The Templar's Penance: (Knights Templar 15)

by Michael Jecks

  ‘You speak good English,’ Simon observed.

  ‘I am a merchant. I deal more with the English than any others, because your wool is such good quality.’

  ‘We are proud of it.’

  Parceval nodded. There was a coldness about him, Simon thought, but that could well have been the reserve of a man who was conversing in a foreign language.

  ‘You are here for your benefit?’ Simon asked.

  ‘Ah yes. I always thought it a strange thing, to go on pilgrimage for another man,’ Parceval said.

  ‘I agree. Although it is easy to see how a great lord, who swore that he would go on pilgrimage but then died, might leave in his will an instruction that one of his staff, or perhaps his child, should undertake the journey in his place.’

  ‘For the good of his soul, he should ensure that he can make the journey himself,’ Parceval said. There was a hardness to his voice. ‘No man should force his child to do something against her will.’

  ‘I have a daughter,’ Simon said. ‘She wishes to marry a boy I think a fool. He is one of these youths to whom costly particoloured hose are more important than a warm home, a good flock of sheep or a herd of cattle.’

  ‘And you are sad at this thought?’

  ‘Very.’

  Parceval leaned forward, his face animated. ‘If you take the advice of a man who lost his daughter, you will indulge her.’

  ‘You have lost yours?’

  ‘She was a beautiful girl – my pride and delight. But I told her not to see a boy because I did not approve of his father. She went to see him without my knowledge, and that night, she died with him. He was murdered; she was raped, and she took her own life in despair.’

  Simon gave a groan of sympathy. ‘My friend, that is terrible. My own worst fear is that I could lose my daughter. Did you find the man who had done this?’

  Parceval’s face hardened. ‘Oh yes, I found him, and I killed him that same night. And I think I too died that night.’

  Dead, he thought. Yes, I am dead. I have been dead since that night. There has been nothing since then. Only transient pleasures. Perhaps she wouldn’t have committed suicide if I’d stayed with her – or did she recognise Hellin as my companion? My friend even!

  He had hoped that the journey here to Compostela would have given him some ease of mind, but it had achieved nothing. The only result had been his affair with the Prioress, a matter of convenience to him, but one of necessity for her. She had no money. Of course she could have gone to the Cathedral and demanded alms, but she appeared chary of that. Instead she preferred to wander the grounds watching all the visitors. Parceval had wondered why, because she should surely have been more worried about being seen consorting with him than about any shame at being poverty-stricken. Still, the ways of women, as he had so often thought, were usually incomprehensible.

  Simon left Parceval to his own thoughts for a moment. Then, ‘She seems a good woman, the Prioress.’

  ‘You think so? I suppose so. She is lonely since the death of her maid.’

  ‘It was a peculiar thing, that,’ Simon said.

  ‘A man saw her, a man raped her, robbed her, and killed her,’ Parceval said harshly. ‘There is nothing strange in that. Just one more bloody bastard who feels nothing for the death of another person. Life can be cheap.’

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘Me? I value life. I know the value of things: it is my job to make an estimate so that I can buy in and sell at a profit. Lives are the same as any other thing a man may buy or sell. Some are expensive: they are bought dearly, whether with money or lives. Look at the three men who rescued me and the other pilgrims on the day we arrived here: they were expensive. They cost the felons several men, without harm to themselves. The felons were cheap. They died quickly and easily.’

  ‘Like that maid.’

  ‘Who, Joana? Oh, yes. She died cheaply.’

  ‘Did you know her?’

  ‘Only vaguely. I saw her on the journey here.’

  ‘I heard you met the Prioress on the way, too.’

  Parceval smiled. ‘Yes. I am afraid so. I was the cause of some embarrassment.’

  ‘Because of …?’

  ‘Because we were seen together by that man Ruy.’

  ‘She spends much of her time with you still. Does she not fear exposure?’

  ‘Doesn’t seem to. She lost all her money, so maybe the advantage of a few luxuries outweighs the risk of discovery.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Simon agreed.

  ‘That Ruy, though – he didn’t have to tell anyone. That was shameful. I think he was just jealous.’

  ‘Really? Why?’

  ‘I caught him sniffing around a few times. He was like a desperate hound after a bitch. All over eager. On the journey down here, he was after the maid, you know, the bloody bastard.’

  ‘Joana?’ Simon asked. He was trying to recall where he had heard that phrase before.

  ‘Yes. He was attracted to her, so I heard. That was what she thought, anyway. She told her mistress that too.’

  Simon nodded and poured the remainder of their wine. Then he smiled as he remembered where he had heard those words. ‘Why did you beat up Gregory? Were you worried that he might take your woman away from you?’

  ‘Good God, no,’ Parceval sighed. ‘No, I only wanted him to stop upsetting the Doña. It was silly, but the little shitbag seemed to pop up wherever she went. So I tapped him and told him to leave her alone. And he did.’

  ‘Probably because of the pain in his head,’ Simon said grimly.

  Parceval laughed unsympathetically. ‘It was a light tap, nothing more. He should count himself lucky.’

  ‘One thing more than anything else worries me about the girl’s death,’ Simon said. ‘It’s the money. The Doña didn’t keep it – she is plainly desperate for cash. Then there is Ruy. He appears to have little, as did Domingo. I wonder who else might have taken it?’

  ‘There was her betrothed, Ramón.’

  ‘It is possible – but not likely. He was a Knight of Santiago, after all.’

  ‘So? You think knights are any better than ordinary folk? Look at the French royal family! Three daughters, and two of them adulterers! Then there were the Templars, the most evil men ever born, and they were supposed to be religious. No, friend, you can’t trust to a man’s birth. The man I killed …’ He stopped momentarily, feeling his anger reaching up to strangle him as he allowed a vision of Hellin’s face to appear in his mind’s eye again, but then he rushed on again. ‘Yes. I killed him. You know why? He got me and some others drunk one night, and for sheer malice, he killed a boy and then had us gang-rape the girl. He thought it was great sport, very funny. I knew something was wrong – I was so drunk at the time, I didn’t join in. I don’t know. I was busy vomiting everywhere, and we left her there afterwards, but it was later, when I grew a little more sober, that I realised. Oh, God!’

  Simon waved to the waitress and poured more wine as Parceval’s eyes streamed with tears.

  ‘God in heaven! How could he do that, eh?’

  ‘It was your daughter?’ Simon asked in a hushed voice.

  Parceval nodded, sniffing. ‘And I killed him. What would you have done? I struck him down like a rabid dog. Like a demon. He was evil, though. He had already given me a mortal blow. And that, my friend,’ he choked, trying to recover himself, ‘was the most powerful man in Ypres at the time, a knight and son of a knight. So don’t tell me that a knight is incapable of rape and murder.’

  Munio returned late in the afternoon, and when he saw Simon sitting out in the front of the house, he gave one of his slow smiles.

  ‘When my wife told me that you were much better, I hardly dared to hope that you would be so greatly recovered,’ he said. ‘Are you sure that you are quite well enough to be up and in the open? Perhaps you should stay indoors, away from dangerous airs?’

  ‘No, I think that the open air is better for me, thank you,’ Simon said, but his mind was
elsewhere, and Munio could see his distraction.

  ‘My friend, are you still in pain?’ he asked solicitously.

  Simon’s brows rose in surprise. ‘Me? No, I’ve a few aches, but nothing more than that. Why do you ask?’

  ‘You seemed to be thinking of other things, and I wondered …’

  ‘Ah, no. It was just a conversation I held this afternoon with that strange fellow Parceval the Fleming.’

  ‘I have heard that he is keeping the Prioress,’ Munio said with a stiff air. ‘She appears to have forgotten her vows. It is strange, is it not? She spent so much time after arriving here trying to conceal her affair, and yet now she is living with that man so openly that even I, the Pesquisidor, have come to hear about it.’

  Simon had given the matter of Doña Stefanía and Parceval a great deal of thought. Alone in this city, lonely and adrift, he felt he understood the Doña’s feelings perfectly.

  ‘She arrived here with men, a maid, and money. All is gone. She must feel that her life has been turned upside-down. For a woman like her, what could be more natural than that she should turn to the only friend she has? She probably doesn’t fully realise how obvious her sins have become. Do you think the Bishop has heard of it?’

  ‘Not necessarily. He doesn’t trouble himself much about the town.’

  ‘Yet there must be a risk. It seems odd that she should have exposed herself to it. Why not merely go home: her Priory is not far, is it?’

  ‘No,’ Munio said. ‘But if all her money was stolen when her maid was killed …’

  ‘That is the other problem I keep returning to,’ Simon said. ‘Where is the money? What has happened to it? If a thief had stolen so much, I should expect to hear about it. Is there no man in the town who has been said to have spread libras around?’

  ‘There is nobody who has apparently received a marvellous gift, no,’ Munio said.

  ‘I do not understand it,’ Simon said, his face reverting to his scowl again. ‘Why should someone steal the money only to hide it away? Merely to keep it secret until it can be used and flaunted safely? That time may never come!’

  For a moment he felt as though someone with greater intelligence and less confusion was hammering at the back of his mind, but the sensation faded, and he resorted to glaring at the view as though daring it to continue to hide the truth from him.

  Baldwin jumped from the boat into the shallow sea with a grunt of relief. He turned to wave his gratitude, picked up his meagre pack, and started off up the loose sandy incline towards the houses.

  ‘I am beginning to feel that all I have done this year is travel,’ he muttered.

  ‘This year? Extraordinary. Myself, I feel as though travel is all I have been doing since my lord died.’

  ‘Aye, and before that,’ Paul added.

  Baldwin grinned at Sir Charles. The knight and his man still had their horses. A knight would not allow his horseflesh to be taken until he had lost absolutely everything else bar his sword. The mounts shivered and tossed their heads, glad to be free of the ship and the stinking reek from the hold. Patting Sir Charles’s horse on its neck, Baldwin said, ‘And yet you decided to come back here with me?’

  ‘It is difficult to deny that your companionship, as an Englishman, would be more attractive to me than …’

  ‘A stranger from Portugal?’

  ‘Afonso was no stranger,’ Sir Charles corrected him. ‘In fact, he saved my life once, and I had grown quite fond of him in the last few months. But when all is said and done, he is determined to be a monk and take the three vows. Now, forgive me for being a rather conventional knight, but I never saw the harm in wine, women and song; the three, sadly, are not to my friend Afonso’s taste.’

  ‘What will you do now?’

  Sir Charles’s expression did not seem to change, but a certain grimness came into his eyes. ‘I am an Englishman. I am unhappy away from my own lands. I think it is time that I rediscovered my own country. Perhaps I should return home.’

  Paul shot him a look. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Paul, where else can we go? We speak no other language apart from a smattering of French, and wherever we stop we appear to have enemies. At least in England we can comprehend the insults being thrown at us.’

  Baldwin had not asked them in whose service they had lived. During the four-day voyage up the coast, he had not felt the need. Their dialect and accents spoke of the North Country, and from the amount of time that they had been travelling, it was clear to him which magnate they must have served.

  ‘There are some in the West who would be glad of two strong men-at-arms, if you can find no other service to your taste,’ he said.

  ‘You interest me strangely,’ Sir Charles said, glancing down at his stained and worn tunic ruefully. ‘Any man who can introduce me to a lord who possesses a good tailor would earn my undying friendship. You could name your own price.’

  ‘I only have one question remaining now,’ Baldwin said. They had reached the grass, and now they climbed the steep pathway up the cliffs, leading their horses. The wind whipped about them and they must grip their hats to stop them from being snatched away in a gust. ‘Who killed that woman, and why?’

  ‘The maid?’ Sir Charles looked blank.

  ‘Herself.’

  ‘An odd death, that. I saw her body in the square when she was brought in and thought to myself, Where is the man who could do that!’

  ‘What on earth do you mean?’ Baldwin asked, stopping on the path.

  ‘Just this. If a man had raped her, he’d stab her or throttle her to silence her, but I’ve never seen anyone smash a woman’s face about like that before. If he found her attractive, he’d never wreck her like that, would he? No. I thought at the time – still do – that it was more likely that another woman killed her. Through jealousy, perhaps.’

  ‘She was raped,’ Baldwin pointed out somewhat caustically.

  ‘So? Some women have friends and companions who may be tempted,’ Sir Charles said lightly.

  Baldwin was about to comment when he stopped. Was it possible that there had been two people involved in Joana’s murder?

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Simon had no idea that Baldwin was almost home when he took to his bed that night. He lay back on the mattress, feeling the finer points of straw scratching at his back like tiny needles, and sighed contentedly. There was a pleasing odour of herbs, and the bed was a good quality one, with a rope-slung mattress; he felt enormously comfortable, and his body was soon overtaken by a delicious lassitude. Closing his eyes, he was aware of a wonderful sensation of slipping away, as though he was falling through the bed and down, to be swallowed up by the earth.

  No. There was something alarming about that. He opened his eyes again and stared up at the ceiling. It was made of bare poles of saplings, with the thatching looking as though it was haphazardly thrown on top and bound in place. Now, in the darkness, he reckoned it looked like a strange forest, in the same way that the idle mind can see faces in clouds on a summer’s day. Especially after a pint or two of strong cider.

  In a way, this ceiling reminded Simon of a wood, and then, when he viewed it slightly askance, he thought it was much like the trees leading up to the ford where he and Baldwin had found Joana’s body. There was the same large gap through which the ford itself could be seen, the same close-set meeting of branches where the girls hung up their drying. Beyond, he thought that the contours of the grasses in the roof were much like the rocks on which the washing was beaten and scrubbed. He could even imagine that the little hillock on the left side there, was the lumpy form of the dead body. On this side of the river.

  So the horses had been tied up there, and the two had crossed over the water and walked together, perhaps made love in the sunshine: Ramón and Joana. Later he had gone back to town, but she had remained there.

  Domingo had turned up after Ramón had left, had killed his cousin, beating her in a frenzy, and then taken her money. And raped her at s
ome point, of course. He must have taken the money back with him to the town – except there was no sign of it amongst his possessions. Unless he had used it to buy the relic. Relics could be expensive, after all. But no! Domingo was not that sort of man. So maybe he had stolen the relic too.

  Simon swore softly to himself, rose and padded out to the hall, grabbing a long shirt to cover himself with as he went. Munio and his wife had retired to their own quiet solar, leaving all the servants snoring or grunting here in the main hall. Simon donned his shirt and went out to the buttery, drawing off a pint or so of wine. He took it with him out to the cool garden and sat listening to the night’s creatures.

  Domingo had not taken the money. He couldn’t have. All Simon’s experience rejected the notion. Domingo was not the sort of thief to hide his good fortune under a bushel. If he had won a small fortune from the Doña, he would have spent it, especially on his men. But the men whom Baldwin and Munio had captured proclaimed their poverty, and there was nothing on Domingo or in his pockets. Ramón might have it, but Simon doubted it. If the man was honourable and intended joining another religious Order, he could hardly do so with money acquired by stealing from a Prioress and murdering a maid. No, that made no sense. It was possible that Baldwin’s other target, the Portuguese, could have taken it. In fact, that made more sense than any other possibility.

  Then his mind began to work with a sudden clarity. The assumption so far had been that this was an accidental murder, that the crime intended was blackmail, and that the killing of the maid was merely incidental to that; the maid’s attractiveness was simply the spur to the rape and murder, neither of which had been planned. But perhaps the murder of Joana was no accident after all. She was there because Doña Stefanía’s horse had been hidden by Domingo, her cousin. What if her death had been planned?

  That gave Simon much to consider for the rest of the night, but it was not until the eastern sky was lightening that his face cleared suddenly and his mouth dropped open as the other possibility occurred to him.