LITMIR.BIZ

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on cushions that they laid before the King, then prostrated themselves in front of the wooden platform where the King and Queen of England and the great magnates of their realm were seated. The six men pleaded for their lives, but Edward was angry. They had defied him, and so the executioner was summoned, but again his great lords argued that he invited reprisals, and the Queen herself knelt to her husband and begged that the six men be spared. Edward growled, paused while the six lay motionless beneath the dais, then let them live.

      Food was taken to the starving citizens, but no other mercy was shown. They were evicted, allowed to take nothing except the clothes they wore and even those were searched to ensure that no coins or jewels were being smuggled past the English lines. An empty town, with houses for eight thousand people, with warehouses and shops and taverns and docks and a citadel and moats, belonged to England. ‘A doorway into France,’ the Earl of Northampton enthused. He had taken a house that had belonged to one of the six, a man who now wandered Picardy like a beggar with his family. It was a lavish stone house beneath the citadel with a view of the town quay that was now crowded with English ships. ‘We’ll fill the town with good English folk,’ the Earl said. ‘You want to live here, Thomas?’

      ‘No, sire,’ Thomas said.

      ‘Nor me,’ the Earl admitted. ‘A pig sty in a swamp, that’s what it is. Still, it’s ours. So what do you want, young Thomas?’

      It was morning, three days after the town’s surrender, and already the confiscated wealth of Calais was being distributed to the victors. The Earl had found himself even richer than he expected, for the great chest Thomas had brought from Brittany was filled with gold and silver coins captured in Charles of Blois’s camp after the battle outside La Roche-Derrien. One-third of that belonged to Thomas’s lord and the Earl’s men had counted the coins, setting aside a third of the Earl’s share for the King.

      Thomas had told his story. How, on the Earl’s instructions, he had gone to England to search his dead father’s past for a clue to the Grail. He had found nothing except a book in which his father, a priest, had written about the Grail, but Father Ralph had wits that wandered and dreams that seemed real and Thomas had learned nothing from the writings, which had been taken from him by the Dominican who had tortured him. But the book had been copied before the Dominican took it and now, in the Earl’s new sunlit chamber above the quay, a young English priest tried to make sense of the copy.

      ‘What I want,’ Thomas told the Earl, ‘is to lead archers.’

      ‘God knows if there’ll be anywhere to lead them,’ the Earl responded gloomily. ‘Edward talks of attacking Paris, but it won’t happen. There’s going to be a truce, Thomas. We’ll plead eternal friendship, then go home and sharpen our swords.’ There was the crackle of parchment as the priest took up a new page. Father Ralph had written in Latin, Greek, Hebrew and French, and evidently the priest understood them all. He made an occasional note on a scrap of parchment as he read. Barrels of beer were being unloaded on the quay, the rumble of the great tuns sounding like thunder. The flag of England’s King, leopards and fleur-de-lis, flew from the captured citadel above the French standard, which was hung upside down as a mark of derision. Two men, Thomas’s companions, stood at the edge of the room, waiting for the Earl to include them. ‘God knows what employment there’ll be for archers,’ the Earl went on, ‘unless it’s guarding fortress walls. Is that what you want?’

      ‘It’s all I’m good for, my lord. Shooting a bow.’ Thomas spoke in Norman French, the language of England’s aristocracy and the language his father had taught him. ‘And I have money, my lord.’ He meant that he could now recruit archers, equip them with horses and take them on the Earl’s service, which would cost the Earl nothing, but the Earl could then take one-third of everything they plundered.

      That was how Will Skeat, common born, had made his name. The Earl liked such men, profited from them, and he nodded approvingly. ‘But lead them where?’ he asked. ‘I hate truces.’

      The young priest intervened from his table by the window. ‘The King would prefer it if the Grail were found.’

      ‘His name’s John Buckingham,’ the Earl said of the priest, ‘and he’s Chamberlain of the Receipt of the Exchequer, which may not sound much to you, young Thomas, but it means he serves the King and he’ll probably be Archbishop of Canterbury before he’s thirty.’

      ‘Hardly, my lord,’ the priest said.

      ‘And of course the King wants the Grail found,’ the Earl said, ‘we all want that. I want to see the damn thing in Westminster Abbey! I want the King of damned France crawling on his bloody knees to say prayers to it. I want pilgrims from all Christendom bringing us their gold. For God’s sake, Thomas, does the bloody thing exist? Did your father have it?’

      ‘I don’t know, my lord,’ Thomas said.

      ‘Much bloody use you are,’ the Earl grumbled.

      John Buckingham looked at his notes. ‘You have a cousin, Guy Vexille?’

      ‘Yes,’ Thomas said.

      ‘And he seeks the Grail?’

      ‘By seeking me,’ Thomas said. ‘And I don’t know where it is.’

      ‘But he was searching for the Grail before he knew you existed,’ the young priest pointed out, ‘which suggests to me that he possesses some knowledge denied to us. I would advise, my lord, that we seek this Guy Vexille.’

      ‘We’d be two dogs chasing each other’s tails,’ Thomas put in sourly.

      The Earl waved Thomas to silence. The priest looked back at his notes. ‘And, opaque though these writings are,’ he said disapprovingly, ‘there is one thread of light. They seem to confirm that the Grail was at Astarac. That it was hidden there.’

      ‘And taken away again!’ Thomas protested.

      ‘If you lose something valuable,’ Buckingham said patiently, ‘where do you begin your search? At the place where it was last seen. Where is Astarac?’

      ‘Gascony,’ Thomas said, ‘in the fief of Berat.’

      ‘Ah!’ the Earl said, but then was silent.

      ‘And have you been to Astarac?’ Buckingham asked. He might have been young, but he had an authority that came from more than his job with the King’s Exchequer.

      ‘No.’

      ‘Then I suggest you go,’ the priest said, ‘and see what you can learn. And if you make enough noise in your searching then your cousin may well come looking for you, and you can find him and discover what he knows.’ He smiled, as if to suggest that he had solved the problem.

      There was silence except that one of the Earl’s hunting dogs scratched itself in a corner of the room and on the quays a sailor let loose a stream of profanities that might have brought a blush to the devil’s face. ‘I can’t capture Guy by myself,’ Thomas protested, ‘and Berat offers no allegiance to our King.’

      ‘Officially,’ Buckingham said, ‘Berat offers allegiance to the Count of Toulouse, which today means the King of France. The Count of Berat is definitely an enemy.’

      ‘No truce is signed yet,’ the Earl offered hesitantly.

      ‘And won’t be for days, I suspect,’ Buckingham agreed.

      The Earl looked at Thomas. ‘And you want archers?’

      ‘I’d like Will Skeat’s men, sire.’

      ‘And no doubt they’d serve you,’ the Earl said, ‘but you can’t lead men-at-arms, Thomas.’ He meant that Thomas, not nobly born and still young, might have the authority to command archers, but men-at-arms, who considered themselves of higher rank, would resent his leadership. Will Skeat, worse born than Thomas, had managed it, but Will had been much older and far more experienced.

      ‘I can lead men-at-arms,’ one of the two men by the wall announced.

      Thomas

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