Grail Knight: Number 5 in series (Outlaw Chronicles) (25 page)

‘John Nailor has been my most loyal follower for more than twenty years,’ said Robin. ‘He is still my most loyal man – along with you, of course, Alan. He has fought beside me on countless occasions, he has killed for me, and worse; and he has shed his own blood for me. For my part, he could bugger a whole den full of pigs, he could rape the Virgin Mary and every single one of the saints – all the women
and
all the men – and I would still love him.’

I considered this appalling, blasphemous statement in silence.

‘He is still the same big, ugly, crude, bloodthirsty bastard he always was,’ said Robin. ‘He’s still John.’

I thought about John then: he had been very kind to me over the years, and also, it must be said, unkind on a few occasions, but he’d always treated me with a rough brotherly camaraderie. He was my comrade, my friend.

‘He’s still John,’ I said, nodding. And Robin smiled at me.

‘I think it might be best if you didn’t tell the others, Alan, particularly Sir Nicholas. He would say, I believe, that the Church considers it a mortal sin. And I don’t want to foster any disharmony in our ranks.’

I nodded again, and Robin slapped me on the shoulder and walked away.

At dusk John and Gavin returned, quietly happy and with five good-sized hares strung on a broken arrow, which we skinned, gutted and roasted on the fire. I watched the pair of them covertly while we cooked and ate and saw clearly for the first time the tenderness between them. I could not believe that I had not noticed their love before, for it seemed to burn as brightly as the pine-wood fire. The Church might call it a mortal sin, Sir Nicholas might not approve, but I could see no wrongdoing.

When we had eaten and drank, and all the Companions were sitting around the crackling blaze, eight tough men and a half-mad witch, a light rain began to patter impotently on the branch roof above us and Robin outlined his plans for the Jealous Castle.

‘Many of us here are known to the Master – and perhaps also to some of these Knights of Our Lady he commands,’ Robin began. ‘We dare not risk riding into the town in daylight. But three of us are unknown, at least by sight, to our enemies, and so they must undertake the reconnaissance.

‘Tuck, Nur and Sir Nicholas will each enter Casteljaloux separately. These three will be our spearhead. Tuck, you will seek lodgings in the cloisters of the Benedictines – a small daughter-house of the Abbey of La Sauve-Majeure, which is in the east of the town near the river. You will claim to be a wandering preacher from Bordeaux who has been fired by a vision of the Virgin to save souls in these heretical southern lands, and you will search for news of the Grail. Sir Nicholas, under the name of Peter of Horsham, you will apply to join the ranks of the Knights of Our Lady – admitting to having been a Knight Hospitaller, which should make you an attractive recruit. Your task will be to get to the Master and his inner circle. And Nur – Nur, you have the most important task of all; you will gather information from both Tuck and Sir Nicholas and relay it back to us. By day, you will sit in the market square begging for alms, waiting for either Tuck or Sir Nicholas to pass on their news. At night, you will leave the town before curfew and, when you know what is needed for a successful attack, you will return here to pass on messages from Tuck and Sir Nicholas to us.

‘It could take several days, I believe, until we have enough knowledge to make our assault – and when we do make it, I want everybody to be clear of our objectives. We are here to take the Grail from the Master. That is our goal. If we can kill the Master as well, that is excellent, and I know that some of us believe this would be a pleasure’ – there was a bear-like growl of assent from Little John, but I remained silent – ‘yet without the Grail, the Master is finished anyway. His power to recruit knights and men-at-arms and whatever other scum choose to serve him, is founded on his possession of the Grail. We take away the Grail; the Master is a broken reed. He can no longer hurt us.’ Robin was looking hard at me. ‘We are not here for revenge. We are here to take possession of the Grail. Is that clear?’

I nodded – for Robin’s labouring of this simple point seemed to be entirely for my benefit. He didn’t want another Mercadier.

‘Does anyone have any questions?’ asked Robin.

Thomas, who was normally silent during these conferences, raised a hand. ‘Yes,’ said Robin.

‘Forgive me for asking a foolish question, sir,’ said Thomas, ‘but why is it called the Jealous Castle?’

It was Nur who answered him. ‘These lands are the territories of the d’Albrets,’ she said, waving a skinny arm in a wide circle above her head. ‘The accursed son of that brood told me this long ago. From here all the way west to the great, grey sea, is d’Albret land. And they have many castles in them. But the Jealous Castle is right on the edge of their domain, away from the prying eyes of friends and family, and Amanieu told me that the d’Albret men had long used it as a place to conduct lustful liaisons with other men’s wives. That is why it is called the Jealous Castle – from the feelings it arouses in all the cuckolded husbands.’

Tuck gave a discreet cough. ‘That is a fascinating story, my dear Nur,’ he began, ‘and it may well be true in some ways, but I have heard a less romantic version of the naming of Casteljaloux. A learned friend of mine in Bordeaux, an elderly monk who has a particular interest in nomenclature, told me that the name came from the Latin “Castrum Gelo” – “Frozen Castle” – so named because the River Avance that runs by the castle is unusually cold.’

I saw a flicker of annoyance pass across Nur’s brow, but before she could speak, Roland said, ‘I think Nur’s tale is more likely to be true. Frozen Castle: what an absurd name. Who would call their home that? No, I’m sure that Nur has it right.’

I was watching Nur’s brown eyes above the veil as Roland said his piece, and I swear they glowed a little with gratitude.

The next morning at dawn Sir Nicholas left us, fully armed and mailed, and riding the best of the nags that Robin had bought in Bordeaux. Before he climbed on to his mount, he clasped my hand and said quietly to me, ‘Never fear, Alan, we shall have our revenge on the Master, whatever Locksley says. From what I hear, he is a piece of heretical filth whose works are a foul stain on Christendom. We shall send the Master to face the judgment of God, soon enough, you have my word on it.’

An hour later, Tuck took his departure, bearing nothing but a tall staff of oak and a small linen bag of clothes and food. As I watched him walk away through the close-set trees towards the road, looking the very image of a poor, wandering monk, I noticed that there was a certain springiness to his step that I had not seen for some years. And it occurred to me that for a long time Tuck had lived a rather dull existence as the chaplain of a great lady – and he was relishing this chance to take part in a grand adventure. I was happy for him.

Nur, swathed in her customary black, though now much travel-stained by salt-water and dust, slipped away shortly after Tuck had gone. Roland called after her disappearing form, urging her not to take any unnecessary risks. And, to my surprise, she glanced back at him, just once, before vanishing quite suddenly among the thick trees only a dozen paces from the camp.

For two days we heard nothing. Thomas and I tended to our weapons and armour, scrubbing and scraping at rust spots on our hauberks, which had bloomed there during the long sea journey from England. We laid them all out on a cloak on the ground and sharpened and polished the blades, oiled my mace and the leather chest-plate and holster for the lance-dagger, and checked straps on our shields and repainted the surfaces to make my personal blazon, the image of a black wild boar, stand out afresh on the red background.

With my war gear spread out on a cloak on the ground, I was painfully aware of how little I owned. Much had been destroyed at Westbury during the fire – a decade of accumulated possessions – and many things that I had treasured were lost for ever. Apart from Shaitan, who was no doubt taking his ease in Sherwood and terrifying Robin’s outlaw-grooms with his big teeth and lethal hooves, this motley collection of metal, wood and leather lying before me – all of which I could easily carry on my back – was my entire worldly goods. For a knight who had once been lord of a prosperous manor, and the companion of a great king, it was pitiful.

I had plenty of leisure to fret about Goody. Did she still live? She had been very close to death when I had left her. Would I be able to find the Grail in time to save her from Nur’s curse? Would the Grail even be able to save her? I had no answers to any of these questions, and they chased themselves around and around in my head from dawn until dusk.

On the afternoon of the third day, a Sunday, Robin, Gavin and Little John went out into the wood with their war bows in search of fresh meat for the pot, and Roland, Thomas and I stirred ourselves to practise our swordplay. Anything, I thought, to take my mind off Goody. We took it in turns to pair up and fence, the third man acting as an umpire. Roland was recovering swiftly from his wound – whatever magic or medicine Nur was using was proving more than efficacious and, apart from a little stiffness in his movements, you could hardly tell that it was less than a week since he had been injured. But it was Thomas who truly impressed me with his skill – overcoming Roland’s guard twice in a pair of lightning passes. He’d been with me as a squire for seven years, I realized, and it was time to begin thinking of making him a knight. Certainly he had all the prowess of one.

My thoughts were interrupted a little before dusk by the appearance of Nur. I do not believe it was witchcraft, just superior fieldcraft – she had, after all, spent many years living in the wild – but the woman was suddenly among us, as if she had popped up from beneath the soil, standing beside me as I watched Roland and Thomas exchange half-strength sword cuts. One moment she wasn’t there, the next she was.

‘Your boy Thomas is very nimble,’ she said casually, in her sing-song voice, as if we had been in the midst of a long, intimate conversation, ‘but my Roland would surely kill him swiftly in a real fight – he has the longer reach.’

I don’t know if I was more surprised by her sudden appearance, or by her apparent expertise in the arts of war, or by the fact that she referred to the young blond French knight with the large burn-scar on his face as ‘my Roland’. I found myself babbling something about the leverage possible for a shorter man with a low centre of his weight, if he moved his feet properly, when she interrupted me, cutting straight through my words with a brusqueness that bordered on insolence.

‘Yes, most interesting, Alan,’ she said. ‘Now, where is Robin? I must speak with him urgently.’

As I was gaping, speechless with astonishment – for this was a wreck of a woman, an outcast witch, who only weeks before had called me ‘my love’ and now she was treating me as if I were an irritating child – I spied Robin, Little John and Gavin coming towards us through the trees, John bearing the limp form of a fallow deer carcass across his broad shoulders, and the three of them wearing expressions of deep satisfaction.

That satisfaction was instantly dispelled, like woodsmoke in a whirlwind, for the first thing that Nur said after Robin had greeted her was: ‘Bad tidings, lord. Sir Nicholas has been taken.’

‘The town of Jealous Castle is roughly square in shape,’ said Nur, drawing with a stick in the pine needle-covered forest floor. The deer carcass had been slung from a stout branch and we were all gathered around by the fire as she told us what she had gleaned from her time spent begging in the main square.

‘Here is the
freezing
River Avance to the east’ – she drew a gently wiggling line in the pine needles – ‘and here are the town walls.’ She drew a rough square adjacent to and west of the river. ‘The castle is here,’ she said, stabbing in the centre of the square, roughly the middle of the town. ‘And it is very strong – thick stone battlements three times as tall as a man and patrolled by many sentries, perhaps a dozen. A square tower on the north-west corner of the castle forms the keep, and look-out is kept up there at all times. This is where Sir Nicholas is being held.’

We all leaned forward to take in the layout of the castle, the lines in the dirt clear-cut in the flickering flames of the campfire, and Robin said gently, ‘Tell us what happened, Nur.’

The witch nodded. ‘Some of this I saw with my own eyes from my begging place. Some of this I was told by Father Tuck this afternoon, and some I had by asking a maiden at the market who wanted a love-charm.’

Nur pointed with her stick to the rough plan of the town and drew a small rectangle in front of the castle. ‘Here is the square, and here I sat this morning’, and she stabbed a spot on its eastern side.

‘Sir Nicholas had met with the castle knights and had spent two days in their company but today he had evidently been asked to demonstrate his skills in the square – as an entertainment in front of the Seigneur d’Albret and his men—’

‘D’Albret was there?’ interrupted Robin. ‘You saw him yourself?’ Nur nodded. ‘And he did not recognize you?’

Nur gave a short dry cackle. ‘He would not know me as I look today. I am certain of that.’ She laughed again. ‘But I saw him today and spat in his shadow as it passed my begging place.’

‘And the knights – what blazon did they wear?’ asked Robin.

‘Some wore the colours of Casteljaloux – black and gold. And some wore white surcoats with a blue cross inside a black border.

‘Knights of Our Lady. Good,’ said Robin. ‘Go on.’

‘The crowds gathered and around mid-morning they watched Sir Nicholas defeat three local men-at-arms, with the greatest of ease, one after the other. The Seigneur d’Albret congratulated him personally and embraced him. And they walked together towards the castle until stopped by a man-at-arms, a dusty, mailed man on horseback, a man who I believe had just arrived in the town. This man pointed at Sir Nicholas and began to shout angrily at him. I could not hear what was said but I was told afterwards that the name of Westbury was spoken. And also that of Sir Alan Dale. And then a large number of other knights fell on Sir Nicholas, and though he struggled like a hero, they subdued him and dragged him inside the castle. And I did not see him again.’