Vagabond

PART TWO England and Normandy, 1346—7

The Winter Siege

It was dark in the cathedral. So dark that the bright colours painted on the pillars and walls had faded into blackness. The only light came from the candles on the side altars and from beyond the rood screen where flames shivered in the choir and black-robed monks chanted. Their voices wove a spell in the dark, twining and falling, surging and rising, a sound that would have brought tears to Thomas's eyes if he had possessed any tears left to shed. 'Libera me, Domine, de morte aeterna,' the monks intoned as the candle smoke twisted up to the cathedral's roof. Deliver me, Lord, from everlasting death, and on the flagstones of the choir lay the coffin in which Brother Hugh Collimore lay undelivered, his hands crossed on his tunic, his eves closed and, unknown to the prior, a pagan coin placed beneath his tongue by one of the other monks who feared the devil would take Collimore's soul if the ferryman who carried the souls of the departed across the river of the after-world was not paid.

' Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine,' the monks chanted, requesting the Lord to give Brother Collimore eternal rest, and in the city beneath the cathedral, in the small houses that clung to the side of the rock, there was weeping for so many Durham men had been killed in the battle, but the weeping was as nothing to the tears that would be shed when the news of the disaster returned to Scotland. The King was taken prisoner, and so was Sir William Douglas and the Earls of Fife and of Menteith and of Wigtown, and the Earl of Moray was dead as was the Constable of Scotland and the King's Marshal and the King's Chamberlain, all of them butchered, their bodies stripped naked and mocked by their enemies, and with them were hundreds of their countrymen, their white flesh laced bloody and food now for foxes and wolves and dogs and ravens. The gorestained Scottish standards were on the altar of Durham's cathedral and the remnants of David's great army were fleeing through the night and on their heels were the vengeful English going to ravage and plunder the lowlands, to take back what had been stolen and then to steal some more. 'Et lux perpetua lucent cis,' the monks chanted, praying that eternal light would shine upon the dead monk, while on the ridge the other dead lay beneath the dark where the white owls shrieked.

'You must confide in me,' the prior hissed at Thomas at the back of the cathedral. Small candles flickered on the scores of side altars where priests, many of them refugees from nearby villages sacked by the Scots, said Masses for the dead. The Latin of those rural priests was often execrable, a source of amusement to the cathedral's own clergy and to the prior who sat beside Thomas on a stone ledge. 'I am your superior in God,' the prior insisted, but still Thomas stayed silent and the prior became angry. 'The King has commanded you! The bishop's letter says so! So tell me what you seek.'

'I want my woman back,' Thomas said, and he was glad it was dark in the cathedral for his eyes were red from crying. Eleanor was dead and Father Hobbe was dead and Brother Collimore was dead, all of them knifed and no one knew by whom, though one of the monks spoke of a dark man, a servant who had come with the foreign priest, and Thomas was remembering the messenger he had seen in the dawn, and Eleanor had been alive then and they had not quarrelled and now she was dead and it was his fault. His fault. The sorrow came to him, overwhelmed him and he howled his misery at the cathedral's nave.

'Be quiet!' said the prior, shocked at the noise.

'I loved her!'

'There are other women, hundreds of them.' Disgusted. he made the sign of the cross.

'What did the King send you to find? I order you to tell me.'

'She was pregnant,' Thomas said, gazing up into the roof, 'and I was going to marry her.' His soul felt as empty and dark as the space above him.

'I order you to tell me!' the prior repeated. 'In the name of God, I order you!'

'If the King wishes you to know what I seek,' Thomas spoke in French though the prior had been using English, 'then the King will be pleased to tell you.'

The prior stared angrily towards the rood screen. The French language, tongue of aristocrats, had silenced him, making him wonder who this archer was. Two men-at-arms, their mail clinking slightly, walked across the flagstones on their way to thank St Cuthbert for their survival. Most of the English army was far to the north, resting through the dark hours before resuming their pursuit of the beaten enemy, but some knights and menat-arms had come to the city where they guarded the valuable prisoners who had been placed in the bishop's residence in the castle. Perhaps, the prior thought, the treasure that Thomas of Hookton sought was no longer important; after all, a king had been captured along with half the earls of Scotland and their ransoms would wring that wretched country dry, yet he could not rid himself of the word thesaurus. A treasure, and the Church was ever in need of money. He stood. 'You forget,' he said coldly, 'that you are my guest.'

'I do not forget,' Thomas said. He had been given space in the monks' guest quarters, or rather in their stables for there were greater men who needed the warmer rooms. 'I do not forget,' he said again, tiredly.

The prior now gazed up into the roof's high darkness. 'Perhaps,' he suggested, 'you know more of Brother Collimore's murder than you pretend?' Thomas did not answer; the prior's words were nonsense and the prior knew it, for he and Thomas had both been on the battle-field when the old monk had been killed, and Thomas's grief over Eleanor's murder was heartfelt, but the prior was angry and frustrated and he spoke unthinkingly. Hopes of treasure did that to a man. 'You will stay in Durham,' the prior commanded,

'until I give you per-mission to leave. I have given instructions that your horse is to be kept in my stables. You understand me?'

'I understand you,' Thomas said tiredly, then he watched the prior walk away. More men-at-arms were entering the cathedral, their heavy swords clattering against pillars and tombs. In the shadows, behind one of the side altars, the Scarecrow, Beggar and Dickon watched Thomas. They had been shadowing him since the battle's end. Sir Geoffrey was wearing a fine coat of mail now, which he had taken from a dead Scotsman, and he had debated whether to join the pursuit, but instead had sent a sergeant and a halfdozen men with orders to take whatever they could when the pillage of Scotland began. Sir Geoffrey himself was gambling that Thomas's treasure, because it had interested a king, would be worthy of his own interest and so he had decided to follow the archer. Thomas, oblivious of the Scarecrow's gaze, bent for-ward, eves tight shut, thinking he would never be whole again. His back and arm muscles burned from a day of drawing a bow and the fingers of his right hand were scraped raw by the cord. If he closed his eyes he saw nothing but Scotsmen coming towards him and the bow making a dark line down memory's picture and the white of the arrows' feathers dwindling in their flight, and then that picture would vanish and he would see Eleanor writhing under the knife that had tortured her. They had made her speak. Yet what did she know? That Thomas had doubted the Grail, that he was a reluctant searcher, that he only wanted to be a leader of archers, and that he had let his woman and his friend go to their deaths. A hand touched the back of his head and Thomas almost hurled himself aside in the expectation of some-thing worse, a blade, perhaps, but then a voice spoke and it was Lord Outhwaite. 'Come outside, young man,' he ordered Thomas, 'somewhere that the Scarecrow can't overhear us.' He said that loudly and in English, then softened his tone and used French. 'I've been look-ing for you.' He touched Thomas's arm, encouraging him. 'I heard about your girl and I was sorry. She was a pretty thing.'

'She was, my lord.'

'Her voice suggested she was well born,' Lord Outhwaite said, 'so her family will doubtless help you exact revenge?'

'Her father is titled, my lord, but she was his bastard.'

'Ah!' Lord Outhwaite stumped along, helping his limping gait with the spear he had carried for most of the day. 'Then he probably won't help, will he? But you can do it on your own. You seem capable enough.' His lordship had taken Thomas into a cold, fresh night. A high moon flirted with silver-edged clouds while on the western ridge great fires burned to plume a veil of red-touched smoke above the city. The fires lit the battlefield for the men and women of Durham who searched the dead for plunder and knifed the Scottish wounded to make them dead so they could also be plundered. 'I'm too old to join a pursuit,' Lord Outhwaite said, staring at the distant fires, 'too old and too stiff in the joints. It's a young man's hunt, and they'll pursue them all the way to Edinburgh. Have you ever seen Edinburgh Castle?'

'No, my lord.' Thomas spoke dully, not caring if he ever saw Edinburgh or its castle.

'Oh, it's fine! Very fine!' Lord Outhwaite said enthusiastically. 'Sir William Douglas captured it from us. He smuggled men past the gate inside barrels. Great big barrels. A clever man, eh? And now he's my prisoner.' Lord Outhwaite peered at the castle as though he expected to see Sir William Douglas and the other high-born Scottish captives shinning down from the battlements. Two torches in slanting metal cressets lit the entrance where a dozen men-at-arms stood guard. 'A rogue, our William, a rogue. Why is the Scarecrow following you?'

'I've no idea, my lord.'

'I think you do.' His lordship rested against a pile of stone. The area by the cathedral was heaped with stone and timber for the builders were repairing one of the great towers.

'He knows you seek a treasure so he now seeks it too.'

Thomas paid attention to that, looking sharply at his lordship, then looking back at the cathedral. Sir Geoffrey and his two men had come to the door, but they evidently dared not venture any closer for fear of Lord Outhwaite's displeasure. 'How can he know?'

Thomas asked.

'How can he not know?' Lord Outhwaite asked. 'The monks know about it, and that's as good as asking a herald to announce it. Monks gossip like market wives! So the Scarecrow knows you might be the source of great wealth and he wants it. What is this treasure?'

'Just treasure, my lord, though I doubt it has great intrinsic worth.'

Lord Outhwaite smiled. He said nothing for a while, but just stared across the dark gulf above the river. 'You told me, did you not,' he said finally, 'that the King sent you in the company of a household knight and a chaplain from the royal household?'

'Yes, my lord.'

'And they fell ill in London?'

'They did.'

'A sickly place. I was there twice, and twice is more than enough! Noxious! My pigs live in cleaner conditions! But a royal chaplain, eh? No doubt a clever fellow, not a country priest, eh? Not some ignorant peasant tricked out with a phrase or two of Latin, but a rising man, a fellow who'll be a bishop before long if he survives his fever. Now why would the King send such a man?'

'You must ask him, my lord.'

'A royal chaplain, no less,' Lord Outhwaite went on as though Thomas had not spoken, then he fell silent. A scatter of stars showed between the clouds and he gazed up at them, then sighed. 'Once,' he said, 'a long time ago, I saw a crystal vial of our Lord's blood. It was in Flanders and it liquefied in answer to prayer! There's another vial in Gloucestershire, I'm told, but I've not seen that one. I did once stroke the beard of St Jerome in Nantes; I've held a hair from the tail of Balaam's ass; I've kissed a feather from the wing of St Gabriel and brandished the very jawbone with which Samson slew so many Philistines! I have seen a sandal of St Paul, a fingernail from Mary Magdalene and six fragments of the true cross, one of them stained by the very same holy blood that I saw in Flanders. I have glimpsed the bones of the fishes with which our Lord fed the five thousand, I have felt the sharpness of one of the arrow heads that felled St Sebastian and smelt a leaf from the apple tree of the Garden of Eden. In my own chapel, young man, I have a knuckle bone of St Thomas and a hinge from the box in which the frankincense was given to the Christ child. That hinge cost me a great deal of money, a great deal. So tell me, Thomas, what relic is more precious than all those I have seen and all those I hope to see in the great churches of Christendom?'

Thomas stared at the fires on the ridge where so many dead lay. Was Eleanor in heaven already? Or was she doomed to spend thousands of years in purgatory? That thought reminded him that he had to pay for Masses to be said for her soul.

'You stay silent,' Lord Outhwaite observed. 'But tell me, young man, do you think I really possess a hinge from the Christ child's tov box of frankincense?'

'I wouldn't know, my lord.'

'I sometimes doubt it,' Lord Outhwaite said genially, 'but my wife believes! And that's what matters: belief. If you believe a thing possesses God's power then it will work its power for you.' He paused, his great shaggy head raised to the darkness as if he smelt for enemies. 'I think you search for a thing of God's power, a great thing, and I believe that the devil is trying to stop you. Satan himself is stirring his creatures to thwart you.' Lord Outhwaite turned an anxious face on Thomas. 'This strange priest and his dark servant are the devil's minions and so is Sir Geoffrey! He is an imp of Satan if ever there was one.' He threw a glance towards the cathedral's porch where the Scarecrow and his two henchmen had retreated into the shadows as a pro-cession of cowled monks came into the night. 'Satan is working mischief,' Lord Outhwaite said, 'and you must fight it. Do you have sufficient funds?'

After the talk of the devil the commonplace question about funds surprised Thomas.

'Do I have funds, my lord?'

'If the devil fights you, young man, then I would help you and few things in this world are more helpful than money. You have a search to make, you have journeys to finish and you will need funds. So, do you have enough?'

'No. my lord,' Thomas said.

'Then permit me to help you.' Lord Outhwaite placed a bag of coins on the pile of stones. 'And perhaps you would take a companion on your search?'

'A companion?' Thomas asked, still bemused.

'Not me! Not me! I'm much too old.' Lord Outhwaite chuckled. 'No, but I confess I am fond of Willie Douglas. The priest who I think killed your woman also killed Douglas's nephew, and Douglas wants revenge. He asks, no, he begs that the dead man's brother be permitted to travel with you.'

'He's a prisoner, surely?'

'I suppose he is, but young Robbie's hardly worth ransoming. I suppose I might fetch a few pounds for him, but nothing like the fortune I intend to exact for his uncle. No, I'd rather Robbie travelled with you. He wants to find the priest and his servant and I think he could help you.' Lord Outhwaite paused and when Thomas did not answer, he pressed his request. 'He's a good young man, Robbie. I know him, I like him, and he's capable. A good soldier too, I'm told.'

Thomas shrugged. At this moment he did not care if half Scotland travelled with him.

'He can come with me, my lord,' he said, 'if I'm allowed to go anywhere.'

'What do you mean? Allowed?'

'I'm not permitted to travel.' Thomas sounded bitter. 'The prior has forbidden me to leave the city and he's taken my horse.' Thomas had found the horse, brought into Durham by Father Hobbe, tied at the monastery's gate.

Lord Outhwaite laughed. 'And you will obey the prior?'

'I can't afford to lose a good horse, my_ lord,' Thomas said.

'I have horses,' Lord Outhwaite said dismissiyely, 'including two good Scottish horses that I took today, and at dawn tomorrow the Archbishop's messengers will ride south to take news of this day to London and three of my men will accompany them. I suggest you and Robbie go with them. That will get the two of you safe to London and after that? Where will you go after that?'

'I'm going home, my lord,' Thomas said, 'to Hookton, to the village where my father lived.'

'And will that murderous priest expect you to go there?'

'I can't say.'

'He will search for you. Doubtless he considered wait-ing for you here, but that was too dangerous. Yet he'll want your knowledge, Thomas, and he'll torment you to find it. Sir Geoffrey will do the same. That wretched Scarecrow will do anything for money, but I suspect the priest is the more dangerous.'

'So I keep my eyes open and my arrows sharp?'

'I would be cleverer than that,' Lord Outhwaite said. 'I have always found that if a man is hunting you then it's best that he finds you in a place of your own choosing. Don't be ambushed, but be ready to ambush him.'

Thomas accepted the wisdom of the advice, but sounded dubious all the same. 'And how will they know where I go?'

'Because I will tell them,' Lord Outhwaite said, 'or rather, when the prior complains that you have dis-obeyed him by leaving the city, I shall tell him and his monks will then inform anyone whose ears they can reach. Monks are garrulous creatures. So where would you like to face your enemies, young man? At your home?'

'No, my lord,' Thomas said hastily, then thought for a few heartbeats. 'At La RocheDerrien,' he went on.

'In Brittany?' Lord Outhwaite sounded surprised. 'Is what you seek in Brittany?'

'I don't know where it is, my lord, but I have friends in Brittany.'

'Ah, and I trust you will also see me as a friend.' He pushed the bag of coins towards Thomas. 'Take it.' 'I shall repay you, my lord.'

'You will repay me,' his lordship said, standing, 'by bringing me the treasure and letting me touch it just once before it goes to the King.' He glanced at the cathedral where Sir Geoffrey lurked. 'I think you had better sleep in the castle tonight. I have men there who can keep that wretched Scarecrow at bay. Come.'

Sir Geoffrey Carr watched the two men go. He could not attack Thomas while Lord Outhwaite was with him, for Lord Outhwaite was too powerful; but power, the Scare-crow knew, came from money and it seemed there was treasure adrift in the world, treasure that interested the King and now interested Lord Outhwaite too. So the Scarecrow, come hell or the devil to oppose him, intended to find it first. Thomas was not going to La Roche-Derrien. He had lied, naming the town because he knew it and because he did not mind if his pursuers went there, but he planned to be elsewhere. He would go to Hookton to see if his father had hidden the Grail there and afterwards, for he did not expect to find it, he would go to France for it was there that the English army laid siege to Calais and it was there that his friends were, and there that an archer could find proper employment. Will Skeat's men were in the siege lines and Will's archers had wanted Thomas to be their leader and he knew he could do the job. He could lead his own band of men, be as feared as Will Skeat was feared. He thought about it as he rode southwards, though he did not think consistently or well. He was too obsessed with the deaths of Eleanor and Father Hobbe, and torturing himself with the memory of his last look back at Eleanor and his remembrance of that glance meant that he saw the country through which he rode distorted by tears.

Thomas was supposed to ride south with the men carrying the news of the English victory to London, but he got no further than York. He was supposed to leave York at dawn, but Robbie Douglas had vanished. The Scotsman's horse was still in the Archbishop's stables and his baggage was where he had dropped it in the yard, but Robbie was gone. For a moment Thomas was tempted to leave the Scot behind, but some vague sense of resented duty made him stay. Or perhaps it was that he did not much care for the company of the men-at-arms who rode with their triumphant news and so he let them go and went to look for his companion.

He found the Scot gaping up at the gilded bosses of the Minster's ceiling. 'We're supposed to be riding south,' Thomas said.

'Aye,' Robbie answered curtly, otherwise ignoring Thomas.

Thomas waited. After a short while: 'I said that we're supposed to be riding south.'

'So we are,' Robbie agreed, 'and I'm not stopping you.' He waved a magnanimous arm.

'Ride on!'

'You're giving up the hunt for de Taillebourg?' Thomas asked. He had learned the priest's name from Robbie.

'No.' Robbie still had his head back as he stared at the magnificence of the transept's ceiling. 'I'll find him and then I'll gralloch the bastard.'

Thomas did not know what gralloch meant, but decided the word was bad news for de Taillebourg. 'So why the hell are you here?'

Robbie frowned. He had a shock of curling brown hair and a snub face that, at first glance, made him look boyish, though a second look would detect the strength in his jawline and the hardness of his eyes. He at last turned those eyes on Thomas. 'What I can't stand,' he said, 'are those damned laddies! Those bastards!'

It took a couple of heartbeats before Thomas realized he meant the men-at-arms who had been their companions on the ride from Durham to York, the men who were now two hours south on the road to London. 'What was wrong with them?'

'Did you hear them last night? Did you?' Robbie's indignation flared, attracting the attention of two men who were on a high trestle where they were painting the feeding of the five thousand on the nave's wall. 'And the night before?' Robbie went on.

'They got drunk,' Thomas said, 'but so did we.' 'Telling how they fought the battle!'

Robbie said. 'And to hear the bastards you'd think we ran away!' 'You did,' Thomas said. Robbie had not heard him. 'You'd think we didn't fight at all! Boasting, they were, and we nearly won. You hear that?' He poked an aggressive finger into Thomas's chest. 'We damn nearly won, and those bastards made us sound like cowards!'

'You lost,' Thomas said.

Robbie stared at Thomas as though he could not believe his ears. 'We drove you back halfway to bloody London! Had you running, we did! Pissing in your breeks! We damn nearly won, we did, and those bastards are gloating. Just gloating! I wanted to murder the pack of them!' A score of folk were listening. Two pilgrims, making their way on their knees to the shrine behind the high altar, were staring open-mouthed at Robbie. A priest was frowning nervously, while a child sucked its thumb and gazed aghast at the shockheaded man who was shouting so loudly. 'You hear me?' Robbie yelled. 'We damn nearly won!'

Thomas walked away.

'Where are you off to?' Robbie demanded.

'South,' Thomas said. He understood Robbie's embarrassment. The messengers, carrying news of the battle, could not resist embellishing the story of the fight when they_

were entertained in castle or monastery and so a hard-fought, savage piece of carnage had become an easy victory. No wonder Robbie was offended, but Thomas had small sympathy. He turned and pointed at the Scotsman. 'You should have stayed at home.'

Robbie spat in disgust, then became aware of his audience. 'Had you running,' he said hotly, then leaped over to catch up with Thomas. He grinned and there was a sudden and appealing charm in his face. 'I didn't mean to shout at you,' he said, 'I was just angry.'

'Me too,' Thomas said, but his anger was at himself and it was mingled with guilt and grief that did not lessen as the two rode south. They took to the road in mornings heavy with dew, rode through autumn mists, hunched under the lash of rain, and for almost every step of the journey Thomas thought of Eleanor. Lord Outhwaite had promised to bury her and have Masses said for her soul and Thomas sometimes wished he was sharing her grave.

'So why is de Taillebourg chasing you?' Robbie asked on the day they rode away from York. They spoke in English for, though Robbie was from the noble house of Douglas, he spoke no French.

For a time Thomas said nothing, and just when Robbie thought he would not answer at all he gave a snort of derision. 'Because,' he said, 'the bastard believes that my father possessed the Grail.'

'The Grail!' Robbie crossed himself. 'I heard it was in Scotland.'

'In Scotland?' Thomas asked, astonished. 'I know Genoa claims to have it, but Scotland?'

'And why not?' Robbie bristled. 'Mind you,' he relented, 'I've heard there's one in Spain, too.' 'Spain?'

'And if the Spanish have one,' Robbie said, 'then the French will have to have one as well, and for all I know the Portuguese too.' He shrugged, then looked back to Thomas.

'So did your father have another?'

Thomas did not know what to answer. His father had been wayward, mad, brilliant, difficult and tortured. He had been a great sinner and, for all that, he might well have been a saint as well. Father Ralph had laughed at the wider reaches of superstition, he had mocked the pig bones sold by pardoners as relics of the saints, yet he had hung an old, blackened and bent spear in his church's rafters and claimed it was the lance of St George. He had never mentioned the Grail to Thomas, but since his death Thomas had learned that the history of his family was entwined with the Grail. In the end he elected to tell Robbie the truth. 'I don't know,' he said, 'I simply don't know.'

Robbie ducked under a branch that grew low across the road. 'Are you telling me this is the real Grail?'

'If it exists,' Thomas said and he wondered again if it did. He supposed it was possible, but wished it was not. Yet he had been charged with the duty of finding out and so he would seek his father's one friend and he would ask that man about the Grail and when he received the expected answer he would go back to France and join Skeat's archers. Will Skeat himself, his one-time commander and friend, was stranded in Caen, and Thomas had no knowledge whether Will still lived or, if he did, whether he could speak or understand or even walk. He could find out by sending a letter to Sir Guillaume d'Evecque, Eleanor's father, and Will could be given safe passage in return for the release of some minor French nobleman. Thomas would repay Lord Outhwaite with money plundered from the enemy and then, he told himself, he would find his consolation in the practice of his skill, in archery, in the killing of the King's enemies. Perhaps de Taillebourg would come and find him and Thomas would kill him like he would put down a rat. As for Robbie? Thomas had decided he liked the Scotsman, but he did not care whether he stayed or went.

Robbie only understood that de Taillebourg would seek Thomas and so he would stay at the archer's side until he could kill the Dominican. He had no other ambition, just to avenge his brother: that was a family duty. 'You touch a Douglas,' he told Thomas, 'and we'll fillet you. We'll skin you alive. It's a blood feud, see?'

'Even if the killer is the priest?'

'It's either him or his servant,' Robbie said, 'and the servant obeys the master: either way the priest's responsible, so he dies. I'll slit his bloody throat.' He rode for a while in silence, then grinned. 'And then I'll go to hell, but at least there'll be plenty of Douglases keeping the devil company.' He laughed.

It took ten days to reach London and, once there, Robbie pretended to be unimpressed, as though Scot-land had cities of this size in every other valley, but after a while he dropped the pretence and just stared in awe at the great buildings, crowded streets and serried market stalls. Thomas used Lord Outhwaite's coins so they could lodge in a tavern just outside the city walls beside the horse pond in Smithfield and close to the green where more than three hundred traders had their stalls. 'And it's not even market day?'

Robbie exclaimed, then snatched at Thomas's sleeve. 'Look!' A juggler was spinning half a dozen balls in the air – that was nothing unusual for any county fair would show the same – but this man was standing on two swords, using them as stilts, with his bare feet poised on the swords' points. 'How does he do it?' Robbie asked. 'And look!' A dancing bear was shuffling to the tune of a flute just beneath the gibbet where two bodies hung. This was the place where London's felons were brought to be sent on their swift way to hell. Both corpses were encased in chains to hold the rotting flesh to their bones and the stench of the decaying corpses mingled with the smell of smoke and the reek of the frightened cattle who were bought and sold on the green, which stretched between London's wall and the Priory of St Bartholomew where Thomas paid a priest to say Masses for the souls of Eleanor and Father Hobbe.

Thomas, pretending to Robbie that he was far more familiar with London than was the truth, had chosen the tavern in Smithfield for no other reason than its sign was two crossed arrows. This was only his second visit to the city and he was as impressed, confused, dazzled and surprised as Robbie. They wandered the streets, gaping at churches and noblemen's houses, and Thomas used Lord Outhwaite's money to buy himself some new boots, calfskin leggings, an oxhide coat and a fine woollen cloak. He was tempted by a sleek French razor in an ivory case, but, not knowing the razor's value, feared he was being cheated; he reckoned he could steal himself a razor from a Frenchman's corpse when he reached Calais. Instead he paid a barber to shave him and then, dressed in his new finery, spent the cost of the unbought razor on one of the tavern's women and afterwards lay with tears in his eyes because he was thinking of Eleanor.

'Is there a reason we're in London?' Robbie asked him that night. Thomas drained his ale and beckoned the girl to bring more. 'It's on our way to Dorset.'

'That's as good a reason as any.'

London was not really on the way from Durham to Dorchester, but the roads to the capital were so much better than those that wandered across the country and so it was quicker to travel through the great city. How-ever, after three davs, Thomas knew they must move on and so he and Robbie rode westwards. They skirted Westminster and Thomas thought for an idle heartbeat of visiting John Prvke, the royal chaplain sent to accompany him to Durham who had fallen ill in London and now either lived or died in the abbey's hospital, but

Thomas had no stomach to talk of the Grail and so he rode on. The air became cleaner as they went deeper into the country. It was not reckoned safe to travel these roads, but Thomas's face was so grim that other travellers reckoned he was the danger rather than the prey. He was unshaven and he dressed, as he always had, in black, and the misery of the last days had put deep lines on his thin face. With Robbie's mass of unkempt hair, the two of them looked like any other vagabonds who wandered the roads, except these two were fearsomely armed. Thomas carried his sword, bow and arrow bag, while Robbie had his uncle's sword with the scrap of St Andrew's hair encased in its hilt. Sir William had reckoned he would have small use for the sword in the next few years while his family attempted to find the vast ransom, and so he had lent it to Robbie with the encouragement to use it well.

'You think de Taillebourg will be in Dorset?' Robbie asked Thomas as they rode through a stinging rain shower.

'I doubt it.'

'So why are we going?'

'Because he may go there eventually,' Thomas said, 'him and his damn servant.' He knew nothing about the servant except what Robbie had told him: that the man was fastidious, elegant, dark in looks and mysterious, but Robbie had never heard his name. Thomas, finding it hard to believe that a priest would have killed Eleanor, had persuaded himself that the servant was the killer and so planned to make the man suffer in agony. It was late afternoon when they ducked under the arch of Dorchester's east gate. A guard there, alarmed by their weapons, challenged them, but backed down when Thomas answered in French. It suggested he was an aristocrat and the guard sullenly let the two horse-men pass, then watched as they climbed East Street past All Saints' church and the county jail. The houses grew more prosperous as they neared the town's centre and, close to St Peter's church, the wool-merchants' homes might not have been out of place in London. Thomas could smell the shambles behind the houses where the butchers worked their trade, then he led Robbie into Cornhill, past the shop of the pewterer who had a stammer and a wall eye, then past the blacksmith where he had once bought some arrow heads. He knew most of these folk. The Dogman, a legless beggar who had come by his nickname because he lapped water from the River Cerne like a dog, was heaving down South Street on the wooden bricks strapped to his hands. Dick Adyn, brother of the town's jailer, was driving three sheep up the hill and paused to deliver a genial insult to Willie Palmer who was closing up his hosiery shop. A young priest hurried into an alley with a book wrapped in his arms and averted his eyes from a woman squatting in the gutter. A gust of wind blew woodsmoke low into the street. Dorcas Galton, brown hair drawn up into a bun, shook a rug out of an upstairs window and laughed aloud at something Dick Adyn said. They all spoke in the local accent, soft and broad and buzzing like Thomas's own, and he almost curbed the horse to speak with them, but Dick Advn glanced at him and then looked swiftly away and Dorcas slammed the window shut. Robbie looked formidable, but Thomas's gaunt looks were even more frightening and none of the townsfolk recognized him as the bastard son of Hook-ton's last priest. They would know him if he introduced himself, but war had changed Thomas. It had given him a hardness that repelled strangers. He had left Dorset a boy, but come back as one of Edward of England's prized killers and when he left the town by the south gate a constable gave both him and Robbie good riddance and told them to stay away. 'Be lucky the pair of you ain't in jail!' the man called, emboldened by his municipal coat of mail and ancient spear. Thomas stopped his horse, turned in the saddle and just stared at the man who suddenly found reason to duck back into the alley beside the gate. Thomas spat and rode on.

'Your home town?' Robbie asked caustically.

'Not now,' Thomas said and he wondered where home was these days, and for some odd reason La Roche-Derrien came unbidden to his thoughts and he found himself remembering Jeanette Chenier in her great house beside the River Jaudy, and that recollection of an old love made him feel guilty yet again for Eleanor. 'Where's your home town?' he asked Robbie rather than dwell on memories.

'I grew up close to Langholm.'

'Where's that?'

'On the River Esk,' Robbie said, 'not far north of the border. It's a hard country, so it is. Not like this.'

'This is a good countryside,' Thomas said mildly. He looked up at the high green walls of Maiden Castle where the devil played on All Hallow's Eve and where the corncrakes now made their harsh song. There were ripe blackberries in the hedgerows and, as the shadows lengthened, fox cubs skittering at the edge of the fields. A few miles on and the evening had almost shaded to night, but he could smell the sea now and he imagined that he could hear it, sucking and surging on the Dorset shingle. This was the ghost time of day when the souls of the dead flickered at the edges of men's sight and when good folk hurried home to their fire and to their thatch and to their bolted doors. A dog howled in one of the villages.

Thomas had thought to ride to Down Mapperley where Sir Giles Marriott, the squire of Hookton among other villages, had his hall, but it was late and he did not think it wise to arrive at the hall after dark. Besides, Thomas wanted to see Hookton before he spoke with Sir Giles and so he turned his tired horse towards the sea and led Robbie under the high dark loom of Lipp Hill. 'I killed my first men up on that hill,' he boasted.

'With the bow?'

'Four of them,' Thomas said, 'with four arrows.' That was not entirely true for he must have shot seven or eight arrows, maybe more, but he had still killed four of the raiders who had come across the Channel to pillage Hookton. And now he was deep in the twilight shadow of Hookton's sea valley and he could see the fret of breaking waves flashing white in the late dusk as he rode down beside the stream to the place where his father had preached and died.

No one lived there now. The raiders had left the village dead. The houses had been burned, the church roof had fallen and the villagers were buried in a grave-yard choked by nettles, thorn and thistles. It was four and a half years since that raiding party had landed at Hookton led by Thomas's cousin, Guy Vexille, the Count of Astarac, and by Eleanor's father, Sir Guillaume d'Evecque. Thomas had killed four of the crossbowmen and that had been the beginning of his life as an archer. He had abandoned his studies at Oxford and, until this moment, had never returned to Hookton. 'This was home,' he told Robbie.

'What happened?'

'The French happened,' Thomas said and gestured at the darkling sea. 'They sailed from Normandy.'

'Jesus.' Robbie, for some reason, was surprised. He knew that the borderlands of England and Scotland were places where buildings were burned, cattle stolen, women raped and men killed, but he had never thought it happened this far south. He slid down from his horse and walked to a heap of nettles that had been a cottage. 'There was a village here?'

'A fishing village,' Thomas said and he strode down what was once the street to where the nets had been mended and the women had smoked fish. His father's house was a heap of burned-out timbers, choked with bindweed now. The other cottages were the same, their thatch and wattle reduced to ash and soil. Only the church to the west of the stream was recognizable, its gaunt walls open to the sky. Thomas and Robbie tied their horses to hazel saplings in the graveyard, then took their baggage into the ruined church. It was already too dark to explore, yet Thomas could not sleep and so he went down to the beach and he remembered that Easter morning when the Norman ships had grounded on the shingle and the men had come shrieking in the dawn with swords and crossbows, axes and fire. They had come for the Grail. Guy Vexille believed it to be in his uncle's possession and so the Harlequin had put the village of Hookton to the sword. He had burned it, destroyed it and gone from it without the Grail.

The stream made its little noise as it twisted inside the shingle Hook on its way to meet the great sound of the sea. Thomas sat down on the Hook, swathed in his new cloak, with the great black bow beside him. The chaplain, John Prvke, had talked of the Grail in the same awed tones that Father Hobbe had used when he spoke of the relic. The Grail, Father Pryke said, was not just the cup from which Christ had drunk wine at the Last Supper, but the vessel into which Christ's dying blood had poured from the cross.

'Longinus,' Father Prvke had said in his excitable manner, 'was the centurion beneath the cross and, when the spear struck the dolorous blow, he raised the dish to catch the blood!'

How, Thomas wondered, did the cup go from the upper room where Christ had eaten his last meal into the possession of a Roman centurion? And, stranger still, how had it reached Ralph Vexille? He closed his eyes, swaying back and forwards, ashamed of his dis-belief. Father Hobbe had always called him Doubting Thomas. 'You mustn't seek explanations,' Father Hobbe had said again and again, 'because the Grail is a miracle. It transcends explanations.'

C'est une tasse magique,' Eleanor had added, implicitly adding her reproof to Father Hobbe's.

Thomas so wanted to believe it was a magic cup. He wanted to believe that the Grail existed just beyond human sight, behind a veil of disbelief, a thing half visible, shimmering, wonderful, poised in light and glowing like pale fire. He wanted to believe that one day it would take on substance and that from its bowl, which had held the wine and the blood of Christ, would flow peace and healing. Yet if God wanted the world to be at peace and if He wanted sickness defeated, why did He hide the Grail? Father Hobbe's answer had been that mankind was not worthy to hold the cup, and Thomas wondered if that was true. Was anyone worthy? And perhaps, Thomas thought, if the Grail had any magic then it was to exaggerate the faults and vir-tues of those who sought it. Father Hobbe had become more saintlike in his pursuit and the strange priest and his dark servant more malevolent. It was like one of those crystal lenses that jewellers used to magnify their work, only the Grail was a crystal that magnified character. What, Thomas wondered, did it reveal of his own? He remembered his unease at the thought of marrying Eleanor, and suddenly he began to weep, to heave with sobs, to cry more than he had already cried since her murder. He rocked to and fro, his grief as deep as the sea that beat on the shingle, and it was made worse by the knowledge that he was a sinner, unshriven, his soul doomed to hell.

He missed his woman, he hated himself, he felt empty, alone and doomed, and so, in his father's dead village, he wept.

It began to rain later, a steady rain that soaked through the new cloak and chilled Thomas and Robbie to the bone. They had lit a fire that flickered feebly in the old church, hissing under the rain and giving them a small illusion of warmth. 'Are there wolves here?' Robbie asked.

'Supposed to be,' Thomas said, 'though I never saw one.'

'We have wolves in Eskdale,' Robbie said, 'and at night their eyes glow red. Like fire.'

'There are monsters in the sea here,' Thomas said. 'Their bodies wash ashore sometimes and you can find their bones in the cliffs. Sometimes, even on calm days, men wouldn't come back from fishing and you'd know the monsters had taken them.' He shivered and crossed himself.

'When my grandfather died,' Robbie said, 'the wolves circled the house and howled.'

'Is it a big house?'

Robbie seemed surprised by the question. He con-sidered it for a moment, then nodded. 'Aye,' he said. 'My father's a laird.'

'A lord?'

'Like a lord,' Robbie said.

'He wasn't at the battle?'

'He lost a leg and an arm at Berwick. So we boys have to fight for him.' He said he was the youngest of four sons. 'Three now,' he said, crossing himself and thinking of Jamie.

They half slept, woke, shivered, and in the dawn Thomas walked back to the Hook to watch the new day seep grey along the sea's ragged edge. The rain had stopped, though a cold wind shredded the wave-tops. The grey turned a leprous white, then silvery as the gulls called over the long shingle where, at the top of the Hook's bank, he found the weathered remnants of four posts. They had not been there when he left, but beneath one of them, half buried in stones, was a yellowish scrap of skull and he guessed this was one of the crossbowmen he had killed with his tall black bow on that Easter day. Four posts, four dead men and Thomas supposed that the four heads had been placed on the poles to gaze out to sea till the gulls pecked out their eyes and flensed the flesh back to the bare skulls.

He stared into the ruined village, but could see no one. Robbie was still inside the church from which a tiny wisp of smoke drifted, but otherwise Thomas was alone with the gulls. There were not even sheep, cattle or goats on Lipp Hill. He walked back inland, his feet crunching on the shingle, then realized he still held the broken curve of skull and he hurled it into the stream where the fishing boats had been flooded to rid them of rats and then, feeling hungry, he went and took the piece of hard cheese and dark bread from the saddlebag that he had dumped beside the church door. The walls of the church, now he could see them properly in the daylight, appeared lower than he remembered, probably because local folk had come with carts and taken the stones away for barns or sties or house walls. Inside the church there was only a tangle of thorns, nettles and a few gnarled lengths of charred timber that had long been overgrown by grass. 'I was almost killed in here,' he told Robbie, and he described how the raiders had beaten on the church door as he had kicked out the horn panes of the east window and jumped down into the graveyard. He remembered how his foot had crushed the silver Mass cup as he scrambled over the altar.

Had that silver cup been the Grail? He laughed aloud at the thought. The Mass cup had been a silver goblet on which was incised the badge of the Vexilles, and that badge, cut from the crushed cup, was now pinned to Thomas's bow. It was all that was left of the old goblet, but it had not been the Grail. The Grail was much older, much more mysterious and much more frightening. The altar was long gone, but there was a shallow clay bowl in the nettles where it had stood. Thomas kicked the plants aside and picked up the bowl, remembering how his father would fill it with wafers before the Mass and cover it with a piece of linen cloth and then hurry it to the church, getting angry if any of the villagers did not take off their hats and bow to the sacrament as he passed. Thomas had kicked the bowl as he climbed onto the altar to escape the Frenchmen, and here it still was. He smiled ruefully, thought about keeping the bowl, but tossed it back into the nettles. Archers should travel light.

'Someone's coming,' Robbie warned him, running to fetch his uncle's sword. Thomas picked up the bow and took an arrow from his bag, and just then he heard the thump of hooves and the baying of hounds. He went to the ruins of the door and saw a dozen great deerhounds splashing through the stream with tongues lolling between their fangs; he had no time to run from them, only to flatten himself against the wall as the hounds streaked for him.

'Argos! Maera! Back off now! Mind your goddamn manners!' the horseman bellowed at his hounds, reinforcing his commands with the crack of a whip over their heads, but the beasts surrounded Thomas and leaped up at him. Yet it was not in threat: they were licking his face and wagging their tails. 'Orthos!' the huntsman snapped at one dog, then he stared hard at Thomas. He did not recognize him, but the hounds obviously knew him and that gave the huntsman pause.

'Jake,' Thomas said.

'Sweet Jesus Christ!' Jake said. 'Sweet Jesus! Look what the tide brought in. Orthos!

Argos! Off and away, you bastards, off and away!' The whip cracked loud and the hounds, still excited, backed away. Jake shook his head. 'It's Thomas, isn't it?'

'How are you, Jake?'

'Older,' Jake Churchill said gruffly, then climbed down from the saddle, pushed through the hounds and greeted Thomas with an embrace. 'It was your damned father who named these dogs. He thought it was a joke. It's good to see you, boy.' Jake was grey-bearded, his face dark as a nut from the weather and his skin scarred from countless brushes with thorns. He was Sir Giles Marriott's chief huntsman and he had taught Thomas how to shoot a bow and how to stalk a deer and how to go hidden and silent through country. 'Good Christ Almighty, boy,' he said, 'but you've fair grown up. Look at the size of you!'

'Boys do grow up, Jake,' Thomas said, then gestured at Robbie. 'He's a friend.'

Jake nodded at the Scotsman, then hauled two of the hounds away from Thomas. The dogs, named for hounds from Greek and Latin myth, whined excitedly. 'And what the hell are you two doing down here?' Jake wanted to know. 'You should have come up to the hall like Christians!'

'We got here late,' Thomas explained, 'and I wanted to see the place.'

'Nothing to see here,' Jake said scornfully. 'Nothing but hares here now.'

'You're hunting hare now?'

'I don't bring ten brace of hounds to snaffle hares, boy. No, Lally Gooden's boy saw the pair of you sneak-ing in here last night and so Sir Giles sent me down to see what evil was brewing. We had a pair of vagabonds trying to set up home here in the spring and they had to be whipped on their way. And last week there was a pair of foreigners creeping about.'

'Foreigners?' Thomas asked, knowing that Jake could well mean nothing more than that the strangers had come from the next parish.

'A priest and his man,' Jake said, 'and if he hadn't been a priest I'd have loosed the dogs on him. I don't like foreigners, don't see no point to them. Those horses of yours looks hungry. So do the two of you. You want breakfast? Or are you going to stand there and spoil those damned hounds by patting them half to death?'

They rode back to Down Mapperley, following the hounds through the tiny village. Thomas remembered the place as big, twice the size of Hookton, and as a child he had thought it almost a town, but now he saw how small it was. Small and low, so that on horse-back he towered above the thatched cottages that had seemed so palatial when he was a child. The dung-heaps beside each cottage were as high as the thatch. Sir Giles Marriott's hall, just beyond the village, was also thatched, the moss-thick roof sweeping almost to the ground. 'He'll be pleased to see you,' Jake promised. And so Sir Giles was. He was an old man now, a widower who had once been wary of Thomas's wildness, but now greeted him like a lost son. 'You're thin, boy, too thin. Ain't good for a man to be thin. You'll have breakfast, the two of you? Pease pudding and small ale is what we've got. There was bread yesterday, but not today. When do we bake more bread, Gooden?' This was demanded of a servant.

'Today's Wednesday, sir,' the servant said reprovingly.

'Tomorrow then,' Sir Giles told Thomas. 'Bread tomorrow, no bread today. It's bad luck to bake bread on Wednesday. It poisons you, Wednesday's bread. I must have eaten Monday's. You say you're Scottish?' This was to Robbie.

'I am, sir.'

'I thought all Scotsmen had beards,' Sir Giles said. 'There was a Scotsman in Dorchester, wasn't there Gooden? You remember him? He had a beard. He played the gittern and danced well. You must remember him.'

'He was from the Scilly Isles,' the servant said. 'That's what I just said. But he had a beard, didn't he?' 'He did, Sir Giles. A big one.'

'There you are then,' Sir Giles spooned some pease pudding into a mouth that only had two teeth left. He was fat, white-haired and red-faced and at least fifty years old. 'Can't ride a horse these days, Thomas,' he admitted. 'Ain't good for anything now except sitting about the place and watching the weather. Did Jake tell you there be foreigners scuttling about?'

'He did, sir.'

'A priest! Black and white robes like a magpie. He wanted to talk about your father and I said there was nothing to talk about. Father Ralph's dead, I said, and God rest his poor soul.'

'Did the priest ask for me, sir?' Thomas asked.

Sir Giles grinned. 'I said I hadn't seen you in years and hoped never to see you again, and then his servant asked me where he might look for you and I told him not to talk to his betters without permission. He didn't like that!' he chuckled. 'So then the magpie asked about your father and I said I hardly knew him. That was a lie, of course, but he believed me and took himself off.

Put some logs on that fire, Gooden. A man could freeze to death in his own hall if it was left to you.'

'So the priest left, sir?' Robbie asked. It seemed unlike de Taillebourg just to accept a denial and meekly go away.

'He was frightened of dogs,' Sir Giles said, still amused. 'I had some of the hounds in here and if he hadn't been dressed like a magpie I'd have let them loose, but it don't do to kill priests. There's always trouble afterwards. The devil comes and plays his games if you kill a priest. But I didn't like him and I told him I wasn't sure how long I could keep the dogs heeled. There's some ham in the kitchen. Would you like some ham, Thomas?'

'No, sir.'

'I do hate winter.' Sir Giles stared into the fire, which now blazed huge in his wide hearth. The hall had smoke blackened beams supporting the huge expanse of thatch. At one end a carved timber screen hid the kitchens while the private rooms were at the other end, though since his wife had died Sir Giles no longer used the small chambers, but lived, ate and slept beside the hall fire. 'I reckon this'll be my last winter, Thomas.'

'I hope not, sir.'

'Hope what you damned well like, but I won't last it through. Not when the ice comes. A man can't keep warm these days, Thomas. It bites into you, the cold does, bites into your marrow and I don't like it. Your father never liked it either.' He was staring at Thomas now. 'Your father always said you'd go away. Not to Oxford. He knew you didn't like that. Like whipping a destrier between the shafts, he used to say. He knew you'd run off and be a soldier. He always said you had wild blood in you.' Sir Giles smiled, remembering. 'But he also said you'd come home one day. He said you'd come back to show him what a fine fellow you'd become.'

Thomas blinked back tears. Had his father really said that? 'I came back this time,' he said, 'to ask you a question, sir. The same question, I think, that the French priest wanted to ask you.'

'Questions!' Sir Giles grumbled. 'I never did like questions. They need answers, see? Of course you want some ham! What do you mean, no? Gooden? Ask your daughter to unwrap that ham, will you?'

Sir Giles heaved himself to his feet and shuffled across the hall to a great chest of dark, polished oak. He raised the lid and, groaning with the effort of bending over, began to rummage through the clothes and boots that were jumbled inside. 'I find now, Thomas,' he went on, 'that I don't need questions. I sit in the manor court every second week and I know whether they're guilty or innocent the moment they're fetched into the hall!

Mind you, we have to pretend otherwise, don't we? Now, where is it? Ah!' He found whatever he sought and brought it back to the table. 'There, Thomas, damn your question and that's your answer.' He pushed the bundle across the table. It was a small object wrapped in ancient sacking. Thomas had an absurd premonition that this was the Grail itself and was ridiculously disappointed when he discovered the bundle contained a book. The book's front cover was a soft leather flap, four or five times larger than the pages, which could be used to wrap the volume that, when Thomas opened it, proved to be written in his father's hand. However, being by his father, nothing in it was straightforward. Thomas leafed through the pages swiftly, discovering notes written in Latin; Greek and a strange script which he thought must be Hebrew. He turned back to the first page where only three words were written and, reading them, felt his blood run cold. 'Calix mews inebrians.'

'Is it your answer?' Sir Giles asked.

'Yes, sir.'

Sir Giles peered at the first page. 'It's Latin that, isn't it?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Thought it was. I looked, of course, but couldn't make head nor tail of it and I didn't like to ask Sir John,' — Sir John was the priest of St Peter's in Dorchester — 'or that lawyer fellow, what's his name? The one who dribbles when he gets excited. He speaks Latin, or he says he does. What does it mean?'

' “My cup makes me drunk”,' Thomas said.

“'My cup makes me drunk”!' Sir Giles thought that was splendidly funny. 'Aye, your father's wits were well off the wind. A good man, a good man, but dear me! “My cup makes me drunk”!'

'It's from one of the psalms,' Thomas said, turning to the second page, which was written in the script he thought was Hebrew, though there was something odd about it. One of the recurrent symbols looked like a human eye and Thomas had never seen that in a Hebrew script before though, in all honesty, he had seen little Hebrew. 'It's from the psalm, sir,' he went on, 'that begins by saying God is our shepherd.'

'He's not my shepherd,' Sir Giles grumbled. 'I'm not some damned sheep.'

'Nor me, sir,' Robbie declared.

'I did hear' — Sir Giles looked at Robbie — that the King of Scotland was taken prisoner.'

'He was, sir?' Robbie asked innocently.

'Probably nonsense,' Sir Giles replied, then he began telling a long tale about meeting a bearded Scotsman in London, and Thomas ignored the story to look through the pages of his father's book. He felt a kind of strange disappointment because the book suggested that the search for the Grail was justified. He wanted someone to tell him it was nonsense, to release him from the cup's thrall, but his father had taken it seriously enough to write this book. But his father, Thomas reminded himself, had been mad. Mary, Gooden's daughter, brought in the ham. Thomas had known Mary since they were both children playing in puddles and he smiled a greeting at her, then saw that Robbie was gazing at her as though she was an apparition from heaven. She had dark long hair and a full mouth and Thomas was sure Robbie would be discovering more than a few rivals in Down Mapperley. He waited until Mary had gone, then held up the book.

'Did my father ever talk to you about this, sir?'

'He talked of everything,' Sir Giles said. 'Talked like a woman, he did. Never stopped!

I was your father's friend, Thomas, but I was never much of a man for religion. If he talked of it too much, I fell asleep. He liked that.' Sir Giles paused to cut a slice of ham.

'But your father was mad.'

'You think this is madness, sir?' Thomas held up the book again.

'Your father was mad for God, but he was no fool. I never knew a man with so much common sense and I miss it. I miss the advice.'

'Does that girl work here?' Robbie asked, gesturing at the screen behind which Mary had disappeared.

'All her life,' Sir Giles said. 'You remember Mary, Thomas?'

'I tried to drown her when we were both children,' Thomas said. He turned the pages of his father's book again though he had no time now to tease any meanings from the tangled words. 'You do know what this is, sir, don't you?'

Sir Giles paused, then nodded. 'I know, Thomas, that many men want what your father claims to have possessed.'

'So he did make that claim?'

Another pause. 'He hinted at it,' Sir Giles said heavily,

'and I don't envy you.'

'Me?'

'Because he gave me that book, Thomas, and he said that if anything happened to him I was to keep it until you were old enough and man enough to take up the task. That's what he said.' Sir Giles stared at Thomas and saw his old friend's son flinch. 'But if the two of you want to stay for a while,' he said, 'then you'd be welcome. Jake Churchill needs help. He tells me he's never seen so many fox cubs and if we don't kill some of the bastards then there'll be some rare massacres among the lambs next year.'

Thomas glanced at Robbie. Their task was to find de Taillebourg and avenge the deaths of Eleanor, Father Hobbe and Robbie's brother, but it was unlikely, he thought, that the Dominican would come back here. Robbie, however, plainly wanted to stay: Mary Gooden had seen to that. And Thomas was tired. He did not know where to seek the priest and so the chance to stay in this hall was welcome. It would be an opportunity to study the book and thus follow his father down the long, tortuous path of the Grail.

'We'll stay, sir,' Thomas said.

For a while.

It was the first time that Thomas had ever lived like a lord. Not a great lord, perhaps, not as an earl or a duke with scores of men to command, but still in privilege, ensconced in the manor — even if the manor was a thatched timber hall with a beaten earth floor —

the davs his to wile away as other people did life's hard work of cutting firewood, drawing water, milking cows, churning butter, pounding dough and washing clothes. Robbie was more used to it, but reckoned life was much easier in Dorset. 'Back home,' he said,

'there's always some damn English raiders coming over the hill to steal your cattle or take your grain.'

'Whereas you,' Thomas said, 'would never dream of riding south and stealing from the English.'

'Why would I even think of such a thing?' Robbie asked, grinning. So, as winter closed down on the land, they hunted Sir Giles Marriott's acres to make the fields safe for the lambing season and to bring back venison to Sir Giles's table; they drank in the Dorchester taverns and laughed at the mummers who came for the winter fair. Thomas found old friends and told them stories of Brittany, Normandy and Picardy, some of which were true, and he won the golden arrow at the fair's archery competition and he presented it to Sir Giles who hung it in the hall and declared it the finest trophy he had ever seen. 'My son could shoot a good arrow. A very good arrow. I'd like to think he could have won this trophy himself.'

Sir Giles's only son had died of a fever and his only daughter was married to a knight who held land in Devon and Sir Giles liked neither son-in-law nor daughter. 'They'll inherit the property when I die,' he told Thomas, 'so you and Robbie may as well enjoy it now.'

Thomas persuaded himself that he was not ignoring the search for the Grail because of the hours he spent poring over his father's book. The pages were thick vellum, expensive and rare, which showed how important these notes had been to Father Ralph, but even so they made small sense to Thomas. Much of the book was stories. One told how a blind man, caressing the cup, had received his sight but then, disappointed in the Grail's appearance, lost it again. Another told how a Moorish warrior had tried to steal the Grail and been turned into a serpent for his impiety. The longest tale in the book was about Perceval, a knight of antiquity who went on crusade and discovered the Grail in Christ's tomb. This time the Latin word used to describe the grail was crater, meaning bowl, whereas on other pages it was calix, a cup, and Thomas wondered if there was any significance in the distinction. If his father had possessed the Grail, would he not have known whether it was a cup or a bowl? Or perhaps there was no real difference. Whatever, the long tale told how the bowl had sat on a shelf of Christ's tomb in plain view of all who entered the sepulchre, both Christian pilgrims and their pagan enemies, yet not till Sir Perceval entered the grotto on his knees was the Grail actually seen by anyone, for Sir Perceval was a man of righteousness and thus worthy of having his eyes opened. Sir Perceval removed the bowl, bringing it back to Christendom where he planned to build a shrine worthy of the treasure, but, the tale laconically recorded, 'he died'. Thomas's father had written beneath this abrupt conclusion: 'Sir Perceval was Count of Astarac and was known by another name. He married a Vexille.'

'Sir Perceval!' Sir Giles was impressed. 'He was a member of your family, eh? Your father never mentioned that to me. At least I don't think he did. I did sleep through a lot of his tales.'

'He usually_ scoffed at stories like this,' Thomas said.

'We often mock what we fear,' Sir Giles observed sententiously. Suddenly he grinned.

'Jake tells me you caught that old dog fox by the Five Marys.' The Five Marvs were ancient grave mounds that the locals claimed were dug by giants and Thomas had never understood why there were six of them.

'It wasn't there,' Thomas said, 'but back of the White Nothe.'

'Back of White Nothe? Up on the cliffs?' Sir Giles stared at Thomas, then laughed.

'You were on Holgate's land! You rascals!' Sir Giles, who had always complained mightily when Thomas had poached from his land, now found this predation on a neighbour hugely amusing. 'He's an old woman, Holgate. So are you making head or tail of that book?'

'I wish I knew,' Thomas said, staring at the name Astarac. All he knew was that Astarac was a fief or county in southern France and the home of the Vexille family before they_ were declared rebel and heretic. He had also learned that Astarac was close to the Cathar heartlands, close enough for the contagion to catch the Vexilles, and when, a hundred years before, the French King and the true Church had burned the heretics out of the land they had also forced the Vexilles to flee. Now it seemed that the legendary Sir Perceval was a Vexille? It seemed to Thomas that the further he penetrated the mystery the greater the entanglement. 'Did my father ever talk to you of Astarac, sir?' He asked Sir Giles.

'Astarac? What's that?'

'Where his family came from.'

'No, no, he grew up in Cheshire. That's what he always said.'

But Cheshire had merely been a refuge, a place to hide from the Inquisition: was that where the Grail was now hidden? Thomas turned a page to find a long passage describing how a raiding column had tried to attack the tower of Astarac and had been repulsed by the sight of the Grail. 'It dazzled them,' Father Ralph had written, 'so that 364 of them were cut down.' Another page recorded that it was impossible for a man to tell a lie while he held his hand on the Grail, 'or else he will be stricken dead'. A barren woman would be granted the gift of children by stroking the Grail and if a man were to drink from it on Good Friday he would be vouchsafed a glimpse of 'she whom he will take to wife in heaven'. Another story related how a knight, carrying the Grail across a wilderness, was pursued by heathens and, when it seemed he must be caught, God sent a vast eagle that caught him, his horse and the precious Grail up into the sky, leaving the pagan warriors howling in frustrated rage.

One phrase was copied over and over in the pages of the book: 'Transfer calicern istem a me', and Thomas could feel his father's misery and frustration reaching through the repeated phrase. 'Take this cup from me,' the words meant and they were the same words Christ had spoken in the Garden of Gethsemane as he pleaded with God the Father to spare him the pain of hanging on the tree. The phrase was sometimes written in Greek, a language Thomas had studied but never mastered fully; he man-aged to decipher most of the Greek text, but the Hebrew remained a mystery.

Sir John, the ancient vicar of St Peter's, agreed that it was a strange kind of Hebrew.

'I've forgotten all the Hebrew I ever learned,' he told Thomas, 'but I don't remember seeing a letter like that!' He pointed to the symbol that looked like a human eye. 'Very odd, Thomas, very odd. It's almost Hebrew.' He paused a while, then said plaintively, 'If only poor Nathan was still here.'

'Nathan?'

'He was before your time, Thomas. Nathan collected leeches and sent them to London. Physicians there prized Dorset leeches, did you know that? But, of course, Nathan was a Jew and he left with the others.' The Jews had been expelled from England almost fifty years before, an event still green in the priest's memory. 'No one has ever discovered where he found his leeches,' Sir John went on, 'and I sometimes wonder if he put a curse on them.' He frowned at the book. 'This belonged to your father?'

'It did.'

'Poor Father Ralph,' Sir John said, intimating that the book must have been the product of madness. He closed the volume and carefully wrapped the soft leather cover about the pages.

There was no sign of de Taillebourg, nor any news of Thomas's friends in Normandy. He wrote a difficult letter to Sir Guillaume which told how his daughter had died and begging for any news of Will Skeat whom Sir Guillaume had taken to Caen to be treated by Mordecai, the Jewish doctor. The letter went to Southampton and from there to Guernsey and Thomas was assured it would be sent on to Normandy, but no reply had come by Christmas and Thomas assumed the letter was lost. Thomas also wrote to Lord Outhwaite, assuring his lordship that he was being assiduous in his search and recounting some of the stories from his father's book.

Lord Outhwaite sent a reply that congratulated Thomas on what he had discovered, then revealed that Sir Geoffrey Carr had left for Brittany with half a dozen men. Rumour, Lord Outhwaite reported, claimed that the Scarecrow's debts were larger than ever,

'which, perhaps, is why he has gone to Brittany'. It would not just be hope of plunder that had taken the Scarecrow to La Roche-Derrien, but the law which said a debtor was not required to make repayments while he served the King abroad. 'Will you follow the Scarecrow?' Lord Outhwaite enquired, and Thomas sent an answer saying he would be in La Roche-Derrien by the time Lord Outhwaite read these words, and then did nothing about leaving Dorset. It was Christmas, he told himself, and he had always enjoyed Christmas.

Sir Giles celebrated the twelve days of the feast in high style. He ate no meat from Advent Sunday, which was not a particular hardship for he loved eels and fish, but on Christmas Eve he ate nothing but bread, readying himself for the first feast of the season. Twelve empty hives were brought into the hall and decorated with sprigs of ivy and holly; a great candle, big enough to burn through the whole season, was placed on the high table and a vast log set to burn in the hearth, and Sir Giles's neighbours were invited to drink wine and ale, and eat beef, wild boar, venison, goose and brawn. The wassail cup, filled with mulled and spiced claret, was passed about the hall and Sir Giles, as he did every night of Christmas, wept for his dead wife and was drunkenly asleep by the time the candles burned out. On the fourth night of Christmas, Thomas and Robbie joined the hogglers as, disguised as ghosts and green men and wild men, they pranced about the parish extorting funds for the Church. They went as far as Dorchester, encroaching on two other parishes as they did, and got into a fight with the hogglers from All Saints' and they ended the night in the Dorchester jail from which they were released by an amused George Adyn who brought them a morning pot of ale and one of his wife's famous hog's puddings. The Twelfth Night feast was a boar that Robbie had speared, and after it was eaten, and when the guests were lying half drunk and satiated on the hall rushes, it began to snow. Thomas stood in the door-way and watched the flakes whirling in the light of a flickering torch.

'We must be away soon,' Robbie had come to join him.

'Away?'

'We have work to do,' the Scot said.

Thomas knew that was true, but he did not want to leave. 'I thought you were happy enough here?'

'So I am,' Robbie said, 'and Sir Giles is more generous than I deserve.'

'So?'

'It's Mary,' Robbie said. He was embarrassed and did not finish.

'Pregnant?' Thomas guessed.

Robbie crossed himself. 'It seems so.'

Thomas stared at the snow. 'If you give her enough money to make a dowry,' he said,

'she'll thrive.'

'I've only got three pounds left,' Robbie said. He had been given a purse by his uncle, Sir William, supposedly with enough money to last a year.

'That should be enough,' Thomas said. The snow whirled in a gust of wind.

'It'll leave me with nothing!' Robbie protested.

'You should have thought of that before you ploughed the field,' Thomas said, remembering how he had been in just this predicament with a girl in Hookton. He turned back to the hall where a harpist and flautist made music to the drunks. 'We should go,' he said,

'but I don't know where.'

'You said you wanted to go to Calais?'

Thomas shrugged. 'You think de Taillebourg will seek us there?'

'I think,' Robbie said, 'that once he knows you have that book he'll follow you into hell itself.'

Thomas knew Robbie was right, but the book was not proving to be of any great help. It never specifically said that Father Ralph had possessed the Grail, nor described a place where a searcher might look for it. Thomas and Robbie had been looking. They had combed the sea caves in the cliffs near Hookton where they had found driftwood, limpets and seaweed. There had been no golden cup half hidden in the shingle. So where to go now? Where to look? If Thomas vent to Calais then he could join the army, but he doubted de Taillebourg would seek him out in the heart of Eng-land's soldiery. Maybe, Thomas thought, he should go back to Brittany and he knew that it was not the Grail or the necessity to face de Taillebourg that attracted him to La Roche-Derrien, but the thought that Jeanette Chenier might have returned home. He thought of her often, thought of her black hair, of her fierce spirit and defiance, and every time he thought of her he suffered guilt because of Eleanor.

The snow did not last. It thawed and a hard rain came from the west to lash the Dorset coast. A big English ship was wrecked on the Chesil shingle and Thomas and Robbie took one of Sir Giles's wagons down to the beach and with the aid of Jake Churchill and two of his sons fought off a score of other men to rescue six packs of wool that they carried back to Down Mapperley and presented to Sir Giles who thereby made a year's income in one day.

And next morning the French priest came to Dorchester.

The news was brought by George Adyn. 'I know as you said we should be watching for foreigners,' he told Thomas, 'and this one be real foreign. Dressed like a priest, he is, but who knows? Looks like a vagabond, he does. You say the word' — he winked at Thomas

— 'and we'll give the bugger a proper whipping and send him on up to Shaftesbury.'

'What will they do with him there?' Robbie asked. 'Give him another whipping and send him back,' George said.

'Is he a Dominican?' Thomas asked.

'How would I know? He's talking gibberish, he is. He don't talk proper, not like a Christian.'

'What colour is his gown?'

'Black, of course.'

'I'll come and talk to him,' Thomas said.

'He only jabbers away, he does. Your honour!' This was in greeting to Sir Giles, and Thomas then had to wait while the two men discussed the health of various cousins and nephews and other relatives, and it was close to midday by the time he and Robbie rode into Dorchester and Thomas thought, for the thousandth time, what a good town this was and how it would be a pleasure to live here.

The priest was brought out into the small jail yard. It was a fine day. Two blackbirds hopped along the top wall and an aconite was blooming in the yard corner. The priest proved to be a young man, very short, with a squashed nose, protuberant eyes and bristling black hair. He wore a gown so shabby, torn and stained that it was little wonder the constables had thought the man a vagrant; a misconception that made the little priest indignant. 'Is this how the English treat God's servants? Hell is too good for you English!

I shall tell the bishop and he will tell the Archbishop and he will inform the Holy Father and you will all be declared anathema! You will all be excommunicated!'

'See what I mean?' George Advn asked. 'Yaps away like a dog fox, but he don't make sense.'

'He's speaking French,' Thomas told him, then turned to the priest. 'What's your name?'

'I want to see the bishop now. Here!'

'What's your name?'

'Bring me the local priest!'

'I'll punch your bloody ears out first,' Thomas said. 'Now what's your name?'

He was called Father Pascal, and he had just endured a journey of exquisite discomfort, crossing the winter seas from Normandy, from a place south of Caen. He had travelled first to Guernsey and then on to Southampton from where he had walked, and he had done it all without any knowledge of English. It was a miracle to Thomas that Father Pascal had come this far. And it seemed even more of a miracle because Father Pascal had been sent to Hookton from Evecque, with a message for Thomas. Sir Guillaume d'Evecque had sent him, or rather Father Pascal had volunteered to make the journey, and it was urgent for he was bringing a plea for help. Evecque was under siege. 'It is terrible!' Father Pascal said. By now, calmed and placated, he was by the fire in the Three Cocks where he was eating goose and drinking bragget, a mixture of warmed mead and dark ale. 'It is the Count of Coutances who is besieging him. The Count!'

'Why is that terrible?' Thomas enquired.

'Because the Count is his liege lord!' the priest exclaimed, and Thomas understood why Father Pascal said it was terrible. Sir Guillaume held his lands in fief to the Count and by making war on his own tenant the Count was declaring Sir Guillaume an outlaw.

'But why?' Thomas asked.

Father Pascal shrugged. 'The Count says it is because of what happened at the battle. Do you know what happened at the battle?'

'I know,' Thomas said, and because he was translating for Robbie he had to explain anyway. The priest referred to the battle that had been fought the previous summer by the forest at Crecy. Sir Guillaume had been in the French army, but in the middle of the fight he had seen his enemy, Guy Vexille, and had turned his men-at-arms against Vexille's troops.

'The Count says that is treason,' the priest explained, 'and the King has given his blessing.'

Thomas said nothing for a while. 'How did you know I was here?' he finally asked.

'You sent a letter to Sir Guillaume.'

'I didn't think it reached him.'

'Of course it did. Last year. Before this trouble started.'

Sir Guillaume was in trouble, but his manor of Evecque, Father Pascal said, was built of stone and blessed with a moat and so far the Count of Coutances had found it impossi-ble to break the wall or cross the moat, but the Count had scores of men while Sir Guillaume had a garrison of only nine. 'There are some women too' – Father Pascal tore at a goose leg with his teeth – 'but they don't count.'

'Does he have food?'

'Plenty, and the well is good.'

'So he can hold for a time?'

The priest shrugged. 'Maybe? Maybe not? He thinks so, but what do I know? And the Count has a machine, a ...' He frowned, trying to find the word.

'A trebuchet?'

'No, no, a springald!' A springald was like a massive crossbow that shot a huge dart. Father Pascal stripped the last morsel off the bone. 'It is very slow and it broke once. But they mended it. It batters at the wall. Oh, and your friend is there,' he mumbled, his mouth full.

'My friend?'

'Skeat, is that the name? He's there with the doctor. He can talk now, and he walks. He is much better, yes? But he cannot recognize people, not unless they speak.'

'Unless they speak?' Thomas asked, puzzled.

'If he sees you,' the priest explained, 'he does not know you. Then you speak and he knows you.' He shrugged again. 'Strange, eh?' He drained his pot. 'So what will you do, monsieur?'

'What does Sir Guillaume want me to do?'

'He wants you close by in case he needs to escape, but he's written a letter to the King explaining what happened in the battle. I sent the letter to Paris. Sir Guillaume thinks the King may relent so he waits for an answer, but me? I think Sir Guillaume is like this goose. Plucked and cooked.'

'Did he say anything about his daughter?'

'His daughter?' Father Pascal was puzzled. 'Oh! The bastard daughter? He said you would kill whoever killed her.'

'I will, too.'

'And that he wants your help.'

'He can have it,' Thomas said, 'and we'll leave tomorrow.' He looked at Robbie. 'We're going back to war.'

'Who am I fighting for?'

Thomas grinned. 'Me.'

Thomas, Robbie and the priest left next morning. Thomas took a change of clothes, a full arrow bag, his bow, sword and mail coat and, wrapped in a piece of deerskin, his father's book that seemed like a heavy piece of baggage. In truth it was lighter than a sheaf of arrows, yet the duty its possession implied weighed on Thomas's conscience. He told himself he was merely riding to help Sir Guillaume, yet he knew he was continuing the quest for his father's secret.

Two of Sir Giles's tenants rode with them to bring back the mare that Father Pascal rode and the two stal-lions which Sir Giles had purchased from Thomas and Robbie.

'You don't want to take them on a boat,' Sir Giles said, 'horses and boats don't mix.'

'He paid us too much,' Robbie remarked as they rode away.

'He doesn't want his son-in-law to get it,' Thomas said. 'Besides, he's a generous man. He gave Mary Gooden another three pounds as well. For her dowry. He's a lucky man.'

Something in Thomas's tone caught Robbie's attention. —He is? You mean she's found a husband?'

'A nice fellow. A thatcher in Tolpuddle. They'll be wed next week.'

'Next week!' Robbie sounded aggrieved that his girl was marrying. It did not matter that he was abandoning her, it still cut his pride. 'But why would he marry her?' he asked after a while. 'Or doesn't he know she's pregnant?'

'He thinks the child is his,' Thomas said, keeping a straight face, 'and well it might be, I hear.'

'Jesus!' Robbie swore when that made sense, then he turned to look back along the road and he smiled, remembering the good times. 'He's a kind man,' he said of Sir Giles.

'A lonely one,' Thomas said. Sir Giles had not wanted them to leave, but accepted they could not stay.

Robbie sniffed the air. 'There's more snow coming.'

'Never!' It was a morning of gentle sunlight. Crocus and aconite were showing in sheltered spots and the hedgerows were noisy with chaffinches and robins. But Robbie had indeed smelt snow. As the day wore on, the skies became low and grey, the wind went into the east and hit their faces with a new bite and the snow followed. They found shelter in a verderer's house in the woods, crowding in with the man, his wife, five daughters and three sons. Two cows had a byre at one end of the house and four goats were tethered at the other. Father Pascal confided to Thomas that this was very like the house in which he had grown up, but he wondered if conventions in England were the same as in the Limousin. 'Conventions?' Thomas asked.

'In our house,' Father Pascal said, blushing, 'the women pissed with the cows and the men with the goats. I would not want to do the wrong thing.'

'It's the same here,' Thomas assured him.

Father Pascal had proved a good companion. He had a fine singing voice and once they had shared their food with the verderer and his family the priest sang some French songs. Afterwards, as the snow still fell and the smoke from the fire swirled thick under the thatch, he sat and talked with Thomas. He had been the village priest at Evecque and, when the Count of Coutances attacked, he had found refuge in the manor. 'But I do not like being cooped up,' he said, and so he had offered to carry Sir Guillaume's message to England. He had escaped from Evecque, he said, by first throwing his clothes across the moat and then swimming after them. 'It was cold,' he said, 'I have never been so cold! I told myself it is better to be cold than to be in hell, but I don't know. It was terrible.'

'What does Sir Guillaume want us to do?' Thomas asked him.

'He did not say. Perhaps, if the besiegers can be discouraged . . . ?' He shrugged. 'The winter is not a good time for a siege, I think. Inside Evecque they are comfortable, they are warm, they have the harvest stored, and the besiegers? They are wet and cold. If you can make them more uncomfortable, who knows? Perhaps they will abandon the siege?'

'And you? What will you do?'

'I have no work left at Evecque,' the priest said. Sir Guillaume had been declared a traitor and his goods pronounced forfeited so his serfs had been taken off to the Count of Coutances's estates, while his tenants, pillaged and raped by the besiegers, had mostly fled. 'So perhaps I go to Paris? I cannot go to the Bishop of Caen.'

'Why not?'

'Because he has sent men to help the Count of Coutances.' Father Pascal shook his head in sad wonder-ment. 'The bishop was impoverished by the English in the summer,'

he explained, 'so he needs money, land and goods, and he hopes to get some from Evecque. Greed is a great provoker of war.'

'Yet you're on Sir Guillaume's side?'

Father Pascal shrugged. 'He is a good man. But now? Now I must look to Paris for preferment. Or may_ be Dijon. I have a cousin there.'