'The right direction,' Villerov pointed out, 'is away from the Saint-Esprit and downwind, so we'll stand on west. They stood on westwards all day. They made good speed, but still the big Saint-Esprit slowly closed the gap. In the morning she had been a blur on the horizon; by midday Thomas could see the little platform at her masthead where, Villerov told him, crossbowmen would be stationed: and by mid-afternoon he could see the black and white eyes painted on her bows. The east wind had increased all through the day until it was blowing strong and cold, whipping the wavetops into white streamers. Sir Guillaume suggested going north, maybe as far as the English shore, but Villeroy claimed not to know that coastline and said he was unsure where he could find shelter there if the weather turned bad. 'And this time of year it can turn fast as a woman's temper,' Villeroy added, and as if to prove him right they ran into violent sleet squalls that hissed on the sea and buffeted the ship and cut visibility down to a few yards. Sir Guillaume again urged a northward course, suggesting they turn while the ship was hidden inside the squall, but Villeroy stubbornly refused and Thomas guessed that the huge man feared being accosted by English ships that loved nothing better than capturing French vessels. Another squall crashed past them, the rain bouncing up a hand's breadth from the deck and the sleet making a slushy white coating on the eastern flank of every halyard and sheet. Villeroy feared that his sail would split, but dared not shorten the canvas because whenever the squalls passed, leaving the sea white and frantic, the Saint-Esprit was always in sight and always a little closer. 'She's a quick one,' Villeroy said grudgingly,
'and Lapoullier knows how to sail her.'
Yet the short winter day was passing and night would offer a chance for the Pentecost to escape. The pursuers knew that and they must have been praying that their ship would be given a little extra speed: as dusk fell, she was closing the gap inch by inch, yet still the Pentecost kept her lead. They were out of sight of land now, two ships on a seething and darkening ocean, and then, when the night was almost complete, the first flame arrow streaked out from the Saint-Esprit's bow.
It was shot from a crossbow. The flames seared the night, arcing up and then plunging to fall in the Pentecost's wake. 'Send him an arrow back,' Sir Guillaume growled.
'Too far,' Thomas said. A good crossbow would always outrange a yew stave, though in the time it took to reload the crossbow the English archer would have run within range and loosed half a dozen arrows. But Thomas could not do that in this gathering darkness, nor did he dare waste arrows. He could only wait and watch as a second fire bolt slashed up against the clouds. It too fell behind.
'They don't fly as well,' Will Skeat said.
'What's that. Will?' Thomas had not heard clearly. 'They wrap the shaft in cloth and it slows them down. You ever shot a fire arrow, Tom?'
'Never.'
'Takes fifty paces off the range,' Skeat said, watching a third arrow plunge into the sea, 'and plays hell with accuracy.'
'That one was closer,' Sir Guillaume said.
Villerov had put a barrel on the deck and he was filling it with seawater. Yvette, meanwhile, had nimbly climbed the rigging to perch herself on the crosstrees where the one yard hung from the masthead and now she hauled up canvas pails of water which she used to soak the sail.
'Can we use fire arrows?' Sir Guillaume asked. 'That thing must have the range.' He nodded at Villeroy's monstrous crossbow. Thomas translated the question for Will Skeat whose French was still rudimentary.
'Fire arrows?' Skeat's face wrinkled as he thought. 'You have to have pitch, Tom,' he said dubiously, 'and you must soak it into the wool and then bind the woollen cloth onto the arrow real hard, but fray the edges a little to get the fire burning nicely. Fire has to be deep in the cloth, not just on the edge because that won't last, and when it's burning hard and deep you send the arrow off before it eats through the shaft.'
'No,' Thomas translated for Sir Guillaume, 'we can't.'
Sir Guillaume cursed, then turned away as the first fire arrow thumped into the Pentecost, but the bolt struck low on the stern, so low that the next heave of a wave extinguished the flames with an audible hiss. We must be able to do something!' Sir Guillaume raged.
'We can be patient,' Villeroy said. He was standing at the stern oar.
'I can use your bow?' Sir Guillaume asked the big sailor and, when Villeroy nodded, Sir Guillaume cocked the huge crossbow and sent a quarrel back towards the SaintEsprit. He grunted as he pulled on the lever to cock the weapon again, astonished at the strength needed. A crossbow drawn by a lever was usually much weaker than the bows armed with a wormscrew and ratchet, but Villeroy's bow was massive. Sir Guillaume's bolts must have struck the pursuing ship, but it was too dark to tell if any damage had been done. Thomas doubted it for the Saint-Esprit's bows were high and her gunwales stout. Sir Guillaume was merely driving metal into planks, but the Saint-Esprit's fiery missiles were beginning to threaten the Pentecost. Three or four enemy crossbows were firing now and Thomas and Robbie were busy dousing the burning bolts with water, then a flaming quarrel hit the sail and creeping fire began to glow on the canvas, but Yvette succeeded in extinguishing it just as Villeroy pushed the steering oar hard over. Thomas heard the oar's long shank creak under the strain and felt the ship lurch as she turned southwards. 'The Saint-Esprit was never quite as quick off the wind,' Villeroy said, 'and she wallows in a cross sea.'
'And we're quicker?' Thomas asked.
'We'll find out.' Villeroy said.
'Why didn't we try to find out earlier?' Sir Guillaume snarled the question.
'Because we didn't have sea room,' Villeroy answered placidly as a flaming bolt seared oser the stern deck like a meteor. 'But we're well clear of the cape now.' He meant they were safely to the west of the Norman peninsula and south of them now were the rock-studded sea reaches between Normandy and Brittany. The turn meant that the range suddenly shortened as the Saint-Esprit held on westwards and Thomas shot a clutch of arrows at the dim figures of armoured men in the pursuing ship's waist. Yvette had come down to the deck and was hauling on ropes and, when she was satisfied with the new set of the sail, she clambered back up to her eyrie just as two more fire bolts thumped into the canvas and Thomas saw the flames leap up the sail as Yvette dragged up buckets. Thomas sent another arrow high into the night so that it plunged down onto the enemy deck and Sir Guillaume was shooting the heavier crossbow bolts as fast as he could, but neither man was rewarded with a cry of pain. Then the range opened again and Thomas unstrung his bow. The Saint-Esprit was turning to follow the Pentecost south and, for a few heartbeats, she seemed to disappear in the dark, but then another fire arrow climbed from her deck and in its sudden light Thomas saw she had made the turn and was again in the Pentecost's wake. Villerov's sail was still burning, giving the Saint-Esprit a mark she could not fail to follow and the pursuing bowmen sent three arrows together, their flames flickering hungrily in the night, and Yvette heaved desperately on the buckets, but the sail was ablaze now and the ship was slowing as the canvas lost its force and then, blessedly, there was a seething hiss and a squall came lashing in from the east. The sleet pelted down with an extraordinary violence, rattling on the charred sail and drumming on the deck, and Thomas thought it would last forever, but it stopped as suddenly as it had begun and all on board the Pentecost stared astern, waiting for the next fire bolt to climb from the Saint-Esprit's deck, but when the flame finally seared into the sky it was a long way off, much too far away for its light to illuminate the Pentecost and Villeroy grunted. 'They reckoned we'd turn back west in that squall,' he said with amusement, 'but they were being too clever for their own good.' The Saint-Esprit had tried to head off the Pentecost, thinking Villerov would put his ship straight downwind again, but the pursuers had made the wrong guess and they were now a long way to the north and west of their quarry.
More fire arrows burned in the dark, but now they were being shot in all directions in hope that the small light of one would glint a dull reflection from the Pentecost's hull, but Villerov's ship was drawing ever farther away, pulled by the remnants of her scorched sail. If it had not been for the squall, Thomas thought. they would surely have been overhauled and captured, and he wondered whether the hand of God was somehow sheltering him because he possessed the book of the Grail. Then guilt assailed him; the guilt of doubting the Grail's existence: of wasting Lord Outhwaite's money instead of spending it on the pursuit of the Grail; then the greater guilt and pity of Eleanor and Father Hobbe's wasteful deaths, and so he dropped to his knees on the deck and stared up at the onearmed crucifix. Forgive me, Lord. he prayed, forgive me.
'Sails cost money,' Villeroy said.
'You shall have a new sail, Pierre,' Sir Guillaume promised.
'And let's pray that what's left of this one will get us somewhere.' Villeroy said sourly. Off to the north a last fire arrow etched red across the black, and then there was no more light, just the endless dark of a broken sea in
