Grail Knight: Number 5 in series (Outlaw Chronicles) (38 page)

‘Yes, Sir Alan, I will. But let me first attend to this,’ said my squire. He knelt down beside me and plucked the knife from my calf in one swift jerk – and I swear I hardly felt a thing as the weapon slid out of the grip of my flesh. But I found that my body was swaying with fatigue, and my head was whirling like a drunkard’s, as my squire stood and, with some difficulty, pulled the bolt from between the iron strips in my chest protector.

As Thomas jogged away, I slumped down on to the ground beside Tuck and took his big, soft hand in my blood-sticky one.

The enemy had all quit the battlefield, but they left a good number of their comrades behind – some forty foemen were dead or too badly wounded to run. Those wounded men did not live long. The surviving mercenaries paced among them, stooping down from time to time, relieving them permanently of their sufferings, and of any valuables on their persons.

I merely sat on the ground and held Tuck’s hand, and looked over the dismal field of victory. I could count fourteen Knights of Our Lady among the slain – including one well-bred young Norman who lay not five yards away and whose dead face, turned towards me, I suddenly recognized. We had been slightly acquainted in the wars against King Philip of France in the north and I remembered him as a gentle aristocrat with fine manners, and an enviable sword-fighting style. What had brought that young man of good family so far from his home to die in a pointless skirmish in these southern hills, fighting for a man such as the Master? I knew that I would never know the true answer. Had I been the one to kill him? I did not know the answer to that either.

From time to time, I checked that Tuck was still alive. He had closed his eyes, but blood still pulsed from under the flap of cut skin on his scalp. However, I knew, by the slow bloody bubbling of his chest, where the last man-at-arms had crushed his thorax with an axe, and the great slippery gash in his belly from his first wound, that he was not long for this world.

As I looked at him, his large shapeless body sprawled on the torn, bloody grass, his hand grasped tightly in mine, I felt my eyes begin to burn. I thought of all the kindnesses he had shown me from the very first days after I had joined Robin’s gang – long, long ago. I thought about his laughter, his courage – his vast love of food. I thought about how much I would miss his cheerful wisdom, his kindness and indomitable moral strength. The tears flowed like twin rivers down my cheeks.

‘Do not weep, Alan,’ said Roland, coming to my side, kneeling and putting an arm around my shoulders. ‘Father Tuck yet has a chance to live, if we can get him to the Grail in time.’

My cousin’s words shocked me out of my grief. Of course – I had been a fool! If the Grail could save Goody, it could save Tuck! The power of the Grail would surely cure him, no matter how sorely he was wounded – had we not been told that, by the loving power of Jesus Christ, the Grail could hold back Death itself?

I jumped to my feet even as Thomas arrived with Robin at his side. My lord stared down at Tuck, his face blank, emotionless.

‘We must get the Grail and swiftly!’ I blurted out.

Robin looked at me oddly, and frowned.

‘We must get the Grail, and get it as soon as possible,’ I repeated.

‘Yes, that is the reason why we came down here. What are you trying to say?’

‘To save Tuck – he will die if we cannot get him to drink from the Grail.’

Robin looked at the still body of his old friend, and he sighed, and said quietly, ‘I have known Tuck for longer than you, and I love him just as much, but, Alan, I think that it is already too late for our old friend. We need to bury our dead, bind our wounds, rest the horses, eat something, sleep, and accomplish a hundred other small things before we are ready to march.’

‘No, no, if we can get him to the Grail, we can save him. We must save him, Robin.’ I found I was shouting at my lord, my flushed, teary face inches from his. ‘We must go now and capture this Montségur place, get the Grail and save Tuck. We must save Tuck, and then go home for Goody. Quickly. Now. We must get the Grail as soon as we possibly can. Are you listening?’

Robin took a step back, looking at me in a curious fashion, almost as one might observe a raving madman.

‘I tell you what, Alan, you go on ahead. I’m told that the Castle of Montségur is less than four miles from here. Take the guide, and Thomas, and reconnoitre the place. Look it over, work out how we can take it, come back and report to me. Understand? Go and have a look, come back here and report by nightfall tomorrow night. I will care for Tuck in your absence.’

I realized that I had been ridiculous. We had just fought a hard battle – we could not charge off leaving our dead and wounded on the field; and the men were dog tired. I was exhausted myself. But the thought of resting and eating and sleeping comfortably all through the night while Tuck’s life drained away was intolerable. We had to get the Grail – and quickly.

‘Yes, I’ll go,’ I said. ‘I’ll go now – back before nightfall tomorrow.’ I turned aside to seek out Thomas and the guide.

‘Alan,’ Robin called softly from behind me.

I turned quickly.

‘Be careful,’ said my lord. ‘Don’t throw your life away. We need you, all of us, we all need you – understand?’

I found Maury the surly guide in the care of two mercenaries. He was under guard: our men were convinced that he had led us directly into the trap at the orders of the Count of Foix, and I got the impression that they had been telling the shepherd a few horrible stories about Robin’s vengeance on others who had betrayed him. The man was obviously terrified.

I squatted down beside him, and trying to make myself understood in my rough version of Langue d’Oc, I looked him in the face and said, ‘Did you deliberately lead us into this ambush?’

The man shook his head wildly.

‘Did you know that we would be attacked by these Knights of Our Lady?’ I gestured towards a nearby white-mantled corpse.

‘No, no, sir – truly I did not, but…’

‘But what?’

I heard a spattering sound and looked down between the man’s splayed grubby knees. The sheepskin there was wet and glistening and a small puddle was forming by his bare feet.

‘But what?’ I repeated.

Maury’s answer came out as a whisper: ‘But my lord told me that I must be certain that I came by this road. There is another way just as good, but the Count insisted we take this one…’

I stood. The two mercenaries were grinning all over their faces, the younger one, a squat ugly fellow, was licking his fat lips. I was suddenly disgusted by all of this. Treachery and revenge; blood spilled and yet more blood spilled in the name of vengeance. My wounded right calf was burning like fire, but I steeled my mind to ignore it.

‘Give him to me,’ I said to the older mercenary.

‘Yes sir,’ he replied. ‘Do you need any help with him, sir? Jehan and myself would be more than happy to lend a—’

‘That won’t be necessary, but thank you.’

I grabbed a handful of the guide’s sheepskin and hauled him bodily over to where Thomas was transferring my saddle and baggage from the dead horse to a new beast, captured in the fight.

I threw the guide at Thomas’s feet and briefly explained to my squire why we were not finished for the day. Thomas, as usual, made not a word of complaint, he just nodded and said, ‘Well, sir, we’d better have a bite of something before we go.’

I squatted down next to Maury, who was looking at me with great cow-like eyes, and said, ‘Will you be a true and faithful guide, henceforth? Will you take me and my squire to Montségur, by discreet ways, unseen by the garrison of the castle there?’

Maury nodded. ‘Oh yes, sir. I will be your loyal man, I swear it, sir. Please believe me, I did not know…’

I shushed him. ‘If you play us false, our vengeance will be more terrible than you can possibly imagine. The infernal regions, when you finally reach them, will be a blessed relief compared to the agonies that I shall inflict on you if you are not true.’

I silenced his babbling protestations of fidelity.

‘And do not tell anyone, particularly the Earl of Locksley, or John Nailor, him over there, what you just told me: that the Count made you lead us by this road. Others will not be nearly as understanding as I am.’

Maury the guide, now soothed and fed, took Thomas and I out of the valley, and we had ridden no more than half a mile up the winding road that led more or less south, when I was surprised to see Nur cantering towards us, her tattered black robe flapping in the breeze as she rode. ‘I will come with you,’ she said imperiously, when she reined in beside Thomas’s horse. ‘I shall view this Grail castle and mayhap I shall unlock its secrets.’

My first instinct was to order her back to the camp – but I doubted that she would obey. So I shrugged, nodded, remembering that she was adept at silent movement in rough country and that she’d be unlikely to give us away as we made our reconnaissance.

An hour later we four found ourselves in a patch of scrubby woodland, under the cover of a large bushy hazel tree, and looking up at Montségur through the broad leaves. For an attacker, it made for a truly daunting site: a great, rocky peak – or
pog
in the local dialect – like an upturned cup that towered above the surrounding countryside; its sides were sheer, almost vertical barriers of jagged grey stone, with only a few hardy shrubs managing to cling stubbornly to the dark cracks and crevices. At the very top, more than a thousand feet above where we stood, I could see the square lines of the castle, a tiny blue-and-white flag flapping over the high keep at the northern end of the structure, and a few ant-like men moving about on the walls. I must admit that my heart quailed at the very thought of assaulting this fortress. It was too sheer to easily ride a horse to the summit, and by the time we had climbed it on foot in our heavy armour, we would be quite exhausted before we were in range to strike the first sword blow. And then to carry an attack over those high walls in the face of fanatical resistance from the Knights of Our Lady … I could not even imagine our succeeding – this was truly an impossible task.

I thought about my rash words to Robin in the bright heat of my sorrow over Tuck, and blushed for such foolishness. But both Tuck and Goody would die unless we could overcome that high mountain and scale those forbidding walls at the summit.

As it was nearly dusk, I decided that we should sleep on the problem and make a full examination of the mountain the next morning. My leg, which had been growing increasingly painful during the ride, was bleeding freely and my right boot was now filled with blood. That was no matter but the pain was making it hard to concentrate on the problem at hand. I told Thomas to begin making camp in that patch of woodland, when Maury the guide approached, and very humbly said, ‘Sir, if it would please you, I know of a cave not two hundred paces from here. Underneath the
pog
. We could make our camp there. It is used by the shepherds on cold winter nights, but I’m sure that we would be very unlikely to be disturbed at this time of year.’

I looked at the man, cringing before me in his filthy sheepskin rags, bobbing and ducking his head to try to appease any possible anger that I might show – could I trust him? I found I was too tired to make that decision and so merely nodded, and muttered to Thomas, ‘Be on your guard’, and we followed the man into the thickening woodland a little way up the steep slope of the mountain, through a patch of thick, and I would have sworn virgin, foliage until he proudly swept away a curtain of drooping willow branches and showed me two massive stones, grey and partially covered with yellow and grey lichen, with a narrow, cobweb-draped gap between them. I stepped forward, tore away the cobwebs and poked my head into the gap between the two monoliths, and found that my broad shoulders were no more than a foot from the stone on either side. Inside was a vast black space – though I could see almost nothing, somehow I could tell it was huge – and there was a smell of old wood ash and a hint of candlewax, but no wild animal scents. I had had a sneaking fear that we might disturb a bear.

Once we had struck flint and tinder and lit a crude torch of oil-dipped rags wrapped around a stick, I led the way into the cave and saw that our accommodation, although narrow at the entrance, was indeed enormous. It was as big as a fine stone church in a decent-sized English market town, being some fifty paces long and thirty wide with a high ceiling that I could not make out in the light of the torch.

Thomas led the horses into the cave, and rummaged into the saddlebags and found a couple of candles, which he lit from the torch, and I was able to explore the space a little further. At the far end was a jumble of rocks, with a great flat stone on top that formed a natural table or altar. It was clear that the place had been used by men before – and not only by rough shepherds – but I judged that it had not been occupied for some time. A crude hearth, a circle of fire-blacked stones, was set near the entrance of the cave, and in various niches in the limestone walls, I found the greasy traces of ancient tallow candles.

Nur, who had followed us into the cave without a word, now began to make excited little squeaks. When I asked the witch what ailed her, she replied, ‘Oh Alan, you cannot possibly understand – this is a place of the spirits. There is strong magic here. I can feel it. This is the womb of the mountain.’

I could feel no magic – but I did find the cave unsettling. It was too big and too empty and felt a little wrong to me; not like a cosy womb, not like a place where life began, but like an abandoned hall, a place of death and decay. Nevertheless, it was shelter, and hidden, and I knew that I would be more comfortable here than elsewhere on the mountain. The guide was looking at me beseechingly, like a kicked dog, to see if the cave had my approval. I said gruffly, ‘Yes, we will sleep here tonight. Well done, Maury’, and the old man beamed with pleasure.

With a fire crackling in the hearth, the place took on a more friendly air, and it was strange to think that we were burrowed into a hole in the ground with a thousand feet of rock between us and our enemies. After nightfall, and a meagre supper of dried wild boar meat and twice-baked bread, I allowed Thomas and Nur to look at my wound. The flesh around the deep puncture was red and sore and Nur smeared a poultice of some black and foul concoction into the cut and around the muscles. Thomas wrapped it tightly with a bandage made from a clean chemise ripped into strips. When I stood on it, I found that I could manage the pain. I felt certain it would serve until we had taken possession of the Grail. When Thomas and Nur had finished, I stepped out of the cave to get a breath of fresh air before taking to my blankets. The mountain was quiet and still, and after a few yards it was impossible to detect the presence of the cave or our occupancy of it. I found a small clearing and sat down with my back to a tree, and looked up at the castle – only a few pin-pricks of light in the blackness high above. I could not see how we could possibly capture this place with the handful of men that we possessed, now further weakened by the bloody battle in the valley. It would take a mighty army – tens of thousands of men – to surround the mountain and even then they would be forced to starve the inhabitants out. For the life of me I could not see how we might capture this perfect fortification. I simply could not see it. And if we did not take it, and soon, Tuck would die. And Goody would die. I could not bear to entertain either of those black thoughts.