Michael JECKS - The Templar's Penance

But if that was the case, then where, she wondered, returning to the main point, where was all her money? Someone had taken it.

But who ?

Simon was suddenly wide awake again, his belly rumbling urgently. It was almost pitch black outside, with no more than a faint luminescence to indicate the roofs and yards. As he reluctantly climbed to his feet, he could feel the beginning of a griping pain in his belly; there was no doubt that his bowels were out of order.

It was an unwholesome prospect. There was something about illnesses of the belly that always alarmed him. He had a morbid fear of them, which was exacerbated by the distance from home, as though any such disease must be more virulent, the farther he travelled from Devon. It was not an irrational phobia, for diarrhoea could kill an adult as easily as a child, when the balance of the humours was disturbed. Some years before, Simon had witnessed the death of his own son, Peterkin, and the horror of that gradual fading away would never entirely leave him.

Here, in the middle of the night, he was struck by a sharp sadness. For perhaps the first time in his life, he actually pictured his own death. He could imagine Meg, his wife, hearing of it from Baldwin, he could see her weeping, his daughter Edith sobbing uncontrollably, his servant Hugh stoically sniffing, a fixed scowl twisting his features. He might easily die here, over the next few days, and never see any of them again. The thought was hideous. He had to put the idea away from him! He wasn’t going to die here, he would return home to see his wife and daughter, and he would be fine again.

Naked, Simon pulled a jack on against the cool night air, and then had to step carefully over the seven or eight prone figures who littered his path on the way to the rear wall. Before he was halfway, he could see nothing. There was only a deeper blackness before him than that which lay behind.

The door to the noisome little room was a thick blanket suspended by rings hanging from a pole. Simon had to feel his way along the wall, stumbling against one of the massive racks which supported the casks, and then his finger, fumbling, felt the edge of a length of cloth. He pulled at it and walked cautiously forward, but as he moved, his foot snagged on a plank and he tripped forward, cracking his head painfully on a projecting stone.

After a few moments which were filled with an awfully pregnant silence, all the obscenities which sprang to his mind appearing woefully inadequate, Simon took a deep breath and reached forward. This time he carefully felt around the area and found where the planks lay in which the holes had been cut. Finding one, he turned, reversed into position, and sat thankfully.

From here, suddenly the room looked as though it was filled with a silver light. The open doorway was a bright rectangle, and as he felt the boards settling underneath him, he wondered fleetingly whether he would plummet to earth sitting here.

Thankfully, he and the boards survived and he made it back to his sleeping space without mishap, but even then he didn’t fall asleep immediately. He lay wrapped in his robe on a bench, hands behind his head, and stared out into the night, thinking mostly of the dead body, but also of the devastated face of Frey Ramón. He had said he last saw Joana in the square.

Could the man have been lying? Was he capable of murdering his own woman – and if so, why?

The next morning there was the sort of dawn Baldwin remembered from his service in the Templars. Small, thin clouds floated high overhead; the sky was a perfect, silken blue, impossibly beautiful. It made the limewashed buildings shine as though they had been deliberately created to make the eyes ache.

For once, Simon woke before Baldwin, and was out in the yard sluicing water over his head and shoulders when a mangy cur entered their room, cocked a leg over Baldwin’s baggage, then went on to sniff and dribble over Baldwin’s head.

Waking, the knight always thought, was a reinvigoration. It was a process by which the body stirred itself from near-death back to life; however, being woken by a flea-bitten mutt which had just pissed over his clothing was less invigorating than he would have liked. Roaring at the little creature, which folded back its ears and streaked from the room like a dog catching a speeding arrow, Baldwin sprang from his makeshift bed and surveyed his clothing. The dog had not had a good life, and the yellow spray stood out on his linen shirt. It stank.

‘Good morning!’ Simon called.

‘And a nice joke that is, I am sure,’ Baldwin retorted grumpily.

‘What joke?’

‘Saying it’s a good morning. What’s good about it?’

But his bad humour faded when he stood at the doorway and could see the sun bursting through the branches of pale leaves, dappling the little yard with shadows that moved gently as the breeze blew. There were soft colours here, pale yellows and ochres, and flowers Baldwin had known when he used to live in the South: plants with rich purple blooms, others with bright red leaves, and olive trees with their tiny, green-white star-shaped flowers. The sight caught at his heart. He felt as though he had come back home, as though he had only been half alive in all the time that he had been living in England.

He had missed this. The scents on the air, the sound of people laughing and talking unhurriedly, knowing that today would be warm again. If there was to be rain, it was no matter. The rain was needed in order to preserve the plants. And if it rained, it would be warm, not the chill mizzle they were used to, out on Dartmoor.

The last time he had been to Southern Europe was so long ago, he could hardly recall it, and yet seeing Matthew in the square had brought it all back to him. Now, with the soft breeze stirring the leaves above him, Baldwin felt oddly excited. It was in a warm climate where he had first felt the urges of lust, chasing girls along alleys in the sunshine to snatch a kiss or rolling in the long grasses with the sun warming their naked bodies. Suddenly aware of a poignant longing for her, he wished his wife Jeanne was with him.

At the inn, the keeper’s older daughter took Baldwin’s pack and promised to launder it. The people of the town went upriver a short distance to where there was a series of rocks on which their washing could be beaten and then left to dry, she said.

‘I hope she’s careful,’ Simon commented as she departed.

Baldwin, who was feeling a little constricted in one of Simon’s cast-off shirts, grunted. ‘Why?’

‘It sounds like the place where we found Joana yesterday. I wouldn’t like to think that there could be another murder.’

Baldwin set his mouth. The death of the woman was a terrible reminder that no matter how holy the city, men still harboured motives to kill. ‘I wonder if Munio will ever learn who killed her?’

‘I doubt it.’ Simon cast a look at Baldwin. ‘I was considering it last night while you snored. The sad fact is, any number of people here could be felons, so how could you tell? A pilgrim is automatically to be assisted by all, regardless of age, sex, or whether he has murdered even. A murderer would be safe from the rope until he returned home to face the law. And that’s what gets to me: so many people here have set out on their journey for precisely that reason – because they are guilty of something. That’s why pilgrims come here, after all, to atone. They commit some terrible sin, and travel all this way to pay for it.’

‘True enough, I fear,’ Baldwin responded sadly; it was certainly true in his case. ‘Many towns in Europe will impose a pilgrimage on a murderer.’

The two left the place and walked through the shaded alleyway out to the square. This early in the morning, there were fewer people abroad, and Simon and Baldwin saw that the inn where they had drunk with Munio the night before was open and ready for business. They sat at a table under a large tree and were soon happily chewing coarse bread and dried meat, washing it down with a smooth, sweet cider.