Grail Knight Read online

  I knew Robin was to my right, and so I fell to my knees and struck left with the misericorde at groin level, plunging it randomly into the darkness, once, twice. I heard a howl, and somebody blundered against my shoulder, kneeing me in the bicep and deadening the arm. I came up fast and charged forward blindly, heading for where I remembered the door to be, and crashed into a mail-hard body, the blade of my lance-dagger snagging on loose cloth. I tumbled to the floor, I took a hard kick to my ribs, rolled and came up again. In the nave of the church the moonlight coming through the coloured glass of the windows lit the room only very dimly. Yet it was enough to see the black forms of half a dozen struggling men. I heard the thuds and cracks and shouts and hisses of pain, but I was well clear of that blind mêlée. A voice with a strong French accent was shouting in English: ‘Get that lantern lit, sergeant, now. Strike tinder and flint. For the love of God give us some light!’

  And a dark form, a familiar shape in a raggedy hooded cloak, was running for the door at the western end of the nave. I was treading on his heels. Robin and I burst out into the courtyard, turned left and raced for the big double doors of the Abbey’s main gate, skidding to a halt in front of their barred might. In less than a dozen heartbeats, the men inside would realize that we were gone, and they would be upon us once more with spear and sword. Worse, the noise of the fight must have awakened the whole community, for I could see lights blooming in the dark cloisters and refectory; the canons would be coming to investigate the disturbance. We needed to run, and now. But Robin was standing by the judas gate, staring at the lock, examining it closely. I could see by the moonlight that he had already slid back the bolts at the top and bottom of the little door; but the big brass lock had stalled him.

  ‘For God’s sake, Robin, you are not going to try and pick that, are you? We simply don’t have time!’

  ‘You have to hold them for me, Alan. Hold them off, come what may, just for a little while and I will get us out. I will get us out, I swear.’

  Years of habit, years of obeying Robin’s commands made me turn my back to my lord and prepare for battle. I trusted him, you see, although it was sheer madness. But there was nothing else to do. We were trapped by the main gate, locked inside the Abbey with scores of enemies coming for our blood. A picture of Goody came into my head and I felt a sudden wrenching sadness that I would never hold her again. I slid the lance-dagger back into its sheath between my shoulder blades, and quickly searched in my shoulder bag for the flanged mace my darling had given me.

  ‘Goodbye, my sweet love,’ I whispered to the image of my beloved, ‘until we meet again in Heaven,’ as the men-at-arms tumbled out of the door of the church in the north of the courtyard, to my left, and advanced towards me. They did not run, but came on slowly, eight of them, I counted, the mole-faced older knight in the lead, his face a picture of frustrated fury. The lantern had been retrieved from the floor of the sacristy and someone had taken the time to relight it.

  I had the mace cocked in my right hand, two feet of iron-hard oak with that wicked, bone-crushing, flanged metal head; and the misericorde in my left fist – a weapon designed to punch straight though iron mail and into the soft flesh beneath. I stood equally balanced on both feet, as the men-at-arms advanced, and waited to meet my doom. I had once promised Robin, long ago when I was just a stripling, that I would be loyal to him until death; and now my lord had ordered me to hold off his enemies, so that is what I was determined to do.

  I could hear Robin behind me swearing foully; and I snatched a glance at him. He stood by the southern side of the main gate, by the tall crane, and through the gloom I could just make out that he seemed to be tugging on the hemp netting underneath a large barrel, a stout rope in his other hand stretching up into the darkness. But I had no time to concern myself with Robin’s pastimes: the men-at-arms were three paces from me, spread in a half-circle. I turned to face them. To my left was the forbidding black wall of the gate; in front of me were the enemy, between me and the church; behind me Robin was fooling about with God knew what. If I had wanted to run, the only way to go would have been to my right, into the centre of the square courtyard.

  But I was not planning to run.

  The knight, in the centre of the men-at-arms, said in a reasonable French-accented tone, ‘Surrender your arms, thief, and you shall have a fair trial in a court of law – there is no need for more bloodshed. Hand over your weapons.’

  I felt the weight of the mace in my right hand and the misericorde in my left. But my eye was fixed on the knight.

  ‘Why don’t you come take them yourself?’ I said.

  He merely snorted in derision.

  Then I said, ‘I’ll fight you, sir, man to man, me and you. Winner goes scot-free.’ Despite my bold words, my eye-patch was driving me to madness: I longed to tear it off, not least because I’d then have two eyes to use in the coming battle. And, oddly, I did not want to die with an itchy face.

  The knight made an impatient hissing noise. ‘I do not duel with creatures such as you.’ Then, flapping his hand at the line of soldiers, he said, ‘Kill them now.’

  And they rushed at me all at once.

  While I had been speaking with the knight, I had heard a curious creaking noise behind me, like the sound of a tree troubled by a gale; and just as the men-at-arms came hurtling at me, I heard Robin shout, ‘Down, now, Alan, get down.’

  I instantly dropped to the floor as a huge black shape in the grey night, suspended in a hempen net, and attached by long ropes to the high horizontal arm of the crane, came sweeping through the air at just below head height in a wide semi-circle. The vast swinging object – a mighty barrel of pickled fish, I soon discovered – crashed into the leading man-at-arms, snapping bone and knocking him into the man behind him, and continued its unstoppable looping path to smack dead centre into the judas gate. The barrel, which must have weighed at least two hundred pounds, hauled five feet up into the air and propelled with all of Robin’s considerable strength, smashed itself to kindling against the gate in a gush of brine and silver herring, wet barrel staves and clattering round iron hoops – and, in doing so, neatly popped the little gate open, like a stopper coming out of a bottle. I was on my feet in an instant, smashing the heavy mace overhand into the skull of a dazed and staggering man-at-arms directly between me and the narrow little door, and dropping him like a stone. Then I was out the broken gate, and running as fast as I could to my right, along the line of the Abbey’s western wall. Without slackening my pace, I jerked my head around and saw that Robin was a mere two paces behind, but struggling with his wind. He seemed to be laughing wildly, almost hysterically, and running for his life all at the same time.

  Beyond my lord, twenty yards away, the first helmeted heads were appearing through the wreckage of the gate. And there were white robes and tonsures too, and men bearing torches, spilling out with shouts and oaths, pointing at our retreating backs.

  Robin and I ducked around the north-western corner of St James Church, which formed the outside wall of the Abbey and paused for a heartbeat, our backs against the stone wall, panting madly, trying to get our bearings. I sheathed my misericorde and tucked the mace securely in my belt; and pulled the irritating leather eye patch off my face and hurled it into the darkness. We turned and looked east. There was just enough moonlight to make out the bulk of the church to our right-hand side, and a dark smear of forest in front of us. To our left nothing but deep blackness. But the shouted commands and indignant rage were coming closer behind us, and we pushed off the wall and sprinted onwards, due east, following the line of the church wall towards the forest and our friends.

  We had not run thirty yards when the torches erupted around the corner of the church; a horde of men, many scores of them, mostly white-garbed canons brandishing simple wooden staves, but a few men-at-arms mixed in too, with swords and spears; a couple of men had crossbows, I noticed. We ran, Robin and I, we ran for our lives. A hundred yards, two hundred, and I tripped and fel
l headlong into a patch of boggy grass, my face splashing down into foulness. Robin who was a few yards ahead of me came back and grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and hauled me upright. It was then that I noticed that he still had the woollen sack in his right hand, the sack containing a rich man’s ransom in gold.

  ‘This is no time to be taking a nap, Alan,’ said my lord, chuckling, dragging me by the elbow as we splashed through a shallow stream and up on to the bank on the other side. ‘We have an appointment to keep.’ And I coughed up a little foul marsh water with my own near-hysterical laughter.

  Our pursuers were only fifty yards behind us, and the tree line a scant thirty yards away, when the first arrows began to fly out of the forest. And good shooting it was, too, for night-time. The shafts arced over our heads, fine grey lines in the blackness, and lanced mercilessly into our pursuers, thudding into white-robed canon and man-at-arms alike, and dropping both in moaning, bleeding heaps on the dark grass. The yard-long shafts, mounted with man-killing bodkin tips, skimmed out of the trees as fast as Robin’s men could loose them and thunked relentlessly into human flesh, with the sound of a butcher’s cleaver on a slab of pork, transfixing limbs and piercing mail and thick wool habits with equal ease. The night was alive with the desperate yells of the wounded. One man-at-arms screamed a foul insult and loosed a crossbow bolt at the black wall of the forest in defiance – then the Abbey folk fled, back to the safety of their walls, dragging their hurt with them, and pursued by the pale killing shafts of the outlaws’ barrage.

  Little John and Robin’s three bowmen might have seen off the Abbey folk for the moment but we did not assume that Abbot Richard would fail to rally his troops, roust out more armed men and attempt to follow us. So we saddled up, as soon as we made it to the tree line and joined our friends, and threaded our way south through the dark forest as quickly as we dared.

  And it was not long before we heard the sounds of horsemen and the fear-emboldened calls of pursuers, and saw through the black trees the red blossoming of scores of torches. We could not move fast, a low hanging branch, unseen in the darkness, might crack a skull or sweep one of us from the saddle. And neither could we make light to see by. Instead we slowly walked our horses forward between the pillars of the trees, heads ducked low against their warm necks, and prayed that our pursuers might soon become lost or disheartened.

  They did not.

  Over the next quarter of an hour, the number of torches seemed to multiply until there was almost a sea of bobbing, ruddy flashes behind us, and the noise of our oncoming enemies had risen to the rumble of a multitude, with the occasional high shout breaking out against the background hubbub. We were being hunted like beasts by a huge pack of enemies. The Abbot appeared to have mustered more than a hundred horse and footmen for the pursuit, and very swiftly too, and against that number of foes we would have no chance in a fight. They were determined, well organized and seemingly unafraid of the wild forest in the depths of a midsummer midnight. And so the tide of fire-bearing hunters came on swiftly, more swiftly than we could progress. And soon, it seemed almost to be lapping at our heels and, as I nervously snatched another glance behind me, I could by now make out the silhouettes of the Abbot’s hired men-at-arms and catch brief glimpses of others in white robes with tonsured heads.

  I told myself that their burning torches would ruin their night-vision and that while I could make out their forms they would surely not be able to see us. But the ice snake of fear slithered in my stomach and I tried not to imagine our fate if we were taken: humiliation, disgrace and a long agonizing dance at the end of a rope.

  Finally, Robin gave a low order and we urged our horses into a nervous trot, but after no more than a dozen heartbeats, my left knee cracked agonizingly against a protruding branch, and it was only with great difficulty that I avoided yelling out in surprised pain. I heard the sound of ripping cloth and a stifled oath ahead of me. Then came the unmistakable sharp thump of wood on bone – and my horse’s nose was bumping on the rump of Little John’s beast ahead of me.

  ‘It’s no good running,’ whispered the blond giant. ‘Dismount and pass the order on.’ I turned to Gavin behind me and relayed the message, and then I found myself leading my horse by the bridle along a narrow track away to the left, almost at right angles to our original path, and heading roughly eastwards, as far as I could tell. We stopped after no more than forty paces, and Robin’s face was right by mine, and whispering, ‘We stay here, and let them pass. For all our sakes, keep your horse quiet.’ Then he was past me and speaking to Gavin, who stood at his mount’s head a pace or two away.

  Robin had chosen an excellent hiding place. By luck? Or from his knowledge of these woods? I could not tell. We were grouped together below a stand of half a dozen skinny ash trees, growing close together, their thin branches swooping and curling around our bodies, the thick black foliage hiding us from sight even a few yards away. Even in daylight I think we six fugitives might have been well cloaked. I had my right hand clamped over the nostrils of my horse, willing her not to make a sound as the horrible red sea of firelight advanced towards us. At one point, I could clearly make out a helmeted horseman, twenty paces away, a tall man on a big horse, a blazing torch in his right hand, a white shield slung across his back. And when I heard him call out loudly to his fellow man-hunters, I confess my whole torso was sweat-slick and my heart was clogging my throat.

  ‘Stay alert, men. Stay alert! A gold bezant for the first man to see the dogs.’ It was the French knight, the man with the mole. And my thought was, oddly: That man has fought in the Holy Land. Who else has bezants to give away?

  And then he was past me, still riding on the original line of march that Robin had taken, and the shouts and noise of excited men and horses was diminishing and the sea of bobbing lights beyond him was flowing away south into the ink-black forest, extinguished one by one by the bulk of the trees.

  We waited a half hour in the safety of our clump of ash trees before remounting and heading on further east at a very cautious walk. After a mile or so we turned south again but we saw no more sign of our pursuers that night; and at the first light of dawn Robin led us to an abandoned hunting lodge on his brother’s lands. We dismounted gratefully in the roofless space, rubbed down our horses, fed and watered them, and sat down ourselves for a bite of bread, cheese and ale, all of us exhausted but grateful to be alive and at liberty. I felt more wrung-out than I had in an age and I was just rolling myself into a heavy cloak for a few hours of blissful sleep, when I heard Little John quietly ask Robin what he thought had gone wrong, and I levered my sleepy lids open once more.

  ‘They were waiting for us, John,’ my lord said. He had an ugly purple-red bruise on his forehead and a smear of green lichen across it that made him look unusually wicked in that cold dawn. ‘They obviously knew we were coming and had recruited scores of fighting men in the hope of taking us. A not-very-subtle trap was set and, I am ashamed to say, we walked straight into it.’

  I reflected tiredly that I’d tried to warn Robin that something was wrong, but there seemed little point in reminding him.

  ‘We should ride over to Lincoln and pay our good friend Malloch Baruch a little visit one of these days,’ growled John. And just from his tone, an icy trickle of fear slid down my spine.

  I told Goody what had happened at Welbeck and, predictably, she was furious at our narrow escape from an ignominious death. But I did not mention it to Sir Nicholas de Scras – it was not that I did not trust him to be silent about the matter, it was merely from a sense of delicacy. I did not want to admit to him that I had been undertaking larcenous adventures in search of an abbot’s gold when I had only just convinced him that I had not, in fact, stolen a hoard of silver from the Templars. Better that he should not know.

  Sir Nicholas and I enjoyed several days hunting red deer together across my lands in the next few weeks. The right to hunt beasts of venery, as these fleet creatures are called, came with the manor, and had bee
n confirmed by William the Bastard himself as a favour to a comrade after he and his ferocious Norman knights had conquered this land. I had been much away at the wars since I had taken possession of Westbury a decade ago, and, as one of my huntsmen put it, the deer had multiplied and were now as thick as fleas on a dog’s back. It was only a slight exaggeration: Sir Nicholas approached hunting with all the ruthless skill and determination that he brought to war and we killed half a dozen fat bucks with my pack of hounds in a fortnight. Some of the meat we salted and smoked for the winter, some I gave to the villagers of Westbury, to my tenants and to Arnold the priest, a funny little man who had a nervous habit of blinking his huge eyes constantly like a sleepy owl – but we did not stint ourselves in the hall either. Many a day we feasted on venison from noon till dusk – Goody, myself, Thomas my squire, Baldwin the steward, and Nicholas de Scras – regaling ourselves like royalty at their ease.

  The weather was golden and a nagging fear that I might have been identified after the botched robbery at Welbeck Abbey receded with day after day of scrambling exhilaration in the woods and fields around Westbury as we chased down the nimble deer with our dogs and our spears, and nights drinking good red wine and playing backgammon by the hearth with Sir Nicholas or remembering old friends and refighting old battles of the Great Pilgrimage. I was happy in that time, perhaps as happy as I have been before or since. And when we retired to bed, Goody and I made the most of our married state, and tried energetically night and morn to put a baby in her womb.