'What have your men plundered here?' the priest, gaunt and angry, asked again.
'Nothing,' the Count assured him.
'Then where's the garrison?'
'The garrison? Escaped.'
Bernard de Taillebourg spat in his rage. Guy Vexille, next to him, gazed up at the tower which now flew the Count's banner. 'When did they escape?' he asked. 'And where did they go?'
The Count bridled at the tone. 'Who are you?' he demanded, for Vexille wore no badge on his black surcoat.
'Your equal.' Vexille said coldly, 'and my lord the King will want to know where they have gone.'
No one knew, though a few questions eventually elicited that some of the besiegers had been aware of horsemen going northwards in the cold night and that surely meant that Sir Guillaume and his men had ridden to Caen. And if the Grail had been hidden in Evecque then that would have gone north as well and so de Taillebourg ordered his men to remount their tired horses.
They reached Caen in the early afternoon, but by then the Pentecost was halfway down the river to the sea, blown northwards by a fitful svind that barely gave headway against the last of the flooding tide. Pierre Villeroy grumbled at the futility of trying to stem the tide, but Sir Guillaume insisted for he expected his enemies to appear at any moment. He had only two men-at-arms with him now, for the rest had not wanted to follow their lord to a new allegiance. Even Sir Guillaume had little enthusiasm for that enforced loyalty. 'You think I .vant to fight for Edward of England?' he grumbled to Tho-mas. 'But what choice do I have? My own lord turned against me. So I'll swear fealty to your Edward and at least I'll live.' That was why he was going to Dunkirk, so that he could make the small journey to the English siege lines about Calais and make his obeisance to King Edward. The horses had to be abandoned on the quay, so all Sir Guillaume brought aboard the Pentecost was his armour, some clothes and three leather bags of money that he dumped on the deck before offering Thomas an embrace. And then Thomas had turned to his old friend, Will Skeat, who had glanced at him without recognition and then looked away. Thomas, about to speak. checked himself. Skeat was wearing a sallet and his hair, white as snow now, hung lank beneath its battered metal brim. His face was thinner than ever, deep-lined, and with a vague look as though he had just woken and did not know where he was. He also looked old. He could not have been more than forty-five, yet he looked sixty, though at least he was alive. When Thomas had last seen him he had been dreadfully_ wounded with a sword cut through the scalp which had laid his brain open and it had been a miracle he had lived long enough to reach Normandy and the skilled attentions of Mordecai, the Jewish doctor who was now being helped across the precarious gangplank. Thomas took another step towards his old friend who again glanced at him without recognition. 'Will?' Thomas said, puzzled. 'Will?'
And at the sound of Thomas's voice light came into Skeat's eyes. 'Thomas!' he exclaimed. 'By God, it is you!' He stepped towards Thomas, stumbling slightly, and the two men embraced. By God, Thomas, it's grand to hear an English voice. I've heard nowt but foreign jabber all winter. Good God, boy, you look older.'
'I am older,' Thomas said. 'But how are you, Will?'
'I'm alive. Tom, I'm alive, though I sometimes wonder if it wouldn't have been better to die. Weak as a kitten, I am.' His speech ryas slightly slurred, as if he had drunk too much. but he was plainly sober.
'I shouldn't call you plain Will now, should I,' Thomas asked. 'for you're Sir William now.'
'Sir William! Me?' Skeat laughed. 'You're full of crap, boy, just like you always were. Always too clever for your own good, eh, Tom?' Skeat did not remember the battle in Picardy, did not remember the King knighting him before the first French charge. Thomas had some-times wondered whether that act had been pure desperation to raise the archers' spirits for the King had surely seen how hugely his little, sick army was outnumbered and he could not have believed his men would survive. But survive they did, and svin, though the cost to Skeat had been terrible. He took off his sallet to scratch his pate and one side of his scalp was revealed as a wrinkled horror of lumpy scar, pink and white. 'Weak as a kitten,'
Skeat said again, 'and I haven't pulled a bow in weeks.'
Mordecai insisted that Skeat had to rest. Then he greeted Thomas as Villeroy let go the mooring lines and used a sweep to shove the Pentecost into the river's current. Mordecai grumbled about the cold, about the privations of the siege and about the horrors of being aboard a ship, then he smiled his wise old smile. 'You look good, Thomas. For a man who was once hanged you look indecently good. How's your urine?'
'Clear and sweet.'
'Your friend Sir William, now—' Mordecai jerked his head towards the forecabin where Skeat had been bedded down in a pile of skeepskins – 'his urine is very murky. I fear you did me no favours by sending him to me.'
'He's alive.'
'I don't know why.'
'And I sent him to you because you're the best.'
'You flatter me.' Mordecai staggered slightly because the ship had rocked in a small river wave that no one else had noticed, yet he looked alarmed; had he been a Christian he would doubtless have warded off imminent danger by the sign of the cross. Instead he looked worriedly at the ragged sail as though he feared it might collapse and smother him. 'I do detest ships,' he said plaintively. 'Unnatural things. Poor Skeat. He seems to be recovering, I admit, but I cannot boast that I did anything except wash the wound and stop people put-ting charms of mouldy bread and holy water on his scalp. I find religion and medicine mix uneasily. Skeat lives, I think, because poor Eleanor did the right thing when he was wounded.' Eleanor had put the broken piece of skull on the exposed brain, made a poultice of moss and spider web, then bandaged the wound. 'I was sorry about Eleanor.'
'Me too,' Thomas said. 'She was pregnant. We were going to marry.'
'She was a dear thing, a dear thing.'
'Sir Guillaume must be angry?'
Mordecai rocked his head from side to side. 'When he received your letter? That was before the siege, of course.' He frowned, trying to remember, 'Angry? I don't think so. He grunted, that was all. He was fond of Eleanor, of course, but she was a servant's child, not
...' He paused. 'Well, it's sad. But as you say, your friend Sir William lived. The brain is a strange thing, Thomas. He understands, I think, though he cannot remember. His speech is slurred, and that might have been expected, but strangest of all is that he does not recognize anyone with his eyes. I will walk into a room and he'll ignore me, then I speak and he knows me. We have all got into the habit of speaking as we get near him. You'll get used to it,' Mordecai smiled. 'But it is good to see you.'
'So you travel to Calais with us?' Thomas asked.
'Dear me, no! Calais?' He shuddered. 'But I couldn't stay in Normandy. I suspect that the Count of Coutances, cheated of Sir Guillaume, would love to make an example of a Jew, so from Dunkirk I shall travel south again. To Montpellier first, I think. My son is studying medicine there. And from Montpellier? I might go to Avignon.'
'Avignon?'
'The Pope is very hospitable to Jews,' Mordecai said, reaching out for the gunwale as the Pentecost shivered under a small wind gust, 'and we need hospitality.'
Mordecai had intimated that Sir Guillaume's reaction to Eleanor's death was callous, but that was not evident when Sir Guillaume spoke of his lost daughter with Thomas as the Pentecost cleared the river's mouth and the cold waves stretched to the grey horizon. Sir Guillaume, his ravaged face hard and grim, looked close to tears as he heard how Eleanor had died. 'Do you know anything more about the men who killed her?' he asked when Thomas had finished his tale. Thomas could only repeat what Lord Outhwaite had told him after the battle, about the French priest called de Taillebourg and his strange servant.
'De Taillebourg,' Sir Guillaume said flatly, 'another man to kill, eh?' He made the sign of the cross. 'She was illegitimate' — he spoke of Eleanor, not to Thomas, but to the wind, instead — 'but she was a sweet girl. All of my children are dead now.' He gazed at the ocean, his dirty long yellow hair stirring in the breeze. 'We have so many men to kill, you and I' — he spoke to Thomas now — 'and the Grail to find.'
'Others are looking for it,' Thomas said.
'Then we must find it before them,' Sir Guillaume growled. 'But we go to Calais first, I make my allegiance to Edward and then we fight. By God, Thomas, we fight.' He turned and scowled at his two men-at-arms as if reflecting on how his fortunes and following had been shrunk by fate, then he saw Robbie and grinned. 'I like your Scotsman.'
'He can fight,' Thomas said.
