And then I see him.
It’s a Friday afternoon in late January and Hugh’s gone out: I’m sitting on my own. A man comes up the alley and stands there a moment, sniffing the air like a pointer. A beaver-fur hat covers his face, but he’s too cautious. He looks up, alert to danger from any direction, and as his gaze passes over the inn I see him full on. A grey face wrapped in furs, a single eye scanning the street.
I stifle the urge to draw back. He can’t possibly see me in the dark window, but he might notice the movement. He stands there another moment, then eases forward into the crowds.
I rush out of the room, down the stairs and into the street. The sun’s almost disappeared, but I can just glimpse the crown of his hat weaving through the throng. He turns right towards the river, along a street that stinks of fish. Fish guts clog the gutters; fallen scales make the cobbles slippery. Half-dead fish flop and flounder in crates stacked by the fishmongers’ doors.
The one-eyed man ducks into a wine shop on the corner. The Thames flows just beyond, though I can hardly see it through the fleet of vessels jamming the docks. I stand aside to let two porters go in, then step smartly in after them. If the one-eyed man looks up as they enter, he doesn’t see me behind them.
The room is low, dim and smoky: the few tallow candles the landlord’s put out cast more shadows than light. I look to the darkest corners and get a vague gleaning of a man taking off his fur hat. I edge around the room towards him. I’m halfway there when he looks up — straight at me.
I freeze. I’m unarmed, and the wine shop looks like the sort of place where brawls are commonplace. A corpse spirited out the back and dropped down a hole into the Thames probably wouldn’t trouble the owner.
A man shoulders his way past me and clasps the one-eyed man’s hand. He wasn’t looking at me. My heart starts to beat again.
‘Alberic,’ the other man greets him. His voice is loud, a London voice trained in its markets and trading-halls.
‘Alderman.’
The new arrival takes a seat facing Alberic. White curls bloom from the sides of his cap like hyacinth. His nose droops, his cheeks blush with broken veins. He takes the drink Alberic offers and sips it while he listens. I can’t hear what Alberic says. He’s facing away, and he speaks like a man well used to conspiring in dark corners. But I catch the reply.
‘London supports King Stephen. We were the first to recognise him. When the Empress Maud came to London, we drove her out as a tyrant and a usurper.’
Again, I don’t hear Alberic’s reply, but I see the alderman’s face change.
‘London’s true loyalty will always be to commerce. War is bad for business.’
Alberic swills his drink. His head moves back and forth as if he’s laughing, though if he is, it’s too soft for me to hear. I drag my stool slightly closer.
‘War is excellent for business. We’ve never made so much money as we have since Maud and the Angevins invaded. The weak are crushed; the strong charge what they like.’
The alderman looks alarmed. ‘I thought we were talking about peace.’
Alberic takes his arm, soothing. ‘We are. When Stephen’s victory is secured, all we want is to protect our privileges.’
‘And my consideration?’
Alberic reaches inside his hat and extracts a limp piece of vellum. ‘I thought in a place like this, a bag of gold might be too obvious.’
The alderman smiles. He pulls out his own piece of parchment and slides it across the table.
‘This will get you your audience.’
The two men down the last of their wine. The alderman leaves; Alberic waits a few minutes, stroking the parchment thoughtfully, then goes out. I daren’t follow immediately, and when I do go I find my way blocked at every turn in the crowded room. By the time I reach the street, he’s vanished into the night.
XLIII
‘Now what?’
Doug and Ellie sat in a tiny restaurant well off the main road. She didn’t even know where they were: an anonymous town, a pretty main square besieged by the usual engines of modernity: hypermarkets, warehouse stores and fast-food outlets. The streets were dark, though it was only five o’clock. She devoured a steak frites and asked for a second helping of chips — their breakfast on the motorway seemed a long time ago. Doug drained a beer and gave the bar a thirsty look.
‘I think I’ve worked out the story so far,’ he said. ‘We’ve stolen something, we don’t know what it is — on behalf of some people, we don’t know who they are — and we’re trying to give it to them, but we’ve no idea where they are and no way to contact them. Is that pretty much it?’
Ellie nodded blankly. ‘Mirabeau was all I had to go on. Now …’ She mashed a chip with her fork. ‘I don’t know where to go.’
‘There must have been something in the Mirabeau chapel. Something the Brotherhood wanted to protect from Monsalvat.’
‘If only we’d found it. At least Joost would have died for something.’ The guilt turned inside her. If she let herself think about it, she’d go mad. First Harry, now Joost: men on their quests, who stumbled into her and ended up dead.
Dead to save me. Was she the villain of the story, the woman at the roadside with long hair and wild eyes drawing men to their doom? She looked at Doug across the table. Her stomach flipped so hard she almost lost her supper.
I can’t do that to him.
‘What are you thinking?’ she asked, to fill the silence.
‘I’m thinking about poems and mazes.’
She despaired. ‘We’re totally lost, and you want to find a maze?’
‘The poem hints at some sort of labyrinth. There was a labyrinthine design on the floor. It’s something.’
‘It wasn’t a labyrinth, it was a geometric shape. It could be anything — just a pretty pattern.’
‘Maybe it’s a pattern that gets you through the maze.’
‘And where is this maze, anyway? Carduel?’
Doug’s shoulders slumped. ‘I’ve been staring at this poem for the last three months. I’ve tried everything I can think of. I’ve had maps out with pieces of string, drawing lines between Troyes and Carlisle — which is ridiculous, because at the time he wrote this poem those sort of maps just didn’t exist.’
‘There’s nothing else in the poem? No clues?’
‘I think the whole poem’s one big clue.’
A catch in his voice grabbed her attention. She looked up from her plate and gave him her best don’t-hold-out-on-me stare.
‘What?’
Doug looked almost embarrassed. ‘You know what Chrétien de Troyes’ greatest contribution to western civilisation was?’
‘Romance poetry?’
He took a deep breath. ‘The Holy Grail. It all starts with him. He’s the first person ever to mention it.’
It was so ridiculous she almost laughed out loud. But Doug wasn’t smiling. Ellie grappled for something sensible to say.
‘Didn’t the Bible get there first? I thought the Holy Grail was the cup of the Last Supper, the one they used to catch Jesus’ blood on the Cross.’
‘That’s part of the legend that grows up around it. In Chrétien’s original poem, Le Conte du Graal, it’s just a mysterious dish that appears to Sir Perceval while he’s feasting in a remote castle one night. A beautiful woman carries it, and behind it comes a lance with blood running down from its tip.’
‘The holy lance that stabbed Jesus on the Cross, right?’
‘Chrétien doesn’t say. Again, that’s part of the legend that attaches to it.’ Doug leaned forward. ‘It’s hard to overstate how little Chrétien gives us. There’s a grail — not a cup, incidentally, but a serving dish — and the spear, and that’s it. No explanation. Perceval watches them go by, and specifically doesn’t ask what’s going on, because he thinks it would be rude. The next morning he wakes up and the castle’s empty. He spends the rest of his life trying to find the Grail again.’