Michael JECKS - The Templar's Penance

Baldwin heard the gasp and turned just in time to see a tall, elegant woman lean to one side, and then fall to the ground as though all sensation had been cut off instantly.

‘Simon!’ he called as he made his way towards her, but then he saw that another man was already there.

It was the brute Simon had noticed before, the Knight of Santiago. He knelt at the woman’s side and looked about like a man lost, staring around for assistance.

‘Friend,’ Baldwin said soothingly. ‘Let me help.’

The man looked Baldwin up and down, then shook his head and began shouting for, ‘Joana! Joana!’

Baldwin stared in helpless appeal at Señor Munio, and was relieved to see the Pesquisidor nod and stroll towards them. He spoke rapidly as he came closer, and the knight snapped something back, but then seemed to regret his words and spoke again, hanging his head.

‘What is it?’ Simon asked after a few moments during which the Knight of Santiago grew conspicuously disturbed.

‘He says that this lady is always accompanied by her maid,’ Baldwin translated. ‘I think that this noble knight is betrothed to the maid, and he is concerned that she is not here.’

Baldwin glanced at Munio. ‘Do you think we should let him see her?’

Munio sighed but agreed. There was no joy in this work. He touched the knight softly on the shoulder. ‘Come, Frey Ramón. We have found a poor woman murdered. Please come and see her, in case you know who she might be.’

‘Me? Why me?’ Ramón demanded. ‘Leave me here with Doña Stefanía, and I shall protect her until my woman arrives. She will not be long. Can you hear anyone trying to break through the crowd? She cannot be far away.’

‘Come with me.’

Frey Ramón was irritated by his insistence. The man was a mere public official, after all. A hidalgo . He might be a low form of noble, but he still worked with the peasants in the fields. The knight was about to give him a curt refusal, for no Knight of Santiago need answer to a petty hidalgo , when he saw the expression on Munio’s face.

Slowly rising to his feet, Frey Ramón squared his shoulders. Ignoring Munio and Sir Baldwin, he marched past them to the table. There he stood motionless for a moment. The dead girl’s tunic was immediately recognisable and he felt as though someone had slammed a hammer into his breast. All the breath was knocked from him. Over the corpse’s head had been thrown a blanket, and Frey Ramón motioned to one of the men to remove it. What he saw beneath the material was so horrific, it was all he could do to ask the man to cover her up again. ‘Her face … She has no face,’ he gasped when he could speak again.

He became aware that Munio now stood at his side. Without turning his head, Frey Ramón said, ‘It is her. It is my fiancée Joana.’ He bent and collected up the body. ‘I shall take her to the Cathedral. Please look after Doña Stefanía. Now she has no maid, she will need to be protected.’

Munio muttered his sympathy as the warrior monk of Saint James strode away towards the Cathedral, the pathetic bundle carried so steadfastly in his arms – the arms that would once have held her as a lover, Munio thought to himself. He was struck with sadness at the sight of such restrained grief.

Then he clapped his hands together. ‘Come! What is everyone staring at?’ he shouted. ‘There has been a murder, but there’s no need to gawp. Any man who knows about this sad event should come to speak to me now. As for the rest of you, you can go about your business!’

At the Cathedral end of the square, Gregory was peering over the heads of the watching crowds as Frey Ramón strode past, his head high, but his eyes speaking of his appalling loss.

‘What has been happening here then, old friend?’

Gregory jerked in shock at the sound of Sir Charles’s voice. The man had a knack of springing up without warning. It was just Gregory’s luck that he should be looking away when Sir Charles appeared. Taking a deep breath to calm himself, he said, ‘I fear that some woman has been murdered.’

‘Ah. The sort of thing that happens all over the world,’ Sir Charles said with a sympathetic shake of his head as Frey Ramón passed them. The knight sighed as though meditating on the swift passage of a life, then said more brightly, ‘Hey ho! But life must go on! So, how are you this fine afternoon?’

‘I am well, sir. I thank you again for your assistance this morning.’

‘It was nothing,’ Sir Charles said quite sincerely. ‘It was no more than a fleeting action.’

Listening to him, Gregory stiffened in dislike. It was as though the other man was uninterested in the lives or deaths of the pilgrims, but had simply become involved because he had seen the opportunity for a battle. Some knights were that way, Gregory knew. He himself had once been equally selfish, with a disinterest in other men’s lives and works. Like other knights he had enjoyed his wine, chased the women, and sought only earthly delights. And there were few pleasures greater than slaying your enemies and seeing their comrades fleeing the field, leaving you and your fellow knights in sole occupation.

Yet he had changed. Since that terrible time when he had lost his wife, he had grown more philosophical, more open to other people. Certainly, he knew glancing at the fair-haired man at his side, he had never been so callous as Sir Charles.

‘Are you here on pilgrimage?’ he asked.

Sir Charles peered at him as though he had forgotten he was there. ‘No. I am on my way to see if I can help my friend Afonso. He wants to kill a man,’ he said blandly, smiled, and was gone.

Gregory puffed out his cheeks and slowly relaxed. Thank God the man was gone. He was an unsettling fellow. Surely even when Gregory himself had been at the height of his self-confidence, he had never been as arrogant as that. Sir Charles seemed to be content to go through life as though he was careless of any man’s feelings. That was no way to live. It was like being possessed of a deathwish.

Perhaps it was only his way of joking, Gregory wondered, but then he shook his head. The fellow had seemed perfectly serious.

Gregory felt uneasy suddenly, standing with his back to wherever Sir Charles had gone. In preference, he moved forward through the crush. He had seen Frey Ramón carrying the body out of the square, and there had been a stillness in the crowds as though it was a rare, terrible event. Funny how foreigners could react, he reflected – not for the first time.

Folk were beginning to resume their normal activities now. Hawkers began to shout their wares again, men bawled for wine at the taverns, and Gregory found his way was easier. Soon he was up at the front of the crowd, staring with vague curiosity at the men gathered there. A cart was being led away by one peasant, and a cleric was standing talking to three men while a physician was bent over a figure lying in a dead faint on the ground. The physician straightened, then set about striking a spark from his knife and a stone, blowing onto tinder. Gregory suddenly felt a dim recognition stirring in him. The bare arm which he could see looked rather familiar.

From closer, it was a great deal more familiar. There was a birthmark near the wrist. Oh, surely it couldn’t be her – not his wife!

The physician had at last made the tinder catch, and now he blew on it. When he had a large enough flame, he lit a candle, shielding it from the occasional gusts in the square, then held it near the unconscious woman’s face and burned a few feathers.

As the reeking smoke entered her nostrils, Doña Stefanía retched, then coughed and moaned loudly. She pushed the noxious odour from her, and even as the physician smiled and tossed his feathers away, she winced and sat up. ‘What …’