which the Pentecost survived under her tattered sail. Dawn found them in a mist and with a fitful breeze that fluttered a sail so weakened that Villeroy and Yvette doubled it on itself so that the wind would have more than charred holes to blow upon, and when they reset it the Pentecost limped south and west and everyone on board thanked God for the mist because it hid them from the pirates that haunted the gulf between Normandy and Brittany. Villeroy was not sure where they were, though he was certain enough that the Norman coast was to the east and that all the land in that direction was in fealty to the Count of Coutances and so they held on south and west with Yvette perched in the bows to keep a lookout for the frequent reefs. 'They breed rocks, these waters,' Villeroy grumbled.
'Then go into deeper water,' Sir Guillaume suggested.
The big man spat overboard. 'Deeper water breeds English pirates out of the isles.'
They pushed on south, the wind dying and the sea calming. It was still cold, but there was no more sleet and, when a feeble sun began to burn off the shredding mists, Thomas sat beside Mordecai in the bow. 'I have a question for you,' he said.
'My father told me never to get on board a ship,' Mordecai responded. His long face was pale and his beard, which he usually brushed so carefully, was tangled. He was shivering despite a makeshift cloak of sheepskins. 'Did you know,' he went on, that Flemish sailors claim that you can calm a storm by throwing a Jew overboard?'
'Do they really?'
'So I'm told,' Mordecai said, 'and if I was on board a Flemish ship I might welcome drowning as an alternative to this existence. What is that?'
Thomas had unwrapped the book that his father had bequeathed him. 'My question,'
he said, ignoring Mordecai's question, 'is who is Hachaliah.'
'Hachaliah?' Mordecai repeated the name, then shook his head. 'Do you think the Flemings carry Jews aboard their ships as a precaution? It would seem a sensible, if cruel, thing to do. Why die when a Jew can die?'
Thomas opened the book to the first page of Hebrew script where Brother Germain had deciphered the name Hachaliah. 'There,' he said, giving the book to the doctor,
'Hachaliah.'
Mordecai peered at the page. 'Grandson of Hachaliah,' he translated aloud, 'and son of the Tirshatha. Of course! It's a confusion about Jonah and the great fish.'
'Hachaliah is?' Thomas asked, staring at the page of strange script.
'No, dear boy!' Mordecai said. 'The superstition about
Jews and storms is a confusion about Jonah, a mere ignorant confusion.' He looked back at the page. 'Are you the son of the Tirshatha?'
'I'm the bastard son of a priest,' Thomas said. 'And did your father write this?'
'Yes.'
'For you?'
Thomas nodded. 'I think so.'
'Then you are the son of the Tirshatha and the grand-son of Hachaliah,' Mordecai said, then smiled. 'Ah! Of course! Nehemiah. My memory is almost as bad as poor Skeat's, eh? Fancy forgetting that Hachaliah was the father of Nehemiah.'
Thomas was still none the wiser. 'Nehemiah?'
'And he was the Tirshatha, of course he was. Extra-ordinary, isn't it, how we Jews prosper in foreign states and then they tire of us and we get blamed for every little accident. Then time passes and we are restored to our offices. The Tirshatha, Thomas, was the Governor of Judaea under the Persians. Nehemiah was the Tirshatha, not the King, of course, just Governor for a time under the rule of Artaxerxes.' Mordecai's erudition was impressive, but hardly enlightening. Why would Father Ralph identify himself with Nehemiah who must have lived hundreds of years before Christ, before the Grail? The only answer that Thomas could conjure up was the usual one of his father's madness. Mordecai was turning the parchment pages and winced when one cracked. 'How people do yearn,' he said, 'for miracles.' He prodded a page with a finger stained by all the medicines he had pounded and stirred. ' “A golden cup in the Lord's hand that made all the earth drunk”, now what on earth does that mean?'
'He's talking about the Grail,' Thomas said.
'I had understood that, Thomas,' Mordecai chided him gently, 'but those words were not written about the Grail. It refers to Babylon. Part of the lamentations of Jeremiah.' He turned another page. 'People like mystery. They want nothing explained, because when things are explained then there is no hope left. I have seen folk dying and known there is nothing to be done, and I am asked to go because the priest will soon arrive with his dish covered by a cloth, and everyone prays for a miracle. It never happens. And the person dies and I get blamed, not God or the priest, but I!' He let the book fall on his lap where the pages stirred in the small wind. 'These are just stories of the Grail, and some odd scriptures that might refer to it. A book, really, of meditations.' He frowned. 'Did your father truly believe the Grail existed?'
Thomas was about to give a vigorous affirmative, but paused, remembering. For much of the time his father had been a wry, amused and clever man, but there had been other times when he had been a wild, shrieking creature, struggling with God and desperate to make sense of the sacred mysteries. 'I think,' Thomas said carefully, 'that he did believe in the Grail.'
'Of course he did,' Mordecai said suddenly, 'how stupid of me! Of course your father believed in the Grail because he believed that he possessed it!'
'He did?' Thomas asked. He was utterly confused now.
'Nehemiah was more than the Tirshatha of Judaea,' the doctor said, 'he was cupbearer to Artaxerxes. He says so at the beginning of his writings. “I was the King's cupbearer.” There.' He pointed to a line of Hebrew script. ' “I was the King's cupbearer.” Your father's words, Thomas, taken from Nehemiah's story.'
Thomas stared at the writing and knew that Mordecai was right. That was his father's testimony. He had been cupbearer to the greatest King of all, to God Himself, to Christ, and the phrase confirmed Thomas's dreams. Father Ralph had been the cupbearer. He had possessed the Grail. It did exist. Thomas shivered.
'I think' – Mordecai spoke gently – 'that your father believed he possessed the Grail, but it seems unlikely.'
'Unlikely!' Thomas protested.
'I am merely a Jew,' Mordecai said blandly, 'so what can I know of the saviour of mankind? And there are those who say_ I should not even speak of such things, but so far as I understand Jesus was not rich. Am I right?'
'He was poor,' Thomas said.
'So I am right, he was not a rich man, and at the end of his life he attends a seder.'
'A seder?'
'The Passover feast. Thomas. And at the seder he eats bread and drinks wine, and the Grail, tell me if I am wrong, was either the bread dish or the wine goblet, yes?'
'Yes.'
'Yes,' Mordecai echoed and glanced off to his left where a small fishing boat rode the broken swell. There had been no sign of the Saint-Esprit all morning, and none of the smaller boats they passed showed any interest in the Pentecesr. 'Yet if Jesus was poor,'
Mordecai said, 'what kind of seder dish would he use? One made of gold? One ringed with jewels? Or a piece of common pottery?'
'Whatever he used,' Thomas said, 'God could transform.'
'Ah yes, of course, I was forgetting,' Mordecai said. He sounded disappointed, but then he smiled and gave Thomas the book. 'When we reach wherever we are going,' he said, 'I can write down translations of the Hebrew for you and I hope it helps.'
'Thomas!' Sir Guillaume bellowed from the stern. We need fresh arms to bail water!'
The caulking had not been finished and the Pentecost was taking water at an alarming rate and so Thomas vent down into the bilge and handed up the pails to Robbie who jettisoned the water over the side. Sir Guillaume had been pressing Villerov to go north and east again in an attempt to run past Caen and make Dunkirk, but Villerov was unhappy with his small sail and even more unhappy with the leaking hull. 'I have to put in somewhere soon,' he growled, 'and you have to buy me a sail.'
They dared not call into Normandy. It was well known throughout the province that Sir Guillaume had been
