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 praevalebit 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, ‘shall 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 playing 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 listening avidly.
‘I am a priest’s son,’ Thomas said, ‘and a good Christian.’
‘So the family discovered where the lance was hidden,’ Sir Guillaume 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 surprising 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 mouthing 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 military 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.
Rouen, nestled in a great loop of the Seine, filled with warriors. Thousands of Genoese crossbowmen came by galley, beaching their ships on the river’s bank and thronging the city’s taverns, while knights and men-at-arms arrived from Anjou and Picardy, from Alençon and Champagne, from Maine, Touraine and Berry. Every blacksmith’s shop became an armoury, every house a barracks and every tavern a brothel. More men arrived, until the city could scarce contain them, and tents had to be set up in the fields south of the city. Wagons crossed the bridge, loaded with hay and newly harvested grain from the rich farmlands north of the river, while from the Seine’s southern bank came rumours. The English had taken Evreux, or perhaps it was Bernay? Smoke had been seen at Lisieux, and archers were swarming through the forest of Brotonne. A nun in Louviers had a dream in which the dragon killed St George. King Philip ordered the woman brought to Rouen, but she had a harelip, a hunchback and a stammer, and when she was presented to the King she proved unable to recount the dream, let alone confide God’s strategy to His Majesty. She just shuddered and wept and the King dismissed her angrily, but took consolation from the bishop’s astrologer who said Mars was in the ascendant and that meant victory was certain.
Rumour said the English were marching on Paris, then another rumour claimed they were going south to protect their territories in Gascony. It was said that every person in Caen had died, that the castle was rubble; then a story went about that the English themselves were dying of a sickness. King Philip, ever a nervous man, became petulant, demanding news, but his advisers persuaded their irritable master that wherever the English were they
