Maybe the world was ending, Thomas thought. Perhaps the terrible prophecies of the Book of Revelation were coming true. The four dread horsemen were riding. The rider on the white horse was God's revenge on an evil world, the red horse carried war, the black horse was saddled by famine while the pale horse, the worst, brought plague and death. And perhaps the only thing that could turn the riders away was the Grail, but he did not have the Grail. So the horsemen would run free. Thomas stood, picked up his bow and started down the street.
Guy's surviving men were not staying to fight the archers. They fled like Joscelyn's men, going to find a place where no plague filled the streets, and Thomas stalked a town of the dying and the dead, a town of smoke and filth, a place of weeping. He carried an arrow on the string, but no one challenged him. A woman called for help, a child cried in a doorway, and then Thomas saw a man-at-arms, still in mail, and he half drew the bow, then saw the man had no weapons, only a pail of water. He was an older man, grey-haired. You must be Thomas?“ the man said. Yes.”
I'm Sir Henri Courtois.“ He pointed at a nearby house. Your friend is in there. He's sick.”
Robbie lay on a fouled bed. He was shaking with a fever and his face was dark and swollen. He did not recognize Thomas. You poor bastard. Thomas said. He gave his bow to Sam. And take that too, Sam. he said, pointing to the parchment that lay on a low stool beside the bed, and then he lifted Robbie in his arms and carried him back up the hill. You should die among friends. he told the unconscious man.
The siege, at last, was over.
Sir Guillaume died. Many died. Too many to bury, so Thomas had the corpses carried to a ditch in the fields across the river and he covered them with brushwood and set the heap on fire, though there was not enough fuel to burn the bodies, which were left half roasted. Wolves came and ravens darkened the sky above the ditch that was death's rich feast.
Folk came back to the town. They had sought refuge in places that were struck as badly as Castillon d'Arbizon. The plague was everywhere, they said. Berat was a town of the dead, though whether Joscelyn lived no one knew and Thomas did not care. Winter brought frost and at Christmas a friar brought news that the pestilence was now in the north. It is everywhere. the friar said, everyone is dying. Yet not everyone died. Philin's son, Galdric, recovered, but just after Christmas his father caught the disease and was dead in three agonizing days.
Robbie lived. It had seemed he must die for there had been nights when he appeared not to breathe, yet he lived and slowly he recovered. Genevieve looked after him, feeding him when he was weak and washing him when he was filthy, and when he tried to apologize to her she hushed him. Speak to Thomas. she said.
Robbie, still weak, went to Thomas and he thought the archer looked older and fiercer. Robbie did not know what to say, but Thomas did. Tell me. he said. When you did what you did, you thought you were doing the right thing?'
Yes. Robbie said.
Then you did no wrong. Thomas said flatly, and that's an end of it.
I should not have taken that. Robbie said, pointing to the parchment on Thomas's lap, the Grail writings left by Thomas's father.
I got it back. Thomas said, and now I'm using it to teach Genevieve to read. It isn't any use for anything else. Robbie stared into the fire. I'm sorry. he said.
Thomas ignored the apology. And what we do now is wait until everyone is well, then we go home.'
They were ready to leave by Saint Benedict's Day. Eleven men would go home to England, and Galdric, who had no parents now, would travel as Thomas's servant. They would go home rich, for most of the money from their plunders was still intact, but what they would find in England Thomas did not know.
He spent the last night in Castillon d'Arbizon listening as Genevieve stumbled over the words of his father's parchment. He had decided to burn it after this night, for it had led him nowhere. He was making Genevieve read the Latin, for there was little English or French in the document, and though she did not under stand the words it did give her practice in deciphering the letters. Virga tua et baculus tuus ipsa consolobuntur me, ' she read slowly, and Thomas nodded and knew the words calix meus inebrians were not far ahead, and he thought that the cup had got him drunk, drunk and wild and all to no purpose. Planchard had been right. The search made men mad.
Ponp coram me mensam, “ Genevieve read, ex adverso hostium meorum.”
It's not pono,“ Thomas said, but pones. Pones coram me mensam ex adverso hostium meorum. ” He knew it by heart and now trans lated for her. Thou prepares! a table for me in the presence of my enemies.'
She frowned, a long pale finger on the writing. No. she insisted, it does say pono.“” She held out the manuscript to prove it. The firelight flickered on the words that did indeed say pono coram me mensam ex adverso hostium meorum.“ His father had written it and Thomas must have looked at the line a score of times, yet he had never noticed the mistake. His familiarity with the Latin had led him to skip across the words, seeing them in his head rather than on the parchment. Pono. I prepare a table.” Not thou preparest, but I prepare, and Thomas stared at the word and knew it was not a mistake.
And knew he had found the Grail.
EPILOGUE
The Grail
The breaking waves drove up the shingle, hissed white and scraped back. On and on, ever and ever, the grey-green sea beating at England's coast.
A small rain fell, soaking the new grass where lambs played and buck hares danced beside the hedgerows where anemones and stitchwort grew.
The pestilence had come to England. Thomas and his three companions had ridden through empty villages and heard cows bellowing in agony for there was no one to take the milk from their swollen udders. At some villages archers waited at barricaded streets to turn all strangers away and Thomas had dutifully ridden around such places. They had seen pits dug for the dead; pits half filled with corpses that had received no last rites. The pits were edged with flowers for it was springtime.
In Dorchester there was a dead man in the street and no one to bury him. Some houses had been nailed shut and painted with a red cross to show that the folk inside were sick and must be left there to die or recover. Outside the town the fields went unploughed, seed stayed in the barns of dead farmers, and yet there were larks above the grass and the kingfishers darting along the streams and plovers tumbling beneath the clouds. Sir Giles Marriott, the old lord of the manor, had died before the plague struck, and his grave was in the village church, but if any of the surviving villagers saw Thomas ride by, they did not greet him. They sheltered from God's wrath and Thomas, Genevieve, Robbie and Galdric rode on down the lane until they were beneath Lipp Hill and ahead was the sea, and the shingle, and the valley where Hookton had once stood. It had been burned by Sir Guillaume and Guy Vexille back when they were allies, and now there was nothing but thorns looping over the lumpy remains of the cottages, and hazels and thistles and nettles growing in the scorched black, roofless walls of the church.
Thomas had been in England for a fortnight. He had ridden to the Earl of Northampton, and he had knelt to his lord who had first had servants examine Thomas to make sure he did not carry the dark marks of the pestilence, and Thomas had paid his lord one-third of the money they had brought from Castillon d'Arbizon, and then he had given him the golden cup. It was made for the Grail, my lord. he said, but the Grail is gone.“ The Earl admired the cup, turning it and holding it up so that it caught the light, and he was amazed at its beauty. Gone?” he asked.
The monks at Saint Sever's. Thomas lied, believe it was taken to heaven by an angel whose wing had been mended there. It is gone, lord.'
And the Earl had been satisfied, for he was the possessor of a great treasure even if it was not the Grail, and Thomas, promising to return, had gone away with his companions. Now he had come to the village of his childhood, the place he had learned to master the bow, and to the church where his father, the mad Father Ralph, had preached to the gulls and hidden his great secret. It was still there. Hidden in the grass and nettles that grew between the flagstones of the old church, a thing discarded as being of no value. It was a clay bowl which Father Ralph had used to hold the mass wafers. He would put the bowl on the altar, cover it with a linen cloth and carry it home when mass was done. I prepare a table', he had written, and the altar was the table and the bowl was the thing he set it with and Thomas had handled it a hundred times and thought nothing of it, and when he had last been in Hookton he had picked it up from the ruins and then, disdaining it, he had thrown it back among the weeds. Now he found it again among the nettles and he took it to Genevieve who placed it in the wooden box and closed the lid, and the fit of the thing was so perfect that the box did not even rattle when it was shaken. The base of the bowl matched the slight discoloured circle in the old paint of the box's interior. The one had been made for the other. What do we do?“ Genevieve asked. Robbie and Galdric were outside the church, exploring the ridges and
