The Grail Quest 2 - Vagabond - Bernard Cornwell

'You like it?'

'I love it.' She smiled at him and her young face, which was strangely wedgelike, took on a beauty as she did so. 'My mother now,' she event on, 'she was going to have me put into the bishop's service. Cleaning and washing, cooking and cleaning till your hands are fair worn away by work, but Pierre told me I could live free as a bird on his boat and so we do, so we do.'

'Just the two of you?' The Pentecost seemed a large ship for just two, even if one of them was a giant.

'No one else will sail with us,' Yvette said. 'It's bad luck to have a woman on a boat. My father always said that.'

'He was a fisherman?'

'A good one.' Yvette said, 'but he drowned all the same. He was caught on the Casquets on a bad night.'

She looked up at Thomas earnestly. 'He did see the lost lands, you know.'

'I believe you.'

'He sailed ever so far north and then west, and he said the men from the north lands know the fishing grounds of the lost lands well and there's fish as far as you can see. He said you could walk on the sea it was so thick with fish, and one day he was creeping through the fog and he saw the land and he saw the trees like bushes and he saw the dead souls on shore. Thev were dark, he said, like they'd been scorched by hell's fires, and he took fright and he turned and sailed away. It took him two months to get there and a month and a half to come home and all his fish had gone bad because he wouldn't go ashore and smoke them.'

'I believe you,' Thomas said again, though he was not really sure that he did.

'And I think if I drown,' Yvette said, 'then me and Pierre will go to the lost lands together and he won't have to sit on the cliffs and call for me.' She spoke very matter-offactly, then went to ready some breakfast for her man whose snoring had just ceased. Sir Guillaume emerged from the forecabin. He blinked at the winter daylight, then strolled aft and pissed across the stern rail while he stared at the three boats which had rowed out from the river and were now a mile or so east of the Pentecost. 'So you saw Brother Germain?' he asked Thomas.

'I wish I hadn't.'

'He's a scholar,' Sir Guillaume said, pulling up his trews and tying the waist knot,

'which means he doesn't have balls. Doesn't need to. He's clever, mind you, clever, but he was never on our side, Thomas.'

'I thought he was your friend.'

'When I had power and money, Thomas,' Sir Guillaume said, 'I had many friends, but Brother Germain was never one of them. He's always been a good son of the Church and I should never have introduced you to him.'

'Why not?'

'Once he learned you were a Vexille he reported our conversation to the bishop and the bishop told the Arch-bishop and the Archbishop told the Cardinal and the Cardinal spoke to whoever gives him his crumbs, and suddenly the Church got excited about the Vexilles and the fact that your family had once owned the Grail. And it was just about then that Guy Vexille reappeared so the Inquisition took hold of him.' He paused, gazing at the horizon, then made the sign of the cross. 'That's who your de Taillebourg is, I'd wager my life on it. He's a Dominican and most Inquisitors are hounds of God.' He turned his one eye on Thomas. 'Why do they call them the hounds of God?'

'It's a joke.' Thomas said, 'from the Latin. Domini canis: the hound of God.'

'Doesn't make me laugh,' Sir Guillaume said gloomily. 'If one of those bastards gets hold of you it's red-hot pokers in the eyes and screams in the night. And I hear they got hold of Guy Vexille and I hope they hurt him.'

'So Guy Vexille is a prisoner?' Thomas was surprised. Brother Germain had said his cousin was reconciled with the Church.

'That's what I heard. I heard he was singing psalms on the Inquisition's rack. And doubtless he told them that your father had possessed the Grail, and how he sailed to Hookton to find it and how he failed. But who else went to Hookton? Me, that's who, so I think Coutances was told to find me, arrest me and haul me to Paris. And meanwhile they sent men to England to find out what they could.'

'And to kill Eleanor,' Thomas said bleakly.

'Which they'll pay for,' Sir Guillaume said.

'And now,' Thomas said, 'they've sent men here.' 'What?' Sir Guillaume asked, startled. Thomas pointed at the three fishing boats which now were rowing directly towards the Pentecost. They were too far away for him to see who or what was on board, but something about their deliberate approach alarmed him. Yvette, coming aft with bread, ham and cheese, saw Thomas and Sir Guillaume staring and she joined them, then uttered a curse that only a fisherman's daughter would ever have learned and ran to the stern cabin and shouted for her man to get on deck.

Yvette's eyes were accustomed to the sea and she knew these were no fishing boats. They had too many men aboard for a start and after a while Thomas could see those men for himself and his eves, which were more used to looking for enemies among the green leaves, saw that some of them wore mail and he knew that no man went to sea in mail unless he was intent on killing.

'They'll have crossbows.' Villeroy was on deck now, tying the neck cords of a swathing leather cloak and looking from the approaching boats up to the clouds as if he might see a breath of wind coming from the heavens. The sea was still heaving in great swells, but the water was smooth as beaten brass and there were no wind-driven ripples streaking the swells' long flanks. 'Crossbows,' Villeroy repeated gloomily.

'You want me to surrender?' Sir Guillaume asked Villeroy. His voice was sour, suggesting the question was nothing but sarcasm.

'Ain't for me to tell your lordship what to do' – Villeroy sounded just as sarcastic – 'but your men could fetch some of the bigger stones out of the bilge.'

'What will that achieve?' Sir Guillaume asked.

'I'll drop 'em on the bastards when they try to board. Those little boats? A stone'll go straight through their bottoms and then yon bastards will be trying to swim with mail strapped to their chests.' Villeroy grinned. 'Hard to swim when you're wrapped in iron.'

The stones were fetched, and Thomas readied his arrows and bow. Robbie had donned his mail coat and had his uncle's sword at his side. Sir Guillaume's two men-at-arms were with him in the waist of the boat, the place where any boarding attempt would be made for there the gunwale was closest to the sea. Thomas went to the higher stern where Will Skeat joined him and though he did not recognize Thomas he did see the bow and held out a hand.

'It's me, Will.' Thomas said.

'I know it's you,' Skeat said. He lied and was embarrassed. 'Let me try the bow, boy.'

Thomas gave him the great black stave and watched in sadness as Skeat failed to draw it even halfway. Skeat thrust the weapon back to Thomas with a look of embarrassment.

'I'm not what I was,' he muttered.

'You'll be back, Will.'

Skeat spat over the gunwale. 'Did the King really knight me?'

'He did.'

'Sometimes I think I can remember the battle, Tom, then it fades. Like a fog.' Skeat stared at the three approaching boats, which had spread into a line. Their oarsmen were pulling hard and Thomas could see crossbowmen standing in the bows and stern of each craft. 'Have you ever shot an arrow from a boat?' Skeat asked.

'Never.'

'You're moving and they're moving. It makes it hard. But take it slow, lad, take it slow.'

A man shouted from the closest boat, but the pursuers were still too far away and whatever the man said was lost in the air. 'St Nicholas, St Ursula,' Villeroy prayed, 'send us wind, and send us plenty of it.'

'He's having a go at us,' Skeat said because a crossbowman in the bows of the central boat had raised his weapon. He seemed to cock it high in the air, then he shot and the bolt banged with astonishing force low into the Pentecost's stern. Sir Guillaume, ignoring the threat, climbed onto the rail and took hold of the back-stay to keep his balance. 'They're Coutances's men,' he told Thomas, and Thomas saw that some of the men in the nearest boat were wearing the green and black livery that had been the uniform of Evecque's besiegers. More crossbows twanged and two of the bolts thudded into the stern planks and two others whipped past Sir Guillaume to slap into the impotent sail, but most splashed into the sea. It might have been calm, but the crossbowmen were still having a hard time aiming their weapons from the small boats.

And the three attacking boats were small. Each held eight or ten oarsmen and about the same number of archers or men-at-arms. The three craft had plainly been chosen for their speed under oars, but they were dwarfed by the Pentecost which would make any attempt to board the bigger vessel very perilous, though one of the three boats seemed determined to come alongside Villeroy's ship. 'What they're going to do,' Sir Guillaume said. 'is let those two boats shower us with quarrels while this bastard' – he gestured at the boat that was pulling hard to close on the Pentecost – 'puts her men on board.'

More crossbow bolts thumped into the hull. Two more quarrels pierced the sail and another hit the mast just above a weathered crucifix that was nailed to the tarred timber. The figure of Christ, white as bone, had lost its left arm and Thomas wondered if that was a had omen, then tried to forget it as he drew the big bow and shot off an arrow. He only had thirty-four shafts left, but this was not the time to stint on them and so, while the first was still in the air, he loosed a second and the crossbowmen had not finished vinding their cords back as the first arrow slashed a rower's arm and the second drove a splinter up from the boat's bow, then a third arrow hissed above the oarsmen's heads to splash into the sea. The rowers ducked, then one gasped and fell fonvard with an arrow in his back, and the next instant a man-at-arms was struck in the thigh and fell onto two of the oarsmen and there was sudden chaos aboard the boat which clewed sharply away with its oars clattering against each other. Thomas lowered the big bow.

'Taught you well,' Will Skeat said fervently. 'Ah, Tom, you always were a lethal bastard.'

The boat pulled away. Thomas's arrows had been far more accurate than the crossbow bolts for he had been shooting from a much larger and more stable ship than the narrow and overburdened rowboats. Only one of the men aboard those smaller ships had been killed, but the frequency of Thomas's first arrows had put the fear of God into the rowers who could not see where the missiles came from, but only hear the hiss of feathers and the cries of the wounded. Now the other two boats overtook the third and the crossbowmen levelled their weapons. Thomas took an arrow from the bag and worried what would happen when he had no more shafts, but just then a swirl of ripples showed that a wind was coming across the water. An east wind, of all things, the most unlikely of all winds in this sea, but it came from the east nonetheless and the Pentecost's big brown sail filled and slackened, then filled again, and suddenly she was turning away from her pursuers and the water was gurgling down her flanks. Coutances's men pulled hard on their oars. 'Down!' Sir Guillaume shouted and Thomas dropped behind the rail as a volley of crossbow bolts punched into the Pentecost's hull or flew high to tear the ragged sail. Villeroy shouted at Yvette to man the steering oar, then he sheeted down the mainsail before diving into the stern cabin to fetch a huge and evidently ancient crossbow that he cocked with a long iron lever. He loaded a rusty bolt into the groove, then shot it at the nearest pursuer. 'Bastards,' he roared. 'Your mothers were goats! They were whoring goats! Boxed whoring goats! Bastards!' He cocked the weapon again, loaded another corroded missile and shot it away, but the bolt plunged into the sea. The Pentecost was gathering speed and already out of crossbow range.

The wind filled and the Pentecost drew further away from her pursuers. The three rowboats had first gone up channel in the expectation that the flooding tide and a possible western wind would bring the Pentecost to them, but with the wind coming from the east the oars-men could not keep up with their quarry and so the three boats fell astern and finally abandoned the chase. But just as they gave up, so two new pursuers appeared in the mouth of the River Orne. Two ships, both of them large and equipped with big square sails like the Pentecost's mainsail, were coming out to sea. 'The one in front is the Saint-Esprit,' Villerov said. Even at this distance from the river mouth he could distinguish the two boats, and the other is the Marie. She sails like a pregnant pig, but the Saint-Esprit will catch us.'

The Saint-Esprit?' Sir Guillaume sounded appalled. 'Jean Lapoullier?'

'Who else?'

'I thought he was a friend!'

'He was your friend,' Villerov said, 'so long as you had land and money, but what do you have now?'

Sir Guillaume brooded on the truth of that question for a while. 'So why are you helping me?'

'Because I'm a fool,' Villeroy said cheerfully, 'and because you'll pay me damn well.'

Sir Guillaume grunted at that truism. 'Not if we sail in the wrong direction.' he added after a while.

'The right direction,' Villerov pointed out, 'is away from the Saint-Esprit and downwind, so we'll stand on west. They stood on westwards all day. They made good speed, but still the big Saint-Esprit slowly closed the gap. In the morning she had been a blur on the horizon; by midday Thomas could see the little platform at her masthead where, Villerov told him, crossbowmen would be stationed: and by mid-afternoon he could see the black and white eyes painted on her bows. The east wind had increased all through the day until it was blowing strong and cold, whipping the wavetops into white streamers. Sir Guillaume suggested going north, maybe as far as the English shore, but Villeroy claimed not to know that coastline and said he was unsure where he could find shelter there if the weather turned bad. 'And this time of year it can turn fast as a woman's temper,' Villeroy added, and as if to prove him right they ran into violent sleet squalls that hissed on the sea and buffeted the ship and cut visibility down to a few yards. Sir Guillaume again urged a northward course, suggesting they turn while the ship was hidden inside the squall, but Villeroy stubbornly refused and Thomas guessed that the huge man feared being accosted by English ships that loved nothing better than capturing French vessels. Another squall crashed past them, the rain bouncing up a hand's breadth from the deck and the sleet making a slushy white coating on the eastern flank of every halyard and sheet. Villeroy feared that his sail would split, but dared not shorten the canvas because whenever the squalls passed, leaving the sea white and frantic, the Saint-Esprit was always in sight and always a little closer. 'She's a quick one,' Villeroy said grudgingly,

'and Lapoullier knows how to sail her.'

Yet the short winter day was passing and night would offer a chance for the Pentecost to escape. The pursuers knew that and they must have been praying that their ship would be given a little extra speed: as dusk fell, she was closing the gap inch by inch, yet still the Pentecost kept her lead. They were out of sight of land now, two ships on a seething and darkening ocean, and then, when the night was almost complete, the first flame arrow streaked out from the Saint-Esprit's bow.