Count corrected the friar.
‘He would do better to look to his soul,’ Father Roubert said sourly.
‘He has no soul, he’s a soldier.’
‘A tournament soldier,’ the friar said scornfully.
The Count shrugged. ‘It is not enough to be wealthy, father. A man must also be strong and Joscelyn is my strong arm.’ The Count said it forcibly, though in truth he was not sure that his nephew was the best heir for Berat, but if the Count had no son then the fief must pass to one of his nephews and Joscelyn was probably the best of a bad brood. Which made it all the more important to have an heir. ‘I asked you here,’ he said, choosing to use the word ‘asked’ rather than ‘ordered’, ‘because you might have some insight into His Eminence’s interest.’
The friar looked at the Cardinal’s letter again. ‘Muniments,’ he said.
‘I noticed that word too,’ the Count said. He moved away from the open window. ‘You’re causing a draught, father.’
Father Roubert reluctantly replaced the horn screen. The Count, he knew, had deduced from his books that for a man to be fertile he must be warm and the friar wondered how folk in cold northern countries ever managed to breed. ‘So the Cardinal isn’t interested in your books,’ the Dominican said, ‘but only in the county’s records?’
‘So it would seem. Two hundred years of tax rolls?’ The Count chuckled. ‘Brother Jerome will enjoy deciphering those.’
The friar said nothing for a while. The sound of clashing swords echoed from the castle’s curtain wall as the Count’s nephew and his cronies practised their weapons in the yard. Let Lord Joscelyn inherit here, the friar thought, and these books and parchments would all be put to the flames. He moved closer to the hearth in which, though it was not cold outside, a great fire burned and he thought of the girl who must be burned to death next morning in Castillon d’Arbizon. She was a heretic, a foul creature, the devil’s plaything, and he remembered her agony as he had tortured the confession from her. He wanted to see her burn and hear the screams that would announce her arrival at the gates of hell, and so the sooner he answered the Count the sooner he could leave.
‘You’re hiding something, Roubert,’ the Count prompted him before the friar could speak.
The friar hated being called by his simple Christian name, a reminder that the Count had known him as a child and had paid for his elevation. ‘I hide nothing,’ he protested.
‘So tell me why a cardinal archbishop would send a monk to Berat?’
The friar turned from the fire. ‘Do I need to remind you,’ he said, ‘that the county of Astarac is now a part of your domain?’
The Count stared at Father Roubert, then realized what the friar was saying. ‘Oh, dear God, no,’ the Count said. He made the sign of the cross and returned to his chair. He peered at the chessboard, scratched an itch beneath his woollen cap and turned back to the Dominican. ‘Not that old story?’
‘There have been rumours,’ Father Roubert said loftily. ‘There was a member of our order, a fine man, Bernard de Taillebourg, who died this year in Brittany. He was pursuing something, we were never told what, but the rumours say that he made common cause with a member of the Vexille family.’
‘Good Christ Almighty,’ the Count said. ‘Why didn’t you tell me this before?’
‘You wish me to bother you with every vaporous story that gets told in the taverns?’ Father Roubert retorted.
The Count did not answer. Instead he was thinking of the Vexilles. The old Counts of Astarac. They had been powerful once, great lords of wide lands, but the family had become entangled with the Cathar heresy and when the Church burned that plague from the land the Vexille family had fled to its last stronghold, the castle of Astarac, and there they had been defeated. Most had been killed, but some had succeeded in running away, even, the Count knew, as far as England, while ruined Astarac, home to ravens and foxes, had been swallowed into the fiefdom of Berat and with the ruined castle had come a persistent story that the defeated Vexilles had once held the fabled treasures of the Cathars in their keeping, and that one of those treasures was the Holy Grail itself. And the reason, of course, that Father Roubert had made no mention of the new stories was because he wanted to find the Grail before anyone else discovered it. Well, the Count would forgive him that. He looked across the wide room. ‘So the Cardinal Archbishop believes the Grail will be found among those things?’ He gestured at his books and papers.
‘Louis Bessières,’ the friar said, ‘is a greedy man, a violent man and an ambitious man. He will turn the earth upside down to find the Grail.’
The Count understood then. Understood the pattern of his life. ‘There was a story, wasn’t there,’ he mused aloud, ‘that the keeper of the Grail would be cursed until he gave the cup back to God?’
‘Stories,’ Father Roubert sneered.
‘And if the Grail is here, father, even if it is hidden, then I am its keeper.’
‘If,’ the Dominican sneered again.
‘And so God cursed me,’ the Count said in wonderment, ‘because all unknowingly I hold his treasure and have not valued it.’ He shook his head. ‘He has withheld a son from me because I have withheld his son’s cup from him.’ He shot a surprisingly harsh look at the young friar. ‘Does it exist, father?’
Father Roubert hesitated, then gave a reluctant nod. ‘It is possible.’
‘Then we had best give the monk permission to search,’ the Count said, ‘but we must also make sure that we find what he is looking for before he does. You will go through the muniments, Father Roubert, and only pass on to Brother Jerome those records that do not mention treasures or relics or grails. You understand?’
‘I will seek the permission of my regent to perform that duty,’ Father Roubert responded stiffly.
‘You will seek nothing but the Grail!’ The Count slapped the arm of his chair. ‘You will start now, Roubert, and you will not stop till you have read every parchment on those shelves. Or would you rather I evicted your mother, your brothers and sisters from their houses?’
Father Roubert was a proud man and he bridled, but he was not a foolish man and so, after a pause, he bowed. ‘I will search the documents, my lord,’ he said humbly.
‘Starting now,’ the Count insisted.
‘Indeed, my lord,’ Father Roubert said, and sighed because he would not see the girl burn.
‘And I will help you,’ the Count said enthusiastically. Because no cardinal archbishop would take from Berat the holiest treasure on earth or in heaven. The Count would find it first.
The Dominican friar arrived at Castillon d’Arbizon in the autumn dusk, just as the watchman was shutting the western gate. A fire had been kindled in a big brazier that stood inside the gate’s arch to warm the town’s watchmen on what promised to be the first chill night of the waning year. Bats were flickering above the town’s half-repaired walls and about the tower of the high castle which crowned Castillon d’Arbizon’s steep hill.
‘God be with you, father,’ one of the watchmen said as he paused to let the tall friar through the gate, but the watchman
