Grail Knight: Number 5 in series (Outlaw Chronicles) (50 page)

When John had secured the door with another plank wedged into the frame and a stout locking bar dropped into its brackets, I limped up the stone stairs and looked out over the departing enemy, running down the hill in the manner of a flock of sheep panicked by a wolf. I could still hear faint cries of ‘Beware the Devil! The Devil is loose!’ from the running men.

The Templars were in full retreat – I could hardly believe it. More than a hundred trained men had come against us that morning – and now more than a third of them lay crushed and broken outside and inside our walls. They had been frightened away from our broken gates by a skinny, naked, body-painted witch-woman who was not quite right in the head.

Gilles de Mauchamps was still on his knees, a yard or two inside the courtyard. Five or six of his dead comrades lay about him but he still breathed, and he was tugging ineffectually at the arrow that jutted beside his neck, as the blood bubbled and spilled on to the white surcoat that sagged over his chest and belly. Beyond him, I saw Roland still lying on the floor, blood running down his temple, and Nur on her haunches beside my cousin, covered in battle-filth and dust, and seemingly trying to wake him. She leaned back and silently reached her skeletal white arms up to the sky as if imploring God or the spirits to come to her aid, and I saw that a black stick seemed to have sprouted from her emaciated, paint-spotted left breast – and then I realized with a cold, drenching shock that it was the latter half of a crossbow quarrel, I could even make out the leather fletchings. I was amazed that someone with such a frail-looking body had lasted as long as she had, for she must have taken her wound when we were pushing the enemy out of the gate. But even Nur’s powerful life force could not endure a pierced heart and she slumped down then and there, as I came down the stone steps towards her, falling gently sideways on to the courtyard floor, stretching out her bony white arm to touch Roland’s unconscious blond head.

By the time I reached him, Gilles de Mauchamps had managed to undo the straps on his helmet one-handed and wrestle it from his head. He was clearly unable to rise and he remained on his knees like a penitent, swaying left and right. Blood covered the whole of his front, and was running freely from the corners of his slack mouth. He looked at me as I approached, his dark eyes questioning, seeming to ask the eternal query of the dying man – why me? – and he mumbled something that was too muffled by his own clotted gore to be comprehensible.

I looked at him there, on his knees, dying. I paused for a heartbeat and stared into his face. Fidelity twitched in my hand, the blade seeming to have a soul of its own. I wanted to tell him that this death was the price of his cruel deeds at Westbury. That this was God’s judgment. I thought about cutting his head from his shoulders, or spitting in his face, or taunting him with some clever remark. But, to be honest, I was just too tired. Instead, I looked into his eyes for a few moments, while he struggled to speak and the blood bubbled from his lips, then I shrugged and moved on.

Nur was dead when I reached her but my cousin yet lived. Her white hand had found its way to his cheek, and in death the slight grubby fingers of the witch seemed to caress the shiny burn scar that marked the side of his face. Roland had a fresh wound to his sword arm, a gash that had ripped through his mail, probably a spear thrust, and a deep sword cut over his left ear, which I assumed came from the blow that had felled him. But he was breathing steadily and, God willing, I was fairly sure that he would live.

The enemy did not come again that day. We stacked our dead by the walls, folded their arms and closed their eyes, and we hurled the enemy corpses – including that of Gilles de Mauchamps – over the steep cliff on the north-eastern side of the castle. We tended to our wounded, which was almost all of us – I had acquired a shallow sword cut across the back of my neck below the line of my helmet, which was irritatingly painful whenever I moved my head, and a deep cut in my right thigh, just above the knee – and all managed to have a drink from the Grail, which Robin said would not only heal our wounds but also put heart into us for the final battle.

Roland remained unconscious – breathing shallowly but regularly, his wounds bathed in Grail water and bound up. He looked peaceful and, in my exhausted state, I had to struggle hard not to envy his seemingly delightful sleep.

We ate a little, prayed, mourned the dead, set the sentries on the walls and all managed to take some measure of rest that night – I fell into a deep but disturbed slumber an hour or two after dusk in which I dreamed that I was trapped at the bottom of a deep well, while Nur and Goody looked down on me from above and mocked my impotent efforts to climb the slimy stone sides and escape my doom. I was awoken by Vim not long after midnight who told me gruffly that it was my turn to stand sentry duty and that all was quiet on the mountain – but when I tried to rise from my blankets, my whole body felt as if it had been beaten with cudgels for days or weeks on end.

It was chilly on the ramparts, and what was worse was the knowledge that we could never manage to repulse another assault as ferocious as the one the day before. Only five mercenaries yet lived, including Vim – and with myself, Robin and Little John – who was a mass of minor cuts, bruises and punctures – we had only eight fighting men with which to repel any attack. I prayed that my death would be swift, when it came. And I wondered how Thomas was faring – had he managed to elude the Templars and make his way north? In a weak moment, just before the dawn, I even briefly considered taking my own life with the lance-dagger, as the Master had done, to ensure my everlasting reward in paradise. But I soon began to scold myself for such weakness – thank the Lord – and at the first pinky-grey light of dawn I felt entirely different about the matter of my life and death, and went over to the keep to wake Robin and report on an uneventful night.

The Templar embassy came a little before noon. A lone knight walking up the path that lead to the main gate, unarmed except for a sword at his waist and carrying a beautiful, snowy white flag on a long ash pole over his shoulder. As he drew nearer, I saw that it was the handsome, red-haired knight I had seen that day with Gilles de Mauchamps at the Maison des Consuls in Toulouse.

‘God save you all,’ he sang out, as he came close to the walls, stopping about ten yards away and smiling cheerfully up at the ramparts – which had every defender who could drag himself upright lined up on them on Robin’s hurried orders.

‘What can we do for you, sir?’ The Earl of Locksley’s tone was perfectly polite, and I marvelled at his composure. He had taken a blow to the ankle the day before and while the joint was not broken it was swollen to twice its normal size and I knew that Robin, just by standing upright, was being battered by waves of pain.

‘Well, without wishing to disparage your magnificent defence yesterday – it was most impressive, my congratulations – I have come to discuss your surrender.’

‘What makes you think, sir, that we are ready to surrender?’ Robin’s words once again were mild as buttermilk, polite, utterly courteous.

‘My dear fellow – how many men have you left under arms? Twenty? Thirty, perhaps? I have more than a hundred men-at-arms down there and thirty knights. And I have just sent off a rider to Toulouse to fetch another hundred. With the greatest respect for your valour, you cannot keep us out for ever. I thought we might come to some accommodation to save unnecessary bloodshed.’

‘I have no problem with shedding your blood, none at all,’ said Robin, but he was smiling down at this charming Templar.

‘Quite, quite – but, you see, I’m afraid I rather do. I am Guy d’Épernay, by the way. The Seigneur de Mauchamps, our gallant captain, has tragically fallen, and that means that as Preceptor of the Templars of Toulouse, I am now the leader of our forces. I think you will find me far more open to reasonable discussion than poor old Gilles, may he rest with God. And I think I might be able to persuade my Order to overlook certain, erm, financial transgressions on your part in exchange for a certain rather special something, a unique holy relic, shall we say, that you currently have in your possession. Do you understand me?’

‘I think, sir, that you’d better come inside,’ Robin said.

The gate had been barricaded with fresh wood and nailed shut at this point and so the Templar knight had to be hoisted up on a rope to the ramparts above the main gate. He passed along the line of wounded men with many a nod and a smile – and although he may have been surprised at how few we were and how knocked about our shrunken company was, he gave no sign of it and followed Robin amiably into the keep, where, once I had brought them a flagon of wine and two goblets, they remained alone for more than an hour.

When they emerged, there was not a single man in Montségur who did not scan their faces for hopeful news. And the news was plain to see. Robin wore his usual serene expression, but with a little smile tugging at the corner of his lips; Guy d’Épernay looked openly delighted. Suddenly every bloody, bandaged, exhausted face in the castle was beaming. The Templar was courteously lowered back down the outside of the wall, after many a friendly slap on the back as he passed along the parapet, and the hard-bitten mercenaries actually waved to him and called out good wishes as he clambered down the mountain to the Templar camp.

‘Saved at the last minute, Alan – plucked out of the slavering jaws of Death!’ Robin was allowing himself to be openly jubilant.

‘Do you think we can trust him?’ I asked, for the sake of saying something. I knew we had no choice in this matter.

‘I believe so, God, I really hope so – it turns out that I know some of his people in Épernay; and his father was a great tournament rival with my father back in King Henry’s day. He’s a friend of the Viscount de Trencavel, as well. He seems to be a decent fellow; a man of his word, I’d say. He was also in a rare sweat to acquire the Grail for the Templars. He kept on asking me about it, all the way through our negotiations – he’s never seen it himself, of course, but he had heard all the extravagant tales. I think he would agree to almost anything to get his hands on it.’

‘So we must give it up?’ I asked.

‘It’s the Grail or all our lives,’ Robin said. ‘We can march out of here, heads held high, with all our weapons and our wounded – we can even take the Master’s silver hoard with us. We will have enough to rebuild Westbury, if that is what is troubling you. But the truth is that we have no choice. Do you want to stay here and die for the Grail, when we can go free? Do you want all of them to die for it?’ He waved a hand across the courtyard at the mercenaries who were already happily engaged in tearing down the planks from the patched main gate.

There was no need to reply to my lord’s question.

Robin personally handed over the Grail to Guy d’Épernay in a brief ceremony the next day that followed the burial of our dead at the foot of the mountain. One of our erstwhile enemy priests obliged by saying the prayers over the mass grave and then we all gathered in the Templar camp in the saddle below Montségur, with our wounded and our horses and our baggage, and my lord presented the square wooden box to a visibly ecstatic Guy d’Épernay.

Guy opened the box slowly, reverently, and I caught a bright flash of gold, before he looked away, as if the very sight of the Grail were searing his eyes, and gently closed the lid. Laying the box down on a portable altar, he fell to his knees, followed in this example by all of his men, who were gathered eagerly around him. He lifted his face to the Heavens and began to utter a loud and lengthy prayer to God Almighty, thanking Him for delivering this blessed vessel into his unworthy care. When he had finished, he led his fellow Templars in a psalm, the singing pure, high and deeply wonderful in that lonely place, the music seeming to bounce off the peaks of the far Pyrenees. But while the Poor Fellow Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon raised their solemn voices to God and praised his holy name – Robin and the handful of survivors of the bloody struggle for Montségur climbed stiffly, painfully into their saddles and slipped away, pointing their horses’ heads north towards Toulouse.

When we had travelled a couple of miles down the road and were well out of sight of the saddle of land, the singing having died away behind us, I dug my heels into my horse’s ribs and rode up to the head of the column until I was trotting along knee to knee with my lord.

‘I saw it,’ I said.

‘I beg your pardon, Sir Alan,’ said Robin. ‘You saw what?’

‘I saw the Grail.’

‘Well, congratulations, my lad. What a blessed day for you!’

‘Where is the real one?’

‘The real one? Whatever can you mean? The one and only Holy Grail – the cup of Christ, a transcendently beautiful, finely wrought vessel of solid gold, intricately carved and encrusted with priceless jewels – now rests with the noble Order of the Knights Templar. I have just given it to them in fair exchange for our lives. And don’t you
ever
say, or even dare to think, otherwise.’

‘So you still have the real one?’

Robin did not answer for a few moments, then he said, ‘Have you ever thought about how many people that we know have died for that damned bowl? Your father, Hanno, Sir Nicholas, the Master, Tuck, Gavin – even poor Nur. And many, many more have perished in its name – think of all the Master’s victims, for a start. All those men and women are dead because of a piece of ancient wood that some people are convinced, for some reason, once held a few drops of Christ’s blood. Oh, and it was also used as a wine container at a rather dull farewell party that your precious Lord and Saviour once threw in Jerusalem.’

It was my turn to be silent – I hated this irreverent, blatantly blasphemous side of Robin, but I could not deny that a vast lake of blood had been spilled in the name of the Holy Grail.

Robin continued: ‘I went to see the Master in that little store room, when he was our prisoner, did you know that?’

I shook my head.

‘I had something that I wanted to ask him urgently before I handed him over to the Count of Foix. Can you guess what I wanted to know?’