Michael Jecks - The Templar, the Queen and Her Lover

Baldwin looked away, then shook his head. He spoke rapidly, in a manner which Simon could not follow. The bailiff was used to many of the dialects of France now, having dealt with many Frenchmen during his time at the Port of Dartmouth, and could even understand the strongly accented language of the butchers of St Jacques, but Baldwin’s speech was incomprehensible to him.

The armourer scowled, but finally nodded. ‘Oui.’

‘Pay him one eighth more,’ Baldwin said. ‘He’ll accept that.’

‘Another eighth?’ Sir Charles asked as though deliberating.

‘It is up to you. It is a very good price for a sword of that quality. He has been reasonable, and he is still trying to be so. However, if you wish, you can instead test your steel.’

Sir Charles allowed a passing confusion to mar his elegant features. ‘Test it? You mean stab him?’

‘No. I mean, if you are wearing your cuirass, you will have a chance to test its strength against this man’s friends, who are preparing their crossbows to fire at you, should you try to harm him.’

‘Are they within reach?’

‘Sir Charles, I am no knave. This man has asked a reasonable price. I would not attack him or those who seek to protect him, just because you want a bargain. If you want cheap goods, seek them elsewhere. If you want this blade, pay the price and be thankful you have acquired so splendid an example of Parisian craftsmanship.’

‘I think you have a point,’ Sir Charles said after a moment’s thought. He nodded to himself, and then relaxed, allowing the sword to fall to point to the ground. ‘I should be most glad if you could tell this gentle that I shall be glad to pay the full price in livres Parisis. As you say, craftsmanship is worth its price.’

Paul watched his master pay and followed him as Sir Charles set off after Sir Baldwin and Simon.

Sir Charles had not spoken to him much in the last few days. The ridiculous way in which he’d managed to lose Mortimer had unsettled them both. It wasn’t something Paul had ever done before. Stupid, stupid bloody thing to do — let him climb up into a hayloft and thence into the grounds of a private house. Soon as he’d seen where the man had gone, Paul had gone to the door to demand to be allowed inside, but there were plenty of guards there to prevent him. He’d even considered calling Sir Charles, but it was plain enough that even with Sir Baldwin, Sir John and Sir Peter, and even Lord John Cromwell too, they’d not be able to get in and capture the bastard without people hearing and stopping them. So he’d been forced to give up, and Sir Charles had been distant. Disappointment was not an emotion Sir Charles enjoyed.

There had been no sign of the traitor since that evening. Probably keeping his head down, in Paul’s view. Still, he’d be looking out for him now. There was a possibility that a man like him would be so arrogant, he’d think himself safe from attack in the French king’s capital. Well, let him show his face, and Paul would introduce him to a whole new experience — a sharp knife, and a swim for the headless corpse in the Seine.

‘What was the point of that?’ Baldwin grumbled a little later as they walked away from the Châtelet, up the road known as the ‘Grande Rue’.

‘He would not wish to be seen to succumb to any form of trickery,’ Simon reckoned. ‘He is an enormously vain man, Baldwin.’

‘True enough — but to try to gull an armourer in a place where armourers congregate is foolish in the extreme. All could see him dickering like a wife buying fish, and all could see he desired the sword, so what was the point of calling attention to himself like that?’

‘I do not pretend to understand the behaviour of knights,’ Simon said with a grin. Then, ‘So where does this road go? I do not think I have been along it as far as the walls.’

‘It takes you up as far as the Porte Saint-Denis. From there you can look north towards the plain of Saint-Denis.’

‘What is up there?’ Sir Charles had paid, and now he walked at their side, a happy smile on his face, his left hand resting on the new sword. Paul wandered at his left flank, a man-at-arms to the last, his eyes wary as he kept an eye on the people thronging the streets.

‘Simon was asking earlier about the place of execution, the hill called Montfaucon. It is up there.’

‘I have heard of this place,’ Sir Charles said. ‘The people of the city often go there, I understand. A curious place to sit and chew on a leg of chicken.’

‘It is good that people should remind themselves of their own mortality,’ Paul muttered.

Simon controlled a grin. Plainly the man had similar feelings to Baldwin about his master’s negotiating stance.

Baldwin was walking a little faster now, and Simon cast a look at him now and again as they marched up the Grande Rue. Baldwin had lived here, as Simon knew, in the great fortress of the Temple. That lay to the north of the city walls, so he had heard, and it was there the Knights Templar had been held and tortured, and many had been killed, before the Pope took pity on the survivors and suppressed the Order.

This city held many sad memories for Baldwin. It seemed peculiar to Simon that the man would want to head up this way, towards the focus of all the misery and horror of those days, but then he understood. This was not only the place where his Order had been destroyed, it was also where they had lived for hundreds of years in glorious isolation from Paris itself.

Passing beneath the Porte Saint-Denis, a fortification that shocked Simon when he saw the outer face: set into the wall at ground level was a large, glazed window! He stopped and gaped at it, before pointing and calling the attention of the others to that incongruous feature.

‘This city is too great to be attacked,’ Sir Charles explained. ‘Have you ever seen so magnificent, so ostentatious a place? It would be worth sacking, but what host would dare to attempt to march on such a town?’

‘When was it last assaulted?’ Simon asked.

‘More than a hundred years ago,’ Baldwin said shortly. ‘In their arrogance the Parisians believe themselves impregnable. No city is so safe that it may give up all its defences without tempting an enemy.’

Simon nodded, but the others were already walking onwards.

Here, the road was still lined with small houses. When Simon asked Baldwin, he was told that the city limit was in practice farther to the north, where the rue met the foul stream called La Pissotte, into which all the refuse and sewage was thrown.

Baldwin took them eastwards, pointing to some towers looming over the houses, and Simon realised that this was the Temple — the most important building for Baldwin’s Order outside the Kingdom of Jerusalem itself.

It was a vast fortress. Standing slightly isolated in marshy ground, it reared up a little like the Tower of London, but apparently taller. There were round turrets at each corner, thinner, smaller ones in the middle of the wall facing Simon too, and each was roofed with a conical cap, flags fluttering from every one. It was a strange-looking place, which gave Simon an impression of elegance and beauty, with its stark, spare lines. This was a building constructed for function, and that function was defence and intimidation.

Not that it had achieved its aim. Simon was glad when Sir Charles gave it a cursory glance, and remarked, ‘I should not like to stay there. It looks like a gaol. Let’s walk on and see this place of execution. I assume that’s it there?’

Simon followed his pointing finger and frowned. There was, only a matter of a few hundred yards away, a flat, almost uninhabited area through which their road passed, which held a low rise in the ground to the north and east. At the top of the hillock was a curious construction. ‘Are they building a house up there?’