1356

faster. Whenever he found a village or a traveller, he asked for directions, but usually folk only knew how to reach the next village or perhaps a town that Thomas had never heard of, and so he just kept going north.
    ‘You’re trying to reach Poitiers?’ the Sire Roland asked him on the sixth day.
    ‘I’m told the prince might be there,’ Thomas said, but as it had been Sir Henri who suggested that, and as Sir Henri knew no more than Thomas, it was at best a vague destination.
    ‘Or are you going there because it’s near Nouaillé?’ Roland asked.
    ‘Nouaillé?’
    ‘That’s where the blessed Junien rests.’
    ‘You’ve been there?’
    Roland shook his head. ‘I’ve only heard of it. Are you going there?’
    ‘If it’s on the way,’ Thomas said.
    ‘Because you want
la Malice
?’ Roland asked, and it was almost an accusation.
    ‘Does it exist?’
    ‘I’ve heard so, yes.’
    ‘Cardinal Bessières believes it,’ Thomas said, ‘and the Black Friars must too, and my lord has ordered me to find it.’
    ‘So he can use it to fight against France?’ Roland asked indignantly. He might have joined the Hellequin and be willing to fight against King Jean’s army, but that was for Bertille. His deep loyalty was still with France, which meant he would do this thing for Bertille, only for Bertille, because she had asked him to do it and what she asked, he gave. He twisted in his saddle to look at her. She rode with Genevieve. Thomas had not wanted either woman to come north, but Bertille had insisted, and it had been impossible to deny her when so many of the archers and men-at-arms had their women mounted on rounceys.
    A grumble of thunder sounded somewhere to the north. ‘You’re worried,’ Thomas said, ‘that I’ll find
la Malice
?’
    ‘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
,