Bernard Cornwell - The Grail Quest 2 - Vagabond

'Not waiting for us, they won't be, not us. They know the Ursula, they do,' the captain, a toothless man with a face horribly scarred from the pox, grinned, 'they do know her and they do love her.' Which meant, presumably, that he had paid his dues to the men of Cherbourg and Carteret. However, he had paid no dues to Neptune or whatever spirit governed the winter sea for, though he claimed some special foreknowledge of winds and waves and asserted that both would be calm, the Ursula rolled like a bell swung on a beam: up and down, pitch-ing hard over so that the cargo slid in the hold with a noise like thunder; and the evening sky was grey as death and then sleet began to seethe on the torn water. The captain, clinging to the steering oar with a grin, said it was nothing but a little blow that should not worry any good Christian, but others in his crew either touched the crucifix nailed to the single mast or else bowed their heads to a small shrine on the afterdeck where a crude wooden image was wrapped in bright ribbons. The image was supposed to be St Ursula, the patron of ships, and Thomas said a prayer to her himself as he crouched in a small space under the foredeck, ostensibly sheltering there with the other passengers, but the overhead deck seams gaped and a mixture of rainwater and seawater continually slopped through. Three of the archers were sick and even Thomas, who had crossed the channel twice before and had been raised among fishermen and spent days aboard their small boats, was feeling ill. Robbie, who had never been to sea, looked cheerful and interested in every thing that was happening aboard.

'It's these round ships,' he yelled over the noise, 'they roll!'

'You know about ships, do you?' Thomas asked. 'It seems obvious,' Robbie said. Thomas tried to sleep. He wrapped himself in his damp cloak, curled up and lay as still as the pitching boat would let him and, astonishingly, he did fall asleep. He woke a dozen times that night and each time he wondered where he was and when he remembered he wondered whether the night would ever end or whether he would ever be warm again.

Dawn was sickly grey and the cold bit into Thomas's bones, but the crew was altogether more cheerful for the wind had dropped and the sea was merely sullen, the long foam-streaked waves rising and falling sluggishly about a wicked group of rocks that appeared to be home for a myriad seabirds. It was the only land in sight. The captain stumped across the deck to stand beside Thomas. 'The Casquets.' he said, nodding at the rocks. 'A lot of widows have been made on those old stones.' He made the sign of the cross, spat over the gunwales for luck and then looked up to a widening rift in the clouds. 'We're making good time,' he said, 'thanks be to God and to Ursula.' He looked askance at Thomas. 'So what takes you to the islands?'

Thomas thought of inventing some excuse, family perhaps, then thought the truth might elicit something more interesting. 'We want to go on to Normandy,' he said.

'They don't like Englishmen much in Normandy, not since our King paid them a visit last year.'

'I was there.'

'Then you'll know why they don't like us.'

Thomas knew the captain was right. The English had killed thousands in Caen, then burned farms, mills and villages in a great swathe east and north. It was a cruel way to wage war, but it could persuade the enemy to come out of his strongholds and give battle. Doubt-less that was why the Count of Coutances was laying Evecque's lands waste, in hope that Sir Guillaume would be enticed out of his stone walls to defend them. Except Sir Guillaume had only nine men and could not hope to face the Count in open battle.

'We've business in Caen,' Thomas admitted, 'if we can ever reach the place.'

The captain picked at a nostril, then flicked something into the sea. 'Look for the troy frairs,' he said. 'The what?'

'Troy Frairs,' he said again. 'It's a boat and that's her name. It's French. She ain't big, no larger than that little tub.' He pointed to a small fishing boat, her hull tarred black, from which two men cast weighted nets into the broken sea about the Casquets. 'A man called Ugh„ Peter runs the Troy Frairs. He might carry you to Caen, or maybe to Carteret or Cherbourg. Not that I told you that.'

'Of course not,' Thomas said. He supposed the captain meant that Ugly Peter commanded a boat called Les Trois Freres. He stared at the fishing boat and wondered what kind of life it was to drag sustenance from this hard sea. It was easier, no doubt, to smuggle wool into Normandy and wine back to the islands. All morning they ran southwards until at last they made landfall. A small island lay off to the east and a larger, Guernsey, to the west, and from both rose pillars of smoke from cooking fires that promised shelter and warm food, but though that promise fluttered in the sky, the wind backed and the tide turned and it took the rest of the day for the Ursula to beat down to the harbour where she anchored under the loom of the castle built on its rocky island. Thomas, Robbie and Father Pascal were rowed ashore and found respite from the cold wind in a tavern with a fire burning in a wide hearth beside which they ate fish stew and black bread washed down with a watery ale. They slept on strawfilled sacks that were home to lice. It was four days before Ugly Peter, whose real name was Pierre Savon, put into the harbour, and another two before he was ready to leave again with a cargo of wool on which no duty would be paid. He was happy to take passengers, though only at a price which left Robbie and Thomas feeling robbed. Father Pascal was carried free on the grounds that he was a Norman and a priest which meant, according to Pierre the Ugly, that God loved him twice over and so was unlikely to sink Les Trots Freres so long as Father Pascal was aboard.

God must have loved the priest for he sent a gentle west wind, clear skies and calm seas so that Les Trois Freres seemed to fly her way to the River Orne. They went up to Caen on the tide, arriving in the morning, and once they were ashore Father Pascal offered Thomas and Robbie a blessing, then hitched up his shabby robe and began walking east to Paris. Thomas and Robbie, carrying heavy bundles of mail, weapons, arrows and spare clothing, vent south through the city.

Caen looked no better than when Thomas had left it the previous year after it had been laid waste by English archers who, disregarding their King's orders to dis-continue their attack, had swarmed over the river and hacked to death hundreds of men and women inside the city. Robbie stared in awe at the destruction on Ile St Jean, the newest part of Caen, which had suffered most from the English sack. Few of the burned houses had been rebuilt and there were ribs, skulls and long bones showing in the rivers' mud at the falling tide's margin. The shops were half bare, though a few countryfolk were in town selling food from carts and Thomas bought dried fish, bread and rock-hard cheese. Some looked askance at his bowstave, but he assured them he was a Scotsman and thus an ally of France. 'They do have proper bows in Scotland, don't they?' he asked Robbie.

'Of course we do.'

'Then why didn't you use them at Durham?'

'We just don't have enough,' Robbie said, 'and besides, we'd rather kill you bastards up close. Make sure you're dead, see?' He stared open-mouthed at a girl carrying a pail of milk. 'I'm in love.'

'If it's got tits you fall in love,' Thomas said. 'Now come on.' He led Robbie to Sir Guillaume's town house, the place where he had met Eleanor, and though Sir Guillaume's crest of three hawks was still carved in stone above the door there was now a new banner flying over the house: a flag showing a hump-backed boar with great tusks.

'Whose flag is that?' Thomas had crossed the small square to talk with a cooper who was hammering an iron ring down the flanks of a new barrel.

'It's the Count of Coutances,' the cooper said, 'and the bastard's already raised our rents. And I don't care if you do serve him.' He straightened and frowned at the bowstave. 'Are you English?'

' Ecossais,' Thomas said.

'Ah!' The cooper was intrigued and leaned closer to Thomas. 'Is it true, monsieur,' he asked, 'that you paint your faces blue in battle?'

'Always,' Thomas said, 'and our arses.'

'Formidable!' the cooper said, impressed.

'What's he saying?' Robbie asked.

'Nothing.' Thomas pointed at the oak which grew at the centre of the small square. A few shrivelled leaves still clung to the twigs. 'I was hanged from that tree,' he told Robbie.

'Aye, and I'm the Pope of Avignon.' Robbie heaved up his bundle. 'Did you ask him where we could buy horses?'

'Expensive things, horses,' Thomas said, 'and I thought we might save ourselves the bother of buying.' 'We're footpads now?'

'Indeed,' Thomas said. He led Robbie off the island across the bridge where so many archers had died in the frenzied attack, and then through the old city. That had been less damaged than the Ile St Jean because no one had tried to defend the narrow streets, while the castle, which had never fallen to the English, had only suffered from cannon balls that had done little except chip the stones about the gate. A red and yellow hanner flew from the castle rampart and men-at-arms, wearing the same coloured liven', challenged Thomas and Robbie as they were leaving the old city. Thomas answered by saying they were Scottish soldiers seeking employment from the Count of Coutances. 'I thought he'd be here,' Thomas lied, 'but we hear he's at Evecque.'

'And getting nowhere,' the guard commander said. He was a bearded man whose helmet had a great split that suggested he had taken it from a corpse. 'He's been pissing at those walls for two months now and got nowhere, but if you want to die at Evecque, boys, then good luck to you.'

They walked past the walls of the Abbaye aux Dames and Thomas had a sudden vision of Jeanette again. She had been his lover, but then had met Edward Wood-stock, the Prince of Wales, and what chance did Thomas have after that? It had been here, in the Abbaye aux Dames, that Jeanette and the Prince had lived during the brief siege of Caen. Where was Jeanette now? Thomas wondered. Back in Brittany? Still seeking her infant son? Did she ever think of him? Or did she regret fleeing from the Prince of Wales in the belief that the Picardy battle would be lost? Perhaps, by now, she would be married again. Thomas suspected she had taken a small fortune in jewels when she had fled the English army, and a rich widow, scarce more than twenty years old, made an attractive bride.

'What happens' — Robbie interrupted his thoughts — 'if they find out you're not Scottish?'

Thomas held up the two fingers of his right hand that drew the bowcord. 'They cut those off.'

'Is that all?'

'Those are the first things they cut off.'

They walked on south through a country of small steep hills, tight fields, thick woods and deep lanes. Thomas had never been to Evecque and, though it was not far from Caen, some of the peasants they asked had never heard of it, but when Thomas asked which way the soldiers had been going during the winter they pointed on southwards. They spent their first night in a roofless hovel, a place that had evidently been abandoned when the English came in the summer and swept through Normandy. They woke at dawn and Thomas put two arrows into a tree, just to keep in practice. He was cutting the steel heads out of the trunk when Robbie picked up the bow. 'Can you teach me to use it?' he asked.

'What I can teach you,' Thomas said, 'will take ten minutes. But the rest will need a lifetime. I began shoot-ing arrows when I was seven and after ten years I was beginning to get good at it.'

'It can't be that difficult,' Robbie protested, 'I've killed a stag with a bow.'

'That was a hunting bow,' Thomas said. He gave Robbie one of the arrows and pointed to a willow that had stubbornly kept its leaves. 'Hit the trunk.'

Robbie laughed. 'I can't miss!' The willow was scarcely thirty paces away.

'Go on, then.'

Robbie drew the bow, glancing once at Thomas as he realized just how much strength was needed to bend the great yew stave. It was twice as stiff as the shorter hunting bows he had used in Scotland. 'Jesus,' he said softly as he hauled the string back to his nose and realized his left arm was trembling slightly with the tension of the weapon. but he peered down the arrow to check his aim and was about to loose when Thomas held up a hand.

'You're not ready yet.'

'I damn well am,' Robbie said, though the words came out as grunts for the bow needed immense force to hold in the drawn position.

'You're not ready.' Thomas said, 'because there's four inches of the arrow sticking out in front of the bow. You have to pull it back until the arrow head touches your left hand.'

'Oh, sweet Jesus,' Robbie said and took a breath, nerved himself and pulled until the string was past his nose, past his eye and close by his right ear. The steel arrow head touched his left hand, but now he could no longer aim by looking down the arrow's shaft. He frowned as he realized the difficulty that implied, then compensated by edging the bow to the right. His left arm was shaking with the tension and, unable to keep the arrow drawn, he released, then twitched as the hemp string whipped along his inner left forearm. The arrow's feathers flashed white as they passed a foot from the willow's trunk. Robbie swore in amazement, then handed the bow to Thomas. 'So the trick of it,' he said,

'is learning how to aim it?'

'The trick,' Thomas said, 'is not aiming at all. It's something that just happens. You look at the target and you let the arrow fly.' Some archers, the lazy ones, only drew to the eye and that made them accurate, but their arrows lacked force. The good archers, the archers who drove down armies or brought down kings in shining armour, pulled the string all the way back. 'I taught a woman to shoot last summer,' Thomas said. taking back the bow, 'and she became good. Really good. She hit a hare at seventy paces.'

'A woman!'

'I let her use a longer string,' Thomas said, 'so the bow didn't need as much strength, but she was still good.' He remembered Jeanette's delight when the hare tumbled in the grass, squealing, the arrow pinned through its haunches. Jeanette. Why was he thinking of her so much?

They walked on through a world edged white with frost. The puddles had frozen and the leafless hedgerows were outlined with a sharp white rime that faded as the sun climbed. They crossed two streams, then climbed through beechwoods towards a plateau which, when they reached it, proved to be a wild place of thin turf that had never been cut with a plough. A few gorse bushes broke the grass, but otherwise the road ran across a featureless plain beneath an empty sky. Thomas had thought that the heathland would be nothing but a narrow belt of high country and that they must soon drop into the wooded valleys again, but the road stretched on and he felt ever more like a hare on a chalk upland under the gaze of a buzzard. Robbie felt the same and the two of them left the road to walk where the gorse provided some intermittent cover. Thomas kept looking ahead and behind. This was horse country, a firm-turfed upland where riders could go full gallop and where there were no woods or gullies in which two men on foot could hide. And the high ground seemed to extend for ever. At midday they reached a circle of standing stones, each about the height of a man and heavily encrusted with lichen. The circle was twenty yards across and one of the stones had fallen and they rested their backs against it while they took a meal of bread and cheese. 'The devil's wedding party, eh?' Robbie said.