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Michael JECKS: The Templar's Penance

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Michael JECKS The Templar's Penance

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The fifteenth Knights Templar Mystery It is , and Sir Baldwin de Furnshill and Bailiff Simon Puttock have been granted leave to go on pilgrimage. Together they travel across Europe to Santiago de Compostela. But danger is never far away, and when a beautiful girl is found murdered on a hillside, the friends are among the first on the scene. Baldwin and Simon lend their investigative skills to the enquiry, headed by the local pesquisidore. But the unexpected appearance of a face from Baldwin’s past could threaten the investigation, as well as the future of Baldwin himself. . .

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A nasty matter, that one. Bitter and devastating. He craved forgiveness, some solace for his unwitting homicide, and hoped that here in Santiago’s great Cathedral he might find it.

The massive entranceway, the Portico de la Gloria, was enough to distract him and he looked up at it in awe. It was magnificent – daunting. Over a hundred years old now, it had been carved between 1168 and 1188, and the stonework was richly decorated with figures of prophets and apostles, each of them welcoming the pilgrims. Saint James himself was placed sitting prominently above the central column as though watching over all the poor folk as they reached this, his memorial.

‘A bit ornate,’ muttered his companion.

‘Different, that is all,’ Baldwin said, refusing to argue. In his opinion there was a grandeur about this entrance that showed how well men could honour God when they put their minds to it.

Simon Puttock glanced up and his face twisted doubtfully. This experience was wholly new to him, and he wasn’t sure that he was enjoying it. He had been keen to come here at first, because it seemed a great adventure. Simon had never travelled abroad before. True, he was well travelled compared with almost everyone he knew, but this was the first time he had been somewhere where all the people spoke a different language. It made him feel very exposed, as though he stood out wherever he was. Like a pilgrim, perhaps, but as he told himself, he felt more like a blasted target, walking about on a field waiting for the archers to loose their arrows. It was as though everyone was pointing at him, gauging the distance before firing, and it made him jumpy and unsettled.

Seeing Simon jerk his head to one side, staring suspiciously at a pilgrim jostling him, Baldwin had to laugh for sheer joy. It was hard not to feel delight here, among so many people thronging the church. Their joint pleasure and relief on reaching their goal was enough to make the tiredness fall away from Baldwin like a man shedding a mantle.

Not so his friend, he knew. Simon, a tall man in his middle thirties, had the ruddy complexion of one who spent many hours a week on horseback in all weathers, but now he looked pinched with nervousness. Riding had given him his solid strength, the strong muscles in his legs and at his throat, but good food and a liking for good ale had fattened his belly and made his jowls grow over the years. The extensive travel of the last days had reduced his paunch, although it had not improved his temperament. That had grown more fiery with the weather as they had approached this southern city.

Baldwin was sure that Simon’s moodiness stemmed from his feeling out of his depth. For the first time, Simon Puttock, Bailiff of Lydford, was aware of his own impotence. Here his voice would not summon officers to do his bidding; he had no power. Instead, almost anyone who understood the local language was better off than he, and this made him fretful, as though it reflected upon his lack of education. But he had been educated by the Canons of Crediton Church in Devon; he could speak, read and write Latin, and could understand much French, but he could make nothing of the language here in Galicia in the far northwest part of the Kingdom of Castile.

His dark-grey eyes still held a measure of the stolid commonsense and piercing intelligence that Baldwin had noticed when they had first met all those years ago in 1316, but here the sparkle was dimmed, because Simon felt lost. Baldwin could easily comprehend his friend’s state of mind. He himself had been aware of that curious sense of ‘otherness’ which afflicts the traveller on occasion.

Not today, though. Today Baldwin was determined to know only pleasure. He had never before been to the great city of Saint James, and wished to make the most of his visit. More than that, he also wanted Simon to enjoy himself.

‘Look at all these people! Hundreds of them,’ Simon muttered.

‘Yes. This is a popular place for pilgrims like us.’

‘And for knights.’

Baldwin followed his gaze and saw several men who must surely be knights. One, wearing a light cloth tunic of slightly faded crimson, was clearly a secular man-at-arms. His shock of fair hair shone brightly in the sunshine and he met Simon’s gaze with reciprocal interest, as though he was gauging Simon’s ability as a fighter. A short distance away, stood another man wearing a clean white tunic with a red cross on his shoulder. It was at him that Simon stared.

‘He is a Knight of Santiago,’ Baldwin informed him. ‘A religious Order devoted to protecting pilgrims.’

‘The cross looks odd,’ Simon noted, then looked up to see that the shoulder’s owner was glaring at him, as though affronted that a mere pilgrim should dare peer so insultingly. He was a strong, heavy-set brute to Simon’s mind, with prognathous features and swarthy skin.

‘It’s made to look like a cross above, but the lower limb is a sword’s blade,’ Baldwin explained. ‘They call it the espada.’

‘They don’t like people staring at them,’ Simon noted.

‘Knight freiles, that is, “Brothers”, are as arrogant as you would expect, when you bear in mind that they are a cross between chivalric, honourably born knights and clerics. They feel that they have all right and might on their side. You know the motto of the Knights of Santiago? It is: Rubet ensis sanguine Arabum – may the sword be red with the blood of Arabs.’

‘That miserable bugger looks as if he’d not mind any man’s blood on his sword,’ Simon said, adding thoughtfully, ‘although perhaps that’s because of his guilt.’

‘Guilt? Why do you say that?’

‘Look at him. He’s with those women. One’s a nun, from the look of her, but the other is too bawdily dressed for that. I wouldn’t mind betting …’ Then Simon recalled where he was, glanced up at Saint James’s welcoming features high above him and cleared his throat.

Baldwin, seeing his brief confusion, chuckled. ‘She may be his wife.’

‘What? He’s a Knight Brother!’

‘The Order of Saint James allows their freiles to be married,’ Baldwin said, but with a note of disapproval in his voice. He personally believed that religious Orders should all conform to the same principles of poverty, obedience and chastity.

‘At least I can admire his taste,’ Simon mused. ‘That young woman is a delight to the eyes.’

‘And I think the good knight has noted your admiration,’ Baldwin warned.

They both turned away. To cause anger in a strange city was foolish, and anyone who did so by upsetting a man protecting his woman was a fool.

‘I don’t know why I allowed you to persuade me to come here with you,’ Simon said mournfully. ‘Look at me! I’m a Devon man, through and through. What am I doing all this way from my home and family?’

‘Be content. We might have travelled all the way on foot like so many others,’ Baldwin reminded him.

The memory was not enough to soothe. ‘You think that makes me feel any better?’ Simon snapped. ‘And don’t snigger like that. I’ve never felt so near to death in my life before.’

‘I only feared that you might intentionally hasten your end,’ Baldwin chuckled.

‘Hilarious.’

Their initial journey had been violent, as they aimed for la Coruna, and Simon’s belly had roiled in response. He had sailed many times, as he had said to Baldwin before they first boarded their ship at Topsham, but he had never seen seas such as those they encountered on their way here. Baldwin, he was sure, had felt poorly, but that was nothing compared with the prostration which Simon experienced. Following the advice of a sailor, he had remained in the bowels of the ship, and although he tried to lie down and sleep, he could find no ease. Blown from their course, they made landfall farther east, near Oviedo, to Simon’s eternal gratitude, while Baldwin had remained up on deck for the entire journey, and denied any illness.

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