Daughter of War

by S. J. A. Turney

  ‘Brother,’ Arnau said, nodding his head and sinking into the seat with a weary sigh.

  ‘Sometimes I forget to credit someone when they deserve it,’ Brother Lütolf said. ‘I am quick to correct and scold, for there seems so much in this world that requires that attention, but I am aware that a lack of empathy is a fault in my character. It is not intentional. You did well today, Brother Arnau, in your eager attention to the situation in the Rourell lands that had not spurred any of the rest of us into investigation, and you also did exceptionally well with your training. You are mastering your movement and controlling yourself well. Soon you will be inscrutable, and a dangerous opponent. Though I still wish you would consign the mace to the role of a secondary weapon, as it really should be.’

  Arnau smiled. Even in recognising his faults and attempting to offer praise, the German was incapable of doing so without some sort of backhanded verbal slap. On this occasion, Arnau found it oddly endearing. He reached out and poured himself a cup of wine, then offered Lütolf a top-up. The scarred knight dithered for a moment and then, with a shrug, nodded. He clacked his cup against Arnau’s and drank quietly.

  Then the German turned. ‘Brother Balthesar? You rode picket duty this afternoon and evening. I presume you still found nothing worrying, else you would have mentioned it?’

  The white-haired knight placed his wine cup on the table and stretched. ‘I found several sites of burned-out campfires around the periphery of the lands. They could potentially be a source of worry, but they might just as easily have been youths, trysting lovers, farmhands or even travellers stopping for the night. I have seen no sign of men with crossbows or with red shields, certainly.’

  ‘And what of the atmosphere in the surroundings?’ Lütolf added.

  ‘Sullen, I would say,’ Balthesar noted. ‘Not rebellious, but clearly unhappy.’

  Arnau nodded. ‘That was my impression. All is not right within the Rourell estates. Trouble is building, of that I am certain.’

  There was a chorus of silent nods at this and the atmosphere in the room descended into a tense, muted worry for the rest of the evening before the brothers decided in unison to clear away and move up to the dormitory. Arnau there suffered an unpleasant, largely sleepless night, surrounded by the cloying warm night air and a symphony of snores.

  He rose with the other brothers the next morning, still uncertain how the first person awake knew when to rise before even the cock realised it was a new day. It was a mystery he was determined to get to the bottom of without having to ask the question directly and rather foolishly. He had earlier dismissed the notion that Father Diego simply did not sleep at all, since he had never seen the man when he wasn’t moving, but the fact that the priest did not seem to have a bed in the dormitory was making the idea attractive once more.

  Lauds passed with a sense of anticipation and impatience for Arnau, and it was clear that Brother Lütolf was suffering a similar eagerness to move on the day. As soon as the service ended, the young squire was arming and preparing himself and then, as the German arrived in the armoury and began to equip himself, Arnau hurried to the stables and made ready their horses.

  ‘Do you think you two can manage to get through a day without getting your horses shot or stabbed?’ Guillem asked archly. ‘It’s just that we breed our own horses and try not to buy them in, and you and Brother Lütolf have cost us more steeds in a week than we’d lost in the last two years.’

  Arnau felt a glow reach his cheeks, and reminded himself that he had lost only one, and in the service of the preceptrix. The German had now lost two. With a rolling of his eyes at the stableman, he finished preparing the horses just as Rafael came in for his.

  ‘Brother Lütolf and I were planning to join you this morning,’ he told the sergeant in charge of the farms.

  Rafael nodded. ‘After yesterday’s trouble, I shall welcome the company.’

  Outside, a few minutes later, the two sergeants in their black habits pulled themselves up into their saddles, Arnau grunting with discomfort as he shuffled in place, while Brother Lütolf did the same, white cloak settled over his horse’s flanks. Arnau was interested to note that Rafael was fully turned out in mail hauberk, helm, shield and sword, just as they were, which was not his common manner for overseeing the farms.

  ‘Expecting trouble?’ Arnau asked, gesturing to the mailed sleeve.

  Rafael shrugged with a shush of steel rings. ‘Expecting? No. Prepared for? Yes.’

  They rode out of the west gate and curved off to the north. The Granja de la Selva lay half a mile away across fields and olive orchards but they all knew that something was wrong the moment they moved away from the preceptory walls. There was not a single figure to be seen in the fields. The same story unfolded as they moved north through field and orchard with still no sign of human life.

  ‘I do not like this one little bit,’ Brother Rafael said quietly as they rounded the corner of the orchard to find the farmhouse still and silent, windows and door open. Arnau could not agree more. The hairs on his neck were standing proud again and he could feel the tension building in the air.

  They dismounted at the farm and tied up the horses, each loosening the sword in his sheath and settling his shield into place before they moved towards the farmhouse’s door. Brother Lütolf moved through first, the two sergeants close on his heel. The German passed across the threshold and stopped just inside the house. Rafael and Arnau stepped to the side to look around him, and the young sergeant’s blood chilled.

  Mujahid and his family were there, still in the house. He and his wife, his boy and his girl spun slowly in the cool morning air, twisting this way and that on the ropes that suspended them from the ceiling. Arnau stared. Hanged. All four. A farmer, his wife and two innocent children, all spinning slowly in the air, naked as the day they were born. Arnau fought over his rising gorge and joined the German and Rafael as they moved closer.

  Each body was grey and lifeless, unmarked bar one thing: a cross carved roughly into their forehead.

  ‘Della Cadeneta sinks to a new low,’ he hissed.

  ‘This was not your friend. Not directly, anyway,’ Brother Lütolf said. ‘This was done by the workers. I have seen it before. If they believe a Moor has sold out his people to us, they mark them like this. I had thought this sort of abomination over. It used to happen often a decade or two ago, when memories of the conquest were fresher, but I believed we had moved on past that now.’

  ‘There were some as did not want to do so,’ said a hollow, reedy voice from the shadows.

  All three Christians’ hands went to their sword hilt, preparing to draw, though the figure that emerged into the light was anything but threatening. It was the balding, middle-aged man the preceptrix had picked out yesterday. He looked haunted. Terrified, even. Wasil al-Hafiz, Arnau’s memory helpfully supplied.

  ‘Tell us.’

  ‘The man came back last night,’ Wasil said quietly. ‘I watched. I listened. So did they.’

  ‘Tell us about him.’

  ‘I do not think he was truly one of us,’ the nervous man said. ‘He was dressed in the manner one might expect of an ulama – a scholar of Islam – and he was certainly a great speaker. He worked the crowd like an entertainer at the fair and got their blood boiling at their ruined heritage, at the wrongs he saw as done to them, at the suppression of their culture. He quoted the book. He quoted the Hadith. But he was slipshod in his quotations, and I do not think he knew them well.’

  Arnau frowned. ‘Could it have been a Christian masquerading as a Moor?’

  The man shook his head. ‘I do not think so. Or perhaps a child of two worlds. But I think he was a son of Al-Andalus who had renounced his faith. I think he was a fallen son of Allah. But he roused them all, despite his slips. Mujahid came to find out what the noise was and they… they wanted to tear him apart. In the end they brought him inside and took the woman, the children. They did this. Many would have fled, but it was clear from the mood
that the mob would have killed any who turned away. I hid here and waited. They were gone an hour ago. Perhaps more. I would not be a part of it.’

  Brother Lütolf nodded his understanding.

  ‘Take them down and see to their burial,’ he said rather tersely to Wasil. ‘I care not whether you feel the need to bury them as Moor or Christian. Just see to them with honour. And then you must decide whether to come to Rourell and seek sanctuary or to run yourself and try to find somewhere you will be safe. I will not criticise you for either decision.’

  With that, the German turned and swept from the building, beckoning to the two sergeants.

  They mounted and left the farmhouse, riding for the mill and then the other estates. It was disheartening but no surprise to find that a similar thing had happened everywhere. The workers at the mill had gone. Simply melted away into the night. At least they had not taken the time to murder the Moorish miller, who was distraught and apologetic. They told him to go to the preceptory, but he insisted on staying at his mill and trying to finish the work that had been left in process.

  The livestock estate was in chaos. Everyone had gone, including the farmer and his family. They had taken all the horses with them and opened the gates of every paddock and field. The livestock was mostly gone, fled into the countryside. What remained ambled happily and free. The winery was deserted, though at least the vintner and his people would still be seeking business in Reus and had therefore avoided falling foul of the rebellion.

  ‘Rourell has just lost all viability as a house,’ the German said, regarding the still, empty wine press and the silent fields. ‘Without grain or oil, meat or animals, we cannot sustain ourselves. Despite the wealth donated to the order, we cannot simply buy everything we need. This is no longer to do with you and yours, Vallbona. Your enemy has now targeted the order itself. And yet they continue to do so with subterfuge and hired villains, never leaving evidence that della Cadeneta is the culprit.’

  The three men rode back to the preceptory in a sullen, worried silence. This concerted campaign to ruin the monastery itself represented a new step forward in enemy strategy. At first it had been observation and casual, opportunistic violence. Then there had been direct targeting of brothers and sisters. Now they were moving against the house as a whole. None of the brothers cared to mention what the next step would likely be. There was only one move left to advance the game, after all.

  They rounded the corner of the house on the approach to the west gate and immediately the three brothers reined in, staring. A column of men was waiting outside the gate, queuing for entry as a carriage made its way into the preceptory. Arnau, heart racing, counted forty men in armour on horseback, each bearing a shield with a busy design. They were not close enough to pick out the coat of arms on the shields, but the same design hung on the pennants that snapped in the warm breeze.

  A red flag with a white three-towered castle below a golden crown.

  ‘I don’t recognise them,’ Arnau said, quietly.

  ‘I do,’ Brother Lütolf replied darkly. ‘The Baron Alberto de Castellvell. No friend of the Temple, he. A hater of men. The sort of Crusader who darkens the name of Christians everywhere. His presence can be no good thing.’

  Ahead, the column of the baron’s men filed into the preceptory. Memories flashed through Arnau’s head, bringing back snippets of conversations and discussions at court over the years. Castellvell. A man prized by the king for his role in the Reconquista. A man who hated the Moor more than he hated Satan himself. A man with little conscience and no compassion.

  A cousin of the Lord d’Entenza who had betrothed Titborga to della Cadeneta and begun this whole foul mess.

  Arnau’s heart sank.

  Chapter Twelve

  Leaving Guillem to deal with the horses and pausing only to remove their shields and helmets, the three Templars marched across the courtyard towards the chapter house. Several small milling knots of men at arms in red and white got in their way and were less than gracious in making way for the three brothers passing through.

  It chilled Arnau to see them here. Not so much for what they might mean, being connected tenuously to d’Entenza and therefore even more tenuously to Titborga’s betrothed, but more because the force of white-and-red-clad soldiers looked so much like the oily della Cadeneta’s men that Arnau kept flinching and instinctively reaching down to the hilt of his sword. The baron himself was in his coach, as they could easily ascertain from the barked orders coming from within and the small knot of officers gathered around it.

  Having finally pushed their way across the open space, earning angry glances from knights as they went, the three Templars clanked through the chapter house’s open doorway to find that many of the preceptory’s population had already gathered there. Preceptrix Ermengarda sat upright and impressive in her chair at the end and, while most of the others sat on the stone bench that ran around the edge of the room, Sister Titborga occupied a separate chair close to the preceptrix, as though under her personal guard. To add to that level of protection – or force, perhaps – Brother Balthesar stood behind Titborga, armed and armoured. The three new arrivals moved to the bench together, standing as close to the preceptrix and Titborga as they could manage.

  A single simple wooden seat sat unoccupied in the room’s centre, facing Sister Ermengarda, and it almost made Arnau smile to realise it was the stunted one from the refectory that no one wanted to use. Having been shortened to level out uneven legs, it was now too short to sit in comfortably for more than a minute. It had been so placed that the person sitting in it would appear to be on trial, surrounded by Templars.

  Barely had the three men settled than Brother Luis appeared in the doorway, the chink and shush and rattle of armoured men behind him. He paused and cleared his throat. ‘Baron Alberto de Castellvell,’ he announced, and then hurried to one side to sit on the stone bench near the door.

  The man who entered sent a shiver through Arnau. Tall and impossibly thin, the baron’s face was drawn and haggard. He did not look able to lift a sword, let alone win renown as a warrior in the Reconquista. Still, Arnau reminded himself, this man was a butcher, licensed by the king.

  Castellvell strode into the room, his soft calfskin boots making hardly a sound, the gentle brush of fabric from his expensive clothes almost lost in the metallic din of the four soldiers who entered behind him and took up position near the door. The baron strode forward, eyed the small chair with a thunderous expression, and then, with some difficulty and rearrangement of robes, sat in the low seat, his chin rising as he was forced to look up at the preceptrix. The trial was about to begin…

  ‘Sister Ermengarda,’ he greeted her in an offhand tone, completely failing to acknowledge her formal title.

  The preceptrix nodded. ‘Don Alberto,’ she replied in much the same tone.

  ‘I am come bearing the olive branch, Sister, seeking to calm what appears to be an increasingly tense situation.’

  ‘Indeed?’ Preceptrix Ermengarda replied.

  Castellvell pursed his lips, seemingly irritated at not receiving the deferential response he had expected. In a terse voice he went on, indicating the room and its occupants with the sweep of an arm. ‘It is no secret that I do not approve of this arrangement, Sister. Your order precludes the very presence of women, let alone in such a position of authority. The Pope himself disapproves of Templar sisters. To find myself haggling like some low merchant with a woman sets my teeth on edge.’

  ‘You are the very soul of grace to lower yourself so,’ the preceptrix said in gentle tones and with a blank expression.

  Castellvell bridled, breathing heavily. ‘In your position, Ermengarda d’Oluja, you should be somewhat circumspect. You should take care not to raise your sweet face above the parapet for fear of someone putting an arrow into it, if you catch my drift.’

  ‘You feel I ought to hide behind my skirts and not take an active part in the politics of our land,’ she replied calmly.

 
; ‘Quite so. You command here at the whim of men who owe your lineage much, but there are others who would happily see you hied off to some rural nunnery and a true battler of the heathen placed in that seat.’

  ‘How lucky I am that the former outnumber the latter.’

  Arnau marvelled at her cool. Her tone was calm and neutral with each verbal bolt she shot, and each missile hit home, raising the temper and irritation of the baron in his tiny seat.

  ‘Do not mock me, woman. I will not be the subject of mirth for chattel and Moor-lovers. I have come at the behest of the Don Ferrer della Cadeneta. That I lower myself to playing negotiator in the affairs of my lessers irritates me endlessly, but the king commands that his barons keep the lands of Aragon and Barcelona peaceful and united against the true enemy. As such I am doing the best I can in such dreadful circumstances to heal the troubles between Rourell and Cadeneta. This cannot go on as it is.’

  ‘I quite agree,’ Preceptrix Ermengarda replied. ‘So if you would kindly inform your friend della Cadeneta that Titborga de Santa Coloma is now a member of the order of the Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon and has donated her estate and fortune to our coffers, I would be grateful.’