'Will you really go?'

'I don't know.' He wanted to be with the army, for that was where he belonged, though he did not know how he was to find it, nor how he was to survive in a countryside where the English had made themselves hated, but he also wanted to stay. He wanted to learn more about the Vexilles and only Sir Guillaume could satisfy that hunger. And, day by day, he wanted to be with Eleanor. There was a calm gentleness in her that Jeanette had never possessed, a gentleness that made him treat her with tenderness for fear that otherwise he would break her. He never tired of watching her long face with its slightly hollow cheeks and bony nose and big eyes. She was embarra.s.sed by his scrutiny, but did not tell him to stop.

'Sir Guillaume,' she told him, 'tells me I look like my mother, but I don't remember her very well.'

Sir Guillaume came back to Caen with a dozen men-at-arms whom he had hired in northern Alencon. He would lead them to war, he said, along with the half-dozen of his men who had survived the fall of Caen. His leg was still sore, but he could walk without crutches and on the day of his return he summarily ordered Thomas to go with him to the church of St Jean. Eleanor, working in the kitchen, joined them as they left the house and Sir Guillaume did not forbid her to come.

Folk bowed as Sir Guillaume pa.s.sed and many sought his a.s.surance that the English were truly gone.

They are marching towards Paris,' he would answer, 'and our king will trap them and kill them.'

'You think so?' Thomas asked after one such a.s.surance.

'I pray so,' Sir Guillaume growled. 'That's what the King is for, isn't it? To protect his people? And G.o.d knows, we need protection. I'm told that if you climb that tower,' he nodded towards the church of St Jean that was their destination, 'you can see the smoke from the towns your army has burned. They are conducting a chevauchee.' chevauchee.'

'Chevauchee? Eleanor asked.

Her father sighed. 'A chevauchee, chevauchee, child, is when you march in a great line through your enemy's country and you burn, destroy and break everything in your path. The object of such barbarity is to force your enemy to come out from his fortresses and fight, and I think our king will oblige the English.' child, is when you march in a great line through your enemy's country and you burn, destroy and break everything in your path. The object of such barbarity is to force your enemy to come out from his fortresses and fight, and I think our king will oblige the English.'

'And the English bows,' Thomas said, 'will cut his army down like hay.'

Sir Guillaume looked angry at that, but then shrugged. 'A marching army gets worn down,' he said. 'The horses go lame, the boots wear out and the arrows run out. And you haven't seen the might of France, boy. For every knight of yours we have six. You can shoot your arrows till your bows break, but we'll still have enough men left to kill you.' He fished in a pouch hanging at his belt and gave some small coins to the beggars at the churchyard gate, which lay close to the new grave where the five hundred corpses had been buried. It was now a mound of raw earth dotted with dandelions and it stank, for when the English had dug the grave they had struck water not far beneath the surface and so the pit was too shallow and the earth covering was too thin to contain the corruption the grave concealed.

Eleanor clapped a hand to her mouth, then hurried up the steps into the church where the archers had auctioned the town's wives and daughters. The priests had thrice exorcized the church with prayers and holy water, but it still had a sad air, for the statues were broken and the windows shattered. Sir Guillaume genuflected towards the main altar, then led Thomas and Eleanor up a side aisle where a painting on the limewashed wall showed St John escaping from the cauldron of boiling oil that the Emperor Domitian had prepared for him. The saint was shown as an ethereal form, half smoke and half man, floating away in the air while the Roman soldiers looked on in perplexity.

Sir Guillaume approached a side altar where he dropped to his knees beside a great black flagstone and Thomas, to his surprise, saw that the Frenchman was weeping from his one eye. 'I brought you here,' Sir Guillaume said, 'to teach you a lesson about your family.'

Thomas did not contradict him. He did not know that he was a Vexille, but the yale on the silver badge suggested he was.

'Beneath that stone,' Sir Guillaume said, 'lies my wife and my two children. A boy and a girl. He was six, she was eight and their mother was twenty-five years old. The house here belonged to her father. He gave me his daughter as ransom for a boat I captured. It was mere piracy, not war, but I gained a good wife from it.' The tears were flowing now and he closed his eye. Eleanor stood beside him, a hand on his shoulder, while Thomas waited. 'Do you know,' Sir Guillaume asked after a while, 'why we went to Hookton?'

'We thought because the tide took you away from Poole.'

'No, we went to Hookton on purpose. I was paid to go there by a man who called himself the Harlequin.'

'Like h.e.l.lequin?' Thomas asked.

'It is the same word, only he used the Italian form. A devil's soul, laughing at G.o.d, and he even looked like you.' Sir Guillaume crossed himself, then reached out to trace a finger down the edge of the stone. 'We went to fetch a relic from the church. You knew that already, surely?'

Thomas nodded. 'And I have sworn to get it back.'

Sir Guillaume seemed to sneer at that ambition. 'I thought it was all foolishness, but in those days I thought all life was foolishness. Why would some miserable church in an insignificant English village have a precious relic? But the Harlequin insisted he was right, and when we took the village we found the relic'

'The lance of St George,' Thomas said flatly.

'The lance of St George,' Sir Guillaume agreed. 'I had a contract with the Harlequin. He paid me a little money, and the balance was kept by a monk in the abbey here. He was a monk that everyone trusted, a scholar, a fierce man whom folk said would become a saint, but when we returned I found that Brother Martin had fled and he had taken the money with him. So I refused to give the lance to the Harlequin. Bring me nine hundred livres in good silver, I told him, and the lance is yours, but he would not pay. So I kept the lance. I kept it in Evecque and the months pa.s.sed and I heard nothing and I thought the lance had been forgotten. Then, two years ago, in the spring, the Harlequin returned. He came with men-at-arms and he captured the manor. He slaughtered everyone - everyone - and took the lance.'

Thomas stared at the black flagstone. 'You lived?'

'Scarcely,' Sir Guillaume said. He hauled up his black jacket and showed a terrible scar on his belly. 'They gave me three wounds,' he went on. 'One to the head, one to the belly and one to the leg. They told me the one to the head was because I was a fool with no brains, the one in the guts was a reward for my greed and the one to the leg was so I would limp down to h.e.l.l. Then they left me to watch the corpses of my wife and children while I died. But I lived, thanks to Mordecai.' He stood, wincing as he put his weight onto his left leg. 'I lived,' he said grimly, 'and I swore I would find the man who did that,' he pointed at the flagstone, 'and send his soul screaming into the pit. It took me a year to discover who he was, and you know how I did it? When he came to Evecque he had his men's shields covered with black cloth, but I slashed the cloth of one with my sword and saw the yale. So I asked men about the yale. I asked them in Paris and Anjou, in Burgundy and the Dauphine, and in the end I found my answer. And where did I find it? After asking the length and breadth of France I found it here, in Caen. A man here knew the badge. The Harlequin is a man called Vexille. I do not know his first name, I do not know his rank, I just know he is a devil called Vexille.'

'So the Vexilles have the lance?'

'They have. And the man who killed my family killed your father.' Sir Guillaume looked ashamed for a brief instant. 'I killed your mother. I think I did, anyway, but she attacked me and I was angry.' He shrugged. 'But I did not kill your father, and in killing your mother I did nothing more than you have done in Brittany.'

'True,' Thomas admitted. He looked into Sir Guillaume's eye and could feel no hatred for his mother's death. 'So we share an enemy,' Thomas said.

'And that enemy,' Sir Guillaume said, 'is the devil.'

He said it grimly, then crossed himself. Thomas suddenly felt cold, for he had found his enemy, and his enemy was Lucifer.

That evening Mordecai rubbed a salve into Thomas's neck. 'It is almost healed, I think,' he said, 'and the pain will go, though perhaps a little will remain to remind you of how close you came to death.' He sniffed the garden scents. 'So Sir Guillaume told you the story of his wife?'

'Yes.'

'And you are related to the man who killed his wife?'

'I don't know,' Thomas said, 'truly I don't, but the yale suggests I am.'

'And Sir Guillaume probably killed your mother, and the man who killed his wife killed your father, and Sir Simon Jekyll tried to kill you.' Mordecai shook his head. 'I nightly lament that I was not born a Christian. I could carry a weapon and join the sport.' He handed Thomas a bottle. 'Perform,' he commanded, 'and what, by the by, is a yale?'

'A heraldic beast,' Thomas explained.

The doctor sniffed. 'G.o.d, in His infinite wisdom, made the fishes and the whales on the fifth day, and on the sixth he made the beasts of the land, and He looked at what He had done and saw that it was good. But not good enough for the heralds, who have to add wings, horns, tusks and claws to His inadequate work. Is that all you can do?'

'For the moment.'

'I'd get more juice from squeezing a walnut,' he grumbled, and shuffled away.

Eleanor must have been watching for his departure, for she appeared from under the pear trees that grew at the garden's end and gestured towards the river gate. Thomas followed her down to the bank of the River Orne where they watched an excited trio of small boys trying to spear a pike with English arrows left after the city's capture.

'Will you help my father?' Eleanor asked.

'Help him?'

'You said his enemy was your enemy.'

Thomas sat on the gra.s.s and she sat beside him. 'I don't know,' he said. He still did not really believe in any of it. There was a lance, he knew that, and a mystery about his family, but he was reluctant to admit that the lance and the mystery must govern his whole life.

'Does that mean you'll go back to the English army?' Eleanor asked in a small voice.

'I want to stay here,' Thomas said after a pause, 'to be with you.'

She must have known he was going to say something of the sort, but she still blushed and gazed at the swirling water where fish rose to the swarms of insects, and the three boys vainly splashed. 'You must have a woman,' she said softly.

'I did,' Thomas said, and he told her about Jeanette and how she had found the Prince of Wales and so abandoned him without a glance. 'I will never understand her,' he admitted.

'But you love her?' Eleanor asked directly.

'No,' Thomas said.

'You say that because you're with me,' Eleanor declared.

He shook his head. 'My father had a book of St Augustine's sayings and there was one that always puzzled me.' He frowned, trying to remember the Latin. 'Nondum amabam, et amare amabam. 'Nondum amabam, et amare amabam. I did not love, but yearned to love.' I did not love, but yearned to love.'

Eleanor gave him a sceptical look. 'A very elaborate way of saying you're lonely.'

'Yes,' Thomas agreed.

'So what will you do?' she asked.

Thomas did not speak for a while. He was thinking of the penance he had been given by Father Hobbe. 'I suppose one day I must find the man who killed my father,' he said after a while.

'But what if he is the devil?' she asked seriously.

'Then I shall wear garlic,' Thomas said lightly, 'and pray to St Guinefort.'

She looked at the darkening water. 'Did St Augustine really say that thing?'

'Nondum amabam, et amare amabam?' Thomas said. 'Yes, he did.' Thomas said. 'Yes, he did.'

'I know how he felt,' Eleanor said, and rested her head on his shoulder.

Thomas did not move. He had a choice. Follow the lance or take his black bow back to the army. In truth he did not know what he should do. But Eleanor's body was warm against his and it was comforting and that, for the moment, was enough and so, for the moment, he would stay.

Chapter 9.

Next morning Sir Guillaume, escorted now by a half-dozen men-at-arms, took Thomas to the Abbaye aux Hommes. A crowd of pet.i.tioners stood at the gates, wanting food and clothing that the monks did not have, though the abbey itself had escaped the worst of the plundering because it had been the quarters of the King and of the Prince of Wales. The monks themselves had fled at the approach of the English army. Some had died on the Ile St Jean, but most had gone south to a brother house and among those was Brother Germain who, when Sir Guillaume arrived, had just returned from his brief exile.

Brother Germain was tiny, ancient and bent, a wisp of a man with white hair, myopic eyes and delicate hands with which he was tr.i.m.m.i.n.g a goose quill.

'The English,' the old man said, 'use these feathers for their arrows. We use them for G.o.d's word.' Brother Germain, Thomas was told, had been in charge of the monastery's scriptorium for more than thirty years. 'In the course of copying books,' the monk explained, 'one discovers knowledge whether one wishes it or not. Most of it is quite useless, of course. How is Mordecai? He lives?'

'He lives,' Sir Guillaume said, 'and sends you this.' He put a clay pot, sealed with wax, on the sloping surface of the writing desk. The pot slid down until Brother Germain trapped it and pushed it into a pouch. 'A salve,' Sir Guillaume explained to Thomas, 'for Brother Germain's joints.'

'Which ache,' the monk said, 'and only Mordecai can relieve them 'Tis a pity he will burn in h.e.l.l, but in heaven, I am a.s.sured, I shall need no ointments. Who is this?' He peered at Thomas.

'A friend,' Sir Guillaume said, 'who brought me this.' He was carrying Thomas's bow, which he now laid across the desk and tapped the silver plate. Brother Germain stooped to inspect the badge and Thomas heard a sharp intake of breath.

'The yale,' Brother Germain said. He pushed the bow away, then blew the sc.r.a.ps from his sharpened quill off the desk. 'The beast was introduced by the heralds in the last century. Back then, of course, there was real scholarship in the world. Not like today. I get young men from Paris whose heads are stuffed with wool, yet they claim to have doctorates.'

He took a sheet of sc.r.a.p parchment from a shelf, laid it on the desk and dipped his quill in a pot of vermilion ink. He let a glistening drop fall onto the parchment and then, with the skill gained in a lifetime, drew the ink out of the drop in quick strokes. He hardly seemed to be taking notice of what he was doing, but Thomas, to his amazement, saw a yale taking shape on the parchment.

'The beast is said to be mythical,' Brother Germain said, flicking the quill to make a tusk, 'and maybe it is. Most heraldic beasts seem to be inventions. Who has seen a unicorn?' He put another drop of ink on the parchment, paused a heartbeat, then began on the beast's raised paws. 'There is, however, a notion that the yale exists in Ethiopia. I could not say, not having travelled east of Rouen, nor have I met any traveller who has been there, if indeed Ethiopia even exists.' He frowned. 'The yale is mentioned by Pliny, however, which suggests it was known to the Romans, though G.o.d knows they were a credulous race. The beast is said to possess both horns and tusks, which seems extravagant, and is usually depicted as being silver with yellow spots. Alas, our pigments were stolen by the English, but they left us the vermilion which, I suppose, was kind of them. It comes from cinnabar, I'm told. Is that a plant? Father Jacques, rest his soul, always claimed it grows in the Holy Land and perhaps it does. Do I detect that you are limping, Sir Guillaume?'

'A b.a.s.t.a.r.d English archer put an arrow in my leg,' Sir Guillaume said, 'and I pray nightly that his soul will roast in h.e.l.l.'

'You should, instead, give thanks that he was inaccurate. Why do you bring me an English war bow decorated with a yale?'

'Because I thought it would interest you,' Sir Guillaume said, 'and because my young friend here,' he touched Thomas's shoulder, 'wants to know about the Vexilles.'

'He would do much better to forget them,' Brother Germain grumbled.

He was perched on a tall chair and now peered about the room where a dozen young monks tidied the mess left by the monastery's English occupiers. Some of them chattered as they worked, provoking a frown from Brother Germain.

'This is not Caen marketplace!' he snapped. 'If you want to gossip, go to the lavatories. I wish I could. Ask Mordecai if he has an unguent for the bowels, would you?' He glowered about the room for an instant, then struggled to pick up the bow that he had propped against the desk. He looked intently at the yale for an instant, then put the bow down. 'There was always a rumour that a branch of the Vexille family went to England. This seems to confirm it.'

'Who are they?' Thomas asked.

Brother Germain seemed irritated by the direct question, or perhaps the whole subject of the Vexilles made him uncomfortable. 'They were the rulers of Astarac,' he said, 'a county on the borders of Languedoc and the Agenais. That, of course, should tell you all you need to know of them.'

It tells me nothing,' Thomas confessed.

Then you probably have a doctorate from Paris!' The old man chuckled at this jest. 'The Counts of Astarac, young man, were Cathars. Southern France was infested by that d.a.m.ned heresy, and Astarac was at the centre of the evil.' He made the sign of the cross with fingers deep-stained by pigments. 'Habere non potest,' 'Habere non potest,' he said solemnly, he said solemnly, 'Deum patrem qui ecclesiam non habet matrem.' 'Deum patrem qui ecclesiam non habet matrem.'

St Cyprian,' Thomas said. '"He cannot have G.o.d as his father who does not have the Church as his mother."'

'I see you are not from Paris after all,' Brother Germain said. 'The Cathars rejected the Church, looking for salvation within their own dark souls. What would become of the Church if we all did that? If we all pursued our own whims? If G.o.d is within us then we need no Church and no Holy Father to lead us to His mercy, and that notion is the most pernicious of heresies, and where did it lead the Cathars? To a life of dissipation, of fleshly l.u.s.t, of pride and of perversion. They denied the divinity of Christ!' Brother Germain made the sign of the cross again.

'And the Vexilles were Cathars?' Sir Guillaume prompted the old man.

'I suspect they were devil worshippers,' Brother Germain retorted, 'but certainly the Counts of Astarac protected the Cathars, they and a dozen other lords. They were called the dark lords and very few of them were Perfects. The Perfects were the sect leaders, the heresiarchs, and they abstained from wine, intercourse and meat, and no Vexille would willingly abandon those three joys. But the Cathars allowed such sinners to be among their ranks and promised them the joys of heaven if they recanted before their deaths. The dark lords liked such a promise and, when the heresy was a.s.sailed by the Church, they fought bitterly.' He shook his head. 'This was a hundred years ago! The Holy Father and the King of France destroyed the Cathars, and Astarac was one of the last fortresses to fall. The fight was dreadful, the dead innumerable, but the heresiarchs and the dark lords were finally scotched.'

'Yet some escaped?' Sir Guillaume suggested gently.

Brother Germain was silent for a while, gazing at the drying vermilion ink. 'There was a story,' he said, 'that some of the Cathar lords did survive, and that they took their riches to countries all across Europe. There is even a rumour that the heresy yet survives, hidden in the lands where Burgundy and the Italian states meet.' He made the sign of the cross. 'I think a part of the Vexille family went to England, to hide there, for it was in England, Sir Guillaume, that you found the lance of St George. Vexille...' He said the name thoughtfully. 'It derives, of course, from vexillaire, vexillaire, a standard-bearer, and it is said that an early Vexille discovered the lance while on the crusades and thereafter carried it as a standard. It was certainly a symbol of power in those old days. Myself? I am sceptical of these relics. The abbot a.s.sures me he has seen three foreskins of the infant Jesus and even I, who hold Him blessed above all things, doubt He was so richly endowed, but I have asked some questions about this lance. There is a legend attached to it. It is said that the man who carries the lance into battle cannot be defeated. Mere legend, of course, but belief in such nonsense inspires the ignorant, and there are few more ignorant than soldiers. What troubles me most, though, is their purpose.' a standard-bearer, and it is said that an early Vexille discovered the lance while on the crusades and thereafter carried it as a standard. It was certainly a symbol of power in those old days. Myself? I am sceptical of these relics. The abbot a.s.sures me he has seen three foreskins of the infant Jesus and even I, who hold Him blessed above all things, doubt He was so richly endowed, but I have asked some questions about this lance. There is a legend attached to it. It is said that the man who carries the lance into battle cannot be defeated. Mere legend, of course, but belief in such nonsense inspires the ignorant, and there are few more ignorant than soldiers. What troubles me most, though, is their purpose.'

'Whose purpose?' Thomas asked.

'There is a story,' Brother Germain said, ignoring the question, 'that before the fall of the last heretic fortresses, the surviving dark lords made an oath. They knew the war was lost, they knew their strongholds must fall and that the Inquisition and the forces of G.o.d would destroy their people, and so they made an oath to visit vengeance on their enemies. One day, they swore, they would bring down the Throne of France and the Holy MotherChurch, and to do it they would use the power of their holiest relics.'

'The lance of St George?' Thomas asked.

'That too,' Brother Germain said.

'That too?' Sir Guillaume repeated the words in a puzzled tone.

Brother Germain dipped his quill and put another glistening drop of ink on the parchment. Then, deftly, he finished his copy of the badge on Thomas's bow. 'The yale,' he said, 'I have seen before, but the badge you showed me is different. The beast is holding a chalice. But not any chalice, Sir Guillaume. You are right, the bow interests me, and frightens me, for the yale is holding the Grail. The holy, blessed and most precious Grail. It was always rumoured that the Cathars possessed the Grail. There is a tawdry lump of green gla.s.s in Genoa Cathedral that is said to be the Grail, but I doubt our dear Lord drank from such a bauble. No, the real Grail exists, and whoever holds it possesses power above all men on earth.' He put down the quill. 'I fear, Sir Guillaume, that the dark lords want their revenge. They gather their strength. But they hide still and the Church has not yet taken notice. Nor will it until the danger is obvious, and by then it will be too late.' Brother Germain lowered his head so that Thomas could only see the bald pink patch among the white hair. 'It is all prophesied,' the monk said; 'it is all in the books.'

'What books?' Sir Guillaume asked.