Vagabond

Sir Guillaume had held the manor from its attackers for close on three months and did not doubt he could hold it indefinitely so long as the Count of Coutances did not bring more gunpowder to the village, but Sir Guillaume knew that his time in Normandy was ended. The Count of Coutances was his liege lord, Sir Guillaume held land of him as the Count held land of the King, and if a man was declared a traitor by his liege lord, and if the King supported the declaration, then a man had no future unless he was to find another lord who owed fealty to a different King. Sir Guillaume had written to the King and he had appealed to friends who had influence at court, but no reply had come. The siege had continued, and so Sir Guillaume must leave the manor. That saddened him for Evecque was his home. He knew every inch of its pastures, knew where to find the shed deer antlers, knew where the young hares lay trembling in the long grass, and knew where the pike brooded like demons in the deeper streams. It was home, but a man declared a traitor had no home and so, on the eve of St Clement's, when his besiegers were sunk in a damp winter gloom, he made his escape.

He had never doubted his ability to escape. The Count of Coutances was a dull, unimaginative, middle-aged man whose experience of war had always been in the service of greater lords. The Count was averse to risk and given to a blustery temper whenever the world escaped his understanding, which happened frequently. The Count certainly did not understand why great men in Paris were encouraging him to besiege Evecque, but he saw the chance of enriching himself and so he obeyed them, even though he was wary of Sir Guillaume. Sir Guillaume was in his thirties and had spent half his life fighting, usually on his own account, and in Normandy he was called the lord of the sea and of the land because he fought on both with enthusiasm and effectiveness. He had been handsome once, hard-faced and golden-haired, but Guy Vexille, Count of Astarac, had taken one eye and had left scars that made Sir Guillaume's face even harder. He was a formidable man, a fighter, but in the hierarchy of kings, princes, dukes and counts he was a lesser being and his lands made it tempting to declare him a traitor. There were twelve men, three women and eight horses inside the manor, which meant every horse but one had to carry two riders. After nightfall, when rain was softly falling across Evecque's waterlogged fields, Sir Guillaume ordered planks, put across the gap where the drawbridge should have been, and then the horses, blindfolded, were led one by one across the perilous bridge. The besiegers, huddled from the cold and rain, saw and heard nothing, even though the sentries in the forwardmost works had been placed to guard against just such an attempt to escape.

The horses' blindfolds were taken off, the fugitives mounted and then rode northwards. They were challenged just once by a sentry who demanded to know who they were. 'Who the hell do you think we are?' Sir Guillaume retorted, and the savagery in his voice persuaded the sentry not to ask any_ more questions. By dawn they were in Caen and the Count of Coutances was still none the wiser. It was only when one of the sentries saw the planks spanning the moat that the besiegers realized their enemy was gone, and even then the Count wasted time by searching the manor. He found furniture, straw and cooking pots, but no treasures.

An hour later a hundred black-cloaked men arrived at Evecque. Their leader carried no banner and their shields had no badges. They looked battle-hardened, like men who earned their living by renting their lances and swords to whoever paid the most, and they curbed their horses beside the makeshift bridge over Evecque's moat and two of them, one a priest, crossed into the courtyard. 'What's been taken?' the priest demanded curtly. The Count of Coutances turned angrily on the man who wore Dominican robes. 'Who are you?'

'What have your men plundered here?' the priest, gaunt and angry, asked again.

'Nothing,' the Count assured him.

'Then where's the garrison?'

'The garrison? Escaped.'

Bernard de Taillebourg spat in his rage. Guy Vexille, next to him, gazed up at the tower which now flew the Count's banner. 'When did they escape?' he asked. 'And where did they go?'

The Count bridled at the tone. 'Who are you?' he demanded, for Vexille wore no badge on his black surcoat.

'Your equal.' Vexille said coldly, 'and my lord the King will want to know where they have gone.'

No one knew, though a few questions eventually elicited that some of the besiegers had been aware of horsemen going northwards in the cold night and that surely meant that Sir Guillaume and his men had ridden to Caen. And if the Grail had been hidden in Evecque then that would have gone north as well and so de Taillebourg ordered his men to remount their tired horses.

They reached Caen in the early afternoon, but by then the Pentecost was halfway down the river to the sea, blown northwards by a fitful svind that barely gave headway against the last of the flooding tide. Pierre Villeroy grumbled at the futility of trying to stem the tide, but Sir Guillaume insisted for he expected his enemies to appear at any moment. He had only two men-at-arms with him now, for the rest had not wanted to follow their lord to a new allegiance. Even Sir Guillaume had little enthusiasm for that enforced loyalty. 'You think I .vant to fight for Edward of England?' he grumbled to Tho-mas. 'But what choice do I have? My own lord turned against me. So I'll swear fealty to your Edward and at least I'll live.' That was why he was going to Dunkirk, so that he could make the small journey to the English siege lines about Calais and make his obeisance to King Edward. The horses had to be abandoned on the quay, so all Sir Guillaume brought aboard the Pentecost was his armour, some clothes and three leather bags of money that he dumped on the deck before offering Thomas an embrace. And then Thomas had turned to his old friend, Will Skeat, who had glanced at him without recognition and then looked away. Thomas, about to speak. checked himself. Skeat was wearing a sallet and his hair, white as snow now, hung lank beneath its battered metal brim. His face was thinner than ever, deep-lined, and with a vague look as though he had just woken and did not know where he was. He also looked old. He could not have been more than forty-five, yet he looked sixty, though at least he was alive. When Thomas had last seen him he had been dreadfully_ wounded with a sword cut through the scalp which had laid his brain open and it had been a miracle he had lived long enough to reach Normandy and the skilled attentions of Mordecai, the Jewish doctor who was now being helped across the precarious gangplank. Thomas took another step towards his old friend who again glanced at him without recognition. 'Will?' Thomas said, puzzled. 'Will?'

And at the sound of Thomas's voice light came into Skeat's eyes. 'Thomas!' he exclaimed. 'By God, it is you!' He stepped towards Thomas, stumbling slightly, and the two men embraced. By God, Thomas, it's grand to hear an English voice. I've heard nowt but foreign jabber all winter. Good God, boy, you look older.'

'I am older,' Thomas said. 'But how are you, Will?'

'I'm alive. Tom, I'm alive, though I sometimes wonder if it wouldn't have been better to die. Weak as a kitten, I am.' His speech ryas slightly slurred, as if he had drunk too much. but he was plainly sober.

'I shouldn't call you plain Will now, should I,' Thomas asked. 'for you're Sir William now.'

'Sir William! Me?' Skeat laughed. 'You're full of crap, boy, just like you always were. Always too clever for your own good, eh, Tom?' Skeat did not remember the battle in Picardy, did not remember the King knighting him before the first French charge. Thomas had some-times wondered whether that act had been pure desperation to raise the archers' spirits for the King had surely seen how hugely his little, sick army was outnumbered and he could not have believed his men would survive. But survive they did, and svin, though the cost to Skeat had been terrible. He took off his sallet to scratch his pate and one side of his scalp was revealed as a wrinkled horror of lumpy scar, pink and white. 'Weak as a kitten,'

Skeat said again, 'and I haven't pulled a bow in weeks.'

Mordecai insisted that Skeat had to rest. Then he greeted Thomas as Villeroy let go the mooring lines and used a sweep to shove the Pentecost into the river's current. Mordecai grumbled about the cold, about the privations of the siege and about the horrors of being aboard a ship, then he smiled his wise old smile. 'You look good, Thomas. For a man who was once hanged you look indecently good. How's your urine?'

'Clear and sweet.'

'Your friend Sir William, now—' Mordecai jerked his head towards the forecabin where Skeat had been bedded down in a pile of skeepskins – 'his urine is very murky. I fear you did me no favours by sending him to me.'

'He's alive.'

'I don't know why.'

'And I sent him to you because you're the best.'

'You flatter me.' Mordecai staggered slightly because the ship had rocked in a small river wave that no one else had noticed, yet he looked alarmed; had he been a Christian he would doubtless have warded off imminent danger by the sign of the cross. Instead he looked worriedly at the ragged sail as though he feared it might collapse and smother him. 'I do detest ships,' he said plaintively. 'Unnatural things. Poor Skeat. He seems to be recovering, I admit, but I cannot boast that I did anything except wash the wound and stop people put-ting charms of mouldy bread and holy water on his scalp. I find religion and medicine mix uneasily. Skeat lives, I think, because poor Eleanor did the right thing when he was wounded.' Eleanor had put the broken piece of skull on the exposed brain, made a poultice of moss and spider web, then bandaged the wound. 'I was sorry about Eleanor.'

'Me too,' Thomas said. 'She was pregnant. We were going to marry.'

'She was a dear thing, a dear thing.'

'Sir Guillaume must be angry?'

Mordecai rocked his head from side to side. 'When he received your letter? That was before the siege, of course.' He frowned, trying to remember, 'Angry? I don't think so. He grunted, that was all. He was fond of Eleanor, of course, but she was a servant's child, not

...' He paused. 'Well, it's sad. But as you say, your friend Sir William lived. The brain is a strange thing, Thomas. He understands, I think, though he cannot remember. His speech is slurred, and that might have been expected, but strangest of all is that he does not recognize anyone with his eyes. I will walk into a room and he'll ignore me, then I speak and he knows me. We have all got into the habit of speaking as we get near him. You'll get used to it,' Mordecai smiled. 'But it is good to see you.'

'So you travel to Calais with us?' Thomas asked.

'Dear me, no! Calais?' He shuddered. 'But I couldn't stay in Normandy. I suspect that the Count of Coutances, cheated of Sir Guillaume, would love to make an example of a Jew, so from Dunkirk I shall travel south again. To Montpellier first, I think. My son is studying medicine there. And from Montpellier? I might go to Avignon.'

'Avignon?'

'The Pope is very hospitable to Jews,' Mordecai said, reaching out for the gunwale as the Pentecost shivered under a small wind gust, 'and we need hospitality.'

Mordecai had intimated that Sir Guillaume's reaction to Eleanor's death was callous, but that was not evident when Sir Guillaume spoke of his lost daughter with Thomas as the Pentecost cleared the river's mouth and the cold waves stretched to the grey horizon. Sir Guillaume, his ravaged face hard and grim, looked close to tears as he heard how Eleanor had died. 'Do you know anything more about the men who killed her?' he asked when Thomas had finished his tale. Thomas could only repeat what Lord Outhwaite had told him after the battle, about the French priest called de Taillebourg and his strange servant.

'De Taillebourg,' Sir Guillaume said flatly, 'another man to kill, eh?' He made the sign of the cross. 'She was illegitimate' — he spoke of Eleanor, not to Thomas, but to the wind, instead — 'but she was a sweet girl. All of my children are dead now.' He gazed at the ocean, his dirty long yellow hair stirring in the breeze. 'We have so many men to kill, you and I' — he spoke to Thomas now — 'and the Grail to find.'

'Others are looking for it,' Thomas said.

'Then we must find it before them,' Sir Guillaume growled. 'But we go to Calais first, I make my allegiance to Edward and then we fight. By God, Thomas, we fight.' He turned and scowled at his two men-at-arms as if reflecting on how his fortunes and following had been shrunk by fate, then he saw Robbie and grinned. 'I like your Scotsman.'

'He can fight,' Thomas said.

'That's why I like him. And he wants to kill de Taillebourg too?'

'Three of us want to kill him.'

'Then God help the bastard because we'll serve his tripes to the dogs,' Sir Guillaume growled. 'But he'll have to be told you're in the Calais siege lines, eh? If he's to come looking for us he has to know where you are.'

To reach Calais the Pentecost needed to go east and north, but once clear of the land she merely wallowed instead of sailing. A small south-west wind had taken her clear of the river mouth, but then, long before she was out of sight of the Norman shore, the breeze faded and the big ragged sail flapped and slatted and banged on the yard. The ship rolled like a barrel in a long dull swell that came from the west where dark clouds heaped like some gloom-laden range of hills. The winter day faded early, the last of its cold light a sullen glint beneath the clouds. A few spots of fire showed on the darkening land. 'The tide will take us up the sleeve,' Villeroy said gloomily, 'then float us down again. Then up and down and up and down till God or St Nicholas sends us wind.'

The tide took them up the English Channel as Villeroy had predicted, then drifted them down again. Thomas, Robbie and Sir Guillaume's two men-at-arms took it in turns to go down into the stone-filled bilge and hand up pails of water. 'Of course she leaks,'

Villeroy told a worried Mordecai, 'all ships leak. She'd leak like a sieve if I didn't caulk her every few months. Bang in the moss and pray to St Nick. It keeps us all from drowning.'

The night was black. The few lights ashore flickered in a damp haze. The sea broke feebly against the hull, and the sail hung uselessly. For a time a fishing boat lay close, a lantern burning on its deck, and Thomas listened to the low chant as the men hauled a net, then they unshipped oars and rowed eastwards until their tiny glimmering light van-ished in the haze. 'A west wind will come,' Villeroy said, 'it always does. West from the lost lands.'

'The lost lands?' Thomas asked.

'Out there,' Villeroy said, pointing into the black west. 'If you go as far as a man can sail you'll find the lost lands and you'll see a mountain taller than the sky where Arthur sleeps with his knights.' Villeroy made the sign of the cross. 'And on the clifftops under the mountain you can see the souls of the drowned sailors calling for their womenfolk. It's cold there, always cold, cold and fog-smothered.'

'My father saw those lands once,' Yvette put in.

'He said he did,' Villeroy commented, 'but he was a rare drinker.'

'He said the sea was full of fish,' Yvette went on as if her husband had not spoken, 'and the trees were very small.'

'Cider, he drank,' Villeroy offered. 'Whole orchards went down his gullet, but he could sail a boat, your father. Drunk or sober, he was a seaman.'

Thomas was staring into the western darkness, imagining a voyage to the land where King Arthur and his knights slept under the fog and where the souls of the drowned called for their lost lovers. 'Time to bail ship,' Villeroy said to him, and Thomas event down into the bilge and scooped the water into buckets until his arms were aching with tiredness, and then he vvent to the forepeak and slept in the cocoon of sheepskins that Villeroy kept there because, he said, it was colder at sea than on land and a man should drown warm.

Dawn came slow, seeping into the east like a grey stain. The steering oar creaked in its ropes, doing nothing as the ship rocked on the windless swell. The Norman coast was still in sight, a grey-green slash to the south, and as the vinter light grew Thomas saw three small ships rowing out from the coast. The three headed up channel until they were east of the Pentecost; Thomas assumed they were fishermen and he wished that Villeroy's boat had oars and so could make some progress in this frustrating stillness. There was a pair of great sweeps lashed to the deck, but Yvette said they were only useful in port. 'She's too heavy to row for long,' she said, 'especially when she's full.'

'Full?'

'We carry cargo,' Yvette said. Her man was sleeping in the stern cabin, his snores seeming to vibrate the whole ship. 'Up and down the coast we go,' Yvette said, 'with wool and wine, bronze and iron, building stone and hides.'

'You like it?'

'I love it.' She smiled at him and her young face, which was strangely wedgelike, took on a beauty as she did so. 'My mother now,' she event on, 'she was going to have me put into the bishop's service. Cleaning and washing, cooking and cleaning till your hands are fair worn away by work, but Pierre told me I could live free as a bird on his boat and so we do, so we do.'

'Just the two of you?' The Pentecost seemed a large ship for just two, even if one of them was a giant.

'No one else will sail with us,' Yvette said. 'It's bad luck to have a woman on a boat. My father always said that.'

'He was a fisherman?'

'A good one.' Yvette said, 'but he drowned all the same. He was caught on the Casquets on a bad night.'

She looked up at Thomas earnestly. 'He did see the lost lands, you know.'

'I believe you.'

'He sailed ever so far north and then west, and he said the men from the north lands know the fishing grounds of the lost lands well and there's fish as far as you can see. He said you could walk on the sea it was so thick with fish, and one day he was creeping through the fog and he saw the land and he saw the trees like bushes and he saw the dead souls on shore. Thev were dark, he said, like they'd been scorched by hell's fires, and he took fright and he turned and sailed away. It took him two months to get there and a month and a half to come home and all his fish had gone bad because he wouldn't go ashore and smoke them.'

'I believe you,' Thomas said again, though he was not really sure that he did.

'And I think if I drown,' Yvette said, 'then me and Pierre will go to the lost lands together and he won't have to sit on the cliffs and call for me.' She spoke very matter-offactly, then went to ready some breakfast for her man whose snoring had just ceased. Sir Guillaume emerged from the forecabin. He blinked at the winter daylight, then strolled aft and pissed across the stern rail while he stared at the three boats which had rowed out from the river and were now a mile or so east of the Pentecost. 'So you saw Brother Germain?' he asked Thomas.

'I wish I hadn't.'

'He's a scholar,' Sir Guillaume said, pulling up his trews and tying the waist knot,

'which means he doesn't have balls. Doesn't need to. He's clever, mind you, clever, but he was never on our side, Thomas.'

'I thought he was your friend.'

'When I had power and money, Thomas,' Sir Guillaume said, 'I had many friends, but Brother Germain was never one of them. He's always been a good son of the Church and I should never have introduced you to him.'

'Why not?'

'Once he learned you were a Vexille he reported our conversation to the bishop and the bishop told the Arch-bishop and the Archbishop told the Cardinal and the Cardinal spoke to whoever gives him his crumbs, and suddenly the Church got excited about the Vexilles and the fact that your family had once owned the Grail. And it was just about then that Guy Vexille reappeared so the Inquisition took hold of him.' He paused, gazing at the horizon, then made the sign of the cross. 'That's who your de Taillebourg is, I'd wager my life on it. He's a Dominican and most Inquisitors are hounds of God.' He turned his one eye on Thomas. 'Why do they call them the hounds of God?'

'It's a joke.' Thomas said, 'from the Latin. Domini canis: the hound of God.'

'Doesn't make me laugh,' Sir Guillaume said gloomily. 'If one of those bastards gets hold of you it's red-hot pokers in the eyes and screams in the night. And I hear they got hold of Guy Vexille and I hope they hurt him.'

'So Guy Vexille is a prisoner?' Thomas was surprised. Brother Germain had said his cousin was reconciled with the Church.

'That's what I heard. I heard he was singing psalms on the Inquisition's rack. And doubtless he told them that your father had possessed the Grail, and how he sailed to Hookton to find it and how he failed. But who else went to Hookton? Me, that's who, so I think Coutances was told to find me, arrest me and haul me to Paris. And meanwhile they sent men to England to find out what they could.'

'And to kill Eleanor,' Thomas said bleakly.

'Which they'll pay for,' Sir Guillaume said.

'And now,' Thomas said, 'they've sent men here.' 'What?' Sir Guillaume asked, startled. Thomas pointed at the three fishing boats which now were rowing directly towards the Pentecost. They were too far away for him to see who or what was on board, but something about their deliberate approach alarmed him. Yvette, coming aft with bread, ham and cheese, saw Thomas and Sir Guillaume staring and she joined them, then uttered a curse that only a fisherman's daughter would ever have learned and ran to the stern cabin and shouted for her man to get on deck.

Yvette's eyes were accustomed to the sea and she knew these were no fishing boats. They had too many men aboard for a start and after a while Thomas could see those men for himself and his eves, which were more used to looking for enemies among the green leaves, saw that some of them wore mail and he knew that no man went to sea in mail unless he was intent on killing.

'They'll have crossbows.' Villeroy was on deck now, tying the neck cords of a swathing leather cloak and looking from the approaching boats up to the clouds as if he might see a breath of wind coming from the heavens. The sea was still heaving in great swells, but the water was smooth as beaten brass and there were no wind-driven ripples streaking the swells' long flanks. 'Crossbows,' Villeroy repeated gloomily.

'You want me to surrender?' Sir Guillaume asked Villeroy. His voice was sour, suggesting the question was nothing but sarcasm.

'Ain't for me to tell your lordship what to do' – Villeroy sounded just as sarcastic – 'but your men could fetch some of the bigger stones out of the bilge.'

'What will that achieve?' Sir Guillaume asked.

'I'll drop 'em on the bastards when they try to board. Those little boats? A stone'll go straight through their bottoms and then yon bastards will be trying to swim with mail strapped to their chests.' Villeroy grinned. 'Hard to swim when you're wrapped in iron.'

The stones were fetched, and Thomas readied his arrows and bow. Robbie had donned his mail coat and had his uncle's sword at his side. Sir Guillaume's two men-at-arms were with him in the waist of the boat, the place where any boarding attempt would be made for there the gunwale was closest to the sea. Thomas went to the higher stern where Will Skeat joined him and though he did not recognize Thomas he did see the bow and held out a hand.

'It's me, Will.' Thomas said.

'I know it's you,' Skeat said. He lied and was embarrassed. 'Let me try the bow, boy.'

Thomas gave him the great black stave and watched in sadness as Skeat failed to draw it even halfway. Skeat thrust the weapon back to Thomas with a look of embarrassment.

'I'm not what I was,' he muttered.

'You'll be back, Will.'

Skeat spat over the gunwale. 'Did the King really knight me?'

'He did.'

'Sometimes I think I can remember the battle, Tom, then it fades. Like a fog.' Skeat stared at the three approaching boats, which had spread into a line. Their oarsmen were pulling hard and Thomas could see crossbowmen standing in the bows and stern of each craft. 'Have you ever shot an arrow from a boat?' Skeat asked.

'Never.'

'You're moving and they're moving. It makes it hard. But take it slow, lad, take it slow.'

A man shouted from the closest boat, but the pursuers were still too far away and whatever the man said was lost in the air. 'St Nicholas, St Ursula,' Villeroy prayed, 'send us wind, and send us plenty of it.'

'He's having a go at us,' Skeat said because a crossbowman in the bows of the central boat had raised his weapon. He seemed to cock it high in the air, then he shot and the bolt banged with astonishing force low into the Pentecost's stern. Sir Guillaume, ignoring the threat, climbed onto the rail and took hold of the back-stay to keep his balance. 'They're Coutances's men,' he told Thomas, and Thomas saw that some of the men in the nearest boat were wearing the green and black livery that had been the uniform of Evecque's besiegers. More crossbows twanged and two of the bolts thudded into the stern planks and two others whipped past Sir Guillaume to slap into the impotent sail, but most splashed into the sea. It might have been calm, but the crossbowmen were still having a hard time aiming their weapons from the small boats.

And the three attacking boats were small. Each held eight or ten oarsmen and about the same number of archers or men-at-arms. The three craft had plainly been chosen for their speed under oars, but they were dwarfed by the Pentecost which would make any attempt to board the bigger vessel very perilous, though one of the three boats seemed determined to come alongside Villeroy's ship. 'What they're going to do,' Sir Guillaume said. 'is let those two boats shower us with quarrels while this bastard' – he gestured at the boat that was pulling hard to close on the Pentecost – 'puts her men on board.'

More crossbow bolts thumped into the hull. Two more quarrels pierced the sail and another hit the mast just above a weathered crucifix that was nailed to the tarred timber. The figure of Christ, white as bone, had lost its left arm and Thomas wondered if that was a had omen, then tried to forget it as he drew the big bow and shot off an arrow. He only had thirty-four shafts left, but this was not the time to stint on them and so, while the first was still in the air, he loosed a second and the crossbowmen had not finished \vinding their cords back as the first arrow slashed a rower's arm and the second drove a splinter up from the boat's bow, then a third arrow hissed above the oarsmen's heads to splash into the sea. The rowers ducked, then one gasped and fell fonvard with an arrow in his back, and the next instant a man-at-arms was struck in the thigh and fell onto two of the oarsmen and there was sudden chaos aboard the boat which clewed sharply away with its oars clattering against each other. Thomas lowered the big bow.

'Taught you well,' Will Skeat said fervently. 'Ah, Tom, you always were a lethal bastard.'

The boat pulled away. Thomas's arrows had been far more accurate than the crossbow bolts for he had been shooting from a much larger and more stable ship than the narrow and overburdened rowboats. Only one of the men aboard those smaller ships had been killed, but the frequency of Thomas's first arrows had put the fear of God into the rowers who could not see where the missiles came from, but only hear the hiss of feathers and the cries of the wounded. Now the other two boats overtook the third and the crossbowmen levelled their weapons. Thomas took an arrow from the bag and worried what would happen when he had no more shafts, but just then a swirl of ripples showed that a wind was coming across the water. An east wind, of all things, the most unlikely of all winds in this sea, but it came from the east nonetheless and the Pentecost's big brown sail filled and slackened, then filled again, and suddenly she was turning away from her pursuers and the water was gurgling down her flanks. Coutances's men pulled hard on their oars. 'Down!' Sir Guillaume shouted and Thomas dropped behind the rail as a volley of crossbow bolts punched into the Pentecost's hull or flew high to tear the ragged sail. Villeroy shouted at Yvette to man the steering oar, then he sheeted down the mainsail before diving into the stern cabin to fetch a huge and evidently ancient crossbow that he cocked with a long iron lever. He loaded a rusty bolt into the groove, then shot it at the nearest pursuer. 'Bastards,' he roared. 'Your mothers were goats! They were whoring goats! Boxed whoring goats! Bastards!' He cocked the weapon again, loaded another corroded missile and shot it away, but the bolt plunged into the sea. The Pentecost was gathering speed and already out of crossbow range.

The wind filled and the Pentecost drew further away from her pursuers. The three rowboats had first gone up channel in the expectation that the flooding tide and a possible western wind would bring the Pentecost to them, but with the wind coming from the east the oars-men could not keep up with their quarry and so the three boats fell astern and finally abandoned the chase. But just as they gave up, so two new pursuers appeared in the mouth of the River Orne. Two ships, both of them large and equipped with big square sails like the Pentecost's mainsail, were coming out to sea. 'The one in front is the Saint-Esprit,' Villerov said. Even at this distance from the river mouth he could distinguish the two boats, and the other is the Marie. She sails like a pregnant pig, but the Saint-Esprit will catch us.'

The Saint-Esprit?' Sir Guillaume sounded appalled. 'Jean Lapoullier?'

'Who else?'

'I thought he was a friend!'

'He was your friend,' Villerov said, 'so long as you had land and money, but what do you have now?'

Sir Guillaume brooded on the truth of that question for a while. 'So why are you helping me?'

'Because I'm a fool,' Villeroy said cheerfully, 'and because you'll pay me damn well.'

Sir Guillaume grunted at that truism. 'Not if we sail in the wrong direction.' he added after a while.

'The right direction,' Villerov pointed out, 'is away from the Saint-Esprit and downwind, so we'll stand on west. They stood on westwards all day. They made good speed, but still the big Saint-Esprit slowly closed the gap. In the morning she had been a blur on the horizon; by midday Thomas could see the little platform at her masthead where, Villerov told him, crossbowmen would be stationed: and by mid-afternoon he could see the black and white eyes painted on her bows. The east wind had increased all through the day until it was blowing strong and cold, whipping the wavetops into white streamers. Sir Guillaume suggested going north, maybe as far as the English shore, but Villeroy claimed not to know that coastline and said he was unsure where he could find shelter there if the weather turned bad. 'And this time of year it can turn fast as a woman's temper,' Villeroy added, and as if to prove him right they ran into violent sleet squalls that hissed on the sea and buffeted the ship and cut visibility down to a few yards. Sir Guillaume again urged a northward course, suggesting they turn while the ship was hidden inside the squall, but Villeroy stubbornly refused and Thomas guessed that the huge man feared being accosted by English ships that loved nothing better than capturing French vessels. Another squall crashed past them, the rain bouncing up a hand's breadth from the deck and the sleet making a slushy white coating on the eastern flank of every halyard and sheet. Villeroy feared that his sail would split, but dared not shorten the canvas because whenever the squalls passed, leaving the sea white and frantic, the Saint-Esprit was always in sight and always a little closer. 'She's a quick one,' Villeroy said grudgingly,

'and Lapoullier knows how to sail her.'

Yet the short winter day was passing and night would offer a chance for the Pentecost to escape. The pursuers knew that and they must have been praying that their ship would be given a little extra speed: as dusk fell, she was closing the gap inch by inch, yet still the Pentecost kept her lead. They were out of sight of land now, two ships on a seething and darkening ocean, and then, when the night was almost complete, the first flame arrow streaked out from the Saint-Esprit's bow.

It was shot from a crossbow. The flames seared the night, arcing up and then plunging to fall in the Pentecost's wake. 'Send him an arrow back,' Sir Guillaume growled.

'Too far,' Thomas said. A good crossbow would always outrange a yew stave, though in the time it took to reload the crossbow the English archer would have run within range and loosed half a dozen arrows. But Thomas could not do that in this gathering darkness, nor did he dare waste arrows. He could only wait and watch as a second fire bolt slashed up against the clouds. It too fell behind.

'They don't fly as well,' Will Skeat said.

'What's that. Will?' Thomas had not heard clearly. 'They wrap the shaft in cloth and it slows them down. You ever shot a fire arrow, Tom?'

'Never.'

'Takes fifty paces off the range,' Skeat said, watching a third arrow plunge into the sea, 'and plays hell with accuracy.'

'That one was closer,' Sir Guillaume said.

Villerov had put a barrel on the deck and he was filling it with seawater. Yvette, meanwhile, had nimbly climbed the rigging to perch herself on the crosstrees where the one yard hung from the masthead and now she hauled up canvas pails of water which she used to soak the sail.

'Can we use fire arrows?' Sir Guillaume asked. 'That thing must have the range.' He nodded at Villeroy's monstrous crossbow. Thomas translated the question for Will Skeat whose French was still rudimentary.

'Fire arrows?' Skeat's face wrinkled as he thought. 'You have to have pitch, Tom,' he said dubiously, 'and you must soak it into the wool and then bind the woollen cloth onto the arrow real hard, but fray the edges a little to get the fire burning nicely. Fire has to be deep in the cloth, not just on the edge because that won't last, and when it's burning hard and deep you send the arrow off before it eats through the shaft.'

'No,' Thomas translated for Sir Guillaume, 'we can't.'

Sir Guillaume cursed, then turned away as the first fire arrow thumped into the Pentecost, but the bolt struck low on the stern, so low that the next heave of a wave extinguished the flames with an audible hiss. We must be able to do something!' Sir Guillaume raged.

'We can be patient,' Villeroy said. He was standing at the stern oar.

'I can use your bow?' Sir Guillaume asked the big sailor and, when Villeroy nodded, Sir Guillaume cocked the huge crossbow and sent a quarrel back towards the SaintEsprit. He grunted as he pulled on the lever to cock the weapon again, astonished at the strength needed. A crossbow drawn by a lever was usually much weaker than the bows armed with a wormscrew and ratchet, but Villeroy's bow was massive. Sir Guillaume's bolts must have struck the pursuing ship, but it was too dark to tell if any damage had been done. Thomas doubted it for the Saint-Esprit's bows were high and her gunwales stout. Sir Guillaume was merely driving metal into planks, but the Saint-Esprit's fiery missiles were beginning to threaten the Pentecost. Three or four enemy crossbows were firing now and Thomas and Robbie were busy dousing the burning bolts with water, then a flaming quarrel hit the sail and creeping fire began to glow on the canvas, but Yvette succeeded in extinguishing it just as Villeroy pushed the steering oar hard over. Thomas heard the oar's long shank creak under the strain and felt the ship lurch as she turned southwards. 'The Saint-Esprit was never quite as quick off the wind,' Villeroy said, 'and she wallows in a cross sea.'

'And we're quicker?' Thomas asked.

'We'll find out.' Villeroy said.

'Why didn't we try to find out earlier?' Sir Guillaume snarled the question.

'Because we didn't have sea room,' Villeroy answered placidly as a flaming bolt seared oser the stern deck like a meteor. 'But we're well clear of the cape now.' He meant they were safely to the west of the Norman peninsula and south of them now were the rock-studded sea reaches between Normandy and Brittany. The turn meant that the range suddenly shortened as the Saint-Esprit held on westwards and Thomas shot a clutch of arrows at the dim figures of armoured men in the pursuing ship's waist. Yvette had come down to the deck and was hauling on ropes and, when she was satisfied with the new set of the sail, she clambered back up to her eyrie just as two more fire bolts thumped into the canvas and Thomas saw the flames leap up the sail as Yvette dragged up buckets. Thomas sent another arrow high into the night so that it plunged down onto the enemy deck and Sir Guillaume was shooting the heavier crossbow bolts as fast as he could, but neither man was rewarded with a cry of pain. Then the range opened again and Thomas unstrung his bow. The Saint-Esprit was turning to follow the Pentecost south and, for a few heartbeats, she seemed to disappear in the dark, but then another fire arrow climbed from her deck and in its sudden light Thomas saw she had made the turn and was again in the Pentecost's wake. Villerov's sail was still burning, giving the Saint-Esprit a mark she could not fail to follow and the pursuing bowmen sent three arrows together, their flames flickering hungrily in the night, and Yvette heaved desperately on the buckets, but the sail was ablaze now and the ship was slowing as the canvas lost its force and then, blessedly, there was a seething hiss and a squall came lashing in from the east. The sleet pelted down with an extraordinary violence, rattling on the charred sail and drumming on the deck, and Thomas thought it would last forever, but it stopped as suddenly as it had begun and all on board the Pentecost stared astern, waiting for the next fire bolt to climb from the Saint-Esprit's deck, but when the flame finally seared into the sky it was a long way off, much too far away for its light to illuminate the Pentecost and Villeroy grunted. 'They reckoned we'd turn back west in that squall,' he said with amusement, 'but they were being too clever for their own good.' The Saint-Esprit had tried to head off the Pentecost, thinking Villerov would put his ship straight downwind again, but the pursuers had made the wrong guess and they were now a long way to the north and west of their quarry.

More fire arrows burned in the dark, but now they were being shot in all directions in hope that the small light of one would glint a dull reflection from the Pentecost's hull, but Villerov's ship was drawing ever farther away, pulled by the remnants of her scorched sail. If it had not been for the squall, Thomas thought. they would surely have been overhauled and captured, and he wondered whether the hand of God was somehow sheltering him because he possessed the book of the Grail. Then guilt assailed him; the guilt of doubting the Grail's existence: of wasting Lord Outhwaite's money instead of spending it on the pursuit of the Grail; then the greater guilt and pity of Eleanor and Father Hobbe's wasteful deaths, and so he dropped to his knees on the deck and stared up at the onearmed crucifix. Forgive me, Lord. he prayed, forgive me.

'Sails cost money,' Villeroy said.

'You shall have a new sail, Pierre,' Sir Guillaume promised.

'And let's pray that what's left of this one will get us somewhere.' Villeroy said sourly. Off to the north a last fire arrow etched red across the black, and then there was no more light, just the endless dark of a broken sea in which the Pentecost survived under her tattered sail. Dawn found them in a mist and with a fitful breeze that fluttered a sail so weakened that Villeroy and Yvette doubled it on itself so that the wind would have more than charred holes to blow upon, and when they reset it the Pentecost limped south and west and everyone on board thanked God for the mist because it hid them from the pirates that haunted the gulf between Normandy and Brittany. Villeroy was not sure where they were, though he was certain enough that the Norman coast was to the east and that all the land in that direction was in fealty to the Count of Coutances and so they held on south and west with Yvette perched in the bows to keep a lookout for the frequent reefs. 'They breed rocks, these waters,' Villeroy grumbled.

'Then go into deeper water,' Sir Guillaume suggested.

The big man spat overboard. 'Deeper water breeds English pirates out of the isles.'

They pushed on south, the wind dying and the sea calming. It was still cold, but there was no more sleet and, when a feeble sun began to burn off the shredding mists, Thomas sat beside Mordecai in the bow. 'I have a question for you,' he said.

'My father told me never to get on board a ship,' Mordecai responded. His long face was pale and his beard, which he usually brushed so carefully, was tangled. He was shivering despite a makeshift cloak of sheepskins. 'Did you know,' he went on, that Flemish sailors claim that you can calm a storm by throwing a Jew overboard?'

'Do they really?'

'So I'm told,' Mordecai said, 'and if I was on board a Flemish ship I might welcome drowning as an alternative to this existence. What is that?'

Thomas had unwrapped the book that his father had bequeathed him. 'My question,'

he said, ignoring Mordecai's question, 'is who is Hachaliah.'

'Hachaliah?' Mordecai repeated the name, then shook his head. 'Do you think the Flemings carry Jews aboard their ships as a precaution? It would seem a sensible, if cruel, thing to do. Why die when a Jew can die?'

Thomas opened the book to the first page of Hebrew script where Brother Germain had deciphered the name Hachaliah. 'There,' he said, giving the book to the doctor,

'Hachaliah.'

Mordecai peered at the page. 'Grandson of Hachaliah,' he translated aloud, 'and son of the Tirshatha. Of course! It's a confusion about Jonah and the great fish.'

'Hachaliah is?' Thomas asked, staring at the page of strange script.

'No, dear boy!' Mordecai said. 'The superstition about

Jews and storms is a confusion about Jonah, a mere ignorant confusion.' He looked back at the page. 'Are you the son of the Tirshatha?'

'I'm the bastard son of a priest,' Thomas said. 'And did your father write this?'

'Yes.'

'For you?'

Thomas nodded. 'I think so.'

'Then you are the son of the Tirshatha and the grand-son of Hachaliah,' Mordecai said, then smiled. 'Ah! Of course! Nehemiah. My memory is almost as bad as poor Skeat's, eh? Fancy forgetting that Hachaliah was the father of Nehemiah.'

Thomas was still none the wiser. 'Nehemiah?'

'And he was the Tirshatha, of course he was. Extra-ordinary, isn't it, how we Jews prosper in foreign states and then they tire of us and we get blamed for every little accident. Then time passes and we are restored to our offices. The Tirshatha, Thomas, was the Governor of Judaea under the Persians. Nehemiah was the Tirshatha, not the King, of course, just Governor for a time under the rule of Artaxerxes.' Mordecai's erudition was impressive, but hardly enlightening. Why would Father Ralph identify himself with Nehemiah who must have lived hundreds of years before Christ, before the Grail? The only answer that Thomas could conjure up was the usual one of his father's madness. Mordecai was turning the parchment pages and winced when one cracked. 'How people do yearn,' he said, 'for miracles.' He prodded a page with a finger stained by all the medicines he had pounded and stirred. ' “A golden cup in the Lord's hand that made all the earth drunk”, now what on earth does that mean?'

'He's talking about the Grail,' Thomas said.

'I had understood that, Thomas,' Mordecai chided him gently, 'but those words were not written about the Grail. It refers to Babylon. Part of the lamentations of Jeremiah.' He turned another page. 'People like mystery. They want nothing explained, because when things are explained then there is no hope left. I have seen folk dying and known there is nothing to be done, and I am asked to go because the priest will soon arrive with his dish covered by a cloth, and everyone prays for a miracle. It never happens. And the person dies and I get blamed, not God or the priest, but I!' He let the book fall on his lap where the pages stirred in the small wind. 'These are just stories of the Grail, and some odd scriptures that might refer to it. A book, really, of meditations.' He frowned. 'Did your father truly believe the Grail existed?'

Thomas was about to give a vigorous affirmative, but paused, remembering. For much of the time his father had been a wry, amused and clever man, but there had been other times when he had been a wild, shrieking creature, struggling with God and desperate to make sense of the sacred mysteries. 'I think,' Thomas said carefully, 'that he did believe in the Grail.'

'Of course he did,' Mordecai said suddenly, 'how stupid of me! Of course your father believed in the Grail because he believed that he possessed it!'

'He did?' Thomas asked. He was utterly confused now.

'Nehemiah was more than the Tirshatha of Judaea,' the doctor said, 'he was cupbearer to Artaxerxes. He says so at the beginning of his writings. “I was the King's cupbearer.” There.' He pointed to a line of Hebrew script. ' “I was the King's cupbearer.” Your father's words, Thomas, taken from Nehemiah's story.'

Thomas stared at the writing and knew that Mordecai was right. That was his father's testimony. He had been cupbearer to the greatest King of all, to God Himself, to Christ, and the phrase confirmed Thomas's dreams. Father Ralph had been the cupbearer. He had possessed the Grail. It did exist. Thomas shivered.

'I think' – Mordecai spoke gently – 'that your father believed he possessed the Grail, but it seems unlikely.'

'Unlikely!' Thomas protested.

'I am merely a Jew,' Mordecai said blandly, 'so what can I know of the saviour of mankind? And there are those who say_ I should not even speak of such things, but so far as I understand Jesus was not rich. Am I right?'

'He was poor,' Thomas said.

'So I am right, he was not a rich man, and at the end of his life he attends a seder.'

'A seder?'

'The Passover feast. Thomas. And at the seder he eats bread and drinks wine, and the Grail, tell me if I am wrong, was either the bread dish or the wine goblet, yes?'

'Yes.'

'Yes,' Mordecai echoed and glanced off to his left where a small fishing boat rode the broken swell. There had been no sign of the Saint-Esprit all morning, and none of the smaller boats they passed showed any interest in the Pentecesr. 'Yet if Jesus was poor,'

Mordecai said, 'what kind of seder dish would he use? One made of gold? One ringed with jewels? Or a piece of common pottery?'

'Whatever he used,' Thomas said, 'God could transform.'

'Ah yes, of course, I was forgetting,' Mordecai said. He sounded disappointed, but then he smiled and gave Thomas the book. 'When we reach wherever we are going,' he said, 'I can write down translations of the Hebrew for you and I hope it helps.'

'Thomas!' Sir Guillaume bellowed from the stern. We need fresh arms to bail water!'

The caulking had not been finished and the Pentecost was taking water at an alarming rate and so Thomas vent down into the bilge and handed up the pails to Robbie who jettisoned the water over the side. Sir Guillaume had been pressing Villerov to go north and east again in an attempt to run past Caen and make Dunkirk, but Villerov was unhappy with his small sail and even more unhappy with the leaking hull. 'I have to put in somewhere soon,' he growled, 'and you have to buy me a sail.'

They dared not call into Normandy. It was well known throughout the province that Sir Guillaume had been declared a traitor and if the Pentecost was searched – and it was probable on this smuggling coast that she would be – then Sir Guillaume would be discovered. That left Brittany and Sir Guillaume was eager to make Saint-Malo or SaintBrieuc, but Thomas protested from the bilge that he and Will Skeat would be considered enemies by the Breton authorities who, in those towns, held allegiance to Duke Charles who was struggling against the English-backed rebels who reckoned Duke Jean was Brittany's true ruler. 'So where would you go?' Sir Guillaume demanded. 'England?'

'We'll never make England,' Villerov_ said unhappily, looking at his sail.

'The islands?' Thomas suggested, thinking of Guernsey or Jersey.

'The islands!' Sir Guillaume liked that idea.

This time it was Villerov who objected. 'Can't do it,' he said bluntly and explained that the Pentecost was a Guernsey boat and he had been one of the men who helped capture her. 'I take her into the isles,' he said, 'and they'll take her back and me with her.'

'For God's sake!' Sir Guillaume snarled. 'Then where do we go?'

'Can you make Treguier?' Will Skeat asked and everyone was so astonished he had spoken that for a few heartbeats no one responded.

'Treguier?' Villeroy asked after a while, then nodded. 'Like as not.' he said.

'Why Treguier?' Sir Guillaume demanded.

'It was in English hands last I heard,' Skeat said. 'Still is.' Villerov put in.

'And we've got friends there,' Skeat went on.

And enemies, Thomas thought. Treguier was not just the closest Breton port in English hands, but also the harbour closest to La Roche-Derrien where Sir Geoffrey Carr, the Scarecrow, had gone. And Thomas had told Brother Germain that he was headed for the same small town, and that would surely mean de Taillebourg would hear of it and follow. And perhaps Jeanette was there too, and suddenly, though Thomas had been saying for weeks that he would not go back, he desperately wanted to reach La Roche-Derrien.

For it was there in Brittany, he possessed friends, old lovers and enemies he wanted to kill.