Bernard Cornwell - 1356 (Special Edition)

‘I wouldn’t want the blade in the hands of France’s enemies,’ Roland said.

‘You want the church to have it?’

‘That’s to whom it should belong,’ Roland said, but his memories of Father Marchant made his tone uncertain.

‘Let me tell you a story,’ Thomas said. ‘Have you heard of the Seven Dark Lords?’

‘They were the men charged with guarding the treasures of the Cathar heretics,’ Roland said disapprovingly.

Thomas reckoned it wise not to say that he was descended from one of those same Dark Lords. ‘It’s said that they possessed the Holy Grail,’ he said instead, ‘and I’ve heard they rescued it from Montségur and then hid it, and that not so long ago other men set out to find it.’

‘I’ve heard the same thing.’

‘But what you have not heard,’ Thomas said, ‘is that one of those men found it.’

The Sire Roland crossed himself. ‘Rumour,’ he said dismissively.

‘I swear to you on the blood of Christ,’ Thomas said, ‘that the Grail was found, though the man who discovered it sometimes doubted what he had found.’

Roland stared at Thomas for a few seconds, then saw the sincerity in Thomas’s face. ‘But if it was found,’ he said urgently, ‘why isn’t it shrined in gold, mounted on an altar, and worshipped by pilgrims?’

‘Because,’ Thomas said gravely, ‘the man who found the Grail hid it again. He took it to a place where it cannot be found. He hid it at the bottom of the ocean. He gave it back to God because man cannot be trusted with it.’

‘Truly?’

‘I promise you,’ Thomas said, and he remembered the moment when he had hurled the clay bowl into the grey sea and had seen the small splash, and it had seemed to him that the world went silent after the Grail vanished, and it had been moments before he heard the sound of the waves and the noise of shingle being dragged to the ocean and the forlorn cry of gulls. Heaven itself, he thought, had held its breath. ‘I promise you,’ he said again.

‘And if you find la Malice ,’ Roland began, then faltered.

‘I shall give it back to God,’ Thomas said, ‘because man cannot be trusted with it.’ He paused, then looked at Roland. ‘So yes,’ he said, ‘I want la Malice , even if it’s only to stop Cardinal Bessières from finding it.’

The thunder murmured far off to the north. There was no rain, just the dark clouds, and the Hellequin rode towards them.

The rain had moved southwards leaving a cloudless sky and a hot sun. It was mid September and felt like June.

The prince’s army was following the clouds, going south, labouring on a high wooded ridge. The baggage train, heavy with the plunder of the chevauchée , was to the west, using roads in the valley, but the main part of the army, the mounted archers and men-at-arms, were following tracks through the high trees.

It had become a race, though to what conclusion no one yet knew. The prince’s advisers, those wise and experienced warriors sent by his father to keep Edward out of trouble, believed that if they could get ahead of the French king and find a suitable place to make a stand, then they could fight a battle and win it. If they could force the French to climb a steep hill into the face of the lethal English archers, then there was the chance of a great victory, but those same advisers feared what would happen if King Jean turned the tables and managed to put his army across the path of the retreating English. ‘I’d rather not attack,’ the Earl of Suffolk told the prince.

‘God, it’s hot,’ the prince said.

‘It is always better to defend,’ the earl, who was riding on the prince’s right, said.

‘Where in God’s name are we?’ the prince asked.

‘Poitiers is over there,’ the Earl of Oxford, on Edward’s left, pointed vaguely eastwards.

‘Your grandfather, forgive me, made that mistake at Bannockburn,’ Suffolk said.

‘Mistake?’

‘He attacked, sire. There was no need, and he lost.’

‘He was an idiot,’ the prince said cheerfully. ‘I’m not an idiot, am I?’

‘Indeed not, sire,’ Suffolk said, ‘and you will remember your father’s great victory at Crécy. Yours too, sire. We defended.’

‘We did! My father’s no idiot!’

‘God forbid, sire.’

‘But grandfather was. No need to apologise! Had the brains of a squirrel, that’s what my father says.’ The prince ducked under the low branch of an elm. ‘But what if we see the bastards on the road? We should attack then, yes?’

‘If the circumstances are propitious,’ the Earl of Oxford said cautiously.

‘And what if we don’t find that convenient hill?’ the prince asked.

‘We keep going south, sire, till we do find one,’ Suffolk said, ‘or till we reach one of our fortresses.’

The prince grimaced. ‘I don’t like running away.’

‘You’ll find it preferable to imprisonment in Paris, sire,’ Oxford said drily.

‘I hear they have very pretty girls in Paris?’

‘There are pretty girls everywhere, sire,’ Suffolk said, ‘as you know better than most men.’

‘God is good,’ the prince said.

‘Amen,’ Oxford added.

‘And pray God he’s slowing the French,’ Suffolk said grimly. The last reliable information he had heard said that the French king was only some ten or twelve miles away, and his army, which, like the prince’s, was all mounted, was travelling faster. King Jean, having dallied all summer, was now suddenly full of energy and, Suffolk assumed, confidence. He was looking for a battle, though he was not so foolish as to risk fighting on disadvantageous ground. The French wanted to trap the prince, force him to fight in a place they chose, and Suffolk was apprehensive. A prisoner taken by the Captal de Buch had confirmed that King Jean had sent all his foot soldiers away because they would slow his army, yet even without that infantry he still outnumbered the prince, though by how many no one knew, and he was not being forced to travel over this damned wooded ridge. He was using good roads. He was racing south. He was looking to close the trap.

Yet the damned wooded ridge was the prince’s best hope. It was a short cut. It might gain a day’s march, and a day’s march was worth gold. And perhaps, at the end of the ridge, there would be a place to ambush the French. Or perhaps not. And Suffolk worried about the baggage. So long as it was separated from the army it was vulnerable, and even if the day’s march was gained they would need to wait half a day for the baggage to catch up. And he worried about the horses. There was no water in this high land, the animals were thirsty, and the men riding them were hungry. The army’s food supplies were desperately low. They needed to reach low, fertile land where the granaries were full, they needed water, they needed rest, they needed respite.

Four miles ahead of where the prince and the two earls rode through the trees, the Captal de Buch sat in his saddle at the ridge’s end. Ahead of him a long slope dropped to a road and the glint of a river, while to his right, beyond some low wooded hills, was a smudge of smoke dirtying the sky that he knew must mark the cooking fires of Poitiers. The far slope of the valley was covered in vineyards, row after row of thick vines.

It was a beautiful day. Warm and sunny, with just a few high white clouds. The trees were heavy with leaves that had started to show a tinge of autumn colour. The grapes were plump, almost ripe for picking. It was a day, the captal thought, to take a girl to the river and swim naked there, and afterwards make love in the grass and drink wine before making love again.

Instead he was watching the enemy.

An army had passed through the gentle valley. The ground on either side of the road had been churned by hooves, thousands upon thousands of hooves, to leave a dark scar of broken turf. One of the captal’s scouts, mounted on a small fast horse, had watched the army pass. ‘Eighty-seven banners, sire,’ he said.