Heretic Read Online Free PDF Page B

old, experienced in war, with a reputation that had first been made by fighting against the English. But now he possessed no land, no master, and as such he was little more than a vagabond and so, after a pause, he walked to the Earl and knelt before him and held up his hands as though in prayer. The Earl put his own hands round Sir Guillaume’s. “You promise to do me service,” he asked, “to be my liege man, to serve no other?”
    “I do so promise,” Sir Guillaume said earnestly and the Earl raised him and the two men kissed on the lips.
    “I’m honored,” the Earl said, thumping Sir Guillaume’s shoulder, then turned to Thomas again. “So you can raise a decent force. You’ll need, what? Fifty men? Half archers.”
    “Fifty men in a distant fief?” Thomas said. “They won’t last a month, my lord.”
    “But they will,” the Earl said, and explained his previous, surprised reaction to the news that Astarac lay in the county of Berat. “Years ago, young Thomas, before you were off your mother’s tit, we owned property in Gascony. We lost it, but we never formally surrendered it, so there are three or four strongholds in Berat over which I have a legitimate claim.” John Buckingham, reading Father Ralph’s notes again, raised an eyebrow to suggest that the claim was tenuous at best, but he said nothing. “Go and take one of those castles,” the Earl said, “make raids, make money, and men will join you.”
    “And men will come against us,” Thomas observed quietly.
    “And Guy Vexille will be one,” the Earl said, “so that’s your opportunity. Take it, Thomas, and get out of here before the truce is made.”
    Thomas hesitated for a heartbeat or two. What the Earl suggested sounded close to insanity. He was to take a force into the deep south of French territory, capture a fortress, defend it, hope to capture his cousin, find Astarac, explore it, follow the Grail. Only a fool would accept such a charge, but the alternative was to rot away with every other unemployed archer. “I shall do it, my lord,” he said.
    “Good. Be off with you, all of you!” The Earl led Thomas to the door, but once Robbie and Sir Guillaume were on the stairs, he pulled Thomas back for a private word. “Don’t take the Scotsman with you,” the Earl said.
    “No, my lord? He’s a friend.”
    “He’s a damned Scot and I don’t trust them. They’re all goddamned thieves and liars. Worse than the bloody French. Who holds him prisoner?”
    “Lord Outhwaite.”
    “And Outhwaite let him travel with you? I’m surprised. Never mind, send your Scottish friend back to Outhwaite and let him molder away until his family raises the ransom. But I don’t want a bloody Scotsman taking the Grail away from England. You understand?”
    “Yes, my lord.”
    “Good man,” the Earl said and clapped Thomas’s back. “Now go and prosper.”
    Go and die, more like. Go on a fool’s errand, for Thomas did not believe the Grail existed. He wanted it to exist, he wanted to believe his father’s words, but his father had been mad at times and mischievous at others, and Thomas had his own ambition, to be a leader as good as Will Skeat. To be an archer. Yet the fool’s errand gave him a chance to raise men, lead them and follow his dream. So he would pursue the Grail and see what came.
    He went to the English encampment and beat a drum. Peace was coming, but Thomas of Hookton was raising men and going to war.

PART ONE
    The Devil’s Plaything
     
    T HE C OUNT OF B ERAT was old, pious and learned. He had lived sixty-five years and liked to boast that he had not left his fiefdom for the last forty of them. His stronghold was the great castle of Berat. It stood on a limestone hill above the town of Berat, which was almost surrounded by the River Berat that made the county of Berat so fertile. There were olives, grapes, pears, plums, barley and women. The Count liked them all. He had married five times, each new wife younger than the