'That's why I like him. And he wants to kill de Taillebourg too?'
'Three of us want to kill him.'
'Then God help the bastard because we'll serve his tripes to the dogs,' Sir Guillaume growled. 'But he'll have to be told you're in the Calais siege lines, eh? If he's to come looking for us he has to know where you are.'
To reach Calais the Pentecost needed to go east and north, but once clear of the land she merely wallowed instead of sailing. A small south-west wind had taken her clear of the river mouth, but then, long before she was out of sight of the Norman shore, the breeze faded and the big ragged sail flapped and slatted and banged on the yard. The ship rolled like a barrel in a long dull swell that came from the west where dark clouds heaped like some gloom-laden range of hills. The winter day faded early, the last of its cold light a sullen glint beneath the clouds. A few spots of fire showed on the darkening land. 'The tide will take us up the sleeve,' Villeroy said gloomily, 'then float us down again. Then up and down and up and down till God or St Nicholas sends us wind.'
The tide took them up the English Channel as Villeroy had predicted, then drifted them down again. Thomas, Robbie and Sir Guillaume's two men-at-arms took it in turns to go down into the stone-filled bilge and hand up pails of water. 'Of course she leaks,'
Villeroy told a worried Mordecai, 'all ships leak. She'd leak like a sieve if I didn't caulk her every few months. Bang in the moss and pray to St Nick. It keeps us all from drowning.'
The night was black. The few lights ashore flickered in a damp haze. The sea broke feebly against the hull, and the sail hung uselessly. For a time a fishing boat lay close, a lantern burning on its deck, and Thomas listened to the low chant as the men hauled a net, then they unshipped oars and rowed eastwards until their tiny glimmering light van-ished in the haze. 'A west wind will come,' Villeroy said, 'it always does. West from the lost lands.'
'The lost lands?' Thomas asked.
'Out there,' Villeroy said, pointing into the black west. 'If you go as far as a man can sail you'll find the lost lands and you'll see a mountain taller than the sky where Arthur sleeps with his knights.' Villeroy made the sign of the cross. 'And on the clifftops under the mountain you can see the souls of the drowned sailors calling for their womenfolk. It's cold there, always cold, cold and fog-smothered.'
'My father saw those lands once,' Yvette put in.
'He said he did,' Villeroy commented, 'but he was a rare drinker.'
'He said the sea was full of fish,' Yvette went on as if her husband had not spoken, 'and the trees were very small.'
'Cider, he drank,' Villeroy offered. 'Whole orchards went down his gullet, but he could sail a boat, your father. Drunk or sober, he was a seaman.'
Thomas was staring into the western darkness, imagining a voyage to the land where King Arthur and his knights slept under the fog and where the souls of the drowned called for their lost lovers. 'Time to bail ship,' Villeroy said to him, and Thomas event down into the bilge and scooped the water into buckets until his arms were aching with tiredness, and then he vvent to the forepeak and slept in the cocoon of sheepskins that Villeroy kept there because, he said, it was colder at sea than on land and a man should drown warm.
Dawn came slow, seeping into the east like a grey stain. The steering oar creaked in its ropes, doing nothing as the ship rocked on the windless swell. The Norman coast was still in sight, a grey-green slash to the south, and as the vinter light grew Thomas saw three small ships rowing out from the coast. The three headed up channel until they were east of the Pentecost; Thomas assumed they were fishermen and he wished that Villeroy's boat had oars and so could make some progress in this frustrating stillness. There was a pair of great sweeps lashed to the deck, but Yvette said they were only useful in port. 'She's too heavy to row for long,' she said, 'especially when she's full.'
'Full?'
'We carry cargo,' Yvette said. Her man was sleeping in the stern cabin, his snores seeming to vibrate the whole ship. 'Up and down the coast we go,' Yvette said, 'with wool and wine, bronze and iron, building stone and hides.'
'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.
