The Lazarus Vault Part 32

He's right. Their bodies are so thin it's hard to tell, but when I look closer I realise all the villagers are men. Even the ones carrying children, some only babies: scrawny, whimpering bundles barely distinguishable from the rags they're wrapped in.

We halt in front of them. The sullen crowd eyes us in silence. One, with a fur-trimmed cap perched incongruously on his head, steps forward. I a.s.sume he's the reeve, the headman.

'Where are your women?' Hugh asks.

It's like throwing corn to geese. A torrent of answers erupts around us, all deference forgotten. I can't hear the words for the noise.

Eventually, the headman quiets them. 'The Earl took them. When we couldn't provide him crops or t.i.thes, he took our women instead. He put them to work spinning and sewing he sells the clothes they make for a fortune, while he pays them nothing. If they don't produce as much as he wants, he strips them and beats them. They live locked in a cattle stall. Three of them have died there already.'

'Who is your earl?'

'The Earl of Wantage. Jocelin de Hautfort.'

Perhaps I should have antic.i.p.ated it. Perhaps I have crossed into a different realm a world where my past comes to life and piles on top of me. Scar tissue acc.u.mulated over years falls away in an instant. My wounds are as raw as the day Ada died.

'Who?'

'Jocelin de Hautfort. His estate was in Normandy, but he lost it when the Angevins invaded. King Stephen compensated him with English lands that belonged to his stepmother, and an invented t.i.tle.'

The headman's eyes sidle to our pack horses. We've removed the points from our spears, but it doesn't do much to disguise them. One of the sacks has pulled open, showing the dull metal of chain mail inside.

'Are you knights?'

'Travellers,' says Hugh shortly. 'And you're blocking our way.'

A s.h.i.+ver goes through the peasants. They press closer around Hugh. Up on his horse, he's an island in a sea of desperate faces. The headman takes the horse's bridle and leans in. Hugh has to bend his head to listen.

'These lands are exhausted you can see for yourself. Jocelin gets nothing from them. The only fertile ground he has left is this road. He harrows it like he harrows us.'

'What do you mean?'

'He watches the road. He'll be waiting for you. Half a mile up this road, where it pa.s.ses through a thick stand of trees, you'll find a burned-out cart blocking the way. You'll get down to clear it, but it's loaded with river stones. More of you will dismount. The next thing you'll know, you'll have a dozen spears at your throats.'

'Why are you telling us this?'

'Look at us. There isn't an ear of corn here that Jocelin hasn't taken. There's nothing left.'

Hugh tugs his bridle out of the headman's hands. 'If we stopped to right every wrong we pa.s.sed on the road, we'd never have got out of London. We'll find another way round.'

'Please.' The headman drops to his knees in the mud and flings his arms around the horse's leg like a child hobbling its mother. It's a piteous sight. He's lucky the horse is too weary to kick him. 'If you avoid his trap, Jocelin will know that we warned you. He'll destroy us and our women. There are worse things he can do than make them spin cloth.'

'He doesn't know we're coming. Unless you told him?'

The headman bares his teeth, though half of them have fallen out from hunger.

'He watches the road I told you. He's seen you. He rode through here fifteen minutes ago.'

We lace on our hauberks and devise a plan. I haven't worn armour since I tore off my old coat on the ile de Peche. A shudder convulses me as it slips over my head, swallowing me. A moment later it feels like my own skin.

We make our preparations. While Hugh and the others withdraw a little way down the road, Abelard and I clamber into the rafters of houses where the thatch has been stripped back. I'm trembling all over. All I can see is Ada tied to the tree, the blood running down the shaft of the spear. An angel sings inside me, the seductive bliss of revenge. Jocelin was never patient: I wonder how long it'll be before he comes to see what happened to his quarry.

And suddenly there he is.

It doesn't take much to be an earl these days. His retinue is two knights, and a dozen serjeants who don't look much better than brigands. At least he's been enjoying the fruits of his estates. His face has grown jowls; his body bulges under the armour, which has a stripe down the back where new links have been added to enlarge the mail s.h.i.+rt.

I clench my fists. Blood beads on my palms where my nails break the skin.

He rides up to the headman and puts his spear against the man's throat. I almost choke on the memory of Ada.

'Where are they?'

Even his voice sounds fat. A slow, uninflected drawl, none of his father's subtlety. A man content to stuff himself on easy pickings.

'They took a different path.' The headman keeps his eyes downcast. A wide scar, crusted black, runs down his cheek. The mark of Jocelin's lords.h.i.+p.

'Liar!' Jocelin wheels his horse round. 'There is no other path. Did you warn them?'

'We told them nothing.'

Jocelin tickles the man's neck with his spear. 'You betrayed me. I warned you, but you disobeyed. Now '

A shriek tears through the village. A piglet comes out of one of the houses and gallops up the road. Smoke trails behind it: someone's tied a burning bundle of straw to its tail.

With whoops of delight, the serjeants break ranks and race after it. Some of them even drop their spears. Jocelin laughs and doesn't try to stop them. He reverses his spear and strikes the headman hard against his skull.

'How is a lord supposed to live if his serfs betray him?'

The smile withers on his face. Suddenly the street is full of men pouring out of the houses and surrounding the serjeants. The weapons they carry are primitive knives and sickles, billhooks and mallets, even roof-timbers from their own houses but their attack is lethal. They surround the serjeants. Some men act as living s.h.i.+elds, soaking up the blows with their bodies, so that the men behind can get through. They beat and bite the weapons out of the soldiers' hands; they drag them to the ground; they tear them to pieces.

Jocelin and his knights spur forward. Gornemant once said: it's not birth that makes a man a knight, or training or skill it's his horse. A mob of brutalised villagers can take down a whole host of foot-soldiers, but even three knights can put them to flight.

A pile of rubbish and rubble sits in the middle of the street carefully laid there an hour earlier. The knights split around it like water round a rock, so close to the houses they almost brush shoulders with the thatch-poles. Praise be Jocelin comes my way.

I count off the paces. Too soon, I'll be trampled underfoot; too late, I'll just bounce off the horse's rear. I time it to perfection. Just like we used to do in the orchard at Hautfort, I hurl myself off the roof, hug my arms around the rider and let my momentum carry us both. Jocelin comes off the horse; I tuck my head against his chest to protect myself as we both crash to the ground. Something snaps as he lands on a loose rock, though it isn't me. I'm winded, but unhurt.

Across the road, Anselm's unhorsed his opponent: they're wrestling on the ground. Further on, Hugh and the others have the third knight surrounded. I pick up the s.h.i.+eld Jocelin dropped and pull my spear out from the thatch where I hid it earlier. Behind me, I hear a clang. Jocelin's ripped off his helmet. He staggers to his feet.

So many years I dreamed of revenge, but now that it comes it happens almost too easily. I've lost some muscle since I gave up fighting, but I'm lean and strong. Jocelin probably hasn't used his sword in years. The boy who delighted in physical courage has grown fat and slow, a bully throwing his weight around in a badly fitting coat of armour. And he hurt himself in the fall.

He draws his sword. I sidestep his lunge and punch him in the face with the boss of my s.h.i.+eld. Blood trickles from his nose. I see Ada again, the blood flowing out of her. I grab his sword arm, twist it around and chop it with my s.h.i.+eld rim. The bone cracks. He steps back but his spur catches in the ground. He sprawls flat in the mud, flapping like a fish stranded above the tidemark.

I put my foot on his throat and raise my spear. It hovers over Jocelin's face. He goes cross-eyed trying to look at it.

'Look at me.'

He can't see beyond the spear tip. I draw it back to strike. Jocelin's pupils pull apart as if tied to a string.

Will killing him heal my wound?

The weight of the spear in my hand tells me yes. It tugs at my shoulder, coaxing me to strike. I want to believe it.

But my arm's numb it won't move. I remember the hermit Will you show love to the loveless, pity to the pitiless?

I killed Ada. I thought I could play Tristan to her Yseult, and write unhappiness out of our story. I forgot that for every Tristan, there's also a King Mark. If I'd wanted to kill Jocelin, I could have found him any time I liked. The real reason I didn't, why I drifted around tournaments and mercenaries nursing my fantasies of storming Hautfort, was that in my heart I knew it was my fault.

Jocelin stole her and tied her to the tree. It was Jocelin's man who threw the spear. If I was lying in the mud now under his blade, I'd already be dead. How much of my life have I spent waiting for this moment?

Pity to the pitiless.

The spear's like lead in my hand. My arm's trembling. I can't hold it still any longer.

It's easier just to plunge it down.

XLV.

Near Reims, France Annelise Stirt lived in the Champagne country south-east of Reims: a land of rolling valleys with vineyards on every hill. Ellie and Doug pa.s.sed through village after village of squat, sandstone houses: shuttered windows and locked doors in the moonlight. They sawnoone. Just as Ellie decided they'd missed it, Doug pulled up at a pair of wrought iron gates, framing a long gravel driveway.

'Are you sure this is right?' Ellie had imagined that all academics lived in houses like Doug's: cramped, shabby places mainly meant to accommodate books. Dr Stirt's house was a full-on chateau: a three-storey mansion with tall bay windows, a gaggle of subordinate outbuildings and a turret hanging off one corner.

'This is where the map says. It looks as if she's still awake.'

The drive had taken longer than they'd expected it was after eleven now but light still shone from the downstairs windows. Ellie scanned the shadows around the house, wondering what they harboured.

'Let's leave the car here,' she said.

'If anyone's there, they'll already have seen us.'

'That's not exactly rea.s.suring.'

'I'll go up and have a look. If anything happens, drive like h.e.l.l.'

I've already put you in far too much danger, Ellie wanted to say. But Doug had opened the door and slipped into the night. Ellie watched him stride up the drive, his lanky silhouette moving with purpose. If he felt any fear, he didn't show it. Ellie was trembling all over.

You don't deserve this, she whispered to him. You don't deserve what I've done to you.

Doug reached the top of the drive and looked around. Ellie watched him go left, then right, peering around the corners of the house. Her heart went into overdrive as he vanished behind an outbuilding, some sort of garage or workshop, but a moment later he was back, waving the all-clear to her.

She drove up the driveway and joined him at the door. Doug lifted the knocker but before he'd let it drop the door swung in. A tall woman stood in the doorway, prettier than her photo on the website. She wore her greying dark hair loosely tied back, framing a heart-shaped face with round cheeks and a dimpled mouth.

'Dr Cullum?'

Doug shook her hand. 'This is my colleague, Ellie Stanton.'

As they shook hands, Ellie realised how filthy she must look. She'd washed her face at the restaurant, and brushed off all the mud she could, but there were still big stains down her jeans where she'd fallen in the lake, and her hair stank of smoke.

'We had a flat tyre. I tripped and fell in a ditch while I was changing it.'

'You poor thing.' Annelise Stirt put an arm around Ellie's shoulders and steered her through into a flagstoned hallway lined with paintings of hounds. 'Do you want to change? Have you eaten?'

Doug demurred. 'We've already kept you up far too late.'

Annelise led them into an elegant drawing room. A log smouldered in the hearth; a pair of gleaming shotguns were mounted above it, and long brocade curtains draped the windows. All the furniture looked at least a hundred years old.

'I'll just put the kettle on.'

Annelise disappeared. Ellie perched on the edge of a golden-upholstered chaise longue and hoped the mud wouldn't stain it. She felt like a lost soul finding an oasis in the desert, unwilling to believe its s.h.i.+mmering welcome could be anything more than a mirage. Everything around her seemed so soft and warm and comforting she thought she might cry.

Annelise came back carrying a tray. As well as the teapot and three mugs, she'd brought a plate piled with cured meats, sliced baguette and a steak pie cut into quarters.

'I had a rummage in the fridge. You look as if you could use feeding up.'

Ellie gave decorum about five seconds, then descended on a piece of pie. 'It's a beautiful house,' she mumbled through a mouthful of crumbs.

'My father was Scottish and my mother German, but both of them wanted to be French. This house was their way of achieving it.' Annelise sat back in a deep armchair and curled her legs under her. 'But you didn't come here to admire my home.'

'We wanted to talk about your research interests,' said Doug.

'You can say it the Holy Grail. I know it's a bit of a dirty word in academic circles.' She settled back in her chair. 'Actually, I'm rather glad to see you hesitate. So many of the people I come across are fanatical on the subject.'

Ellie spread thick b.u.t.ter on the bread and added a slice of ham.

'In this field, there are two kinds of people: scholars, and crazies. I try to avoid the crazies, but you can't be a scholar a proper scholar and not come up against them from time to time. They talk about the Knights Templar, tarot cards, the bloodline of Jesus, Freemasons, all that conspiratorial stuff. Sometimes you have to admire their ingenuity, but it's still complete rubbish.'

'We're more interested in Chretien de Troyes and his poetry.'

Annelise nodded, thoughtful. 'I looked you up when you said you were coming, Dr Cullum. Your field is French poets and their cla.s.sical models. You haven't published anything on Chretien.'

'It's a recent development.'

'You said you had something to show me?'

Doug glanced at Ellie. Ellie pulled the leather tube out of the bag and unscrolled the parchment. She pa.s.sed it to Annelise, together with Doug's translation.

'Where did you find this?'

'A friend of the family found it in an attic,' Doug said. 'He knew I studied old ma.n.u.scripts, so he gave it to me to look at.'

Annelise put on her gla.s.ses, which she wore on a red cord around her neck, and read over the ma.n.u.script. A glow came into her face.

'You think this is Chretien's work?'

Doug nodded.

'And you're convinced it's genuine?'

'We wouldn't have troubled you if we weren't.'

'The language seems right. The Champenois dialect, some of the vocabulary. It's obviously Grail related. All those allusions: the bowl, the spear, the maiden. But that much you've surely seen yourselves. What did you think I could tell you?'