Michael Jecks - The Templar

Although he was used to working for long periods alone on the moors, this place was too alien for him to feel entirely at home. The heat, the crowds, the odd tones of the voices, all assailed his senses and made him feel more than ever like a stranger, or an outcast.

It was while he stood at the wine counter that he saw Gregory again. The cleric was standing pensively at a stall which sold many pewter badges for pilgrims to display on their clothes, and as Simon watched, Gregory picked up a large cockleshell and purchased it.

‘That should suit your hat!’ Simon said.

Gregory jumped and turned with a face bright red. ‘Ah! I had thought you were gone with your friend.’

‘You heard that Baldwin had left?’ Simon said, rather surprised.

‘I … I asked,’ Gregory said hesitantly. ‘You see …’ He was suddenly shy, glancing away from Simon and looking about them in the square. Taking the plunge, he spoke so low that it was all Simon could do to hear him over the noise of hawkers. ‘When we attacked the tavern that day — the day you were knocked down?’

A polite way to put it, Simon reflected. Aloud he merely prompted, ‘Yes?’

‘That day … I saw his sword when he drew it.’

‘So?’

Gregory looked at him quickly. ‘It’s nothing to do with me,’ he said, and would have turned away, but Simon realised what he had seen: Baldwin’s sword, the special little riding sword of which he was so proud. The sword into whose blade was etched a Templar cross in memory of his service and his friends.

Simon caught his shoulder. ‘I know what you mean,’ he said, speaking quietly, ‘but why should you ask about him because of that?’

‘He was … Well, so was I. For a time. A short time,’ Gregory said miserably. He looked up at Simon. ‘I was not faithless. When my wife divorced me, I chose to take my own vows. It was just my luck to have married such a vicious shrew, and as soon as I could, I joined the Order. Best thing I ever did.’

Simon was aware of Margarita. ‘Shall we share some wine, Gregory? Let us take a seat for a while.’

Margarita wanted to return home, but she was prevailed upon by Simon to remain with him. To his shame, he insisted that he felt weak, and must have a few moments sitting. The call on her generosity of spirit was effective, although Simon saw that she did not believe him entirely, and he wasn’t certain whether the expression in her eyes was hurt and offence at being lied to, or simple amusement.

‘Now Domingo is dead, what will your wife do?’

‘Ex-wife,’ Gregory said dismally, his hand holding a cup. ‘I wouldn’t mind, but I still love her. It makes me feel a fool, but I can’t help it. Even after she had her servant attack me, and had him kill all those people, and clobber me again the other day,’ he said, his hand rising gingerly to touch the egg-shaped lump on his tonsure, ‘I still can’t bring myself to hate her.’

‘What will she do? She will need some form of guard to return to her Priory, won’t she?’

‘I suppose so. From what I have heard, she will have the services of another bully boy. Some damned Fleming she’s taken up with.’

‘I seem to recall …’ Simon murmured, and was then quiet. The man with whom she had enjoyed an affair: Don Ruy had said that he was a Fleming. ‘Wasn’t there a Fleming as well as Don Ruy in your band of pilgrims?’

‘Yes. That was the same man. I had heard that he had a fling, but I had no idea then that the woman he had had a fling with was my own wife!’

‘So Domingo actually attacked the very same band in which you travelled, along with her own lover?’ Simon mused. Two things had occurred to him. First, Domingo was evil and dangerous, but he clearly wasn’t mad. Second, Domingo was a very competent killer. He didn’t draw back at the last moment. If he had struck down Gregory, the latter would have remained down. He might have killed Joana, but there was no possibility that he had knocked Gregory down as well.

So the man who had attacked Gregory must have been someone else altogether.

The ship rocked gently as it passed down the Portuguese coast, and Baldwin was content. In the glorious sunlight of a summer’s day, his wide-brimmed travelling hat pulled down tightly against the breeze, his head rammed deep into the bowl-shaped crown, he felt as though he was achieving something — and he was filled with excitement at the idea of seeing a Templar church.

In the distance off the port side of the ship lay another small town. Fishing boats painted in bright colours with large sails, moved slowly over the clear, blue water, the crews throwing their great nets into the water or hauling on the ropes that would pull up the pots for catching lobsters. These were the things that Baldwin remembered from his last visits to Portugal — the prevalence of fresh fish throughout the country, and the broad, azure sky.

When he boarded, he had asked the master of the ship where they would dock, and he had told Baldwin that their course would take four days to reach the estuary that led up to the great city of Obidos, which the Portuguese still called the ‘Wedding City’, since King Dinis had given it to his wife as a present when they married some forty years before.

‘Not long now, Dom Baldwin,’ the master called.

To port Baldwin saw a series of white beaches, and then there was a gap, a narrow space, filled with water, at which the master was pointing. Baldwin felt a slight anxiety to think that this was the place where he would leave the ship, which must continue on its way to Lisbon, where the master had material and leathers to sell. Baldwin himself would be set on land so that he could either sail to Obidos, or perhaps hire a horse. That, he considered, glancing about him, looked unlikely. There might be a sturdy mule or two here, but he reckoned that a boat would best suit his purposes.

He climbed from the ship into a small fishing vessel, and that set him down safely on shore. Knowing little Portuguese, he felt daunted by the thought of explaining himself to the fishermen who stood idly watching him while their hands automatically moved wooden lumps through old nets as they threaded new string through holes. So this, he thought, is what Simon felt like in Galicia. It made Baldwin realise how disorientating a total inability to communicate could be.

By signs and regular repetition of the name ‘Obidos!’ he managed, he thought, to make his wishes plain, and many of the men about the nets smiled contentedly, their sun-browned faces wrinkling, eyes all but hidden in the tanned flesh from long years of staring at the sun glinting off the sea. It was only when a black-robed priest appeared that he realised that they had understood not a word.

‘I wanted to sail to Obidos,’ he explained in Latin.

The priest looked a little bemused and when he spoke, his accent was so strong, Baldwin found it very hard to understand. ‘Aha. The city is easy to reach.’

He had a fawning manner, which put Baldwin’s back up at first, but then he reflected that this man was probably unused to meeting strangers from over the seas, and knowing that Baldwin was heading for the great city, he might feel that respect was a suitable response.

There were no boats sailing that afternoon. Baldwin had to content himself with sitting outside a small, cheap inn on a sun-whitened bench and sipping at a rough local wine. Tomorrow he would be moving on. With luck, once at the city he would be able to buy or hire a horse. Tomar was some way beyond Obidos, maybe another fifty miles, which meant at least two days of travelling in this heat. Perhaps he could make up time by riding at night, he thought, but that was dangerous without a guide. Munio had given him some gold to help him, arguing that Baldwin would need more than hope to carry him onwards, and as the murders were committed on Munio’s land, he had an interest in seeing to it that his colleague was successful. That was his argument, and Baldwin had little enough money with him, so he was in no position to refuse.