He raised his chin and glared at me.
‘When we charged into Pamplona, the place had already been emptied out. Most of the treasure had been carried away to safety.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course I’m sure,’ he snapped. ‘We got into the cathedral before it burned. Nothing there. All the church plate gone. The same story with the merchant houses. We found just a few baubles.’
He turned his bloodshot eyes towards me.
‘And now there’s a far greater prize.’
I looked at him baffled.
‘What prize?’
The count leaned forward and tugged a length of firewood clear of the hearth. The end was smouldering. The count blew on it until the first flames began to flicker.
‘Patch, think back to your earlier trip through these mountains. We spoke about it when we were riding south. You told me then that the people of these mountains are an ancient race who have lived in their mountain strongholds for centuries.’
‘It was how Wali Husayn described them to me,’ I said.
‘And didn’t he say that they demanded tolls from the people who used the passes, or robbed them if they did not pay?’
I was growing uneasy with the line of questioning.
When Hroudland next spoke, it was in a dreamy tone as if he was far away. He was staring at the flames on the firebrand in a half-trance.
‘A priest in Pamplona gloated to me, even as his cathedral burned around his ears. He crowed that their greatest treasure was worthless to us.’ With a sudden fierce gesture, the count jabbed the end of the piece of wood back into the fire, and left it there deep among the glowing embers. ‘The priest should have kept his mouth shut. But he was too intent on having his paltry victory — the church’s spiritual value outweighs any wordly price was how he put it. I asked him what he meant, and he said that their greatest treasure was a chalice fashioned from stone. It came from the Holy Land.’
I felt the hairs on my neck prickle for now I knew why Hroudland had ridden up into the mountains with such haste.
The count turned to face me. It was as though he was seeing me for the first time.
‘I asked the priest why the chalice was so special. He informed me that Christ had used this very same chalice at the Last Supper.’
‘I suppose he even told you where to find it?’ I forced as much disbelief as possible into my voice, but Hroudland ignored my scepticism.
‘It took a little persuasion. The chalice doesn’t belong to the cathedral but is brought there for special feast days. For the rest of the year it is kept in a mountain refuge.’ He reached out and caught me by the sleeve. ‘Don’t you see, Patch. Everything fits. The castle in the mountain, the ancient guardians, the chalice from the Holy Land. This has to be the Graal. Somehow the Vascons got hold of it from a group of travellers who were on their way through the pass. If I bring it back to the Bretons, I will become more than just a margrave.’
I made another attempt to deflect him.
‘Everyone knows that Vascon mountain refuges are impregnable.’
‘How about robbery by stealth?’ he said, suddenly sly. ‘Less than five miles from here a stronghold matches the description we extracted from the Pamplona priest. It’s worth a look.’ He gave my sleeve a slight shake to emphasize his words. ‘Patch, tomorrow I’m going to see what I can find there. I want you to come with me.’ He called across to Berenger. ‘Fetch in that prisoner.’
Berenger left the hut and came back moments later, pushing ahead of him a short, wiry man with a weather-beaten look. The side of his face was cut and bruised. Someone had beaten him up badly. A faint memory stirred. He was the Vascon shepherd in whose hut we were sitting.
‘We caught this fellow spying on us from the side of the track as we came up the road,’ said Berenger. He kicked the shepherd’s feet from under him so that the man fell heavily to the ground.
‘This hut is where the man lives,’ I said defensively.
‘Then he must know the mountains as well as anyone. He’ll tell us where we want to go,’ said Hroudland. There was a more ruthless edge to his voice than I had ever heard before.
I should have refused at that moment, or at very least I should have made another effort to convince Hroudland that the Graal was a fantasy. Yet there was something so intense about his conviction that I knew my words would have no effect. It was the same stubborn, self-obsessed Hroudland that I had seen before. Once he had decided on a course of action, he was adamant. This time he had persuaded himself that the Graal was hidden nearby, and he was determined to take it. I could either stand aside and refuse to be involved in such a madcap venture or I could accompany him and assist in whatever way I could. A quick, stealthy raid might achieve surprise but I doubted it. The mountaineers would be keeping a good lookout, knowing the Frankish army was moving through the pass. If there was fighting, the count’s reckless bravery might win a skirmish. But his rashness could equally draw him far into danger.
Conscious that I already owed my life and liberty to Hroudland’s impetuous actions, I decided that I would go with him. If I was the cool head by his side, there might come a moment when I could repay the debt.
Just three of us set out in mid-morning — Hroudland, Berenger and myself. Hroudland had decided to keep our group as small as possible to attract the least attention. Eggihard raised no objection to our departure. Indeed he was so keen to see us go that I suspected he was hoping that Hroudland would get himself killed. Our plan was that we would be back by the time the broken cartwheel was repaired so we could catch up with the main army. Gerin was to stay behind, partly to help stand guard over the disabled treasure carts, but also to make sure that Eggihard kept his word and waited for our return. At Hroudland’s request I carried my bow, and he and Berenger were armed with swords and daggers. None of us wore our armoured jackets for we intended to travel fast and light, and we left behind our horses for the trail we followed was a thread of a footpath that branched from the main track.
The path looped its way around the flank of the hillside and by the time we had gone less than a mile, we were out of sight of the main track behind us. The surface was crumbly and treacherous, and we had to walk cautiously. To our right, the land was a series of steep slopes scarred with dry gullies and an occasional deep ravine. In places a few scrubby plants had managed to take root, but in this season they were parched and shrivelled. To our left the mountainside rose so abruptly that the path was often broken in places where land slips had carried away the trail. It was a bleak, rocky wilderness where the only signs of life were a large bird of prey hanging in the air far above us, and, very far in the distance, a small group of animals on an upper slope that I guessed were wild goats. They took fright and went bounding off across a ridge as soon as they detected our presence.
The weather was in our favour. The day was sunny and bright, and there was enough of a breeze to make the air feel pleasantly cool. I began to hope that Hroudland’s notion of locating the Graal was misplaced, and our venture would prove to be no more than a pleasant stroll. It took us another hour of steady walking before we turned a corner around a spur and Hroudland, who was in the lead, came to a sudden halt. He dropped to one knee and gestured to us to wait where we were. After a few moments he beckoned me forward and pointed. I could just make out some sort of building in the distance. It was perched on a rocky crag that jutted out from the mountainside like the prow of a ship. The building was made of exactly the same grey stone as the surrounding landscape so it was difficult to make out any details. It was much smaller than I had expected, little more than a substantial hut surrounded by what looked like a wall built of boulders. The line of our footpath continued on, doubling back and forth, climbing across the face of the mountain in that direction.