Michael Jecks - The Templar, the Queen and Her Lover

‘I don’t know,’ Baldwin said. He could remember the scene again. ‘I saw the man as though crouched on the ground, and then there was a flash and flames were rushing towards me.’

‘That is all you recall?’

‘I seem to …’ He closed his eyes to aid his memory. ‘Perhaps there was a small glowing ember of some sort.’

Now he thought about it, he was almost sure he had seen a little red glow before that enormous burst of flame. And a sizzling line, like an incandescent, spitting snake. ‘Come with me!’

‘This is where you found me last night?’

They had stopped at a slight hollow in the ground. Nothing much, and in the snow it would have been hard to see, but there was a muddy puddle at the bottom which showed its curvature, and Baldwin could see where he had stood, then fallen, his hand prints showing distinctly in the mushy snow at the upper lip. And then he saw the blackened mess.

‘There was no gonne , Simon. The fellow simply set fire to a pile of black powder on the ground,’ he said. ‘That was why I was uninjured.’

‘But why would someone have done that?’ Simon said, hunkering down and prodding at the black residue.

It had lain on a flat board, a half-inch-thick plank of some light wood about three feet long. Simon ran his finger over it. There appeared to be a groove cut into it from one end to the other, and where the black residue was thickest there was a distinct hollowing, like a shallow dish.

‘This board would keep the powder away from the damp,’ Baldwin said musingly. ‘And the depressions would hold the powder in one place to be fired.’

That would make sense, so far as Simon was concerned. He had heard of black powder, the strange, explosive material that was used to fill the lethal cannons that hurled rocks at walls. Siege trains in the hosts of any king must always have their cannons now, no matter the fact that the damned things seemed to be the invention of the devil. From all he had heard, they were more dangerous to the labourers who loaded and fired the hellish things than to the enemy. But the powder was as temperamental as a girl on the cusp of puberty. Like his own daughter — although now she was a little older, thanks to God, she seemed to have calmed a little …

No. He must concentrate on the matter at hand.

Baldwin was frowning with perplexity, he saw. ‘Baldwin? What is the matter?’

‘Look at this, Simon. Whoever put this here was intending some mischief. What was it, though? Did he intend to disturb the camp, and perhaps put the Queen in fear of her life, or did he intend to waylay someone?’

‘And when you stumbled into him, he saw an opportunity, took your knife, and when someone else came to see him, stabbed him to death?’ Simon guessed.

‘It is more likely than someone trying to harm me personally,’ Baldwin admitted. Then he straightened and gazed about him. ‘Although I think the Comte was already dead. I guess he was met here, killed, and then set down. When I turned up, I made the killer panic. He set off the powder, and then saw me lurch away and drop my knife. He took it and thrust it into the Comte’s chest.’

‘Why the powder, though? What was it doing here?’

‘Let us go and talk to de Foix’s servants. Perhaps a little of his spare powder had been mislaid? If not, who else might have some of it here?’

Janin was pouring some water into a dish preparatory to washing his face, which still felt sticky and rough from the previous day’s journey, when he heard the soft footsteps behind him. Turning, he saw the Irishman. He gave a short, piercing whistle, and Ricard and Philip both stirred and grunted themselves awake.

‘So you decided to come back, then,’ Ricard said grimly. ‘Where were you last night? Another French bint?’

‘I am lucky to be popular,’ Jack said easily.

‘There was a murder last night. You hear about that? Strange how things happen when you aren’t around,’ Philip said.

‘Coincidences. I find them refreshing. Your boy. He is not here — you haven’t lost him, have you?’

‘Never mind him. He’s safe enough,’ Ricard spat. ‘What do you mean, refreshing? You realise …’

‘You realise that the man responsible is an English knight called Furnshill? He was there, his dagger was found in the man’s breast, and it was only his position as a guardian to Queen Isabella that saved him from arrest.’

Ricard glanced at his companions. ‘That true?’

Janin shrugged. ‘How would I know?’

‘Well, just stay back with us, so we don’t have to be suspicious about you at least,’ Ricard said flatly. ‘We don’t need all this shite. It’s bad enough we were forced into coming away.’

‘Forced into coming here? You were persuaded to bring me, but someone made you come as well? Who did that, then?’ Jack asked. There was a smile on his face, but no reflection of it in his voice. That was as cold as the ground all about.

Janin shivered. ‘It was before we met you.’

‘And it’s none of your business,’ Philip added.

‘No problem. I was only interested. After all, we musicians need to keep together, don’t we?’

As he smiled and moved away, his feet as quiet as a cat’s, Ricard exchanged a look with Janin. ‘I really, really don’t like him.’

Robert de Chatillon knew he had to prepare the tent to be taken down. His eyes were drawn all too often to the shrouded body on the table, considering all the messages which must be composed and sent hither and thither. He managed to persuade the two churls to leave the place at last, and could begin to start work.

No sooner were Arnaud and the old man gone than he heard someone else scratching at the canvas.

‘This is the tent of Enguerrand de Foix?’

‘What do you want, Sir Baldwin?’

‘You know my name?’

Robert gave a dry smile. ‘I think that there will be few people in the camp who don’t recall your name by now, sir knight. Now, if you don’t mind, I have to strike camp and prepare my dead master’s body for the journey. There is much work for a man whose master has been murdered.’

His shot hit the mark, he saw. The bearded knight coloured slightly. Not with anger, but a kind of shame.

‘When your master died last night, I had been fired on by a charge of that powder you use for gonnes and cannons.’

‘You have my sympathy. Was that an excuse to kill him?’

‘I killed no one. I was attacked. Someone tried to kill me, then took my dagger and stabbed your master while I was blinded.’

‘So you say someone was out there to kill him and waited until you happened by? I don’t think-’

‘Or, more likely, they set the charge and only fired at me because I came by at an inopportune moment.’

Robert stopped at that. ‘Why would they do that?’

‘Tell me about this charge, and maybe I can find out why — and who !’

‘They aren’t the same, you know.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The powders. You couldn’t use cannon powder in a device made for your hand. It would burst out of the barrel without exploding. I have seen it. For a smaller gonne , you need smaller grains of powder.’

Baldwin was holding the board on which the charge had been laid. ‘Which was this?’

Robert decided there could be no harm in telling him. ‘It was the finer type.’

‘You can tell that without even looking at the board?’ Simon snapped.

Robert had kept his eyes on Baldwin. Now he looked at Simon without emotion. ‘Master, it is easy to see. I can see each flake marked on this knight’s face.’ Still, he took the board and studied that too for a short while.