by Angus Donald
I blocked a cudgel blow from the man on the extreme left with Fidelity, whirled and hacked the sharp blade into the calf muscle of the man next to him — and he was down, his right foot all but severed. I ducked a mace blow, bobbed up again and killed the man wielding that iron bludgeon with a lunge to the throat. Two down. Out of the side of my rain-blurred eye, I saw that a knifeman had lunged past me, grabbed Thomas, wrapped a brawny arm around him and was holding the blade to his throat. I jumped towards Thomas, slipped on the wet stone-paving slabs, skidded, and had barely managed to regain my balance, my arms waving wildly out on either side, when a cudgel slammed into my lower back, at the level of my kidneys. If it had been a sword, it would have cut me in half — instead, the explosion of pain drove me to my knees. My long wet hair was in my eyes, and I sensed rather than saw the next blow from that great oaken club, and swayed my head just enough to avoid it. The cudgel crashed down on to my shoulder with numbing force, though I believe the thick sodden wool of my cloak saved me from a shattered joint. I tried to rise, slipped on the wet road again, and found myself on my back; my left arm was useless, the man with the cudgel was standing over me, his knotted club raised to strike again. Still down, breathless with pain, I jerked my torso off the wet ground, and lunged up with my sword, spearing Fidelity’s sharp point hard into his groin and beyond, deep into his lower bowels. The cudgel-man fell to his knees, mouth wide, blood draining from his face; he dropped the club, hands cupping his privates, and blood pissing through his fingers, instantly washed away by the driving rain.
Beyond him I could see Thomas in the arms of the fourth man, who was looking about madly, unable to believe that none of his three comrades still stood. Regardless of the sharp blade at his collarbone, Thomas reached up and behind him with both hands, and took a bunch of the man’s wet rags in his fists. My squire twisted his shoulders, bent forward suddenly and pulled hard, and the knifeman — to his considerable surprise — was thrown over the boy’s shoulder and crashed on to the slick paving slabs, flat on his back. Thomas leapt on his fallen foe, his own small eating knife in his fist, and the boy began to savage the prone man with a speed and ferocity that more than made up for his lack of skill. Within a few moments Thomas had plunged the knife a dozen times into the man’s face and neck, the blade sinking deep, the gore jetting upwards, and as the man lifted his hands to his face to protect himself, Thomas’s dagger punched and sliced into fingers and palms, too, in his fear-spurred killing-rage.
By the time I had regained my feet, my squire was weeping and panting, spent and still kneeling over the body of a man whose upper regions had been transformed into a mash of chopped meat. Thomas’s hands were red to the wrists, as if dipped in paint; but the blood was not his, God be praised.
All four men were down. The fight from first to last had taken only a couple of dozen heartbeats. The first man I had struck down had tried to crawl away from the fight and now sat half a dozen paces away, facing away from me, howling in agony, clutching his half-severed foot as it pumped blood to join the black flow in the centre of the street. I shambled across to him, growling, my left arm completely numb, and took his head off with one low hard sweep of Fidelity. As I stepped back from his squirting neck stump, and watched his head roll bumpily into the torrent of filth in the centre of the road, I realized that my anger had led me into making a mistake: I needed information. Turning, I saw that the second man, whose throat I had skewered, lay sprawled on the paving slabs, the rain falling relentlessly into his still open eyes. The deluge was beginning to wash the blood from Thomas’s victim, but the knife-mangled neck that was revealed made it clear he would never speak again. The cudgel man whose bowel I had pierced was still alive, but only just. His face was a waxy yellow, knotted with pain, and he was breathing in short, hard gasps. I knew he too had only a few moments left in this world — and I badly needed him to talk to me.
I knelt beside him and gently smoothed the wet hair from his forehead, out of his eyes. The rain fell like spears. I put my mouth to his ear. ‘What is your name, sir?’ I said quietly in French. ‘And why did you seek to attack me?’
He seemed not to notice my questions, although his breathing slowed a little — the end was very near. I repeated my questions, slightly louder this time, giving his shoulder a gentle shake. And this time, he managed to turn his head and look at me. ‘Forgive me,’ he panted.
‘Tell me your name, and whom you serve and I will forgive you,’ I said. ‘Tell me now.’
‘For… forgive me,’ he forced out again. ‘We had our orders from the Master. You had… to die. But I ask your forgiveness, Sir Alan… for the sake of Our Lady, Our Mother, the ever merciful Queen of Heaven, forgive me.’
For all that he had been trying to kill me a few moments before, I did feel pity for him. I was moved by his unusual way of begging for forgiveness. He slumped against my body, his breathing ragged, pumping, the pain riding him. I said: ‘I forgive you; but tell me whom you serve? Who is this Master you speak of — and why does he wish me dead?’
The man gave no reply but let out one long shuddering breath. He twitched once, his head fell forward, chin on breast, and his immortal soul left the cage of his body.
I laid him down as gently as possible in the street, made the sign of the Cross above him, and looked over at Thomas. He was still kneeling beside the corpse he had made, the rain splashing in the gore puddles around him. I levered myself to my feet, my back and shoulder shrieking with pain.
‘Come, Thomas, we must go. Before long the Provost’s men will come and we are strangers here, and foreigners to boot — we will be seen as enemies. I do not want to answer questions in the King’s dungeon about these men’s deaths; questions that I cannot answer. Let us leave their souls to Almighty God, and their bodies to the Provost’s men.’
Extremely bad weather, my bruised body and a stinking cold — brought on no doubt by our violent exertions in the rain that day — kept me housebound for the next week. But I did not grudge the inactivity; it gave me time to think.
I was no longer convinced that Robin was the ‘man you cannot refuse’. Twice now I had been attacked by men who sought my death; on each occasion the men involved in the attack were of the same quality: trained soldiers, most probably knights. I had been close to Robin for six years, and even assuming that he sought my death — which I did not really believe — if he had a company of murderous French knights at his beck and call I was certain that I would have had some inkling of them. So these were not Robin’s men, they belonged to somebody else: somebody they referred to as ‘the Master’. Presumably the Master and the ‘man you cannot refuse’ were the same man, and he was not Robin.
On the other hand, Robin had silenced Murdac, and had tried to prevent me from pursuing the man who ordered my father’s death. So Robin might well have some connection with this murderous Master — but what?
My reasoning could go no further.
There had been no word from Brother Michel — but I was not overly concerned. From Maurice de Sully’s point of view, I was a man enquiring into a twenty-year-old crime — it would not be high on the list of duties that needed attending to. And I had confidence that Brother Michel was a man of his word and that he would find an opportunity for us to meet with the Bishop. As he had said, I must be patient.
The students too were housebound during these unseasonably wet days. As their lessons were usually held on the Petit-Pont in the open air, they had been cancelled while this stormy weather continued. Matthew and a few of the others spent their free time in a local tavern, the sign of the Cock, and came back to the room after nightfall, rosy-faced and cheery with wine. But one of the students, Luke, a slight chap, who cared less than the others for wine and games of dice, preferred to stay in the Widow Barbette’s salle and improve his skills as a copyist. He sat for long hours at the scribe’s desk, copying out a text in Latin called the Institutiones Grammaticae by a long-dead Roman pedant called Priscian.
I
was fascinated by Luke’s work — not the book he was copying, which was a turgid exposition on Latin grammar, full of advice on inflexion, word-formation and syntax, but by the process of writing. Luke bought the parchment from a dealer on the Left Bank and he would cut it to the right shape and scrape it smooth with a knife, polish it with a boar’s tooth, and then when it was ready to receive the ink, he would rule neat lines across the parchment, and down the margins, with a lead point. He bought goose quills by the sheaf from another shop nearby, and he would cut the quills with a sharp knife to make a nib, dip it in a cow’s horn of black ink and begin, in tiny precise strokes of the quill, to copy out Priscian’s dull text.
I knew my letters, of course — I had been taught by Robin’s own brother, years ago in Sherwood, and I had a decent command of Latin, too, but there had been little time for writing in the past few years of war — and I had spilled far more blood than ink since I was a boy. All the same, I loved the idea of transmitting my thoughts and feelings, and of recording deeds, and some of my better songs and poetry for future generations to read. Luke occasionally and rather reluctantly allowed me to practise my writing on the offcuts of his pages, and I believe it was then that I conceived the idea of writing this memoir that now strains your tired eyes. You have young Luke to thank for this tale, for his work in Paris gave me the idea to make a book all of my own, and fill it with my own adventures; although he was horrified by my eccentric plan to compose the story in English, my own mother language, rather than in French or good, honest Latin.
‘But, Sir Alan, Latin is the language of proper literature,’ he protested. ‘All educated people read Latin.’
‘And what of those who are not so well educated?’ I said. ‘Should I not share my songs and stories with them?’
‘If they are not educated they will not be able to read, whether it is written in Latin or English or Ethiopian,’ shot back Luke. I could see his point. They were sharp boys, my young student friends, and ruthless wielders of the formal logic they were taught; I could never manage to best them in any argument. But he did not dissuade me from setting down this tale in English — and if none can read my story in the years to come, so be it. It is all in God’s hands.
After a week of almost constant thunderstorms, the August sun returned and Hanno, Thomas and I set off for the Ville de Paris once again, this time through clean, gently steaming streets, on horseback and fully armed. My bruised back and shoulder were still stiff, marked yellow and brown and purple and remained very painful — but I was able to move. As Hanno had pointed out, I should be grateful that I was not in my grave. My Bavarian had reproached himself severely for not being with me on the day that I had visited the Seigneur d’Alle, although I had not asked him to accompany me, and the attack had come with no warning at all. Nevertheless, Hanno felt that he should have been there to protect me. He did have a thoroughly good reason to be absent from my side, though — he had discovered a Flemish ale-wife living in Paris, and although she was fat, middle-aged and married, he had fallen in love.
‘Oh God, Alan,’ Hanno had told me in mock despair, ‘she is so wonderful; sweet and plump as fresh butter, and her heavenly brew, her ale — strong, brown, bitter and clean — and tasting a little of hazelnuts. It is perfect! I love her! I think I should kill her man, that good-for-nothing Provost’s lackey; I should cut his throat and take her for myself.’
I knew that Hanno was not serious — at least, I hoped he was not. However I made him promise not to molest that unfortunate ale-husband — I did not wish to bring the wrath of the Provost upon us. This powerful royal official, who resided in the Petit Chastelet, a small fortress on the south side of the Petit-Pont, was famously corrupt and lazy. But he was responsible to the King for the maintenance of law and order in Paris and he had over a hundred men-at-arms at his command. We had heard nothing more of the men Thomas and I had killed on the Rue St-Denis — Matthew had passed by the spot shortly after dawn the day after the fight and he had reported that the bodies had been removed by someone, but what became of them I never discovered. May their souls rest in peace.
So, on a gleaming day in late August, Hanno, Thomas and I crossed the Seine at the Grand-Pont, turned right on the Ruga Sancti Germani, and left again to head north on the Rue St Martin. We were retracing the steps we had taken almost two weeks earlier when we entered Paris — but I was not reneging on my vow to St Michael to remain in the city until I had discovered the identity of the ‘man you cannot refuse’. We were heading to the Paris Temple, the huge new compound of the Order that was being constructed just outside the northern boundary of the city, next to the Priory of St Martin where we had spent the night on our arrival. I had a broad and bulging money belt around my waist, which held nearly four pounds in silver, and I wished to make a deposit at the Temple, so that the money would be secure from thieves — footpads like the men who had so recently attacked me. At least, that was what I would be telling the Knights of the Order when we presented ourselves at the gates and demanded entry.
In truth, we were on a scouting mission: while I had been idle during the past few thundery days thinking about the mystery, a single word kept popping into my head. The word was: ‘Templar’. The one thing that all the knights who had attacked me had in common, both in Paris and at Freteval, was that they were bearded. Now, of course, the Templars were not the only hirsute knights in Christendom, but most of the members of the Order of the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Solomon favour beards. I believe it may even be one of the many vows they take when joining the Order.
And there were other signs, too. The cross was a well-known Templar symbol, although theirs was red not blue, and the black border on a white field echoed the famous black-and-white flag under which the Templars fought. The knights of the blue cross, I reasoned, might well be Templars of some kind, or have some link with them: and by going to the Paris Temple and making a deposit of money into their safekeeping, I would have a perfect excuse to inspect the inside of their stronghold and perhaps learn something about my enemies.
As we rode up the crowded Rue St Martin, I saw that Hanno kept glancing behind us. After a while, he put out a hand and the three of us reined in and stopped, allowing the heavy traffic to push past us on both sides.
‘What is it?’ I asked my Bavarian friend, who was twisted in his saddle and scanning the street behind with narrowed eyes.
‘I do not know,’ he said. ‘Perhaps it is nothing, but I have a feeling in my backbone that someone is following us, watching us.’
I looked behind me and saw shopkeepers, tradesmen and workers striding up and down the street, going about their lawful business, a monk or two, a knot of black-robed students, laughing together and drinking wine from a large earthenware jug, a pair of glum men-at-arms standing outside a church. A very dirty man was tending a herd of pigs, who were foraging in the remaining muck in the centre of the thoroughfare that had not been swept away by the storms. A lone mounted man, evidently a rich townsman by the quality of his clothes and horse, was coming closer: but he showed no interest in us and when I looked into his face I realized I had never seen him before. I had never seen any of them before, as far as I could recall.
‘There is nobody following us,’ I said to Hanno, releasing the hilt of Fidelity.
‘I cannot see him,’ my friend replied, scowling, ‘but I feel him in my marrow.’
Jumpy, I thought, he’s jumpy, that’s all — and perhaps he feels a little guilty because he was with his butter-sweet ale-wife when I was attacked last week. Nothing to worry about, Alan, just fix your mind on the task at hand.
We were admitted to the enormous Templar compound, and once again my ears were assaulted by the ringing of chisels on stone and my nostrils clogged with fine white dust. The knights had recently completed a very strong, three-storey stone tower as the core of their defences, and a big round church, which reminded me painfully of the Temple Church in London, where Robin had been tried for heresy
by this same Order the year before. And they had also recently finished building the encircling walls of their stronghold, but the huge compound, perhaps six acres in size, still resembled a mason’s yard. The Knights were constructing a grand palace for the Master of France in the south of the compound, next to the great tower, and a hospital further to the north, and a dozen buildings of wood and stone — conventual houses, cloisters, farm buildings, stables, chapels — were slowly rising into the sky. But while the Paris Temple might have been unfinished, it still represented a formidable fortification; perhaps as strong as any castle in France. And the Brother Sergeant who manned the powerful gatehouse admitted me through a portal guarded by two round towers, a portcullis, and an iron-studded oak gate.
After hearing my story, the gatehouse guard indicated that we should take our business to the largest stone building to the front of the Temple Church, the Counting House, where all the Order’s money matters with outsiders were transacted.
I had the utmost respect for the fighting abilities of the Templar knights, and I had never met one who was not an extraordinary man, in one way or another — but the Order was cunning, too, and full of guile. And they were wealthy. Despite the vow of poverty that each knight took upon entering, the Order itself had amassed an abundance of treasure in the seventy years of its existence, and wide lands and estates, too, across the breadth of Europe. It was said that many a king or duke envied the coffers of the black-and-white knights — and part of the reason for their wealth lay in the nature of the exchange that I was about to make with them.
The Templars had preceptories all over Christendom and each was staffed by the Order’s knights and their sergeants, clerks, chaplains and servants. For decades, the Templars had been conveying goods — food, wine, clothing, building materials, weapons and so on — to their bases in remote parts of the world, from Syria to Scotland, from Denmark to the Douro, and in doing so they had also, naturally, begun to take part in commerce. Moving goods over the face of the earth, and selling them here and there had meant that sometimes the members of the Order needed to carry large sums of silver coin; and they thus laid themselves open to attack by bandits and thieves in the wilder regions. So the knights had devised a simple method of money exchange: a traveller would not carry money in the form of specie or coin, he would carry a letter, written in code, which commanded a Templar clerk when he arrived at his destination to hand over a particular sum of money on receipt of the parchment. This proved to be a great success — as a piece of parchment could have no value for a back-country thief — and soon the idea spread to other knights, who were not members of the Order, and then to townsfolk and traders who were travelling to far-flung markets and wished to safeguard their own silver.