The Grail Quest 1 - Harlequin - Bernard Cornwell

Yes," Thomas agreed.

So what will you do?" she asked.

Thomas did not speak for a while. He was thinking of the penance he had been given by Father Hobbe. I suppose one day I must find the man who killed my father,“ he said after a while. But what if he is the devil?” she asked seriously. Then I shall wear garlic,“ Thomas said lightly, and pray to Saint Guinefort.”

She looked at the darkening water. Did Saint Augustine really say that thing?"

Nondum amabam, et amare amabam?“ Thomas said. Yes, he did.” I know how he felt," Eleanor said, and rested her head on his shoulder.

Thomas did not move. He had a choice. Follow the lance or take his black bow back to the army. In truth he did not know what he should do. But Eleanor's body was warm against his and it was comforting and that, for the moment, was enough and so, for the moment, he would stay.

Next morning Sir Guillaume, escorted now by a half-dozen men-at-arms, took Thomas to the Abbaye aux Hommes. A crowd of pet-itioners stood at the gates, wanting food and clothing that the monks did not have, though the abbey itself had escaped the worst of the plundering because it had been the quarters of the King and of the Prince of Wales. The monks themselves had fled at the approach of the English army. Some had died on the ile Saint Jean, but most had gone south to a brother house and among those was Brother Germain who, when Sir Guillaume arrived, had just returned from his brief exile.

Brother Germain was tiny, ancient and bent, a wisp of a man with white hair, myopic eyes and delicate hands with which he was trimming a goose quill.

The English,“ the old man said, use these feathers for their arrows. We use them for God's word.” Brother Germain, Thomas was told, had been in charge of the monastery's scriptorium for more than thirty years. In the course of copying books,“ the monk explained, one discovers knowledge whether one wishes it or not. Most of it is quite useless, of course. How is Mordecai? He lives?” He lives,“ Sir Guillaume said, and sends you this.” He put a clay pot, sealed with wax, on the sloping surface of the writing desk. The pot slid down until Brother Germain trapped it and pushed it into a pouch. A salve,“ Sir Guillaume explained to Thomas, for Brother Germain's joints.”

Which ache,“ the monk said, and only Mordecai can relieve them Tis a pity he will burn in hell, but in heaven, I am assured, I shall need no ointments. Who is this?” He peered at Thomas. A friend,“ Sir Guillaume said, who brought me this.” He was carrying Thomas's bow, which he now laid across the desk and tapped the silver plate. Brother Germain stooped to inspect the badge and Thomas heard a sharp intake of breath.

The yale," Brother Germain said. He pushed the bow away, then blew the scraps from his sharpened quill off the desk. The beast was introduced by the heralds in the last century. Back then, of course, there was real scholarship in the world. Not like today. I get young men from Paris whose heads are stuffed with wool, yet they claim to have doctorates.

He took a sheet of scrap parchment from a shelf, laid it on the desk and dipped his quill in a pot of vermilion ink. He let a glistening drop fall onto the parchment and then, with the skill gained in a lifetime, drew the ink out of the drop in quick strokes. He hardly seemed to be taking notice of what he was doing, but Thomas, to his amazement, saw a yale taking shape on the parchment. The beast is said to be mythical,“ Brother Germain said, flicking the quill to make a tusk, and maybe it is. Most heraldic beasts seem to be inventions. Who has seen a unicorn?” He put another drop of ink on the parchment, paused a heartbeat, then began on the beast's raised paws. There is, however, a notion that the yale exists in Ethiopia. I could not say, not having travelled east of Rouen, nor have I met any traveller who has been there, if indeed Ethiopia even exists.“ He frowned. The yale is mentioned by Pliny, however, which suggests it was known to the Romans, though God knows they were a credulous race. The beast is said to possess both horns and tusks, which seems extravagant, and is usually depicted as being silver with yellow spots. Alas, our pigments were stolen by the English, but they left us the vermilion which, I suppose, was kind of them. It comes from cinnabar, I'm told. Is that a plant? Father Jacques, rest his soul, always claimed it grows in the Holy Land and perhaps it does. Do I detect that you are limping, Sir Guillaume?” A bastard English archer put an arrow in my leg,“ Sir Guillaume said, and I pray nightly that his soul will roast in hell.” You should, instead, give thanks that he was inaccurate. Why do you bring me an English war bow decorated with a yale?“ Because I thought it would interest you,” Sir Guillaume said, and because my young friend here,“ he touched Thomas's shoulder, wants to know about the Vexilles.”

He would do much better to forget them," Brother Germain grumbled.

He was perched on a tall chair and now peered about the room where a dozen young monks tidied the mess left by the monastery's English occupiers. Some of them chattered as they worked, provok-ing a frown from Brother Germain. This is not Caen marketplace!“ he snapped. If you want to gossip, go to the lavatories. I wish I could. Ask Mordecai if he has an unguent for the bowels, would you?” He glowered about the room for an instant, then struggled to pick up the bow that he had propped against the desk. He looked intently at the yale for an instant, then put the bow down. There was always a rumour that a branch of the Vexille family went to England. This seems to confirm it."

Who are they?" Thomas asked.

Brother Germain seemed irritated by the direct question, or per-haps the whole subject of the Vexilles made him uncomfortable. They were the rulers of Astarac,“ he said, a county on the borders of Languedoc and the Agenais. That, of course, should tell you all you need to know of them.”

It tells me nothing," Thomas confessed.

Then you probably have a doctorate from Paris!“ The old man chuckled at this jest. The Counts of Astarac, young man, were Cathars. Southern France was infested by that damned heresy, and Astarac was at the centre of the evil.” He made the sign of the cross with fingers deep-stained by pigments. Habere non potest,“ he said solemnly, Deum patrem qui ecciesiam non habet matrem.” Saint Cyprian,“ Thomas said. He cannot have God as his father who does not have the Church as his mother. ”

I see you are not from Paris after all,“ Brother Germain said. The Cathars rejected the Church, looking for salvation within their own dark souls. What would become of the Church if we all did that? If we all pursued our own whims? If God is within us then we need no Church and no Holy Father to lead us to His mercy, and that notion is the most pernicious of heresies, and where did it lead the Cathars? To a life of dissipation, of fleshly lust, of pride and of perversion. They denied the divinity of Christ!” Brother Germain made the sign of the cross again.

And the Vexilles were Cathars?" Sir Guillaume prompted the old man.

I suspect they were devil worshippers,“ Brother Germain retorted, but certainly the Counts of Astarac protected the Cathars, they and a dozen other lords. They were called the dark lords and very few of them were Perfects. The Perfects were the sect leaders, the heresiarchs, and they abstained from wine, intercourse and meat, and no Vexille would willingly abandon those three joys. But the Cathars allowed such sinners to be among their ranks and promised them the joys of heaven if they recanted before their deaths. The dark lords liked such a promise and, when the heresy was assailed by the Church, they fought bitterly.” He shook his head. This was a hundred years ago! The Holy Father and the King of France destroyed the Cathars, and Astarac was one of the last fortresses to fall. The fight was dreadful, the dead innumerable, but the heresiarchs and the dark lords were finally scotched.“ Yet some escaped?” Sir Guillaume suggested gently. Brother Germain was silent for a while, gazing at the drying vermilion ink. There was a story,“ he said, that some of the Cathar lords did survive, and that they took their riches to countries all across Europe. There is even a rumour that the heresy yet survives, hidden in the lands where Burgundy and the Italian states meet.” He made the sign of the cross. I think a part of the Vexille family went to England, to hide there, for it was in England, Sir Guillaume, that you found the lance of Saint George. Vexille . .“ He said the name thoughtfully. It derives, of course, from vexillaire, a standard-bearer, and it is said that an early Vexille discovered the lance while on the crusades and thereafter carried it as a standard. It was certainly a symbol of power in those old days. Myself? I am sceptical of these relics. The abbot assures me he has seen three foreskins of the infant Jesus and even I, who hold Him blessed above all things, doubt He was so richly endowed, but I have asked some questions about this lance. There is a legend attached to it. It is said that the man who carries the lance into battle cannot be defeated. Mere legend, of course, but belief in such nonsense inspires the ignorant, and there are few more ignorant than soldiers. What troubles me most, though, is their purpose.”

Whose purpose?" Thomas asked.

There is a story,“ Brother Germain said, ignoring the question, that before the fall of the last heretic fortresses, the surviving dark lords made an oath. They knew the war was lost, they knew their strongholds must fall and that the Inquisition and the forces of God would destroy their people, and so they made an oath to visit vengeance on their enemies. One day, they swore, they would bring down the Throne of France and the Holy Mother Church, and to do it they would use the power of their holiest relics.” The lance of Saint George?" Thomas asked.

That too," Brother Germain said.

That too?“ Sir Guillaume repeated the words in a puzzled tone. Brother Germain dipped his quill and put another glistening drop of ink on the parchment. Then, deftly, he finished his copy of the badge on Thomas's bow. The yale,” he said, I have seen before, but the badge you showed me is different. The beast is holding a chalice. But not any chalice, Sir Guillaume. You are right, the bow interests me, and frightens me, for the yale is holding the Grail. The holy, blessed and most precious Grail. It was always rumoured that the Cathars possessed the Grail. There is a tawdry lump of green glass in Genoa Cathedral that is said to be the Grail, but I doubt our dear Lord drank from such a bauble. No, the real Grail exists, and whoever holds it possesses power above all men on earth.“ He put down the quill. I fear, Sir Guillaume, that the dark lords want their revenge. They gather their strength. But they hide still and the Church has not yet taken notice. Nor will it until the danger is obvious, and by then it will be too late.” Brother Germain lowered his head so that Thomas could only see the bald pink patch among the white hair. It is all prophesied,“ the monk said; it is all in the books.”

What books?" Sir Guillaume asked.

Et confortabitur rex austri et de principibus eius praeva/ebit super eum," Brother Germain said softly.

Sir Guillaume looked quizzically at Thomas. And the King from the south will be mighty,“ Thomas reluctantly translated, but one of his princes will be stronger than him.”

The Cathars are of the south,“ Brother Germain said, and the prophet Daniel foresaw it all.” He raised his pigment-stained hands. The fight will be terrible, for the soul of the world is at stake, and they will use any weapon, even a woman. Filiaque regis austri veniet ad regem aquilonis facere amicitiam."

The daughter of the King of the south,“ Thomas said,'s hall come to the King of the north and make a treaty.”

Brother Germain heard the distaste in Thomas's voice. You don't believe it?“ he hissed. Why do you think we keep the scriptures from the ignorant? They contain all sorts of prophecies, young man, and each of them given direct to us by God, but such knowledge is confusing to the unlearned. Men go mad when they know too much.” He made the sign of the cross. I thank God I shall be dead soon and taken to the bliss above while you must struggle with this darkness."

Thomas walked to the window and watched two wagons of grain being unloaded by novices. Sir Guillaume's men-at-arms were play-ing dice in the cloister. That was real, he thought, not some babbling prophet. His father had ever warned him against prophecy. It drives men's minds awry, he had said, and was that why his own mind had gone astray?

The lance,“ Thomas said, trying to cling to fact instead of fancy, was taken to England by the Vexille family. My father was one of them, but he fell out with the family and he stole the lance and hid it in his church. He was killed there, and at his death he told me it was his brother's son who did it. I think it is that man, my cousin, who called himself the Harlequin.” He turned to look at Brother Germain. My father was a Vexille, but he was no heretic. He was a sinner, yes, but he struggled against his sin, he hated his own father, and he was a loyal son of the Church.“ He was a priest,” Sir Guillaume explained to the monk. And you are his son?“ Brother Germain asked in a disapproving tone. The other monks had abandoned their tidying and were listen-ing avidly. I am a priest's son,” Thomas said, and a good Christian.“ So the family discovered where the lance was hidden,” Sir Guil-laume took up the story, and hired me to retrieve it. But forgot to pay me.

Brother Germain appeared not to have heard. He was staring at Thomas. You are English?"

The bow is mine," Thomas acknowledged.

So you are a Vexille?"

Thomas shrugged. It would seem so.

Then you are one of the dark lords,“ Brother Germain said. Thomas shook his head. I am a Christian,” he said firmly. Then you have a God-given duty," the small man said with sur-prising force, which is to finish the work that was left undone a hundred years ago. Kill them all! Kill them! And kill the woman. You hear me, boy? Kill the daughter of the King of the south before she seduces France to heresy and wickedness.

If we can even find the Vexilles,“ Sir Guillaume said dubiously, and Thomas noted the word we”. They don't display their badge. I doubt they use the name Vexille. They hide."

But they have the lance now,“ Brother Germain said, and they will use it for the first of their vengeances. They will destroy France, and in the chaos that ensues, they will attack the Church.” He moaned, as if he was in physical pain. You must take away their power, and their power is the Grail."

So it was not just the lance that Thomas must save. To Father Hobbe's charge had been added all of Christendom. He wanted to laugh. Catharism had died a hundred years before, scourged and burned and dug out of the land like couch grass grubbed from a field! Dark lords, daughters of kings and princes of darkness were figments of the troubadours, not the business of archers. Except that when he looked at Sir Guillaume he saw that the Frenchman was not mocking the task. He was staring at a crucifix hanging on the scriptorium wall and mou thing a silent prayer. God help me, Thomas thought, God help me, but I am being asked to do what all the great knights of Arthur's round table failed to do: to find the Grail. Philip of Valois, King of France, ordered every Frenchman of mili-tary age to gather at Rouen. Demands went to his vassals and appeals were carried to his allies. He had expected the walls of Caen to hold the English for weeks, but the city had fallen in a day and the panicked survivors were spreading across northern France with terrible stories of devils unleashed.