Michael JECKS - The Templar's Penance

‘Are you seriously intending to leave my service to marry that imbecile ?’ she hissed.

Joana’s eyes took on that heavy-lidded look of obstinacy which Doña Stefanía recognised so well.

‘You can look at me like that, if you want,’ she told her maid tartly, ‘but it won’t change anything. Look at you! You could have your choice of many fellows. You don’t have to stick to him ! He’s so … so silly!’

‘And you think that you behave better?’

It was a slap in the face. The lady took a sharp breath, but then let it out gently. ‘Very well. I am no paragon of virtue, perhaps, but that doesn’t mean that you need throw yourself away on a fellow like him.’

‘He suits me. He would do anything I wanted,’ Joana said, ‘and that serves my purpose for now.’

‘For now maybe, but marriage is for a lifetime, not for a few moments of idleness.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Is that beggarwoman waving to you?’

Joana glanced up and along the way to where Doña Stefanía had seen the tall beggar. The sight seemed to surprise her, and then she gave a cold smile. Murmuring a word of apology, she left her lady, as though making for the beggarwoman, but turned away at the last moment when she saw Ramón and paused to talk with him instead.

Foolish, Doña Stefanía thought, her mind still locked on the riddle like a terrier fighting to get the marrow from a beef bone. Why couldn’t she have picked a fellow with a brain and looks? There were enough of them about. If Doña Stefanía herself decided to choose a man for her personal use, she would be sure to select one who was on her own level.

At the thought she gave a twisted grin. The last man with whom she had slept wasn’t at all the right sort. If she was honest, Parceval Annesen the Fleming was a scruffy peasant at whom she would not usually have glanced, but there was something about his persistence. It was just as though he had fallen in love with her, and that was enormously complimentary. He did at least have manners; he was extremely polite. And although Doña Stefanía wouldn’t usually have entertained any thought of sleeping with him in the normal course of events, while away from her priory, and with the thrill of his obvious infatuation, she succumbed and let him take her. At the time she had thought it could be dangerous: and now … Well, she had been proved right! She had no wish for a man to come and blackmail her – and yet that was exactly what had happened. It was unfair!

Perhaps, she thought, that dullard Ramón was not so unsuited for Joana, after all. At least he was devoted to her, from what Doña Stefanía could see. Watching the two of them now, she saw the little caress Joana gave him – a fleeting touch on the forearm, no more. There was no need. He was enraptured, smitten, hooked. Bowing to Joana, he walked away backwards for a few paces, as though intending to fix every aspect of her upon his mind, reluctant to leave her presence.

Doña Stefanía pursed her lips. What an idiot. He was just like a lovesick youth. Yet he made Joana happy, and that was good.

Joana was talking to the beggarwoman now, a tall woman who looked much like Joana herself, apart from the heavy black material of her habit and veil. There was no hunching to her shoulders, no palsied hand shaking beneath the noses of passers-by; in fact, she had the carriage of a noblewoman. Doña Stefanía thought she could herself have been a lady.

It was annoying that Joana would still go and talk to people who were below her station. It was always a mistake, Doña Stefanía thought sourly. It made those to whom she talked feel as though they had some importance, which was entirely spurious. Better by far to leave them to their own kind.

There she went again, laughing with the beggar. Joana would always have a word with even the lowliest. For many people who knew her, it was a part of her charm; for Doña Stefanía, this ability to talk to any person, whether a whore, a beggar, or a queen, was a sign of the girl’s foolishness. One should always remember from whence one came, and stick to one’s equals while serving one’s superiors. That was the whole basis of society. If peasants started to think they were equal to lords and ladies, there would be rioting. Better that the peasants should know their place. Better for everyone. Peasants didn’t enjoy being treated like equals, they preferred certainty. But a person’s station in life mattered less to a woman like Joana, the Doña assumed. After all, she was born a peasant herself, so there was less stigma for her, talking to the dregs of society. The Doña herself would have found it very difficult to talk to some of the folks that Joana sought out – like those beggars. Nasty, befouled people that they were. Most of them were perfectly healthy, too. They only begged because they were lazy.

It wasn’t only Joana who went to the beggars. Another group of pilgrims had just entered the square, and Doña Stefanía saw a monk, two merchant-types and a tall woman in black all reaching into their purses. Fools. All they were doing was showing the beggars that there was money to be made.

‘Doña? Doña?’

She took one look at the grubby out-thrust hand and commanded, ‘Begone.’

‘Could you spare a coin for an old man?’

‘No. If you want alms, claim them from the Cathedral.’

He was frowning now, peering determinedly. ‘Doña Stefanía?’ She turned and looked at the black-clad beggar, slowly taking him in, up and down. ‘What do you want? I have no money for you.’

‘I remember you. You were wife to Gregory.’

She drew in her breath. ‘I do not know you,’ she said. The insolent son of a Moorish slave!

‘I used to be a knight, Lady – Sir Matthew,’ he whined. ‘I knew your husband.’

This creature used to be a knight? It hardly bore thinking of. Some knights occasionally suffered loss, when their master died or they were thrown from their positions because of some real or imagined misdemeanour, such as trying to bed the master’s wife. That was the most common cause of a knight’s urgent separation from his place of bed and board. This fellow did not fit her picture of an adulterous servant, however. Nor did he look like a knight, even one who had lost his position and livelihood.

‘Go away, little man! I do not know you,’ she snapped.

Matthew stood unmoving for a long moment after the Doña had walked away with her nose in the air.

Only ten years ago he had been a man of honour. He was called to meetings with great lords, his opinion was sought by the rich and powerful, his support enlisted.

In that one decade, his entire life had been pulled apart; his position in the world had been whisked from beneath him and his status utterly eradicated. There was nothing he could do about it. There were no allies for a man who had been a Templar. Eleven or twelve years ago, he would have been able to report the behaviour of that vain Prioress to her Bishop and felt sure that she would have learned to regret her rudeness.

A couple of traders were watching him unsympathetically, he noted, as though they were preparing to evict him from the square. He turned and walked away between the stalls, until he reached a clearing, and there he almost stumbled into a pair of arguing women.

‘Caterina, look at the state of you! I’m shocked that you’ve sunk so low.’

‘What would you expect, Joana? My father won’t support me, therefore I am destitute. What else can I do?’

‘What of your husband’s master? You gave up everything for your man. Wouldn’t he look after you if he knew the depths into which you have sunk?’

‘Look after me! How many masters accept responsibility for their servants’ widows?’ Caterina said scathingly. ‘There is little enough chance of that.’