Vagabond (Extract)
“Quiet,” Thomas warned him and held up his hand. He could smell burning and see the flicker of flames, but there were no voices. He took his bow from where it hung from the saddle and he strung it, bending the huge stave to loop the hemp string over the piece of nocked horn. He pulled an arrow from the bag and then, motioning Eleanor and Father Hobbe to stay where they were, he edged up the track to the shelter of a deep hedge where larks and finches flitted through the dying leaves. The fires were roaring, suggesting they were newly set. He crept closer, the bow half drawn, until he could see there had been three or four cottages about a crossroads and their rafters and thatch were well ablaze and sending sparks whirling up into the damp grey. The fires looked recent, but there was no one in sight; no enemy, no men in mail, just the burning cottages and so he beckoned Eleanor and Father Hobbe forward and then, over the sound of the fire, he heard a scream. It was far off, or perhaps it was close but muffled by fog, and Thomas stared through the smoke and the fog and past the seething flames and suddenly two men in mail, both mounted on black stallions, cantered into view. The horsemen had black hats, black boots and black scabbarded swords and they were escorting two other men who were on foot. One was a priest, a Dominican judging by his black and white garb, and he had a bloodied face while the other man was tall, dressed in mail, and had long black hair and a narrow, intelligent face. The two followed the horsemen through the smoky fog, then paused at the crossroads where the priest dropped to his knees and made the sign of the cross.
The leading horseman seemed irritated by the priest’s prayer for he turned his horse back and, drawing his sword, prodded the blade at the kneeling man. The priest looked up and, to Thomas’s astonishment, suddenly rammed his staff up into the stallion’s throat. The beast twitched away and the priest slammed the staff hard at the rider’s sword arm. The horseman, unbalanced by his stallion’s jerking motion, tried to cut down across his body with his long blade. The second horseman was already unsaddled, though Thomas had not seen him fall, and the black-haired man in mail was astride his body with a long knife drawn. Thomas just stared in puzzlement for he was convinced that neither the two horsemen nor the priest nor the black-haired man had uttered the scream, yet no other folk were in sight. One of the two horsemen was already dead and the other now fought the priest in silence and Thomas had a sense that the conflict was unreal, that he was dreaming, that in truth this was a morality play in dumbshow and the black-clad horseman was the devil and the priest was God’s will and Thomas’s doubts about the grail were about to be resolved by whoever won and then Father Hobbe seized the great bow from Thomas. “We must help!” Father Hobbe protested Thomas’s inaction.
Yet the priest hardly needed help. He used the staff like a sword, parrying his opponent’s cut, lunging hard to bruise the rider’s ribs, then the man with the long black hair rammed a sword up into the horseman’s back and the man arched, shivered, and his own sword dropped. He stared down at the priest for a moment, then he fell backwards from his saddle. His feet were momentarily trapped in the stirrups and the horse, panicking, galloped uphill. The killer wiped the blade of his sword, then took a scabbard from one of the dead men.
The priest had run to secure one of the two horses and now, sensing he was being watched, he turned to see two men and a woman in the fog. One of the men was a priest who had an arrow on a bowstring. “They were going to kill me!” Bernard de Taillebourg protested in French. The black-haired man turned fast, the sword rising in threat.
“It’s all right,” Thomas said to Father Hobbe and he took the black bow away from his friend and hung it on his shoulder. God had spoken, the priest had won the fight and Thomas was reminded of his night vision when the grail had loomed in the clouds like a cup of fire. Then he saw that under the bruises and blood the strange priest’s face was hard and lean, a martyr’s face, the look of a man who had hungered for God and achieved an evident saintliness and Thomas almost fell to his knees. “Who are you?” He called to the Dominican.
“I am a messenger,” Bernard de Taillebourg snatched at any explanation to cover his confusion. He had escaped from his Scottish escort and now he wondered how he was to escape from the tall young man with the long black bow, but then a flight of arrows hissed from the south and one thumped into a nearby elm trunk while a second skidded along the wet grass, and a horse shrieked nearby and men were shouting in disorder. Father de Taillebourg called to his servant to catch the second horse that was trotting uphill and, by the time it was caught de Taillebourg saw that the stranger with the bow had forgotten him and was staring south to where the arrows flew.
So he turned towards the city, called his servant to follow him and kicked back his heels.
For God, for France, for Saint Dennis and for the Grail.
* * *
Sir William Douglas cursed. Arrows were hissing all about him. Horses were screaming and men were lying dead or injured on the grass. For a heartbeat he felt bewildered, then he realised that his forage party had blundered into an English force, but what kind of force? There was no English army nearby! The whole English army was in France, not here! Which meant, surely, that the citizens of Durham had broken their truce and that thought filled Sir William with a terrible anger. Christ, he thought, but there would not be one stone left on another when he had finished with the city, and he tugged the big shield to cover his body and spurred south towards the bowmen who were lining a low hedge and he reckoned there were not so many of them, maybe only fifty, and he still had nearly two hundred men mounted and so he roared the order to charge. Swords scraped from scabbards. “Kill the bastards!” Sir William shouted, “kill them!” He was savaging his horse with his spurs and thrusting other confused horsemen aside in his eagerness to reach the hedge. He knew the charge would be ragged, knew some of his men must die, but once they were over the blackthorn and in among the bastards they would kill them all. Bloody archers, he thought. He hated archers. He especially hated English archers and he detested traitorous, truce-breaking Durham archers above all others. “On! On!” he shouted. “Douglas! Douglas!” He liked to let his enemies know who was killing them, and who would be raping their wives when they were dead. God, but if the city had broken the truce, then God help the city for he would sack, rape and burn the whole of it. He would fire the houses, plough the ashes and leave the bones of its citizens to the winter blight, and for years men would see the bare stones of the ruined cathedral and watch the birds nesting in the castle’s empty towers and they would know that the Knight of Liddesdale had worked his revenge. “Douglas!” he shouted, “Douglas!” and he felt the thump of arrows smacking into his shield and then his horse screamed and he knew more arrows must have driven deep into its chest for he could feel the beast stumbling. He kicked his feet from the stirrups as the horse slewed sideways. Men charged past him, screaming defiance, then Sir William threw himself out of the saddle and onto his shield that slid along the wet grass like a sledge, and he heard his horse screaming in pain, but he himself was unhurt, hardly even bruised and he pushed himself up, found his sword that he had dropped when he fell and ran on with his horsemen. A rider had an arrow sticking from his knee. A horse went down, eyes white, teeth bared, blood flecking from the arrow wounds. The first horsemen were at the hedge and some had found a gap and were spurring through and Sir William saw that the damned English bowmen were running away. Bastards, he thought, cowardly bloody English rotten whoreson bastards, then more bows sounded harsh to his left and he saw a man fall from a horse with an arrow through his head and the fog lifted enough to show that the enemy archers had not run away, but had merely joined a solid mass of dismounted men at arms. The bowstrings sounded again. A horse reared in pain and an arrow sliced into its belly. A man staggered, was struck again and fell back with a crash of mail.
Sweet Christ, Sir William thought, but there was a damned army here! A whole damned army! “Back! Back!” he shouted, “haul off! Back!” He yelled till he was hoarse. Another arrow drove into his shield, its point whipping through the leather-covered willow and, in his rage, he slapped at it, breaking the ash shaft.
“Uncle! Uncle!” A man shouted and Sir William saw it was Robbie Douglas, one of his eight nephews who rode with the Scottish army, bringing him a horse, but a pair of English arrows struck the beast’s quarter and, enraged by pain, it broke away from Robbie’s grasp.
“Go north!” Sir William shouted at his nephew. “Go on, Robbie!”
Instead Robbie rode to his uncle. An arrow struck his saddle, another glanced off his helmet, but he leaned down, took Sir William’s hand and dragged him northwards. Arrows followed them, but the fog swirled thick and hid them. Sir William shook off his nephew’s grip and stumbled north, made clumsy by his shield that was stuck with arrows and by his heavy mail. God damn it, God damn it!
“Mind left! Mind left!” A Scottish voice shouted and Sir William saw some English horsemen coming from the hedgerow. One saw Sir William and thought he would be easy pickings. The English had been no more ready for battle than the Scotsmen. A few wore mail, but none was properly armoured and none had lances. But Sir William reckoned they must have detected his presence long before they loosed their first arrows, and the anger at being so ambushed made him step towards the horseman who was holding his sword out like a spear. Sir William did not even bother to try and parry. He just thrust his heavy shield up into the horse’s mouth, punching it up, and he heard the animal whinny in pain as he swept his sword at its legs and the beast twisted away and the rider was flailing for balance and was still trying to calm his horse when Sir William’s sword tore up under his mail and into his guts. “Bastard, bastard,” Sir William snarled and the man was whimpering as Sir William twisted the blade, and then Robbie rode up on the man’s far side and chopped his sword down onto his neck so that the Englishman’s head was all but severed as he fell from the saddle. The other horsemen had mysteriously shied away, but then arrows flew again and Sir William knew the fickle fog was thinning. He dragged his sword free of the corpse, scabbarded the wet blade and hauled himself into the dead man’s saddle. “Away!” he shouted at Robbie who seemed inclined to take on the whole English force single-handed. “Away, boy! Come on!” By God, he thought, but it hurt to run from an enemy, yet there was no shame in two hundred men fleeing six or seven hundred. And when the fog lifted there could be a proper battle, a murderous clash of men and steel, and Sir William would teach these bastard English how to fight. He kicked his borrowed horse on, then saw an archer in a hedge. A woman and a priest were with him and Sir William put a hand to his sword hilt and thought about swerving aside to take some revenge for the arrows that had ripped into his forage party, but behind him the English were shouting their war cry. “Saint George! Saint George!” And so Sir William left the archer alone. He rode on, leaving good men on the autumn grass. They were dead and dying, wounded and frightened. But he was a Douglas and so he would come back and he would kill and he would have his revenge.