He turned, sword point dropping, and threw himself at the door a mere four paces behind him. The nun saw him at the last moment out of the corner of her eye and had barely moved aside before the young sergeant hit the timber. The door flew inward and he fell into the dark, stumbling over the grain sack that had blocked the timber, rolling by instinct and keeping the sword out to the side to reduce the risk of self-injury. The pain was exquisite, and he felt as though his side were afire, his vision blurring with the agony and the effort, but he forced himself to focus despite everything. Better to feel agony than the cold embrace of death, after all…
As he leaped to his feet once more, he saw Titborga throw herself inside. He ran to the door as the thugs closed on it and grabbed the wood, heaving it closed. A club smashed through the gap and caught Arnau a glancing blow on the shoulder that would hurt badly and bruise impressively, but was far from incapacitating. The door jammed half a foot from the frame and Arnau realised why at a scream. One of the attackers had got his leg through the gap in a desperate attempt to stop the Templar shutting it.
Throwing his back against the door and wincing at the new pain in his shoulder, Arnau lifted his sword as high as he could, point dangling, and then slammed it down into the leg in the doorway. The blow was poor but effective. The blade plunged deep into the thigh, grating off the femur and carving through muscle. Its owner howled like something from a nightmare on the other side of the door, and Arnau, just for a moment, stepped forward, releasing his pressure on the door. The leg, predictably, was pulled from the gap, and before anyone else could try and stop him, Arnau slammed his back against the timber once more and pushed the door to. He floundered with his left hand, trying to grasp the latch, but from this angle it was impossible. There was a thump and the door shuddered as someone outside hit it with their shoulder. For a frightening moment, it felt like Arnau was being pushed out of the way, but he grunted and reapplied the pressure, holding the door closed.
‘The latch,’ he hissed. ‘Titborga, the latch!’
She was there a moment later, fastening the thing. It would not bar entry, of course, and they did not have the key.
The door shuddered under another thump.
‘What do we do?’ she asked Arnau, all business now. The young sergeant’s eyes scoured his surroundings in the minimal light, and he felt a wave of relief as his eyes fell upon the metal brackets on either side of the doorframe.
‘There will be a restraining bar somewhere near the door. You need to find it and slide it through that iron loop near the latch. Then feed it through the one at the other side. That will hold it against them.’
As the nun started scouring the wall and floor nearby in the dark, using her hands more than her eyes, she was breathing heavily. ‘It has a lock,’ she said, ‘why a bar too?’
Arnau felt the door budge momentarily again and changed his position, bracing his feet against the flagstones a little better and pressing the door back once more as the latch rattled, someone outside trying to deal with it. ‘This mill was built at the same time as the preceptory, not long after the area was taken back by the Christians. Have you found the bar yet?’
‘No, I… Wait, here it is.’
There was a sound of scraping wood, and the nun rose once more with a length of timber, trying to feed it through the loop. ‘With the danger from the border,’ Arnau went on, ‘and with raiders everywhere, even mills and cottages and barns were equipped with ways to defend them should it become necessary. It seemed likely this place could be held against the rampaging Moor if necessary.’
He felt the bar slide past his back, beneath his shoulders, and with a little wiggling and hurrying back and forth, Titborga slid the stout timber bar home.
‘Thank the dear Lord for that mercy,’ she said through heaving breaths.
‘That mercy and others,’ Arnau added, wiping his sword on his black habit and then sheathing it. ‘Find the window shutters and make sure they’re secured. I’m going for the north door. If it’s not being watched, maybe we can get out that way.’
As the nun hurried around the windows, securing the shutters with two thick bolts each, designed to keep out marauders every bit as much as the door, Arnau lurched through the open doorway in a dividing wall and into the other side of the mill, making for the north door, hand held to his painful side. He stopped as he approached. Male voices were audible, muffled through the timber. It seemed unfeasible that they were anything other than more of the thugs. Consequently, he grabbed the same sort of bar that stood in the dark corner of the room and lifted it, sliding it home through metal loops.
A moment later he was back in the main room of the mill.
‘We need light,’ Titborga suggested. She was correct. They were safe for now, inside the mill, but it was almost pitch dark in here and already Arnau had almost walked into the mill’s workings and tripped over debris twice.
‘There will be lamps. I remember when I came here there was one beside each door on a little shelf, along with flint and steel. As soon as it’s lit get the glass closed, though. We don’t want the flame burning openly in the mill.’
‘Why not?’ the nun puzzled as she hurried over to the door that was still resounding to the thuds of a pair of charging shoulders.
‘Nearly everything in a mill burns easily, and nothing burns easier than flour dust.’
Leaving her to her work, he ran back to the north door, found the items precisely where he remembered and began to strike the light, praying that there was not enough flour dust in the air to combust. It smelled of flour overwhelmingly in here. Moments later he had the wick lit and closed the lantern for safety. As the glow increased rapidly, he carried the lamp to the doorway between the two rooms, where he placed it on the floor so that it gave adequate light to both. A similar glow dawned at the southern end, where the nun had lit the second lamp and left it on the shelf. Slowly the interior of the mill became visible in the golden glow.
‘What now?’
‘Now we’re in trouble,’ Arnau replied. ‘We’re surrounded and seriously outnumbered. They’re outside the north door too.’
‘Maria,’ sighed Titborga regretfully.
‘So it was Maria. I thought it might be.’
‘How did you come to be here, Vallbona? Brother Arnau, I mean. Not that I am not indebted to you, but why are you here at all?’
‘Providence. The Lord’s workings, clearly. I was up in the night, easing my bladder, when I saw you both through the necessarium window. I hurried out after you, not sure what was going on. What is going on?’ he prompted.
‘Maria,’ Titborga replied. ‘She came to me in the night. Said she had word from Peter.’
‘Who is Peter?’ Arnau asked as his eyes did circuits of the mill’s interior, searching out anything potentially useful.
‘Peter is – was, I suppose – the seneschal at home.’
Arnau frowned, thinking back. He had vague recollections of an old man with thinning hair and a neat white beard who wore a perpetual scowl, as though the world had been made solely to annoy him. He’d spoken to the man many times over the years and it had never once occurred to him to ask his name. What he did remember was a man fiercely loyal to the Lord Berenguer and the Santa Coloma estate, as were most of the people there.
‘Maria said that Peter had come with news of Santa Coloma and my inheritance. He did not wish to meet me at the preceptory, but it was important. He would meet me at the mill.’
Arnau rolled his eyes. ‘You are intelligent, my lady. I know that from the many games of chess and conversations we have shared. How did you fall for such a feeble lie? As if the old man would have ridden all the way here and then lurked in a mill in the dark rather than presenting himself at the gate.’
Titborga was nodding, her face flushed with embarrassment. ‘I was, I admit, not thinking clearly. It is a sad fact that sometimes blind optimism overrides common sense. The very idea that our circumstances could change for the better and
eliminate all this trouble filled me with hope. I should have questioned Maria, but I have known her all my life. She is Santa Coloma like you.’
‘Not like me,’ grunted Arnau as he grasped the sides of the ladder and began to heave himself up towards the rafters, wincing at the searing pain each step brought. As he reached the roof, he moved across to the eaves and peered out of the gaps beneath the roof tiles. Unable to spot what he was searching for, he moved further along with some difficulty and a close shave or two.
‘What are you looking for?’ Titborga called up.
‘There,’ he replied, peering out. A squat but well-built cottage sat close by, and he squinted at it. The building, the house of the Moorish miller, was dark and silent. There was precious little chance the man was asleep, given the commotion at the mill. He had probably not fled, given that even when his workers ran away he had refused sanctuary and gone on working his business, and with all the shouting and banging at his mill mere yards away from the house, unless the man was the heaviest sleeper in the world, then likely tonight had not gone well for him.
‘The miller is gone. He won’t have run, but these ruffians might have dealt with him. There will be no aid from that quarter.’
There was a hiss of disappointment from below, and Arnau balanced carefully on a beam, using joists to left and right where possible, and crossed the mill like a rope-walker at a town fair. He felt the nerves rise in him at the sight of the dim mill floor so far below him, as well as the various workings, but he was soon at the far side and peering out under the eaves once more.
Infernal luck. Despite everything going on at the mill, it was just far enough from the preceptory that the noise and activity had gone unnoticed there, and there was no sign of movement. He grumbled his disappointment and leaned over the drop. ‘No one in the preceptory noticed. We’re on our own.’
As a series of subdued noises suggesting unladylike statements rose from the dim floor below, Arnau retrod his dangerous and acrobatic way along the beam to the ladder, where he simply grasped the sides, wrapped his insteps around the uprights and slid down in sections, wincing at his side once more and taking care not to cause friction burns to his hands. He might need his sword arm in perfect health tonight, after all.
‘What now?’ Titborga asked, another outing for that same question that kept leaping to her lips. Arnau held up a hand to shush her and then hurried over to the south door on light steps.
‘It’s gone quiet,’ he whispered back to her, pointing at the door, which was no longer thumping and shaking under blows from without. He put his eye to one of the narrow gaps around the edge, being careful not to put it up too close straight away in case some enterprising villain was close to the other side with something long and pointed. Thankfully he was rewarded instead with a partial view of a confab going on some way from the mill.
‘… boarded tight,’ one of the men was saying. ‘No door, no window.’
The boss, whom he could only partly see, nodded. ‘It’s old. From reconquest days. Defensible against raiders, and certainly against us.’
‘So how do we get in?’
‘I’m not sure we want to,’ added another of the men. ‘That man was a Templar sergeant. I saw the cross on his breast.’
‘There are twelve of us,’ said the boss, scathingly.
‘Only till that sword starts to swing. We’ll get him, obviously, but only half of us will be alive to see it.’
The boss rounded on the recalcitrant ruffian. ‘Think of all that silver waiting for you. Better than standing under a bridge robbing merchants for a couple of coppers a day, eh? Now tell me: in all your opinions, have we run out of options? There’s no way to take the woman?’
There was a chorus of affirmatives.
‘Then you know the deal. If she can’t be brought back alive, then she doesn’t live at all. As long as she doesn’t get back to the monastery intact.’
Arnau’s heart skipped. Capture or kill? That seemed stupid. Not like della Cadeneta. But pondering on the problem for just a moment suggested otherwise. The unctuous lord would win all if he held both Titborga and the documents to her lands. But if he couldn’t have her, and she died before she could attend the ceremony of admission to the order, then her lands were still hers and not the Temple’s and she would have no heir. Disposition of her estate would be the task of the Lord Bernat d’Entenza, who almost certainly would grant them straight to della Cadeneta, thereby creating a strong sword arm backed by a sizeable estate to serve the king. Capture Titborga, the enemy wins her estate. Kill Titborga, the enemy wins her estate.
He hissed his discontent at the horrible realisation. Titborga’s value had just changed. Della Cadeneta had realised that, other than losing a servile whore he could break, her death would serve him as well as her capture, and that put a whole new complexion on things.
‘Fetch torches,’ the ruffian boss outside told his men. ‘We fire the mill.’
‘Shit,’ Arnau said, stepping back from the door.
‘What is it?’
‘They’re going to burn the mill down with us inside. Della Cadeneta believes he can grab your lands anyway if you’re dead before you can complete your admission to the order.’
‘So we’re trapped in an oven?’ she said, breathlessly.
‘No. An oven just gets hot, and it heats up slowly. This place is made at least half of timber. Old, dry, seasoned timber. And grain. And dust. And oil. We’re not in an oven. We’re in a bonfire. When this place catches, it’ll be an inferno in minutes.’
Eyes wide and wild, Titborga dropped to her knees, clasping her hands in prayer. Arnau watched her, contemplated doing the same, as he was sure the German brother would advocate, but decided instead that his eyes, hand and mind were better employed scouring the mill for a solution. Did that make him a bad Templar? To put his faith in his own ability before the Lord?
Perhaps. But with luck it would make him a bad Templar rather than a pious corpse.
Chapter Fourteen
Arnau fought off the panic as he hurried around the mill, searching for any solution to their dreadful peril, taking the time to send up prayer after prayer for deliverance any moment his mind was not full to brimming with desperation and fear. The very idea of burning alive was simply the worst thing he could imagine. No death in battle could be as awful. In fact, he had quickly come to the private, silent decision that if no way out presented itself, he would put Titborga to the sword and then throw himself upon it like a Roman of old before the flames could lick at his flesh.
Titborga remained kneeling, hands folded in prayer, her faith in the Lord strong enough that such a course of action was the only one she could imagine. Now, watching her as he ran around in a panic, Arnau could see how fitted she truly was to a life married to the cross. She had been right about that all along.
Arnau checked each door and window in quick succession, but even through the tiny gaps, he could see that men had been set to watching for any attempt at escape. Futile to try such a thing. Outnumbered as they were, they would not make it far from the mill before meeting their maker. The doors and windows discounted, Arnau climbed the ladder once more into the rafters, grunting at each painful step, and then began to shuffle along the eaves of the roof this way and that, peering down. Of the dozen men that seemed to constitute the enemy force, six were watching the mill exits while the others were gathering dry scrub and piling it against the two doors.
There was little time. Even now they were finishing their foraging and preparing to light the dry tinder outside the doors. It had not rained in so long that the entire mill was like matchwood, and any flame would race around it in minutes. No windows, no doors, no time.
No one watching the riverside…
Two men to the south, two to the north and two to the west, keeping tabs on the doors and windows, but no one watching the side of the mill facing the river. Of course, there were no windows or doors there, so they probably deemed it unnecessary. It wa
s unnecessary, he realised with a sigh. No real hope of escape that way either. They could probably lift a few tiles from the roof and sneak out under the eaves of the building, but what then? They would be on the top of a funeral pyre. They couldn’t climb down east, west or north without being seen. They could, perhaps, have jumped into the river in the wintertime, but right now, with the low flow after so many dry months, that would be a death sentence anyway. Perhaps they could climb down that side, but Arnau was not keen on the idea. There were precious few hand holds and it was a long way down to the river. Besides, one noise and they would attract the attention of the brigands anyway, and then they would be worse off than now.
Grunting in exasperation and wincing with pain, he clambered quickly back down the ladder only to hear a distant roar, reminiscent of a waterfall. Moments later, thick grey smoke began to pour under the south door and through the small cracks in and around it.
‘Titborga,’ he yelled, ‘grab some empty sacks and push them against the bottom of the door to stop the smoke.’
Though he had interrupted her prayers, the young nun nodded emphatically and rose swiftly, searching around for sacks and then running over to the door. Arnau grabbed more from the corner of the room and ran to the north door, which was also now admitting smoke. He stuffed the sacks against the bottom of the wooden portal, praying they did not catch fire themselves, as that might just propel the conflagration fatally forward. Smoke was still leaking in through the cracks in worrying amounts, but at least the flow of choking black had diminished a little. Arnau looked up. No point in going back up the ladder anyway, but now it was unthinkable with the black smoke pooling in the rafters like deadly fog.
Was it his imagination, or could he already feel the heat building?
His eyes raked the building desperately. Nothing. Just sacks of grain, empty bags, tools, a grain hopper, other bits and pieces that were beyond his ken and the great grindstones with the sets of wheels and pulleys to operate a sack lift. Nothing useful there, though of course, he could only see the top parts of the workings…
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