which had been taught to him by his father – ‘makes men excited. Over-excited.’
‘Good Lord above, good Lord indeed, you speak French! Miracles never cease. Thesaurus, it does mean treasure, doesn’t it? My Latin is not what it was when I was young. I had it flogged into me by a priest and it seems to have mostly leaked out since. A treasure, eh? And you speak French!’ The horseman showed genial surprise that Thomas spoke the language of aristocrats, though Sir Geoffrey, who did not speak French, looked alarmed for it suggested Thomas might be a good deal better born than he had thought. The horseman gave the letter back to Father Hobbe, then spurred to Sir Geoffrey. ‘You were picking a squabble with an Englishman, Sir Geoffrey, a messenger, no less, from our lord the King. How do you explain that?’
‘I don’t have to explain anything,’ Sir Geoffrey said, ‘my lord.’ The last two words were added reluctantly.
‘I should fillet you now,’ his lordship said mildly, ‘then have you stuffed and mounted on a pole to scare the crows away from my newly born lambs. I could show you at Skipton Fair, Sir Geoffrey, as an example to other sinners.’ He seemed to consider that idea for a few heartbeats, then shook his head. ‘Just get on your horse,’ he said, ‘and fight the Scots today instead of quarrelling with your fellow Englishman.’ He turned in his saddle and raised his voice so all the archers and men-at-arms could hear him. ‘All of you, back down the ridge! And quick, before the Scots come and drive you off! You want to join those rascals in the fire?’ He pointed to the three Scottish prisoners who were now nothing but dark shrivelled shapes in the bright flames, then he beckoned Thomas and changed his language to French. ‘You’ve really come from France?’
‘Yes, my lord.’
‘Then do me the courtesy, my dear fellow, of speaking with me.’
They went south, leaving a broken stone cross, burned men and arrow-struck corpses in a thinning mist, where the army of Scotland had come to Durham.
Bernard de Taillebourg took the crucifix from about his neck and kissed the writhing figure of Christ that was pinned to the small wooden cross. ‘God be with you, my brother,’ he murmured to the old man lying on the stone bench cushioned by a palliasse of straw and a folded blanket. A second blanket, just as thin, covered the old man whose hair was white and wispy.
‘It is cold,’ Brother Hugh Collimore said feebly, ‘so cold.’ He spoke in French, though to de Taillebourg the old monk’s accent was barbarous for it was the French of Normandy and of England’s Norman rulers.
‘Winter comes,’ de Taillebourg said. ‘You can smell it on the wind.’
‘I am dying’ – Brother Collimore turned his red-rimmed eyes on his visitor – ‘and can smell nothing. Who are you?’
‘Take this,’ de Taillebourg said and gave his crucifix to the old monk, then he stoked up the wood fire, put two more logs on the revived blaze and sniffed a jug of mulled wine that sat in the hearth. It was not too rank and so he poured some into a horn cup. ‘At least you have a fire,’ he said, stooping to peer through the small window, no bigger than an arrow slit, that faced west across the encircling Wear. The monks’ hospital was on the slope of Durham’s hill, beneath the cathedral, and de Taillebourg could see the Scottish men-at-arms carrying their lances through the straggling remnants of mist on the skyline. Few of the mail-clad men had horses, he noticed, suggesting that the Scots planned to fight on foot.
Brother Collimore, his face pale and his voice frail, gripped the small cross. ‘The dying are allowed a fire,’ he said, as though he had been accused of indulging himself in luxury. ‘Who are you?’
‘I come from Cardinal Bessières,’ de Taillebourg said, ‘in Paris, and he sends you his greetings. Drink this, it will warm you.’ He held the mulled wine towards the old man.
Collimore refused the wine. His eyes were cautious. ‘Cardinal Bessières?’ he asked, his tone implying that the name was new to him.
‘The Pope’s legate in France.’ De Taillebourg was surprised that the monk did not recognize the name, but thought perhaps the dying man’s ignorance would be useful. ‘And the Cardinal is a man,’ the Dominican went on, ‘who loves the Church as fiercely as he loves God.’
‘If he loves the Church,’ Collimore said with a surprising force, ‘then he will use his influence to persuade the Holy Father to take the papacy back to Rome.’ The statement exhausted him and he closed his eyes. He had never been a big man, but now, beneath his lice-ridden blanket, he seemed to have shrunk to the size of a ten-year-old and his white hair was thin and fine like a small infant’s. ‘Let him move the papacy to Rome,’ he said again, though feebly, ‘for all our troubles have worsened since it was moved to Avignon.’
‘Cardinal Bessières wants nothing more than to move the Holy Father back to Rome,’ de Taillebourg lied, ‘and perhaps you, brother, can help us achieve that.’
Brother Collimore appeared not to hear the words. He had opened his eyes again, but just lay gazing up at the whitewashed stones of the arched ceiling. The room was low, chill and white. Sometimes, when the summer sun was high, he could see the flicker of reflected water on the white stones. In heaven, he thought, he would be forever within sight of crystal rivers and under a warm sun. ‘I was in Rome once,’ he said wistfully. ‘I remember going down some steps into a church where a choir sang. So beautiful.’
‘The Cardinal wants your help,’ de Taillebourg said.
‘There was a saint there.’ Collimore was frowning, trying to remember. ‘Her bones were yellow.’
‘So the Cardinal sent me to see you, brother,’ de Taillebourg said softly. His servant, dark-eyed and elegant, watched from the door.
‘Cardinal Bessières,’ Brother Collimore said in a whisper.
‘He sends you his greetings in Christ, brother.’
‘What Bessières wants,’ Collimore said, still in a whisper, ‘he takes with whips and scorpions.’
De Taillebourg half smiled. So Collimore did know of Cardinal Bessières after all, and no wonder, but perhaps fear of Bessières would be sufficient to elicit the truth. The monk had closed his eyes again and his lips were moving silently, suggesting he was praying. De Taillebourg did not disturb the prayers, but just gazed through the small window to where the Scots were making their battleline on the far hill. The invaders faced southwards so that the left end of their line was nearest to the city and de Taillebourg could see men jostling for position as they tried to take the places of honour closest to their lords. The Scots had evidently decided to fight on foot so that the English archers could not destroy their men-at-arms by cutting down their horses. There was no sign of those English yet, though from all de Taillebourg had heard they could not have assembled a great force. Their army was in France, outside Calais, not here, so perhaps it was merely a local lord leading his retainers? Yet plainly there were enough men to persuade the Scots to form a battleline, and de Taillebourg did not expect David’s army to be delayed for long. Which meant that if he wanted to hear the old man’s story and be away from Durham before the Scots entered the city then he had best make haste. He looked back at the monk, ‘Cardinal Bessières wants only the glory of the Church and of God. And he wants to know about Father Ralph Vexille.’
‘Dear God,’ Collimore said, and his fingers traced the bone figure on the small crucifix as he opened his eyes and turned his head to stare at the priest. The monk’s expression suggested it was the first time he had really noticed de Taillebourg and he shuddered, recognizing in his visitor a man who believed suffering gave merit. A man, Collimore reflected, who would be as implacable as his master in Paris. ‘Vexille!’ Collimore said, as though he had almost forgotten the name, and then he sighed. ‘It is a long tale,’ he said tiredly.
‘Then I will tell you what I know of it,’ de Taillebourg said. The gaunt Dominican was pacing the room now, turning and turning again in the small space under the highest part of the arched ceiling. ‘You have heard,’ he demanded, ‘that a battle was fought in Picardy in the summer? Edward of England fought his cousin of France and a man came from the south to fight for France and on his banner was the device of a yale holding a cup.’ Collimore blinked, but said nothing. His eyes were fixed on de Taillebourg who, in turn, stopped his pacing to look at the priest. ‘A yale holding a cup,’ he repeated.
‘I know the beast,’ Collimore said sadly. A yale was an heraldic animal, unknown in nature, clawed like a lion, horned like a goat and scaled like a dragon.
‘He came from the south,’ de Taillebourg said, ‘and he thought that by fighting for France he would wash from his family’s crest the ancient stains of heresy and of treason.’ Brother Collimore was far too sick to see that the priest’s servant was now listening intently, almost fiercely, or to notice that the Dominican had raised his voice slightly to make it easier for the servant, who still stood in the doorway, to overhear. ‘This man came from the south, riding in pride, believing his soul to be beyond reproof, but no man is beyond God’s reach. He thought he would ride in victory into the King’s affections, but instead he shared France’s defeat. God will sometimes humble us, brother, before raising us to glory.’ De Taillebourg spoke to the old monk, but his words were for his servant’s ears. ‘And after the battle, brother, when France wept, I found this man and he talked of you.’
Brother Collimore looked startled, but said nothing.
‘He talked of you,’ Father de Taillebourg said, ‘to me. And I am an Inquisitor.’
Brother Collimore’s fingers fluttered in an attempt to make the sign of the cross. ‘The Inquisition,’ he said feebly, ‘has no authority in England.’
‘The Inquisition has authority in heaven and in hell, and you think little England can stand against us?’ The fury in de Taillebourg’s voice echoed in the hospital cell. ‘To root out heresy, brother, we will ride to the ends of the earth.’
The Inquisition, like the Dominican order of friars, was dedicated to the eradication of heresy, and to do it they employed fire and pain. They could not shed blood, for that was against the law of the Church, but any pain inflicted without blood-letting was permitted, and the Inquisition knew well that fire cauterized bleeding and that the rack did not pierce a heretic’s skin and that great weights pressed on a man’s chest burst no veins. In cellars reeking of fire, fear, urine and smoke, in a darkness shot through with flamelight and the screams of heretics, the Inquisition hunted down the enemies of God and, by the application of bloodless pain, brought their souls into a blessed unity with Christ.
‘A man came from the south,’ de Taillebourg said to Collimore again, ‘and the crest on his shield was a yale holding a cup.’
‘A Vexille,’ Collimore said.
‘A Vexille,’ de Taillebourg said, ‘who knew your name. Now why, brother, would a heretic from the southern lands know the name of an English monk in Durham?’
Brother Collimore sighed. ‘They all knew,’ he said tiredly, ‘the whole family knew. They knew because Ralph Vexille was sent to me. The bishop thought I could cure him of madness, but his family feared he would tell me secrets instead. They wanted him dead, but we locked him away in a cell where no one but I could reach him.’
‘And what secrets did he tell you?’ de Taillebourg asked.
‘Madness,’ Brother Collimore said, ‘just madness.’ The servant stood in the doorway and watched him.
‘Tell me of the madness,’ the Dominican ordered.
‘The mad speak of a thousand things,’ Brother Collimore said, ‘they speak of spirits and phantoms, of snow in summer and darkness in the daylight.’
‘But Father Ralph spoke to you of the Grail,’ de Taillebourg said flatly.
‘He spoke of the Grail,’ Brother Collimore confirmed.
The Dominican let out a sigh of relief. ‘What did he tell you of the Grail?’
Hugh Collimore said nothing for a while. His chest rose and fell so feebly that the motion was scarcely visible, then he shook his head. ‘He told me that his family had owned the Grail and that he had stolen and hidden it! But he spoke of a hundred such things. A hundred such things.’
‘Where would he have hidden it?’ de Taillebourg enquired.
‘He was mad. Mad. It was my job, you know, to look after the mad? We starved or beat them to drive the devils out, but it did not always work. In winter we would plunge them into the river, through the ice, and that worked. Devils hate the cold. It worked with Ralph Vexille, or mostly it worked. We released him after a while. The demons were gone, you see.’
‘Where did he hide the Grail?’ De Taillebourg’s voice was harder and louder.
Brother Collimore stared at the flicker of reflected water light on the ceiling. ‘He was mad,’ he whispered, ‘but he was harmless. Harmless. And when he left here he was sent to a parish in the south. In the far south.’
‘At Hookton in Dorset?’
‘At Hookton in Dorset,’ Brother Collimore agreed, ‘where he had a son. He was a great sinner, you see, even though he was a priest. He had a son.’
Father de Taillebourg stared at the monk who had, at last, given him some news. A son? ‘What do you know of the son?’
‘Nothing.’ Brother Collimore sounded surprised that he should be asked.
‘And what do you know of the Grail?’ de Taillebourg probed.
‘I know that Ralph Vexille was mad,’ Collimore said in a whisper.
De Taillebourg sat on the hard bed. ‘How mad?’
Collimore’s voice became even softer. ‘He said that even if you found the Grail then you would not know it, not unless you were worthy.’ He paused and a look of puzzlement, almost amazement, showed briefly on his face. ‘You had to be worthy, he said, to know what the Grail was, but if you were worthy then it would shine like the very sun. It would dazzle you.’
De Taillebourg leaned close to the monk. ‘You believed him?’
‘I believe Ralph Vexille was mad,’ Brother Collimore said.
‘The mad sometimes speak truth,’ de Taillebourg said.
‘I think,’ Brother Collimore went on as though the Inquisitor had not spoken, ‘that God gave Ralph Vexille a burden too great for him to bear.’
‘The Grail?’ de Taillebourg asked.
‘Could you bear it? I could not.’
‘So where is it?’ de Taillebourg persisted. ‘Where is it?’
Brother Collimore looked puzzled again. ‘How would I know?’
‘It was not at Hookton,’ de Taillebourg said, ‘Guy Vexille searched for it.’
‘Guy Vexille?’ Brother Collimore asked.
‘The man who came from the south, brother, to fight for France and ended in my custody.’
‘Poor man,’ the monk said.
Father de Taillebourg shook his head. ‘I merely showed him the rack, let him feel the pincers and smell the smoke. Then I offered him life and he told me all he knew and he told me the Grail was not at Hookton.’
The old monk’s face twitched in a smile. ‘You did not hear me, father. If a man is unworthy then the Grail would not reveal itself. Guy Vexille could not have been worthy.’
‘But Father Ralph did possess it?’ De Taillebourg sought reassurance. ‘You think he really possessed it?’
‘I did not say as much,’ the monk said.
‘But you believe he did?’ de Taillebourg asked and, when Brother Collimore said nothing, he nodded to himself. ‘You do believe he did.’ He slipped off the bed, going to his knees and a look of awe came to his face as his linked hands clawed at each other. ‘The Grail,’ he said in a tone of utter wonder.
‘He was mad,’ Brother Collimore warned him.
De Taillebourg was not listening. ‘The Grail,’ he said again, ‘le Graal!’ He was clutching himself now, rocking back and forth in ecstasy. ‘Le Graal!’
‘The mad say things,’ Brother Collimore said, ‘and they do not know what they say.’
‘Or God speaks through them,’ de Taillebourg said fiercely.
‘Then God sometimes has a terrible tongue,’ the old monk replied.
‘You must tell me,’ de Taillebourg insisted, ‘all that Father Ralph told you.’
‘But it was so long ago!’
‘It is le Graal!’ de Taillebourg shouted and, in his frustration, he shook the old man. ‘It is le Graal! Don’t tell me you have forgotten.’ He glanced through the window and saw, raised on the far ridge, the red saltire on the yellow banner of the Scottish King and beneath it a mass of grey-mailed men with their thicket of lances, pikes and spears. No English foe was in sight, but de Taillebourg would not have cared if all the armies of Christendom were come to Durham for he had found his vision, it was the Grail, and though the world should tremble with armies all about him, he would pursue it.
And an old monk talked.
The horseman with the rusted mail, broken-strapped breastplate and scallop-decorated shield named himself as Lord Outhwaite of Witcar. ‘Do you know the place?’ he asked Thomas.
‘Witcar, my lord? I’ve not heard of it.’
‘Not heard of Witcar! Dear me. And it’s such a pleasant place, very pleasant. Good soil, sweet water, fine hunting. Ah, there you are!’ This last was to a small boy mounted on a large horse and leading a second destrier by the reins. The boy wore a jupon that had the scalloped cross emblazoned in yellow and red and, tugging the warhorse behind him, he spurred towards his master.
‘Sorry, my lord,’ the boy said, ‘but Hereward do haul away, he do.’ Hereward was evidently the destrier he led. ‘And he hauled me clean away from you!’
‘Give him to this young man here,’ Lord Outhwaite said. ‘You can ride?’ he added earnestly to Thomas.
‘Yes, my lord.’
‘Hereward is a handful though, a rare handful. Kick him hard to let him know who’s master.’
A score of men appeared in Lord Outhwaite’s livery, all mounted and all with armour in better repair than their master’s. Lord Outhwaite turned them back south. ‘We were marching on Durham,’ he told Thomas, ‘just minding our own affairs as good Christians should, and the wretched Scots appeared! We won’t make Durham now. I was married there, you know? In the cathedral. Thirty-two years ago, can you credit it?’ He beamed happily at Thomas. ‘And my dear Margaret still lives, God be praised. She’d like to hear your tale. You really were at Wadicourt?’
‘I was, my lord.’
‘Fortunate you, fortunate you!’ Lord Outhwaite said, then hailed yet more of his men to turn them about before they blundered into the Scots. Thomas was rapidly coming to realize that Lord Outhwaite, despite his ragged mail and dishevelled appearance, was a great lord, one of the magnates of the north country, and his lordship confirmed this opinion by grumbling that he had been forbidden by the King to fight in France because he and his men might be needed to fend off an invasion by the Scots. ‘And he was quite right!’ Lord Outhwaite sounded surprised. ‘The wretches have come south! Did I tell you my eldest boy was in Picardy? That’s why I’m wearing this.’ He plucked at a rent in the old mail coat. ‘I gave him the best armour we had because I thought we wouldn’t need it here! Young David of Scotland always seemed peaceable enough to me, but now England’s overrun by his fellows. Is it true that the slaughter at Wadicourt was vast?’
‘It was a field of dead, my lord.’
‘Theirs, not ours, God and His saints be thanked.’ His lordship looked across at some archers straggling southwards. ‘Don’t dawdle!’ he called in English. ‘The Scots will be looking for you soon enough.’ He looked back to Thomas and grinned. ‘So what would you have done if I hadn’t come along?’ he asked, still using English. ‘Cut the Scarecrow’s throat?’
‘If I had to.’
‘And had your own slit by his men,’ Lord Outhwaite observed cheerfully. ‘He’s a poisonous tosspot. God only knows why his mother didn’t drown him at birth, but then she was a goddamned turd-hearted witch if ever there was one.’ Like many lords who had grown up speaking French, Lord Outhwaite had learned his English from his parents’ servants and so spoke it coarsely. ‘He deserves a slit throat, the Scarecrow does, but he’s a bad enemy to have. He holds a grudge better than any man alive, but he has so many grudges that maybe he don’t have room for one more. He hates Sir William Douglas most of all.’
‘Why?’
‘Because Willie had him prisoner. Mind you, Willie Douglas has held most of us prisoner at one time or another and one or two of us have even held him in return, but the ransom near killed Sir Geoffrey. He’s down to his last score of retainers and I’d be surprised if he’s got more than three halfpennies in a pot. The Scarecrow’s a poor man, very poor, but he’s proud, and that makes him a bad enemy to have.’ Lord Outhwaite paused to raise a genial hand to a group of archers wearing his livery. ‘Wonderful fellows, wonderful. So tell me about the battle at Wadicourt. Is it true that the French rode down their own archers?’
‘They did, my lord. Genoese crossbowmen.’
‘So tell me all that happened.’
Lord Outhwaite had received a letter from his eldest son that told of the battle in Picardy, but he was desperate to hear of the fight from someone who had stood on that long green slope between the villages of Wadicourt and Crécy, and Thomas now told how the enemy had attacked late in the afternoon and how the arrows had flown down the hill to cut the King of France’s great army into heaps of screaming men and horses, and how some of the enemy had still come through the line of newly dug pits and past the arrows to hack at the English men-at-arms, and how, by the battle’s end, there were no arrows left, just archers with bleeding fingers and a long hill of dying men and animals. The very sky had seemed rinsed with blood.
The telling of the tale took Thomas down off the ridge and out of sight of Durham. Eleanor and Father Hobbe walked behind, leading the mare and sometimes interjecting with their own comments, while a score of Lord Outhwaite’s retainers rode on either side to listen to the battle’s tale. Thomas told it well and it was plain Lord Outhwaite liked him; Thomas of Hookton had always possessed a charm that had protected and recommended him, even though it sometimes made men like Sir Geoffrey Carr jealous. Sir Geoffrey had ridden ahead and, when Thomas reached the water meadows where the English force gathered, the knight pointed at him as if he were launching a curse and Thomas countered by making the sign of the cross. Sir Geoffrey spat.
Lord Outhwaite scowled at the Scarecrow. ‘I have not forgotten the letter your priest showed me’ – he spoke to Thomas in French now – ‘but I trust you will not leave us to deliver it to Durham yourself? Not while we have enemies to fight?’
‘Can I stand with your lordship’s archers?’ Thomas asked.
Eleanor hissed her disapproval, but both men ignored her. Lord Outhwaite nodded his acceptance of Thomas’s offer, then gestured that the younger man should climb down from the horse. ‘One thing does puzzle me, though,’ he went on, ‘and that is why our lord the King should entrust such an errand to one so young.’
‘And so base born?’ Thomas asked with a smile, knowing that was the real question Lord Outhwaite had been too fastidious to ask.
His lordship laughed to be found out. ‘You speak French, young man, but carry a bow. What are you? Base or well born?’
‘Well enough, my lord, but out of wedlock.’
‘Ah!’
‘And the answer to your question, my lord, is that our lord the King sent me with one of his chaplains and a household knight, but both caught a sickness in London and that is where they remain. I came on with my companions.’
‘Because you were eager to speak with this old monk?’
‘If he lives, yes, because he can tell me about my father’s family. My family.’
‘And he can tell you about this treasure, this thesaurus. You know of it?’
‘I know something of it, my lord,’ Thomas said cautiously.
‘Which is why the King sent you, eh?’ Lord Outhwaite queried, but did not give Thomas time to answer the question. He gathered his reins. ‘Fight with my archers, young man, but take care to stay alive, eh? I would like to know more of your thesaurus. Is the treasure really as great as the letter says?’
Thomas turned away from the ragged-haired Lord Outhwaite and stared up the ridge where there was nothing to be seen now except the bright-leaved trees and a thinning plume of smoke from the burned-out hovels. ‘If it exists, my lord’ – he spoke in French – ‘then it is the kind of treasure that is guarded by angels and sought by demons.’
‘And you seek it?’ Lord Outhwaite asked with a smile.
Thomas returned the smile. ‘I merely seek the Prior of Durham, my lord, to give him the bishop’s letter.’
‘You want Prior Fossor, eh?’ Lord Outhwaite nodded towards a group of monks. ‘That’s him over there. The one in the saddle.’ He had indicated a tall, white-haired monk who was astride a grey mare and surrounded by a score of other monks, all on foot, one of whom carried a strange banner that was nothing but a white scrap of cloth hanging from a painted pole. ‘Talk to him,’ Lord Outhwaite said, ‘then seek my flag. God be with you!’ He said the last four words in English.
‘And with your lordship,’ Thomas and Father Hobbe answered together.
Thomas walked towards the Prior, threading his way through archers who clustered about three wagons to receive spare sheaves of arrows. The small English army had been marching towards Durham on two separate roads and now the men straggled across fields to come together in case the Scots descended from the high ground. Men-at-arms hauled mail coats over their heads and the richer among them buckled on whatever pieces of plate armour they owned. The army’s leaders must have had a swift conference for the first standards were being carried northwards, showing that the English wanted to confront the Scots on the higher ground of the ridge rather than be attacked in the water meadows or try to reach Durham by a circuitous route. Thomas had become accustomed to the English banners in Brittany, Normandy and Picardy, but these flags were all strange to him: a silver crescent, a brown cow, a blue lion, the Scarecrow’s black axe, a red boar’s head, Lord Outhwaite’s scallop-emblazoned cross and, gaudiest of all, a great scarlet flag showing a pair of crossed keys thickly embroidered in gold and silver threads. The prior’s flag looked shabby and cheap compared to all those other banners for it was nothing but a small square of frayed cloth beneath which the prior was working himself into a frenzy. ‘Go and do God’s work,’ he shouted at some nearby archers, ‘for the Scots are animals! Animals! Cut them down! Kill them all! God will reward each death! Go and smite them! Kill them!’ He saw Thomas approaching. ‘You want a blessing, my son? Then God give strength to your bow and add bite to your arrows! May your arm never tire and your eye never dim. God and the saints bless you while you kill!’
Thomas crossed himself then held out the letter. ‘I came to give you this, sir,’ he said.
The prior seemed astonished that an archer should address him so familiarly, let alone have a letter for him and at first he did not take the parchment, but one of his monks snatched it from Thomas and, seeing the broken seal, raised his eyebrows. ‘My lord the bishop writes to you,’ he said.
‘They are animals!’ the prior repeated, still caught up in his peroration, then he realized what the monk had said. ‘My lord bishop writes?’
‘To you, brother,’ the monk said.
The prior seized the painted pole and dragged the makeshift banner down so it hung near to Thomas’s face. ‘You may kiss it,’ he said grandly.
‘Kiss it?’ Thomas was quite taken aback. The ragged cloth, now it was close by his nose, smelt musty.
‘It is St Cuthbert’s corporax cloth,’ the prior said excitedly, ‘taken from his tomb, my son! The blessed St Cuthbert will fight for us! The very angels of heaven will follow him into the battle.’
Thomas, faced with the saint’s relic, went to his knees and drew the cloth to his lips. It was linen, he thought, and now he could see it was embroidered about its edge with an intricate pattern in faded blue thread. In the centre of the cloth, which was used during Mass to hold the wafers, was an elaborate cross, embroidered in silver threads that scarcely showed against the frayed white linen. ‘It is really St Cuthbert’s cloth?’ he asked.
‘His alone!’ the prior exclaimed. ‘We opened his tomb in the cathedral this very morning, and we prayed to him and he will fight for us today!’ The prior jerked the flag up and waved it towards some men-at-arms who spurred their horses northwards. ‘Perform God’s work! Kill them all! Dung the fields with their noxious flesh, water it with their treacherous blood!’
‘The bishop wants this young man to speak with Brother Hugh Collimore,’ the monk who had read the letter now told the prior, ‘and the King wishes it too. His lordship says there is a treasure to be found.’
‘The King wishes it?’ the prior looked in astonishment at Thomas. ‘The King wishes it?’ he asked again and then he came to his senses and realized there was great advantage in royal patronage and so he snatched the letter and read it himself, only to find even more advantage than he had anticipated. ‘You come in search of a great thesaurus?’ he asked Thomas suspiciously.
‘So the bishop believes, sir,’ Thomas responded.
‘What treasure?’ the prior snapped and all the monks gaped at him as the notion of a treasure momentarily made them forget the proximity of the Scottish army.
‘The treasure, sir’ – Thomas avoided giving a truthful answer – ‘is known to Brother Collimore.’
‘But why send you?’ the prior asked, and it was a fair question for Thomas looked young and possessed no apparent rank.
‘Because I have some knowledge of the matter too,’ Thomas said, wondering if he had said too much.
The prior folded the letter, inadvertently tearing off the seal as he did so, and thrust it into a pouch that hung from his knotted belt. ‘We shall talk after the battle,’ he said, ‘and then, and only then, I shall decide whether you may see Brother Collimore. He is sick, you know? Ailing, poor soul. Maybe he is dying. It may not be seemly for you to disturb him. We shall see, we shall see.’ He plainly wanted to talk to the old monk himself and so be the sole possessor of whatever knowledge Collimore might have. ‘God bless you, my son,’ the prior dismissed Thomas, then hoisted his sacred banner and hurried north. Most of the English army was already climbing the ridge, leaving only their wagons and a crowd of women, children and those men too sick to walk. The monks, making a procession behind their corporax cloth, began to sing as they followed the soldiers.
Thomas ran to a cart and took a sheaf of arrows, which he thrust into his belt. He could see that Lord Outhwaite’s men-at-arms were riding towards the ridge, followed by a large group of archers. ‘Maybe the two of you should stay here,’ he said to Father Hobbe.
‘No!’ Eleanor said. ‘And you should not be fighting.’
‘Not fight?’ Thomas asked.
‘It is not your battle!’ Eleanor insisted. ‘We should go to the city! We should find the monk.’
Thomas paused. He was thinking of the priest who, in the swirl of fog and smoke, had killed the Scotsman and then spoken to him in French. I am a messenger, the priest had said. ‘Je suis un avant-coureur,’ had been his exact words and an avant-coureur was more than a mere messenger. A herald, perhaps? An angel even? Thomas could not drive away the image of that silent fight, the men so ill matched, a soldier against a priest, yet the priest had won and then had turned his gaunt, bloodied face on Thomas and announced himself: ‘Je suis un avant-coureur.’ It was a sign, Thomas thought, and he did not want to believe in signs and visions, he wanted to believe in his bow. He thought perhaps Eleanor was right and that the conflict with its unexpected victor was a sign from heaven that he should follow the avant-coureur into the city, but there were also enemies up on the hill and he was an archer and archers did not walk away from a battle. ‘We’ll go to the city,’ he said, ‘after the fight.’
‘Why?’ she demanded fiercely.
But Thomas would not explain. He just started walking, climbing a hill where larks and finches flitted through the hedges and fieldfares, brown and grey, called from the empty pastures. The fog was all gone and a drying wind blew across the Wear.
And then, from where the Scots waited on the higher ground, the drums began to beat.
Sir William Douglas, Knight of Liddesdale, prepared himself for battle. He pulled on leather breeches thick enough to thwart a sword cut and over his linen shirt he hung a crucifix that had been blessed by a priest in Santiago de Compostela where St James was buried. Sir William Douglas was not a particularly religious man, but he paid a priest to look after his soul and the priest had assured Sir William that wearing the crucifix of St James, the son of thunder, would ensure he received the last rites safe in his own bed. About his waist he tied a strip of red silk that had been torn from one of the banners captured from the English at Bannockburn. The silk had been dipped in the holy water of the font in the chapel of Sir William’s castle at Hermitage and Sir William had been persuaded that the scrap of silk would ensure victory over the old and much hated enemy.
He wore a haubergeon taken from an Englishman killed in one of Sir William’s many raids south of the border. Sir William remembered that killing well. He had seen the quality of the Englishman’s haubergeon at the very beginning of the fight and he had bellowed at his men to leave the fellow alone, then he had cut the man down by striking at his ankles and the Englishman, on his knees, had made a mewing sound that had made Sir William’s men laugh. The man had surrendered, but Sir William had cut his throat anyway because he thought any man who made a mewing sound was not a real warrior. It had taken the servants at Hermitage two weeks to wash the blood out of the fine mesh of the mail. Most of the Scottish leaders were dressed in hauberks, which covered a man’s body from neck to calves, while the haubergeon was much shorter and left the legs unprotected, but Sir William intended to fight on foot and he knew that a hauberk’s weight wearied a man quickly and tired men were easily killed. Over the haubergeon he wore a full-length surcoat that showed his badge of the red heart. His helmet was a sallet, lacking any visor or face protection, but in battle Sir William liked to see what his enemies to the left and right were doing. A man in a full helm or in one of the fashionable pig-snouted visors could see nothing except what the slit right in front of his eyes let him see, which was why men in visored helmets spent the battle jerking their heads left and right, left and right, like a chicken among foxes, and they twitched until their necks were sore and even then they rarely saw the blow that crushed their skulls. Sir William, in battle, looked for men whose heads were jerking like hens, back and forth, for he knew they were nervous men who could afford a fine helmet and thus pay a finer ransom. He carried his big shield. It was really too heavy for a man on foot, but he expected the English to loose their archery storm and the shield was thick enough to absorb the crashing impact of yard-long, steel-pointed arrows. He could rest the foot of the shield on the ground and crouch safe behind it and, when the English ran out of arrows, he could always discard it. He carried a spear in case the English horsemen charged, and a sword, which was his favourite killing weapon. The sword’s hilt encased a scrap of hair cut from the corpse of St Andrew, or at least that was what the pardoner who had sold Sir William the scrap had claimed.
Robbie Douglas, Sir William’s nephew, wore mail and a sallet, and carried a sword and shield. It had been Robbie who had brought Sir William the news that Jamie Douglas, Robbie’s older brother, had been killed, presumably by the Dominican priest’s servant. Or perhaps Father de Taillebourg had done the killing? Certainly he must have ordered it. Robbie Douglas, twenty years old, had wept for his brother. ‘How could a priest do it?’ Robbie had demanded of his uncle.
‘You have a strange idea of priests, Robbie,’ Sir William had said. ‘Most priests are weak men given God’s authority and that makes them dangerous. I thank God no Douglas has ever put on a priest’s robe. We’re all too honest.’
‘When this day’s done, uncle,’ Robbie Douglas said, ‘you’ll let me go after that priest.’
Sir William smiled. He might not be an overtly religious man, but he did hold one creed sacred and that was that any family member’s murder must be avenged and Robbie, he reckoned, would do vengeance well. He was a good young man, hard and handsome, tall and straightforward, and Sir William was proud of his youngest sister’s son. ‘We’ll talk at day’s end,’ Sir William promised him, ‘but till then, Robbie, stay close to me.’
‘I will, uncle.’
‘We’ll kill a good few Englishmen, God willing,’ Sir William said, then led his nephew to meet the King and to receive the blessing of the royal chaplains.
Sir William, like most of the Scottish knights and chieftains, was in mail, but the King wore French-made plate, a thing so rare north of the border that men from the wild tribes came to stare at this sun-reflecting creature made of moving metal. The young King seemed just as impressed for he took off his surcoat and walked up and down admiring himself and being admired as his lords came for a blessing and to offer advice. The Earl of Moray, whom Sir William believed was a fool, wanted to fight on horseback and the King was tempted to agree. His father, the great Robert the Bruce, had beaten the English at the Bannockburn on horseback, and not just beaten them, but humiliated them. The flower of Scotland had ridden down the nobility of England and David, King now of his father’s country, wanted to do the same. He wanted blood beneath his hooves and glory attached to his name; he wanted his reputation to spread through Christendom and so he turned and gazed longingly at his red and yellow painted lance propped against the bough of an elm.
Sir William Douglas saw where the King was looking. ‘Archers,’ he said laconically.
‘There were archers at the Bannockburn,’ the Earl of Moray insisted.
‘Aye, and the fools didn’t know how to use them,’ Sir William said, ‘but you can’t depend on the English being fools for ever.’
‘And how many archers can they have?’ the Earl asked. ‘There are said to be thousands of bowmen in France, hundreds more in Brittany and as many again in Gascony, so how many can they have here?’
‘They have enough,’ Sir William growled curtly, not bothering to hide the contempt he felt for John Randolph, third Earl of Moray. The Earl was just as experienced in war as Sir William, but he had spent too long as a prisoner of the English and the consequent hatred made him impetuous.
The King, young and inexperienced, wanted to side with the Earl whose friend he was, but he saw that his other lords were agreeing with Sir William who, though he held no great title nor position of state, was more battle-hardened than any man in Scotland. The Earl of Moray sensed that he was losing the argument and he urged haste. ‘Charge now, sir,’ he suggested, ‘before they can make a battleline.’ He pointed southwards to where the first English troops were appearing in the pastures. ‘Cut the bastards down before they’re ready.’
‘That,’ the Earl of Menteith put in quietly, ‘was the advice given to Philip of Valois in Picardy. It didn’t serve there and it won’t serve here.’
‘Besides which,’ Sir William Douglas remarked caustically, ‘we have to contend with stone walls.’ He pointed to the walls which bounded the pastures where the English were beginning to form their line. ‘Maybe Moray can tell us how armoured knights get past stone walls?’ he suggested.
The Earl of Moray bridled. ‘You take me for a fool, Douglas?’
‘I take you as you show yourself, John Randolph,’ Sir William answered.
‘Gentlemen!’ the King snapped. He had not noticed the stone walls when he formed his battleline beside the burning cottages and the fallen cross. He had only seen the empty green pastures and the wide road and his even wider dream of glory. Now he watched the enemy straggle from the far trees. There were plenty of archers coming, and he had heard how those bowmen could fill the sky with their arrows and how their steel arrow heads drove deep into horses and how the horses then went mad with pain. And he dared not lose this battle. He had promised his nobles that they would celebrate the feast of Christmas in the hall of the English King in London and if he lost then he would lose their respect and encourage some to rebellion. He had to win and, being impatient, he wanted to win quickly. ‘If we charge fast enough,’ he suggested tentatively, ‘before they all reach their lines—’
‘Then, you’ll break your horse’s legs on the stone walls,’ Sir William said with scant respect for his royal master. ‘If your majesty’s horse even gets that far. You can’t protect a horse from arrows, sir, but you can weather the storm on foot. Put your pikes up front, but mix them with men-at-arms who can use their shields to protect the pike-holders. Shields up, heads down and hold hard, that’s how we win this.’
The King tugged at the espalier which covered his right shoulder and had an annoying habit of riding up on the top edge of the breastplate. Traditionally the defence of Scottish armies was in the hands of pikemen who used their monstrously long weapons to hold off the enemy knights, but pikemen needed both hands to hold their unwieldy blades and so became easy targets for English bowmen who liked to boast that they carried the lives of Scottish pikemen in their arrow bags. So protect the pikemen with the shields of the men-at-arms and let the enemy waste their arrows. It made sense, but it still irked David Bruce that he could not lead his horsemen in an earth-shaking assault while the trumpets screamed at the heavens.
Sir William saw his King’s hesitation and pressed his argument. ‘We have to stand, sir, and we have to wait, and we have to let our shields take the arrows, but in the end, sir, they’ll tire of wasting shafts and they’ll come to the attack and that’s when we’ll chop them down like dogs.’
A growl of assent greeted this. The Scottish lords, hard men all, armed and armoured, bearded and grim, were confident that they could win this fight because they so outnumbered the enemy, but they also knew there was no short cut to victory, not when archers opposed them, and so they would have to do what Sir William said: endure the arrows, goad the enemy, then give them slaughter.
The King heard his lords agree with Sir William and so, reluctantly, he abandoned his dream of breaking the enemy with mounted knights. That was a disappointment, but he looked about his lords and thought that with such men beside him he could not possibly lose. ‘We shall fight on foot,’ he decreed, ‘and chop them down like dogs. We shall slaughter them like whipped puppies!’ And afterwards, he thought, when the survivors were fleeing southwards, the Scottish cavalry could finish the slaughter.
But for now it would be footman against footman and so the war banners of Scotland were carried forward and planted across the ridge. The burning cottages were mere embers now that cradled three shrunken bodies, black and small as children, and the King planted his flags close to those dead. He had his own standard, red saltire on yellow field, and the banner of Scotland’s saint, white saltire on blue, in the line’s centre and to left and right the flags of the lesser lords flew. The lion of Stewart brandished its blade, the Randolph falcon spread its wings while to east and west the stars and axes and crosses snapped in the wind. The army was arrayed in three divisions, called sheltrons, and the three sheltrons were so large that the men on the far flanks jostled in towards the centre to keep themselves on the flatter ground of the ridge’s summit.
The rearmost ranks of the sheltrons were composed of the tribesmen from the islands and the north, men who fought bare-legged, without metal armour, wielding vast swords that could club a man to death as easily as cut him down. They were fearsome fighters, but their lack of armour made them horribly vulnerable to arrows and so they were placed at the rear and the leading ranks of the three sheltrons were filled by men-at-arms and pikemen. The men-at-arms carried swords, axes, maces or war-hammers and, most important, the shields that could protect the pikemen whose weapons were tipped with a spike, a hook and an axehead. The spike could hold an enemy at bay, the hook could haul an armoured man out of the saddle or off his feet, and the axe could smash through his mail or plate. The line bristled with the pikes that made a steel hedge to greet the English and priests walked along the hedge consecrating the weapons and the men who held them. Soldiers knelt to receive their blessings. A few of the lords, like the King himself, were mounted, but only so that they could see over the heads of their army, and those men stared south to see the last of the English troops come into view. So few of them! Such a small army to beat! To the left of the Scots was Durham, its towers and ramparts thick with folk watching the battle, and in front was this small army of Englishmen who did not possess the sense to retreat south towards York. They would fight on the ridge instead and the Scots had the advantage of position and numbers. ‘If you hate them!’ Sir William Douglas shouted at his men on the right of the Scottish battleline, ‘then let them hear you!’
The Scots bellowed their hatred. They clashed swords and spears against their shields, they shrieked to the sky and, in the line’s centre, where the King’s sheltron waited under the banners of the cross, a troop of drummers began to beat huge goatskin drums. Each drum was a big ring of oak over which were stretched two goat skins that were tightened with ropes until an acorn, dropped onto a skin, would bounce as high as the hand that had let it go and the drums, beaten with withies, made a sharp, almost metallic sound that filled the sky. They made an assault of pure noise.
‘If you hate the English, let them know!’ the Earl of March shouted from the left of the Scottish line that lay closest to the city. ‘If you hate the English, let them know!’ and the roar became louder, the clash of spear stave on shield was stronger, and the noise of Scotland’s hate spread across the ridge so that nine thousand men were howling at the three thousand who were foolish enough to confront them.
‘We shall cut them down like stalks of barley,’ a priest promised, ‘we shall soak the fields with their stinking blood and fill all hell with their English souls.’
‘Their women are yours!’ Sir William told his men. ‘Their wives and their daughters will be your toys tonight!’ He grinned at his nephew Robbie. ‘You’ll have your pick of Durham’s women, Robbie.’
‘And London’s women,’ Robbie said, ‘before Christmas.’
‘Aye, them too,’ Sir William promised.
‘In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,’ the King’s senior chaplain shouted, ‘send them all to hell! Each and every foul one of them to hell! For every Englishman you kill today means a thousand less weeks in purgatory!’
‘If you hate the English,’ Lord Robert Stewart, Steward of Scotland and heir to the throne, called, ‘let them hear!’ And the noise of that hate was like a thunder that filled the deep valley of the Wear, and the thunder reverberated from the crag where Durham stood and still the noise swelled to tell the whole north country that the Scots had come south.
And David, King of those Scots, was glad that he had come to this place where the dragon cross had fallen and the burning houses smoked and the English waited to be killed. For this day he would bring glory to St Andrew, to the great house of Bruce, and to Scotland.
Thomas, Father Hobbe and Eleanor followed the prior and his monks who were still chanting, though the brothers’ voices were now ragged for they were breathless from hurrying. St Cuthbert’s corporax cloth swayed to and fro and the banner attracted a straggling procession of women and children who, not wanting to wait out of sight of their men, carried spare sheaves of arrows up the hill. Thomas wanted to go faster, to get past the monks and find Lord Outhwaite’s men, but Eleanor deliberately hung back until he turned on her angrily. ‘You can walk faster,’ he protested in French.
‘I can walk faster,’ she said, ‘and you can ignore a battle!’ Father Hobbe, leading the horse, understood the tone even though he did not comprehend the words. He sighed, thus earning himself a savage look from Eleanor. ‘You do not need to fight!’ she went on.
‘I’m an archer,’ Thomas said stubbornly, ‘and there’s an enemy up there.’
‘Your King sent you to find the Grail!’ Eleanor insisted. ‘Not to die! Not to leave me alone! Me and a baby!’ She had stopped now, hands clutching her belly and with tears in her eyes. ‘I am to be alone here? In England?’
‘I won’t die here,’ Thomas said scathingly.
‘You know that?’ Eleanor was even more scathing. ‘God spoke to you, perhaps? You know what other men do not? You know the day of your dying?’
Thomas was taken aback by the outburst. Eleanor was a strong girl, not given to tantrums, but she was distraught and weeping now. ‘Those men,’ Thomas said, ‘the Scarecrow and Beggar, they won’t touch you. I’ll be here.’
‘It isn’t them!’ Eleanor wailed. ‘I had a dream last night. A dream.’
Thomas put his hands on her shoulders. His hands were huge and strengthened by hauling on the hempen string of the big bow. ‘I dreamed of the Grail last night,’ he said, knowing that was not quite true. He had not dreamed of the Grail, rather he had woken to a vision which had turned out to be a deception, but he could not tell Eleanor that. ‘It was golden and beautiful,’ he said, ‘like a cup of fire.’
‘In my dream,’ Eleanor said, gazing up at him, ‘you were dead and your body was all black and swollen.’
‘What is she saying?’ Father Hobbe asked.
‘She had a bad dream,’ Thomas said in English, ‘a nightmare.’
‘The devil sends us nightmares,’ the priest asserted. ‘It is well known. Tell her that.’
Thomas translated that for her, then he stroked a wisp of golden hair away from her forehead and tucked it under her knitted cap. He loved her face, so earnest and narrow, so cat-like, but with big eyes and an expressive mouth. ‘It was just a nightmare,’ he reassured her, ‘un cauchemar.’
‘The Scarecrow,’ Eleanor said with a shudder, ‘he is the cauchemar.’
Thomas drew her into an embrace. ‘He won’t come near you,’ he promised her. He could hear a distant chanting, but nothing like the monks’ solemn prayers. This was a jeering, insistent chant, heavy as the drumbeat that gave it rhythm. He could not hear the words, but he did not need to. ‘The enemy,’ he said to Eleanor, ‘are waiting for us.’
‘They are not my enemy,’ she said fiercely.
‘If they get into Durham,’ Thomas retorted, ‘then they will not know that. They will take you anyway.’
‘Everyone hates the English. Do you know that? The French hate you, the Bretons hate you, the Scots hate you, every man in Christendom hates you! And why? Because you love fighting! You do! Everyone knows that about the English. And you? You have no need to fight today, it is not your quarrel, but you can’t wait to be there, to kill again!’
Thomas did not know what to say, for there was truth in what Eleanor had said. He shrugged and picked up his heavy bow. ‘I fight for my King, and there’s an army of enemies on the hill here. They outnumber us. Do you know what will happen if they get into Durham?’
‘I know,’ Eleanor said firmly, and she did know for she had been in Caen when the English archers, disobeying their King, had swarmed across the bridge and laid the town waste.
‘If we don’t fight them and stop them here,’ Thomas said, ‘then their horsemen will hunt us all down. One after the other.’
‘You said you would marry me,’ Eleanor declared, crying again. ‘I don’t want my baby to be fatherless, I don’t want it to be like me.’ She meant illegitimate.
‘I will marry you, I promise. When the battle is done we shall be married in Durham. In the cathedral, yes?’ He smiled at her. ‘We can be married in the cathedral.’
Eleanor was pleased with the promise, but too furious to show her pleasure. ‘We should go to the cathedral now,’ she snapped. ‘We would be safe there. We should pray at the high altar.’
‘You can go to the city,’ Thomas said. ‘Let me fight my King’s enemies and you go to the city, you and Father Hobbe, and you find the old monk and you can both talk to him, and afterwards you can go to the cathedral and wait for me there.’ He unstrapped one of the big sacks on the mare’s back and took out his haubergeon, which he hauled over his head. The leather lining felt stiff and cold, and smelt of mould. He forced his hands down the sleeves, then strapped the sword belt about his waist and hung the weapon on his right side. ‘Go to the city,’ he told Eleanor, ‘and talk to the monk.’
Eleanor was crying. ‘You are going to die,’ she said, ‘I dreamed it.’
‘I can’t go to the city,’ Father Hobbe protested.
‘You’re a priest,’ Thomas barked, ‘not a soldier! Take Eleanor to Durham. Find Brother Collimore and talk to him.’ The prior had insisted that Thomas wait and suddenly it seemed very sensible to send Father Hobbe to talk to the old monk before the prior poisoned his memories. ‘Both of you,’ Thomas insisted, ‘talk to Brother Collimore. You know what to ask him. And I shall see you there this evening, in the cathedral.’ He took his sallet, with its broad rim to deflect the downward stroke of a blade, and tied it onto his head. He was angry with Eleanor because he sensed she was right. The imminent battle was not his concern except that fighting was his trade and England his country. ‘I will not die,’ he told Eleanor with an obstinate irrationality, ‘and you will see me tonight.’ He tossed the horse’s reins to Father Hobbe. ‘Keep Eleanor safe,’ he told the priest. ‘The Scarecrow won’t risk anything inside the monastery or in the cathedral.’
He wanted to kiss Eleanor goodbye, but she was angry with him and he was angry with her and so he took his bow and his arrow bag and walked away. She said nothing for, like Thomas, she was too proud to back away from the quarrel. Besides, she knew she was right. This clash with the Scots was not Thomas’s fight, whereas the Grail was his duty. Father Hobbe, caught between their obstinacy, walked in silence, but did note that Eleanor turned more than once, evidently hoping to catch Thomas looking back, but all she saw was her lover climbing the path with the great bow across his shoulder.
It was a huge bow, taller than most men and as thick about its belly as an archer’s wrist. It was made from yew; Thomas was fairly sure it was Italian yew though he could never be certain because the raw stave had drifted ashore from a wrecked ship. He had shaped the stave, leaving the centre thick, and he had steamed the tips to curve them against the way the bow would bend when it was drawn. He had painted the bow black, using wax, oil and soot, then tipped the two ends of the stave with pieces of nocked antler horn to hold the cord. The stave had been cut so that at the belly of the bow, where it faced Thomas when he drew the hempen string, there was hard heartwood which was compressed when the arrow was hauled back while the outer belly was springy sapwood and when he released the cord the heartwood snapped out of its compression and the sapwood pulled it back into shape and between them they sent the arrow hissing with savage force. The belly of the bow, where his left hand gripped the yew, was whipped with hemp and above the hemp, which had been stiffened with hoof glue, he had nailed a scrap of silver cut from a crushed Mass vessel that his father had used in Hookton church, and the piece of silver cup showed the yale with the Grail in its clawed grip. The yale came from Thomas’s family’s coat of arms, though he had not known that when he grew up for his father had never told him the tale. He had never told Thomas he was a Vexille from a family that had been lords of the Cathar heretics, a family that had been burned out of their home in southern France and which had fled to hide themselves in the darkest corners of Christendom.
Thomas knew little of the Cathar heresy. He knew his bow and he knew how to select an arrow of slender ash or birch or hornbeam, and he knew how to fledge the shaft with goose feathers and how to tip it with steel. He knew all that, yet he did not know how to drive that arrow through shield, mail and flesh. That was instinct, something he had practised since childhood; practised till his string fingers were bleeding; practised until he no longer thought when he drew the string back to his ear; practised until, like all archers, he was broad across the chest and hugely muscled in his arms. He did not need to know how to use a bow, it was just an instinct like breathing or waking or fighting.
He turned when he reached a stand of hornbeams that guarded the upper path like a rampart. Eleanor was walking stubbornly away and Thomas had an urge to shout to her, but knew she was already too far off and would not hear him. He had quarrelled with her before; men and women, it seemed to Thomas, spent half their lives fighting and half loving and the intensity of the first fed the passion of the second, and he almost smiled for he recognized Eleanor’s stubbornness and he even liked it; and then he turned and walked through the trampled drifts of fallen hornbeam leaves along the path between stone-walled pastures where hundreds of saddled stallions were grazing. These were the warhorses of the English knights and men-at-arms and their presence in the pastures told Thomas that the English expected the Scots to attack because a knight was far better able to defend himself on foot. The horses were kept saddled so that the mailed men-at-arms could either retreat swiftly or else mount up and pursue a beaten enemy.
Thomas could still not see the Scottish army, but he could hear their chanting, which was given force by the hellish beat of the big drums. The sound was making some of the pastured stallions nervous and three of them, pursued by pageboys, galloped beside the stone wall with their eyes showing white. More pages were exercising destriers just behind the English line, which was divided into three battles. Each battle had a knot of horsemen at the centre of its rear rank, the mounted men being the commanders beneath their bright banners, while in front of them were four or five rows of men-at-arms carrying swords, axes, spears and shields, and ahead of the men-at-arms, and crowded thick in the spaces between the three battles, were the archers.
The Scots, two arrow shots away from the English, were on slightly higher ground and also divided into three divisions which, like the English battles, were arrayed beneath their clusters of commanders’ banners. The tallest flag, the red and yellow royal standard, was in the centre. The Scottish knights and men-at-arms, like the English, were on foot, but each of their sheltrons was much larger than its opposing English battle, three or four times larger, but Thomas, tall enough to look over the English line, could see there were not many archers in the enemy ranks. Here and there along the Scottish line he could see some long bowstaves and there were a few crossbows visible among the thicket of pikes, but there were not nearly so many bowmen as were in the English array, though the English, in turn, were hugely outnumbered by the Scottish army. So the battle, if it ever started, would be between arrows and Scottish pikes and men-at-arms, and if there were not enough arrows then the ridge must become an English graveyard.
Lord Outhwaite’s banner of the cross and scallop shell was in the left-hand battle and Thomas crossed to it. The prior, dismounted now, was in the space between the left and centre divisions where one of his monks swung a censer and another brandished the Mass cloth on its painted pole. The prior himself was shouting, though Thomas could not tell whether he called insults at the enemy or prayers to God for the Scottish chanting was so loud. Thomas could not distinguish the enemy’s words either, but the sentiment was plain enough and it was sped on its way by the massive drums.
Thomas could see the huge drums now and observe the passion with which the drummers beat the great skins to make a noise as sharp as snapping bone. Loud, rhythmic and reverberating, an assault of ear-piercing thunder, and in front of the drums at the centre of the enemy line some bearded men whirled in a wild dance. They came darting from the rear of the Scottish line and they wore no mail or iron, but were draped in thick folds of cloth and brandished long-bladed swords about their heads and had small round leather shields, scarce larger than serving platters, strapped to their left forearms. Behind them the Scottish men-at-arms beat the flats of their sword blades against their shields while the pikemen thumped the ground with the butts of their long weapons to add to the noise of the huge drums. The sound was so great that the prior’s monks had abandoned their chanting and now just gazed at the enemy.
‘What they do’ – Lord Outhwaite, on foot like his men, had to raise his voice to make himself heard – ‘is try to scare us with noise before they kill us.’ His lordship limped, whether through age or some old wound, Thomas did not like to ask; it was plain he wanted somewhere he could pace about and kick the turf and so he had come to talk with the monks, though now he turned his friendly face on Thomas. ‘And you want to be most careful of those scoundrels,’ he said, pointing at the dancing men, ‘because they’re wilder than scalded cats. It’s said they skin their captives alive.’ Lord Outhwaite made the sign of the cross. ‘You don’t often see them this far south.’
‘Them?’ Thomas asked.
‘They’re tribesmen from the farthest north,’ one of the monks explained. He was a tall man with a fringe of grey hair, a scarred face and only one eye. ‘Scoundrels, they are,’ the monk went on, ‘scoundrels! They bow down to idols!’ He shook his head sadly. ‘I’ve never journeyed that far north, but I hear their land is shrouded in perpetual fog and that if a man dies with a wound to his back then his woman eats her own young and throws herself off the cliffs for the shame of it.’
‘Truly?’ Thomas asked.
‘It’s what I’ve heard,’ the monk said, making the sign of the cross.
‘They live on birds’ nests, seaweed and raw fish.’ Lord Outhwaite took up the tale, then smiled. ‘Mind you, some of my people in Witcar do that, but at least they pray to God as well. At least I think they do.’
‘But your folk don’t have cloven hooves,’ the monk said, staring at the enemy.
‘The Scots do?’ a much younger monk with a face left horribly scarred by smallpox asked anxiously.
‘The clansmen do,’ Lord Outhwaite said. ‘They’re scarcely human!’ He shook his head then held out a hand to the older monk. ‘It’s Brother Michael, isn’t it?’
‘Your lordship flatters to remember me,’ the monk answered, pleased.
‘He was once a man-at-arms to my Lord Percy,’ Lord Outhwaite explained to Thomas, ‘and a good one!’
‘Before I lost this to the Scots,’ Brother Michael said, raising his right arm so that the sleeve of his robe fell to reveal a stump at his wrist, ‘and this,’ he pointed to his empty eye socket, ‘so now I pray instead of fight.’ He turned and gazed at the Scottish line. ‘They are noisy today,’ he grumbled.
‘They’re confident,’ Lord Outhwaite said placidly, ‘and so they should be. When was the last time a Scottish army outnumbered us?’
‘They might outnumber us,’ Brother Michael said, ‘but they’ve picked a strange place to do it. They should have gone to the southern end of the ridge.’
‘And so they should, brother,’ Lord Outhwaite agreed, ‘but let us be grateful for small mercies.’ What Brother Michael meant was the Scots were sacrificing their advantage of numbers by fighting on the narrow ridge top where the English line, though thinner and with far fewer men, could not be overlapped. If the Scots had gone further south, where the ridge widened as it fell away to the water meadows, they could have outflanked their enemy. Their choice of ground might have been a mistake that helped the English, but that was small consolation when Thomas tried to estimate the size of the enemy army. Other men were doing the same and their guesses ranged from six to sixteen thousand, though Lord Outhwaite reckoned there were no more than eight thousand Scots. ‘Which is only three or four times our number,’ he said cheerfully, ‘and not enough of them are archers. God be thanked for English archers.’
‘Amen,’ Brother Michael said.
The smallpox-scarred younger monk was staring in fascination at the thick Scottish line. ‘I’ve heard that the Scots paint their faces blue. I can’t see any though.’
Lord Outhwaite looked astonished. ‘You heard what?’
‘That they paint their faces blue, my lord,’ the monk said, embarrassed now, ‘or maybe they only paint half the face. To scare us.’
‘To scare us?’ His lordship was amused. ‘To make us laugh, more like. I’ve never seen it.’
‘Nor I,’ Brother Michael put in.
‘It’s just what I’ve heard,’ the young monk said.
‘They’re frightening enough without paint,’ Lord Outhwaite pointed to a banner opposite his own part of the line. ‘I see Sir William’s here.’
‘Sir William?’ Thomas asked.
‘Willie Douglas,’ Lord Outhwaite said. ‘I was a prisoner of his for two years and I’m still paying the bankers because of it.’ He meant that his family had borrowed money to pay the ransom. ‘I liked him, though. He’s a rogue. And he’s fighting with Moray?’
‘Moray?’ Brother Michael asked.
‘John Randolph, Earl of Moray.’ Lord Outhwaite nodded at another banner close to the red-heart flag of Douglas. ‘They hate each other. God knows why they’re together in the line.’ He stared again at the Scottish drummers who leaned far back to balance the big instruments against their bellies. ‘I hate those drums,’ he said mildly. ‘Paint their faces blue! I never heard such nonsense!’ he chuckled.
The prior was haranguing the nearest troops now, telling them that the Scots had destroyed the great religious house at Hexham. ‘They defiled God’s holy church! They killed the brethren! They have stolen from Christ Himself and put tears onto the cheeks of God! Wreak His vengeance! Show no mercy!’ The nearest archers flexed their fingers, licked lips and stared at the enemy who were showing no sign of advancing. ‘You will kill them,’ the prior shrieked, ‘and God will bless you for it! He will shower blessings on you!’
‘They want us to attack them,’ Brother Michael remarked drily. He seemed embarrassed by his prior’s passion.
‘Aye,’ Lord Outhwaite said, ‘and they think we’ll attack on horseback. See the pikes?’
‘They’re good against men on foot too, my lord,’ Brother Michael said.
‘That they are, that they are,’ Lord Outhwaite agreed. ‘Nasty things, pikes.’ He fidgeted with some of the loose rings of his mail coat and looked surprised when one of them came away in his fingers. ‘I do like Willie Douglas,’ he said. ‘We used to hunt together when I was his prisoner. We caught some very fine boar in Liddesdale, I remember.’ He frowned. ‘Such noisy drums.’
‘Will we attack them?’ the young monk summoned up the courage to enquire.
‘Dear me no, I do hope not,’ Lord Outhwaite said. ‘We’re outnumbered! Much better to hold our ground and let them come to us.’
‘And if they don’t come?’ Thomas asked.
‘Then they’ll slink off home with empty pockets,’ Lord Outhwaite said, ‘and they won’t like that, they won’t like it at all. They’re only here for plunder! That’s why they dislike us so much.’
‘Dislike us? Because they’re here for plunder?’ Thomas had not understood his lordship’s thinking.
‘They’re envious, young man! Plain envious. We have riches, they don’t, and there are few things more calculated to provoke hatred than such an imbalance. I had a neighbour in Witcar who seemed a reasonable fellow, but then he and his men tried to take advantage of my absence when I was Douglas’s prisoner. They tried to ambush the coin for my ransom, if you can believe it! It was just envy, it seems, for he was poor.’
‘And now he’s dead, my lord?’ Thomas asked, amused.
‘Dear me, no,’ his lordship said reprovingly, ‘he’s in a very deep hole in the bottom of my keep. Deep down with the rats. I throw him coins every now and then to remind him why he’s there.’ He stood on tiptoe and gazed westwards where the hills were higher. He was looking for Scottish men-at-arms riding to make an assault from the south, but he saw none. ‘His father,’ he said, meaning Robert the Bruce, ‘wouldn’t be waiting there. He’d have men riding around our flanks to put the fear of God up our arses, but this young pup doesn’t know his trade, does he? He’s in the wrong place altogether!’
‘He’s put his faith in numbers,’ Brother Michael said.
‘And perhaps their numbers will suffice,’ Lord Outhwaite replied gloomily and made the sign of the cross.
Thomas, now that he had a chance to see the ground between the armies, could understand why Lord Outhwaite was so scornful of the Scottish King who had drawn up his army just south of the burned cottages where the dragon cross had fallen. It was not just that the narrowness of the ridge confined the Scots, denying them a chance to outflank the numerically inferior English, but that the ill-chosen battlefield was obstructed by thick blackthorn hedges and at least one stone wall. No army could advance across those obstacles and hope to hold its line intact, but the Scottish King seemed confident that the English would attack him for he did not move. His men shouted insults in the hope of provoking an attack, but the English stayed stubbornly in their ranks.
The Scots jeered even louder when a tall man on a great horse rode out from the centre of the English line. His stallion had purple ribbons twisted into its black mane and a purple trapper embroidered with golden keys that was so long that it swept the ground behind the horse’s rear hooves. The stallion’s head was protected by a leather faceplate on which was mounted a silver horn, twisted like a unicorn’s weapon. The rider wore plate armour that was polished bright and had a sleeveless surcoat of purple and gold, the same colours displayed by his page, standard-bearer and the dozen knights who followed him. The tall rider had no sword, but instead was armed with a great spiked morningstar like the one Beggar carried. The Scottish drummers redoubled their efforts, the Scots soldiers shouted insults and the English cheered until the tall man raised a mailed hand for silence.
‘We’re to get a homily from his grace,’ Lord Outhwaite said gloomily. ‘Very fond of the sound of his own voice is his grace.’
The tall man was evidently the Archbishop of York and, when the English ranks were silent, he again raised his mailed right hand high above his purple plumed helmet and made an extravagant sign of the cross. ‘Dominus vobiscum,’ he called. ‘Dominus vobiscum.’ He rode down the line, repeating the invocation. ‘You will kill God’s enemy today,’ he called after each promise that God would be with the English. He had to shout to make himself heard over the din of the enemy. ‘God is with you, and you will do His work by making many widows and orphans. You will fill Scotland with grief as a just punishment for their godless impiety. The Lord of Hosts is with you; God’s vengeance is your task!’ The Archbishop’s horse stepped high, its head tossing up and down as his grace carried his encouragement out to the flanks of his army. The last wisps of mist had long burned away and, though there was still a chill in the air, the sun had warmth and its light glinted off thousands of Scottish blades. A pair of one-horse wagons had come from the city and a dozen women were distributing dried herrings, bread and skins of ale.
Lord Outhwaite’s squire brought an empty herring barrel so his lordship could sit. A man played a reed pipe nearby and Brother Michael sang an old country song about the badger and the pardoner and Lord Outhwaite laughed at the words, then nodded his head towards the ground between the armies where two horsemen, one from each army, were meeting. ‘I see we’re being courteous today,’ he remarked. An English herald in a gaudy tabard had ridden towards the Scots and a priest, hastily appointed as Scotland’s herald, had come to greet him. The two men bowed from their saddles, talked a while, then returned to their respective armies. The Englishman, coming near the line, spread his hands in a gesture that said the Scots were being stubborn.
‘They come this far south and won’t fight?’ the prior demanded angrily.
‘They want us to start the battle,’ Lord Outhwaite said mildly, ‘and we want them to do the same.’ The heralds had met to discuss how the battle should be fought and each had plainly demanded that the other side begin by making an assault, and both sides had refused the invi-tation, so now the Scots tried again to provoke the English by insult. Some of the enemy advanced to within bowshot and shouted that the English were pigs and their mothers were sows, and when an archer raised his bow to reward the insults an English captain shouted at him. ‘Don’t waste arrows on words,’ he called.
‘Cowards!’ A Scotsman dared to come even closer to the English line, well within half a bowshot. ‘You bastard cowards! Your mothers are whores who suckled you on goat piss! Your wives are sows! Whores and sows! You hear me? You bastards! English bastards! You’re the devil’s turds!’ The fury of his hatred made him shake. He had a bristling beard, a ragged jupon and a coat of mail with a great rent in its backside so that when he turned round and bent over he presented his naked arse to the English. It was meant as an insult, but was greeted by a roar of laughter.
‘They’ll have to attack us sooner or later,’ Lord Outhwaite stated calmly. ‘Either that or go home with nothing, and I can’t see them doing that. You don’t raise an army of that size without hope of profit.’
‘They sacked Hexham,’ the prior observed gloomily.
‘And got nothing but baubles,’ Lord Outhwaite said dismissively. ‘The real treasures of Hexham were taken away for safekeeping long ago. I hear Carlisle paid them well enough to be left alone, but well enough to make eight or nine thousand men rich?’ He shook his head. ‘Those soldiers don’t get paid,’ he told Thomas, ‘they’re not like our men. The King of Scotland doesn’t have the cash to pay his soldiers. No, they want to take some rich prisoners today, then sack Durham and York, and if they’re not to go home poor and empty-handed then they’d best hitch up their shields and come at us.’
But still the Scots would not move and the English were too few to make an attack, though a straggle of men were constantly arriving to reinforce the Archbishop’s army. They were mostly local men and few had any armour or any weapons other than farm implements like axes and mattocks. It was close to midday now and the sun had chased the chill off the land so that Thomas was sweating under his leather and mail. Two of the prior’s lay servants had arrived with a horse-drawn cart loaded with casks of small beer, sacks of bread, a box of apples and a great cheese, and a dozen of the younger monks carried the provisions along the English line. Most of the army was sitting now, some were even sleeping and many of the Scots were doing the same. Even their drummers had given up, laying their great instruments on the pasture. A dozen ravens circled overhead and Thomas, thinking their presence presaged death, made the sign of the cross, then was relieved when the dark birds flew north across the Scottish troops.
A group of archers had come from the city and were cramming arrows into their quivers, a sure sign that they had never fought with the bow for a quiver was a poor instrument in battle. Quivers were likely to spill arrows when a man ran, and few held more than a score of points. Archers like Thomas preferred a big bag made of linen stretched about a withy frame in which the arrows stood upright, their feathers kept from being crushed by the frame and their steel heads projecting through the bag’s neck, which was secured by a lace. Thomas had selected his arrows carefully, rejecting any with warped shafts or kinked feathers. In France, where many of the enemy knights possessed expensive plate armour, the English would use bodkin arrows with long, narrow and heavy heads that lacked barbs and so were more likely to pierce breastplates or helmets, but here they were still using the hunting arrows with their wicked barbs that made them impossible to pull out of a wound. They were called flesh arrows, but even a flesh arrow could pierce mail at two hundred paces.
Thomas slept for a time in the early afternoon, only waking when Lord Outhwaite’s horse almost stepped on him. His lordship, along with the other English commanders, had been summoned to the Archbishop and so he had called for his horse and, accompanied by his squire, rode to the army’s centre. One of the Archbishop’s chaplains carried a silver crucifix along the line. The crucifix had a leather bag hanging just below the feet of Christ and in the bag, the chaplain claimed, were the knuckle bones of the martyred St Oswald. ‘Kiss the bag and God will preserve you,’ the chaplain promised, and archers and men-at-arms jostled for a chance to obey. Thomas could not get close enough to kiss the bag, but he did manage to reach out and touch it. Many men had amulets or strips of cloth given them by their wives, lovers or daughters when they left their farms or houses to march against the invaders. They touched those talismans now as the Scots, sensing that something was about to happen at last, climbed to their feet. One of their great drums began its awful noise.
Thomas glanced to his right where he could just see the tops of the cathedral’s twin towers and the banner flying from the castle’s ramparts. Eleanor and Father Hobbe should be in the city by now and Thomas felt a pang of regret that he had parted from his woman in such anger, then he gripped his bow so that the touch of its wood might keep her from evil. He consoled himself with the knowledge that Eleanor would be safe in the city and tonight, when the battle was won, they could make up their quarrel. Then, he supposed, they would marry. He was not sure he really wanted to marry, it seemed too early in his life to have a wife even if it was Eleanor, whom he was sure he loved, but he was equally sure she would want him to abandon the yew bow and settle in a house and that was the very last thing Thomas wanted. What he wanted was to be a leader of archers, to be a man like Will Skeat. He wanted to have his own band of bowmen that he could hire out to great lords. There was no shortage of opportunity. Rumour said that the Italian states would pay a fortune for English archers and Thomas wanted a part of it, but Eleanor must be looked after and he did not want their child to be a bastard. There were enough bastards in the world without adding another.
The English lords talked for a while. There were a dozen of them and they glanced constantly at the enemy and Thomas was close enough to see the anxiety on their faces. Was it worry that the enemy was too many? Or that the Scots were refusing battle and, in the next morning’s mist, might vanish northwards?
Brother Michael came and rested his old bones on the herring barrel that had served Lord Outhwaite as a seat. ‘They’ll send you archers forward. That’s what I’d do. Send you archers forward to provoke the bastards. Either that or drive them off, but you don’t drive Scotsmen off that easily. They’re brave bastards.’
‘Brave? Then why aren’t they attacking?’
‘Because they’re not fools. They can see these.’ Brother Michael touched the black stave of Thomas’s bow. ‘They’ve learned what archers can do. You’ve heard of Halidon Hill?’ He raised his eyebrows in surprise when Thomas shook his head. ‘Of course, you’re from the south. Christ could come again in the north and you southerners would never hear about it, or believe it if you did. But it was thirteen years ago now and they attacked us by Berwick and we cut them down in droves. Or our archers did, and they won’t be enthusiastic about suffering the same fate here.’ Brother Michael frowned as a small click sounded. ‘What was that?’
Something had touched Thomas’s helmet and he turned to see the Scarecrow, Sir Geoffrey Carr, who had cracked his whip, just glancing the metal claw at its tip off the crest of Thomas’s sallet. Sir Geoffrey coiled his whip as he jeered at Thomas. ‘Sheltering behind monks’ skirts, are we?’
Brother Michael restrained Thomas. ‘Go, Sir Geoffrey,’ the monk ordered, ‘before I call down a curse onto your black soul.’
Sir Geoffrey put a finger into a nostril and pulled out something slimy that he flicked towards the monk. ‘You think you frighten me, you one-eyed bastard? You who lost your balls when your hand was chopped off?’ He laughed, then looked back to Thomas. ‘You picked a fight with me, boy, and you didn’t give me a chance to finish it.’
‘Not now!’ Brother Michael snapped.
Sir Geoffrey ignored the monk. ‘Fighting your betters, boy? You can hang for that. No’ – he shuddered, then pointed a long bony finger at Thomas – ‘you will hang for that! You hear me? You will hang for it.’ He spat at Thomas, then turned his roan horse and spurred it back down the line.
‘How come you know the Scarecrow?’ Brother Michael asked.
‘We just met.’
‘An evil creature,’ Brother Michael said, making the sign of the cross, ‘born under a waning moon when a storm was blowing.’ He was still watching the Scarecrow. ‘Men say that Sir Geoffrey owes money to the devil himself. He had to pay a ransom to Douglas of Liddesdale and he borrowed deep from the bankers to do it. His manor, his fields, everything he owns is in danger if he can’t pay, and even if he makes a fortune today he’ll just throw it away at dice. The Scarecrow’s a fool, but a dangerous one.’ He turned his one eye on Thomas. ‘Did you really pick a fight with him?’
‘He wanted to rape my woman.’
‘Aye, that’s our Scarecrow. So be careful, young man, because he doesn’t forget slights and he never forgives them.’
The English lords must have come to some agreement for they reached out their mailed fists and touched metal knuckle on metal knuckle, then Lord Outhwaite turned his horse back towards his men. ‘John! John!’ he called to the captain of his archers. ‘We’ll not wait for them to make up their minds,’ he said as he dismounted, ‘but be provocative.’ It seemed Brother Michael’s prognostication was right; the archers would be sent forward to annoy the Scots. The plan was to enrage them with arrows and so spur them into a hasty attack.
A squire rode Lord Outhwaite’s horse back to the walled pasture as the Archbishop of York rode his destrier out in front of the army. ‘God will help you!’ he called to the men of the central division that he commanded. ‘The Scots fear us!’ he shouted. ‘They know that with God’s help we will make many children fatherless in their blighted land! They stand and watch us because they fear us. So we must go to them.’ That sentiment brought a cheer. The Archbishop raised a hand to silence his men. ‘I want the archers to go forward,’ he called, ‘only the archers! Sting them! Kill them! And God bless you all. God bless you mightily!’
So the archers would begin the battle. The Scots were stubbornly refusing to move in hope that the English would make the attack, for it was much easier to defend ground than assault a formed enemy, but now the English archers would go forward to goad, sting and harass the enemy until they either ran away or, more likely, advanced to take revenge.
Thomas had already selected his best arrow. It was new, so new that the green-tinted glue that was pasted about the thread holding the feathers in place was still tacky, but it had a breasted shaft, one that was slightly wider behind the head and then tapered away towards the feathers. Such a shaft would hit hard and it was a lovely straight piece of ash, a third as long again as Thomas’s arm, and Thomas would not waste it even though his opening shot would be at very long range.
It would be a long shot for the Scottish King was at the rear of the big central sheltron of his army, but it would not be an impossible shot for the black bow was huge and Thomas was young, strong and accurate.
‘God be with you,’ Brother Michael said.
‘Aim true!’ Lord Outhwaite called.
‘God speed your arrows!’ the Archbishop of York shouted.
The drummers beat louder, the Scots jeered and the archers of England advanced.
Bernard de Taillebourg already knew much of what the old monk told him, but now that the story was flowing he did not interrupt. It was the tale of a family that had been lords of an obscure county in southern France. The county was called Astarac and it lay close to the Cathar lands and, in time, became infected with the heresy. ‘The false teaching spread,’ Brother Collimore had said, ‘like a murrain. From the inland sea to the ocean, and northwards into Burgundy.’ Father de Taillebourg knew all this, but he had said nothing, just let the old man go on describing how, when the Cathars were burned out of the land and the fires of their deaths had sent the smoke pouring to heaven to tell God and His angels that the true religion had been restored to the lands between France and Aragon, the Vexilles, among the last of the nobility to be contaminated by the Cathar evil, had fled to the farthest corners of Christendom. ‘But before they left,’ Brother Collimore said, gazing up at the white painted arch of the ceiling, ‘they took the treasures of the heretics for safekeeping.’
‘And the Grail was among them?’
‘So they said, but who knows?’ Brother Collimore turned his head and frowned at the Dominican. ‘If they possessed the Grail, why did it not help them? I have never understood that.’ He closed his eyes. Sometimes, when the old man was pausing to draw breath and almost seemed asleep, de Taillebourg would look through the window to see the two armies on the far hill. They did not move, though the noise they made was like the crackling and roaring of a great fire. The roaring was the noise of men’s voices and the crackling was the drums and the twin sounds rose and fell with the vagaries of the wind gusting in the rocky defile above the River Wear. Father de Taillebourg’s servant still stood in the doorway where he was half hidden by one of many piles of undressed stone that were stacked in the open space between the castle and the cathedral. Scaffolding hid the cathedral’s nearest tower and small boys, eager to get a glimpse of the fighting, were scrambling up the web of lashed poles. The masons had abandoned their work to watch the two armies.
Now, after questioning why the Grail had not helped the Vexilles, Brother Collimore did fall into a brief sleep and de Taillebourg crossed to his black-dressed servant. ‘Do you believe him?’
The servant shrugged and said nothing.
‘Has anything surprised you?’ de Taillebourg asked.
‘That Father Ralph has a son,’ the servant answered. ‘That was new to me.’
‘We must speak with that son,’ the Dominican said grimly, then turned back because the old monk had woken.
‘Where was I?’ Brother Collimore asked. A small trickle of spittle ran from a corner of his lips.
‘You were wondering why the Grail did not help the Vexilles,’ Bernard de Taillebourg reminded him.
‘It should have done,’ the old monk said. ‘If they possessed the Grail why did they not become powerful?’
Father de Taillebourg smiled. ‘Suppose,’ he said to the old monk, ‘that the infidel Muslims were to gain possession of the Grail, do you think God would grant them its power? The Grail is a great treasure, brother, the greatest of all the treasures upon the earth, but it is not greater than God.’
‘No,’ Brother Collimore agreed.
‘And if God does not approve of the Grail-keeper then the Grail will be powerless.’
‘Yes,’ Brother Collimore acknowledged.
‘You say the Vexilles fled?’
‘They fled the Inquisitors,’ Brother Collimore said with a sly glance at de Taillebourg, ‘and one branch of the family came here to England where they did some service to the King. Not our present King, of course,’ the old monk made clear, ‘but his great-grandfather, the last Henry.’
‘What service?’ de Taillebourg asked.
‘They gave the King a hoof from St George’s horse.’ The monk spoke as though such things were commonplace. ‘A hoof set in gold and capable of working miracles. At least the King believed it did for his son was cured of a fever by being touched with the hoof. I am told the hoof is still in Westminster Abbey.’
The family had been rewarded with land in Cheshire, Collimore went on, and if they were heretics they did not show it, but lived like any other noble family. Their downfall, he said, had come at the beginning of the present reign when the young King’s mother, aided by the Mortimer family, had tried to keep her son from taking power. The Vexilles had sided with the Queen and when she lost they had fled back to the continent. ‘All of them except one son,’ Brother Collimore said, ‘the eldest son, and that was Ralph, of course. Poor Ralph.’
‘But if his family had fled back to France, why did you treat him?’ de Taillebourg asked, puzzlement marring the face that had blood scabs on the abrasions where he had beaten himself against the stone that morning. ‘Why not just execute him as a traitor?’
‘He had taken holy orders,’ Collimore protested, ‘he could not be executed! Besides, it was known he hated his father and he had declared himself for the King.’
‘So he was not all mad,’ de Taillebourg put in drily.
‘He also possessed money,’ Collimore went on, ‘he was noble and he claimed to know the secret of the Vexilles.’
‘The Cathar treasures?’
‘But the demon was in him even then! He declared himself a bishop and preached wild sermons in the London streets. He said he would lead a new crusade to drive the infidel from Jerusalem and promised that the Grail would ensure success.’
‘So you locked him up?’
‘He was sent to me,’ Brother Collimore said reprovingly, ‘because it was known that I could defeat the demons.’ He paused, remembering. ‘In my time I scourged hundreds of them! Hundreds!’
‘But you did not fully cure Ralph Vexille?’
The monk shook his head. ‘He was like a man spurred and whipped by God so that he wept and screamed and beat himself till the blood ran.’ Brother Collimore, unaware that he could have been describing de Taillebourg, shuddered. ‘And he was haunted by women too. I think we never cured him of that, but if we did not drive the demons clean out of him we did manage to make them hide so deep that they rarely dared show themselves.’
‘Was the Grail a dream given to him by demons?’ the Dominican asked.
‘That was what we wanted to know,’ Brother Collimore replied.
‘And what answer did you find?’
‘I told my masters that Father Ralph lied. That he had invented the Grail. That there was no truth in his madness. And then, when his demons no longer made him a nuisance, he was sent to a parish in the far south where he could preach to the gulls and to the seals. He no longer called himself a lord, he was simply Father Ralph, and we sent him away to be forgotten.’
‘To be forgotten?’ de Taillebourg repeated. ‘Yet you had news of him. You discovered he had a son.’
The old monk nodded. ‘We had a brother house near Dorchester and they sent me news. They told me that Father Ralph had found himself a woman, a housekeeper, but what country priest doesn’t? And he had a son and he hung an old spear in his church and said it was St George’s lance.’
De Taillebourg peered at the western hill for the noise had become much louder. It looked as though the English, who were by far the smaller army, were advancing and that meant they would lose the battle and that meant Father de Taillebourg had to be out of this monastery, indeed out of this city, before Sir William Douglas arrived seeking vengeance. ‘You told your masters that Father Ralph lied. Did he?’
The old monk paused and to de Taillebourg it seemed as if the firmament itself held its breath. ‘I don’t think he lied,’ Collimore whispered.
‘So why did you tell them he did?’
‘Because I liked him,’ Brother Collimore said, ‘and I did not think we could whip the truth out of him, or starve it from him, or pull it out by trying to drown him in cold water. I thought he was harmless and should be left to God.’
De Taillebourg gazed through the window. The Grail, he thought, the Grail. The hounds of God were on the scent. He would find it! ‘One of the family came back from France,’ the Dominican said, ‘and stole the lance and killed Father Ralph.’
‘I heard.’
‘But they did not find the Grail.’
‘God be thanked for that,’ Brother Collimore said faintly.
De Taillebourg heard a movement and saw that his servant, who had been listening intently, was now watching the courtyard. The servant must have heard someone approaching and de Taillebourg, leaning closer to Brother Collimore, lowered his voice so he would not be overheard. ‘How many people know of Father Ralph and the Grail?’
Brother Collimore thought for a few heartbeats. ‘No one has spoken of it for years,’ he said, ‘until the new bishop came. He must have heard rumours for he asked me about it. I told him that Ralph Vexille was mad.’
‘He believed you?’
‘He was disappointed. He wanted the Grail for the cathedral.’
Of course he did, de Taillebourg thought, for any cathedral that possessed the Grail would become the richest church in Christendom. Even Genoa, which had its gaudy piece of green glass that they claimed was the Grail, took money from thousands of pilgrims. But put the real Grail in a church and folk would come to it in their hundreds of thousands and they would bring coins and jewels by the wagonload. Kings, queens, princes and dukes would throng the aisle and compete to offer their wealth.
The servant had vanished, slipping soundlessly behind one of the piles of building stone, and de Taillebourg waited, watching the door and wondering what trouble would show there. Then, instead of trouble, a young priest appeared. He wore a rough cloth gown, had unruly hair and a broad, guileless, sunburned face. A young woman, pale and frail, was with him. She seemed nervous, but the priest greeted de Taillebourg cheerfully. ‘A good day to you, father.’
‘And to you, father,’ de Taillebourg responded politely. His servant had reappeared behind the strangers, preventing them from leaving unless de Taillebourg gave his permission. ‘I am taking Brother Collimore’s confession,’ de Taillebourg said.
‘A good one, I hope,’ Father Hobbe said, then smiled. ‘You don’t sound English, father?’
‘I am French,’ de Taillebourg said.
‘As am I,’ Eleanor said in that language, ‘and we have come to talk with Brother Collimore.’
‘Talk with him?’ de Taillebourg asked pleasantly.
‘The bishop sent us,’ Eleanor said proudly, ‘and the King did too.’
‘Which King, child?’
‘Edouard d’Angleterre,’ Eleanor boasted. Father Hobbe, who spoke no French, was looking from Eleanor to the Dominican.
‘Why would Edward send you?’ de Taillebourg asked and, when Eleanor looked flustered, he repeated the question. ‘Why would Edward send you?’
‘I don’t know, father,’ Eleanor said.
‘I think you do, my child, I think you do.’ He stood and Father Hobbe, sensing trouble, took Eleanor’s wrist and tried to pull her from the room, but de Taillebourg nodded at his servant and gestured towards Father Hobbe and the English priest was still trying to understand why he was suspicious of the Dominican when the knife slid between his ribs. He made a choking noise, then coughed and the breath rattled in his throat as he slid down to the flagstones. Eleanor tried to run, but she was not nearly fast enough and de Taillebourg caught her by the wrist and jerked her roughly back. She screamed and the Dominican silenced her by clapping a hand over her mouth.
‘What’s happening?’ Brother Collimore asked.
‘We are doing God’s work,’ de Taillebourg said soothingly, ‘God’s work.’
And on the ridge the arrows flew.
Thomas advanced with the archers of the left-hand battle and they had not gone more than twenty yards when, just beyond a ditch, a bank and some newly planted blackthorn saplings, they were forced to their right because a great scoop had been taken out of the ridge’s flank to leave a hollow of ground with sides too steep for the plough. The hollow was filled with bracken that had turned yellow and at its far side was a lichen-covered stone wall and Thomas’s arrow bag caught and tore on a rough piece of the coping as he clambered across. Only one arrow fell out, but it dropped into a mushroom fairy ring and he tried to work out whether that was a good or a bad omen, but the noise of the Scottish drums distracted him. He picked up the arrow and hurried on. All the enemy drummers were working now, rattling their skins in a frenzy so that the air itself seemed to vibrate. The Scottish men-at-arms were hefting their shields, making sure they protected the pikemen, and a crossbowman was working the ratchet that dragged back his cord and lodged it on the trigger’s hook. The man glanced up anxiously at the advancing English bowmen, then discarded the ratchet handles and laid a metal quarrel in the crossbow’s firing trough. The enemy had begun to shout and Thomas could distinguish some words now. ‘If you hate the English,’ he heard, then a crossbow bolt hummed past him and he forgot about the enemy chant. Hundreds of English archers were advancing through the fields, most of them running. The Scots only had a few crossbows, but those weapons outranged the longer war bows of the English who were hurrying to close that range. An arrow slithered across the grass in front of Thomas. Not a crossbow bolt, but an arrow from one of the few Scottish yew bows and the sight of the arrow told him he was almost in range. The first of the English archers had stopped and drawn back their cords and then their arrows flickered into the sky. A bowman in a padded leather jerkin fell backwards with a crossbow bolt embedded in his forehead. Blood spurted skywards where his last arrow, shot almost vertically, soared uselessly.
‘Aim at the archers!’ a man in a rusted breastplate bellowed. ‘Kill their archers first!’
Thomas stopped and looked for the royal standard. It was off to his right, a long way off, but he had shot at further targets in his time and so he turned and braced himself and then, in the name of God and St George, he put his chosen arrow onto the string and drew the white goose feathers back to his ear. He was staring at King David II of Scotland, saw the sun glint gold off the royal helmet, saw too that the King’s visor was open and he aimed for the chest, nudged the bow right to compensate for the wind, and loosed. The arrow went true, not vibrating as a badly made arrow would, and Thomas watched it climb and saw it fall and saw the King jerk backwards and then the courtiers closed about him and Thomas laid his second arrow across his left hand and sought another target. A Scottish archer was limping from the line, an arrow in his leg. The men-at-arms closed about the wounded man, sealing their line with heavy shields. Thomas could hear hounds baying deep among the enemy formation, or perhaps he was hearing the war howl of the tribesmen. The King had turned away and men were leaning towards him. The sky was filled with the whisper of flying arrows and the noise of the bows was a steady, deep music. The French called it the devil’s harp music. There were no Scottish archers left that Thomas could see. They had all been made targets by the English bowmen and the arrows had ripped the enemy archers into bloody misery, so now the English turned their missiles on the men with pikes, swords, axes and spears. The tribesmen, all hair and beard and fury, were beyond the men-at-arms who were arrayed six or eight men deep, so the arrows rattled and clanged on armour and shields. The Scottish knights and men-at-arms and pike-carriers were sheltering as best they could, crouching under the bitter steel rain, but some arrows always found the gaps between the shields while others drove clean through the leather-covered willow boards. The thudding sound of the arrows hitting shields was rivalling the sharper noise of the drums.
‘Forward, boys! Forward!’ One of the archers’ leaders encouraged his men to go twenty paces nearer the enemy so that their arrows could bite harder into the Scottish ranks. ‘Kill them, lads!’ Two of his men were lying on the grass, proof that the Scottish archers had done some damage before they were overwhelmed with English arrows. Another Englishman was staggering as though he were drunk, weaving back towards his own side and clutching his belly from which blood trickled down his leggings. A bow’s cord broke, squirting the arrow sideways as the archer swore and reached under his tunic to find a spare.
The Scots could do nothing now. They had no archers left and the English edged closer and closer until they were driving their arrows in a flat trajectory that whipped the steel heads through shields, mail and even the rare suit of plate armour. Thomas was scarce seventy yards from the enemy line and choosing his targets with cold deliberation. He could see a man’s leg showing under a shield and he put an arrow through the thigh. The drummers had fled and two of their instruments, their skins split like rotten fruit, lay discarded on the turf. A nobleman’s horse was close behind the dismounted ranks and Thomas put a missile deep into the destrier’s chest and, when he next looked, the animal was down and there was a flurry of panicking men trying to escape its thrashing hooves and all of those men, exposing themselves by letting their shields waver, went down under the sting of the arrows and then a moment later a pack of a dozen hunting dogs, long-haired, yellow-fanged and howling, burst out of the cowering ranks and were tumbled down by the slicing arrows.
‘Is it always this easy?’ a boy, evidently at his first battle, asked a nearby archer.
‘If the other side don’t have archers,’ the older man answered, ‘and so long as our arrows last, then it’s easy. After that it’s shit hard.’
Thomas drew and released, shooting at an angle across the Scottish front to whip a long shaft behind a shield and into a bearded man’s face. The Scottish King was still on his horse, but protected now by four shields that were all bristling with arrows and Thomas remembered the French horses labouring up the Picardy slope with the feather-tipped shafts sticking from their necks, legs and bodies. He rummaged in his torn arrow bag, found another missile and shot it at the King’s horse. The enemy was under the flail now and they would either run from the arrow storm or else, enraged, charge the smaller English army and, judging by the shouts coming from the men behind the arrow-stuck shields, Thomas suspected they would attack.
He was right. He had time to shoot one last arrow and then there was a sudden terrifying roar and the whole Scottish line, seemingly without anyone giving an order, charged. They ran howling and screaming, stung into the attack by the arrows, and the English archers fled. Thousands of enraged Scotsmen were charging and the archers, even if they shot every arrow they possessed into the advancing horde, would be overwhelmed in a heartbeat and so they ran to find shelter behind their own men-at-arms. Thomas tripped as he climbed the stone wall, but he picked himself up and ran on, then saw that other archers had stopped and were shooting at their pursuers. The stone wall was holding up the Scots and he turned round himself and put two arrows into defenceless men before the enemy surged across the barrier and forced him back again. He was running towards the small gap in the English line where St Cuthbert’s Mass cloth waved, but the space was choked with archers trying to get behind the armoured line and so Thomas went to his right, aiming for the sliver of open ground that lay between the army’s flank and the ridge’s steep side.
‘Shields forward!’ a grizzled warrior, his helmet visor pushed up, shouted at the English men-at-arms. ‘Brace hard! Brace hard!’ The English line, only four or five ranks deep, steadied to meet the wild attack with their shields thrust forward and right legs braced back. ‘St George! St George!’ a man called. ‘Hold hard now! Thrust hard and hold hard!’
Thomas was on the flank of the army now and he turned to see that the Scots, in their precipitate charge, had widened their line. They had been arrayed shoulder to shoulder in their first position, but now, running, they had spread out and that meant their westernmost sheltron had been pushed down the ridge’s slope and into the deep hollow that so unexpectedly narrowed the battle ground. They were down in the hollow’s bottom, staring up at the skyline, doomed.
‘Archers!’ Thomas shouted, thinking himself back in France and responsible for a troop of Will Skeat’s bowmen. ‘Archers!’ he bellowed, advancing to the hollow’s lip. ‘Now kill them!’ Men came to his side, yelped in triumph and drew back their cords.
Now was the killing time, the archers’ time. The Scottish right wing was down in the sunken ground and the archers were above them and could not miss. Two monks were bringing spare sheaves of arrows, each sheaf holding twenty-four shafts evenly spaced about two leather discs that kept the arrows apart and so protected their feathers from being crushed. The monks cut the twine holding the arrows and spilt the missiles on the ground beside the archers who drew again and again and killed again and again as they shot down into the pit of death. Thomas heard the deafening crash as the men-at-arms collided in the field’s centre, but here, on the English left, the Scots would never come to their enemy’s shields because they had spilled into the low yellow bracken of death’s kingdom.
Thomas’s childhood had been spent in Hookton, a village on England’s south coast where a stream, coming to the sea, had carved a deep channel in the shingle beach. The channel curved to leave a hook of land that protected the fishing boats and once a year, when the rats became too thick in the holds and bilges of the boats, the fishermen would strand their craft at the bottom of the stream, fill their bilges with stones and let the incoming tide flood the stinking hulls. It was a holiday for the village children who, standing on the top of the Hook, waited for the rats to flee the boats and then, with cheers and screams of delight, they would stone the animals. The rats would panic and that would only increase the children’s glee as the adults stood around and laughed, applauded and encouraged.
It was like that now. The Scots were in the low ground, the archers were on the lip of the hill and death was their dominion. The arrows were flashing straight down the slope, scarce any arc in their flight, and striking home with the sound of cleavers hitting flesh. The Scots writhed and died in the hollow and the yellow autumn bracken turned red. Some of the enemy tried to climb towards their tormentors, but they became the easiest targets. Some attempted to escape up the far side and were struck in the back, while some fled down the hill in ragged disarray. Sir Thomas Rokeby, Sheriff of Yorkshire and commander of the English left, saw their escape and ordered two score of his men to mount their horses and scour the valley. The mailed riders swung their swords and morningstars to finish the archers’ bloody work.
The base of the hollow was a writhing, bloody mass. A man in plate armour, a plumed helmet on his head, tried to climb out of the carnage and two arrows whipped through his breastplate and a third found a slit in his visor and he fell back, twitching. A thicket of arrows jutted from the falcon on his shield. The arrows became fewer now, for there were not many Scotsmen left to kill and then the first archers scrambled down the slope with drawn knives to pillage the dead and kill the wounded.
‘Who hates the English now?’ one of the archers jeered. ‘Come on, you bastards, let’s hear you? Who hates the English now?’
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