Michael JECKS: The Templar's Penance

But it could, he reckoned, be a payment.

There was some irony there. It was just his luck that he should have been close to being attacked by one of his ex-wife’s own servants.

But that made no sense! Why should his wife pay a felonious son of a bastard Breton pirate and a Southwark whore money? It made no sense at all.

For Caterina, seeing her brother Domingo was a relief. He was a figure who had always loomed large in her life, up until her marriage, and spotting him in the square with his head held at that curious angle – the result of a fall from a pony when he was very young – made her heart lurch as though this in itself was a sign that her luck was about to change.

‘Domingo! Domingo!’ she called, but he paid her no heed.

That was odd. Domingo, always a man to have a finger thrust up to the knuckle in any pies available, was habitually cautious, always keeping a weather eye open for any officials. It was most strange to see him apparently deaf to her voice. Not like him at all.

Caterina pushed her way through the crowds until she was a great deal nearer, her forcefulness earning her curses and one hack on the ankle. At last she got close to him, just in time to see how he was ordered away by the Lady Prioress.

Caterina had heard much about her, of course. Doña Stefanía de Villamor was spoken of in hushed voices by Caterina’s family, mainly because she had enjoyed a rather sordid history, being a married woman who gave up the world for a place in the convent. Not everyone liked her. They thought her to be a grasping woman, remote and unfriendly, with her eyes firmly fixed upon whatever pleasures she could win for herself on this earth, rather than the gains she would make in heaven.

That, so far as Caterina was concerned, was fine. She too had lost faith in heaven. All she wanted was a little peace here on earth.

‘Domingo!’ she called again, this time a little more peremptorily as he made to pass by her and go back out into the square.

His face was black with ingrained dirt, sunburn and a kind of grim misery that was so palpable, she felt his look strike her like a blow.

‘Go away, peasant!’ he snarled.

‘Domingo, it’s me – Caterina.’

‘It can’t be,’ he declared, scowling at her closely.

‘You look terrible,’ she said gently. ‘What is the matter?’

‘My son. He’s dead.’

‘Sancho?’ She listened aghast as he told her of the ambush on the pilgrims. ‘But why did you attack them in the first place?’

He wouldn’t meet her eye. ‘It was for a good reason,’ he said evasively. ‘But the bastards cut my poor Sancho down as if he was nothing more than a calf. Just struck him down like a calf.’

She opened her arms to him, and he went to her, his sister, the widow who begged in black in the great square at the foot of the Cathedral. The sister who was dead to him.

When the two men had finished their prayers at the shrine of Saint James, they made their way out through the Cathedral to the northern square.

Simon was mentally drained after visiting the Saint’s shrine and kissing the relics. The incense used had affected him like a strong wine, making him warm and comfortable, yet the rest of the experience had been unsettling. Although the words spoken by the priests were the same Latin ones he knew and expected, the intonation and accents were strangely different, as though being pronounced by children or untutored priests who were pretending a greater understanding than they truly possessed. To think that they should be guardians of such a magnificent cathedral!

And it was truly magnificent. He absorbed as much as he could, walking about the place after they had given their thanks for their safe arrival, drinking in the pictures and symbols all about. At the south portico he saw the Virgin Mary and he stared at her with adoration, admiring the way that the artist had depicted her with her child in Bethlehem, the three kings nearby, offering their gifts, and finally the angel warning them to leave and not return to Herod because of his evil plan.

There were other pictures, too. Simon’s judicial soul rather enjoyed the scene painted near The Temptation of Christ . It showed The Woman Caught in Adultery . In her hand she held the head of her lover, which her husband had hacked from the body, ordering her to kiss it twice a day if she loved the man so much, even though it was putrid and rotten. Of course he found the punishment repugnant, but Simon privately wondered if there weren’t some women who could benefit from such a salutary lesson in justice. He’d seen some during his lifetime who were little better than whores. With that thought came the reflection that many men deserved the same treatment.

The tomb of Saint James was magnificent, and Simon was intoxicated with the gold and rich crimsons. The altar cloth itself must have been a good nine by twenty or more hands-breadths in size – huge! Surely the patron who gave that must have been rich beyond imagination. The whole place was massive but beautifully proportioned, bright with light and constantly humming with the noise of hundreds of people talking and murmuring prayers.

This was the busiest time of the year, Simon had heard, and as he stared out over the multitude in the square, he acknowledged that he himself had never before seen so many people gathered together in one place. It was two days before the great feast day of Saint James, and it appeared to him as though the whole of Christendom had gathered here in order to honour the city’s patron saint.

Of course, many of these people were only here to provide services for pilgrims. There were money-changers, people offering lodgings, shoe-sellers, wine-sellers, men selling herbs and spices – and everywhere were the folk hawking cockleshells, real or made of lead or pewter, to celebrate arriving at Saint James’s Cathedral. Some fellows simply loitered around, Simon noticed, and he saw some of them spring up and stride over to a man leading a horse. There was a short discussion, and one lad took the horse away, over the paving slabs, up towards a beautiful well, next to which stood a large trough. Another man brought up a bucket of water and filled the trough for the horse, standing at its side as it drank its fill. This was clearly where riders left their mounts when they were in a hurry, Simon thought.

When he and Baldwin had first left the Cathedral, the sun was like a blast from an armourer’s forge after the cool stone shelter within, and Simon had felt his energy being sapped as the first rays struck his heavy woollen tunic and cloak. He was sweltering in moments. Now he was less aware of the sun’s warmth as he stood gazing out over the great square.

People were everywhere, dressed for the most part in their ordinary, day-to-day clothing: peasants in rough unmended hose and tunics that were all but rags; wealthier freemen with their pathetic bundles but more colourful jackets and shirts; merchants clad in expensive velvets or fine linens; knights with their slightly poorer quality clothing, but the swagger of the man-at-arms; clerics with their robes and slightly bowed heads. The scene was filled with reds and greens, ochres and yellows. Faces were blackened by the sun, shaded by their great broad-brimmed hats, many already wearing that symbol of Saint James, the cockleshell. Some wore real examples, the pale pink colour showing up clearly, while others had dull pewter versions which they would have purchased from the vendors along the Via Francigena or from a thousand other places all along the route here from Tours, Vezelay, Le Puy or Arles.

‘My God,’ Simon murmured.

‘Has the heat affected you?’ Baldwin asked quickly.

‘That must be the seventh time you’ve asked me that so far today,’ Simon noted.