Grail Knight Read online

  Six enemy spearmen in pursuit of a pair of squealing shoats raced around the corner of the stables, saw us in the firelight and charged into our terrified little party. The pigs escaped unharmed. We did not. A moment later four of our folk were curled on the ground screaming, bellies punctured, faces hacked and bleeding their lives away; although Thomas with a deft bit of sword work had crippled one of the men-at-arms and dropped another with a savage kick to the groin. Roland faced off against a spearman in helmet and mail. He attacked instantly, two quick half-steps then he swept the man’s spear contemptuously out of his way and skewered him through the neck with a classic lunge.

  As he pulled his blade free with the help of a boot on the dying man’s chest, he turned to me: ‘Alan, we must leave very soon. Very soon. We cannot kill them all.’

  I released Goody’s hand and pushed her towards the stable. And I joined Roland and Thomas in a loose line, guarding the door and facing the three remaining spearmen. They dithered, not wishing to attack, turning to search the night behind them and yelling in French for their comrades to come to their aid.

  A tall dark figure on a dark horse trotted out into the centre of the courtyard by the well; he was shouting something to a group of unseen men over in the west of the compound and gesturing with his drawn sword. I only made out half of it: ‘… and make sure you search every hut – and thoroughly – before you burn it. It must be here somewhere. It must be!’

  He had no shield on his left arm, and no weapon either, his arm ended in the white swaddling of a bandage. He heard the commotion outside the stable caused by our brief fight and turned in the saddle and a sudden flare of light from the burning kitchen illuminated his face: it was Gilles de Mauchamps. He saw us at the same moment and shouted gleeful orders behind him, and many more men came running out of the darkness.

  Gilles pointed his sword at me like a spear and shouted in French, ‘I want him – it is Dale; take that man now; take him.’ Then he jabbed back his spurs. His horse leaped towards me, but by then we were all running as fast as we could for the stable door just a few yards away. Roland got there first, then Thomas, and as they tumbled inside I heard shouting and the crash of steel blades, but I stupidly slipped on an unseen frozen puddle, skidding and only just managing to stay upright. And then Gilles and his horse were upon me.

  His destrier’s iron-shod hooves fanned the air above me, his sword hammered down on my head, and I had to block the blow double-handed with my own blade held at hilt and tip; and then he was past and wheeling his mount in a tight circle and coming at me again, snarling like the beast he was. An enemy soldier, unseen, pelted out of the night and blundered into me from the left knocking me to the floor. I dropped Fidelity. Alfie, the kitchen boy, came yelling back out from the stables, and with wild swinging blows from right and left he crunched the two iron pots into the head of the man-at-arms who was just now raising an axe to carve through my head. But Gilles, on horseback, towered over the boy and hacked into the brave lad’s unprotected skull, cleaving it open with one tearing blow. Something wet and warm splattered on my bare hands, but I was busy scrambling under Mauchamps’s horse’s hooves trying to recover my sword. My clutching fingers closed around the hilt and I twisted and flung the blade upwards, by sheer chance managing to deflect Gilles’s next downward strike. He turned his horse again but I did not stand to face him. Instead, I scuttled for the stable and dived inside, while the surviving men of Westbury stopped the door with swords, spears and knives – a bristling hedge of sharp steel.

  Inside, I saw how few of us had made it there intact. One of our men-at-arms, a good man named Joseph, sat by the wall bleeding from a huge gash in his stomach – I knew he would not live long. Alfie the pot boy was surely dead. That left myself, Roland, Thomas, Goody, Ada, Baldwin and two men-at-arms who had gone with me to Normandy named Kit and Ox-head.

  Two enemy warriors lay in a gory puddle on the floor but, praise God, I saw that four of the horses were still in their stalls. Three of them, two bay mares and a roan gelding, were clearly very frightened by the noise and smoke of battle, stamping and fidgeting, and rolling their eyes. But Shaitan, the horse nearest to me, looked calmly over and merely whickered a soft greeting.

  I said, ‘Mount up, everyone, two to a horse, and head for the gate. Once we are out, ride like hell for Sherwood and Robin.’

  Everyone nodded. We were all a-horse in a few heartbeats, Goody up behind me on Shaitan, gripping my waist firmly. We had no time to saddle or even bridle our mounts – at any moment the enemy, whose shouts outside seemed to be growing in volume, could charge in and overwhelm us – so we merely untied their halters and swung our legs up and over their backs. I gripped tight with my knees and ordered Shaitan onwards with my heels, sword in my right hand, mace in my left, Goody snug behind my back, her left arm tight around my middle, when the first man cautiously stepped through the stable door, a spear extended in his shaking hand. I put my heels hard into Shaitan’s sides and my destrier jumped forward. I flipped the wavering spear-point out of our path with my sword and a moment later Shaitan’s huge glossy black shoulder smashed into the unfortunate fellow, hurling him to the floor, and I heard the snapping of bone and shrill cries as half a tun of iron-shod horseflesh churned over his body.

  We came out of the stable at a dead run and barrelled straight into a loose crowd of men-at-arms, scattering them like chickens. I managed to catch one man on the cheek with a flick of my mace as I passed him, and he flopped to the ground, and then we were through them. The whole of Westbury was ablaze now, and I saw that Gilles de Mauchamps had been gathering his horsemen in the centre of the courtyard – fewer of them than I had expected. I counted six mounted men in the surcoats of Templar sergeants, but the place was still thick with unmounted men-at-arms, mostly spearmen. Gilles’s horsemen were directly between us and the gate. I glanced behind me and saw that the other three horses had emerged from the stable, and Roland on a bay, with my man-at-arms Kit behind him, was besieged by a scrum of enemy foot soldiers jabbing up at them with sword and spear. But not for long. Roland laid about him efficiently, left and right with his sword, and Kit killed with equal ferocity, and their foes fell away, gashed and bloody, as they urged their mount towards me. Beyond them came Thomas on the roan, with plump little Ada clinging to his shoulders; and last of all Ox-head, an experienced and very tough soldier on the second bay, with Baldwin’s thin, frightened face peeking over his shoulder.

  A squad of men-at-arms was running straight at me from the right, but I ignored them and urged Shaitan straight at Gilles and his knot of mounted black-clad sergeants. My destrier bounded forward and in half a moment I was slicing Fidelity hard at my enemy’s skull. He blocked the blow with his sword and broke away, circling his charger out of range. And I heard the yelling behind me of the footmen; I nudged Shaitan with my right foot in a special signal, and my black friend dipped his head, pecked forward and shot out both hind hooves at the same time with the force of a pair of battering rams. There was a crack and a scream and the leading man-at-arms who had been racing towards me was catapulted backwards, into his following comrades, bringing a second and third man tumbling to the ground. But I had not time to praise Shaitan’s skill, for Gilles was upon me again, scything his blade down at my shoulder. I blocked with Fidelity, pushed his blade away and guiding Shaitan’s shoulder into his horse’s haunches, I smashed the mace into the back of his helmet and saw his dark eyes flutter at the blow.

  I heard Goody give a gasp of fright and turned to see a mounted Templar sergeant swiping his sword at us, by God’s mercy, but we both ducked just in time and the blade whistled half an inch over our heads. Goody’s thin left arm jabbed out like a striking snake and I saw the misericorde sink deeply into his inner thigh, and then we were past him and clear through the enemy horsemen. The gate, still wide open, was but twenty yards away. It was time to run.

  I pointed Shaitan’s head towards the gate with my knees, slammed back both heels and he took
off like a frisky young roebuck. Goody’s arms gripped me tightly, but we both somehow kept our balance on his saddle-less back. Before we raced through that portal and into the welcoming darkness beyond, I just had time to snatch a look behind: Roland and Kit were clear and only five yards away; Thomas’s face was a mask of blood and fury but he and Ada charged straight through a pair of spear-wielding men-at-arms as I watched, Thomas dropping the two with short vicious sword strikes.

  But of Ox-head and Baldwin there was no sign at all.

  We covered a mile at a fast canter, across the dark flat sheep pasture outside the walls of the manor, and up to the wooded knoll where poor drunken Katelyn believed she had met the demon; but with six folk on only three horses, I dared not push the beasts too hard, and it seemed that there was no pursuit. We stopped at the knoll and looked back at Westbury – and I admit that I wept then at the sight. The whole compound was alight, with the flames leaping highest from the hall itself. The village of Westbury, a few hundred yards to the east of the manor, a straggle of homes of varying degrees of prosperity gathered round the stone church, was burning too, and I could see horsemen in groups of two or three riding up and down its only street. I prayed that the villagers might escape the wrath of Gilles de Mauchamps, but feared that his men would loot the place as savagely as the manor and slaughter anyone who stood in their way. Then I looked back at my home, tears blurring my eyes. I could see the tiny black stick-like figures of men crossing the courtyard, some running, some moving slowly, some bearing burdens, others unencumbered. And in the centre, surrounded by the orange glow of a settlement put to fire and sword, was a tall dark shape on a dark horse, and I fancied, even at that distance, that I could make out the white flash of the bandage on his arm.

  Chapter Eight

  ‘I told you I should have aimed for his heart not his hand,’ said Robin. We were in the main cave of Robin’s hideout, deep in Sherwood, in the grey light just before true dawn, and all the surviving members of my band of escapees were now sleeping, fed, warmed and wrapped in blankets and furs by the central hearth fire. It had been a gruelling ride through the forest from the high copse to Robin’s Caves; a freezing rain had soaked us to the skin, the horses became so fatigued with carrying their double loads that they nearly collapsed from exhaustion and the roan had to be whipped to get him to move at all; and to make matters worse, I had lost my way twice on the tangled deer tracks and secret pathways in the utter darkness of the forest, and it was only by the grace of God, and the fact that we stumbled into a pair of Robin’s alert sentries, that we were now in the safety of my outlaw lord’s limestone demesne.

  ‘You should have killed him, yes,’ I admitted. ‘And you have my permission to do so next time you see him – I would even ask it as a favour,’ I said with no little bitterness. ‘Though I think there is little point dwelling on what might have been.’

  I did not take too much offence at Robin’s I-told-you-so attitude. To be honest, I was not paying much attention to the conversation. I was bone-tired myself and aching to crawl under a blanket by the fire and sleep, but more than that I was desperately worried about Goody. The freezing ride – thinly clad and soaking wet – as we fumbled our way through the forest had reduced her to a state close to insensibility, and she had nearly slipped from Shaitan’s back twice during the journey. Eventually, we switched positions and I rode with her cradled in my arms. Her breathing was very shallow, and even her occasional coughs were merely feeble convulsions that produced only a dribble of sputum from her slack, bluish lips. At the caves, she responded very slowly and a little strangely to my questions and comments when I had prepared her for bed, wrapping her in a huge, thick bearskin that Robin provided and feeding her hot broth with a horn spoon. I clawed my heart to ribbons over her and the baby – indeed, I was almost certain that they could not both survive her illness. As I sat on the straw-covered ground of the main cave beside her, a great fur-wrapped bundle by the hearth, still as a stone, her face as white as a swan’s wing, I realized that she already resembled a corpse. I closed my eyes and prayed then: ‘Dear God, please, I beg You of Your infinite mercy spare my woman, and my unborn child – I do not think that I can live without her. But if, in Your wisdom, You must take a life, let it be mine, O Lord. I offer my life for hers. I ask this in the name of Your Son, Jesus Christ. Amen.’

  Robin took me by the arm. ‘You must sleep for an hour or so, Alan. She will need your strength. I will watch over her until morning. Sleep! That is an order from your liege lord.’

  I slept, fitfully, for a few hours and when I awoke it was full morning, though a grey day of drizzly showers and sullen clouds. Thomas – that prince among squires – brought me hot water to wash my face and a clean towel, and a breakfast of bread, dried venison and ale. Goody slept on, as white and motionless as before, and I left her in her fur by the fire and went to find Robin.

  The Earl of Locksley was with Roland d’Alle in a large, crudely constructed wooden shed where the horses were stabled, looking at a pony with a split off-hind hoof. A villainous-looking outlaw-groom was saddling a grey mare two stalls along and obviously listening to their conversation.

  ‘How is Goody this morning?’ asked Robin. He looked tired; it was clear that he had not slept. ‘She did not stir once in the night and I left her in Thomas’s care just after dawn, with instructions to wake you if she awoke.’

  ‘She is still sleeping, but her skin is cold. And … I fear for her, Robin, I think…’

  He gripped my shoulder. ‘I have sent for Brigid, she will come swiftly and cure whatever ails her. I am sure of it.’

  ‘I think it is Nur’s curse,’ I blurted. I hated to sound credulous or weak-minded in any way around Robin for fear that he’d laugh at me; but I was not fully in control of my heart on that bleak day.

  ‘We will see what Brigid has to say on the matter,’ said Robin. ‘This is her corner of the battlefield.’

  Brigid was a strange woman: a hermit, a healer and, some whispered, a witch, who lived not far from Robin’s Caves. She had cured me once, long ago, of an infected wolf bite but since then I had avoided her – for there was another side of her, apart from her apparent ability to cure almost any hurt, illness or wound, that I was wary of. She was also a priestess of the Old Religion, as she called it – a heretic who shunned God and who worshipped instead a collection of foul pagan woodland spirits that clamoured for the sacrifice of living flesh.

  I was half-glad that she was coming to treat Goody for she undoubtedly had great powers of healing but, for the sake of my immortal soul, I did not want to have any further dealings with Brigid than were absolutely necessary.

  ‘I’m going to Westbury this afternoon – alone,’ I told Robin, and he nodded sympathetically. ‘I need to borrow a fresh horse.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Robin, and he jerked his head at the groom. ‘Are you done with the grey, Andrew?’ Then he looked back at me. ‘You know that you won’t like what you see there?’ he said.

  I nodded. I could well imagine the devastation and how it must look in full, bleak daylight.

  Robin continued, ‘Nevertheless, you can tell any of your people who survived last night that they can come to me if they are in need. Food, clothing, shelter, beasts of burden, whatever they wish. And from what you have told me about the fire, we will need to think about rebuilding the whole place from the ground up.’

  ‘I don’t have the money for that; I’d be much surprised if a single silver penny survived the looting unscathed.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that for now. I have plenty of money at the moment, thanks to your honest cousin here.’ Robin smiled at Roland.

  I felt a vast swell of affection for the man. He was truly a generous lord, whatever other sins he was guilty of – and they were legion. He was a true friend. ‘Thank you, Robin, for that offer – for taking us in last night, for seeing to Goody, for everything. I don’t know how I will ever be able to repay you…’

  ‘Well, I’m
glad you mentioned that,’ said Robin with a mischievous grin that I knew well and did not relish. ‘I’ve something to discuss with you when you return.’

  I frowned and took the bridle of the grey horse from the groom’s hand. As I stepped up into the saddle, a most unpleasant thought struck me. ‘What did you do with the poor goldsmith? He had surely told you everything. What became of him?’

  Robin said nothing. He merely stared at me, his face blank, as I sat on his grey horse, my belly full of his food and drink, my sick wife and unborn baby under his care. ‘Have a safe journey,’ he said. ‘We have much to talk about when you return.’

  ‘What did you do with him, Robin?’ I insisted foolishly. ‘What became of Malloch Baruch, the Jew of Lincoln?’

  Robin looked at me levelly for a few moments. ‘I gave him to Brigid – I gave him to Brigid for the ritual,’ he said with nothing in his voice. ‘He is the price of Goody’s care.’

  The journey was safe – and very nearly uneventful. The deer paths and woodland tracks were narrow but clear to follow. I could not understand how I had lost my way so easily the night before: and yet I knew that darkness can make even the simplest task a dozen times more difficult.

  As I approached Westbury and rode towards the high knoll with the little copse, a thin figure burst out of the stand of trees and came running towards me calling my name. I released my sword hilt and stepped down from my horse to embrace Baldwin: dirty, his robe damp and torn, his face grey with fatigue and fear, but it was truly my steward, more or less whole and hale. My joy at discovering him alive leavened the deep sadness I felt at the sight of Westbury in the daylight. As we stood by the copse and looked down at the charred ruin a little over a mile away, Baldwin told me his story in short, excited bursts.

  My steward had ridden out of the stable behind Ox-head with the rest of us, but the surprise of our eruption from the building on horseback had lessened by the time he and his riding companion emerged. While we had ridden to safety out of the gates, they had been surrounded by a crowd of enemy men-at-arms and pulled from the horse near the gate. While Ox-head had battled manfully for his life, killing at least two of his enemies before he succumbed, Baldwin, perhaps less gloriously though more prudently, had wriggled free of the press and run as fast as his legs would carry him to the well in the middle of the courtyard and had jumped inside. He had remained there somehow undetected for several hours and towards dawn, when the soldiers had all departed, he climbed out with the aid of the rope that was attached to the bucket. Fearing that Gilles de Mauchamps’ men might return, he had left Westbury and hidden himself in the undergrowth in the copse on the knoll until he had seen me approaching.