Heretic Read online

  But Father Roubert, instead of sharing the excitement of the buried wall, was looking up at Joscelyn who, armed in his fine tournament plate, had ridden his horse to the edge of the uncovered vaults. “There is a smoke pyre,” Joscelyn said, “in the next valley.”

  The Count could hardly bear to leave the wall, but he scrambled up a ladder and stared westwards to where, in the pale sky, a dirty plume of smoke drifted southwards. It seemed to come from just across the nearest ridge. “The English?” the Count asked in wonderment.

  “Who else?” Joscelyn answered. His men-at-arms were at the bottom of the path that climbed to the castle. They were armored and ready. “We could be there in an hour,” Joscelyn said, “and they won’t be expecting us.”

  “Archers,” the Count said warningly, then sneezed and afterwards gasped for breath.

  Father Roubert watched the Count warily. He reckoned the old man was getting a fever, and it would be his own fault for insisting on making this excavation in the cold wind.

  “Archers,” the Count said again, his eyes watering. “You must be cautious. Archers are not to be trifled with.”

  Joscelyn looked exasperated, but it was Father Roubert who answered the Count’s warning. “We know they ride in small parties, my lord, and leave some archers behind to protect their fortress. There may only be a dozen of the wretches over there.”

  “And we may never have another chance like this,” Joscelyn put in.

  “We don’t have many men,” the Count said dubiously.

  And whose fault was that? Joscelyn wondered. He had told his uncle to bring more than thirty men-at-arms, but the old fool had insisted that would be sufficient. Now the Count was staring at a patch of grubby wall uncovered at the end of the vault and letting his fears overwhelm him. “Thirty men will be enough,” Joscelyn insisted, “if the enemy is few.”

  Father Roubert was staring at the smoke. “Is this not the purpose of the fires, my lord?” he inquired. “To let us know when the enemy is near enough to strike?” That was indeed one purpose of the fires, but the Count wished Sir Henri Courtois, his military leader, was with him to offer advice. “And if the enemy party is small,” Father Roubert went on, “then thirty men-at-arms will suffice.”

  The Count reckoned he would have no peace to explore the mysterious wall unless he gave his permission and so he nodded. “But take care!” he ordered his nephew. “Make a reconnaissance first! Remember the advice of Vegetius!” Joscelyn had never heard of Vegetius so would be hard put to remember the man’s advice and the Count might have sensed that for he had a sudden idea. “You’ll take Father Roubert and he’ll tell you whether it is safe to attack or not. Do you understand me, Joscelyn? Father Roubert will advise you and you will take his advice.” That offered two advantages. The first was that the friar was a sensible and intelligent man and so would not let the hot-headed Joscelyn do anything foolish, while second, and better, it would rid the Count of the Dominican’s gloomy presence. “Be back by nightfall,” the Count commanded, “and keep Vegetius in mind. Above all, keep Vegetius in mind!” These last words were called hurriedly as he clambered back down the ladder.

  Joscelyn looked sourly at the friar. He did not like churchmen and he liked Father Roubert even less, but if the friar’s company was the price he must pay for a chance to kill Englishmen, then so be it. “You have a horse, father?” he asked.

  “I do, my lord.”

  “Then fetch it.” Joscelyn turned his destrier and spurred it back to the valley. “I want the archers alive!” he told his men when he reached them. “Alive, so we can share the reward.” And afterwards they would cut off the Englishmen’s damned fingers, take out their eyes and then burn them. That was Joscelyn’s daydream as he led his men westwards. He would have liked to travel fast, to reach the next valley before the English withdrew, but men-at-arms on their way to battle could not move swiftly. Some of the horses, like Joscelyn’s own, were armored with leather and mail, and the weight of the armor, let alone the weight of the riders’ armor, inevitably meant that the destriers had to be walked if they were to be fresh for the charge. A few of the men had squires and those lesser beings led packhorses, which carried cumbersome bundles of lances. Men-at-arms did not gallop to war, but lumbered slow as oxen.

  “You will bear in mind your uncle’s advice, my lord?” Father Roubert remarked to Joscelyn. He spoke to cover his nervousness. The friar was normally a grave and self-contained man, very conscious of his hard-won dignity, but now he found himself in unfamiliar, dangerous, but exciting territory.

  “My uncle’s advice,” Joscelyn responded sourly, “was to heed yours. So tell me, priest, what you know of battle?”

  “I have read Vegetius,” Father Roubert answered stiffly.

  “And who the hell was he?”

  “A Roman, my lord, and still considered the supreme authority on military matters. His treatise is called the Epitoma Rei Militaris, the essence of military things.”

  “And what does this essence recommend?” Joscelyn asked sarcastically.

  “Chiefly, if I remember aright, that you should look to the enemy’s flanks for an opportunity, and that on no account should you attack without a thorough reconnaissance.”

  Joscelyn, his big tournament helmet hanging from his pommel, looked down on the friar’s small mare. “You’re mounted on the lightest horse, father,” he said with amusement, “so you can make the reconnaissance.”

  “Me!” Father Roubert was shocked.

  “Ride ahead, see what the bastards are doing, then come back and tell us. You’re supposed to be giving me advice, aren’t you? How the hell can you do that if you haven’t made a reconnaissance? Isn’t that what your vegetal advises? Not now, you fool!” He called these last words because Father Roubert had obediently kicked his mare ahead. “They’re not up here,” Joscelyn said, “but in the next valley.” He nodded towards the smoke that seemed to be thickening. “So wait till we’re in the trees on the hill’s far side.”

  In fact they did see a handful of horsemen on the bare summit of the ridge, but the riders were far off and they turned and fled as soon as Joscelyn’s men came into view. Coredors, as like as not, Joscelyn reckoned. Everyone had heard how the coredors were haunting the English in hope of earning one of the Count’s rewards for an archer taken alive, though Joscelyn’s view was that the only reward any coredor should ever fetch was a slow hanging.

  The coredors had vanished by the time Joscelyn reached the crest. He could see most of the valley ahead now, could see Masseube to the north and the road reaching south towards the high Pyrenees. The smoke plume was directly in front, but the village the English plundered was hidden by trees and so Joscelyn ordered the friar to ride ahead and, to give him some protection, ordered his two personal men-at-arms to accompany him.

  Joscelyn and the rest of his men had almost reached the valley floor by the time the Dominican returned. Father Roubert was excited. “They did not see us,” he reported, “and can’t know we’re here.”

  “You can be sure of that?” Joscelyn demanded.

  The friar nodded. His dignity had been replaced by a suddenly discovered enthusiasm for warfare. “The road to the village goes through trees, my lord, and is well shielded from view. The trees thin out a hundred paces from the river and the road crosses it by a ford. It’s shallow. We watched some men carry chestnut stakes to the village.”

  “The English didn’t interfere with them?”

  “The English, my lord, are delving into a grave mound in the village. There seemed to be no more than a dozen of them. The village itself is another hundred paces beyond the ford.” Father Roubert was proud of this report which he considered to be careful and accurate, a reconnaissance of which Vegetius himself might have been proud. “You may approach to within two hundred paces of the village,” he concluded, “and arm yourselves in safety before attacking.”

  It was indeed an impressive report and Joscelyn looked quizzically at his two men-a
t-arms who nodded to show they agreed. One of them, a Parisian named Villesisle, grinned. “They’re ready for butchering,” he said.

  “Archers?” Joscelyn asked.

  “We saw two,” Villesisle said.

  Father Roubert was saving the best news till last. “But one of the two, my lord,” he said excitedly, “was the beghard!”

  “The heretic girl?”

  “So God will be with you!” Father Roubert said vehemently.

  Joscelyn smiled. “So your advice, Father Roubert, is what?”

  “Attack!” the Dominican said. “Attack! And God will give us triumph!” He might be a cautious man by nature, but the sight of Genevieve had stirred his soul to battle.

  And when Joscelyn reached the edge of the trees on the valley floor he saw that everything seemed to be exactly as the Dominican had promised. Beyond the river the English, apparently ignorant of the presence of enemies, had set no picquets to guard the road that came down from the ridge and instead were digging into the big mound of earth at the center of the village. Joscelyn could see no more than ten men and the one woman. He dismounted briefly and let his squire tighten the buckles of his armor, then he heaved himself into the saddle again where he pulled on his great tournament helm with its yellow and red plume, leather padding, and cross-shaped eye slits. He pushed his left arm through the loops of his shield, made sure his sword was loose in its scabbard, then reached down for his lance. Made of ash, it was sixteen feet long and painted in a spiral of yellow and red, the colors of his lordship at Béziers. Similar lances had broken the best tourney fighters in Europe, now this one would do God’s work. His men armed themselves with their own lances, some painted with Berat’s colors of orange and white. Their lances were mostly thirteen or fourteen feet long, for none of Berat’s men had the strength to carry a great lance like those Joscelyn used in tournaments. The squires drew their swords. Helmet visors were closed, reducing the world to bright slits of sunlight. Joscelyn’s horse, knowing it was riding to battle, pawed the ground. All was ready, the unsuspecting English were oblivious of the threat and Joscelyn, at long last, was off his uncle’s leash.

  And so, with his men-at-arms tight bunched to either side, and with Father Roubert’s prayer echoing in his head, he charged.

  GASPARD THOUGHT THE HAND of the Lord was on him, for the very first time he attempted to pour the gold into the delicate mold that had once held the wax model of his Mass cup, it worked. He had told his woman, Yvette, that it might take ten or eleven attempts, that he was not even sure he could make the cup for the detail of the filigree was so delicate that he doubted the molten gold would fill every cranny of the mold, but when, with a beating heart, he broke away the fired clay he found that his wax creation had been reproduced almost perfectly. One or two details were lumpish and in some places the gold had failed to make the twist of a leaf or the spine of a thorn, but those defects were soon put right. He filed away the rough edges, then polished the whole cup. That took a week, and when it was done he did not tell Charles Bessières that he had finished, instead he claimed there was still more work to do when in truth he simply could not relinquish the beautiful thing he had made. He reckoned it was the finest piece of goldsmithing ever achieved.

  So he made a lid for the cup. It was conical, like the cover of a font, and at its crown he placed a cross, and about its rim he hung pearls, and on its sloping sides he made the symbols of the four evangelists. A lion for St. Mark, an ox for Luke, and angel for Matthew and an eagle for John. That piece, not quite as delicate as the cup itself, also came sweetly from the mould and he filed and polished it, then assembled the whole thing. The golden cup-holder, the ancient green glass cup itself and the new lid hung with pearls. “Tell the Cardinal,” he told Charles Bessières as the exquisite thing was packed in cloth, straw and boxes, “that the pearls stand for the tears of Christ’s mother.”

  Charles Bessières could not care what they stood for, but he grudgingly acknowledged that the chalice was a beautiful thing. “If my brother approves of it,” he said, “then you’ll be paid and freed.”

  “We can go back to Paris?” Gaspard asked eagerly.

  “You can go where you like,” Charles lied, “but not till I tell you.” He gave his men instructions that Gaspard and Yvette were to be well guarded while he was away, then took the chalice to his brother in Paris.

  The Cardinal, when the cup was unwrapped and the three pieces assembled, clasped his hands in front of his breast and just stared. For a long time he said nothing, then he leaned forward and peered at the ancient glass. “Does it seem to you, Charles,” he asked, “that the cup itself has a tinge of gold?”

  “Haven’t looked,” was the churlish reply.

  The Cardinal carefully removed the lid then lifted the old glass cup from the golden cradle and held it to the light and he saw that Gaspard, in a moment of unwitting genius, had put an almost invisible layer of gold leaf around the cup so that the common glass was given a heavenly sheen of gold. “The real Grail,” he told his brother, “is supposed to turn to gold when the wine of Christ’s blood is added. This would pass for that.”

  “So you like it?”

  The Cardinal reassembled the chalice. “It is gorgeous,” he said reverentially. “It is a miracle.” He stared at it. He had not expected anything half as good as this. It was a wonder, so much so that for a brief instant he even forgot his ambitions for the papal throne. “Perhaps, Charles”— there was awe in his voice now—“perhaps it is the real Grail! Maybe the cup I bought was the true object. Perhaps God guided me to it!”

  “Does that mean,” Charles said, unmoved by the cup’s beauty, “that I can kill Gaspard?”

  “And his woman,” the Cardinal said without removing his gaze from the glorious thing. “Do it, yes, do it. Then you will go south. To Berat, south of Toulouse.”

  “Berat?” Charles had never heard of the place.

  The Cardinal smiled. “The English archer has appeared. I knew he would! The wretched man has taken a small force to Castillon d’Arbizon, which I am told is close to Berat. He is a fruit ripe for the plucking, Charles, so I am sending Guy Vexille to deal with him and I want you, Charles, to be close to Guy Vexille.”

  “You don’t trust him?”

  “Of course I don’t trust him. He pretends to be loyal, but he is not a man who is comfortable serving any master.” The Cardinal lifted the cup again, gazed at it reverentially, then lay it back in the sawdust-filled box in which it had been brought to him. “And you will take this with you.”

  “That!” Charles looked appalled. “What in Christ’s name do I want with that?”

  “It is a heavy responsibility,” the Cardinal said, handing his brother the box, “but legend insists the Cathars possessed the Grail, so where else must it be discovered but close to the last stronghold of the heretics?”

  Charles was confused. “You want me to discover it?”

  The Cardinal went to a prie-dieu and knelt there. “The Holy Father is not a young man,” he said piously. In fact Clement was only fifty-six, just eight years older than the Cardinal, but even so Louis Bessières was racked by the thought that Pope Clement might die and a new successor be appointed before he had a chance to make his claim with the Grail. “We do not have the luxury of time and so I need the Grail.” He paused. “I need a Grail now! But if Vexille knows that Gaspard’s cup exists then he will try to take it from you, so you must kill him when he has done his duty. His duty is to find his cousin, the English archer. So kill Vexille, then make that archer talk, Charles. Peel the skin from his flesh inch by inch, then salt him. He’ll talk, and when he has told you everything he knows about the Grail, kill him.”

  “But we have a Grail,” Charles said, hefting the box.

  “There is a true one, Charles,” the Cardinal said patiently, “and if it exists, and if the Englishman reveals where it is, then we shall not need the one you’re holding, shall we? But if the Englishman is a dry well, then you will a
nnounce that he gave you that Grail. You will bring it to Paris, we shall sing a Te Deum, and in a year or two you and I shall have a new home in Avignon. And then, in due time, we shall move the papacy to Paris and the whole world shall marvel at us.”

  Charles thought about his orders and considered them unnecessarily elaborate. “Why not produce the Grail here?”

  “No one will believe me if I find it in Paris,” the Cardinal said, his eyes fixed on an ivory crucifix hanging on the wall. “They will assume it is a product of my ambition. No, it must come from a far place and rumors of its discovery must run ahead of its coming so that folk kneel in the street to welcome it.”

  Charles understood that. “So why not just kill Vexille now?”

  “Because he has the zeal to find the true Grail and if it exists, I want it. Men know his name is Vexille, and they know his family once possessed the Grail, so if he is involved in its discovery then it will be all the more convincing. And another reason? He’s well born. He can lead men and it will take all his force to prize that Englishman from his lair. Do you think forty-seven knights and men-at-arms will follow you?” The Cardinal had raised Vexille’s force from his tenants, the lords who ruled the lands bequeathed to the Church in hope that prayers would wipe away the sins of the men who granted the land. Those men would cost the Cardinal dear, for the lords would not pay rents for a year now. “You and I are from the gutter, Charles,” the Cardinal said, “and men-at-arms would despise you.”

  “There must be a hundred lords who would seek your Grail,” Charles suggested.