The Grail Quest Books 1-3: Harlequin, Vagabond, Heretic Read online

  'He's the ugly bastard over there,' Jake said, pointing to Thomas, who was dancing to the music of a flute and drum. The men-at-arms waited till he had finished his dance, then explained that Will Skeat was with the garrison's commander and wanted to talk with him.

  Thomas drained his ale. 'What it is,' he told the other archers, 'is that they can't make a decision without me. Indispensable, that's me.' The archers mocked that, but cheered good-naturedly as Thomas left with the two men-at-arms.

  One of them came from Dorset and had actually heard of Hookton. 'Didn't the French land there?' he asked.

  'Bastards wrecked it. I doubt there's anything left,' Thomas said. 'So why does Will want me?'

  'God knows and He ain't telling,' one of the men said. He had led Thomas towards Richard Totesham's quarters, but now he pointed down a dark alley. 'They're in a tavern at the end there. Place with the anchor hanging over the door.'

  'Good for them,' Thomas said. If he had not been half drunk he might have realized that Totesham and Skeat were unlikely to summon him to a tavern, let alone the smallest one in town at the river end of the darkest alley, but Thomas suspected nothing until he was halfway down the narrow passage and two men stepped from a gateway. The first he knew of them was when a blow landed on the back of his head. He pitched forward onto his knees and the second man kicked him in the face, then both men rained kicks and blows on him until he offered no more resistance and they could seize his arms and drag him through the gate into a small smithy. There was blood in Thomas's mouth, his nose had been broken again, a rib was cracked and his belly was churning with ale.

  A fire burned in the smithy. Thomas, through half-closed eyes, could see an anvil. Then more men surrounded him and gave him a second kicking so that he rolled into a ball in a vain attempt to protect himself.

  'Enough,' a voice said, and Thomas opened his eyes to see Sir Simon Jekyll. The two men who had fetched him from the tavern, and who had seemed so friendly, now came through the smithy gate and stripped off their borrowed tunics showing the Earl of Northampton's badge. 'Well done,' Sir Simon told them, then looked at Thomas. 'Mere archers,' Sir Simon said, 'do not tell knights to boil their arse.'

  A tall man, a huge brute with lank yellow hair and blackened teeth, was standing beside Thomas, wanting to kick him if he offered an insolent reply, so Thomas held his tongue. Instead he offered a silent prayer to St Sebastian, the patron saint of archers. This plight, he reckoned, was too serious to be left to a dog.

  'Take his breeches down, Colley,' Sir Simon ordered, and turned back to the fire. Thomas saw there was a great three-legged pot standing in the red-hot charcoal. He swore under his breath, realizing that he was the one who was to get a boiled arse. Sir Simon peered into the pot. 'You are to be taught a lesson in courtesy,' he told Thomas, who whimpered as the yellow-haired brute cut through his belt, then dragged his breeches down. The other men searched Thomas's pockets, taking what coins they found and a good knife, then they turned him onto his belly so that his naked arse was ready for the boiling water.

  Sir Simon saw the first wisps of steam float from the pot. 'Take it to him,' he ordered his men.

  Three of Sir Simon's soldiers were holding Thomas down and he was too hurt and too weak to fight them, so he did the only thing he could. He screamed murder. He filled his lungs and bellowed as loud as he could. He reckoned he was in a small town that was crowded with men and someone must hear and so he shrieked the alarm. 'Murder! Murder!' A man kicked his belly, but Thomas went on shouting.

  'For Christ's sake, silence him,' Sir Simon snarled, and Colley, the yellow-haired man, kneeled beside Thomas and tried to stuff straw into his mouth, but. Thomas managed to spit it out.

  'Murder!' he screamed. 'Murder!'

  Colley swore, took a handful of filthy mud and slapped it into Thomas's mouth, muffling his noise. 'Bastard,' Colley said, and thumped Thomas's skull. 'Bastard!'

  Thomas gagged on the mud, but he could not spit it out.

  Sir Simon was standing over him now. 'You are to be taught good manners,' he said, and watched as the steaming pot was carried across the smithy yard.

  Then the gate opened and a newcomer stepped into the yard. 'What in God's name is happening here?' the man asked, and Thomas could have sung a Te Deum in praise of St Sebastian if his mouth had not been crammed with mud, for his rescuer was Father Hobbe, who must have heard the frantic shouting and come running down the alley to investigate. 'What are you doing?' the priest demanded of Sir Simon.

  'It is not your business, father,' Sir Simon said.

  'Thomas, is it you?' He turned back to the knight. 'By God, it is my business!' Father Hobbe had a temper and he lost it now. 'Who the devil do you think you are?'

  'Be careful, priest,' Sir Simon snarled.

  'Be careful! Me? I will have your soul in hell if you don't leave.' The small priest snatched up the smith's huge poker and wielded it like a sword. 'I'll have all your souls in hell! Leave! All of you! Out of here! Out! In the name of God, get out! Get out!'

  Sir Simon backed down. It was one thing to torture an archer, but quite another to get into a fight with a priest whose voice was loud enough to attract still more attention. Sir Simon snarled that Father Hobbe was an interfering bastard, but he retreated all the same.

  Father Hobbe knelt beside Thomas and hooked some of the mud from his mouth, along with tendrils of thick blood and a broken tooth. 'You poor lad,' Father Hobbe said, then helped Thomas stand. 'I'll take you home, Tom, take you home and clean you up.'

  Thomas had to vomit first, but then, holding his breeches up, he staggered back to Jeanette's house, supported all the way by the priest. A dozen archers greeted him, wanting to know what had happened, but Father Hobbe brushed them aside. 'Where's the kitchen?' he demanded.

  'She won't let us in there,' Thomas said, his voice indistinct because of his swollen mouth and bleeding gums.

  'Where is it?' Father Hobbe insisted. One of the archers nodded at the door and the priest just pushed it open and half carried Thomas inside. He sat him on a chair and pulled the rush lights to the table's edge so he could see Thomas's face. 'Dear God,' he said, 'what have they done to you?' He patted Thomas's hand, then went to find water.

  Jeanette came into the kitchen, full of fury. 'You are not supposed to be here! You will get out!' Then she saw Thomas's face and her voice trailed away. If someone had told her that she would see a badly beaten English archer she would have been cheered, but to her surprise she felt a pang of sympathy. 'What happened?'

  'Sir Simon Jekyll did this,' Thomas managed to say.

  'Sir Simon?'

  'He's an evil man.' Father Hobbe had heard the name and came from the scullery with a big bowl of water. 'He's an evil thing, evil.' He spoke in English. 'You have some cloths?' he asked Jeanette.

  'She doesn't speak English,' Thomas said. Blood was trickling down his face.

  'Sir Simon attacked you?' Jeanette asked. 'Why?'

  'Because I told him to boil his arse,' Thomas said, and was rewarded with a smile.

  'Good,' Jeanette said. She did not invite Thomas to stay in the kitchen, but nor did she order him to leave. Instead she stood and watched as the priest washed his face, then took off Thomas's shirt to bind up the cracked rib.

  'Tell her she could help me,' Father Hobbe said.

  'She's too proud to help,' Thomas said.

  'It's a sinful sad world,' Father Hobbe declared, then knelt down. 'Hold still, Tom,' he said, 'for this will hurt like the very devil.' He took hold of the broken nose and there was the sound of cartilage scraping before Thomas shouted in pain. Father Hobbe put a cold wet cloth over his nose. 'Hold that there, Tom, and the pain will go. Well, it won't really, but you'll get used to it.' He sat on an empty salt barrel, shaking his head. 'Sweet Jesus, Tom, what are we going to do with you?'

  'You've done it,' Thomas said, 'and I'm grateful. A day or two and I'll be leaping about like a spring lamb.'

  'You've been doing that for to
o long, Tom,' Father Hobbe said earnestly. Jeanette, not understanding a word, just watched the two men. 'God gave you a good head,' the priest went on, 'but you waste your wits, Tom, you do waste them.'

  'You want me to be a priest?'

  Father Hobbe smiled. 'I doubt you'd be much credit to the Church, Tom. You'd like as not end up as an archbishop because you're clever and devious enough, but I think you'd be happier as a soldier. But you have debts to God, Tom. Remember that promise you made to your father! You made it in a church, and it would be good for your soul to keep that promise, Tom.'

  Thomas laughed, and immediately wished he had not, for the pain whipped through his ribs. He swore, apologized to Jeanette, then looked back to the priest. 'And how in the name of God, father, am I supposed to keep that promise? I don't even know what bastard stole the lance.'

  'What bastard?' Jeanette asked, for she had picked up that one word. 'Sir Simon?'

  'He is a bastard,' Thomas said, 'but he's not the only one,' and he told her about the lance, about the day his village had been murdered, about his father dying, and about the man who carried a banner showing three yellow hawks on a blue field. He told the story slowly, through bloody lips, and when he had finished Jeanette shrugged.

  'So you want to kill this man, yes?'

  'One day.'

  'He deserves to be killed,' Jeanette said.

  Thomas stared at her through half-closed eyes, astonished by those words. 'You know him?'

  'He is called Sir Guillaume d'Evecque,' Jeanette said.

  'What's she saying?' Father Hobbe asked.

  'I know him,' Jeanette said grimly. 'In Caen, where he comes from, he is sometimes called the lord of the sea and of the land.'

  'Because he fights on both?' Thomas guessed.

  'He is a knight,' Jeanette said, 'but he is also a sea-raider. A pirate. My father owned sixteen ships and Guillaume d'Evecque stole three of them.'

  'He fought against you?' Thomas sounded surprised.

  Jeanette shrugged. 'He thinks any ship that is not French is an enemy. We are Bretons.'

  Thomas looked at Father Hobbe. 'There you are, father,' he said lightly, 'to keep my promise all I must do is fight the knight of the sea and of the land.'

  Father Hobbe had not followed the French, but he shook his head sadly. 'How you keep the promise, Thomas, is your business. But God knows you made it, and I know you are doing nothing about it.' He fingered the wooden cross he wore on a leather lace about his neck. 'And what shall I do about Sir Simon?'

  'Nothing,' Thomas said.

  'I must tell Totesham, at least!' the priest insisted.

  'Nothing, father.' Thomas was just as insistent. 'Promise me.'

  Father Hobbe looked suspiciously at Thomas. 'You're not thinking of taking your own revenge, are you?'

  Thomas crossed himself and hissed because of the pain in his rib. 'Doesn't our MotherChurch tell us to turn the other cheek?' he asked.

  'It does,' Father Hobbe said dubiously, 'but it wouldn't condone what Sir Simon did tonight.'

  'We shall turn away his wrath with a soft answer,' Thomas said, and Father Hobbe, impressed by this display of genuine Christianity, nodded his acceptance of Thomas's decision.

  Jeanette had been following the conversation as best she could and had at least gathered the gist of their words. 'Are you discussing what to do to Sir Simon?' she asked Thomas.

  'I'm going to murder the bastard,' Thomas said in French.

  She offered him a sour grimace. 'That is a very clever idea, Englishman. So you will be a murderer and they will hang you. Then, thanks be to God, there will be two dead Englishmen.'

  'What's she saying, Thomas?' Father Hobbe asked.

  'She's agreeing that I ought to forgive my enemies, father.'

  'Good woman, good woman,' Father Hobbe said.

  'Do you really want to kill him?' Jeanette demanded coldly.

  Thomas shuddered with the pain, but he was not so hurt that he could not appreciate Jeanette's closeness. She was a hard woman, he reckoned, but still as lovely as the spring and, like the rest of Will Skeat's men, he had harboured impossible dreams of knowing her better. Her question gave him that chance. 'I'll kill him,' he assured her, 'and in killing him, my lady, I'll fetch you your husband's armour and sword.'

  Jeanette frowned at him. 'You can do that?'

  'If you help me.'

  She grimaced. 'How?'

  So Thomas told her and, to his astonishment, she did not dismiss the idea in horror, but instead nodded a grudging acceptance. 'It might really work,' she said after a while, 'it really might work.'

  Which meant that Sir Simon had united his enemies and Thomas had found himself an ally.

  —«»—«»—«»—

  Jeanette's life was encompassed by enemies. She had her son, but everyone else she loved was dead, and those who were left she hated. There were the English, of course, occupying her town, but there was also Belas, the lawyer, and the shipmasters who had cheated her, and the tenants who used the presence of the English to default on their rent, and the town's merchants who dunned her for money she did not have. She was a countess, yet her rank counted for nothing. At night, brooding on her plight, she would dream of meeting a great champion, a duke perhaps, who would come to La Roche-Derrien and punish her enemies one by one. She saw them whimpering with terror, pleading for mercy and receiving none. But in each dawn there was no duke and her enemies did not cringe, and Jeanette's troubles were unrelieved until Thomas promised to help her kill the one enemy she hated above the rest.

  To which end, early in the morning after her conversation with Thomas, Jeanette went to Richard Totesham's headquarters. She went early because she hoped Sir Simon Jekyll would still be in bed, and though it was essential he knew the purpose of her visit, she did not want to meet him. Let him learn from others what she planned.

  The headquarters, like her own house, fronted the River Jaudy, and the waterfront yard, despite the early hour, already held a score of petitioners seeking favours from the English. Jeanette was told to wait with the other petitioners. 'I am the Countess of Armorica,' she told the clerk.

  'You must wait like the rest,' the clerk answered in poor French, then cut another notch in a tally stick on which he was counting arrow sheaves that were being unloaded from a lighter that had come upriver from the deepwater harbour at Tréguier. A second lighter held barrels of red herrings, and the stench of the fish made Jeanette shudder. English food! They did not even gut the herrings before smoking them and the red fish came from the barrels covered in yellow-green mould, yet the archers ate them with relish. She tried to escape the reeking fish by crossing the yard to where a dozen local men trimmed great lengths of timber propped on saw-horses. One of the carpenters was a man who had sometimes worked for Jeanette's father, though he was usually too drunk to hold a job for more than a few days. He was barefoot, ragged, hump-backed and hare-lipped, though when he was sober he was as good a labourer as any in the town.

  'Jacques!' Jeanette called. 'What are you doing?' She spoke in Breton.

  Jacques tugged his forelock and bobbed down. 'You're looking well, my lady.' Only a few folk could understand his speech for his split lip mangled the sounds. 'Your father always said you were his angel.'

  'I asked what you are doing.'

  'Ladders, my lady, ladders.' Jacques cuffed a stream of mucus from his nose. There was a weeping ulcer on his neck and the stink of it was as bad as the red herrings. 'They want six ever so long ladders.'

  'Why?'

  Jacques looked left and right to make sure no one could overhear him. 'What he says,' he jerked his head at the Englishman who was supposedly supervising the work, 'what he says is that they're taking them to Lannion. And they're long enough for that big wall, ain't they?'

  'Lannion?'

  'He likes his ale, he does,' Jacques said, explaining the Englishman's indiscretion.

  'Hey! Handsome!' the supervisor shouted at Jacques. 'Get to work!' Jacques
, with a grin to Jeanette, picked up his tools.

  'Make the rungs loose!' Jeanette advised Jacques in Breton, then turned because her name had been called from the house. Sir Simon Jekyll, looking heavy-eyed and sleepy, was standing in the doorway and Jeanette's heart sank at the sight of him.

  'My lady,' Sir Simon offered Jeanette a bow, 'you should not be waiting with common folk.'

  'Tell that to the clerk,' Jeanette said coldly.

  The clerk tallying the arrow sheaves squealed when Sir Simon caught him by the ear. 'This clerk?' he asked.

  'He told me to wait out here.'

  Sir Simon cuffed the man across the face. 'She's a lady, you bastard! You treat her like a lady.' He kicked the man away, then pulled the door fully open. 'Come, my lady,' he invited her.

  Jeanette went to the door and was relieved to see four more clerks busy at tables inside the house. 'The army,' Sir Simon said as she brushed past him, 'has almost as many clerks as archers. Clerks, farriers, masons, cooks, herdsmen, butchers, anything else on two legs that can take the King's coin.' He smiled at her, then brushed a hand down his threadbare wool robe that was trimmed with fur. 'If I had known you were gracing us with a visit, my lady, I would have dressed.'

  Sir Simon, Jeanette noted gladly, was in a puppy mood this morning. He was always either boorish or clumsily polite and she hated him in either mood, but at least he was easier to deal with when he tried to impress her with his manners. 'I came,' she told him, 'to request a pass from Monsieur Totesham.' The clerks watched her surreptitiously, their quills scratching and spluttering on the scraped parchment.