Vagabond

Part Three

Brittany, spring 1347

The King's Cupbearer

Jeanette Chenier, Comtesse d'Armorique, had lost her husband, her parents, her fortune, her house, her son and her royal lover, and all before she was twenty years old. Her husband had been lost to an English arrow and had died in agony, weeping like a child.

Her parents had died of the bloody flux and their bedclothes had been burned before they were buried near the altar of St Renan's church. They had left Jeanette, their only remaining child, a small fortune in gold, a wine-shipping business and the great merchant's house on the river in La Roche-Derrien. Jeanette had spent much of the fortune on equipping ships and men to fight the hated English who had killed her husband, but the English won and thus the fortune vanished. Jeanette had begged help from Charles of Blois, Duke of Brittany and her dead husband's kinsman, and that was how she had lost her son. The three-year-old Charles, named for the duke, had been snatched from her. She was called a whore because she was a mer-chant's daughter and thus unworthy to be an aristocrat and Charles of Blois, to show Jeanette how much he despised her, had raped her. Her son, now the Count of Armorica, was being raised by one of Charles of Blois's loyal supporters to ensure that the boy's extensive lands stayed sworn to the house of Blois. So Jeanette, who had lost her fortune in the attempt to make Duke Charles the undisputed ruler of Brittany, learned a new hatred and found a new lover, Thomas of Hookton. She fled north with him to the English army in Normandy and there she had caught the eye of Edward of Woodstock, Prince of Wales, and so Jeanette had abandoned Thomas. But then, fearing that the English would be crushed by the French in Picardy and that the victorious French would punish her for her choice of lover, she had fled again. She had been wrong about the battle, the English had won, but she could not go hack. Kings, and the sons of Kings, did not reward fickleness and so Jeanette Chenier, dowager Countess of Armorica, had gone back to La Roche-Derrien to find she had lost her house.

When she had left La Roche-Derrien she had been deeply in debt and Monsieur Belas, a lawyer, had taken the house to pay those debts. Jeanette, on her return, possessed money enough to pay all she owed, for the Prince of Wales had been generous with jewels, but Belas would not move from the house. The law was on his side. Some of the English who occupied La Roche-Derrien showed sympathy for Jeanette, but they did not interfere with the decision of the court and it would not have mattered overmuch if they had, for everyone knew the English could not stay in the small town for long. Duke Charles was gathering a new army in Rennes and La Roche-Derrien was the most iso-lated and remote of all the English strongholds in Brittany, and when Duke Charles snapped up the town he would reward Monsieur Belas, his agent, and scorn Jeanette Chenier whom he called a whore because she was not nobly born. So Jeanette, unable to claim back her house, found another, much smaller, close to La Roche-Derrien's southern gate and she confessed her sins to the priest at St Renan's church, who said she had been wicked beyond man's measure and perhaps beyond God's measure as well; the priest promised her absolution if she would sin with him and he hoisted up his robes and reached for her, then cried aloud as Jeanette kicked him. She continued to take mass at St Renan's, for it was her childhood church and her parents were buried beneath the painting of Christ emerging from the tomb with a golden light about His head, and the priest dared not refuse her the sacrament and dared not meet her eyes.

Jeanette had lost her servants when she fled north with Thomas, but she hired a fourteen-year-old girl to be her kitchen maid and the girl's idiot brother to draw water and collect firewood. The Prince's jewels, Jeanette reckoned, would last her a year and something would turn up by then. She was young, she was truly beautiful, she was filled with anger, her child was still a hostage and she was inspired by hatred. Some in the town feared she was mad because she was much thinner than when she had left La Roche-Derrien, but her hair was still raven-black, her skin as smooth as the rare silk that only the wealthiest could afford and her eyes were big and bright. Men came and begged her favours, but were told they could not speak to her again unless they brought her the shrivelled heart of Belas the lawyer and the shrivelled prick of Charles of Blois. 'Bring them both to me in reliquaries,' she told them, 'but bring me my son alive.' Her anger repelled men and some of them spread the tale that she was moon-touched, perhaps a witch. The priest of St Renan's confided to the other clergy in the town that Jeanette had tried to tempt him and he spoke darkly of bringing in the Inquisition, but the English would not permit it for the King of England refused to let the torturers of God work their dark arts in his possessions. 'There's enough grumbling,' Dick Totesham, commander of the English garrison in La Roche-Derrien said, 'without bringing in damned friars to stir up trouble.'

Totesham and his garrison knew that Charles of Blois was raising an army that would attack La Roche-Derrien before marching on to besiege the other English strong-holds in Brittany, and so they worked hard to make the town's walls higher and to build new ramparts outside the old. Local farm labourers were whipped to the work. They were forced to push barrowloads of clay and rock, they drove timbers into the soil to make palisades and they dug ditches. They hated the English for forcing them to work without pay, but the English did not care for they had to defend themselves and Totesham pleaded with Westminster to send him more men and on the feast of St Felix, in the middle of January, a troop of Welsh archers landed at Treguier, which was the small harbour an hour and a half's walk upriver from La Roche-Derrien, but the garrison's only other reinforcements were a few knights and men-at-arms who were down on their luck and came to the small town in hope of plunder and prisoners. Some of those knights came from as far away as Flanders, lured by false rumours of the riches to be had in Brittany, and another six menat-arms arrived from northern Eng-land, led by a malevolent, raw-faced man who carried a whip and a heavy load of grudges, and they were La Roche-Derrien's last reinforcements before the Pentecost came to the river. La Roche-Derrien's garrison was small, but Duke Charles's army was large and grew even larger. Spies in English pay told of Genoese crossbowmen arriving at Rennes in companies a hundred strong, and of men-at-arms riding from France to swear fealty to Charles of Blois. His army swelled and the King of England, apparently careless of his garrisons in Brittany, sent them no help. Which meant that La Roche-Derrien, smallest of all the English fortress towns in Brittany and the one closest to the enemy, was doomed. Thomas felt strangely unsettled as the Pentecost slipped between the low rocky outcrops that marked the mouth of the River Jaudv. Was it a failure, he wondered, to be coming back to this small town? Or had God sent him because it was here that the enemies of the Grail would be seeking him? That was how Thomas thought of the mysterious de Taillebourg and his servant. Or perhaps, he told himself, he was merely nervous of seeing Jeanette again. Their history was too tangled, there was too much hate mixed with the love, yet he did want to see her and he was worried she would not want to see him. He tried and failed to conjure a picture of her face as the incoming tide carried the Pentecost into the river's mouth, where guillemots spread their ragged black wings to dry above rocks fretted with white foam. A seal raised its glistening head, stared indignantly at Thomas and then went back to the depths. The river-banks came closer, bringing the smell of land. There were boulders and pale grass and small wind-bent trees, while in the shallows there were sinuous fish traps made from woven willow stakes. A small girl, scarce more than six years old, used a stone to knock limpets from the rocks. 'It's a poor supper, that,' Will Skeat remarked.

'It is, Will, it is.'

'Ah, Tom!' Skeat smiled, recognizing the voice. 'You never had limpets for supper!'

'I did!' Thomas protested. 'And for breakfast too.'

'A man who speaks Latin and French? Eating limpets?' Skeat grinned. 'You can write, ain't that so, Tom?'

'Good as a priest, Will.'

'I reckon we should send a letter to his lordship,' Skeat said, meaning the Earl of Northampton, 'and ask for my men to be shipped here, only he won't do that without money, will he?'

'He owes you money,' Thomas said.

Skeat frowned at Thomas. 'He does?'

'Your men have been serving him these last months. He has to pay for that.'

Skeat shook his head. 'The Earl was never slow to pay for good soldiers. He'll be keeping their purses full, Ill be bound, and if I want them here I'll have to persuade him to let them go and I'll have to pay their passages too.' Skeat's men were contracted to fight for the Earl of Northampton who, after campaigning in Brittany, had joined the King in Normandy and now served him near Calais. 'I'll have to pay passage for men and horses, Thomas,' Skeat went on, 'and unless things have changed since I got slapped about the head that won't be cheap. Won't be cheap. And why would the Earl want them to leave Calais? They'll have a bellyful of fighting come springtime.'

The question was a good one, Thomas thought, for there surely would be some vicious fighting near Calais when the winter ended. So far as Thomas knew the town had not fallen, but the English had surrounded it and the French King was said to be raising a great army that would attack the besiegers in springtime.

'There'll be plenty of fighting here come spring,' Thomas said, nodding at the riverbank, which was very close now. The fields beyond the banks were fallow, but at least the barns and farmhouses still stood for these lands fed La Roche-Derrien's garrison and so they had been spared the pillage, rape and fire that had crackled across the rest of the dukedom.

'There'll be fighting here,' Skeat agreed, 'but more in Calais. Maybe you and I should go there, Tom?'

Thomas said nothing. He feared Skeat could no longer command a band of men-atarms and archers. His old friend was too prone to forgetfulness or to sudden bouts of vagueness and melancholy, and those attacks were made worse by the times when Skeat seemed like his old self – except he never was quite like the old Will Skeat who had been so swift in war, savage in decision and clever in battle. Now he repeated himself, became confused and was too frequently puzzled – as he was now by a guardboat flying England's red cross on its white field that pulled downstream towards the Pentecost. Skeat frowned at the small craft. 'Is he an enemy?'

'Flying our flag, Will.'

'He is?'

A mail-clad man stood up in the rowboat's bows and hailed the Pentecost. 'Who are you?'

'Sir William Skeat!' Thomas shouted back, using the name that would be most welcome in Brittany. There was a pause, maybe of incredulity. 'Sir William Skeat?' the man called back.

'Will Skeat, you mean?'

'The King knighted him,' Thomas told the man.

'I keep forgetting that myself,' Skeat said.

The portside oarsmen backed water so that the guard boat turned in the tide alongside the Pentecost. 'What are you carrying?' the man asked.

'Empty!' Thomas shouted.

The man stared up at the ragged, scorched, doubled sail. 'You had trouble?'

'Off Normandy.'

'Time those bastards were killed once and for all,' the man grumbled, then gestured upriver to where Treguier's houses smeared the sky with their wood-smoke. 'Tie up out-board of the Edward,' he ordered them. 'There's a harbour fee you'll have to pay. Six shillings.'

'Six shillings?' Villeroy exploded when he was told. 'Six bloody shillings! Do they think we pull money off the seabed in nets?'

Thus Thomas and Will Skeat came back to Treguier where the cathedral had lost its tower after Bretons who supported Charles of Blois had fired crossbows at the English from its summit. In retaliation the English had pulled the tower down and shipped the stone to London. The little harbour town was scantily populated now for it had no walls and Charles of Blois's men sometimes raided the warehouses behind the quay. Small ships could go all the way upriver to La Roche-Derrien, but the Pentecost drew too much water and so she tied herself alongside the English cog and then a dozen men in redcrossed jupons came aboard to take the harbour fee and look for contraband or else a healthy bribe to persuade them to ignore whatever they might discover, but they found neither goods nor bribe. Their commander, a fat man with a weeping ulcer on his forehead, confirmed that Richard Totesham still commanded at La Roche-Derrien. 'He be there,' the fat man said, 'and Sir Thomas Dagworth commands in Brest.'

'Dagworth!' Skeat sounded pleased. 'He's a good one, he is. So's Dick Totesham,' he added to Thomas, then looked puzzled as Sir Guillaume emerged from the forecabin.

'It's Sir Guillaume,' Thomas said in a low voice. 'Course it is,' Skeat said. Sir Guillaume dropped the saddlebags on the deck and the chink of coins drew an expectant gaze from the fat man. Sir Guillaume met his gaze and half drew his sword.

'Reckon I be going,' the fat man said.

'Reckon you do,' Skeat said with a chuckle.

Robbie heaved his baggage onto the deck, then stared across the waist of the Eduard to where four girls were gutting herrings and chucking the offal into the air where gulls snatched it in mid flight. The girls strung the gutted fish on long poles that would be placed in the smokers at the quay's end. 'Are they all as pretty as that?' Robbie asked.

'Prettier,' Thomas said, wondering how the Scot could see the girl's faces under their bonnets.

'I'm going to like Brittany,' Robbie said.

There were debts to be paid before they could leave. Sir Guillaume paid off Villeroy and added enough cash to buy a new sail. 'You might do well,' he advised the big man, 'to avoid Caen for a while.'

'We'll go on down to Gascony,' Villeroy said. 'There's always trade in Gascony. Maybe we'll even poke on down to Portugal?'

'Perhaps,' Mordecai spoke shyly, 'you would let me come?'

'You?' Sir Guillaume turned on the doctor. 'You hate goddamn ships.'

'I have to go south,' Mordecai said wearily, 'to Montpellier first of all. The further south a man is, the friendlier the people. I would rather suffer a month of sea and cold than meet Duke Charles's men.'

'Passage to Gascony' – Sir Guillaume offered Villeroy a gold coin – 'for a friend of mine.'

Villeroy glanced at Yvette, who shrugged, and that persuaded the big man to agree.

'You're welcome, doctor,' he said.

So they said farewell to Mordecai and then Thomas and Robbie, Will Skeat and Sir Guillaume and his two men-at-arms went ashore. A boat was going upstream to La Roche-Derrien, but not till later in the day and so the two men-at-arms were left with the baggage and Thomas led the others along the narrow track that fol-lowed the river's western bank. They wore mail and carried weapons for the local peasantry were not friendly to the English, but the only men they passed were a dozen drab labourers pitchforking dung from two carts. The men paused to watch the soldiers pass, but said nothing. 'And by this time tomorrow,' Thomas commented, 'Charles of Blois will know we've arrived.'

'He'll be quaking in his boots,' Skeat said with a grin.

It began to rain as they reached the bridge which led into La Roche-Derrien. Thomas stopped under the arch of the protective barbican on the bank opposite the town and pointed upstream to the ramshackle quay where he and Skeat's other archers had sneaked into La Roche-Derrien on the night it first fell to the English. 'Remember that place. Will?' he asked.

"Course I remember,' Skeat said, though he looked vague and Thomas did not say more.

They crossed the stone bridge and hurried down the street to the house by the tavern that had always been Richard Totesham's headquarters and Totesham himself was just sliding out of his saddle as they arrived. He turned and scowled at the newcomers, then recognized Will Skeat and stared at his old friend as though he had seen a ghost. Skeat looked blankly back and his lack of recognition troubled Totesham. 'Will?' the garrison commander asked. 'Will? Is it you, Will?'

A look of astonished delight animated Skeat's face. 'Dick Totesham! Of all the folk to meet!'

Totesham was puzzled that Skeat should be surprised to meet him in a garrison he commanded, but then he saw the emptiness in his old friend's eyes and frowned. 'Are you well, Will?'

'I had a bash on the head,' Skeat said, 'but a doctor cobbled me together again. Things get blurred here and there, just blurred.'

The two clasped hands. They were both men who had been born penniless and become soldiers, then earned the trust of their masters and gained the profits of prisoners ransomed and property plundered until they were wealthy enough to raise their own bands of men, which they hired to the King or to a noble and so became richer still as they ravaged more enemy lands. When the troubadours sang of battle they named the King as the fighting hero, and extolled the exploits of dukes, earls, barons and knights, but it was men like Totesham and Skeat who did most of England's fighting. Totesham clapped Skeat good-naturedly on the shoulder. 'Tell me you've brought your men, Will.'

'God knows where they are,' Skeat said. 'I haven't laid eyes on them in months.'

'They're outside Calais,' Thomas put in.

'Dear God.' Totesham made the sign of the cross. He was a squat man, grey-haired and broad-faced, who held La Roche-Derrien's garrison together by sheer force of character, but he knew he had too few men. Far too few men. 'I've a hundred and thirty-two men under orders,' he told Skeat, 'and half of those are sick. Then there's fifty or sixty mercenaries who might or might not stay till Charles of Blois arrives. Of course the townsfolk will fight for us, or most of them will.'

'They will?' Thomas interrupted, astonished at the claim. When the English had captured the town the previous year the town's people had fought bitterly to defend their walls, and when they had lost they had been subjected to rape and plunder, vet now they supported the garrison?

'Trade's good,' Totesham explained. 'They've never been so rich! Ships to Gascony, to Portugal, to Flanders and to England. Making money, they are. They don't want us to leave, so yes, some will fight for us and it'll help, but it's not like having trained men.'

The other English troops in Brittany were a long way to the west so when Charles of Blois came with his army, Totesham would have to hold the small town for two or three weeks before he could expect any relief and, even with the inhabitants' help, he doubted he could do it. He had sent a petition to the King at Calais begging that more men be sent to La Roche-Derrien. 'We are far from help,' his clerk had written to Tote-sham's dictation, 'and our enemies gather close about.' Totesham, seeing Will Skeat, had assumed that Skeat's men had arrived in answer to his petition and he could not hide his disappointment. 'You'll write to the King yourself?' Totesham asked Will.

'Tom here can write for me.'

'Ask for your men to be sent,' Totesham urged. 'I need three or four hundred more archers, but your fifty or sixty would help.'

'Tommy Dagworth can't send you any?' Skeat asked.

'He's as hard pressed as I am. Too much land to hold, too few men and the King won't hear of us surrendering a single acre to Charles of Blois.'

'So why doesn't he send reinforcements?' Sir Guillaume asked.

'Because he ain't got men to spare,' Totesham said, 'which is no reason for us not to ask.'

Totesham took them inside his house where a fire blazed in a big hearth and his servants brought jugs of mulled wine and plates of bread and cold pork. A baby lay in a wooden cradle by the fire and Totesham blushed when he admitted it was his. 'Newly married,' he told Skeat, then ordered a maid to take the baby away before it began crying. He flinched when Skeat took off his hat to reveal his scarred, thick-ridged scalp, then he insisted on hearing Will's story, and when it was told he thanked Sir Guillaume for the help the Frenchman had given his friend. Thomas and Robbie got a cooler welcome, the latter because he was Scottish and the former because Totesham remembered Thomas from the previous year. 'You were a bloody nuisance,' Totesham said bluntly, 'you and the Countess of Armorica.'

'Is she here?' Thomas asked.

'She came back, aye.' Totesham sounded guarded. 'We can go back to her house, Will,'

Thomas said to Skeat.

'No you can't,' Totesham said firmly. 'She lost the house. It was sold to pay her debts and she's been screaming about it ever since, but it was sold fair and square. And the lawyer who bought it has paid us a quittance to be left in peace and I don't want him disturbed, so the two of you can find yourself space at the Two Foxes. Then come and have supper.' This invitation was to Will Skeat and to Sir Guillaume and pointedly not to Thomas or Robbie. Thomas did not mind. He and Robbie found a room to share in the tavern called the Two Foxes and after-wards, as Robbie had his first taste of Breton ale, Thomas went to St Renan's church, which \vas one of the smallest in La Roche-Derrien, but also one of the wealthiest because Jeanette's father had endowed it. He had built a bell tower and paid to have fine pictures painted on its walls, though by the time Thomas reached St Renan's it was too dark to see the Saviour walking on Galilee's water or the souls tumbling down to their fiery hell. The only light in the church came from some candles burning on the altar where a silver reliquary held St Renan's tongue, but Thomas knew there was another treasure beneath the altar, something almost as rare as a saint's silent tongue, and he wanted to consult it. It was a book, a gift from Jeanette's father, and Thomas had been astonished to find it there, not just because the book had survived the fall of the town – though in truth not many soldiers would seek books for plunder – but because there was any book in a small church in a Breton town. Books were rare and that was St Renan's treasure: a bible. Most of the New Testament was miss-ing, evidently because some soldiers had taken those pages to use in the latrines, but all of the Old Testament remained. Thomas threaded his way through the black-dressed old ladies who knelt and prayed in the nave and he found the book beneath the altar and blew off the dust and cobwebs, then put it beside the candles. One of the women hissed that he was being impious, but Thomas ignored her.

He turned the stiff pages, sometimes stopping to admire a painted capital. There was a bible in St Peter's church in Dorchester and his father had possessed one, and Thomas must have seen a dozen in Oxford, but he had seen few others and, as he searched the pages, he marvelled at the time it must take to copy such a vast book. More women protested his annexation of the altar and so. to placate them, he went a few steps away and sat cross-legged with the heavy book on his lap. He was now too far from the candles and found it hard to read the script, which was mostly ill done. The capitals were pretty, suggesting they had been done by a skilled hand, but most of the writing was cramped and his task was made no easier by his ignorance of where to look in the huge book. He began at the end of the Old Testa-ment. but did not find what he wanted and so he leafed back. the huge pages crackling as he turned them. He knew what he sought was not in the Psalms so he turned those pages fast, then slowed again, seeking words out of the illwritten script and then, suddenly, the names jumped from the page. 'Neemias Athersatha filius Achelai', 'Nehemiah the Governor, son of Hachaliah'. He read the whole passage, but did not find what he sought, and so he leafed still further back, page by stiff page, knowing he was close, and there, at last, it was.

'Ego enim Bram pincerna regis.'

He stared at the phrase, then read it aloud. ' “ Ego enim Bram pincerna regis.” '

'For I was the King's cupbearer.'

Mordecai had thought Father Ralph's book was a plea to God to make the Grail true, but Thomas did not agree. His father did not want to be the cupbearer. No, the notebook was a way of confessing and of hiding the truth. His father had left a trail for him to follow. Go from Hachaliah to the Tirshatha and realize that the Governor was also the cupbearer: ego enim eram pincerna regis. 'Was', Thomas thought. Did that mean his father had lost the Grail? It was more likely that he knew Thomas would only read the book after his death. But Thomas was certain of one thing: the words confirmed that the Grail did exist and his father had been its reluctant keeper. I was the King's cupbearer; let this cup pass from me; the cup makes me drunk. The cup existed and Thomas felt a shiver go though his body. He stared at the candles on the altar and his eyes blurred with tears. Eleanor had been right. The Grail existed and it was waiting to be found and to put the world right and to bring God to man and man to God and peace on earth. It existed. It was the Grail.

'My father,' a woman said, 'gave that book to the church.'

'I know he did,' Thomas said, then he closed the bible and he turned to look at Jeanette and he was almost frightened to see her in case she was less beautiful than he remembered, or perhaps he feared the sight of her would engender hatred because she had abandoned him, but instead he felt tears in his eyes when he saw her face. 'Merle,' he said softly, using her nickname. It meant Blackbird.

'Thomas.' Her voice was toneless, then she flicked her head towards an old woman dressed and veiled in black. 'Madame Verlon,' Jeanette said, 'who is nervous of life, told me that an English soldier was stealing the bible.'

'So you came to fight the soldier?' Thomas asked. A candle guttered to his right, its flame flickering as fast as a small bird's heart.

Jeanette shrugged. 'The priest here is a coward and would not challenge an English archer, so who else would come?'

'Madame Verlon can rest safe,' Thomas said as he put the bible back under the altar.

'She also said' – Jeanette's voice had a quaver in it – 'that the man stealing the bible had a big black bow.' Which was why, she implied, she had come herself instead of sending for help. She had guessed it was Thomas.

'At least you did not have to come far,' Thomas said, gesturing to the side door which led into the yard of Jeanette's father's house. He was pretending not to know that she had lost the house.

Her head jerked back. 'I do not live there,' she said curtly, 'not now.'

A dozen women were listening and they stepped nervously back as Thomas came towards them. 'Then perhaps, madame,' he said to Jeanette, 'you will let me escort you home?'

She nodded abruptly. Her eyes seemed very bright and big in the candlelight. She was thinner, Thomas thought, or perhaps that was the darkness in the church shadowing her cheeks. She had a bonnet tied under her chin and a great black cloak that swept on the flagstones as she followed him to the western door. 'You remember Belas?' she asked him.

'I remember the name,' Thomas said. 'Wasn't he a lawyer?'

'He is a lawyer,' Jeanette said, 'and a thing of bile, a creature of slime, a cheat. What was that English word you taught me? A tosspot. He is a tosspot. When I came home he had bought the house, claiming it was sold to pay my debts. But he had bought the debts!

He promised to look after my business, waited till I was gone, then took my house. And now I am back he won't let me pay what I owed. He says it is paid. I said I would buy the house from him for more than he paid, but he just laughs at me.'

Thomas held the door for her. Rain was spitting in the street. 'You don't want the house,' he told her, 'not if Charles of Blois comes back. You should be gone by then.'

'You're still telling me what to do, Thomas?' she asked and then, as if to soften the harshness of her words, she took his arm. Or perhaps she put her hand through his elbow because the street was steep and slippery. 'I will stay here, I think.'

'If you hadn't escaped from him,' Thomas said, 'Charles was going to marry you to one of his men-at-arms. If he finds you here he'll do that. Or worse.'

'He already has my child. He has already raped me. What more can he do? No' – she clutched Thomas's arm fiercely – 'I shall stay in my little house by the south gate and when he rides into the town I will sink a crossbow quarrel in his belly.'

'I'm surprised you haven't put a quarrel into Belas's belly.'

'You think I would hang for a lawyer's death?' Jeanette asked and gave a short, hard laugh. 'No, I shall save my death for the life of Charles of Blois and all Brittany and France will know he was killed by a woman.'

'Unless he returns your child?'

'He won't!' she said fiercely. 'He answered no appeals.' She meant, Thomas was sure, that the Prince of Wales, maybe the King as well, had written to Charles of Blois, but the appeals had achieved nothing, and why should they? England was Charles's most bitter enemy. 'It's all about land, Thomas,' she said wearily, 'land and money.' She meant that her son, who at three years old was the Count of Armorica, was the rightful heir to great swathes of western Brittany that were presently under English occupation. If the child were to give fealty to Duke Jean, who was Edward of England's candidate to rule Brittany, then the claim of Charles of Blois to sovereignty of the duchy would be seriously weakened and so Charles had taken the child and would keep him till he was of an age to swear fealty.

'Where is Charles?' Thomas asked. It was one of the ironies of Jeanette's life that her son had been named after his great-uncle in an attempt to win his favour.

'He is in the Tower of Roncelets,' Jeanette said, 'which is south of Rennes. He is being raised by the Lord of Roncelets.' She turned on Thomas. 'It's almost a year since I've seen him!'

'The Tower of Roncelets,' Thomas said, 'it's a castle?' 'I've not seen it. A tower, I suppose. Yes, a castle.' 'You're sure he's there?'

'I'm sure of nothing,' Jeanette said wearily, 'but I received a letter which said Charles was there and I have no reason to doubt it.'

'Who wrote the letter?'

'I don't know. It was not signed.' She walked in silence for a few paces, her hand warm on his arm. 'It was Belas,' she said finally. 'I don't know that for sure, but it must be. He was goading me, tormenting me. It is not enough that he has my house and Charles of Blois has my child, Belas wants me to suffer. Or else he wants me to go to Roncelets knowing that I would be given back to Charles of Blois. I'm sure it was Belas. He hates me.'

'Why?'

'Why do you think?' she asked scornfully. 'I have something he wants, something all men want, but I won't give it to him.'

They walked on through dark streets. Singing sounded from some taverns, and somewhere a woman screamed at her man. A dog barked and was silenced. The rain pattered on thatch, dripped from the eaves and made the muddy street slippery. A red glow slowly appeared ahead, growing as they came closer until Thomas saw the flames of two braziers 'varming the guards on the south gate and he remembered how he and Jake and Sam had opened that gate to let in the English army. 'I promised you once,' he said to Jeanette,

'that I would fetch Charles back.'

'You and I, Thomas,' Jeanette said, 'made too many promises.' She still sounded weary.

'I should start keeping some of mine,' Thomas said. But to reach Roncelets I need horses.'

'I can afford horses,' Jeanette said, stopping by a dark doorway. 'I live here,' she went on, then looked into his face. He was tall, but she was very nearly the same height. 'The Count of Roncelets is famous as a warrior. You mustn't die to keep a promise you should never have made.'

'It was made, though,' Thomas said.

She nodded. That is true.'

There was a long pause. Thomas could hear a sentry's footsteps on the wall. 'I—' he began.

'No,' she said hastily.

'I didn't ...'

'Another time. I must get used to your being here. I'm tired of men, Thomas. Since Picardy . . .' She paused and Thomas thought she would say no more, but then she shrugged. 'Since Picardy I have lived like a nun.'

He kissed her forehead. 'I love you,' he said, meaning it, but surprised all the same that he had spoken the thought aloud.

For a heartbeat she did not speak. The reflected light from the two braziers glinted red in her eyes. 'What happened to that girl?' she asked. 'That little pale thing « ho was so protective of you?'

'I failed to protect her,' Thomas said, 'and she died.'

'Men are such bastards,' she said, then turned and pulled the rope that lifted the latch of the door. She paused for a moment. 'But I'm glad you're here,' she said without looking back, and then the door was shut, the bolt slid home and she was gone. Sir Geoffrey Carr had begun to think his foray to Brittany was a mistake. For a long time there had been no sign of Thomas of Hookton and once the archer arrived he had made little effort to discover any treasure. It was mysterious and all the time Sir Geoffrey's debts were growing. But then, at last, the Scarecrow discovered what plans Thomas of Hookton was hatching. That new knowledge took Sir Geoffrey to Maitre Belas's house. Rain poured on La Roche-Derrien. It was one of the wettest winters in memory. The ditch beyond the strengthened town wall was flooded so it looked like a moat, and many of the River Jaudy's water meadows resembled lakes. The streets of the town were sticky with mud, men's boots were thick with it and women went to market wearing awkward wooden pattens that slipped treacherously on the steeper streets and still thick mud was smeared on the hems of their dresses and cloaks. The only good things about such rain was the protection it offered against fire and, for the English, the knowledge that it would make any siege of the town difficult. Siege engines, whether catapults, trebuchets or guns, needed a solid base, not a quagmire, and men could not assault through a marsh. Richard Totesham was said to be praying for more rain and giving thanks every morning that dawned grey, heavy and damp.

'A wet winter, Sir Geoffrey,' Belas greeted the Scare-crow, then gave his visitor a covert inspection. A raw and ugly face, he thought, and while Sir Geoffrey's clothes were of a fine quality, they had also been made for a fatter man which suggested that either the English-man had recently lost weight or, more likely, the clothes had been taken from a man he had killed in battle. A coiled whip hung at his belt, which seemed a strange accoutrement, but the lawyer never presumed to under-stand soldiers. 'A very wet winter,' Belas went on, waving the Scarecrow into a chair.

'It's a pissing 'vet winter,' Sir Geoffrey snarled to cover his nervousness, 'nothing but rain, cold and chilblains.' He was nervous because he was not certain that this thin and watchful lawyer was as sympathetic to Charles of Blois as tavern rumour suggested, and he had been forced to leave Beggar and Dickon in the courtyard below and he felt vulnerable without their protective company, especially as the lawyer had a great hulking attendant who was dressed in a leather jerkin and had a long sword at his side.

'Pierre protects me,' Belas said. He had seen Sir Geoffrey glancing at the big man. 'He protects me from the enemies all honest lawyers make. Please, Sir Geoffrey, sit yourself.'

He gestured again at a chair. A small fire burned in the hearth, the smoke vanishing up a newly made chimney. The lawyer had a face as hungry as a stoat and pale as a grass-snake's belly. He was wearing a black gown and a black cloak edged with black fur and a black hat with flaps that covered his ears, though he now pushed one flap up so he could hear the Scare-crow's voice. 'Parley-vous francais?' he asked.

'No.'

'Breroneg a ourit?' the lawyer enquired and, when he saw the dumb incomprehension on the Scarecrow's face, shrugged. 'You don't speak Breton?'

'I just told you, didn't I? I don't talk French.'

'French and Breton are not the same language, Sir Geoffrey.'

'They're not bloody English,' Sir Geoffrey said belligerently.

'Indeed they are not. Alas, I do not speak English well, but I learn fast. It is, after all, the language of our new masters.'

'Masters?' the Scarecrow asked. 'Or enemies?'

Belas shrugged. 'I am a man of, how do you say? Of affairs. A man of affairs. It is not possible, I think, to be such and not to make enemies.' He shrugged again, as if he spoke of trivialities, then he leaned back in his chair. 'But you come on business, Sir Geoffrey? You have property to convey, perhaps? A contract to make?'

'Jeanette Chenier, Countess of Armorica,' Sir Geoffrey said bluntly. Belas was surprised, but did not show it. He was alert, though. He knew well enough that Jeanette wanted revenge and he was ever watchful for her machinations, but now he pretended indifference. 'I know of the lady,' he admitted.

'She knows you. And she don't like you, Monsieur Belas,' Sir Geoffrey said, making his pronunciation of the name sound like a sneer. 'She don't like you one small bit. She'd like to have your collops in a skillet and kindle a fierce fire under them.'

Belas turned to the papers on his desk as though his visitor was being tedious. 'I told you, Sir Geoffrey, that a lawyer inevitably makes enemies. It is nothing to worry about. The law protects me.'

'Piss on the law, Belas.' Sir Geoffrey spoke flatly. His eyes, curiously pale, watched the lawyer, who pre-tended to be busy sharpening a quill. 'Suppose the lady got her son back?' the Scarecrow went on. 'Suppose the lady takes her son to Edward of England and has the boy swear fealty to Duke Jean? The law won't stop them chopping off your collops then, will it? One, two, snip, snip and stoke the fire, lawyer.'

'Such an eventuality,' Belas said in apparent bore-dom, 'could have no possible repercussions for me.'

'So your English ain't bad, eh?' Sir Geoffrey sneered. 'I don't pretend to know the law, monsieur, but I know folk. If the Countess gets her son then she'll go to Calais and see the King.'

'So?' Belas asked, still pretending carelessness.

'Three months' — Sir Geoffrey held up three fingers — 'four, maybe, before your Charles of Blois can get here. And she might be in Calais in four weeks' time and back here with the King's piece of parchment inside eight weeks, and by then she'll be valuable. Her son has what the King wants and he'll give her what she wants, and what she wants is your collops. She'll bite them off with her little white teeth and then she'll skin you alive, monsieur, and the law won't help you. Not against the King, it won't.'

Belas had been pretending to read a parchment, which he now released so that it rolled up with a snap. He stared at the Scarecrow, then shrugged. 'I doubt, Sir Geoffrey, that what you describe is likely to happen. The Countess's son is not here.'

'But suppose, monsieur, just suppose, that a party of men is readying themselves to go to Roncelets and fetch the little tosspot?'

Belas paused. He had heard a rumour that just such a raid was being planned, but he had doubted the rumour's truth for such tales had been told a score of times and come to nothing. Yet something in Sir Geoffrey's tone suggested that this time there might be some meat on the bone. 'A party of men,' Belas responded flatly.

'A party of men,' the Scarecrow confirmed, 'that plans to ride to Roncelets and watch until the little darling is taken out for his morning piddle and then they'll snatch him, bring him back here and put your collops in the frying pan.'

Belas unrolled the parchment and pretended to read it again. 'It is hardly surprising, Sir Geoffrey.' he said carelessly, 'that Madame Chenier conspires for the return of her son. It is to be expected. But why should you bother me with it? What harm can it do me?' He dipped the newly sharpened quill in his ink pot. 'And how do you know about this planned raid?'

'Because I ask the right questions, don't I?' the Scare-crow answered. In truth the Scarecrow had heard rumours that Thomas planned a raid on Rostrenen, but other men in the town had sworn that Rostrenen had been picked over so often that a sparrow would die of starvation there now. So what, the Scarecrow had wondered, was Thomas really doing? Sir Geoffrey was certain that Thomas was riding to find the treasure, the same treasure that had taken him to Durham, but why would it be at Rostrenen? What was there? Sir Geoffrey had accosted one of Richard Totesham's deputies in a tavern and bought the man ale and asked about Rostrenen and the man had laughed and shaken his head. 'You don't want to ride on that nonsense,' he told Sir Geoffrey.

'Nonsense?'

'They ain't going to Rostrenen. They're going to Roncelets. Well, we don't know that for certain,' the man had continued, 'but the Countess of Armorica is up to her pretty neck in the whole business, so that means it must be Roncelets. And you want my advice, Sir Geoffrey? Stay out of it. They don't call Roncelets the wasp's nest for nothing.'

Sir Geoffrey, more confused than ever, asked more questions and slowly he came to understand that the thesaurus Thomas sought was not thick golden coins, nor leather bags filled with jewels, but instead was land: the Breton estates of the Count of Armorica, and if Jeanette's little son swore allegiance to Duke Jean, then the English cause in Brittany was advanced. It was a treasure in its way, a political treasure: not so satisfying as gold, but it was still valuable. Quite what the land had to do with Durham the Scarecrow did not know. Perhaps Thomas had gone there to find some deeds? Or a grant made by a previous duke? Some lawyer's nonsense, and it did not matter; what mattered was that Thomas was riding to seize a boy who could bring political muscle to the King of England, and Sir Geoffrey had then wondered how he could benefit from the child and for a time he had toyed with the wild idea of kid-napping the boy and taking him to Calais himself, but then he had realized there was a far safer profit to be made by simply betraying Thomas. Which was why he was here, and Belas, he suspected, was interested, but the lawyer was also pretending that the raid on Roncelets was none of his business and so the Scarecrow decided it was time to force the lawyer's hand. He stood and pulled down his rain-soaked jerkin. 'You ain't interested. monsieur?' he asked. 'So be it. You know your business better than I do, but I know how many are going to Roncelets and I know who leads them and I can tell you when they're going.' The quill was no longer moving and drips of ink were falling from its tip to blot the parchment, but Belas did not notice as the Scarecrow's harsh voice ground on. Of course they ain't told Mr Totesham what they're doing, on account that officially he'd disapprove, which he might or he might not, I wouldn't know, so he thinks they're going to burn some farms near Rostrenen, which maybe they will and maybe they won't, but whatever they sav and whatever Master Totesham might believe, I know they're going to Roncelets.'

'How do you know?' Belas asked quietly.

'I know!' Sir Geoffrey said harshly.

Belas put down the pen. 'Sit,' he ordered the Scarecrow, 'and tell me what you want.'

'Two things,' Sir Geoffrey said as he sat again. 'I came to this damned town to make money, but we're having thin pickings, monsieur, thin pickings.' Very thin, for English troops had been pillaging Brittany for months and there were no farms within a day's ride that had not been burned and robbed, while to ride further afield was to risk strong enemy patrols. Beyond the walls of its fortresses Brittany was a wilderness of ambush, danger and ruin and the Scarecrow had quickly dis-covered that it would be a hard landscape in which to make a fortune.

'So money is the first thing you want,' Belas said acidly. 'And the second?'

'Refuge,' Sir Geoffrey said.

'Refuge?'

'When Charles of Blois takes the town,' the Scarecrow said, 'then I want to be in your courtyard.'

'I cannot think why,' Belas said drily, 'but of course you will be welcome. And as for money?' He licked his lips. 'Let us first see how good your information is.'

'And if it is good?' the Scarecrow asked.

Belas considered for a moment. 'Seventy ecus?' he suggested. 'Eighty, perhaps?'

'Seventy ecus?' The Scarecrow paused to convert it into pounds, then spat. 'Just ten pounds! No! I want a hundred pounds and I want them in English-struck coin.'

They settled on sixty English pounds, to be paid when Belas had proof that Sir Geoffrey was telling him the truth, and that truth was that Thomas of Hookton was leading men to Roncelets and they were leaving on the eve of Valentine's Feast which was just over two weeks away.

'Why so long?' Belas wanted to know.

'He wants more men. He's only got half a dozen now and he's trying to persuade others to go with him. He's telling them there's gold to be had at Roncelets.'

'If you want money,' Belas asked acidly, 'why don't you ride with him?'

'Because I'm seeing you instead,' Sir Geoffrey answered.

Belas leaned back in his chair and steepled his pale, long fingers. 'And that is all you want?' he asked the Englishman. 'Some money and refuge?'

The Scarecrow stood, bending his head under the room's low beams. 'You pay me once,' he said, 'and you'll pay me again.'

'Perhaps,' Belas said evasively.

'I give you what you want,' Sir Geoffrey said, 'and you'll pay me.' He went to the door, then stopped because Belas had called him back.

'Did you say Thomas of Hookton?' Belas asked and there was an undeniable interest in his voice.

'Thomas of Hookton,' the Scarecrow confirmed.

'Thank you,' Belas said, and he looked down at a scroll he had just unrolled and it seemed he found Thomas's name written there for his finger checked and he smiled.

'Thank you,' he said again and, to Sir Geoffrey's astonishment, the lawyer took a small purse from a chest beside his desk and pushed it towards the Scare-crow. 'For that news, Sir Geoffrey, I do thank you.'

Sir Geoffrey, back down in the courtyard, found he had been given ten pounds of English gold. Ten pounds for just mentioning Thomas's name? He suspected there was much more to learn about Thomas's plans, but at least he had gold in his pocket now, so the visit to the lawyer had been profitable and there was the promise of more lawyer's gold to come.

But it was still bloody raining.

Thomas persuaded Richard Totesham that instead of writing another plea to the King they should appeal to the Earl of Northampton who was now among the leaders of the army besieging Calais. The letter re-minded his lordship of his great victory in capturing La Roche-Derrien and stressed that achievement might all be for naught if the garrison was not reinforced. Richard Totesham dictated most of the words and Will Skeat put a cross beside his name at the foot of the letter which claimed, truthfully enough, that Charles of Blois was assembling a new and mighty army in Rennes.

'Master Totesham,' Thomas wrote, 'who sends your lordship humble greetings, reckons that Charles's army already numbers a thousand men-at-arms, two times that number in crossbowmen and other men besides, while in our garrison we have scarce a hundred healthy men, while your kinsman, Sir Thomas Dagworth, who is a week's march away, can raise no more than six or seven hundred men.'

Sir Thomas Dagworth, the English commander in Brittany, was married to the Earl of Northampton's sis-ter and Totesham was hoping that family pride alone would persuade the Earl to avoid a defeat in Brittany, and if Northampton were to send Skeat's archers, just the archers and not the men-at-arms, it would double the number of bowmen on La Roche-Derrien's walls and give Totesham a chance to resist a siege. Send the archers, the letter pleaded, with their bows, their arrows, but without their horses and Totesham would send them back to Calais when Charles of Blois was repulsed. 'He won't believe that,' Totesham grumbled, 'he'll know I'll want to keep them, so make sure he knows it's a solemn promise. Tell him I swear on Our Lady and on St George that the archers will go back.'

The description of Charles of Blois's army was real enough. Spies in English pay sent the news which, in truth, Charles was eager for his enemies to learn for the more La Roche-Derrien's garrison was out-numbered the lower its hopes would be. Charles already had close to four thousand men, more were coming every week, and his engineers had hired nine great siege engines to hurl boulders at the walls of the English towns and fortresses in his duchy. La Roche-Derrien would be attacked first and few men gave it a hope of lasting longer than a month.

'It is not true, I trust,' Totesham said sourly to Thomas when the letter was written,

'that you have designs on Roncelets?'

'On Roncelets?' Thomas pretended not to have heard of the place. 'Not Roncelets, sir, but Rostrenen.'

Totesham gazed at Thomas with dislike. 'There's nothing at Rostrenen,' the garrison commander said icily.

'I hear there's food there, sir,' Thomas said.

'Whereas' – Totesham continued as if Thomas had not spoken – 'the Countess of Armorica's son is said to be held at Roncelets.'

'Is he, sir?' Thomas asked disingenuously.

'And if it's a swiving you want,' – Totesham ignored Thomas's lies – 'then I can recommend the brothel behind St Brieuc's chantry.'

'We're riding to Rostrenen,' Thomas insisted.

'And none of my men will ride with you,' Totesham said, meaning none that took his wages, though that still left the mercenaries.

Sir Guillaume had agreed to ride with Thomas, though he was uncomfortable about the prospects for success. He had bought horses for himself and his two men but he reckoned they were of poor quality. 'If it comes to a chase out of Roncelets.' he said, 'we'll be trounced. So take a lot of men to put up a decent fight.'

Thomas's first instinct had been to ride with just a handful of others, but a few men on bad horses would be easy bait. More men made the expedition safer.

'And why are you going anyway?' Sir Guillaume demanded. 'Just to get into the widow's skirts?'

'Because I made a promise to her,' Thomas said, and it was true, though Sir Guillaume's reason had the more truth. 'And because,' Thomas went on, 'I need to let our enemies know that I'm here.'

'You mean de Taillebourg?' Sir Guillaume asked. 'He knows already.'

'You think so?'

'Brother Germain will have told him,' Sir Guillaume said confidently, 'in which case I reckon your Dominican is already in Rennes. He'll come for you in good time.'

'If I raid Roncelets,' Thomas said, 'they'll hear of me. Then, I can be sure they'll come.'

By Candlemas he knew he could rely on Robbie, on Sir Guillaume and his two menat-arms and he had found seven other men who had been lured by the rumours of Roncelets' wealth or by the prospect of Jeanette's good opinion. Robbie wanted to leave straightaway, but Will Skeat, like Sir Guillaume, advised Thomas to take a larger party.

'This ain't like northern England,' Skeat said, 'you can't run for the border. You get caught. Tom, and you'll need a dozen good men to lock shields and break heads. Reckon I ought to come with you.'

'No,' Thomas said hastily. Skeat had his lucid moments, but too often was vague and forgetful, though now he tried to help Thomas by recommending other men to go on the raid. Most turned the invitation down: the Tower of Roncelets was too far off, they claimed, or the Lord of Roncelets was too powerful and the odds against the raiders too great. Some were frightened of offending Iotesham who, fearing to lose any of his garrison, had decreed that no raids should go farther than a day's ride from the town. His caution meant there was little plunder to be had and it was only the poorest mercenaries who, desperate for anything they could turn into cash, offered to ride with Thomas.

'Twelve men is enough,' Robbie insisted. 'Sweet Christ, but I've been on enough raids into England. My brother and I once took a herd of cattle from Lord Percy with just three other men and Percy had half the county searching for us. Go in fast and come out quicker. Twelve men is enough.'

Thomas was almost convinced by Robbie's fervent words, but he worried that the odds were still too uneven and the horses too badly conditioned to allow them to go swiftly in and come out quicker. 'I want more men,' he told Robbie.

'If you go on dithering,' Robbie told him, 'the enemy will hear about you. They'll be waiting for us.'

'They won't know where to wait,' Thomas said, 'or what to think.' He had spread a score of rumours about the raid's purpose and hoped that the enemy would be thoroughly confused. 'But we'll go soon,' he promised Robbie.

'Sweet God, but who's left to ask?' Robbie demanded. 'Let's ride now!'

But that same day a ship came to Treguier and three more Flemish men-at-arms rode into the garrison. Thomas found them that night in a tavern by the river's edge. The three complained how they had been in the English lines at Calais, but there was too little fighting there and thus few prospects of wealthy prisoners. They wanted to try their luck in Brittany and so they_ had come to La Roche-Derrien. Thomas spoke to their leader, a gaunt man with a twisted mouth and with two fingers missing from his right hand, who listened, grunted an acknowledgement and said he would think about it. Next morning all three Flemings came to the Two Foxes tavern and said they were willing to ride. 'We came here to fight,' their leader, who was called Lodewijk, said, 'so we go.'

'So let's leave!' Robbie urged Thomas.

Thomas would have liked to recruit still more men, but he knew he had waited long enough. 'We'll go,' he told Robbie, then he went to find Will Skeat and made the older man promise to keep an eye on Jeanette. She liked and trusted Skeat and Thomas was confident enough to leave his father's notebook in her keeping. 'We shall be back,' he told her, 'in six or seven days.'

'God be with you,' Jeanette said. She clung to Thomas for an instant. 'God be with you,' she said again, 'and bring me my son.'

And next dawn, in a mist that pearled their long mail coats, the fifteen horsemen rode. Lodewijk – he insisted it was Sir Lodewijk though his two companions sniggered whenever he did – refused to speak French, claiming that the language made his tongue sour.

'It is a people of filth,' Lodewijk maintained, 'the French. Filth. The word is good, ja? Filth?'

'The word is good,' Thomas agreed.

Jan and Pieter, Sir Lodewijk's companions, spoke only in guttural Flemish spiced with a handful of English curses they must have learned near Calais.

'What's happening in Calais?' Thomas asked Sir Lodewijk as they rode south.

'Nothing. The town is . . . what you say?' Sir Lodewijk made a circling motion with his hand.

'Surrounded.'

'Ja, the town is goddamn surrounded. By the English, ja? And by ...' He paused, uncertain of the word he wanted, then pointed to a stretch of waterlogged ground that lay east of the road. 'By that.'

'Marshes.'

'Ja! By bloody marshes. And the goddamn bloody French, they are on . . .' Again he was lost for words, so jabbed his mailed finger at the lowering sky.

'Higher ground?' Thomas guessed.

'Ja! Bloody high ground. Not so bloody high, I think, but higher. And they . . .' He put a hand over his eyes, as if shading them.

'Stare?'

'Ja! They stare at each other. So nothing is happens but they and we gets bloody wet. Pissing wet, ja?'

They got wet later that morning when the rains swept in from the ocean. Great curtains of grey lashed the deserted farmlands and upland heaths where the trees were permanently bent towards the east. When Thomas had first come to Brittany this had been a productive land of farms, orchards, mills and grazing, but now it was blasted naked. The fruit trees, untended, were thick with bullfinches, the fields were choked with weeds and the pastures tangled with couch grass. Here and there a few folk still tried to scratch a living, but they were constantly being forced to La Roche-Derrien to work on the ramparts and their harvests and livestock were forever being stolen by English patrols. If any such Bretons were aware of the fifteen horsemen they took care to hide themselves and so it seemed as though Thomas and his companions rode through a deserted country. They rode with one spare horse. They should have had more because only the three Flemings were mounted on good stallions. Sea voyages usually had a bad effect on horses, but Sir Lodewijk made it plain their journey had been unusually quick. 'Bloody winds, is?' He whirled his hand and made a whooshing noise to suggest the strength of the winds which had brought the destriers through in such fine fettle. 'Quick! Bloody quick!'

The Flemings were not only well mounted, but well equipped. Jan and Pieter had fine mail hauberks while Sir Lodewijk had his chest, both thighs and one arm protected by good plate that was strapped over a leather-backed mail haubergeon. The three wore black surcoats with a broad white stripe running down front and back, and all had undecorated shields, though Sir Lodewijk's horse's trapper displayed a badge showing a knife dripping blood. He tried to explain the device, but his English could not cope and Thomas was left with the vague impression that it was the mark of a trading guild in Bruges.

'The butchers?' he suggested to Robbie. 'Is that what he said? Butchers?'

'Bloody butchers don't make war. Except on pigs,' Robbie said. He was in a fine mood. Raiding was in his blood and he had heard stories in La Roche-Derrien's taverns of the plunder that could be stolen if a man was willing to break Richard Totesham's rule and ride further than a day's journey from the town. 'The trouble in the north of England,'

he told Thomas, 'is that if it's worth stealing then it's behind big bloody walls. We scratch up some cattle now and then, and a year ago I stole a fine horse off my Lord Percy, but there's not any gold and silver to be had. Nothing that you'd call real plunder. The Mass vessels are all wood or pewter or clay, and the poor boxes are poorer than the poor. And ride too far south and the bastards will be waiting for you on the way home. I hate bloody English archers.'

'I'm a bloody English archer.'

'You're different,' Robbie said, and he meant it for he was puzzled by Thomas. Most archers were country born, the sons of yeomen or smiths or bailiffs, while a few were the sons of labourers, but none in Robbie's experience was well born, which Thomas plainly was for he spoke French and Latin, he was confident in the company of lords and other archers deferred to him. Robbie might look like a wild Scottish fighter, but he was the son of a gentleman and nephew to the Knight of Liddesdale, and thus he regarded archers as inferior beings who, in a properly arranged universe, could be ridden down and slaughtered like game, but he liked Thomas. 'You're just bloody different,' he said. 'Mind you, when my ransom's paid and I'm safe home, I'll come back and kill you.'

Thomas laughed, but it was forced laughter. He was nervous. He put the nervousness down to being in the unfamiliar position of leading a raid. This was his idea, and it had been his promises that brought most of these men on the long ride. He had claimed that Roncelets, being so far from any English stronghold, lay in unplundered country. Snatch the child, he had promised them, and they could then pillage as much as they wished or at least until the enemy woke up and organized a pur-suit, and that promise had persuaded men to follow him and the responsibility of it weighed on Thomas. He also resented worrying. His ambition, after all, was to be the leader of a war band like Will Skeat had been before his injury, and what hope did he have of being a good leader if he fretted over a little raid like this? Yet fret he did, and he worried most of all that he might not have anticipated everything that could go wrong; and the men who had joined him gave him small consolation for, except for his friends and the newly arrived Flemings, they were the poorest and least well equipped of all the adventurers who had come to La Roche-Derrien in search of wealth. One of them, a quarrelsome man-at-arms from western Brittany, became drunk on the first day and Thomas discovered he had two water skins filled with a fierce apple spirit. He broke both skins, whereupon the enraged Breton drew his sword and attacked Thomas, but he was too drunk to see properly and a knee to his groin and a thump over the head put him down hard. Thomas took the man's horse and left him groaning in the mud, which meant he was down to fourteen men. 'That will have helped,' Sir Guillaume said cheerfully.

Thomas said nothing. He deserved to be mocked, he thought.

'No, I mean it! You knock a man down one day and you might do it again. You know why some men are bad leaders?'

'Why?'

'They want to be liked.'

'That's bad?' Thomas asked.

'Men want to admire their leaders, they want to fear them, and above all they want them to be successful. What does being liked have to do with any of that? If the leader is a good man he will be liked and if he's not, he won't, and if he is a good man and a bad leader then he is better off dead. You see? I am full of wisdom.' Sir Guillaume laughed. He might be down on his luck, his manor lost and fortune gone, but he was riding to a fight and that cheered him. 'The good thing about this rain,' he said, 'is that the enemy won't expect you to be riding in it. It's stay-at-home weather.'

'They'll know we've left La Roche-Derrien,' Thomas said. He was certain that Charles of Blois had as many spies in the town as the English had in Rennes.

'He won't know yet,' Sir Guillaume said. 'We're travelling faster than any message can go. Anyway, while they know we've left La Roche-Derrien, they don't know where we're going.'

They rode south in hope that the enemy would think they were planning to scavenge the farms near Guingamp, then late in the first day they turned eastwards and climbed into a high, empty country. The hazels were in blossom and rooks were calling from the bare elm tops, signs that the year was turning away from winter. They camped in a deserted farm, sheltered by low scorched stone walls, and before the last glimmer of dusk faded they had a good augury when Robbie, rooting about in the ruins of the barn, discovered a leather bag half buried beside the broken wall. The exorbitant rain had washed the earth away above the bag which held a small silver plate and three handfuls of coins. Whoever had buried the money must have thought the coins too heavy to carry or else had feared being robbed during their exile from the house.

'We, how do you say?' Sir Lodewijk made a chopping motion with his hand as if he cut up a pie.

'Share?'

'Ja! We share?'

'No,' Thomas said. That had not been the agreement. He would have preferred to have shared, for that was how Will Skeat had treated spoils, but the men who rode with him wanted to keep whatever they found.

Sir Lodewijk bridled. 'It is how we do it, ja? We share.'

'We don't share,' Sir Guillaume said harshly, 'it's been agreed.' He spoke in French and Sir Lodewijk reacted as though he had been struck, but he understood well enough and just turned and walked away.

'Tell your Scottish friend to watch his back,' Sir Guillaume said to Thomas.

'Lodewijk's not so bad,' Thomas said, 'you just don't like him because he's Flemish.'

'I hate the Flemish,' Sir Guillaume agreed, 'they're dull, stupid porkwits. Like the English.'

The small argument with the Flemings did not fester. Next morning Sir Lodewijk and his companions were cheerful and, because their horses were much fresher and fitter than any others, they volunteered, with much broken English and elaborate hand signals, to ride ahead as scouts and all day their black and white surcoats appeared and reappeared far ahead and each time they waved the main party on, signalling that there was no danger. The deeper they went into enemy territory the greater the risk, but the Flemings'

watchfulness meant that they made good progress. They were weaving a path either side of the main highway that ran east and west along Brittany's spine, a road flanked by deep woods, which hid the raiders from the few people who travelled on the road. They saw only two drovers with their skinny cattle and a priest leading a band of pilgrims who walked barefoot, waved tattered branches and sang a dirge. No pickings there. Next day they went south again. They were now entering a country where the farms had escaped English raiders and so the people were unafraid of horsemen and the pastures were filled with ewes and their new-born lambs, many of which had been torn to bloody scraps because the men of Brittany were too busy hunt-ing each other and so the foxes thrived and the lambs died. Shepherds' dogs barked at the grey-mailed men, and now Thomas no longer had the Flemings ride ahead, but instead he and Sir Guillaume led the horse-men and, if challenged, they answered in French, claiming to be supporters of Charles of Blois. 'Where's Roncelets?' they constantly asked and at first found no one who knew, but as the morning wore on they dis-covered a man who had at least heard of the place, then another who said his father had once been there and he thought it was beyond the ridge, the forest and the river, and then a third who gave them precise directions. The tower, he said, was no more than a half-day's journey away at the far end of a long wooded ridge that ran between two rivers. He showed them where to ford the nearer river, told them to follow the ridge crest southwards and then bowed his head in thanks for the coin Thomas gave him.

They crossed the river, climbed the ridge and rode south. Thomas knew they must be close to Roncelets when they stopped for the third night, but he did not press on for he reckoned it would be better to come to the tower in the dawn and so they camped under beech trees, shivering because they dared not light a fire, and Thomas slept badly because he was listening to the strange things crackle and rustle deep in the woods and he feared those noises might be made by patrols sent out by the Lord of Roncelets. Yet no patrols found them. Thomas doubted there were any patrols except in his imagination, yet still he could not sleep and so, very early, while the others snored, he blundered through the trees to where the ridge's flank fell steeply away and he stared into the night in hope of seeing a glimmer of light cast from the battlements of the Tower of Roncelets. He saw nothing, but he heard sheep bleating piteously further down the slope and he guessed that a fox had got among the lambs and was slaughtering them.

'The shepherd's not doing his job.' Someone spoke

in French and Thomas turned, thinking it was one of Sir Guillaume's men-at-arms, but saw, in the small moonlight, that it was Sir Lodewijk.

'I thought you wouldn't use French?' Thomas said.

'There are times when I do,' Sir Lodewijk said and he strolled to stand beside Thomas and then, smiling, he rammed a makeshift club into Thomas's belly and when Thomas gasped and bent over the Fleming slammed the broken branch over his head and then kicked him in the chest. The attack was sudden, unexpected and overwhelming. Thomas was fighting for breath, half doubled over, staggering, and he tried to straighten and claw at Sir Lodewijk's eyes, but the club hit him a re-sounding blow on the side of the head and Thomas was down.

The Flemings' three horses had been tied to trees a small way from the others. No one had thought that strange and no one had remarked that the beasts had been left saddled and no one woke as the horses were untethered and led away. Sir Guillaume alone stirred when Sir Lodewijk collected his pieces of plate armour. 'Is it dawn?' he asked.

'Not yet,' Sir Lodewijk answered in soft French, then carried his armour and weapons out to the wood's edge where Jan and Pieter were lashing Thomas's wrists and ankles. They slung him belly down on a horse's back, tied him to the beast's girth strap and then took him eastwards.

Sir Guillaume woke properly twenty minutes later. The birds were filling the trees with song and the sun was a hint of light in the misted east. Thomas had vanished. His mail coat, his arrow bag, his sword, his helmet, his cloak, his saddle and his big black bow were all still there, but Thomas and the three Flemings were gone.

Thomas was taken to the Tower of Roncelets, a four-square, unadorned fortress that reared from an outcrop of rock high above a river bend. A bridge, made of the same grey stone as the tower, carried the high road to Nantes across the river and no merchant could move his goods across the bridge without paying dues to the Lord of Roncelets whose banner of two black chevrons on a yellow field flew from the tower's high ramparts. His men wore the black and yellow stripes as a livery and were inevitably called guepes, wasps. This far east in Brittany the folk spoke French rather than Breton and their tower was nicknamed the Guepier, the wasp's nest, though on this late winter's morning most of the soldiers in the village wore plain black liveries rather than the waspish stripes of the Lord of Roncelets. The newcomers were quartered in the little cottages that lay between the Guepier and the bridge and it was in one of those cottages that Sir Lodewijk and his two companions rejoined their comrades. 'He's up in the castle' – Sir Lodewijk jerked his head towards the tower – 'and God help him.'

'No trouble?' a man asked.

'No trouble at all,' Sir Lodewijk said. He had drawn a knife and was cutting off the white stripes that had been sewn onto his surcoat. 'He made it easy for us. A stupid bloody Englishman, eh?'

'So why do they want him?'

'God knows and who cares? All that matters is that they've got him and the devil will have him soon.' Sir Lodewijk yawned hugely. 'And there's a dozen more of them out in the woods so we're riding out to find them.'

Fifty horsemen rode westwards from the village. The sound of their hooves and their curb chains and creak-ing leather armour was loud, but quickly faded when they rode into the ridge's thick woods. A pair of king-fishers, startling blue, whipped up the river and vanished in shadows. Long weeds waved in the current where a flash of silver showed that the salmon were returning. A girl carried a pail of milk down the village street and wept because in the night she had been raped by one of the black-liveried soldiers and she knew it was futile to complain for no one would protect her or even make a protest on her behalf. The village priest saw her, understood why she was weeping, and reversed his course so he would not have to face her. The black and yellow flag on the Guepier's ramparts flapped in a small gust of wind, then hung limp. Two young men with hooded falcons perched on their arms rode out of the tower and turned south. The great door grated shut behind them and the sound of the heavy locking bar dropping into its brackets could be heard throughout the village.

Thomas heard it too. The sound shuddered through the rock on which the Guepier was built and reverberated up the winding stair to the long, bare room where he had been taken. Two windows lit the chamber, but the wall was so thick and the embrasures so deep that Thomas, who was chained between the windows, could not see through either of them. An empty hearth stood on the opposite wall, the stones of its chimney hood stained black. The floor's wide wooden boards were scarred and worn by too many nailstudded boots and Thomas guessed this had been a barrack room. It probably still was, but now it was needed as his prison and so the men-at-arms had been ordered out and Thomas carried in and manacled to the iron ring set into the wall between the two windows. The manacles encircled his wrists and held them behind his back and were connected to the iron ring in the wall by three feet of chain. He had tested the ring, seeing if he could shift it or perhaps snap a link of the chain, but all he did was hurt his wrists. A woman laughed somewhere in the tower. Feet sounded on the circular stairs beyond the door, but no one came into the room and the footsteps faded. Thomas wondered why the iron ring should have been cemented into the wall. It seemed an odd thing to have so high up the tower where no horse would ever need to be tied. Maybe it had been placed there when the castle had been built. He had watched once as men hauled stones to the top of a church tower and they had used a pulley attached to a ring like this one. It was better to think of the ring and of stones and of masons making the tower than to reflect on his idiocy in being so easily captured, or to wonder what was about to happen to him, though of course he did wonder about that and nowhere in his imagination was the answer comforting. He tugged on the ring again, hoping that it had been there a long time and that the mortar that bedded it would have been weakened, but all he did was break the skin of his wrists on the manacles' sharp edges. The woman laughed again and a child's voice sounded.

A bird flew in one of the windows, fluttered for a few heartbeats and then vanished again, evidently rejecting the room as a nesting site. Thomas closed his eyes and softly recited the prayer of the Grail, the same prayer that Christ had uttered in Gethsemane:

'Pater, si vis, transfer calicem isturn a me.' Father, if you're willing, take this cup from me. Thomas repeated the prayer over and over, suspecting it was a waste of breath. God had not spared his own son the agony of Golgotha so why would He spare Thomas? Yet what hope did he have without prayer? He wanted to weep for his own naivete in thinking he could ride here and somehow snatch the child from this stronghold that stank of woodsmoke, horse dung and rancid fat. It had all been so stupid and he knew he had not done it for the Grail, but to impress Jeanette. He was a fool, such a damned fool, and like a fool he had walked into his enemy's trap and he knew he would not be ransomed. What value did he have? So why was he even alive? Because they wanted something from him and just then the door to the room opened and Thomas opened his eyes. A man in a monk's black robe carried two trestles into the room. He had untonsured hair, suggesting he was a lay servant to a monastery. 'Who are you?' Thomas asked. The man, who was short and had a slight limp, gave no answer, but just placed the two trestles in the centre of the floor and, a moment later, brought in five planks that he laid across the trestles to make a table. A second untonsured man, similarly robed in black, entered the room and stared at Thomas. 'Who are you?' Thomas asked again, but the second man was as silent as the first. He was a big man with bony ridges over his eyes and sunken cheeks and he inspected Thomas as if he were appraising a bullock at slaughter time.

Are you going to make the fire?' the first man asked.

'In a minute,' the second man said and he pulled a short-bladed knife from a sheath at his belt and walked towards Thomas. 'Stay still,' he growled, 'and you don't get hurt.'

'Who are you?'

'No one you know and no one you'll ever know,' the man said, then he seized the neck of Thomas's woollen jerkin and, with one savage cut, slit it down the front. The blade touched, but did not break Thomas's skin. Thomas pulled back, but the man simply followed him, slashing and tugging at the torn cloth until Thomas's chest was naked, then he slit down the sleeves and pulled the jerkin away so that Thomas was naked from the waist up. Then the man pointed at Thomas's right foot, 'lift it,' he ordered. Thomas hesitated and the man sighed. 'I can make you do it,' he said, 'and that will hurt, or you can do it yourself and it won't hurt.'

He pulled off both of Thomas's boots, then cut the waist of his breeches.

'No!' Thomas protested.

'Don't waste your breath,' the man said, and he sawed and tugged and ripped with the blade until he had cut through the breeches and could pull them away to leave Thomas shivering and naked. Then the man scooped up the boots and torn clothes and carried them out of the room.

The other man was carrying things into the room and placing them on the table. There was a book and a pot, presumably of ink, because the man placed two goose feathers beside the book and a small ivory-handled knife to trim the quills. Then he put a crucifix on the table, two large candles like those that would grace the altar of a church, three pokers, a pair of pincers and a curious instrument that Thomas could not see properly. Last of all he put two chairs behind the table and a wooden bucket within Thomas's reach. 'You know what that's for, don't you?' he asked, knocking the bucket with his foot.

'Who are you? Please!'

'Don't want you to make a mess on the floor, do we?'

The bigger man came back into the room carrying some kindling and a basket of logs.

'At least you'll be warm,' he said to Thomas with evident amusement. He had a small clay pot filled with glowing embers that he used to light the kindling, then he piled on the smaller logs and held his hands to the growing flames. 'Nice and warm,' he said, 'and that's a blessing in winter. Never known a winter like it! Rain! We should be building an ark.'

A long way off a bell tolled twice. The fire began to crackle and some of the smoke seeped out into the room, perhaps because the chimney was cold. 'What he really likes,'

the big man who had laid the fire said, 'is a brazier.'

'Who?' Thomas asked.

'He always likes a brazier, he does, but not on a wooden floor. I told him.'

'Who?' Thomas demanded.

'Don't want to burn the place down! Not a brazier, I told him, not on a wooden floor, so we had to use the hearth.' The big man watched the fire for a while. 'That seems to he burning proper, don't it?' He heaped a half-dozen larger logs on the fire and then backed away. He gave Thomas a casual look, shook his head as if the prisoner was beyond help and then both men left the room.

The firewood was dry and so the flames blazed high, fast and fierce. More smoke billowed into the room and gusted out of the windows. Thomas, in a sudden spurt of rage, dragged at the manacles, heaving with all his archer's strength to pull the iron ring from the wall, but all he achieved was to cut the iron gyves further into his bleeding wrists. He stared up at the ceiling, which was simply planks over beams, presumably the floor of the chamber above. He had heard no footsteps up there, but then there came the sound of feet just beyond the door and he stepped back to the wall.

A woman and a small child came in. Thomas crouched to hide his nakedness and the woman laughed at his modesty. The child laughed too and it took Thomas a few seconds to realize that the boy was Jeanette's son, Charles, who was gazing at him with interest, curiosity, but no recognition. The woman was tall, fair-haired, very pretty and very pregnant. She wore a pale blue dress that was belted above her swollen belle and was trimmed with white lace and little loops of pearls. Her hat was a blue spire with a brief veil that she pushed away from her eves to see Thomas better. Thomas drew up his knees to hide himself, but the woman brazenly crossed the room to stare down at him. 'Such a pity,' she said.

'A pity?' Thomas asked.

She did not elaborate. 'Are you really English?' she demanded and looked peeved when Thomas did not answer. 'They're making a rack downstairs, English-man. Windlasses and ropes to stretch you. Have you ever seen a man after he's been racked? He flops. It's amusing, but not, I think, for the man himself.'

Thomas still ignored her, looking instead at the small boy who had a round face, black hair and the fierce dark eyes of Jeanette, his mother. 'You remember me, Charles?' Thomas asked, but the boy just stared at him blankly. 'Your mother sends you greetings,'

Thomas said and saw the surprise on the boy's face.

'Mama?' Charles, who was almost four, asked.

The woman snatched at Charles's hand and dragged him away as though Thomas carried a contagion. 'Who are you?' she asked angrily.

'Your mother loves you, Charles,' Thomas told the wide-eyed boy.

'Who are you?' the woman insisted, and then turned as the door was pushed open. A Dominican priest came in. He was gaunt, thin and tall with short grey hair and a fierce face. He frowned when he saw the woman and child. 'You should not be here, my lady,' he said harshly.

'You forget, priest, who rules here,' the pregnant woman retorted.

'Your husband,' the priest said firmly, 'and he will not want you here, so you will leave.' The priest held the door open and the woman, whom Thomas assumed to be the Lady of Roncelets, hesitated for a heartbeat and stalked out. Charles looked back once, then was dragged out of the room just before another Dominican entered, this one a younger man, small and bald, with a towel folded over one arm and a bowl of water in his hands. He was followed by the two robed servants who walked with folded hands and downcast eyes to stand beside the fire. The first priest, the gaunt one, closed the door, then he and his fellow priest walked to the table.

'Who are you?' Thomas asked the gaunt priest,

though he suspected he knew the answer. He was trying to remember that misted morning in Durham when he had seen de Taillebourg fight Robbie's brother. He thought it was the same man, the priest who had mur-dered Eleanor or else ordered her death, but he could not be certain.

The two priests ignored him. The smaller man put the water and towel on the table, then both men knelt. 'In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost,' the older priest said, making the sign of the cross, 'amen.' He stood, opened his eyes and looked down at Thomas who was still crouching on the pitted floorboards. 'You are Thomas of Hookton,' he said formally, 'bastard son of Father Ralph, priest of that place?'

'Who are you?'

'Answer me, please,' the Dominican said.

Thomas stared up into the man's eyes and recognized the terrible strength in the priest and knew that he dared not give in to that strength. He had to resist from the very first and so he said nothing.

The priest sighed at this display of petty obstinacy. 'You are Thomas of Hookton,' he declared, 'Lodewijk says so. In which case, greetings, Thomas. My name is Bernard de Taillebourg and I am a friar of the Dominican order and, by the grace of God and at the pleasure of the Holy Father, an Inquisitor of the faith. My brother in Christ' – here de Taillebourg gestured at the younger priest, who had settled at the table where he opened the book and picked up one of the quills – 'is Father Cailloux, who is also an Inquisitor of the faith.'

'You are a bastard,' Thomas said, staring at de Taillebourg, 'you're a murdering bastard.'

He might have spared his breath for de Taillebourg

showed no reaction. 'You will stand, please,' the priest demanded.

'A motherless murdering bastard,' Thomas said, making no move. De Taillebourg made a small gesture and the two servants ran forward and took Thomas by his arms and dragged him upright and, when he threatened to collapse, the bigger one slapped him hard in the face, stinging the bruise left by the blow Sir Lodewijk had given him before dawn. De Taillebourg waited till the men were back beside the fire. 'I am charged by Cardinal Bessieres,' he said tonelessly, 'to discover the whereabouts of a relic and we are informed that you can assist us in this matter, which is deemed to be of such importance that we are empowered by the Church and by Almighty God to ensure that you tell us the truth. Do you understand what that means, Thomas?'

'You killed my woman,' Thomas said, 'and one day, priest, you're going to roast in hell and the devils will dance on your shrivelled arse.'

De Taillebourg again showed no reaction. He was not using his chair, but standing tall and arrow-thin behind the table on which he rested the tips of his long, pale fingers. 'We know,' he said, 'that your father might have possessed the Grail, and we know that he gave you a book in which he wrote his account of that most precious thing. I tell you that we know of these matters so that you do not waste our time or your pain by denying them. Yet we shall need to know more and that is why we are here. You understand me, Thomas?'

'The devil will piss in your mouth, priest, and shit in your nostrils.'

De Taillebourg looked faintly pained as if Thomas's crudity was tiresome. 'The Church grants us the authority to question you, Thomas,' he continued in a mild voice,

'but in her infinite mercy she also commands that we do not shed blood. We may use pain, indeed it is our duty to employ pain, but it must be pain without bloodshed. This means we may employ fire' – his long pale fingers touched one of the pokers on the table

– 'and we may crush you and we may stretch you and God will forgive us for it will be done in His name and in His most holy service.'

'Amen,' Brother Cailloux said and, like the two ser-vants, made the sign of the cross. De Taillebourg pushed all three of the pokers to the edge of the table and the smaller servant ran across the room, took the irons and plunged them into the fire.

'We do not employ pain lightly,' de Taillebourg said, 'or wantonly, but with prayerful regret and with pity and with a tearful concern for your immortal soul.'

'You're a murderer,' Thomas said, 'and your soul will sear in hell.'

'Now,' de Taillebourg continued, apparently oblivious to Thomas's insults, 'let us start with the book. You told Brother Germain in Caen that your father wrote it. Is that true?'

And so it began. A gentle questioning at first to which Thomas gave no answers for he was consumed by a hatred for de Taillebourg, a hatred fed by the memory of Eleanor's pale and blood-laced body, vet the questioning was insistent and unceasing, and the threat of an awful pain was in the three pokers that heated in the fire, and so Thomas persuaded himself that de Taillebourg knew some things and there could be very little harm in telling him others. Besides, the Dominican was so very reasonable and so very patient. He endured Thomas's anger, he ignored the abuse, he expressed again and again an unwillingness to employ torture and said he only wanted the truth, however inadequate and so, after an hour, Thomas began to answer the questions. Why suffer, he asked himself, when he did not possess what the Dominican wanted? He did not know where the Grail was, he was not even certain that the Grail existed and so, hesitantly at first, and then more willingly, he talked.

There was a book, yes, and much of it was in strange languages and scripts and Thomas claimed to have no idea what those mysterious passages meant. As for the rest he admitted a knowledge of Latin and agreed he had read those parts of the book, but he dismissed them as vague, repetitive and unhelpful. 'They were just stories,' he said.

'What kind of stories?'

'A man received his sight after looking at the Grail and then, when he was disappointed in its appearance, he lost his sight again.'

'God be praised for that,' Father Cailloux interjected, then dipped the quill in ink and wrote down the miracle.

'What else?' de Taillebourg asked.

'Stories of soldiers winning battles because of the Grail, stories of healings.' Thomas said.

'Do you believe them?'

'The stories?' Thomas pretended to think, then nodded. 'If God has given us the Grail, father,' he said, 'then it will surely work miracles.'

'Did your father possess the Grail?'

'I don't know.'

So de Taillebourg asked him about Father Ralph and Thomas told how his father had walked the stony beach at Hookton wailing for his sins and sometimes preaching to the wild things of the sea and the sky.

'Are you saying he was mad?' de Taillebourg asked. 'He was mad with God,' Thomas said.

'Mad with God,' de Taillebourg repeated, as though the words intrigued him. 'Are you suggesting he was a saint?'

'I think many_ saints must have been like him,' Thomas replied cautiously, 'but he was also a great mocker of superstitions.'

'What do you mean?'

'He was very fond of St Guinefort,' Thomas said, 'and

called on him whenever some minor problem occurred.' 'Is it mockery to do that?' de Taillebourg asked. 'St Guinefort was a dog,' Thomas said.

'I know what St Guinefort was,' de Taillebourg said testily, 'but are you saying God could not use a dog to effect His sacred purposes?'

'I am saying that my father did not believe a dog could be a saint, and so he mocked.'

Did he mock the Grail?'

Never,' Thomas answered truthfully, 'not once.'

'And in his book' — de Taillebourg suddenly reverted to the earlier subject — 'did he say how the Grail came to be in his possession?'

For the last few moments Thomas had been aware that there was someone standing on the other side of the door. De Taillebourg had closed it, but the latch had been silently lifted and the door pushed gently ajar. Someone was there, listening, and Thomas assumed it was the Lady of Roncelets. 'He never claimed that the Grail was in his possession,' he countered, 'but he did say that it was once owned by his family.'

'Once owned,' de Taillebourg said flatly, 'by the Vexilles.'

'Yes,' Thomas replied and he was sure the door moved a fraction. Father Cailloux's pen scratched on the parchment. Everything Thomas said was being written down and he remembered a wandering Franciscan preacher at a fair in Dorchester shouting at the people that every sin they ever committed was being recorded in a great book in heaven and when they died and went to the judge-ment before God the book would be opened and their sins read out, and George Adyn had made the crowd laugh by calling out that there was not enough ink in Christendom to record what his brother was doing with Dorcas Churchill in Puddletown. The sins, the Francis-can had angrily retorted, were recorded in letters of fire, the same fire that would roast adulterers in the depths of hell.

'And who is Hachaliah?' de Taillebourg asked. Thomas was surprised by the question and hesitated. Then he tried to look puzzled. 'Who?'

'Hachaliah,' de Taillebourg repeated patiently. 'I don't know,' Thomas said.

'I think you do,' de Taillebourg declared softly.

Thomas stared at the priest's strong, bony face. It reminded him of his father's face for it had the same grim determination, a hard-jawed inwardness which hinted that this man would not care what others thought of his behaviour because he justified himself only to God. 'Brother Germain mentioned the name,' Thomas said cautiously, 'but what it means I don't know.'

'I don't believe you,' de Taillebourg insisted.

'Father,' Thomas said firmly, 'I do not know what it means. I asked Brother Germain and he refused to tell me. He said it was beyond someone of my wits to understand.'

De Taillebourg stared at Thomas in silence. The fire roared hollow in the chimney and the big servant shifted the pokers as one of the logs collapsed. 'The prisoner says he doesn't know,' de Taillebourg dictated to Father Cailloux without taking his gaze from Thomas. The servants put more logs on the fire and de Taillebourg let Thomas stare at the pokers and worry about them for a moment before he resumed his questioning. 'So,'

the Dominican asked, 'where is the book now?'

'In La Roche-Derrien,' Thomas said promptly.

'Where in La Roche-Derrien?'

'With my baggage,' Thomas said, 'which I left with an old friend, Will Skeat.' That was not true. He had left the book in Jeanette's keeping, but he did not want to expose her to danger. Will Skeat, even with a dam-aged memory, could look after himself better than the Blackbird. 'Sir William Skeat,' Thomas added.

'Does Sir William know what the book is?' de Taillebourg asked.

'He can't even read! No, he doesn't know.'

There were other questions then, scores of them. De Taillebourg wanted to know the story of Thomas's life, why he had abandoned Oxford, why he had become an archer, when he had last made confession, what had he been doing in Durham? What did the King of Eng-land know of the Grail? What did the Bishop of Durham know? The questions went on and on until Thomas was faint from hunger and from standing, yet de Taillebourg seemed indefatigable. As evening came on and the light from the two windows paled and darkened he still persisted. The two servants had long looked rebellious while Father Cailloux kept frowning and glancing at the windows as if to suggest that the time for a meal was long past, but de Taillebourg did not know hunger. He just pressed and pressed. With whom had Thomas travelled to London? What had he done in Dorset? Had he searched for the Grail in Hookton? Brother Cailloux filled page after page with Thomas's answers and, as the evening wore on, he had to light the candles so he could see to write. The flames of the fire cast shadows from the table legs and Thomas was swaying with fatigue when at last de Taillebourg nodded. 'I shall think and pray about all your answers tonight, Thomas,' he said, 'and in the morning we shall continue.'

'Water,' Thomas croaked, 'I need water.'

'You shall be given food and drink,' de Taillebourg said.

One of the servants removed the pokers from the fire. Father Cailloux closed the book and gave Thomas a glance which seemed to have some sympathy. A blanket was fetched and with it came a meal of smoked fish, beans, bread and water, and one of Thomas's hands was unmanacled so he could eat it. Two guards, both in plain black surcoats, watched him eat, and when he was done they snapped the manacles back about his wrist and he sensed a pin being pushed through the clasp to secure it. That gave him hope and when he was left alone he tried to reach the pin with his fingers, but both the gyves were deep bracelets and he could not reach the clasp. He was trapped. He lay back against the wall, huddled in the blanket and watching the dying fire. No heat crossed the room and Thomas shivered uncontrollably. He contorted his fingers as he tried to reach the clasp of the manacles, but it was impossible and he suddenly moaned involuntarily as he anticipated the pain. He had been spared torture this dav, but did that mean he had escaped it altogether? He deserved to, he thought, for he had mostly told the truth. He had told de Taillebourg that he did not know where the Grail was, that he was not even certain it existed, that he had rarely heard his father speak of it and that he would rather be an archer in the King of England's army than a seeker of the Grail. Again he felt a terrible shame that he had been captured so easily. He should have been on his way back to La Roche-Derrien by now, riding home to the taverns and the laughter and the ale and the easy company of soldiers. There were tears in his eyes and he was ashamed of that too. Laughter sounded from deep in the castle and he thought he could hear the sound of a harp playing.

Then the door opened.

He could only see that a man had come into the room. The visitor was wearing a swathing black cloak that made him appear a sinister shadow as he crossed to the table where he stopped and stared down at Thomas. The fire's dying timbers were behind the man, edging his tall cloaked figure with red, but illuminating Thomas. 'I am told,' the man said, 'that he did not burn you today?'

Thomas said nothing, just huddled under the blanket.

'He likes burning people,' the visitor said. 'He does like it. I have watched him. He shudders as the flesh bubbles.' He went to the fire, picked up one of the pokers and thrust it into the smouldering embers before piling new logs over the dying flames. The dry wood burned quickly and, in the flaring light, Thomas could see the man for the first time. He had a narrow, sallow face, a long nose, a strong jaw and black hair swept back from a high forehead. It was a good face, intelligent and hard, then it was shadowed as the man turned away from the fire. 'I am your cousin,' he said. A stab of hatred coursed through Thomas. 'You're Guy Vexille?'

'I am the Count of Astarac,' Vexille said. He walked slowly towards Thomas. 'Were you at the battle by the forest of Crecy?'

'Yes.'

'An archer?'

'Yes.'

'And at the battle's end,' Guy Vexille said, 'you shouted three words in Latin.'

'Calix meus inebrians,' Thomas said.

Guy Vexille perched on the edge of the table and gazed at Thomas for a long time. His face was in shadow so Thomas could see no expression, only the faint glimmer of his eyes. '''Ca/ix meus inebrians",' Vexille said at last. 'It is the secret motto of our family. Not the one we show on our crest. You know what that is?'

'No.'

'' Pie repose to",' Guy Vexille said.

“'In pious trust”,' Thomas translated.

'You're strangely well educated for an archer,' Vexille said. He stood and paced up and down as he spoke. 'We display “ pie repone to”, but our real motto ismeus inebrians". We are the secret guardians of the Grail. Our family has held it for generations, we were entrusted with it by God, and your father stole it.'

'You killed him,' Thomas said.

'And I am proud of that,' Guy Vexille said, then suddenly stopped and turned to Thomas. 'Were you the archer on the hill that day?'

'Yes.'

'You shoot well, Thomas.'

'That was the first day I ever killed a man,' Thomas said, 'and it was a mistake.'

'A mistake?'

'I killed the wrong one.'

Guy Vexille smiled, then went back to the fire and pulled out the poker to see its tip was a dull red. He pushed it back into the heat. 'I killed your father,' he said. 'and I killed your woman in Durham and I killed the priest who was evidently your friend.'

'You were de Taillebourg's servant?' Thomas asked, astonished. He had hated Guy Vexille because of his father's death. Now he had two more deaths to add to that hatred.

'I was indeed his servant,' Vexille confirmed. 'It was the penance put on me by de Taillebourg, the punish-ment of humility. But now I am a soldier again and charged with recovering the Grail.'

Thomas hugged his knees under the blanket. 'If the Grail has so much power,' he asked, 'then why is our family so powerless?'

Guy Vexille thought about the question for a moment, then shrugged. 'Because we squabbled,' he said, 'because we were sinners, because we were not worthy. But we shall change that, Thomas. We shall recover our

strength and our virtue.' Guy Vexille stooped to the fire and took the poker from the flames and swept it like a sword so that it made a hissing sound and its red-hot tip seared an arc of light in the dim room. 'Have you thought, Thomas,' he asked, 'of helping me?'

'Helping you?'

Vexille paced close to Thomas. He still swung the poker in great scything cuts so that the light trailed like a falling star to leave wispy lines of smoke in the dark room. 'Your father,' he went on, 'was the elder brother. Did you know that? If you were legitimate, you would be Count of Astarac.' He dropped the poker's tip so that it was close to Thomas's face, so close that Thomas could feel the scorching heat. 'Join me,' Guy Vexille said intensely, 'tell me what you know, help me retrieve the book and go with me on the quest for the Grail.' He crouched so that his face was at the same height as Thomas's.

'Bring glory to our family, Thomas,' he said softly, 'such glory that you and I could rule all Christen-dom and, with the power of the Grail, lead a crusade against the infidel that will leave them writhing in agony. You and I, Thomas! We are the Lord's anointed, the Grail guardians, and if we join hands then for generations men will talk of us as the greatest warrior saints that the Church ever knew.' His voice was deep, even, almost musical. 'Will you help me, Thomas?'

'No,' Thomas said.

The poker came close to Thomas's right eye, so close that it loomed like a great sullen sun, but Thomas did not twitch away. He did not think his cousin would plunge the poker into his eye, but he did think Guy Vexille wanted him to flinch and so he stayed still.

'Your friends got away today,' Vexille said. 'Fifty of us rode to catch them and somehow they avoided us. They went deep into the trees.'

'Good.'

'But all they can do is retreat to La Roche-Derrien and they'll be trapped there. Come the spring, Thomas, we shall close that trap.' Thomas said nothing. The poker cooled and went dark, and Thomas at last dared to blink. 'Like all the Vexilles,' Guy said, taking the poker away and standing, 'you are as brave as you are foolish. Do you know where the Grail is?'

'No.'

Guy Vexille stared at him, judging that answer, then shrugged. 'Do you think the Grail exists, Thomas?'

Thomas paused, then gave the answer he had denied to de Taillebourg through all the long day. 'Yes.'

'You're right,' Vexille said, 'you're right. It does exist. We had it and your father stole it and you are the key to finding it.'

'I know nothing of it!' Thomas protested.

'But de Taillebourg won't believe that,' Vexille said, dropping the poker onto the table.

'De Taillebourg wants the Grail as a starving man wants bread. He dreams of it. He moans in his sleep and he weeps for it.' Vexille paused, then smiled. 'When the pain becomes too much to bear, Thomas, and it will, and when you are wishing that you were dead, and you will, then tell de Taillebourg that you repent and that you will become my liege man. The pain will stop then, and you will live.'

It had been Vexille, Thomas realized, who had been listening outside the door. And tomorrow he would listen again. Thomas closed his eyes. Pater, he prayed, si ris, transfer ea/icon istem a me. He opened his eyes again. 'Why did you kill Eleanor?' he asked.

'Why not?'

'That is a ridiculous answer,' Thomas snarled. Vexille's head snapped back as if he had been struck.

'Because she knew we existed,' he said, 'that's why.' 'Existed?'

'She knew we were in England, she knew what we wanted,' Guy Vexille said. 'She knew we had spoken to Brother Collimore. If the King of England had learned that we were searching for the Grail in his kingdom then he would have stopped us. He would have imprisoned us. He would have done to us what we are doing to you.'

'You think Eleanor could have betrayed you to the King?' Thomas asked, incredulous.

'I think it was better that no one knew why we were there,' Guy Vexille said. 'But do you know what, Thomas? That old monk could tell us nothing except that you existed. All that effort, that long journey, the killings, the Scottish weather, just to learn about you! He didn't know where the Grail was, couldn't imagine where your father might have hidden it, but he did know about you and we have been seeking you ever since. Father de Taillebourg wants to question you, Thomas, he wants to make you cry with pain until you tell him what I suspect you cannot tell him, but I don't want your pain. I want your friendship.'

'And I want you dead,' Thomas said.

Vexille shook his head sadly, then stooped so that he was near to Thomas. 'Cousin,' he said quietly, one day you will kneel to me. One day you will place your hands between my hands and you will pledge your allegiance and we shall exchange the kiss of lord and man, and thus you will become my liege man and we shall ride together, beneath the cross, to glory. We shall be as brothers, I promise it.' He kissed his fingers then laid the tips on Thomas's cheek and the touch of them was almost like a caress. 'I promise it, brother,' Vexille whispered, 'now goodnight.'

'God damn you, Guy Vexille,' Thomas snarled. 'Cali meus inebrians,' Guy Vexille said, and went.

Thomas lay shivering in the dawn. Every footstep in the castle made him cringe. Beyond the deep windows cockerels crowed and birds sang and he had an impression, for what reason he did not know, that there were thick woods outside the Tower of Roncelets and he wondered if he would ever see green leaves again. A sullen servant brought him a breakfast of bread, hard cheese and water and, while he ate, the manacles were unpinned and a wasp-liveried guard watched him, but the gyves were again fixed onto his wrists as soon as he had finished. The bucket was carried away to be emptied and another put in its place.

Bernard de Taillebourg arrived shortly after and, while his servants revived the fire and Father Cailloux settled himself at the makeshift table, the tall Dominican greeted Thomas politely. 'Did you sleep well? Was your breakfast adequate? It's colder today, isn't it? I've never known a winter as wet. The river flooded in Rennes for the first time in years! All those cellars under water.'

Thomas, cold and frightened, did not respond and de Taillebourg did not take offence. Instead he waited as Father Cailloux dipped a quill in the ink, then ordered the taller servant to take Thomas's blanket away. 'Now,' he said when his prisoner was naked, 'to business. Let us talk about your father's notebook. Who else is aware of the book's existence?'

'No one,' Thomas said, 'except Brother Germain and you know about him.'

De Taillebourg frowned. 'But, Thomas, someone must have given it to you! And that person is surely aware of it! Who gave it to you?'

'A lawyer in Dorchester,' Thomas lied glibly. 'A name, please, give me a name.'

'John Rowley,' Thomas said, making the name up.

'Spell it, please,' de Taillebourg said and after Thomas had obeyed the Inquisitor paced up and down in apparent frustration. 'This Rowley must have known what the book was, surely?'

'It was wrapped in a cloak of my father's and in a bundle of other old clothes. He didn't look.'

'He might have done.'

'John Rowley,' Thomas said, spinning his invention, 'is old and fat. He won't go searching for the Grail. Besides, he thought my father was mad, so why would he be interested in a book of his? All Rowley's interested in is ale, mead and mutton pies.'

The three pokers were heating in the fire again. It had started to rain and gusts of cold wind sometimes blew drops through the open windows. Thomas re-membered his cousin's warning in the night that de Taillebourg liked to inflict pain, yet the Dominican's voice was mild and reasonable and Thomas sensed he had survived the worst. He had endured a day of de Taillebourg's questioning and his answers seemed to have satisfied the stern Dominican who was now reduced to filling in the gaps of Thomas's story. He wanted to know about the lance of St George and Thomas told how the weapon had hung in Hookton's church and how it had been stolen and how he had taken it back at the battle outside the forest of Crecv. Did Thomas believe it was the real lance? de Taillebourg asked and Thomas shook his head. 'I don't know,' he said, 'but my father believed it was.'

'And your cousin stole the lance from Hookton's church?'

'Yes.'

'Presumably,' de Taillebourg mused, 'so that no one would realize he sailed to England to search for the Grail. The lance was a disguise.' He thought about that and Thomas, not feeling the need to comment. said nothing. 'Did the lance have a blade?' de Taillebourg asked.

'A long one.'

'Yet, surely, if this was the lance that killed the dragon,' de Taillebourg observed, 'the blade would have melted in the beast's blood?'

'Would it?' Thomas asked.

'Of course it would!' de Taillebourg insisted, staring at Thomas as though he were mad. 'Dragon's blood is molten! Molten and fiery.' He shrugged as if to acknowledge that the lance was irrelevant to his quest. Father Cailloux's pen scratched as he tried to keep up with the interrogation and the two servants stood by the fire, scarcely bothering to hide their boredom as de Taillebourg looked for a new subject to explore. He chose Will Skeat for some reason and asked about his wound and about his memory lapses. Was Thomas really sure Skeat could not read?

'He can't read!' Thomas said. He sounded now as though he were reassuring de Taillebourg and that was a measure of his confidence. He had begun the previous day with insults and hate, but now he was eagerly help-ing the Dominican towards the end of the interrogation. He had survived.

'Skeat can't read,' de Taillebourg said as he paced up and down 'I suppose that's not surprising. So he won't be looking at the notebook you left in his keeping?'

'I'll be lucky if he doesn't use its pages to wipe his arse. That's the only use Will Skeat has for paper or parchment.'

De Taillebourg gave a dutiful smile then stared up at the ceiling. He was silent for a long time, but at last shot Thomas a puzzled look. 'Who is Hachaliah?'

The question took Thomas by surprise and he must have shown it. 'I don't know,' he managed to say after a pause.

De Taillebourg watched Thomas. The room was suddenly tense; the servants were fully awake and Father Cailloux was no longer writing, but gazing at Thomas. De Taillebourg smiled. I'm going to give you one last chance, Thomas,' he said in his deep voice.

'Who is Hachaliah?'

Thomas knew he must brazen it out. Get past this, he thought, and the interrogation would be done. 'I'd never heard of him,' he said, doing his best to sound guileless, 'before Brother Germain mentioned his name.'

Whv de Taillebourg seized on Hachaliah as the weak point of Thomas's defences was a mystery, but it was a shrewd seizure for if the Dominican could prove that Thomas knew who Hachaliah was then he could prove that Thomas had translated at least one of the Hebrew passages in the book. He could prove that Thomas had lied through the whole interrogation and he would open whole new areas of revelation. So de Taillebourg pressed hard and when Thomas continued with his denials the priest beckoned to the servants. Father Cailloux flinched.

'I told you,' Thomas said nervously, 'I really don't know who Hachaliah is.'

'But my duty to God,' de Taillebourg said, taking the first of the red-hot pokers from the tall servant. 'is to make sure you are not telling lies.' He looked at Thomas with what appeared to be sympathy, 'I don't want to hurt you, Thomas. I just want the truth. So tell me, who is Hachaliah?'

Thomas swallowed. 'I don't know,' he said, then repeated it in a louder voice, 'I don't know!'

'I think you do,' de Taillebourg said, and so the pain began.

'In the name of the Father,' de Taillebourg prayed as he placed the iron against the bare flesh of Thomas's leg, 'and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.' The two servants held Thomas down and the pain was worse than he could have believed and he tried to twist away from it, but he could not move and his nostrils were filled with the stench of burning flesh and still he would not answer the question for he thought that by revealing his lies he would open himself to more punish-ment. Somewhere in his shrieking head he believed that if he persisted in the lie then de Taillebourg must believe him and he would cease to use the fire. but in a competition of patience between torturer and prisoner the prisoner has no chance. A second poker was heated and its tip traced down Thomas's ribs. 'Who is Hachaliah?' de Taillebourg asked.

'I've told you —'

The red-hot iron was put to his chest and drawn down to his belly to leave a line of burning, puckered, raw flesh and the wound was instantly cauterized so it left no blood and Thomas's scream echoed from the high ceiling. The third poker was waiting and the first was being reheated so that the pain did not need to stop, and then Thomas was turned onto his burned belly and the strange device which he had not been able to recognize when it was first put on the table was placed over a knuckle of his left hand and he knew it was an iron vice, screw-driven, and de Taillebourg tight-ened the screw and the pain made Thomas jerk and scream again. He lost consciousness, but Father Cailloux brought him back to his senses with the towel and cold water.

'Who is Hachaliah?' de Taillebourg asked.

Such a stupid question, Thomas thought. As if the answer was important! 'I don't know!' He moaned the words and prayed that de Taillebourg would believe him, but the pain came again and the best moments, other than pure oblivion, were when Thomas drifted in and out of consciousness and it seemed that the pain was a dream – a bad dream, but still only a dream – and the worst moments were when he realized it was not a dream and that his world was reduced to agony, pure agony, and then de Taillebourg would apply more pain, either tightening a screw to shatter a finger or else placing the hot iron on his flesh.

'Tell me, Thomas,' the Dominican said gently, 'just tell me and the pain will end. It will end if you just tell me. Please, Thomas, you think I enjoy this? In the name of God, I hate it so tell me, please, tell me.'

So Thomas did. Hachaliah was the father of the

Tirshatha, and the Tirshatha was the father of Nehemiah.

'And Nehemiah,' de Taillebourg asked, 'was what?'

'Was the cup bearer to the King,' Thomas sobbed.

'Why do men lie to God?' de Taillebourg asked. He had put the finger-vice back on the table and the three pokers were all in the fire. 'Why?' he asked again. 'The truth is always discovered, God ensures that. So, Thomas, after all, you did know more than you claimed and we shall have to discover your other lies, but let us talk first, though, about Hachaliah. Do you think this citation from the book of Esdras is your father's 'av of proclaiming his possession of the Grail?'

'Yes,' Thomas said, 'yes, yes, yes.' He was hunched against the wall, his broken hands manacled behind him, his body a mass of pain, but perhaps the hurt would end if he confessed all.

'But Brother Germain tells me that the Hachaliah entry in your father's book,' de Taillehourg said, 'was written in Hebrew. Do you know Hebrew, Thomas?'

'No.'

'So who translated the passage for you.'

'Brother Germain.'

'And Brother Germain told you who Hachaliah was?' de Taillebourg asked.

'No,' Thomas whimpered. There was no point in lying for the Dominican would doubtless check with the old monk, but the answer opened a new question that, in turn, would reveal other areas where Thomas had lied. Thomas knew that, but it was too late to resist now.

'So who did tell you?' de Taillehourg asked.

'A doctor,' Thomas said softly.

'A doctor,' de Taillehourg repeated. 'That doesn't help me, Thomas. You want me to use the fire again? What doctor? A doctor of theology? A physician? And if you asked this mysterious doctor to explain the significance of the passage, was he not curious why you wished to know?'

So Thomas confessed it was Mordecai, and admitted that Mordecai had looked at the notebook and de Taillehourg thumped the table in the first display of temper he had shown in all the long hours of questioning. 'You showed the book to a Jew?' He hissed the question, his voice incredulous. 'To a Jew? In the name of God and of all the precious saints, what were you thinking? To a Jew! To a man of the race that killed our dear Saviour! If the Jews find the Grail, you fool, they will raise the Antichrist! You will suffer for that betrayal! You must suffer!' He crossed the room, snatched a poker from the fire, and brought it back to where Thomas huddled against the wall. 'To a Jew!' de Taillehourg shouted and he scored the poker's glowing tip down Thomas's leg. 'You foul thing!' he snarled over Thomas's screams. 'You are a traitor to God, a traitor to Christ, a traitor to the Church! You are no better than Judas Iscariot!'

The pain went on. The hours went on. It seemed to Thomas that there was nothing left but pain. He had lied when there had been no pain and so now all his previous answers were being checked against the measure of agony he could endure without losing consciousness.

'So where is the Grail?' de Taillehourg demanded.

'I don't know,' Thomas said and then, louder, 'I don't know!' He watched the red-hot iron come to his skin and by now he was shrieking before it even touched. The screaming did no good because the torture went on. And on. And Thomas talked, telling all he knew,

and he was even tempted to do as Guy Vexille had suggested and beg de Taillebourg to let him swear allegiance to his cousin, but then, somewhere in the red horror of his torment, he thought of Eleanor and kept silent. On the fourth day, when he was quivering, when even a twitch of de Taillebourg's hand was enough to make him whimper and beg for mercy, the Lord of Roncelets came into the room. He was a tall man with short bristling black hair and a broken nose and two missing front teeth. He was wearing his own waspish livery, the two black chevrons on yellow, and he sneered at Thomas's scarred and broken body. You didn't bring the rack upstairs, father.' He sounded disappointed.

'It wasn't necessary,' de Taillebourg said.

The Lord of Roncelets prodded Thomas with a mailed foot. 'You say the bastard's an English archer?' 'He is.'

'Then cut off his bow fingers,' Roncelets said savagely. 'I cannot shed blood,' de Taillebourg said.

'By God, I can.' Roncelets pulled a knife from his belt.

'He is my charge!' de Taillebourg snapped. He is in God's hands and you will not touch him. You will not shed his blood!'

'This is my castle, priest,' Roncelets growled.

'And your soul is in my hands,' de Taillebourg retorted.

'He's an archer! An English archer! He came here to snatch the Chenier boy! That's my business!'

'His fingers have been shattered by the vice,' de Taillebourg said, 'so he's an archer no longer.'

Roncelets was placated by that news. He prodded Thomas again. 'He's a piece of piss, priest, that's what he is. A piece of feeble piss.' He spat on Thomas, not because he hated Thomas in particular, but because he detested all archers who had dethroned the knight from his rightful place as king of the battlefield. 'What will you do with him?' he asked.

'Pray for his soul,' de Taillebourg said curtly and when the Lord of Roncelets was gone he did exactly that. It was evident he had finished his questioning for he produced a small vial of holy oil and he gave Thomas the final rites of the church, touching the oil to his brow and to his burned breast and then he said the prayers for the dying. 'Sand me, Domine,' de Taillebourg intoned, his fingers gentle on Thomas's brow, 'quoniam conturbata sunt ossa mea.' Heal me, Lord, for my bones are twisted with pain. And when that was said and done Thomas was carried down the castle stairs into a dungeon sunk into a pit in the rock crag on which the Guepier was built. The floor was the bare black stone, as damp as it was cold. His manacles were removed as he was locked in the cell and he thought he must go mad for his body was all pain and his fingers were shattered and he was no longer an archer for how could he draw a bow with broken hands? Then the fever came and he wept as he shivered and sweated and at night, when he was half sleeping, he gibbered in his nightmares; and he wept again when he woke for he had not endured the torture, but had told de Taillebourg everything. He was a failure, lost in the dark, dying. Then, one day, he did not know how many days it was since he had been taken down to the Guepier's cellars, de Taillebourg's two servants came and fetched him. They put a rough woollen shirt on him, pulled dirty woollen breeches over his soiled legs and then they carried him up to the castle yard and threw him into the back of an empty dung cart. The tower's gate creaked open and, accompanied by a score of men-at-arms in the Lord of Roncelets's livery and dazzled by the pale sun light, Thomas left the Guepier. He was hardly aware of what was happening, he just lay on the dirty boards, hunched in pain, the stink of the cart's usual cargo sour in his nostrils, wanting to die. The fever had not gone and he was shaking with weakness. 'Where are you taking me?' he asked, but no one answered; maybe no one even heard him for his voice was so feeble. It rained. The cart rumbled northwards and the villagers crossed themselves and Thomas drifted in and out of a stupor. He thought he was dying and he supposed they were taking him to the graveyard and he tried to call out to the cart's driver that he still lived, but instead it was Brother Germain 1vho answered him in a querulous voice, saying he should have left the book with him in Caen. 'It's your own fault,' the old monk said and Thomas decided he was dreaming.

He was next aware of a trumpet calling. The cart had stopped and he heard the flapping of cloth and looked up and saw that one of the horsemen was waving a white banner. Thomas wondered if it was his winding sheet. They wrapped a baby when it came into the world and they wrapped a corpse when it went out and he sobbed because he did not want to be buried, and then he heard English voices and he knew he was dreaming as strong hands lifted him from the remnants of dung. He wanted to scream, but he was too weak, and then all sense left him and he was unconscious.

When he woke it was dark and he was in another

cart, a clean one this time, and there were blankets over him and a straw mattress beneath him. The cart had a leather cover on wooden half-hoops to keep out the rain and sunlight. 'Will you bury me now?' Thomas asked.

'You're talking nonsense,' a man said and Thomas recognized Robbie's voice.

'Robbie?'

'Aye, it's me.'

'Robbie?'

'You poor bastard,' Robbie said and stroked Thomas's forehead. 'You poor, poor bastard.'

'Where am I?'

'You're going home, Thomas,' Robbie said, 'you're going home.'

To La Roche-Derrien.

He had been ransomed. A week after his disappearance and two days after the rest of the raiding party had returned to La Roche-Derrien a messenger had come to the garrison under a flag of truce. He brought a letter from Bernard de Taillebourg that was addressed to Sir William Skeat. Surrender Father Ralph's book, the letter said, and Thomas of Hookton will be delivered back to his friends. Will Skeat had the message translated and read to him, but he knew nothing of any book so he asked Sir Guillaume if he had any idea what the priest wanted and Sir Guillaume spoke to Robbie who, in turn, talked to Jeanette and next day an answer went back to Roncelets.

Then there was a fortnight's delay because Brother Germain had to be fetched from Normandy to Rennes.

De Taillebourg insisted on that precaution because Brother Germain had seen the book and he could con-firm that what was exchanged for Thomas was indeed Father Ralph's notebook.

'And so it was,' Robbie said.

Thomas stared up at the ceiling. He vaguely felt it had been wrong to exchange him for the book, even if he was grateful to be alive, to be home and among his friends.

'It was the right book,' Robbie went on with indecent relish, 'but we added some stuff to it.' He grinned at Thomas. 'We copied it all out first, of course, and then we added some rubbish to mislead them. To confuse them, see? And that shrivelled old monk never noticed. He just pawed at the book like a starving dog given a bone.'

Thomas shuddered. He felt as if he had been stripped of pride, strength and even manhood. He had been utterly humiliated, reduced to a shivering, whining, twitching thing. Tears ran down his face though he made no sound. His hands hurt, his body hurt, everything hurt. He did not even know where he was, only that he had been brought back to La Roche-Derrien and carried up a steep flight of stairs to this small chamber under a roof's steep rafters where the walls were roughly plastered and a crucifix hung at the head of the bed. A window screened with opaque horn let in a dirty brown light. Robbie went on telling him about the false entries they had added to Father Ralph's book. It had been his idea, he said, and Jeanette had copied out the book first, but after that Robbie had let his imagination run wild. 'I put some of it in Scots,' he boasted, 'how the Grail is really in Scotland. Have the bastards searching the heather, eh?' He laughed, but could see that Thomas was not listening. He went on talking anyway, and then another person came into the room and wiped the tears from Thomas's face. It was Jeanette.

Vagabond_part1.fm

'Thomas?' she asked, 'Thomas?'

He wanted to tell her that he had seen and spoken to her son, but he could not find the words. Guy Vexille had said Thomas would want to die while he was being tortured and that had been true, but Thomas was sur-prised to find it was still true. Take a man's pride, he thought, and you leave him with nothing. The worst memory was not the pain, nor the humiliation of begging for the pain to stop, but the gratitude he had felt towards de Taillebourg when the pain did stop. That was the most shameful thing of all.

'Thomas?' Jeanette asked again. She knelt by the bed and stroked his face. 'It's all right,' she said softly, 'you're safe now. This is my house. No one will hurt you here.'

'I might,' a new voice said and Thomas shook with fear, then turned to see that it was Mordecai who had spoken. Mordecai? The old doctor was supposed some-where in the

«arm south. 'I might have to reset your finger and toe bones,' the doctor said, 'and that will be painful.' He put his bag on the floor. 'Hello, Thomas. I do hate boats. We waited for the new sail and then when they'd finished sewing it up they decided there wasn't enough caulking between the planks and when that was corrected they decided the rigging needed work and so the wretched boat is still sitting there. Sailors! All they ever do is talk about going to sea. Still, I shouldn't complain, it gave me the time to concoct some new material for your father's notebook and I rather enjoyed doing that! Now I hear you need me. My dear Thomas, what have they done to you?'

'Hurt me,' Thomas said and they were the first words he had spoken since he had come to Jeanette's house.

'Then we must mend you,' Mordecai said very calmly. He peeled the blanket back from Thomas's scarred body and, though Jeanette flinched, Mordecai just smiled. 'I've seen worse come from the Dominicans,' he said, 'much worse.'

So Thomas was again tended by Mordecai and time was measured by the clouds passing beyond the opaque window and the sun climbing ever higher in the sky and the noise of birds plucking straw from the thatch to make their nests. There were two days of awful pain when Mordecai brought a bone-setter to rebreak and splint Thomas's fingers and toes, but that pain went after a week and the burns on his body healed and the fever passed. Day after day Mordecai peered at his urine and declared it was clearing. 'You have the strength of an ox, young Thomas.'

'I have the stupidity of one,' Thomas said.

'Just brashness,' Mordecai said, 'just youth and brashness.'

'When they . . .' Thomas began and flinched from remembering what de Taillebourg had done. 'When they talked to me,' he said instead, 'I told them you had seen the notebook.'

'They can't have liked that,' Mordecai said. He had taken a spool of cord from a pocket of his gown and now looped one end of the line around a spur of wood that protruded from an untrimmed rafter. 'They can't have liked the thought of a Jew being curious about the Grail. They doubtless thought I wanted to use it as a pisspot?'

Thomas, despite the impiety, smiled. 'I'm sorry, Mordecai.'

'For telling them about me? What choice did you have? Men always talk under torture, Thomas, that is why torture is so useful. It is why torture will be used so long as the sun goes on circling the earth. And you think I am in more danger now than I was? I'm Jewish, Thomas, Jewish. Now, what do I do with this?' He was speaking of the cord, which now hung from the rafter and which he evidently wished to attach to the floor, but there was no obvious anchor point.

'What is it?' Thomas asked.

'A remedy,' Mordecai said, staring helplessly at the cord, then at the floor. 'I was ever unpractical with matters like this. A hammer and nail, you think?'

'A staple.' Thomas suggested.

Jeanette's idiot servant boy was sent out with careful instructions and managed to find the staple that Mordecai asked Thomas to hammer into the floorboard, but Thomas held up his crooked right hand with its fingers bent like claws and said he could not do it, so Mordecai clumsily banged the staple in himself and then tightened the cord and tied it off so that it stretched taut from floor to ceiling. '\'hat you must do,' he said, admiring his handiwork, 'is pluck it like a bowcord.'

'I can't,' Thomas said in panic, holding up his crooked hands again.

'What are you?' Mordecai asked.

'What am I?'

'Ignore the specious answers. I know you're an

Englishman and I assume you're a Christian, but what are you?'

'I was an archer,' Thomas said bitterly.

'And you still are,' Mordecai said harshly, 'and if you are not an archer then you are nothing. So pluck that cord! And keep on plucking it until your fingers can close on it. Practise. Practise. What else do you have to do with your time?'

So Thomas practised and after a week he could tighten two fingers opposite the thumb and make the cord reverberate like a harp string, and after another week he could bend the fingers of both hands about the cord and he plucked it so vigorously that it finally broke under the strain. His strength was coming back and the burns had healed to leave puckered welts where the poker had scored his skin, but the wounds in his memory did not heal. He would not talk of what had been done to him for he did not want to remember it, instead he practised plucking the cord until it snapped and then he learned to grip a quarterstaff and fought mock battles in the house yard with Robbie. And, as the days had lengthened out of winter, he went for walks beyond the town. There was a windmill on a slight hill that lay not far from the town's eastern gate and at first he could hardly manage the climb because his toes had been broken in the vice and his feet felt like unyielding lumps, but by the time April had filled the meadows with cowslips he was walking confidently. Will Skeat often went with him and though the older man never said much his company was easy. If he did talk it was to grumble about the weather or complain because the food was strange or, more likely, because he had heard nothing from the Earl of Northampton.

'You think we should write to his lordship again, Tom?'

'Maybe the first letter didn't reach him?'

'I never did like things written down,' Skeat said, 'it ain't natural. Can you write to him?'

'I can try,' Thomas said, but though he could pluck a bowcord and hold a quarterstaff or even a sword he could not manage the quill. He tried but his letters were scratchy and uncontrolled and in the end one of Tote-sham's clerks wrote the letter, though Totesham himself did not think the message would do any good.

'Charles of Blois will be here before we get any reinforcements,' he said. Totesham was awkward with Thomas, who had disobeyed him by riding to Roncelets, but Thomas's punishment had been far more than Tote-sham would have wanted and so he felt sorry for the archer. 'You want to carry_ the letter to the Earl?' he asked Thomas. Thomas knew he was being offered an escape, but he shook his head. 'I'll stay,' he said, and the letter was entrusted to a shipmaster who was sailing the next day. The letter was a futile gesture and Totesham knew it for his garrison was almost certainly doomed. Each day brought news of the reinforcements reaching Charles of Blois, and the enemy's raiding parties were now coming within sight of La Roche-Derrien's walls and harassing the forage parties that searched the countryside for any cattle, goats and sheep that could be driven back to the town to be slaughtered and salted down. Sir Guillaume enjoyed such foraging raids. Since losing Evecque he had become fatalistic and so savage that already the enemy had learned to be wary of the blue jupon with its three yellow hawks. Yet one evening, coming home from a long day that had yielded only two goats, he was grinning when he came to see Thomas. 'My enemy has joined Charles,' he said, 'the Count of Coutances, God damn his rotten soul. I killed one of his men this morning and I only wish it had been the Count himself.'

'Why's he here?' Thomas asked. 'He's not a Breton.'

'Philip of France is sending men to help his nephew,' Sir Guillaume said, 'so why won't the King of England send men to oppose him? He thinks Calais is more important?'

'Yes.'

'Calais,' Sir Guillaume said in disgust, 'is the arsehole of France.' He picked a shred of meat from between his teeth. 'And your friends were out riding today,' he went on.

'My friends?'

'The wasps.'

'Roncelets,' Thomas said.

'We fought half a dozen of the bastards in some benighted village,' Sir Guillaume said,

'and I put a lance clean through a black and yellow belly. He was cough-ing afterwards.'

'Coughing?'

'It's the wet weather, Thomas,' Sir Guillaume explained, 'it gives men a cough. So I left him alone, killed another of the bastards, then event back and cured his cough. I cut his head off.'

Robbie rode with Sir Guillaume and, like him, amassed coins taken from dead enemy patrols. though Robbie also rode in hope of meeting Guy Vexille. He knew that name now because Thomas had told him that it was Guy Vexille who had killed his brother just before the battle outside Durham and Robbie had gone to St Renan's church, put his hand on the altar's cross and sworn revenge. 'I shall kill Guy Vexille and de Taillebourg,' he vowed.

'They're mine,' Thomas insisted.

'Not if I get to them first,' Robbie promised.

Robbie had found himself a brown-eyed Breton girl called Oana who hated to leave his side and she came with him whenever he walked with Thomas. One day, as they set out for the windmill, she appeared with Thomas's big black bow.

'I can't use that!' Thomas said, frightened of it.

'Then what bloody use are you?' Robbie asked and he patiently encouraged Thomas to draw the bow and praised him as his strength returned. The three of them would take the bow to the windmill and Thomas would drive arrows into the wooden tower. The shots were feeble at first for he could scarcely pull the cord halfway and the more power he exerted the more treacherous his fingers seemed to be and the more wayward his aim, but by the time the swallows and swifts had magically reappeared above the town's roofs he could pull the cord all the way back to his ear and put an arrow through one of Oana's wooden bracelets at a hundred paces.

'You're cured,' Mordecai told him when Thomas told him that news.

'Thanks to you,' Thomas said, though he knew it was not only Mordecai, any more than it was the friendship of Will Skeat or of Sir Guillaume or of Robbie Douglas that had helped him recover. Bernard de Taillebourg had wounded Thomas, but those bloodless wounds of God had not just been to his body, but to his soul, and it was on a dark spring night when the lightning was flickering in the east that Jeanette had climbed to her attic. She had not left Thomas until the town's cockerels greeted the new dawn and if Mordecai understood why Thomas was smiling the next day he said nothing, but he noted that from that moment on Thomas's recovery was swift.

Thereafter Thomas and Jeanette talked every night. He told her of Charles and of the look on the boy's face when Thomas had mentioned his mother; Jeanette wanted to know everything about that look and she worried that it meant nothing and that her son had forgotten her, but eventually she believed Thomas when he said the boy had almost wept when he heard news of her. 'You told him I loved him?' she asked.

'Yes,' Thomas said, and Jeanette lay silent, tears in her eyes, and Thomas tried to reassure her, but she shook her head as if there was nothing Thomas could say that would console her. 'I'm sorry,' he said.

'You tried,' Jeanette said.

They wondered how the enemy had known Thomas was coming and Jeanette said that she was sure that Belas the lawyer had had a hand in it. 'I know he writes to Charles of Blois,' she said, 'and that horrid man, what did you call him? Epolurantail?'

'The Scarecrow.'

'Him,' Jeanette confirmed, 'l'zpoourantail. He talks to Belas.'

'The Scarecrow talks to Belas?' Thomas asked, surprised.

'He lives there now. He and his men live in the store-houses.' She paused. 'Why does he even stay in the town?' Others of the mercenaries had slipped away to find employment where there was some hope of victory rather than stay and endure the defeat that Charles of Blois threatened.

'He can't go home,' Thomas said, 'because he has too many debts. He's protected from his creditors so long as he's here.'

'But why La Roche-Derrien?'

'Because I'm here,' Thomas said. 'He thinks I can lead him to treasure.'

'The Grail?'

'He doesn't know that,' Thomas said, but he was wrong because the next day, while he was alone at the windmill and shooting arrows at a wand he had planted a hundred and fifty paces away, the Scarecrow and his six men-at-arms came riding out of the town's eastern gate. They turned off the Pontrieux road, filed through a gap in the hedge and spurred up the shallow slope towards the mill. They were all in mail and all with swords except for Beggar who, dwarfing his horse, carried a morningstar. Sir Geoffrey reined in close to Thomas, who ignored him to shoot an arrow that just brushed the wand. The Scarecrow let the coils of his whip ripple to the ground. 'Look at me,' he ordered Thomas.

Thomas still ignored him. He took an arrow from his belt and put it on the string, then jerked his head aside as he saw the whip snake towards him. The metal tip touched his hair, but did no damage. 'I said look at me,' Sir Geoffrey snarled.

'You want an arrow in your face?' Thomas asked him.

Sir Geoffrey leaned forward on his saddle's pommel, his raw red face twisted with a spasm of anger. 'You are an archer' – he pointed his whip handle at Thomas – 'and I am a knight. If I chop you down there's not a judge alive who would condemn me.'

'And if I put an arrow through your eye,' Thomas said, 'the devil will thank me for sending him company.'

Beggar growled and spurred his horse forward, but the Scarecrow waved the big man back. 'I know what you want,' he said to Thomas.

Thomas hauled the string back, instinctively corrected for the small wind rippling the meadow's grass, and released. The arrow made the wand quiver. 'You have no idea what I want,' he told Sir Geoffrey.

'I thought it was gold,' the Scarecrow said, 'and then I thought it was land, but I never understood why gold or land would take you to Durham.' He paused as Thomas shot another arrow that hissed a hand's breadth past the distant wand. 'But now I know,' he finished, 'now at last I know.'

'What do you know?' Thomas asked derisively.

'I know you went to Durham to talk with the church-men because you're seeking the greatest treasure of the Church. You're looking for the Grail.'

Thomas let the bowcord slacken, then looked up at Sir Geoffrey. 'We're all looking for the Grail,' Thomas said, still derisive.

'Where is it?' Sir Geoffrey growled.

Thomas laughed. He was surprised the Scarecrow knew about the Grail, but he supposed that gossip in the garrison had probably let everyone in La Roche-Derrien know.

'The best questioners of the Church asked me that,' he said, holding up one crooked hand,

'and I didn't tell them. You think I'll tell you?'

'I think,' the Scarecrow said, 'that a man searching for the Grail doesn't lock himself into a garrison that only has a month or two to live.'

'Then maybe I'm not looking for the Grail,' Thomas said and shot another arrow at the wand, but this shaft was warped and the arrow wobbled in flight and went wide. Above him the great sails of the mill, furled about their spars and tethered by ropes, creaked as a wind gust tried to turn them.

Sir Geoffrey coiled the whip. 'You failed the last time you rode out. What happens if you ride again? What happens if you ride after the Grail? And you must be going soon, before Charles of Blois gets here. So when you ride you're going to need help.' Thomas, incredulous, realized that the Scarecrow had come to offer him help, or perhaps Sir Geoffrey was asking for help. He was in La Roche-Derrien for only one reason, treasure, and he was no nearer to it now than he had been when he first accosted Thomas outside Durham. 'You daren't fail again.' the Scarecrow went on, 'so next time take some real fighters with you.'

'You think I'd take you?' Thomas asked, astonished.

'I'm an Englishman,' the Scarecrow said indignantly, 'and if the Grail exists I want it in England. Not in some scab of a foreign place.'

The sound of a sword scraping from its scabbard made the Scarecrow and his men turn in their saddles. Jeanette and Robbie had come to the meadow with Oana at Robbie's side; Jeanette had her crossbow cocked and Robbie, as though he did not have a care in the world, was now slashing the tops from thistles with his uncle's sword. Sir Geoffrey turned back to Thomas. 'What you don't need is a damned Scotchrnan,' he said angrily.

'nor a damned French bitch. If you look for the Grail, archer, look for it with loyal Englishmen! It's what the King would want, isn't it?'

Again Thomas did not answer. Sir Geoffrey hung the whip on a hook attached to his belt, then jerked his reins. The seven men cantered down the hill, going close to Robbie as if tempting him to attack them, but Robbie ignored them. 'What did that bastard want?'

Thomas shot at the wand, brushing it with the arrow's feathers. 'I think,' he said, 'that he wanted to help me find the Grail.'

'Help you!' Robbie exclaimed. 'Help you find the Grail? Like hell. He wants to steal it. That bastard would steal the milk from the Virgin Mary's tits.'

'Robbie!' Jeanette said, shocked, then aimed her crossbow at the wand.

'Watch her,' Thomas said to Robbie. 'She'll close her eyes when she shoots. She always does.'

'Damn you,' Jeanette said, then, unable to help it, closed her eyes as she pulled the trigger. The bolt slapped out of the groove and miraculously clipped the top six inches from the wand. Jeanette looked at Thomas triumphantly. 'I can shoot better than you with my eyes closed,' she said.

Robbie had been on the town's walls and had seen the Scarecrow accost Thomas and so he had come to help, but now, with Sir Geoffrey gone, they sat in the sun with their backs against the mill's wooden skirt. Jeanette was staring at the town's wall which still showed the scars where the English-made breach had been repaired with a lightercoloured stone. 'Are you really nobly born?' she asked Thomas.

'Bastard born,' Thomas said.

'But to a nobleman?'

'He was the Count of Astarac,' Thomas said, then laughed because it was strange to think that Father Ralph, mad Father Ralph who had preached to the gulls on Hookton's beach, had been a count.

'So what's the badge of Astarac?' Jeanette asked.

'A yale,' Thomas told her, 'holding a cup,' and he showed her the faded silver patch on his black bowstave that was engraved with the strange creature that had horns, cloven hooves, claws, tusks and a lion's tail. 'I'll have a banner made for you,' Jeanette said.

'A banner? Why?'

'A man should display his badge,' Jeanette said.

'And you should leave La Roche-Derrien,' Thomas retorted. He kept trying to persuade her to leave the town, but she insisted she would stay. She doubted now she would ever get her son back and so she was determined to kill Charles of Blois with one of her cross-bow's bolts, which were made of dense yew heartwood tipped with iron heads and fledged, not with feathers, but with stiff pieces of leather inserted into slits cut crosswise into the yew and then bound up with cord and glue. That was why she practised so assiduously, for the chance to cut down the man who had raped her and taken her child. Easter came before the enemy arrived. The weather was warm now. The hedgerows were full of nestlings and the meadows echoed with the shriek of partridges and on the day after Easter, when folk ate up the remnants of the feast that had broken their Lenten fast, the dreaded news at last arrived from Rennes.

That Charles of Blois had marched.