the howling began again.
Bernard de Taillebourg went to the cathedral when his business in the monastery's small hospital was finished. His servant was readying the horses as the Dominican strode down the great nave between the vast pillars painted in jagged stripes of red, yellow, green and blue. He went to the tomb of St Cuthbert to say a prayer. He was not certain that Cuthbert was an important saint – he was certainly not one of the blessed souls who commanded the ear of God in heaven – but he was much revered locally, and his tomb, thickly decorated with jewels, gold and silver, testified to that devotion. At least a hundred women were gathered about the grave, most of them crying, and de Taillebourg pushed some out of his way so he could get close enough to touch the embroidered pall that shrouded the tomb. One woman snarled at him, then realized he was a priest and, seeing his bloodied, bruised face, begged his forgiveness. Bernard de Taillebourg ignored her, stoop-ing instead to the tomb. The pall was tasselled and the women had tied little shreds of cloth to the tassels, each scrap a prayer. Most prayers were for health, for the restoration of a limb, for the gift of sight, or to save a child's life, but today they were begging Cuthbert to bring their menfolk safely down from the hill. Bernard de Taillebourg added his own prayer. Go to St Denis, he beseeched Cuthbert, and ask him to speak to God. Cuthbert, even if he could not hold God's attention, could certainty find St Denis who, being French, was bound to be closer to God than Cuthbert. Beg Denis to pray that God's speed attend my errand and that God's blessing be upon the search and that God's grace give it success. And pray God to forgive us our sins, but know that our sins, grievous though they be, are committed only in God's service. He moaned at the thought of this day's sins, then he kissed the pall and took a coin from the purse under his robe. He dropped the coin in the great metal jar where pilgrims gave what they_ could to the shrine and then he hurried back down the cathedral's nave. A crude building, he thought, its coloured pillars so fat and gross and its carvings as clumsy as a child's scratchings, so unlike the new and graceful abbeys and churches that were rising in France. He dipped his fingers in the holy water, made the sign of the cross and went out into the sunlight where his servant was waiting with their mounts.
'You could have left without me,' he said to the servant.
'It would be easier,' the servant said, 'to kill you on the road and then go on without you.'
'But you won't do that,' de Taillebourg said, 'because the grace of God has come into your soul.'
'Thanks be to God,' the servant said.
The man was not a servant by birth, but a knight and gently born. Now, at de Taillebourg's pleasure, he was being punished for his sins and for the sins of his family. There were those, and Cardinal Bessieres was among them, who thought the man should have been stretched on the rack, that he should have been pressed by great weights, that the burning irons should have seared into his flesh so that his back arched as he screamed repentance at the ceiling, but de Taillebourg had persuaded the Cardinal to do nothing except show this man the instruments of the Inquisition's torture. 'Then give him to me,'
de Taillebourg had said, 'and let hint lead me to the Grail.'
'Kill him afterwards,' the Cardinal had instructed the Inquisitor.
'All will be different when we have the Grail,' de Taillebourg had said evasively. He still did not know whether he would have to kill this thin young man with the sun-dark skin and the black eyes and the nar-row face who had once called himself the Harlequin. He had adopted the name out of pride because harlequins were lost souls, but de Taillebourg believed he might well have saved this harlequin's soul. The Harlequin's real name was Guy Vexille, Count of Astarac, and it had been Guy Vexille whom de Taillebourg had been describing when he spoke to Brother Collimore about the man who had come from the south to fight for France in Picardy. Vexille had been seized after the battle when the French King had been looking for scapegoats and a man who dared display the crest of a family declared heretic and rebel had made a good scapegoat. Vexille had been given to the Inquisition in the expectation that they would torture the heresy out of him, but de Taillebourg had liked the Harlequin. He had recognized a fellow soul, a hard man, a dedicated man, a man who knew that this life meant nothing because all that counted was the next, and so de Taillebourg had spared Vexille the agonies. He had merely shown him the chamber where men and women screamed their apologies to God, and then he had questioned him gently and Vexille had revealed how he had once sailed to England to find the Grail and, though he had killed his uncle, Thomas's father, he had not found it. Now, with de Taillebourg, he had listened to Eleanor tell Thomas's story. 'Did you believe her?' the Dominican now asked.
'I believed her,' Vexille said.
'But was she deceived?' The Inquisitor wondered. Eleanor had told them that Thomas had been charged to seek the Grail, but that his faith was weak and his search halfhearted. 'We shall still have to kill him,' de Taillebourg added.
'Of course.'
De Taillebourg frowned. 'You do not mind?' 'Killing?' Guy Vexille sounded surprised that de Taillebourg should even ask. 'Killing is my job, father,' the Harlequin said. Cardinal Bessieres had decreed that everyone who sought the Grail should be killed, all except those who sought it on the Cardinal's own behalf, and Guy Vexille had willingly become God's murderer. He certainly had no qualms about slitting his cousin Thomas's throat.
'You want to wait here for him?' he asked the Inquisitor. 'The girl said he would be in the cathedral after the battle.'
De Taillebourg looked across to the hill. The Scots would win, he was sure, and that made it doubtful that Thomas of Hookton would come to the city. More likely he would flee southwards in panic. 'We shall go to Hookton.'
'I searched Hookton once,' Guy Vexille said.
'Then you will search it again,' de Taillebourg snapped.
'Yes, father.' Guy Vexille humbly lowered his head. He was a sinner; it was required of him that he show penitence and so he did not argue. He just did de Taillebourg's bidding and his reward, he had been promised, would be reinstatement. He would be given back his pride, allowed to lead men to war again and forgiven by the Church.
'We shall leave now,' de Taillebourg said. He wanted to go before William Douglas came in search of them and, even more urgently, before anyone discovered the three bodies in the hospital cell. The Dominican had closed the door on the corpses and doubtless the monks would believe Collimore was sleeping and so would not disturb him, but de Taillebourg still wanted to be free of the city when the bodies were found and so he pulled himself into the saddle of one of the horses they had stolen from Jamie Douglas that morning. It seemed a long time ago now. He pushed his shoes into the stirrups, then kicked a beggar away. The man had been clawing at de Taillebourg's leg, whining that he was hungry, but now reeled away from the priest's savage thrust. The noise of battle swelled. The Dominican looked at the ridge again, but the fight was none of his business. If the English and the Scots wished to maul each other then let them. He had greater matters on his mind, matters of God and the Grail and of heaven and hell. He had sins on his conscience too, but they would be shriven by the Holy Father and even heaven would understand those sins once he had found the Grail. The gates of the city, though strongly guarded, were open so that the wounded could be brought inside and food and drink carried to the ridge. The guards were older men and had been ordered to make certain that no Scottish raiders tried to enter the city, but they had not been charged to stop anyone leaving and so they took no notice of the haggard priest with the bruised face mounted on a warhorse, nor of his elegant servant. So de Taillebourg and the Harlequin rode out of Durham, turned towards the York road, put back their heels and, as the sound of battle echoed from the city's crag, rode away southwards. It was mid- afternoon when the Scots attacked a second time, but this assault, unlike the first, did not come hard on the heels of fleeing archers. Instead the archers were drawn up ready to receive the charge and this time the arrows flew thick as starlings. Those on the Scottish left who had so nearly broken the English line were now faced by twice as many archers, and their charge, which had begun so confidently, slowed to a crawl and then stopped altogether as men crouched behind shields. The Scottish right never advanced at all, while the King's central sheltron was checked fifty paces from the stone wall behind which a crowd of archers sent an incessant shower of arrows. The Scots would not retreat, they could not advance, and for a time the long-shafted arrows thumped onto shields and into carelessly ex-posed bodies, then Lord Robert Stewart's men edged back out of range and the King's sheltron followed and so another pause came over the red-earthed battlefield. The drums were silent and no more insults were being shouted across the littered pastureland. The Scottish lords, those who still lived, gathered under their King's saltire banner and the Archbishop of York, seeing his enemies in council, called his own lords together. The Englishmen were gloomy. The enemy, they reasoned, would never expose themselves to what the Archbishop described as a third baptism of arrows. 'The bastards will slink off northwards,' the Archbishop predicted,
