Krishna
The story in the Grail Quest series continues, after Harlequin and Vagabond
The British army has laid siege to a castle and the French troops are across the river with a large contingent come to help their compatriots trapped inside.
Thomas is there to defend the English army from the French forces. He is asked to go deep into enemy territory and ‘make noise’ so that Guy Vexille will come find him. Then he is to capture Guy and then learn where the grail is. A pigheaded plan if ever there was one. \
Thomas goes as a friar to the city, gains entry and in the night gets his companions into the fortress in a thrilling scene. The heretic of the title is a girl imprisoned there – to be burnt at the pyre for her heretic beliefs. Thomas captures the fort and claims it in the name of the Earl of Northampton and puts the priests who wanted to burn her in their place. A brilliant argument with the priest to disprove that she is not a pagan witch ensues.
In the meanwhile the French Count, who is annoyed that the British dared to capture the castle, meets a priest and learns of the fact the the Grail may be (unknowingly) somewhere in his possession and is determined to get it before anyone else does.
The Cardinal makes a fake Grail cup and sends it to be ‘found’ in the place where the real one is rumoured to be. The assistant, Charles, is supposed to use Guy Vexille to find the cup and if he did, kill him and take the cup back. If not, kill him anyway and take the fake cup back. Either way the Cardinal will be the one who declares the find, and his path to Papacy would be cleared.
The French prepare an ambush for Thomas and his crew. When the hidden English archers not only defeat them and also capture Jocelyn, the tide turns. But a priest who tortured Genevieve and later, a Bishop come and plant fear in the hearts of Christian soldiers (and also Robbie) that Thomas is doomed, he is forced to flee with no part of the ransom with Genevieve.
Jocelyn sends two people to murder the ailing uncle so that he can become the Count and make Robbie – and himself – rich. The succeed in killing the count but at that time, Thomas was being looked after by the Abbot Blanchard, who has a mute abbot cure Genevieve after she is hit by a crossbow quarrel in a fight. As she recovers, Jocelyn, who is now the Lord of the castle behaves brutally to everyone and sends Guy Vexile to look for Thomas in the monastery. There is a lovely scene where Thomas sees them literally the last minutes and hides under a pile of skeletons and human bones with Genevieve.
They escape and are almost killed by outlaws and in a great scene manage to barely escape. Guy Vexilles people come a split second too late to catch him.
He goes to the fort to be among friends and Jocelyn and Guy Vexille go there to kill them all in the hopes that he has got the grail. When the brother of the monk goes with the fake grail to ‘claim to have found it’, Thomas finds and kills him and ‘discovers’ the grail through Genevieve.
The final war is amazingly told and the ‘twist’ in the grail, even though I saw it coming way before it happened, it is still nice.
This was supposed to be a trilogy and so the story ends in a neat finish which is satisfying, but recently Bernard has written a fourth book in this sequence. I am curious about what that entails.
However, this is a very entertaining and lovely story, even though the author admits that almost the entire story of this book is fabricated, unlike his usual fare which has a historical fact in it.
8/10
— Krishna