Bernard Cornwell - Grail Quest 1 - Harlequin

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Harlequin
by Bernard Cornwell
Prologue
The treasure of Hookton was stolen on Easter morning 1342.
It was a holy thing, a relic that hung from the church rafters,
and it was extraordinary that so precious an object should have
been kept in such an obscure village. Some folk said it had no
business being there, that it should have been enshrined in a
cathedral or some great abbey, while others, many others, said it
was not genuine. Only fools denied that relics were faked. Glib men
roamed the byways of England selling yellowed bones that were
said to be from the fingers or toes or ribs of the blessed saints, and
sometimes the bones were human, though more often they were
from pigs or even deer, but still folk bought and prayed to the
bones. A man might as well pray to Saint Guinefort," Father Ralph
said, then snorted with mocking laughter. They're praying to ham
bones, ham bones! The blessed pig!"
It had been Father Ralph who had brought the treasure to Hookton and he would
not hear of it being taken away to a cathedral
or abbey, and so for eight years it hung in the small church, gathering dust
and growlng spider webs that shone silver when the
sunlight slanted through the high window of the western tower.
Sparrows perched on the treasure and some mornings there were
bats hanging from its shaft. It was rarely cleaned and hardly ever
brought down, though once in a while Father Ralph would demand
that ladders be fetched and the treasure unhooked from its chains
and he would pray over it and stroke it. He never boasted of it.
Other churches or monasteries, possessing such a prize, would have
used it to attract pilgrims, but Father Ralph turned visitors away.
It is nothing," he would say if a stranger enquired after the relic,
a bauble. Nothing." He became angry if the visitors persisted. It is
nothing, nothing, nothing!" Father Ralph was a frightening man
even when he was not angry, but in his temper he was a wild-haired
fiend, and his flaring anger protected the treasure, though Father
Ralph himself believed that ignorance was its best protection for if
men did not know of it then God would guard it. And so He did,
for a time.
Hookton's obscurity was the treasure's best protection. The tiny
village lay on England's south coast where the Lipp, a stream that
was almost a river, flowed to the sea across a shingle beach. A
half-dozen fishing boats worked from the village, protected at night
by the Hook itself, which was a tongue of shingle that curved around
the Lipp's last reach, though in the famous storm of 1322 the sea
had roared across the Hook and pounded the boats to splinters on
the upper beach. The village had never really recovered from that
tragedy. Nineteen boats had sailed from the Hook before the storm,
but twenty years later only six small craft worked the waves beyond
the Lipp's treacherous bar. The rest of the villagers worked in the
saltpans, or else herded sheep and cattle on the hills behind the
huddle of thatched huts which clustered about the small stone
church where the treasure hung from the blackened beams. That
was Hookton, a place of boats, fish, salt and livestock, with green
hills behind, ignorance within and the wide sea beyond.
Hookton, like every place in Christendom, held a vigil on the eve
of Easter, and in 1342 that solemn duty was performed by five men
who watched as Father Ralph consecrated the Easter Sacraments
and then laid the bread and wine on the white-draped altar. The
wafers were in a simple clay bowl covered with a piece of bleached
linen, while the wine was in a silver cup that belonged to Father
Ralph. The silver cup was a part of his mystery. He was very tall,
pious and much too learned to be a village priest. It was rumoured
that he could have been a bishop, but that the devil had persecuted
him with bad dreams and it was certain that in the years before he
came to Hookton he had been locked in a monastery's cell because
he was possessed by demons. Then, in 1334, the demons had left
him and he was sent to Hookton where he terrified the villagers
by preaching to the gulls, or pacing the beach weeping for his sins
and striking his breast with sharp-edged stones. He howled like a
dog when his wickedness weighed too heavily on his conscience,
but he also found a kind of peace in the remote village. He built a
large house of timber, which he shared with his housekeeper, and
he made friends with Sir Giles Marriott, who was the lord of Hook-
ton and lived in a stone hall three miles to the north.
Sir Giles, of course, was a gentleman, and so it seemed was Father
Ralph, despite his wild hair and angry voice. He collected books
which, after the treasure he had brought to the church, were the
greatest marvels in Hookton. Sometimes, when he left his door
open, people would just gape at the seventeen books that were
bound in leather and piled on a table. Most were in Latin, but a
handful were in French, which was Father Ralph's native tongue.
Not the French of France, but Norman French, the language of
England's rulers, and the villagers reckoned their priest must be
nobly born, though none dared ask him to his face. They were all
too scared of him, but he did his duty by them; he christened them,
churched them, married them, heard their confessions, absolved
them, scolded them and buried them, but he did not pass the time
with them. He walked alone, grim-faced, hair awry and eyes
glowering, but the villagers were still proud of him. Most country
churches suffered ignorant, pudding-faced priests who were scarce
more educated than their parishioners, but, Hookton, in Father Ralph
had a proper scholar, too clever to be sociable, perhaps a saint,
maybe of noble birth, a self-confessed sinner, probably mad, but
undeniably a real priest.
Father Ralph blessed the Sacraments, then warned the five men
that Lucifer was abroad on the night before Easter and that the
devil wanted nothing so much as to snatch the Holy Sacraments
from the altar and so the five men must guard the bread and wine
diligently and, for a short time after the priest had left, they dutifully
stayed on their knees, gazing at the chalice, which had an armorial
badge engraved in its silver flank. The badge showed a mythical
beast, a yale, holding a grail, and it was that noble device which
suggested to the villagers that Father Ralph was indeed a high-born
man who had fallen low through being possessed of devils. The
silver chalice seemed to shimmer in the light of two immensely tall
candles which would burn through the whole long night. Most
villages could not afford proper Easter candles, but Father Ralph
purchased two from the monks at Shaftesbury every year and the
villagers would sidle into the church to stare at them. But that
night, after dark, only the five men saw the tall unwavering flames.
Then John, a fisherman, farted. Reckon that's ripe enough to
keep the old devil away," he said, and the other four laughed. Then
they all abandoned the chancel steps and sat with their backs against
the nave wall. John's wife had provided a basket of bread, cheese
and smoked fish, while Edward, who owned a saltworks on the
beach, had brought ale.
In the bigger churches of Christendom knights kept this annual
vigil. They knelt in full armour, their surcoats embroidered with
prancing lions and stooping hawks and axe heads and spread-wing
eagles, and their helmets mounted with feathered crests, but there
were no knights in Hookton and only the youngest man, who was
called Thomas and who sat slightly apart from the other four, had
a weapon. It was an ancient, blunt and slightly rusted sword.
You reckon that old blade will scare the devil, Thomas?" John
asked him.
My father said I had to bring it," Thomas said.
What does your father want with a sword?"
He throws nothing away, you know that," Thomas said, hefting
the old weapon. It was heavy, but he lifted it easily; at eighteen,
he was tall and immensely strong. He was well liked in Hookton
for, despite being the son of the village's richest man, he was a
hard-working boy. He loved nothing better than a day at sea hauling
tarred nets that left his hands raw and bleeding. He knew how to
sail a boat, had the strength to pull a good oar when the wind
failed; he could lay snares, shoot a bow, dig a grave. geld a calf, lay
thatch or cut hay all day long. He was a big, bony, black-haired
country boy, but God had given him a father who wanted Thomas
to rise above common things. He wanted the boy to be a priest.
which was why Thomas had just finished his first term at Oxford.
What do you do at Oxford, Thomas?" Edward asked him.
Everything I shouldn't," Thomas said. He pushed black hair away
from his face that was bony like his father's. He had very blue eyes,
a long jaw, slightly hooded eyes and a swift smile. The girls in the
village reckoned him handsome.
Do they have girls at Oxford?" John asked slyly.
More than enough," Thomas said.
Don't tell your father that," Edward said, or he'll be whipping
you again. A good man with a whip, your father."
There's none better," Thomas agreed.
He only wants the best for you," John said. Can't blame a man
for that."
Thomas did blame his father. He had always blamed his father.
He had fought his father for years, and nothing so raised the anger
between them as Thomas's obsession with bows. His mother's father
had been a bowyer in the Weald, and Thomas had lived with his
grandfather until he was nearly ten. Then his father had brought
him to Hookton, where he had met Sir Giles Marriott's huntsman,
another man skilled in archery, and the huntsman had become his
new tutor. Thomas had made his first bow at eleven, but when his
father found the elmwood weapon he had broken it across his knee
and used the remnants to thrash his son. You are not a common
man," his father had shouted, beating the splintered staves on
Thomas's back and head and legs, but neither the words nor the
thrashing did any good. And as Thomas's father was usually pre-
occupied with other things, Thomas had plenty of time to pursue
his obsession.
By fifteen he was as good a bowyer as his grandfather, knowing
instinctively how to shape a stave of yew so that the inner belly
came from the dense heartwood while the front was made of the
springier sapwood, and when the bow was bent the heartwood was
always trying to return to the straight and the sapwood was the
muscle that made it possible. To Thomas's quick mind there was
something elegant, simple and beautiful about a good bow. Smooth
and strong, a good bow was like a girl's flat belly, and that night,
keeping the Easter vigil in Hookton church, Thomas was reminded
of Jane, who served in the village's small alehouse.
John, Edward and the other two men had been speaking of village
things: the price of lambs at Dorchester fair, the old fox up on Lipp
Hill that had taken a whole flock of geese in one night and the
angel who had been seen over the rooftops at Lyme.
I reckon they's been drinking too much," Edward said.
I sees angels when I drink," John said.
That be Jane," Edward said. Looks like an angel, she does."
Don't behave like one," John said. Lass is pregnant," and all four
men looked at Thomas, who stared innocently up at the treasure
hanging from the rafters. In truth Thomas was frightened that the
child was indeed his and terrified of what his father would say
when he found out, but he pretended ignorance of Jane's pregnancy
that night. He just looked at the treasure that was half obscured by
a fishing net hung up to dry, while the four older men gradually
fell asleep. A cold draught flickered the twin candle flames. A dog
howled somewhere in the village, and always, never ending,
Thomas could hear the sea's heartbeat as the waves thumped on
the shingle then scraped back, paused and thumped again. He
listened to the four men snoring and he prayed that his father
would never find out about Jane, though that was unlikely for she
was pressing Thomas to marry her and he did not know what to
do. Maybe, he thought, he should just run away, take Jane and his
bow and run, but he felt no certainty and so he just gazed at the
relic in the church roof and prayed to its saint for help.
The treasure was a lance. It was a huge thing, with a shaft as
thick as a man's forearm and twice the length of a man's height
and probably made of ash though it was so old no one could really
say, and age had bent the blackened shaft out of true, though not
by much, and its tip was not an iron or steel blade, but a wedge of
tarnished silver which tapered to a bodkin's point. The shaft did
not swell to protect the handgrip, but was smooth like a spear or
a goad; indeed the relic looked very like an oversized ox-goad, but
no farmer would ever tip an ox-goad with silver. This was a weapon,
a lance.
But it was not any old lance. This was the very lance which
Saint George had used to kill the dragon. It was England's lance, for
Saint George was England's saint and that made it a very great treasure,
even if it did hang in Hookton's spidery church roof. There were
plenty of folk who said it could not have been Saint George's lance,
but Thomas believed it was and he liked to imagine the dust churned
by the hooves of Saint George's horse, and the dragon's breath stream-
ing in hellish flame as the horse reared and the saint drew back
the lance. The sunlight, bright as an angel's wing, would have been
flaring about Saint George's helmet, and Thomas imagined the dragon's
roar, the thrash of its scale-hooked tail, the horse screaming in
terror, and he saw the saint stand in his stirrups before plunging
the lance's silver tip down through the monster's armoured hide.
Straight to the heart the lance went, and the dragon's squeals would
have rung to heaven as it writhed and bled and died. Then the dust
would have settled and the dragon's blood would have crusted on
the desert sand, and Saint George must have hauled the lance free
and somehow it ended up in Father Ralph's possession. But how?
The priest would not say. But there it hung, a great dark lance,
heavy enough to shatter a dragon's scales.
So that night Thomas prayed to Saint George while Jane, the black-
haired beauty whose belly was just rounding with her unborn child,
slept in the taproom of the alehouse, and Father Ralph cried aloud
in his nightmare for fear of the demons that circled in the dark, and
the vixens screamed on the hill as the endless waves clawed and
sucked at the shingle on the Hook. It was the night before Easter.
Thomas woke to the sound of the village cockerels and saw that
the expensive candles had burned down almost to their pewter
holders. A grey light filled the window above the white-fronted
altar. One day, Father Ralph had promised the village, that window
would be a blaze of coloured glass showing Saint George skewering
the dragon with the silver-headed lance, but for now the stone
frame was filled with horn panes that turned the air within the
church as yellow as urine.
Thomas stood, needing to piss, and the first awful screams
sounded from the village.
For Easter had come, Christ was risen and the French were ashore.
The raiders came from Normandy in four boats that had sailed the
night's west wind. Their leader, Sir Guillaume d'evecque, the Sieur
d'evecque, was a seasoned warrior who had fought the English in
Gascony and Flanders, and had twice led raids on England's
southern coast. Both times he had brought his boats safe home
with cargoes of wool, silver, livestock and women. He lived in a
fine stone house on Caen's Ile Saint Jean, where he was known as
the knight of the sea and of the land. He was thirty years old, broad
in the chest, wind-burned and fair-haired, a cheerful, unreflective
man who made his living by piracy at sea and knight-service on
shore, and now he had come to Hookton.
It was an insignificant place, hardly likely to yield any great
reward, but Sir Guillaume had been hired for the task and if he
failed at Hookton, if he did not snatch so much as one single poor
coin from a villager, he would still make his profit for he had been
promised one thousand livres for this expedition. The contract was
signed and sealed, and it promised Sir Guillaume the one thousand
livres together with any other plunder he could find in Hookton.
One hundred livres had already been paid and the rest was in the
keeping of Brother Martin in Caen's Abbaye aux Hommes, and all
Sir Guillaume had to do to earn the remaining nine hundred livres
was bring his boats to Hookton, take what he wanted, but leave
the church's contents to the man who had offered him such a
generous contract. That man now stood beside Sir Guillaume in
the leading boat.
He was a young man, not yet thirty, tall and black-haired, who
spoke rarely and smiled less. He wore an expensive coat of mail
that fell to his knees and over it a surcoat of deep black linen that
bore no badge, though Sir Guillaume guessed the man was nobly
born for he had the arrogance of rank and the confidence of privilege. He was
certainly not a Norman noble, for Sir Guillaume knew
all those men, and Sir Guillaume doubted the young man came
from nearby Alencon or Maine, for he had ridden with those forces
often enough, but the sallow cast of the stranger's skin suggested
he came from one of the Mediterranean provinces, from Languedoc
perhaps, or Dauphine, and they were all mad down there. Mad as
dogs. Sir Guillaume did not even know the man's name.
Some men call me the Harlequin," the stranger had answered
when Sir Guillaume had asked.
Harlequin?" Sir Guillaume had repeated the name, then made
the sign of the cross for such a name was hardly a boast. You mean
like the hellequin?"
Hellequin in France," the man had allowed, but in Italy they say
harlequin. It is all the same." The man had smiled, and something
about that smile had suggested Sir Guillaume had best curb his curi-
osity if he wanted to receive the remaining nine hundred livres.
The man who called himself the Harlequin now stared at the
misty shore where a stumpy church tower, a huddle of vague roofs
and a smear of smoke from the smouldering fires of the saltpans
just showed. Is that Hookton?" he asked.
So he says," Sir Guillaume answered, jerking his head at the
shipmaster.
Then God have mercy on it," the man said. He drew his sword,
even though the four boats were still a half-mile from shore. The
Genoese crossbowmen, hired for the voyage, made the sign of the
cross, then began winding their cords as Sir Guillaume ordered his
banner raised to the masthead. It was a blue flag decorated with
three stooping yellow hawks that had outspread wings and claws
hooked ready to savage their prey. Sir Guillaume could smell the
salt fires and hear the cockerels crowing ashore.
The cockerels were still crowing as the bows of his four ships ran
onto the shingle.
Sir Guillaume and the Harlequin were the first ashore, but after
them came a score of Genoese crossbowmen, who were professional
soldiers and knew their business. Their leader took them up the
beach and through the village to block the valley beyond, where
they would stop any of the villagers escaping with their valuables.
Sir Guillaume's remaining men would ransack the houses while
the sailors stayed on the beach to guard their ships.
It had been a long, cold and anxious night at sea, but now came
the reward. Forty men-at-arms invaded Hookton. They wore close-
fitting helmets and had mail shirts over leather-backed hacquetons,
they carried swords, axes or spears, and they were released to plun-
der. Most were veterans of Sir Guillaume's other raids and knew
just what to do. Kick in the flimsy doors and start killing the men.
Let the women scream, but kill the men, for it was the men who
摘要：

HarlequinbyBernardCornwellPrologueThetreasureofHooktonwasstolenonEastermorning1342.Itwasaholything,arelicthathungfromthechurchrafters,anditwasextraordinarythatsopreciousanobjectshouldhavebeenkeptinsuchanobscurevillage.Somefolksaidithadnobusinessbeingthere,thatitshouldhavebeenenshrinedinacathedralors...

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