The Templar's Penance: (Knights Templar 15)

by Michael Jecks

  ‘Doña?’

  She turned to see that Frey Ramón stood a short way behind her, his ugly face twisted with anxiety. She felt as though the entire scene was being shown to her through a glass. It seemed to move, the colours altering, and swirls of mist rose up before her, while the regular lines of paving began to dance. And then they grew larger, and even as she heard a warning shout, the pavings seemed to leap right up towards her.

  Baldwin heard the gasp and turned just in time to see a tall, elegant woman lean to one side, and then fall to the ground as though all sensation had been cut off instantly.

  ‘Simon!’ he called as he made his way towards her, but then he saw that another man was already there.

  It was the brute Simon had noticed before, the Knight of Santiago. He knelt at the woman’s side and looked about like a man lost, staring around for assistance.

  ‘Friend,’ Baldwin said soothingly. ‘Let me help.’

  The man looked Baldwin up and down, then shook his head and began shouting for, ‘Joana! Joana!’

  Baldwin stared in helpless appeal at Señor Munio, and was relieved to see the Pesquisidor nod and stroll towards them. He spoke rapidly as he came closer, and the knight snapped something back, but then seemed to regret his words and spoke again, hanging his head.

  ‘What is it?’ Simon asked after a few moments during which the Knight of Santiago grew conspicuously disturbed.

  ‘He says that this lady is always accompanied by her maid,’ Baldwin translated. ‘I think that this noble knight is betrothed to the maid, and he is concerned that she is not here.’

  Baldwin glanced at Munio. ‘Do you think we should let him see her?’

  Munio sighed but agreed. There was no joy in this work. He touched the knight softly on the shoulder. ‘Come, Frey Ramón. We have found a poor woman murdered. Please come and see her, in case you know who she might be.’

  ‘Me? Why me?’ Ramón demanded. ‘Leave me here with Doña Stefanía, and I shall protect her until my woman arrives. She will not be long. Can you hear anyone trying to break through the crowd? She cannot be far away.’

  ‘Come with me.’

  Frey Ramón was irritated by his insistence. The man was a mere public official, after all. A hidalgo. He might be a low form of noble, but he still worked with the peasants in the fields. The knight was about to give him a curt refusal, for no Knight of Santiago need answer to a petty hidalgo, when he saw the expression on Munio’s face.

  Slowly rising to his feet, Frey Ramón squared his shoulders. Ignoring Munio and Sir Baldwin, he marched past them to the table. There he stood motionless for a moment. The dead girl’s tunic was immediately recognisable and he felt as though someone had slammed a hammer into his breast. All the breath was knocked from him. Over the corpse’s head had been thrown a blanket, and Frey Ramón motioned to one of the men to remove it. What he saw beneath the material was so horrific, it was all he could do to ask the man to cover her up again. ‘Her face … She has no face,’ he gasped when he could speak again.

  He became aware that Munio now stood at his side. Without turning his head, Frey Ramón said, ‘It is her. It is my fiancée Joana.’ He bent and collected up the body. ‘I shall take her to the Cathedral. Please look after Doña Stefanía. Now she has no maid, she will need to be protected.’

  Munio muttered his sympathy as the warrior monk of Saint James strode away towards the Cathedral, the pathetic bundle carried so steadfastly in his arms – the arms that would once have held her as a lover, Munio thought to himself. He was struck with sadness at the sight of such restrained grief.

  Then he clapped his hands together. ‘Come! What is everyone staring at?’ he shouted. ‘There has been a murder, but there’s no need to gawp. Any man who knows about this sad event should come to speak to me now. As for the rest of you, you can go about your business!’

  At the Cathedral end of the square, Gregory was peering over the heads of the watching crowds as Frey Ramón strode past, his head high, but his eyes speaking of his appalling loss.

  ‘What has been happening here then, old friend?’

  Gregory jerked in shock at the sound of Sir Charles’s voice. The man had a knack of springing up without warning. It was just Gregory’s luck that he should be looking away when Sir Charles appeared. Taking a deep breath to calm himself, he said, ‘I fear that some woman has been murdered.’

  ‘Ah. The sort of thing that happens all over the world,’ Sir Charles said with a sympathetic shake of his head as Frey Ramón passed them. The knight sighed as though meditating on the swift passage of a life, then said more brightly, ‘Hey ho! But life must go on! So, how are you this fine afternoon?’

  ‘I am well, sir. I thank you again for your assistance this morning.’

  ‘It was nothing,’ Sir Charles said quite sincerely. ‘It was no more than a fleeting action.’

  Listening to him, Gregory stiffened in dislike. It was as though the other man was uninterested in the lives or deaths of the pilgrims, but had simply become involved because he had seen the opportunity for a battle. Some knights were that way, Gregory knew. He himself had once been equally selfish, with a disinterest in other men’s lives and works. Like other knights he had enjoyed his wine, chased the women, and sought only earthly delights. And there were few pleasures greater than slaying your enemies and seeing their comrades fleeing the field, leaving you and your fellow knights in sole occupation.

  Yet he had changed. Since that terrible time when he had lost his wife, he had grown more philosophical, more open to other people. Certainly, he knew glancing at the fair-haired man at his side, he had never been so callous as Sir Charles.

  ‘Are you here on pilgrimage?’ he asked.

  Sir Charles peered at him as though he had forgotten he was there. ‘No. I am on my way to see if I can help my friend Afonso. He wants to kill a man,’ he said blandly, smiled, and was gone.

  Gregory puffed out his cheeks and slowly relaxed. Thank God the man was gone. He was an unsettling fellow. Surely even when Gregory himself had been at the height of his self-confidence, he had never been as arrogant as that. Sir Charles seemed to be content to go through life as though he was careless of any man’s feelings. That was no way to live. It was like being possessed of a deathwish.

  Perhaps it was only his way of joking, Gregory wondered, but then he shook his head. The fellow had seemed perfectly serious.

  Gregory felt uneasy suddenly, standing with his back to wherever Sir Charles had gone. In preference, he moved forward through the crush. He had seen Frey Ramón carrying the body out of the square, and there had been a stillness in the crowds as though it was a rare, terrible event. Funny how foreigners could react, he reflected – not for the first time.

  Folk were beginning to resume their normal activities now. Hawkers began to shout their wares again, men bawled for wine at the taverns, and Gregory found his way was easier. Soon he was up at the front of the crowd, staring with vague curiosity at the men gathered there. A cart was being led away by one peasant, and a cleric was standing talking to three men while a physician was bent over a figure lying in a dead faint on the ground. The physician straightened, then set about striking a spark from his knife and a stone, blowing onto tinder. Gregory suddenly felt a dim recognition stirring in him. The bare arm which he could see looked rather familiar.

  From closer, it was a great deal more familiar. There was a birthmark near the wrist. Oh, surely it couldn’t be her – not his wife!

  The physician had at last made the tinder catch, and now he blew on it. When he had a large enough flame, he lit a candle, shielding it from the occasional gusts in the square, then held it near the unconscious woman’s face and burned a few feathers.

  As the reeking smoke entered her nostrils, Doña Stefanía retched, then coughed and moaned loudly. She pushed the noxious odour from her, and even as the physician smiled and tossed his feathers away, she winced and sat up. ‘What …’

  She was assailed by
sudden nausea, and had to close her eyes for a moment. ‘What is happening?’ she asked dully, and then she began to weep as she remembered the body of her maid, remembered that shattered remnant of a face.

  Simon was saddened to see a noblewoman brought so low by circumstances, but he could easily understand her feelings. A pilgrim, many miles from her home, the only companion she would have had was her maid, and now the latter had been snatched away. It was a fearfully lonely life for a woman, no matter how well-filled her purse, if she were left alone. Bad enough to lose a husband, but in some ways Simon thought that for a woman, losing a maid or manservant was worse. The companionship was usually easier and more genuine between master and servant than that which prevailed between married partners.

  No one could doubt the genuine sadness of the woman. She had collapsed at the sight of her maid, and now she wept uncontrollably. It was the sort of behaviour that no one of her station would normally indulge in. They wouldn’t want people to think they were so weakly as to become too closely attached to their staff. All too often people did, of course: the number of widows who married their husbands’ stewards was eloquent proof of that.

  Rather than contemplate the wailing woman, Simon turned away. Nearby was a woman clad in black, wandering among the crowds. He watched her irritably, half aware of Baldwin arriving at his side.

  ‘Another ruddy beggar,’ he grouched. ‘There seem to be more of them than pilgrims.’

  ‘Do not be too harsh,’ Baldwin remonstrated gently. ‘Some are genuine enough.’

  Simon winced. ‘I’m sorry, Baldwin. I didn’t mean to pass comment on your old companion. He’s obviously all right.’

  ‘Not many would agree with you,’ Baldwin said moodily, scuffing a boot on the paving and sending a pebble skittering over the slabs.

  ‘There is one thing that is beneficial about beggars, though,’ Simon said. ‘Come with me.’

  Surprised, Baldwin obediently followed Simon to the edge of the crowds. The beggarwoman in black was moaning gently, a hand wrapped in filthy linen held out to any who passed within her range. There was a repellent odour about her, with a faint hint of lemons, as though she had slept beneath a grove of citrus. Simon caught sight of a pale face beneath her hood, but averted his eyes automatically. One didn’t meet their gaze, because that lent their begging legitimacy and let them feel that they could ask for more money.

  ‘You speak English?’ he demanded gruffly.

  ‘Sí – a leetle, Señor.’

  ‘You walk about the crowds here. Did you see the woman with the blue tunic before, the woman who was killed?’

  ‘I saw her with the Doña there. She was maid to her, called Joana.’

  Baldwin smiled as he understood Simon’s reason for questioning this beggar. A beggar could pass through a crowd unnoticed, ignored, as irrelevant as a cur, but might still notice others and make comment about them.

  Simon saw his understanding dawn. ‘Today, did you see her leave the city?’

  ‘Sí. She left by the Porta Francigena after lunch.’

  ‘Was she alone?’

  There was a long pause, and then the woman spoke as if reluctantly. ‘I think she was with a man. Perhaps I am wrong, but he was behind her – a tall, dark knight. I have seen him. He is called Don Ruy, I think. A pilgrim to Compostela.’

  ‘You think he and she were going to a rendezvous?’ Baldwin asked.

  ‘I do not think she saw him, but he had eyes only for her.’

  ‘They were both walking?’

  ‘No. Both were on horseback.’

  ‘We may need you to speak to the Pesquisidor,’ Simon said sternly.

  ‘I am always here in the square,’ she said sadly, and her hand rose a little.

  Simon grunted, but he reached into his purse and pulled out a coin. ‘Very well. What is your name?’

  ‘What need has a beggar of a name?’ she asked softly. ‘I have lost my husband, my home, my station. But I have been called María. My father called me that. You may, too. María of Venialbo.’

  ‘Very good,’ Simon said and dropped the coin into her palm.

  Chapter Eight

  Domingo had watched dully while the men with the body on the cart passed, going towards the Cathedral, but it meant nothing to him. Nothing did, not since the death of Sancho. Life itself had lost its meaning. All that mattered was finding the fair man and executing him. Standing with his men in front of the tavern, he drained his cup and belched.

  They had been waiting here as he had told them, and now that the little cavalcade was done and the body had been carried away by Frey Ramón, they all felt the anti-climax. They turned to drinking more cider or wine, thinking about finding some food and maybe a woman. One of his men had told of a serving girl at an inn up the way who had a saucy smile that promised more than mere conversation, or he was a mudéjar!

  Domingo sat on a wall with a pot of wine and drank steadily.

  This place was too far from home. He’d never have come here if it wasn’t for that bitch of a Prioress. She’d tempted him with money, him and his men. She needed protection, she said. And Joana had added her voice to the Prioress’s. She told her cousin that she needed his help: without some sort of guard, there was no telling what might happen to Doña Stefanía and her. They were carrying something, she hinted, something which was so valuable, they must have men about them to guard it.

  It was enough to pique his interest, naturally. Joana knew perfectly well how her cousin made his living; Domingo captured travellers and held them hostage, sometimes wounding them if their families were too slow to pay, occasionally killing them when the whim took him.

  His son, poor Sancho, he was a good lad. Not the cleverest, even Domingo wouldn’t suggest that, but he was tough, ruthless and loyal, provided you didn’t take your eyes off him. If you did, you might learn just how ruthlessly ambitious he was. Not the sort of man you would let behind you.

  But he was Domingo’s son, and to Domingo a blood tie between man and son was sacred. His duty to find and kill his son’s murderer was equally sacred.

  The attack was strange. He still wasn’t sure why the Prioress had instructed them to attack the pilgrims. It was days since she had tried to join the band, days since she had opened her legs to the shabby little creep in the shed. Oh, Domingo knew all about that. He’d seen the churl go in there with the Doña, saw the tall knight walk in and hurriedly leave; later he’d seen the Prioress slip out, walking a little more bandy-legged than she had for a while, and with a huge, grateful smile on her face. But any shame or anger she felt at her subsequent treatment must have faded by the time she told Joana to have Domingo attack the pilgrims.

  ‘Attack them and kill all,’ Joana had said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She wills it.’

  That was all. Joana had swept around in her nice new blue tunic as though she was going to flounce from his fireside, but Domingo wasn’t so easy to impress. He grabbed her arm and pulled her easily to him, bending her arm behind her back. ‘Why, I asked.’

  There was a prick at his belly, and he glanced down to see that in her other hand she gripped a short knife. ‘Let me go!’ she said through gritted teeth.

  ‘You’d not kill a chicken with that,’ he said, and then his hand moved. He took the blade in his open hand and twisted. Her face was wrenched with pain as he tightened his grip, squeezing her fingers tightly into the wood. He could feel the blade cutting into the fatty skin at the edge of his palm, but his expression didn’t alter. Pain was something he was used to. ‘Well?’

  ‘A man has threatened her with blackmail.’

  He released her with a feeling of anti-climax. Blackmail was a good way to earn money, he knew. He wondered what scandalous thing it was, that she was paying to keep quiet. If he could learn it, it might benefit him. However, he did think that it was unnecessary to kill all the others just because the Doña wanted one man dead. Not that it mattered.

  But now it did matter. It
mattered a great deal, because his own boy was dead. Poor Sancho; it was terrible to think that he’d never be able to rely on the lad at his side in a fight. Sancho was dead and gone for ever.

  The thought brought a huge gobbet of grief into Domingo’s breast. To lose it, he stood and sniffed, gazing about him like a man idly stretching. He could feel the tension in his men, as though they knew what he was going through and feared that he might explode into violence. They had seen his rages before. Curiously, he felt no need. For once in his life, fighting would not assuage his spirit. It couldn’t.

  In the square, he could see the men discussing the dead woman in the blue dress. It was nothing to him. Others mattered not at all, compared with poor Sancho. When they returned to their little church in their home town, Domingo would have to make an offering in Sancho’s memory. Their town was poor, but at least the priest was on the side of the poverty-struck peasants. They had little enough to look forward to, as he knew – only the annual cycle of labour on the land, unless they could break out like Domingo and find work elsewhere, making use of their physical strength in the service of whichever lord or lady offered the most money.

  That was when he saw him, over at the far side of the square, peering down at the body with a clinical interest.

  It was the fair one, the tall, easy-looking bastard. He was with the other, the one who’d ridden into the fight with two blades flashing; while the fair one killed Sancho, the other one had slaughtered others. Domingo’s son Sancho was killed as he struck down a pilgrim, and then the fair man rode over his poor body, trampling it in the dirt like the carcass of a dead fox. As though there was nothing to worry about, killing a man like that. There was nothing but shame in leaving a man alive who could behave in such a manner towards Domingo’s kin. This was a deed that could only be punished with blood, with the man’s blood.

  Dropping the cup and letting it shatter on the stone floor, Domingo stood up straight, twisting his head as he contemplated the bastard. He thought he was powerful, Domingo saw; thought he was superior to all others, probably. Well, Domingo would prove him wrong. He would cut out the man’s heart and eat it. He’d open his belly and throttle him with his own bowels. He’d …