Bernard Cornwell - The Grail Quest 2 - Vagabond

'It's him?' Robbie asked.

'It's his men, anyway,' Thomas said. He guessed his cousin had been in the eastern encampment with de Taillebourg and that he had come here in hope of bring-ing a relief force to Charles's aid, but he had been too late and now his men were fighting a rearguard battle to protect other men who were fleeing.

'Where is he?' Robbie demanded.

Thomas could not see his cousin. He shouted again. 'Vexille! Vexille!'

And there he was. The Harlequin, Count of Astarac, armoured in plate, visor lifted, mounted on a black destrier and carrying a plain black shield. He saw Thomas and raised his sword in an ironic salute. Thomas unslung his bow, but Guy Vexille saw the threat, turned away and his horsemen closed protectively about him. 'Vexille!' Thomas yelled and he ran towards his cousin. Robbie called a warning and Thomas ducked as a horseman swung a blade at him, then he pushed against the horse, smelling leather and sweat, and another horseman banged into him, almost throwing him off his feet. 'Vexille!' he bellowed. He could see Guy Vexille again, only now his cousin was turning back, spurring towards him, and Thomas drew the bow-cord, but Vexille held up his right hand to show he had scabbarded his sword and the gesture made Thomas lower the black bow. Guy Vexille, his visor raised and his handsome face lit by the fires, smiled. 'I have the book, Thomas.'

Thomas said nothing, but just raised the bow again.

Guy Vexille shook his head in reproof. 'No need for that, Thomas. Join me.'

'In hell, you bastard,' Thomas said. This was the man who had killed his father, had killed Eleanor, had killed Father Hobbe, and Thomas drew the arrow fully back and Vexille took a small knife that had been concealed in his shield hand and calmly leaned fonvard and cut the bowcord. The broken string made the bcm jump violently in Thomas's hand and the arrow spewed away harmlessly. The cord had been cut so swiftly that Thomas had been given no time to react.

'One day you'll join me, Thomas,' Vexille said, then he saw that the English archers had at last noticed his men and were beginning to take their toll and so he turned his horse, shouted at his men to retreat and spurred away.

'Jesus!' Thomas swore in frustration.

' Calix meus inebrians!' Guy Vexille shouted, then he was lost among the horsemen galloping south. A flight of English arrows followed them, but none struck Vexille.

'Bastard!' Robbie swore at the retreating figure.

A woman's scream sounded from the burning tents. 'What did he say to you?' Robbie asked.

'He wanted me to join him,' Thomas said bitterly. He threw away the slashed cord and took the spare from under his sallet. His clumsy fingers fumbled as he restrung the bow, but he managed to do it on the second try. 'And he said he's got the book.'

'Aye, well, much good that will bloody do him,' Robbie commented. The fight had died and he knelt by a black-dressed corpse and began searching for coins. Sir Thomas Dagworth was shouting for men to assemble at the encampment's western edge to assault the next fortress where some of the defenders, realizing that the battle was lost, were already running away. Church bells were ringing in La Roche-Derrien, celebrating that Charles of Blois had entered the town as a prisoner.

Thomas stared after his cousin. He was ashamed because one small part of him, one small and treacherous part, had been tempted to take the offer. Join his cousin, be back in a family, look for the Grail and harness its power. The shame was sour, like the shame of the gratitude he had felt towards de Taillebourg when the torture ceased. 'Bastard!' he yelled uselessly. 'Bastard.'

'Bastard!' It was Sir Guillaume's voice that cut across Thomas's. Sir Guillaume, with his two men-at-arms, was prodding a prisoner in the back with a sword. The captive wore plate armour and the sword scraped on it with every prod. 'Bastard!' Sir Guillaume bawled again, then saw Thomas. 'It's Coutances! Coutances!' He pulled off his prisoner's helmet. 'Look at him!'

The Count of Coutances was a melancholy-looking man, bald as an egg, who was doing his best to appear dignified. Sir Guillaume poked him again. 'I tell you, Thomas' –

he spoke in French – 'that this bastard's wife and daughters will have to whore themselves to raise this ransom! They'll be swiving every man in Normandy to buy this gutless bastard back!' He jabbed the Count of Coutances again. 'I'm going to squeeze you witless!' Sir Guillaume roared and then, exultant, marched his prisoner onwards. The woman screamed again.

There had been many women screaming that night, but something about this sound cut through Thomas's awareness and he turned, alarmed. The scream sounded a third time and Thomas began to run. 'Robbie!' he shouted. 'To me!'

Thomas ran across the remnants of a burning tent, his boots throwing up sparks and embers. He swerved round a smoking brazier, almost tripped on a wounded man who was vomiting into an upturned helmet, ran down an alley between armourers' huts where anvils, bellows, hammers, tongs and barrels full of rivets and mail rings were spilt on the grass. A man in a farrier's apron with blood streaming from a head wound staggered into his path and Thomas shoved him aside to run towards the black and yellow standard that still flew outside the Lord of Roncelets's burning tent. 'Jeanette!' he called. 'Jeanette!'

But Jeanette was a prisoner. She was being held by a huge man who had pressed her spine against the windlass of the trebuchet called Stonewhip that stood just beyond the Lord of Roncelets's tent. The man heard Thomas shouting and looked round, grinning. It was Beggar, all beard and rotted teeth, and he shoved Jeanette hard as she struggled to escape him.

'Hold her, Beggar!' Sir Geoffrey Carr shouted. 'Hold the bitch!'

'The pretty ain't going anywhere,' Beggar said, 'going nowhere, darling,' and he tried to haul up her coat of mail, but it was too heavy and awkward and Jeanette was struggling too frantically. The Lord of Roncelets, still without his sword, was sitting on Stonewhip's frame. He had a red mark on his face, suggesting he had been struck, and Sir Geoffrey Carr with five other men-at-arms was standing over him. The Scarecrow stared defiantly at Thomas. 'He's my prisoner!' he insisted.

'He belongs to us,' Thomas said, 'we took him.'

'Listen, boy,' the Scarecrow said, his voice still slurred by drink, 'I am a knight and you are a turd. You under-stand me?' He staggered slightly as he stepped towards Thomas. 'I am a knight,' he said again, louder, 'and you are nothing!' His red face, made lurid by the flames, was twisted in derision. 'You are nothing!' he shouted again, then whipped round to make sure that his men were guarding the Lord of Roncelets. Such a wealthy captive would solve all Sir Geoffrey's problems and he was determined to hold onto him and take the ransom for himself. 'She can't take a captive,' he said, pointing his sword at Jeanette, 'because she's got tits, and you can't take him because you're a turd. But I'm a knight! A knight!' He spat the word at Thomas who, goaded by the insults, drew his bow. The new string was slightly too long and he could feel the lack of power in the black stave because of it, but he reckoned there was enough strength for his purpose. 'Beggar!'

the Scarecrow shouted, 'if he looses that bow, kill the bitch.'

'Kill the pretty,' Beggar said. He was drooling spittle, which ran down his big beard as he stroked the mail rings above Jeanette's breasts. She still fought, but he had her bent painfully back across the windlass and she could hardly move. Thomas kept the bow drawn. The trebuchet's long beam, he saw, had been winched down to the ground though the engineers must have been interrupted be-fore they could load a stone because the great leather sling was empty. A heap of stones stood off to the right and a sudden movement there made Thomas see there was a wounded man leaning against the boulders. The man was trying to stand, but could not. There was blood on his face. 'Will?' Thomas asked.

'Tom!' Will Skeat tried to push himself upright again. 'It's you, Tom!'

'What happened?' Thomas asked.

'Not what I was, Torn,' Skeat said. The two townsmen who had been helping to guard the Lord of Roncelets were dead at Skeat's feet, and Skeat himself seemed to be dying. He was white-faced, feeble and every breath was a struggle. There were tears on his face.

'I tried to fight,' he said pitiably, 'I did try, but I'm not what I was.'

'Who attacked you?' Thomas asked, but Skeat seemed unable to answer.

'Will was just trying to protect me,' Jeanette shouted, then she screamed as Beggar thrust her back so hard that at last she was forced onto the top of the windlass and Beggar could push her mail skirts up. He gabbled excitedly just as Sir Geoffrey roared in anger.

'It's the Douglas bastard!'

Thomas loosed the cord. With a new bowcord he liked to shoot a couple of arrows to discover how the new hemp would behave, but he had no time for such niceties now, he just loosed the arrow and it sliced through the tangles of Beggar's beard to cut his throat, the broad arrow head slitting his gullet as cleanly as a butcher's knife, and Jeanette screamed as the blood spurted across her jupon and face. The Scarecrow bellowed in rage and ran at Thomas who rammed the horn-tipped howstave into the red face then let the weapon fall as he drew his sword. Robbie ran past him and thrust his uncle's sword at the Scarecrow's belly, but even drunk Sir Geoffrey was quick and he managed to parry the blow and strike back. Two of his men-at-arms were running to help – the others were guarding the Lord of Roncelets – and Thomas saw the two men coming. He went to his left, hoping to put the big frame of Stonewhip between himself and the men wearing Sir Geoffrey's badge of the black axe, but Sir Geoffrey almost cut him off and Thomas gave a desperate back-swing with his newly drawn sword that slammed against the Scarecrow's blade with a force that numbed Thomas's arm. The blow rocked the Scarecrow back, then he recovered and leaped forward and Thomas was desperately defending himself as the Scarecrow rained blows down on him. Thomas was no swordsman and he was being beaten down to his knees and Robbie could not help him because he was fending off Sir Geoffrey's two followers, and then there was an almighty crash, a bang that sounded as though the gates of hell had just opened, and the ground shook as the Scarecrow screamed in utter agony. His howl, trailing blood, seared into the sky. Jeanette had pulled the lever that released the long beam. Ten tons of counterweight had thumped to the ground and the thick metal pin that held the sling had jerked up between Sir Geoffrey's legs and torn a bloody hole from his crotch to his belly. He should have been hurled halfway to the town by the trebuchet's beam, but instead the pin had been trapped in his entrails and he was caught on the beam's end where he writhed in agony, his blood pouring down to the ground.

His men, seeing their master dying, stepped back. Why fight for a man who could offer no reward? Robbie gaped up as the Scarecrow twisted and jerked, and somehow the dying man managed to tear himself free of the great iron stake and he fell, trailing intestines and spraying blood. He hit the ground with a thump, bounced bloodily, yet still he lived. His eyes were twitching and his mouth was drawn back in a snarl. 'Goddamn Douglas,' he managed to gasp before Robbie stepped to him, lifted his uncle's sword, and rammed it down once, straight between the Scarecrow's eyes.

The Lord of Roncelets had watched it all happen with disbelief. Now Jeanette was holding a sword to his face, daring him to run away, and he dumbly shook his head to show that he had no intention of risking his life among the drunken, screaming, savage men who had come out of the night to destroy the greatest army the duchy of Brittany had ever raised.

Thomas crossed to Sir William Skeat, but his old friend was dead. He had been wounded in the neck and he had bled to death on the stone pile. He looked strangely peaceful. A first shaft of the new day's sun cut across the world's edge to light the bright blood at the top of Stonewhip's beam as Thomas closed his mentor's eyes. 'Who killed Will Skeat?' Thomas demanded of Sir Geoffrey's men and Dickon, the young one, pointed at the wreckage of mail, flesh, entrails and bone that had been the Scarecrow. Thomas inspected the dents in his sword. He must learn to use one, he thought, or else he would die by the sword, then he looked up at Sir Geoffrey's men. 'Go and help the attack on the next fort,' he told them. They stared at him. 'Go!' he snapped and, startled, they ran westwards.

Thomas pointed his sword at the Lord of Roncelets. 'Take him back to town,' he told Robbie, 'and guard him well.'

'What about you?' Robbie asked.

'I'm going to bury Will,' Thomas said. 'He was a friend.' He thought he must shed some tears for Will Skeat, but there were none. Not now, anyway. He sheathed the sword, then smiled at Robbie. 'You can go home, Robbie.'

'I can?' Robbie seemed puzzled.

'De Taillebourg's dead. Roncelets will pay your ran-som to Lord Outhwaite. You can go to Eskdale, go home, go back to killing Englishmen.'

Robbie shook his head. 'Guy Vexille lives.'

'He's mine to kill.'

'And mine,' Robbie said. 'You forget he killed my brother. I'm staying till he's dead.'

'If you can ever find him,' Jeanette said softly.

The sun was lighting the smoke of the burning encampments and casting long shadows across the ground where the last of Charles's army abandoned their earthworks and fled towards Rennes. They had come in their great splendour and now they scuttled away in abject defeat.

Thomas went to the engineers' tents and found a pickaxe, a mattock and a shovel. He dug a grave beside Stonewhip and tipped Skeat into the damp soil and tried to say a prayer, but he could not think of one, and then he remembered the coin for the ferryman and so he went to the Lord of Roncelets's tent and pulled the charred canvas away from the chest and took a piece of gold and went back to the grave. He jumped down beside his friend and put the coin under Skeat's tongue. The ferryman would find it and know from the gold that Sir William Skeat was a special man. 'God bless you, Will,' Thomas said, then he scrambled out of the grave and he filled it in, though he kept pausing in hope that Will's eyes would open, but of course they did not and Thomas at last wept as he shovelled earth onto his friend's pale face. The sun was up by the time he finished and women and children were coming from the town to look for plunder. A kestrel flew high and Thomas sat on the chest of coins and waited for Robbie to return from the town. He would go south, he thought. Go to Astarac. Go and find his father's notebook and solve its mystery. The bells of La Roche-Derrien were ringing for the victory, a huge victory, and Thomas sat among the dead and knew he would have no peace until he had found his father's burden. Calix mens inebrians. Transfer calicem istem a me. Ego enim Bram pincerna regis.

Whether he wanted the job or not he was the King's cupbearer, and he would go south.

Historical Notes

The novel begins with the battle of Neville's Cross. The name of the battle is derived from the stone cross that Lord Neville erected to mark the victory, though it is possible there was another cross already on the site which Lord Neville's memorial replaced. The battle, fought by a large Scottish army against a small scratch force hastily assembled by the Archbishop of York and the northern lords, was a disaster for the Scots. Their King, David II, was captured as described in Vagabond, trapped under a bridge. He managed to knock out some of his captor's teeth, but then was subdued. He spent a long time at Bamburgh Castle recovering from his facial wound, then was taken to London and put into the Tower with most of the other Scottish aristocracy cap-tured that day, including Sir William Douglas, the Knight of Liddesdale. The two Scottish Earls who had previously sworn fealty to Edward were decapitated, then quartered. and the parts of their body displayed around the realm as a warning against treachery. Later that year Charles of Blois, nephew to the King of France and would-be Duke of Brittany, joined David II in the Tower of London. It was a remarkable double by the English who will, in another decade, add the King of France himself to the haul.