She pushed their bags, his bow and the arrows, the mail and their cloaks across the bones, then followed, wincing at the pain in her shoulder. Thomas had to help her put on the mail and he hurt her when he lifted her arm. He put on his own, draped the cloaks about their shoulders, then strung his bow so he could wear it on his back. He belted his sword in place, put the box in his bag, which he hung from his belt, and then, carrying the arrow sheaves, turned to the stairs and saw, because just enough light spilled from the open door, the white robe in the treasury chamber. He motioned Genevieve to stay where she was and crept up the vault. Rats scampered away as he came to the low arch and there he stopped and stared. Planchard was dead.
What is it?' Genevieve asked.
The bastard killed him. Thomas said in astonishment. Who?'
The abbot!“ He spoke in a whisper and, though he was excom municated, he made the sign of the cross. He killed him!” He had listened to the end of Vexille and Planchard's conversation and had been puzzled that the abbot fell silent, and equally puzzled that he had only heard one set of feet climb the stairs, but he had never imagined this. Never. He was a good man,“ he said. And if he's dead. Genevieve said, they'll blame us. So come on! Come!”
Thomas hated to leave the bloody corpse in the cellar, but knew he had no choice. And Genevieve was right, they would be blamed. Planchard had died because his grandfather had recanted a heresy, but no one would believe that, not when two condemned heretics were there to blame.
He led her up the stairs. The church was still empty, but now Thomas thought he could hear voices beyond the open western door. There was a fog outside and some of it was spilling into the nave and spreading gently across the flagstones. He thought of going back to the ossuary and hiding again, then wondered whether his cousin would make a more thorough search of the whole monastery today and that decided him to keep going. This way.' He took Genevieve's hand and led her to the southern side of the church where a door led to the inner cloister. It was the door the monks used when they came for prayers, a devotion that had evidently been denied them this morning.
Thomas pushed the door, flinching when its hinges creaked, and peered through. At first he thought the cloister, like the church, was empty; then he saw a group of black-cloaked men at its far side. They were standing at a doorway, evidently listening to someone inside, and none looked round as Thomas and Genevieve flitted under the shadowed arcade and chose a door at random. It opened onto a corridor and at its end they found themselves in the monastery kitchen where two monks were stirring a vast cauldron above a fire. One of them saw Genevieve and looked as if he was about to protest at a woman's presence, but Thomas hissed at him to be silent. Where are the other monks?' Thomas asked. In their cells. the frightened cook replied, then watched as the two of them ran across the kitchen, past the table with its cleavers and spoons and bowls and beneath the hooks where two goat carcasses hung, and disappeared out of the far door, which led into the olive grove where Thomas had abandoned their horses. Those horses were gone.
The gate to the lazar house was open. Thomas glanced at it, then turned westwards, but Genevieve plucked at his cloak and pointed through the fog and Thomas saw a black-cloaked rider beyond the trees. Was the man part of a cordon? Had Vexille placed men all about the monastery? It seemed likely and it seemed even more likely that the horseman would turn and see them, or that the two kitchen monks might raise the alarm, but then Genevieve plucked his cloak again and led him across the olive grove and into the lazar house.
It was empty. All men feared lepers and it seemed to Thomas that Vexille must have driven them away so his men could search the sheds. We can't hide here,“ he whispered to Genevieve. They'll search again.”
We don't hide,“ she said, and she went into the biggest shed and came out with two grey robes. Thomas understood then. He helped drape one robe over Genevieve, pulling its hood over her golden hair, donned the other and then took two clappers from the handful left on the table. Genevieve, meanwhile, had put the arrow sheaves and Thomas's bow on a sledge that the lepers used to gather firewood and Thomas heaped some of the firewood over the weapons and put the sledge's looped rope over his shoulders. Now we go,” Genevieve said.
Thomas hauled the sledge, which ran easily on the damp ground. Genevieve went ahead and, once out of the gate, she turned north and west, hoping to avoid the horseman. The fog was their ally, a grey cloak in which their own cloaks melded. A tongue of wood land reached from the western ridge and Genevieve walked towards it, not sounding the clapper, but just watching. She hissed once and Thomas went still. A horse's hooves sounded; he heard them go away, and he hauled on. He turned after a while and saw that the monastery had vanished. The trees ahead were gaunt black shapes in the vapour. They were following a track that the lepers used when they went to gather mushrooms from the woods. The trees came closer, then the thud of hooves sounded once more and Genevieve rattled her clapper in warning.
But the horseman was not deterred. He came from behind them and Thomas shook his own clapper as he turned. He kept his head low so his face would not be seen under the robe's hood. He saw the horse's legs, but not the rider. Mercy, kind sir,“ he said, mercy.” Genevieve reached out her hands as if seeking charity, and the scars on her skin left by Father Roubert looked grotesque. Thomas did the same, revealing his own scars, the skin white and ridged. Alms,“ he said, of your kindness, sir, alms.” The unseen horseman stared at them and they dropped to their knees. The horse's breath came as great clouds of thicker fog. Have pity on us.“ Genevieve spoke in the local tongue, using a rasping voice. For God's sake, have pity.”
The horseman just sat there and Thomas dared not look up. He felt the abject fear of a defenceless man at the mercy of a mailed rider, but he also knew that the man was torn by indecision. He had doubtless been ordered to look for two people
escaping the monastery, and he had found just such a couple, but they appeared to be lepers and his fear of leprosy was fighting with his duty. Then, suddenly, more clappers sounded and Thomas sneaked a look behind him to see a group of grey shrouded figures coming from the trees, sounding their warn ings and calling out for alms. The sight of more lepers, coming to join the first two, was more than the horseman could take. He spat at them, then wrenched his reins to turn away. Thomas and Genevieve waited, still on their knees, until the man was half cloaked in the fog and then they hurried on to the trees where at last they could throw down the clappers, strip off the stinking grey robes and retrieve the bow and arrow sheaves. The other lepers, driven from their refuge at the monastery, just stared at them. Thomas took a handful of coins from those Sir Guillaume had given him and left them on the grass. You have not seen us,' he said to them, and Genevieve repeated the words in the local language.
They walked on west, climbing out of the fog, keeping to the trees until there were no more woods, only a rocky slope going up to the ridge. They scrambled up, trying to stay behind boulders or in gullies, while behind them the fog burned off the valley. The roof of the abbey church appeared first, then the other roofs, and by mid-morning the whole monastery was visible, but Thomas and Genevieve were already on the crest, going south. If they had kept going westwards they would descend into the valley of the River Gers where the villages lay thick, while to the south was emptier, wilder country and that was where they were headed. At midday they stopped to rest. We have no food,' Thomas said.
Then we go hungry,“ Genevieve said. She smiled at him. And where are we going?”
Castillon d'Arbizon,“ Thomas said, eventually.” Going back there!“ She was surprised. But they threw us out: why would they take us back?”
Because they need us,' Thomas said. He did not know that, not for sure, but he had listened to Vexille talking to Planchard and had learned that some of the garrison had gone over to the Count of Berat, and he reckoned Robbie must have led that group. He could not imagine Sir Guillaume breaking his allegiance to the Earl of Northampton, but Robbie had no allegiance outside of Scotland. It was Thomas's guess that the men left at Castillon d'Arbizon were his own men, the men he had recruited outside Calais, the Englishmen. So he would go there, and if he found the castle slighted and the garrison dead then he would go on, ever westwards, until he reached the English possessions.
But first they would go southwards for that was where the great woods stretched in folds across the ridges running out of the mountains. He picked up his baggage and, as he did, the grail box, which had been stuffed into his archer's bag on top of the spare arrow heads, sharpening stone and cords, fell out. He sat again and picked up the box. What is it?' Genevieve asked.
Planchard believed it was the box that held the Grail,“ he told her, or maybe the box that was supposed to make men think it had held the Grail.” He stared at the fading inscription. Now that he could see the box properly, in the sunlight, he saw that the lettering had been in red and that where the paint had been rubbed away there was still a faint impression on the wood. There was another faint impression inside the box, a circle of dust that had
