Heretic

Review by Booklist Review

Thomas of Hookton, English archer and illegitimate son of a disgraced French priest, returns in the third and final volume of Cornwell's best-selling Grail Quest series. As the Hundred Years' War rages on, Thomas continues to fight for the earl of Northampton and the Crown while remaining devoted to the quest he first undertook in The Archer's Tale (2001) and refined in Vagabond (2002) . Spurred on by a series of enigmatic clues, he remains determined to unearth the greatest treasure in all of Christendom--the Holy Grail. Together with his ragtag band of loyal followers and a beautiful woman accused of heresy, Thomas lays a trap in Gascony for his evil cousin and sworn enemy Guy Vexille. Both determined to win the ultimate prize, Thomas and Guy ultimately meet in a decisively gruesome battle. Though triumphant, Thomas must eventually contemplate the price of his victory and decide if the sacred trophy he sought is worth the havoc it will continue to wreak on mankind. Oozing with all the blood, gore, and action that fans of Cornwell's graphically detailed historical fiction have come to expect, the conclusion of this gripping trilogy is on target to please a ready-made audience. --Margaret Flanagan Copyright 2003 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Cornwell is a master of the historical action novel, and he outdoes himself again with this gripping third volume in his Grail Quest series, set during the bloody Hundred Years' War (The Archer's Tale; Vagabond). For years, English archer Thomas of Hookton has been searching for the Holy Grail. Thomas is not certain it ever existed, but obscure clues link his family to the mysterious vessel. In 1347, driven by his desire to plumb the truth of the Grail as well as to earn money from the plunder of French lands and property, Thomas and a small group of soldiers capture a castle in Gascony, the homeland of Thomas's father. Thomas hopes to hold the castle against the French, raid the countryside for loot and draw the attention of his evil cousin Guy Vexille, a French nobleman who murdered Thomas's father and who may have information about the Grail. Vexille appears, but so does the army of a local lord, sent to besiege the castle, and the vicious brother of a treacherous and cunning bishop who is determined to secure the Grail. Fighting honorably amid extreme brutality, Thomas is aided by loyal English archers, English and French men-at-arms, local bandits, a Scottish mercenary and a heretic girl with unusual powers. Outnumbered by his enemies, he faces the might of a huge cannon and the power of the Church's greed-not to mention the dreaded Black Death. Most daunting of all, however, is the decision Thomas must make when he finally discovers the truth about the Holy Grail. Graphic battlefield action, strong characters and sharp plotting are Cornwell's trademarks, and his fans will love this latest melee. (Oct. 7) Forecast: The Grail Quest books sell even faster than Cornwell's popular Napoleonic War series, and this is the best in the series so far. Expect it to fly off shelves. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

Expert archer Thomas of Hookton is shunned for refusing to help his fellow soldiers in the burning of a heretic-and then faces the Black Death. Cornwell's most popular series. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Beset by the plague and those hellacious Dominican inquisitors, the sure-shot hero of Cornwell's Archer series (Vagabond, 2002, etc.) continues his eventful search for the Holy Grail. Armed with his own Weapon of Mass Destruction, the deadly English longbow Thomas Hookton, nÉ (on the wrong side of the sheets) Vexille, has made it through the battle of Crecy and torture at the hands of a Dominican madman, comforted by a succession of equally tough and healthy young ladies, to arrive at last in the Languedoc, the southern French country where the Vexilles, before falling into the Cathar heresy, were lords of Astarac and where the few clues left by Thomas's father seem to lead to the holy relic. Accompanied by Robbie Douglas, the tough young Scot he rescued in Vagabond and by landless, one-eyed, Norman turncoat Sir Guillaume D'Evecque, and backed by his own posse of longbowmen, Thomas has seized the stronghold of Castillon d'Arbazon in order to lure his ruthless crypto-Cathar cousin Guy Vexille to the neighborhood. Guy and Thomas each believe the other holds the clues to the location of the Grail that everybody is sure the Vexilles held and hid. Everybody, that is, except the spectacularly cynical Cardinal Archbishop Louis Bessieres, who has imprisoned a gifted Parisian goldsmith and his doxy with orders to run up a state-of-the-art fake, which, once planted and then "discovered," will put the Cardinal in the papal throne at Avignon. There is, of course, a lovely lass for Tom in Castillon d'Arbazon. She's Genevieve, scheduled for burning by a creepy fanatic priest who decided, after some lustful torture, that she's a heretic. Lissome, blond, and a quick student of the crossbow, Genevieve, property of the devil though she may be, is just the gal for our archer, and together they take on the Cardinal, Guy, the local baron, and any number of Genoese crossbowmen, and, as the Black Plague arrives, get their hands on the box that leads to the cup of everyone's dreams. The usual Cornwell bull's-eye. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Heretic Chapter One The Count of Berat 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 last, but none had provided him with a child. He had not even spawned a bastard on a milkmaid though, God knew, it was not for lack of trying. That absence of children had persuaded the Count that God had cursed him and so in his old age he had surrounded himself with priests. The town had a cathedral and eighteen churches, with a bishop, canons and priests to fill them, and there was a house of Dominican friars by the east gate. The Count blessed the town with two new churches and built a convent high on the western hill across the river and beyond the vineyards. He employed a chaplain and, at great expense, he purchased a handful of the straw that had lined the manger in which the baby Jesus had been laid at his birth. The Count encased the straw in crystal, gold and gems, and placed the reliquary on the altar of the castle's chapel and prayed to it each day, but even that sacred talisman did not help. His fifth wife was seventeen and plump and healthy and, like the others, barren. At first the Count suspected that he had been cheated in his purchase of the holy straw, but his chaplain assured him that the relic had come from the papal palace at Avignon and produced a letter signed by the Holy Father himself guaranteeing that the straw was indeed the Christ-child's bedding. Then the Count had his new wife examined by four eminent doctors and those worthies decreed that her urine was clear, her parts whole and her appetites healthy, and so the Count employed his own learning in search of an heir. Hippocrates had written of the effect of pictures on conception and so the Count ordered a painter to decorate the walls of his wife's bedchamber with pictures of the Virgin and child; he ate red beans and kept his rooms warm. Nothing worked. It was not the Count's fault, he knew that. He had planted barley seeds in two pots and watered one with his new wife's urine and one with his own, and both pots had sprouted seedlings and that, the doctors said, proved that both the Count and Countess were fertile. Which meant, the Count had decided, that he was cursed. So he turned more avidly to religion because he knew he did not have much time left. Aristotle had written that the age of seventy was the limit of a man's ability, and so the Count had just five years to work his miracle. Then, one autumn morning, though he did not realize it at the time, his prayers were answered. Churchmen came from Paris. Three priests and a monk arrived at Berat and they brought a letter from Louis Bessières, Cardinal and Archbishop of Livorno, Papal Legate to the Court of France, and the letter was humble, respectful and threatening. It requested that Brother Jerome, a young monk of formidable learning, be allowed to examine the records of Berat. "It is well known to us," the Cardinal Archbishop had written in elegant Latin, "that you possess a great love of all manuscripts, both pagan and Christian, and so entreat you, for the love of Christ and for the furtherance of His kingdom, to allow our Brother Jerome to examine your muniments." Which was fine, so far as it went, for the Count of Berat did indeed possess a library and a manuscript collection that was probably the most extensive in all Gascony, if not in all southern Christendom, but what the letter did not make clear was why the Cardinal Archbishop was so interested in the castle's muniments. As for the reference to pagan works, that was a threat. Refuse this request, the Cardinal Archbishop was saying, and I shall set the holy dogs of the Dominicans and the Inquisitors onto your county and they will find that the pagan works encourage heresy. Then the trials and the burnings would begin, neither of which would affect the Count directly, but there would be indulgences to buy if his soul was not to be damned. The Church had a glutton's appetite for money and everyone knew the Count of Berat was rich. So the Count did not want to offend the Cardinal Archbishop, but he did want to know why His Eminence had suddenly become interested in Berat. Which was why the Count had summoned Father Roubert, the chief Dominican in the town of Berat, to the great hall of the castle, which had long ceased to be a place of feasting, but instead was lined with shelves on which old documents moldered and precious handwritten books were wrapped in oiled leather. Father Roubert was just thirty-two years old. He was the son of a tanner in the town and had risen in the Church thanks to the Count's patronage. He was very tall, very stern, with black hair cut so short that it reminded the Count of the stiff-bristled brushes the armorers used to burnish the coats of mail. Father Roubert was also, this fine morning, angry. "I have business in Castillon d'Arbizon tomorrow," he said, "and will need to leave within the hour if I am to reach the town in daylight." The Count ignored the rudeness in Father Roubert's tone. The Dominican liked to treat the Count as an equal, an impudence the Count tolerated because it amused him ... Heretic . Copyright © by Bernard Cornwell. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from Heretic by Bernard Cornwell All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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