Michael Jecks - The Templar

‘Leave him,’ Dona Stefania said urgently. ‘Don’t pursue him, he is deadly.’

‘You know him?’

‘I …’ she hesitated, but fear made her blurt out the truth. ‘Yes. He was my maid’s cousin. He and his men were protecting me on my way to Orthez, and back again.’

‘They were not with your party when you joined us,’ Parceval pointed out.

‘I told them to keep away, but to follow at a distance. I thought that such a disreputable group might make your companions refuse to let me join you.’

Parceval nodded. Clearly she feared attack or robbery by the man and his companions — not unreasonably, from what he had just witnessed. Well now, he thought, this is better than the other day when I saw her in the square. He was about to speak again, when she submitted to another bout of sobbing. ‘My lady, please. How can I serve you?’

‘I don’t know … Take me to a tavern, somewhere I can have a little wine. I am so unsettled … I feel terrible.’

He saw her hand pat at her side, as though feeling for something, and then he saw the thongs, obviously sliced through, and realised that her purse was gone. So now she was bankrupted. With nothing but the clothes she stood up in, she would be delighted for the comfort, and perhaps companionship, of a man. Especially a man of means. He smiled and held out his hand. ‘Come, lady. Let me help you. But you shouldn’t go to a low tavern. Come with me and I shall see you well provided for.’

She accepted his hand, and when she stood, he was enormously relieved to see that opposite, a short way up a narrow little alley, there was a torch burning. He realised it had been the reflection of this which had made the attacker’s knife shine so alarmingly.

‘Are you hurt?’ he asked, content now that her answer would be negative.

‘No. Only my …’ She dissolved into tears, and this time he was in a better position to offer her comfort. He took her head in one hand and bent it to his shoulder, while with the other he encircled her waist. Then he stood still as she wailed and moaned quietly into his neck. ‘I trusted him! I’ve lost Joana, now him … who can I trust?’

Tonight he need not pay the exorbitant charges of the prostitutes, he reckoned. This woman was desperate, and he was sure that, from past experience with her, he could give her exactly the kind of solace she required.

He was rather glad he’d come along this alley. That figure had been very alarming, but things had turned out well. With that thought, he shot a look back in the direction the man had run off. If he appeared again, Parceval would ditch the woman and flee, he decided, but then he calmed himself. There was no sign of the fellow, and Parceval, if he played his dice aright, would have the opportunity of plenty of exercise without running!

That night, Simon woke with an intense griping sensation in his belly. ‘I’ll never get a decent night’s sleep in this blasted country,’ he grumbled as he picked his way over the slumbering bodies, tugging his blanket tighter about his naked shoulders on the way to the garderobe.

Squatting on the creaking wood, he brought his weight away from the moving timbers. It was partly to take his mind off the quality of the workmanship that he reminded himself of the investigation so far.

Baldwin, he knew, was shocked by the death of his friend Matthew the beggar. Learning that an old companion had been murdered had clearly stolen his concentration. Simon had a conviction that if either of them was to learn who had killed Joana, it would be him.

It was odd, the bond that service in the Order created between men, he thought. All the men he had met who had been in the Templars had seemed more intelligent than other knights, and Simon wondered fleetingly whether that was a sign of the recruitment policy of the Order, or a sign that they did enjoy some special training. He would probably never know. Even Matthew, who had sunk so low, still had a degree of cunning and intelligence that was higher than some knights Simon knew. Most knights, when it came down to it, would find it hard to locate their arses with both hands!

With that thought, there was a tortured squeak from the timbers and he hastily stopped chuckling.

Don Ruy had looked like an honourable knight, but he was flawed, if his Bishop was to be believed. But then, the Bishop might have been partial. If the girl’s father was politically important in Don Ruy’s town, the Bishop himself may have been influenced to punish the knight unreasonably. Politics mattered.

If Ruy was telling the truth, then it was possible that Ramon had walked with his fiancee, then killed her and stolen the money. Certainly Ramon had fled the town one day afterwards, which could be taken as an admission of guilt — although Simon himself could well understand that a man who had just buried his raped and murdered woman would want to flee the place which held such foul memories. Then again, surely a knight would want to find the culprit and kill him?

There was the other man: the felon who had been involved in the attack on the pilgrims, and who took the horse to the stable. How could that tie into Joana’s death? There were plenty of attacks on pilgrims, after all. Robberies and rapes were common enough.

Simon wondered whether the man had actually left Compostela to go and find the girl Joana. If he had, he might have come across her after Ramon had seen her; after which he killed and robbed her. Perhaps he had led an attack against the pilgrims because he wanted to kill her before, or to kill the Prioress, and he killed Joana when the Prioress didn’t appear? The two women had joined this group of pilgrims, Simon remembered, if only for a few short days. Could the man have intended to kill one or both of them, and that was why he attacked them outside Compostela? It was possible — but again, why? What motive was there for the attack?

‘I don’t know enough yet,’ he repeated to himself. ‘I need more information.’

That wasn’t all. He also needed his sleep. He cleaned himself as best he could and slowly made his way, yawning widely, to his bed. Once there, with his blanket spread over him, he closed his eyes, and imagined in front of him the face of Don Ruy, gazing at him sternly, one hand on his sword. Then Ruy moved aside, and he found himself facing Ramon, who stood sadly shaking his head. Behind him appeared first Matthew, then a woman whom he assumed was Joana.

But finally, as he began to drift into sleep, he grew aware of another figure behind them all — the squat figure of a man dressed in leather and cheap cloth, an ugly man with a head set to one side, a man whose hands were covered in blood.

Matthew’s corpse had been lodged in a room off at the northern side of the Cathedral. It was a mere rude shelter, and the next morning, when Simon and Baldwin arrived there with Munio, it was cool in the lee of the massive stone walls.

‘I keep bodies here until they can be buried,’ Munio explained as he fumbled with the lock. ‘You will understand that in the hot weather, we have to bury them quickly … and Matthew will need to be placed in his grave today.’

The room was bare. There was a set of shelves over on the left wall, all musty and cobwebbed, while the only light came from a small, high window. The right wall was composed of massive stone slabs, the unrendered wall of the Cathedral itself, and boxes were stacked along it, all with open lids. Some had shovels protruding, some axes, while in a far one stood some long polearms, an incongruous sight here in a church’s grounds.

Munio saw the direction of his gaze. ‘Where would you put them?’ he asked simply.

Simon grinned, but he saw that Baldwin didn’t hear their talk. The knight stood just inside the doorway, staring at the wreckage of his companion.