Michael Jecks - The Templar

Baldwin motioned to the innkeeper and stood. ‘Frey Ramon,’ he called out. ‘Please join us.’

‘I have no wish to be sociable,’ the knight said. His eyes were restless, as was his soul, Baldwin thought. The man was torn by horror and loss.

At least he understood English. That was a relief. ‘There is little comfort in the compassion of a stranger, and yet I would speak with you,’ Baldwin told him. ‘If we can aid you, we should like to do so.’

Frey Ramon looked a little confused by some of Baldwin’s words, but he understood the sympathy in his tone. He ducked his head, and appeared to make up his mind. ‘I am thankful for your kindness. Perhaps a little wine?’

‘Please be seated,’ Baldwin said and motioned towards a stool.

‘I was to have married her next week,’ Ramon sighed.

‘I am terribly sorry.’

‘She would have made a perfect wife for a Brother. For me.’

For a moment Baldwin feared that Ramon might burst into tears, his emotion was so plain, but then he gratefully took the cup Simon had poured and drank half in a gulp.

‘Did you meet her near here?’ Baldwin enquired.

‘It was on the pilgrim route from Tours. I had been to Orthez and was returning when I met her, and I fell in love with her immediately. To see her, to feel her sweetness and generosity, that was all I needed. I knew she was meant to be my wife.’

‘When did you last see her?’

‘Here, in the square. We went into the Cathedral, and when we left, her mistress told me that they were to go out for a ride, but that they would be back later. I said I would meet Joana when she returned, and her mistress gave us her blessing. It would obviously be an honour for her to have her maid wedded to a Knight of Santiago.’

‘Of course,’ Baldwin said without emphasis.

‘But she never came back. I didn’t see her again until you brought her back on that cart. Her face, her head …’ He swallowed.

‘Did you ever argue with her?’

‘You think I could have hurt her like that?’ Ramon cried out.

‘No. But it is a natural question. Others will wonder if you don’t answer.’

‘I never argued with her. I could not. It would be impossible. She was always so sweet and kind.’

‘Did she have enemies?’

‘No! You don’t know what you are suggesting! How could someone like my Joana have enemies?’

‘She was a good woman, I am sure,’ Baldwin said comfortingly.

The sudden flush which had risen in Ramon’s face seeped away. He stared down into his cup, which Simon refreshed for him.

Baldwin took a breath. ‘I have heard of another knight in the town. Perhaps you have seen him — a Don Ruy?’

‘No. I have never heard of him.’

‘Do you know of other people whom she knew, people who are here in the city?’ Baldwin enquired.

‘There was one. A man who calls himself Gregory. I think he is named Gregory of Coventry, an English name, but he speaks Galician fluently.’

‘Do you know where we might find this man?’

‘He was in the chapel with me just now, helping me to lay her out ready for burial, but I do not know where he is staying. He is a pilgrim. He said that he met my Joana because he knew Dona Stefania.’

‘Where did she and her mistress travel from?’

‘They live south of here, but they had gone to Orthez. I returned with them yesterday. Dona Stefania had been travelling with a band of men, but they left us the day before yesterday. I find it hard to understand how men could desert two women like that. For the sake of their own mothers, for the sake of Holy Mother Mary Herself, they should have protected my Joana and her lady. But at least I was there, and for that I should be grateful. Although now …’

Frey Ramon drained his cup and refused when Simon offered to refill it. ‘I must go. I shall pray for my poor Joana in my chapel. I would not go to pray for her drunk. I thank you both for your kindness.’

Standing, he bowed, turned and walked away, crossing the square. Baldwin and Simon watched, and neither spoke a word as the man disappeared from sight.

Later, when the two were rolled up in blankets, having negotiated a space for themselves in an old stable at an inn, Baldwin snoring gently, Simon staring up at the ceiling, pensively considering reasons for a woman to be killed and her features so comprehensively ruined, Frey Ramon sat before the altar in his Order’s chapel, and bent his head. He wept. At his side, the chapel’s priest sat and prayed with him, stolidly speaking the prayers of the services for the dead woman, occasionally glancing sideways at Ramon as the man’s grief overwhelmed him. Once he put a hand out to touch Ramon’s shoulder, but the knight shrugged it away.

There was no end to Ramon’s grief. Confused, shocked, seeing the whole of his future life destroyed, he was unsure what he should do after the terrible events of the day.

‘God, give me peace!’ he begged, but he knew that God couldn’t help him. The answers He must give could only lead to Ramon’s destruction.

It was almost dawn when he stood and made his obeisance to the cross. He would have to leave. There was no place in Compostela for a man like him. He had made his decision. He would go to Portugal and hide himself there.

After he had gone to his room and collected his few belongings, he returned to the priest and paid him for his vigil, then gave him a little more to arrange for the burial.

‘You must see that she is treated honourably,’ he stated. ‘Have her buried like an honourable woman. A good, kindly woman. A woman who was loved,’ he added, his voice choked.

Then he turned on his heel and walked from the place, never to see it again.

Simon woke in the middle watches of the night, groggy and chilled, with the faint sense that something was wrong. He had to pull his cloak back over himself, from where it had fallen.

Their room was an old wine storage barn, containing huge casks of wine, which was occasionally used for guests when there was a glut of visitors. Simon and Baldwin were not the only men staying; there were several other bodies lying rolled in cloaks on the floor.

The barn was a good forty feet long, and the roof was more than ten feet above their heads, giving a feeling of airiness or, as Simon reckoned at this godforsaken time of the night, of draughtiness. He could feel a rumbling in his belly. His bowels were unsettled, and he wondered if it was the rich food which he and Baldwin had tried the night before. One more piece of information which Baldwin had cheerfully shared with him was that people who travelled abroad could contract diseases from the bad air. Baldwin had seen it often in the warmer climates, so he said. Simon had no wish to go and experiment with the garderobe here in the dark, but he was uncomfortably aware that he might soon have little choice.

It did not appeal. The toilet here was like others he had seen in England, but the whole structure looked extremely dilapidated. In his home, that didn’t matter. The outhouse was a light shack which was positioned over a hole in the ground, and every few weeks a new hole would be dug and the shack lifted over it. The muck could be dug out and used as manure, while a fresh crop was collected. Here, though, the toilet was a wooden projection from the wall of the barn. Because the barn had been built on a hillside, although the guests entered from the road’s level, when they walked out to the far side of the barn, they were one storey above the roadway. Here the owner had constructed a room which was in reality little more than a series of rotten-looking planks placed over the void and supported by the building on the opposite side of the alley. The intrepid person who wished to make use of this convenience, must dangle their buttocks over one of the two holes, trusting to faith that they would hit the target, which was a large wooden enclosure into which the muck from the cowshed underneath the wine store also drained.