blood-spotted parchment letter, and waved it under my nose. ‘When Reuben was cutting you about, we found a money belt around your middle and a sealed pigskin pouch, and this letter inside. It is none of my business, I know — but I’m rather curious. Can you tell me what it is?’
I noted that Robin had been rummaging through my most personal possessions while I was unconscious. But the man had saved my life, and so I suppressed my irritation. In fact, I was happy to talk about a subject other than the Grail or the Master, so I explained to Robin how the Templars took a traveller’s money at one preceptory, and returned it at another, in another country, perhaps years later. Robin listened intently; he seemed fascinated by the process, and asked innumerable questions. I answered him as best I could, and when I had finished, Robin said: ‘And they charged you three shillings for this service? No wonder those God-struck bastards are so damned rich.’
Then he made a strange request: ‘Alan,’ he said, ‘might I ask a favour from you? Could I borrow this letter for a week or so? You will not be needing it until you return to England, and I would like to show it to a friend of mine. I swear I will not lose it.’
The days passed, the weather grew colder and before long it was November, and although the flesh of my chest was healing, I caught a dangerous chill that went straight into my lungs. Thomas and Reuben rarely left my bedside in those fever-racked weeks and Reuben admitted afterwards that I came closer to death in that sweat- drenched whirling nightmare of oozing bloody phlegm and racking coughs than I had done in the immediate aftermath of the stabbing. My dead visited me night and day, clustering around the bed but rarely speaking: merely looking at me imploringly. Men I had killed in battle years before and very nearly forgotten came to me then; they sat at the foot of my bed, their wounds fresh and bleeding: their quietness chided me. I screamed for their forgiveness; I begged them to leave me be; but they returned my fevered shouts with a vast, aching silence.
November became December and the Feast of Our Lord’s Nativity came and went without my being conscious of that holy celebration: Robin and Little John had been called away to attend King Richard, who was keeping Christmas at Rouen, but Reuben and Thomas remained with me, and I realized that I was receiving the attention that a prince of the Church would receive from the monks of the Hotel-Dieu; whatever Robin had said to Bishop de Sully had had a profound effect. I was all but pampered like a lapdog, brought fine foods and wrapped in costly furs; read to by the monks each day — mostly dull homilies and sermons, but I knew that they meant well — and with a brazier almost constantly burning in the small cell to keep the winter chill at bay.
The great man came to see me himself, one grey afternoon in January. I was standing beside my bed — the fevers had left me pathetically weak, but I forced myself to get out of the warm, comfortable cot each morning and stand by the window for as long as I could, staring out over the vast building yard of the cathedral of Notre-Dame. It was abandoned by the gangs of workmen in the very coldest season; the mortar could not be mixed and set properly when frost and ice ruled the night. That morning, it had snowed and the high roof, the buttresses and the canvas-covered sections of the scaffolding of the cathedral bore a crust of white that resembled a giant nun’s wimple.
‘It is even more beautiful in the winter,’ said a voice behind me. And I turned slowly to see the Bishop, very gaunt but smiling, standing in the doorway of the cell. He was alone, but holding a large earthenware pot in his hands. I could see a ladle poking from the open top, and tendrils of steam, but it was the hot, fruity, spicy smell filling the room that allowed me to recognize the Bishop’s burden.
‘I have brought you some warmed wine — Doctor Reuben has recommended it; he says it will do you good, and it may quite possibly help me, as well. May I enter?’
It was a curiously humble speech from this most powerful churchman who was the master in this Hotel-Dieu, and therefore my host.
‘Please come in, Your Grace,’ I said. ‘Be welcome!’
With a good deal of effort, the Bishop put the pot on the table by the bed and fumbled two clay cups from a pouch at his waist. He served us both a steaming portion of the rich red liquid, clumsily, spilling some of the liquor and splashing his long white fingers. We both sat on the bed, and after a mumbled benediction from the Bishop, we drank to each other’s health. He was nervous, I saw, which surprised me, and very thin. He looked even more ill than the last time I had seen him. And he did not know how to speak to me. So I tried to make it easier on a sick old man.
‘Your Grace, I must thank you for your hospitality, and for the kindness your servants have shown me here in the Hotel-Dieu. I believe they have saved my life and I am most grateful to them — and to you.’
He regarded me with his pale, empty eyes over the rim of his steaming cup.
‘You are a good man, Alan Dale — I can tell that. As was your father, I recall. You may not think me such a good judge of character after, after…’ He tailed off; then rallied. ‘But I never wished any harm to come to you, or to your friend — Johannes. We buried him with dignity in the graveyard at St Victor’s, you know. The monks sang a Requiem Mass for him, and I pray that Almighty God has taken him to his bosom.’
I felt a jab of raw grief at his words. ‘We called him Hanno,’ I said, fighting back the burn of unmanly tears.
He nodded and we fell silent for a moment or two.
‘How much did you know,’ I finally asked, ‘about Brother Michel’s activities? Did you know he possessed the Grail? Did you know about the gangs of cut-throats?
‘Those bandits? No, never in my wildest dreams,’ he said, sounding shocked that I should suggest it.
‘And the Grail?’ I persisted. ‘Did you know that Brother Michel possessed the Grail?’
He gave a long deep sigh. ‘The Grail, that God-damned, devilish Grail… yes, I knew he had something that he believed was the bowl that had once contained Christ’s blood. But that was later: your father was long gone by then. And when Michel came to me after his service in Spain — it must be fifteen years ago, now — he was the finest, the most hard-working and intelligent assistant that I have ever had. He was pious too, and humble. I found out much later that he thought he possessed the true Grail, but I was wholly convinced that it was a silly, harmless fancy.’
The Bishop rose and began to pace the small cell. ‘I think I must have known in my heart that he had stolen it from Heribert, and that your father was innocent; but I suppressed that thought. He had such youthful energy and enthusiasm and faith in my cathedral as a grand ideal. And then, later, when he began to find the resources, the money to continue the building work, when mine had run quite dry — well, I did not ask too many questions, I was aware that he was using the Grail in some way as a method of raising revenue. But for such a good cause, I did not want to discourage him. I thought he was displaying it to pilgrims, allowing rich, pious knights to drink from it for a fee, that sort of thing. I had no idea that he had constructed an entire secret order of killers and thieves, upon one old dish. I turned a blind eye, I admit it; I believed, as I still do, that the cathedral is a worthy cause and I confess I was prepared to condone a little relic-mongering to achieve that aim.’
The Bishop was standing now by the window, staring out at the snow-covered cathedral: ‘Look at it, Sir Alan — just imagine its splendour when completed! It is my life’s work; it is the fruit of a life dedicated to Almighty God. Is that magnificent monument to the Mother of Christ not worth a little mummery with an old bowl?’
I stood and looked past the Bishop’s shoulder and saw… a building — an enormous, very grand, beautifully constructed, three-parts-built, snow-covered building. But a just building nonetheless — and one that had indirectly caused the death of my father and my friend. I made no reply to the Bishop but sat down on the bed again, suddenly overwhelmed with a great weariness.
The Bishop turned and regarded me for a while: ‘I came,’ he said, ‘to make an apology to you. And perhaps to try to explain myself, and seek your forgiveness for what has passed between us. But I can see that you would not welcome that little speech. And so I will leave you with a gift of information. It is this: if you seek Brother Michel — and I suspect that even if you do not wish to encounter him again now, you or your hard-faced master will decide to seek him out one day — you will find him in the south, in Aquitaine. Viscount Aimar of Limoges is his cousin; they were boyhood friends — and he told me once, after he had taken too much wine, that it was in those lands, and those lands only, that he felt truly happy and at peace. When he has no other place to run to, Michel will go south, and you will find him under his cousin’s protection. And, if you do meet him again, you may give him my curse.’
I thanked the Bishop for his counsel, and once again for his hospitality, although I could not find it in my heart to utter words of forgiveness, and he blessed me and took his leave. And then I thought about the information that he had given me, and felt a heavy weight on my heart. I could not even contemplate a journey so far to the south on a mission of vengeance. Robin was right: revenge was an idiotic indulgence. Besides, the thought of another
