Lions of the Grail Page 5

  ‘Shoot them,’ the Master of the Hospitallers shouted to his men. ‘They’re fanatics. Shoot them down like dogs.’

  The ranks of the Sheriff’s men at the broken gates divided and their archers came forward. In an instant they loosed a volley of arrows that tore up the courtyard into the charging knights. The sergeants and the armed knights fell to a crouch behind their shields. Savage heard the thump of an arrow colliding with his shield and saw another glance off the iron helmet of one of the sergeants beside him.

  The commanders stood no chance. Their grand ceremonial robes gave no protection and the deadly missiles plunged into their bodies. As Savage watched, Guilleme de Vere stumbled and collapsed forward, one arrow transfixing him through the chest and another through his thigh. All five of the other commanders also fell, each one riddled with arrows. Harley had gone down too, an arrow having glanced off his shield into his foot.

  Rage boiled in Savage’s chest and for a few moments in his eyes the scene before him took on a strange, red hue. He clenched his eyes tightly and took a couple of deep breaths. At all costs he had to remember his training and stay calm while in combat.

  ‘Take them now,’ the Sheriff shouted. His voice was high, almost a squeal.

  The horsemen surged forward again, this time in a more concerted charge. Sheriff Pimlot aimed himself at Savage.

  Savage dodged sideways, then spun back round. He swung his sword in a chop that caught the horse across the flanks and connected squarely with the Sheriff’s knee joint. With ease the blade separated the bottom half of the Sheriff’s leg from the rest of his body. The horse whinnied in pain. Pimlot shrieked and instantly lost his balance. He toppled out of the saddle, landing with a sickening crunch on the ground.

  Melee ensued. Sergeants and knights on foot tried to defend against the horsemen who wheeled around them, slashing and cutting. Several of the sergeants went down. Bright crimson blood splashed across the cobblestones of the courtyard. Behind the riders the foot soldiers of the Sheriff came surging forward in an overwhelming tide.

  They quickly overpowered the defenders by sheer weight of numbers. Savage desperately slashed at the first two men that came at him. His blade missed the first one but connected with the side of the head of the second. The man’s iron helmet saved him but the force of the blow sent him staggering sideways into the path of a charging horse. The weight of the beast thumped him to the ground and a nauseating crack issued from his chest as the horse planted one of its back hooves on him.

  Savage heard the crash of splintering wood behind him. He turned to see Hugo Montmorency had smashed down the chapel door and was going inside. Savage began sprinting towards the chapel himself but as he did so a horseman riding past swiped at him with his sword. The blow landed on the crown of Savage’s head. His helmet absorbed most of the damage but the impact stunned him and he fell forwards, the weight of his shield dragging him over.

  The moment he hit the ground three soldiers pounced on him and began raining punches, kicks and blows from the butts of their swords on him. His arms were pinned and the remnants of his damaged helmet ripped off.

  ‘Surrender. Give yourselves up,’ Savage shouted to his brethren. ‘It was Commander de Vere’s last order.’

  Looking up, he glimpsed Montmorency emerging from the chapel, a look of rage and frustration on his face. With some satisfaction Savage surmised that his French brethren had made good their escape.

  Twisting his head, he caught sight of a cudgel raised above his head. It fell, bringing darkness with it.

  When he awoke, Savage found himself with the fourteen other survivors of the fight, bound in a covered carriage that was rattling and bouncing its way along a very rough road.

  Peering out through a flap in the covering, Savage saw nothing but the darkness of night.

  He and his brethren were prisoners. He wondered how long it would be before he saw the light of day again.

  Part II

  “Icham of Irlaunde

  Ant of the holy londe

  Of Irlaunde.

  Gode sire, pray ich the,

  For of saynte charite,

  Come ant daunce wyt me

  In Irlaunde”

  Anonymous, 14th Century medieval lyric

  “I am of Ireland,

  And the Holy Land of Ireland,

  …Come dance with me in Ireland”

  W. B. Yeats

  6

  AD 1315

  Goodrich Castle, England

  The dungeon stank of damp and death. He had been a prisoner so long now he had lost track of time.

  The single window was so high up no prisoner could see out of it. Some days he huddled in the pool of sunbeams that streamed in through the iron-barred window, desperate to soak up every ounce of the precious, life-sustaining warmth. That must have been summer time. Other times he crouched by the wall, struggling to avoid the freezing sleet that spat through the window into the filthy straw that clogged the floor. That must have been winter.

  How many times this cycle of the seasons had revolved he could no longer recall. All he knew for sure was that one by one, his companions had died or been taken away. None ever returned. Soon they would come for him.

  The air in the dungeon was foul. Putrid straw lay in rank clumps amid festering puddles of mire on the floor. The bare stone walls glistened with green slime. At the start of his incarceration he had shared this prison with fourteen of his brethren. They were crammed in, condemned and shut away from prying eyes. They were heretics, criminals, abominations before God.

  Now he was the only one left.

  He had watched some die, choking away their last moments as – weakened by cold, damp and the starvation diet – they finally succumbed to the suffocating grasp of disease. Edward Harley was the first to go, dying within two weeks of being locked in the dungeon. He had suffered much. In the fighting before their capture an arrow had impaled his foot. When they removed the arrow, Harley, like a true knight, had not flinched. A low grunt was the only indication that he had felt any pain.

  All there was to clean the wound was the filthy water that ran in a channel down one side of the dungeon, providing both drinking water and latrines for the prisoners.

  Within days Harley’s foot had swollen to twice its normal size. It began to give off a foul stench that could be smelt even in the fetid air of the dungeon. He fell into a fever and spent his nights bathed in sweat, raving and screaming at imaginary demons that tore at his face like bats. Young and strong, the virtues that had made him a good knight had simply prolonged Harley’s agonies until finally, after a week of torment, infection achieved what their captors could not in open combat. His corpse lay rotting on the dungeon floor for three days before it was removed.

  A few months later, Thomas Berard had begun coughing uncontrollably. Resolutely devout, the black-haired knight from Aquitaine had continued to choke his way through his prayers every day as the disease progressed and his lungs filled with ever more bloody fluid. He had finally gurgled his last breath after a paroxysm of coughing that had begun halfway through saying his paternoster.

  Robert Mountford, most senior of the captured knights, seemed to simply waste away. As the seasons revolved he had got thinner and thinner, his grey hair turned to snow-white and his teeth crumbled to chalky stumps that rotted in the gums. One night, as they slept in the Stygian darkness, Mountford had heaved a loud groan, followed by a deep sigh, and they all knew he was dead.

  As the seasons became years, death in the form of a pestilence claimed Brian le Jay and Guy de Foresta also.

  The rest were taken away from the dungeon never to return. Geoffry de Chamberlayne was taken first. One morning the guards had arrived, the cell door was unlocked, Chamberlayne’s name was called and he was led away. Where he went to they were not told. The accusations they were locked up for were grave, so it was safe to assume that his fate involved torture, a false confession, then either the agonies of a fiery death at the stake or els
e the shameful, perpetual living death of a renounced heretic.

  As time passed, the same happened to the remaining prisoners, one at a time. No one ever returned.

  Now he was the only one left, and the guard had said that his time was coming soon.

  Over the years his clothes had degenerated to mere dirty rags that hung around his wasted frame. The rule of his order had barred him from shaving so even before he was thrown into the prison his beard was already full and bushy. Now it was long, unkempt and filthy as well. His hair hung down nearly to his waist; a wild, shaggy brown mass of tangles, beneath which burned two red-rimmed eyes.

  It was these eyes that most unnerved his jailers. Even after years in the murky twilight of the prison cell they still glittered a strange green. Their constant livid glare spoke of a man who burned inside, tormented by deep rage, tortured by the fires of hatred.

  Hatred was his last remaining friend. It kept him alive when the others died: a constant, smouldering fire that vowed he would never succumb, not to them, not to anyone. His hatred had distilled into anger, an emotion that impelled him to walk constantly, pacing up and down the little cell like a wild beast in a cage. Rage boiled within him and the only outlet was to pull himself up on the bars of the door, lifting his whole body weight off the floor, so that while the others wasted away, he remained hard and lean.

  He despised the men who had thrown him in jail, he detested the enemies who had conspired to bring down his order, he loathed the hypocrites who lied and hid behind religion to justify bloody murder and most of all he hated God. The Lord who had betrayed him, led him away from home to chase dreams that did not exist and then left him to rot in this cold, wet, malodorous dungeon.

  As he sat in silence, huddled beside the wall, the sound of the key in the lock startled him. He heard bolts being drawn back and the heavy iron-bound wooden door swung open. Two soldiers clad in chain mail stood in the doorway, their drawn swords holding the casual promise of violence.

  One of them wore an unpleasant smile that revealed several broken teeth.

  ‘Syr Richard le Savage,’ he commanded. ‘Come with us. Your time has come.’

  7

  He had expected it for years, but the final arrival of his summons sent a quiver of trepidation through Savage’s guts.

  What lay ahead?

  He knew too well the devices that could be employed whenever a heretic was “put to the question”. He and his companions had all heard the horror stories of what their brethren in France suffered to extort their confessions.

  Some had had teeth pulled out with pliers, then iron nails poked into the bloody sockets. The feet of many were dipped in oil then suspended over charcoal braziers, inciting agony as the flesh fried and the bones blackened and dropped off into the coals. Finger and toenails were ripped out by the roots. Worst of all was the rack: the wooden frame the brethren were strapped to and slowly stretched. The anguish became steadily more excruciating as they listened to the popping and cracking of the sinews in their arms and legs until the joints dislocated. A spell on the rack was enough to coerce even the strongest of men to admit to planning the murder of the Mother of God herself.

  The two soldiers half-dragged half-carried Savage roughly up a spiral staircase out of the dank underground cellar where the castle dungeon was. His nose twitched at a strange, sweet smell as they reached the top of the staircase. Savage suddenly realised that the aroma was the scent of fresh air, the first he had breathed for years.

  As they dragged him out through a doorway into the rain and across a cobbled courtyard, he flinched and tried to shade his eyes from the brightness of the daylight. After years spent in semi-darkness the sunlight provoked smarting and tears.

  ‘Aw look: he’s crying,’ the soldier with the broken teeth said, his sarcastic tone betraying how much sympathy he really had for the prisoner.

  ‘He’ll have something to cry about soon enough,’ the other soldier grunted.

  They dragged Savage across the cobblestones towards a large stone castle keep. Like a dreamer waking from a long sleep, memories came flooding back from when he had arrived there, years before. Now Savage was too weak to resist the pull of the guards. Then it had taken four of them to drag him, punching and kicking like a horse, down the narrow stairway to the dungeon.

  He had no idea where the castle was: they had been brought here at night in covered wagons. It was at least a day’s journey from the priory of the order where they had been arrested, but in what direction he did not know. The castle courtyard had been deserted apart from the detachment of soldiers who had made the arrests.

  Now the courtyard was full of horses and wagons. There seemed to be sergeants, men-at-arms and soldiers everywhere. Grooms and other menial servants were busy running to and fro, carrying water, preparing horses for stabling and unpacking wagons. It was obvious that a large contingent of folk had just arrived at the castle and from the grandeur of the clothes worn by some of the ladies stepping out of the covered wagons and the banners of knights that were being unfurled on the battlements, these were very important people indeed. Most of them did not give a second glance at the ragged, hairy figure being trailed towards the keep. Such prisoners were common in a place like this and it was better not to pay too much attention to them in case you saw something you should not.

  A cool, blessed rain splashed Savage’s face, awakening memories of his last day of freedom. It had been raining then too, but how long ago had that been?

  The guards dragged him into the castle keep. They went up another flight of spiral stairs and across a hallway until they finally came to a large set of double doors. Two more men-at-arms blocked their way with swords drawn.

  ‘The last prisoner from the dungeon, as requested: Syr Richard le Savage,’ the guard with the broken teeth said.

  The men-at-arms nodded and opened the doors.

  Through the doors came a welcome breath of warm air. Savage was dragged into the room and just had time to note the sumptuous tapestries on the walls and the roaring open fire that blazed in the grate before he was dumped unceremoniously on the floor.

  ‘So,’ said a cultured voice in Norman French, ‘this is the Irish Knight Templar.’

  8

  Savage looked around him. Compared to the dungeon, the room was a riot of colour that overwhelmed his senses. Embroidered woollen tapestries shrouded the walls. A fire blazed in a huge iron dog grate at the end of the room. The floor was carpeted with deep, clean rush matting and furs.

  A long table ran along the far wall. A man of perhaps thirty five winters lounged in a brightly painted chair behind it. From the length of his legs he looked like he would be of considerable height once he stood up. His face ended in a long, pointed goatee beard and his chestnut brown hair was combed straight and hung to his shoulders where it was curled in. At the brow, his hairline had receded, leaving a high-domed forehead that lay between a middle parting. Even though he was seated, it was obvious that he was a big man: very tall and powerfully built. His clothes looked expensive and a large black bear fur was wrapped around his shoulders.

  The man regarded Savage with a curious gaze and a slightly sardonic smile played across his lips.

  ‘Am I to be tortured?’ Savage said. His voice was hoarse from lack of use.

  The stranger snorted and his smile widened. ‘My dear Syr Richard, this is England. The use of torture is against the law here.’

  Savage tried to struggle to his feet but one of the guards forced him back down again.

  ‘Kneel before the king, heretic!’ the guard shouted.

  Savage looked at the man lounging in the chair again, a confused look on his face. What did he mean by “king”?

  The man in the bearskin stood up to his full height, which was indeed well over that of most men, and gestured to the guards to leave. ‘Out!’ he said. ‘Syr Richard was a member of the Order of Knights Templar. They did not recognise any earthly kings and their only overlord was the Pope.’ He ga
ve a little chuckle. ‘Which is rather ironic, given what happened to them. Tell my Lords Lancaster and Mortimer to join us.’

  With expressions on their faces that betrayed that they were as confused as Savage, the guards left the room. Savage struggled to his feet again.

  ‘He called you king…’ he croaked.

  The man at the table poured himself a goblet of ruby red wine. ‘I am Edward Plantagenet, King of England, France and Lord of Ireland,’ he announced.

  Savage did not know what to say. He had expected beatings, torture and being hauled before a bishop at a Church Court. Instead he was standing in front of the King of England. What was going on?

  ‘I may have a little job for you,’ King Edward said. ‘I shall tell you more when the Earls of Lancaster and the March arrive.’

  The king walked around the table and approached Savage, looking him up and down. The dishevelled knight felt uncomfortable under the king’s gaze, which seemed both appraising and critical. As he got closer, King Edward’s nose wrinkled and a look of evident displeasure creased his face as if he had just drunk sour milk.

  ‘My God you are filthy,’ he said. ‘And you stink. I’m going to order you a bath.’

  The king walked to the door, opened it and spoke in a low voice to someone outside. He closed the door then returned to the table and drank a long draught of wine. Savage could hear the ice rattling in the goblet and his parched throat lusted for the taste of anything but the brackish water that was all he had had to drink during his years of captivity.

  The doors opened again and in strode another tall, broad-shouldered man dressed in dark colours. He was older than the king, but not much, and his clothes were just as sumptuous.

  ‘Ah! Speak of the Devil and he shall appear: My Lord Lancaster,’ the king announced. His tone of voice held a hint of what to Savage sounded like displeasure. The newcomer showed no signs of deference towards the king. There was a distinct resemblance between the two men, both in height and facial features. This was not surprising, given that they shared a grandfather. Lancaster had gone completely bald though. He looked at Savage for a long time without comment, then turned to King Edward.