The Templar's Penance: (Knights Templar 15)

by Michael Jecks

  There was a strange listlessness to him still as he began his story, as though he had been on a long journey, but had at last finished it. He was home.

  ‘I am called Afonso de Gradil. I was the second son of Dom Álvaro, but my older brother died when I was young. My grandfather helped fight the Moors and won back our lands, and my father felt the debt to God deeply. When I was young, he renounced the world and took on the white robes. He became a Knight Templar, living here in Tomar.

  ‘Like my mother, I was proud of him. I honoured him for taking up the sword in God’s name. When she died, I thought that I might wish to come and join him here in the castle, but before I could do so, the Templars were arrested.’

  He looked at Baldwin. ‘The accusations against those men were false. I know this. And then they began the foul process of destroying the Order – all on the words of a few lying men.’

  ‘I know,’ Baldwin said impatiently. ‘So why did you choose to punish another innocent Templar?’

  ‘Innocent? Brother Matthew was an agent of the French King sent to destroy the Templars!’ Afonso spat. ‘He was here for a while, but he invented stories about worshipping a devil’s head, about urinating on the cross … all kinds of nonsense! Then he took those stories back with him to France and gave evidence against the Templars, helping to have them destroyed. And one of the men who died was my father.’

  Baldwin fell back in his seat, and he felt a hideous crawling sensation over his flesh, as though tiny demons were enjoying his discomfiture. Suddenly the remoteness of Matthew, the ‘otherness’ of his behaviour, made sense. It was why he had never been tortured; he had no need of torture. He had willingly given evidence against his own brethren. ‘No!’

  ‘My father heard of the courts being held in France and travelled with others to give evidence in support of the Templars. Many were listened to, but because of Matthew, my father was captured. In 1310, he was burned to death with fifty others outside Paris, in a meadow near the Convent of Saint Antoine.’

  Baldwin knew that place. Saint Antoine des Champs, on the road to Meaux, was a huge fortified precinct, entirely walled and moated. The Templars had been taken there to break the spirits of those who still denied guilt, and had been led there on wagons, shouting their innocence still. Chained and manacled, they could not escape when the King’s men slipped the horses from their harnesses and set fire to the wagons, not even giving the men the dignity of a stake.

  ‘I knew Matthew … are you sure he was guilty?’

  ‘My uncle saw the records.’

  ‘Your uncle?’

  ‘The claveiro here. He came here willingly to restore the castle and convent to its previous glory,’ Afonso said. ‘After the shame brought upon the convent and my father by Matthew, he felt the need to do all he could to put matters right again. As did I in my own way.’

  ‘So you killed Matthew.’

  Afonso looked at him again, and there was a sadness in his eyes. It was enough to stay Baldwin’s hand. He remembered this fellow picking up the child in the courtyard and helping him so carefully and kindly. Then he remembered Matthew. Conflicting emotions rose in his breast, but if Afonso was right, and Matthew had indeed survived the ordeals of the Templars by confessing to crimes and accusing his own brethren, then Afonso was justified in his revenge. And Baldwin would be merely perpetuating an injustice by killing him.

  ‘I think you know I am speaking the truth,’ Afonso said.

  ‘I believe so.’

  ‘Aha, that is good news!’ a strange voice broke in. ‘I would hate to have to harm an Englishman so far from home.’

  Baldwin felt the muscles at the back of his neck tense. Slowly he turned and faced Sir Charles, who stood there smiling happily. ‘So you aren’t going to kill my friend, then, Sir Baldwin? That, I think, is an astonishingly good idea. Why don’t we have a chat over some wine instead?’

  ‘I should be glad of it at some point,’ Baldwin said. ‘But first I should like to finish this conversation.’

  ‘Please do so. My friend here is leaving my companionship now, which I feel is very sad, but no matter. I shall be in our tavern, Afonso, if you change your mind.’

  He turned and walked away, whistling, down the lane towards the town, and Baldwin raised a questioning eyebrow at Afonso.

  ‘My task is done. I have decided to come here and join the Order. Many men from the Templars are still here. King Dinis did not believe the allegations, and he has merely changed the name, but the Order remains. My uncle will see that it remains pious and Christian. I shall join the Order, and then go to Castro-Marim. There I shall be able to kill Moors, and fulfil my father’s aim.’

  ‘If you thought Matthew was responsible for your father’s death, then your killing him was understandable.’

  ‘It would have been.’

  Baldwin felt his breath catch in his throat. ‘What do you mean: would have been?’

  ‘I didn’t kill him.’ Afonso shrugged. ‘Someone else got to him first. I merely reached him as he fell to the ground. And the thing that surprised me was that he looked glad. He was grateful for his life to be ended. I found that hard to imagine.’

  Baldwin stared at him for a short while, then turned away and gazed out over the low lands beyond the river again. It was speculation, but Baldwin knew enough about how the Inquisition had gathered their evidence against Templars to be able to piece together the story.

  ‘He had lived with his shame for such a long time,’ he said slowly. ‘All his life had been spent as a Templar, and he was as committed and honourable a Templar knight as any – until the arrests. I expect he was captured with others in France. He lost his courage while in the gaol. The Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, and the leading members of the Order were held murus strictus, with small walls, which meant that they were held alone and manacled for years, but the others were held murus largus, in large cells with many men together. That is where Matthew would have been held. And when the torturers did their work, they did it in the same large cells, so that all the other Templars could see what would soon be done to them. One at a time, they were taken and scorched, whipped, broken … Is it any surprise that a man like Matthew, proud, haughty and handsome, should find his will breaking as he saw all his comrades being tortured? He agreed to give evidence against them, and he was released. Except now he had no one to call friend. All his friends were dead, or they despised him. He had no profession, no livelihood. His past career was closed to him for he had betrayed his companions. Ah! Poor Matthew! So he sank and became the lowest creature whom he himself would have disdained. A beggar.’

  Baldwin sighed deeply and turned to the younger man. ‘Yes, Afonso, I think he would have been very glad to have been killed. Whoever was responsible saved him from ever having to look himself in the face again.’

  Munio’s head was uncommonly heavy. He had sat through three days of court deliberations in the city and after all that, he was more than a little exhausted, although not so tired as poor Margarita. That was why he was sitting beside the sick man tonight, leaving his wife to go to bed early. After sitting up for the past three nights, Margarita was close to collapse, and Munio was worried about her. At last she had submitted to his insistence, and went to her bed a short time after eating a light supper, but it meant that in her place Munio must watch over their guest.

  Simon’s breathing was a little improved, Munio noted with a feeling of hope. It was not much, but Simon had been so close to death, from what he had seen, that any faint sign of improvement was a source of joy. Munio dreaded the thought of telling Sir Baldwin that his friend was dead.

  Munio was not scared of Baldwin, even though most men would have known fear of a greater or lesser extent when harbouring the best friend of a knight. Knights were so dangerous, generally. They were prone, so Munio thought, to acquiring the same attributes as their favourite clothing: steel. In place of flexible thinking, such as a man like Munio himself might develop after wearing soft clothing
all his life, the average knight was incapable of the limited pliancy even of a shirt of mail. Most knights understood only one response to any stimulus: drawing a sword. There were many indeed, Munio knew, who would, on hearing that a companion had died of a disease in another’s house, immediately rush at the poor man who had only done his best to protect a guest. True, there were some who would happily speed a man’s death just for the coins in his purse, but that was rare enough. Most Christians were kindly behaved towards their own.

  In any case, Baldwin was not one of that type. Munio was sure that the knight would be more likely to berate himself, were Simon to die, rather than blame others. For Baldwin, Simon’s death would be a cause of shame, because as Munio knew, there had been no real need for him to leave Compostela at this time. He could easily have demanded that Munio send another man to question Ramón and the other fellow, the one whom Baldwin thought might have killed the beggar.

  ‘Come on, Simon!’ he muttered. ‘You have to get better. How else am I going to find out who killed poor Joana? I need your help.’

  Simon made a slightly choking noise in his throat, and Munio shot him a nervous look, wondering whether he would need to wake his wife to look after Simon again, but the Bailiff gave a short cough, smacked his lips, and turned his face to the wall. Munio wiped his brow gently, but Simon’s forehead wrinkled, as though annoyed by the service. He twitched his face in rejection, and Munio drew the cloth away, a feeling of relief thrilling him. Putting a hand on Simon’s brow, his lips relaxed into a smile as he felt the relative coolness of the flesh.

  ‘Ah, my friend, you will never know what glad news this is,’ he whispered.

  It was hellishly bright in the room when he slowly swam up through the warm seas of sleep to the cooler shallows of wakefulness, and Simon winced as he opened one eye a crack.

  ‘I am as thirsty as a blacksmith who has drunk nothing but water for a week,’ he said hoarsely.

  Opening his eye a little wider, he glanced down at his body. He felt as though he’d been thrown in the path of an entire host of chivalry riding at full gallop. Terrible. And his voice was as rough as a sawn oak log. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘You have been very ill,’ Margarita said gently.

  ‘How long for?’ Simon asked in a croak.

  ‘Five days. I think it was the foul air from when you fell into that pit with Domingo,’ she said. ‘But you are over the worst of it.’

  ‘I owe my life to you again, my lady,’ he said with a smile. ‘I should like to thank you.’

  Her face was not glad, but rather remained anxious. ‘Your health is all the thanks I need, Bailiff. Now, drink this cider and try to rest.’

  ‘Rest? I’ve done nothing but rest for five days, if you are right.’ Simon grimaced, but he took the drink and sipped it slowly.

  His recovery was slower than before. He had suffered a serious fever, and he felt as weak as a newborn puppy. Daylight itself was painful, and he found himself squinting even early in the morning, and to it was impossible for him to do more than rest in his bed when the sun was at its height.

  The languor to which he had succumbed was not merely physical. His mind was scarcely able to concentrate for more than a minute at a time. He was too tired to worry himself about Joana’s murder, or any other matter, come to that, apart from the fact that he missed his wife, his own little family. The fact that Baldwin was not with him was an extra blow. Simon was not a man prone to feelings of self-pity, but on that first day after he woke from his fever, his soul was weighed down under a leaden gloom that prevented his taking pleasure in anything. The mere thought of food was enough to make his belly clench like a fist; he could drink little other than cider and a tiny quantity of white wine, and all he felt able to do was sit and doze. It was a relief to be nudged awake when the night approached, to be carried indoors to his room and sleep.

  On the second day of his recovery, he felt that life was improving enough to justify taking a little meat, and although the stuff took an age to chew and try to swallow, it did eventually go down. At first he felt as though it was going to come straight back up, and ten minutes later he had the conviction, judging by the noises emanating from beneath his belt, that he might soon need to hasten to a chamber pot; however, his worst fears came to nought, and he did find later that afternoon that he was feeling much better.

  When he went to bed, he did not sleep so well as he had. The bed felt too warm, the blankets too itchy, the air too muggy and uncomfortable. He rolled over, trying to settle, and eventually slept, but even as he did, he was aware of that same parade of people passing by which he had seen so many days before. There was Doña Stefanía, Ramón, Don Ruy, Domingo, María, and then Gregory and Parceval – both together, and smiling at him as though they knew something he didn’t. Even as Simon tried to draw his attention away, he saw that Parceval was holding up a hand, and in it was clasped a large stone.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The next morning, Simon woke feeling tired still, but at least fully refreshed. He was able to roll out of bed, grunting at the pain in his aching muscles, and lumber to his feet. Drawing on his hose, then a thin shirt and jack, he forced himself to tie his belt about his middle. The weight of his sword was comforting. Heavy, he told himself with a curl of his lip at his weakness, but comforting.

  Munio was already gone, running to view a body in a tavern. Some men had been drinking all night, and although they had started as the best of friends, they had ended the night as mortal enemies. Now one was dead, and the other unconscious after being hit hard by the cudgel in the hands of the innkeeper, the bloody knife still gripped in his hand.

  Margarita looked glad that he was well, although she insisted that he should rest about the house all day and rejected absolutely his suggestion that he might go into the city and sit at a tavern for a while.

  ‘If you want to make sure I am all right, you could join me, lady. We could send for your husband.’

  ‘It would not be right for us to walk about the city,’ she said quickly. ‘No, you must remain here. I shall make sure that you are comfortable and one of my men will remain with you.’

  ‘Perhaps I could merely walk along a road, or—’

  ‘Master Bailiff, you will stay here,’ she said firmly, and so, he found, he did.

  The pain in his joints was already going by lunchtime, when he ate a bowl of pale, watery soup with light ham-filled dumplings, followed by a mixture of fruits – not usually a meal he would care for, but today he was enormously grateful for it, and ate an orange and some grapes with enjoyment. Afterwards he lay back on his bed and dozed for an hour, before waking feeling much more hearty.

  Pushing open the shutters, he saw that there were clouds over the sky and the afternoon had cooled a little. ‘Perfect,’ he said as he walked from his room. Outside there was an old man nodding on a stool. Simon passed by him quietly, but some alarm stirred him, and he woke startled, gabbling quickly in his incomprehensible tongue.

  Simon smiled broadly, then nodded, ducking his head, widening his eyes and nodding again, before walking away, ignoring the man’s entreaties. ‘As if I can’t look after myself,’ he said.

  The weather was delightfully cool compared with the previous days, and he walked easily down to the square.

  It was quieter now, perhaps because there was a service going on in the Cathedral, and Simon found himself walking along almost empty streets. The market had finished and the stalls were deserted. It gave the place a curious feeling of death, a feeling which Simon did not enjoy after the grim misery of the last few days. He needed life and happiness, things to remind him that he was alive, that he had not expired. This deathly hush was alarming.

  There was a bell from somewhere in the Cathedral, and suddenly people appeared in the doors, hurrying about again. It was just like Exeter Cathedral when the priests finished their ceremonies and the choir trooped out, and all the congregation of merchants, prostitutes, hawkers and haggling townspeo
ple who had gone in out of the wind and rain sloped off back into the open.

  Simon sat down on a bench and ordered a small cup of wine. It tasted rough, but as he sipped, the flavour improved and he wondered whether his reaction to it could have been caused by his fever. Nothing tasted quite right since he had recovered.

  The air was warming, and when he glanced up, he saw that the clouds were clearing. He moved along the bench until he was shaded by a building at his side, and when he was there, he saw Doña Stefanía leave.

  She was swept along by the mass of people. Simon saw her glance in his direction, but he was fairly sure that she averted her head, as though he was a reminder of a sad experience. He wasn’t sure why she should blame him for the death of her maid or the loss of her money, nor was he interested enough to want to find out. It seemed unimportant, compared with the illness he had suffered, or compared with the pleasure of sitting in the warmth and feeling the sun heat his bones.

  As she carried on around the corner of the Cathedral, Simon saw another familiar figure – Parceval. Simon wondered about him. Parceval was a curious fellow. His clothing was shabby, yet he had somehow managed to seduce the Prioress, so either she was a shameless wench, or Parceval had the gift of persuasion. Simon had not spoken to the man, thus had little idea whether he could have been involved in the murder of Joana. The only time Simon had seen him was when he himself had collapsed, and he had not been on his best interrogative form that day.

  There was one way which always, in Simon’s experience, persuaded a merchant to come and chat. He gave a wolfish grin to Parceval and held up his cup. The Fleming smiled with a gesture of acceptance, and walked over to Simon.

  ‘Take some wine with me,’ Simon said, gesturing politely at the waitress.

  ‘I thank you.’ The Fleming sat down gratefully. When the wine arrived, Simon poured from the earthenware jug, topping up his own cup as well as filling one for Parceval.