LITMIR.BIZ

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the monk ordered, ‘before I call down a curse onto your black soul.’

      Sir Geoffrey put a finger into a nostril and pulled out something slimy that he flicked towards the monk. ‘You think you frighten me, you one-eyed bastard? You who lost your balls when your hand was chopped off?’ He laughed, then looked back to Thomas. ‘You picked a fight with me, boy, and you didn’t give me a chance to finish it.’

      ‘Not now!’ Brother Michael snapped.

      Sir Geoffrey ignored the monk. ‘Fighting your betters, boy? You can hang for that. No’ – he shuddered, then pointed a long bony finger at Thomas – ‘you will hang for that! You hear me? You will hang for it.’ He spat at Thomas, then turned his roan horse and spurred it back down the line.

      ‘How come you know the Scarecrow?’ Brother Michael asked.

      ‘We just met.’

      ‘An evil creature,’ Brother Michael said, making the sign of the cross, ‘born under a waning moon when a storm was blowing.’ He was still watching the Scarecrow. ‘Men say that Sir Geoffrey owes money to the devil himself. He had to pay a ransom to Douglas of Liddesdale and he borrowed deep from the bankers to do it. His manor, his fields, everything he owns is in danger if he can’t pay, and even if he makes a fortune today he’ll just throw it away at dice. The Scarecrow’s a fool, but a dangerous one.’ He turned his one eye on Thomas. ‘Did you really pick a fight with him?’

      ‘He wanted to rape my woman.’

      ‘Aye, that’s our Scarecrow. So be careful, young man, because he doesn’t forget slights and he never forgives them.’

      The English lords must have come to some agreement for they reached out their mailed fists and touched metal knuckle on metal knuckle, then Lord Outhwaite turned his horse back towards his men. ‘John! John!’ he called to the captain of his archers. ‘We’ll not wait for them to make up their minds,’ he said as he dismounted, ‘but be provocative.’ It seemed Brother Michael’s prognostication was right; the archers would be sent forward to annoy the Scots. The plan was to enrage them with arrows and so spur them into a hasty attack.

      A squire rode Lord Outhwaite’s horse back to the walled pasture as the Archbishop of York rode his destrier out in front of the army. ‘God will help you!’ he called to the men of the central division that he commanded. ‘The Scots fear us!’ he shouted. ‘They know that with God’s help we will make many children fatherless in their blighted land! They stand and watch us because they fear us. So we must go to them.’ That sentiment brought a cheer. The Archbishop raised a hand to silence his men. ‘I want the archers to go forward,’ he called, ‘only the archers! Sting them! Kill them! And God bless you all. God bless you mightily!’

      So the archers would begin the battle. The Scots were stubbornly refusing to move in hope that the English would make the attack, for it was much easier to defend ground than assault a formed enemy, but now the English archers would go forward to goad, sting and harass the enemy until they either ran away or, more likely, advanced to take revenge.

      Thomas had already selected his best arrow. It was new, so new that the green-tinted glue that was pasted about the thread holding the feathers in place was still tacky, but it had a breasted shaft, one that was slightly wider behind the head and then tapered away towards the feathers. Such a shaft would hit hard and it was a lovely straight piece of ash, a third as long again as Thomas’s arm, and Thomas would not waste it even though his opening shot would be at very long range.

      It would be a long shot for the Scottish King was at the rear of the big central sheltron of his army, but it would not be an impossible shot for the black bow was huge and Thomas was young, strong and accurate.

      ‘God be with you,’ Brother Michael said.

      ‘Aim true!’ Lord Outhwaite called.

      ‘God speed your arrows!’ the Archbishop of York shouted.

      The drummers beat louder, the Scots jeered and the archers of England advanced.

      Bernard de Taillebourg already knew much of what the old monk told him, but now that the story was flowing he did not interrupt. It was the tale of a family that had been lords of an obscure county in southern France. The county was called Astarac and it lay close to the Cathar lands and, in time, became infected with the heresy. ‘The false teaching spread,’ Brother Collimore had said, ‘like a murrain. From the inland sea to the ocean, and northwards into Burgundy.’ Father de Taillebourg knew all this, but he had said nothing, just let the old man go on describing how, when the Cathars were burned out of the land and the fires of their deaths had sent the smoke pouring to heaven to tell God and His angels that the true religion had been restored to the lands between France and Aragon, the Vexilles, among the last of the nobility to be contaminated by the Cathar evil, had fled to the farthest corners of Christendom. ‘But before they left,’ Brother Collimore said, gazing up at the white painted arch of the ceiling, ‘they took the treasures of the heretics for safekeeping.’

      ‘And the Grail was among them?’

      ‘So they said, but who knows?’ Brother Collimore turned his head and frowned at the Dominican. ‘If they possessed the Grail, why did it not help them? I have never understood that.’ He closed his eyes. Sometimes, when the old man was pausing to draw breath and almost seemed asleep, de Taillebourg would look through the window to see the two armies on the far hill. They did not move, though the noise they made was like the crackling and roaring of a great fire. The roaring was the noise of men’s voices and the crackling was the drums and the twin sounds rose and fell with the vagaries of the wind gusting in the rocky defile above the River Wear. Father de Taillebourg’s servant still stood in the doorway where he was half hidden by one of many piles of undressed stone that were stacked in the open space between the castle and the cathedral. Scaffolding hid the cathedral’s nearest tower and small boys, eager to get a glimpse of the fighting, were scrambling up the web of lashed poles. The masons had abandoned their work to watch the two armies.

      Now, after questioning why the Grail had not helped the Vexilles, Brother Collimore did fall into a brief sleep and de Taillebourg crossed to his black-dressed servant. ‘Do you believe him?’

      The servant shrugged and said nothing.

      ‘Has anything surprised you?’ de Taillebourg asked.

      ‘That Father Ralph has a son,’ the servant answered. ‘That was new to me.’

      ‘We must speak with that son,’ the Dominican said grimly, then turned back because the old monk had woken.

      ‘Where was I?’ Brother Collimore asked. A small trickle of spittle ran from a corner of his lips.

      ‘You were wondering why the Grail did not help the Vexilles,’ Bernard de Taillebourg reminded him.

      ‘It should have done,’ the old monk said. ‘If they possessed the Grail why did they not become powerful?’

      Father de Taillebourg smiled. ‘Suppose,’ he said to the old monk, ‘that the infidel Muslims were to gain possession of the Grail, do you think God would grant them its power? The Grail is a great treasure, brother, the greatest of all the treasures upon the earth, but it is not greater than God.’

      ‘No,’ Brother Collimore agreed.

      ‘And if God does not approve of the Grail-keeper then the Grail will be powerless.’

      ‘Yes,’ Brother Collimore acknowledged.

      ‘You say the Vexilles fled?’

      ‘They fled the Inquisitors,’ Brother Collimore said with a sly glance at de Taillebourg, ‘and one branch of the family came here to England where they did some service to the King. Not our present King, of course,’ the old monk made clear, ‘but his great-grandfather, the last Henry.’

      ‘What service?’ de Taillebourg asked.

      ‘They gave the King a hoof from St George’s horse.’ The monk spoke as though such things

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