Grail Knight: Number 5 in series (Outlaw Chronicles) (40 page)

‘I’m tempted to walk up there and just knock on the door,’ said Robin after we had been standing there for perhaps the time it takes to say ten Hail Marys. ‘He must have been told that we were coming. I think he’s just being deliberately rude.’ Robin grinned at me to tell me he was joking … and at that moment there was a blast of trumpets, at least three long brass instruments, shockingly loud, that seemed to split the sunshine.

And there was the Master, standing atop the ramparts, unarmed, his sandalled feet spread wide, his hands resting on his robe over his hips, and towering over the helmeted heads of the defenders on the walkway beneath him. He looked a little younger than the last time I had seen him, a bound captive awaiting torture outside the Château Chalus-Chabrol, a little more than a year ago. He was smiling indulgently at us, like a father watching over his unruly children. His face had been lightly tanned by the sun, but I could still make out the faint marks of the pox that had scarred him as a young man. He was clean-shaven, and his hair was neatly cut. His robe was clean – pure black – but of some fine and faintly shiny, rich material, perhaps silk, a silver crucifix hung from a chain around his neck. But he looked happy, fit and handsome, a holy man from whom wholesomeness and Christian kindness seemed to pour like light from a lamp.

I realized then that I had forgotten the power of his presence. In my mind he had been this dark monster, lurking in the shadows, striking viciously at me and my friends from concealment like a footpad in a darkened street. But, looking up at him framed by the pure blue sky, it was difficult to imagine that he was evil at all. Indeed, he looked like goodness personified. He even looked a little like the images I have seen of Our Lord Jesus Christ. I found I was smiling at him, and secretly hoping that he would greet me with a friendly word.

Disgusted with myself, I jerked my head to the right and looked at Robin. He too was staring at the Master, and smiling, but there was a curl of gentle contempt around his mouth that I had seen on his lips many times before.

For a long, long time, neither spoke, and neither moved. They seemed to be intently taking each other’s measure and there was no sound but for the wind whistling over the battlements and the far-away cry of a hunting bird. It suddenly seemed to me that they were in some absurd competition, a contest to see who could remain silent the longest, and to determine who would lose by speaking first.

If it truly was a bout of wills, then Robin lost.

‘We had an agreement once, you and I,’ said Robin quietly, calmly, but in a carrying voice. ‘We divided the world in two at the line of the English channel. I had dominion over England, and you over France – and we were at peace with each other for ten long years. We could have that once again…’

Robin stopped speaking. The Master slowly nodded his head.

‘Yes, for ten years I allowed you to play your childish games in Sherwood. That is true. But you broke our accord when you sent your man’ – the Master jerked his chin at me – ‘to Paris to hunt me down. And, by your actions, I was hounded from that city, and away from my beautiful cathedral – my whole life’s work.’

‘You reached out your arm into my domain and killed Sir Alan’s father,’ said Robin. ‘Was he supposed to meekly forgive that? Was I? And later you sent men to England – treacherous Templars and their creatures – to trap me by stealth and cunning and have me hanged as a—’

My lord’s voice had not risen in volume but, nonetheless, he seemed to have lost a little of his composure. He stopped speaking abruptly and seemed to take a moment to regain his mastery of himself. Then he sighed with what might have been taken for regret: ‘We have wronged each other, you and I, we must both acknowledge that. We have been at war. That is the truth. But we can mend our discord, restore our honour – a word or two and some small gesture of good faith, a little forgiveness, and we can have peace again, on the same terms if you wish, you in France, and I in England. Would that please you, my old friend?’

The Master laughed – a light, musical, happy sound. It lifted my heart just to hear it. But his words were anything but joyful.

‘The Earl of Locksley talks of peace – the man whose name is a byword for dissimulation, deceit and knavery, a man who has murdered dozens of my knights, and slain scores of my men-at-arms, a man who has tricked and robbed half the magnates of Europe – he comes to me now, stands before my gates, calls me “old friend” and talks softly to me of peace and forgiveness!’

The mockery was thick as curd, but the Master’s voice, to my ears anyway, sounded oddly gentle and entirely reasonable.

Neither man said anything for a few moments. The Master said meditatively, ‘And how would we achieve this lasting peace, I wonder? What could this small good-faith gesture be?’

‘You know what I desire, I believe,’ said Robin, his tone calm and friendly. ‘If you deliver it up to me, my men and I will ride away from here and return to our own lands and you need never be troubled by us again. Give me the Grail and I shall go – and there can be harmony between us for the rest of our lives.’

‘Do you think I am in fear of you? I assure you, I am not.’ The Master laughed again; this time it seemed with real mirth. ‘You cannot hope to take this castle – ever – and a man such as you, a man who mocks God, shall never possess the Grail while I have strength. What I have in my possession is worth a thousand men-at-arms. I have the vessel that has been blessed by Our Lord’s holy blood. There is no more precious object in all the world. None can prevail against me – not you, not your raggedy paid men, not even all the noblest knights of Christendom, were they ranged against me – for while I hold the Grail, God, His only son Jesus Christ and his Holy Virgin Mother stand at my side.’

The Master spread his arms wide, adopting the position suffered by Our Lord on the cross at Calvary, seeming to touch the sky on either side of him. And his voice changed when he spoke, becoming deeper, warmer, somehow golden – seeming to vibrate with a weird and powerful music all of its own.

‘You will go from this place, now, Robert of Locksley, Prince of Deceivers, I command you! You will go from this place or it will become the place of your death. By the power of the Grail, by the power of God Himself, I command you to go!’

And, so help me, I felt an almost overpowering urge to obey him; I felt an actual force, like an invisible hand pushing me down the mountainside – and I swear I wanted, just then, to depart from Montségur and never to come back.

Incredibly, I heard Robin give a low chuckle. ‘For goodness sake, Michel,’ said my lord, ‘we have known each other too long for this sort of silly I-command-you nonsense – do you think we are all as feeble-willed as your deluded followers?’

Robin’s words were a splash of icy water in my face, breaking the Master’s spell like a hand through a cobweb. I glared up at my enemy, flushed with embarrassed rage at the weakness of my own will.

The imposing black-robed monk standing atop the battlements of Montségur lowered his arms; he looked a little hurt, disappointed by Robin’s words.

But my lord was speaking again: ‘It’s really very simple, Michel, you give me the Grail and I will depart and leave you in peace. Otherwise, I will come over that wall and get it myself.’

‘I would roast in Hell before I gave up such a holy treasure to a Godless killer such as you.’

‘Is that your final answer?’ asked Robin.

‘No,’ said the Master. ‘This is.’

And two score of crossbowmen, all in the white surcoats of the Knights of Our Lady, appeared at the crenellations below the Master’s feet, forty weapons aimed down at the four of us. They put the crossbows to their shoulders, and looked down the length of the iron-tipped wooden quarrels, ready to loose a black rain of death upon our heads in an instant.

‘Go now,’ said the Master, ‘or die.’

We were moving even before the Master spoke his final words – for none of us was unversed in war, and none of us had really trusted him to respect the flag of truce. I had my big, kite-shaped shield up and was scrambling down the rocky mountainside the moment the crossbowmen popped up on the battlements and aimed their loaded weapons down at us. And the others were just as quick to flee the place of parley.

But not a bolt flew, not a quarrel was loosed. We four brave, soldierly men re-met about a third of the way down, well out of crossbow range, each of us looking half-defiant, half-sheepish at having fled so quickly, and without being offered any real harm; although, in truth, there would have been no point in standing still and taking a bolt to the belly merely to prove our manhoods.

‘Did you really expect him to hand over the Grail?’ I asked Robin, when I caught my breath after the undignified rush down the hill.

‘Not really,’ he replied with a rueful grin. ‘But I wanted to get a closer look at the gate and the walls. And to get a sense of the strength of the castle and number of men he has at his command.’

‘He just showed us forty crossbowmen,’ said Sir Nicholas, ‘and he may well have as many knights again, and as many men-at-arms again, too.’

‘That would seem about right,’ said Robin.

‘A hundred and twenty men?’ I said. ‘That is three times our number! We cannot possibly defeat such an army.’

‘Yes, we will have to find a way to reduce their numbers a little,’ said Robin. He was looking back up the slope at the castle, framed in blue above him, seemingly lost in thought. ‘But we have learned one very interesting thing…’ he said. ‘He is still putting his faith in all that mystical power-of-the-mind drivel. He really believed he could order me away like a naughty boy, and that I would meekly go. That is worth knowing, I think.’

‘From what you told me, his powers of persuasion seemed to work just fine on the Count of Foix,’ I said.

‘Him?’ said Robin. ‘A child could command Raymond-Roger to jump from his own battlements and he’d likely do it.’

I said nothing, embarrassed. The Master’s strange power had indeed had an effect on me, if not on my lord. I would have obeyed his command. And that, I felt, was cause for shame.

Once we had returned to the cave, Robin sent out Gavin and Little John with their war bows, to harass the walls a little and let the occupants of Montségur know that we were serious.

‘Don’t expose yourself,’ Robin told his giant friend, ‘but the more you kill at a distance, the fewer we will face in the assault.’

But once those two had departed, there seemed little else that could be achieved. The men spent the afternoon sleeping in the cool of the cave or climbing about the foot of the mountain, staring up at the castle on the summit. Robin seemed totally unperturbed; even when Vim came and spoke seriously with him, voicing the mercenaries’ unease at tackling such a fortress, defended by so many men, he never showed anything but total confidence. ‘Do not trouble yourself, Vim, we will triumph against them. And rest assured that there will be treasure inside the castle beyond your wildest dreams – gold, silver, jewels – more wine than you could drink in a dozen lifetimes. And the fewer men we are, the bigger share of loot we shall each receive.’

While Robin spoke to the mercenaries, I saw that both Roland and Sir Nicholas were listening intently. I was struck by their utterly different expressions. When Robin spoke of gold and silver and jewels, Roland’s eyes sparkled and a broad smile broke out on his lips. Sir Nicholas, in contrast, seemed almost physically sickened by such crude promises of vulgar worldly gain.

However, I was fairly sure that Robin was lying through his teeth to the mercenary captain and his men. He dangled the prospect of wealth because he had to keep them on his side to have even the remotest chance of attacking the castle.

I was unmoved by the talk of riches: I only wanted the Grail. It was so close – a few hundred yards away; and yet completely out of reach behind impregnable walls guarded by an army of enemies. My wounded right leg was paining me somewhat, and so I sat about the cave all afternoon, resting it, gnawing my fingernails and racking my brains for a way into Montségur. Nothing came.

But, worse than a lack of ideas, was the knowledge that time was slipping away – by my reckoning, if I were to get the Grail home to Goody in time to save her life, I had to begin the journey home within the next ten days. And then there was Tuck – how much longer could he maintain his feeble grip on life? A day? Two days?

At nightfall, Little John and Gavin returned in a state of mild elation: Gavin had killed one man and probably wounded another and after that the defenders had taken care not to show themselves on the walls for any length of time. But it was a paltry victory, and their strength was still overwhelming compared with ours.

Thomas made us all some hot soup that evening, a thin pottage of wild garlic, hyssop, onions and barley, in a huge cauldron collectively owned by the mercenaries, and we all sat around the edges of the cave to eat. Before I had a chance to even taste a spoonful of my soup, Roland came over and said that Tuck was awake, and urgently wished to speak to me.

The old priest was in a pitiable state: his eyes were open but fluttering madly, his skin was quite yellow and he was moaning almost constantly from the pain of his stomach wound. I thought at first that he was delirious, and after I had mopped his brow, and spooned a little water into his mouth, I was about to return to my cooling soup, when he grasped my hand with shocking force. His kind brown eyes opened and they stared at me with a feverish, almost demonic glitter that I had never seen in them before. Tuck was trying to speak through his agony, and I was dimly aware that Robin was standing quietly at my shoulder.

‘Too late,’ Tuck said, panting. ‘Too late … for me…’

‘Save your strength, my friend,’ I said, moistening his dry lips with a little more water. Sir Nicholas had told me that I must not let him eat or drink, not with a stomach wound, but his mouth was so cracked that it was beginning to split and bleed. ‘Rest yourself for a little while and save your strength to heal your wounds.’