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 were commonplace. ‘A hoof set in gold and capable of working miracles. At least the King believed it did for his son was cured of a fever by being touched with the hoof. I am told the hoof is still in Westminster Abbey.’
The family had been rewarded with land in Cheshire, Collimore went on, and if they were heretics they did not show it, but lived like any other noble family. Their downfall, he said, had come at the beginning of the present reign when the young King’s mother, aided by the Mortimer family, had tried to keep her son from taking power. The Vexilles had sided with the Queen and when she lost they had fled back to the continent. ‘All of them except one son,’ Brother Collimore said, ‘the eldest son, and that was Ralph, of course. Poor Ralph.’
‘But if his family had fled back to France, why did you treat him?’ de Taillebourg asked, puzzlement marring the face that had blood scabs on the abrasions where he had beaten himself against the stone that morning. ‘Why not just execute him as a traitor?’
‘He had taken holy orders,’ Collimore protested, ‘he could not be executed! Besides, it was known he hated his father and he had declared himself for the King.’
‘So he was not all mad,’ de Taillebourg put in drily.
‘He also possessed money,’ Collimore went on, ‘he was noble and he claimed to know the secret of the Vexilles.’
‘The Cathar treasures?’
‘But the demon was in him even then! He declared himself a bishop and preached wild sermons in the London streets. He said he would lead a new crusade to drive the infidel from Jerusalem and promised that the Grail would ensure success.’
‘So you locked him up?’
‘He was sent to me,’ Brother Collimore said reprovingly, ‘because it was known that I could defeat the demons.’ He paused, remembering. ‘In my time I scourged hundreds of them! Hundreds!’
‘But you did not fully cure Ralph Vexille?’
The monk shook his head. ‘He was like a man spurred and whipped by God so that he wept and screamed and beat himself till the blood ran.’ Brother Collimore, unaware that he could have been describing de Taillebourg, shuddered. ‘And he was haunted by women too. I think we never cured him of that, but if we did not drive the demons clean out of him we did manage to make them hide so deep that they rarely dared show themselves.’
‘Was the Grail a dream given to him by demons?’ the Dominican asked.
‘That was what we wanted to know,’ Brother Collimore replied.
‘And what answer did you find?’
‘I told my masters that Father Ralph lied. That he had invented the Grail. That there was no truth in his madness. And then, when his demons no longer made him a nuisance, he was sent to a parish in the far south where he could preach to the gulls and to the seals. He no longer called himself a lord, he was simply Father Ralph, and we sent him away to be forgotten.’
‘To be forgotten?’ de Taillebourg repeated. ‘Yet you had news of him. You discovered he had a son.’
The old monk nodded. ‘We had a brother house near Dorchester and they sent me news. They told me that Father Ralph had found himself a woman, a housekeeper, but what country priest doesn’t? And he had a son and he hung an old spear in his church and said it was St George’s lance.’
De Taillebourg peered at the western hill for the noise had become much louder. It looked as though the English, who were by far the smaller army, were advancing and that meant they would lose the battle and that meant Father de Taillebourg had to be out of this monastery, indeed out of this city, before Sir William Douglas arrived seeking vengeance. ‘You told your masters that Father Ralph lied. Did he?’
The old monk paused and to de Taillebourg it seemed as if the firmament itself held its breath. ‘I don’t think he lied,’ Collimore whispered.
‘So why did you tell them he did?’
‘Because I liked him,’ Brother Collimore said, ‘and I did not think we could whip the truth out of him, or starve it from him, or pull it out by trying to drown him in cold water. I thought he was harmless and should be left to God.’
De Taillebourg gazed through the window. The Grail, he thought, the Grail. The hounds of God were on the scent. He would find it! ‘One of the family came back from France,’ the Dominican said, ‘and stole the lance and killed Father Ralph.’
‘I heard.’
‘But they did not find
