Michael Jecks - The Templar, the Queen and Her Lover

‘He was like a man who’d eaten a bowl of sloes.’

Baldwin winced at that thought. ‘Why should that be?’

‘I think he’s chewing through the money faster than he had hoped.’

‘The Queen was given a large sum, I think. The King finally gave in and allowed her a decent sum for this embassy.’

‘Well, you wouldn’t think so to look at her comptroller.’

‘Maybe so. At least he’s a decent fellow, not like this Comte de Foix.’

‘Him again?’ Simon grunted despairingly.

‘He was thoroughly dishonourable,’ Baldwin muttered. ‘I should have allowed him to challenge me. It would have saved much time.’

‘Baldwin, from what you’ve told me, the fellow was twenty years younger than you — possibly more. I don’t think that it would save much time to seek out a suitable site for your burial, and it most assuredly wouldn’t have made my journey any faster to have to go to your home to explain to Jeanne how it was that you died.’

‘Oh, so now you don’t think I can protect myself against a young brute like him?’

‘What was it made that noise, anyway?’

‘The noise? I don’t know. I have never heard an explosion like that before. It was a curious thing — like a small cannon.’

‘I did see some smoke,’ Simon said thoughtfully. ‘But that was all. It reeked.’

‘Yes. I smelled brimstone,’ Baldwin said. ‘Ach, there’s a root under me.’

‘Move, then,’ said Simon, content in the knowledge that his own bedspace was comfortable. At least they had the benefit of good tent canvas overhead. It was considerably better than being stuck out in the open. He could hear the tiny pattering of snow hitting the material. It was like the sound of individual grains of sand … no, it was quieter, softer, more soothing.

‘I do not expect much in the way of sympathy, luckily,’ Baldwin grumbled.

‘That may be as well.’

‘However, you are fortunate to be younger. A man of my decrepitude also has to contend with the tribulations of old age. Such as a weak bladder!’ Baldwin said, rising. He eyed his sword, but it seemed foolish to strap on his war belt. Still, he did not like to wander about a camp without any means of defence. After pausing, he took his dagger and held it in his hand as he ducked beneath the awning, then stuck it, sheathed, into his belt.

It was darker than he had expected. This late in the evening, only a couple of fires were lighted still. The others had been put out for safety. Some years ago, when the Queen was here with her husband on another diplomatic visit, her tent had caught fire, and she had been badly burned about the arms as she tried to rescue some trinkets — jewellery and other valuables. The injuries had affected her for years afterwards, and she had been most insistent on camp safety during this journey. Which was why Baldwin kept stumbling into discarded items of camp trash or almost tripping over guy ropes in the dark.

The area he was heading towards was a ditch between two fields. There were bushes and trees on the farther side of the ditch, which gave a useful marker to him now as he made his way somewhat unsteadily over the rough ground, icy and snowy as it was. Then he found himself at the lip, and lifted his tunic to make his own mark in the snow before sighing, hitching up his hosen again, pulling down his tunic, and setting off to return.

A small cry made him pause. There was a short gurgling sound, rather like a mill’s leat chuckling over stones, except there was none here. The river was at the other side of the camp. Baldwin looked about him sharply, wondering if it was another man writing in the snow, but he saw no one.

That noise was all too much like another he knew well: a man trying to shout when his throat was filling with blood from severed arteries. Baldwin had heard it too often ever to be able to forget it. He felt his scalp move with the atavistic fear that affected any man, no matter how old, when hearing another slain in the darkness. But Baldwin had been well trained. Although he wanted to return to the tent, to Simon’s companionship and safety, he was a knight, and, more than that, he was here to protect his queen. He would prefer to be damned for eternity than submit to night terrors.

He gripped the hilt of his dagger and pulled it free of the sheath, then started to make his way towards the place from which he thought the sounds had come, although the going was tough, and reaching the place quietly would be extremely difficult. Rather than fall over guy ropes again, he took a wide berth around the tents and made for the source more cautiously.

The noise had seemed to come from the small stand of trees that marked the edge of a little stream. Baldwin had noted this, as he had noted the lie of all the land as they arrived. One aspect of his military training while in the Knights Templar was always to make careful observations of the ground near a camp, and never had it proved so useful.

Beaten into the soil here, was a pathway, and he followed along the track until he came closer to the trees. Once there he slowed, listening intently.

There was little to hear. From all about there came the muffled snores and grumbles of a camp at night. In the short pauses between, when the wind blew from the north and took all such sounds away, there was nothing at all, only the soft, insistent sussuration of snowflakes settling on the ground, like a gentle hissing. A horse whinnied, a dog barked, and a man muttered, cursed and rolled over, trying to get warm, but there was nothing else.

Baldwin closed his eyes to hear the better. The clouds were so thick and low, there was no light from the moon whatever. Not a stray gleam shone in the midst of the clouds. His eyes were all but useless. Slowly he crouched down, frowning, wondering whether he could have been mistaken when he had thought he had heard something. He took a step, his foot crunching on a patch of ice, slipping into the puddle beneath, the mud squelching, and stood utterly still.

There was a sound there … there ! He set off more quickly. The man was moving quietly, but his passage would conceal Baldwin’s approach. And then he saw something ahead. It was a man, bent down, so he thought, and there was a little spark of light in his hands. He called out, and ran on, but the man was up and away in the darkness, and Baldwin saw a short flash, a sizzling burning, and then there was an appalling explosion, a vile gout of fire, like raw energy. Flames gushed towards him from the ground, searing his eyes and leaving him blinded, and he screamed as he turned away, falling to the ground, his hands over his eyes, trying to squeeze out the vision of hell leaping towards him.

The screams woke Charlie first, and he shot upright, staring about him wildly, adding to the noise with his own shrill cries of terror.

‘ Jesus and all the saints! ’ Janin burst out, springing from his bed. ‘Ricard? Are you all right?’

All the musicians were together in the one tent, and as Ricard held little Charlie close to him Philip stared about him blearily, gathering tinder and striking a spark. As it glowed, he was able to light a taper, and then looked round at the other faces.

Looking at Jack’s bedding, Ricard summed it up for them all. ‘So where has the little shite got to now?’

In his tent, Peter of Oxford woke gradually. The screaming and shouting on all sides was enough to startle him, but he had been so deeply asleep, ready to wake before dawn to celebrate Prime, that it was hard to gather his senses.

‘Do not panic,’ came a voice, and he was about to bellow for help when he realised it was his guest, Pierre Clergue.

‘Father! Do you know what has happened?’

‘No idea, my friend,’ Clergue said. He was at the tent’s flap, and now he turned to peer out. ‘An alarm of some sort, but probably just a squabble over a game of merrills.’