by Mike Ashley
The swarthy little man was sweating. “That was all a mistake. I was nowhere near Cheapside that night.”
“Or so you convinced your master, which is why he vouched for you. However, that’s nothing to the matter. You were in the chapel during Compline. How long did you stay?”
Barnet swore roundly. “I keep telling you I wasn’t there.”
“Just as you weren’t in Cheapside when another murder took place?”
“That’s right. Why won’t you believe me?”
“Perhaps because I’m not as trusting as your late master. You don’t have him to protect you now, to help you conceal the truth. Well, I mean to have the truth. Since you won’t tell me let me suggest something to you. You were spying, keeping a watch on the Sieur de Benville and the Sieur de Vaux. You wanted to know exactly where they were at all times so that you could let your friends know when the coast was clear to break into the treasure wagon.”
“NO! No, Brother! That’s not right! I’ll swear it on all the holy relics in Christendom. I wasn’t watching out for no thieves. I was . . .”
“Yes?”
“Nothing!” He gave me a glance of surly defiance.
I had to break him. I grabbed him by the shoulder and forced him to face me “I command you, as you value your immortal soul, tell me why you were in the chapel and what you saw.”
“I saw nothing!” I could feel the fear trembling through his body. “Yes, I was there – just for a few minutes . . . Because my master told me to keep watch.”
“To keep watch? What for?”
“He’d been troubled with dreams of late. He thought someone was out to kill him. Revenge, or some such nonsense.”
“Perhaps it wasn’t such nonsense.”
“Oh, yes it was. Just a crazy notion. Anyway, just to humour him I followed him from time to time. That’s why I was in the chapel. But I reckoned no one was going to do anything to him in there, so I left. I was exhausted after all that travelling. I went straight to bed.”
“You slept in your master’s chamber?”
“Yes on a mattress by the door.”
“So that you would wake and attend to him when he came in?”
“That’s right. Only he didn’t come in that night.”
“When did you realize he hadn’t returned?”
“Not till morning. I told you, I was worn out. I slept like a drunk dog.”
I had one more test for the servant. I whisked the dagger out of my sleeve. “Have you seen this before?”
He jumped back, caught his heel on the low cloister wall and sprawled on the grass. I stood over him, holding the stiletto’s point close to his chin. “Well?”
Now he was really frightened. “Is that . . .?”
“Yes. Do you recognise it? Did it belong to your master?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Take a good look.” I held out the narrow blade, now cleaned of blood, for his inspection. “Castillian workmanship. The sort of thing that’s very common north of the Pytenees where the de Benville estates were. You’re sure you’ve never seen anything like it among the possessions of your master – or perhaps his brother?”
“Yes, that’s possible.” He accepted the lifeline readily. “Philip de Benville likes that sort of thing. He’s got quite a collection. Why don’t you ask him about it?”
At that I let the fellow go. He was obviously lying but I would get no more out of him at that point and what he had revealed called for careful thought.
The next day de Vaux ordered the return to London. Intensive enquiries in the area had yielded no information about the missing gold or the thieves, a fact which, in itself, I found interesting. Leyburn left a few of his men behind to continue their search but he returned with the main party to accept responsibility for the loss and to face the wrath of the Master. The hot weather continued and we made a long rest in the deep shade of some woodland on Barham Down. I took the opportunity for a quiet talk with the captain. Or, rather, it would be truer to say that he took the opportunity. I was sitting by myself meditating with the aid of The Interrogation of John – perfectly safe amidst that illiterate company – when he sauntered up and crouched beside me.
“Well, Brother,” he began, “these Templars have placed a heavy burden on you. Are you making any progress?”
I closed my book and looked him in the face. What I saw was an honest, straightforward soldier, a youngish man loyal to simple, easily formulated ideals. “One or two interesting facts have come to light. I think de Benville’s man holds the key to the business. He witnessed the crime; I’m sure of it but he is very scared and at the moment I can’t get him to tell all he knows.”
“No problem there, Brother. I’ll get the truth out of him for you.”
I shook my head. “Thank you, my son, but my experience of torture – and I have had some in my time – has taught me that the victims say what their persecutors want to hear rather than what is true. Tell me, where did you raise your troop of soldiers?”
“Most of them are my father’s tenants from our estates near Maidstone.”
“Which we shall pass close by on our journey.”
“Yes, tomorrow.”
“So you know well the perpetrators of this foul murder?”
The question shocked him. “Murder? You’re not suggesting that my men had anything to do with that? All I can tell you is that the three who have disappeared were unknown to me until a few days ago. They were from London. They were men who had served the King here and in Gascony and had suffered for it. They were near-destitute and I took pity on them – the more fool I. They are blackguards. They deserve to hang and hang they will when I track them down. But for robbery, not murder.”
“The two crimes must be connected, do you not think? It seems to me that de Benville must have come across the thieves in the act of removing the treasure. They overpowered him, killed him and carried his body to the chapel in the hope that we would not connect them with so unspeakably foul and cowardly a deed.”
“But there would have been evidence of the crime in the courtyard – blood, signs of a struggle.”
“Carefully covered up by the murderers. They had time to brush dust over any telltale marks.”
Leyburn stood up and leaned against an ash bole. “A neat theory, Brother, but I’m afraid it’s wrong. I’ve questioned my men very thoroughly, especially the wooden-headed idiot I left on duty. You remember the lad, Brother? I was reprimanding him for dozing at his post the other evening. His story is that three of his colleagues went to sit with him in the middle of the night. They brought wine but he refused it, knowing the trouble he would be in if I caught him with the stink of it on his breath. When they found that they could not befuddle him they knocked him senseless, tied him up and threw him in the wagon. I found him there in the morning. He would have heard if anyone had come up to challenge the thieves.”
“How so? By his own admission he was unconscious.” The captain fell unhappily silent and I pressed home my advantage. “No, it must be the thieves who committed this more infamous crime. How did you make their acquaintance? The Master will want all the details we can provide. Rest assured that the long arm of the Templars will reach out to these miscreants and their accomplices wherever they are. The vengeance of the poor knights is legendary.”
“I still think you’re wrong, Brother, but the one you should talk to is Philip de Benville. It was he who recommended those men to me – doubtless some of his drinking cronies.”
It was to be the following day before I could put the captain’s suggestion into effect. The bereaved brother was hard to approach. He rode alone in morose silence and swore gruffly at anyone who attempted to bear him company. In Canterbury, where we passed the night, he disappeared among the city’s stews and our departure in the morning was delayed while men were sent in search of him. We had been an hour on the road when I drew my horse alongside his. His sins had left their mark on the wretched knight. He looked
dreadful – bleary-eyed and dishevelled – and smelled worse. I apologized for intruding on his grief but pointed out that my only interest was to discover his brother’s killer. I took his grunt as permission to ask my questions.
First of all I showed him the knife. Did he recognize it, I inquired.
He shrugged. “I’ve seen several like it.”
“But not in England, I think.”
“No, more like the ones they use in Languedoc and Provence.”
“Where you fought the Cathar heretics?”
He nodded. “Where our lands were.”
“A beautiful country. I know it well. The swelling hills; the abundant vineyards; the sun; the wind from the mountains.”
“Beautiful, indeed, Brother.” I noticed that tears had come to his eyes.
“What a sacrifice you made for the Order, giving up such fair estates, estates won at great cost fighting the enemies of the Church.”
“Simon’s sacrifice, not mine.”
“You did not approve of him granting away the patrimony?”
De Benville shrugged. “He was the elder brother. He had no sons.”
“Still, he might have left some land for you. As you said to me the other day, you were not designed to be a poor knight. It’s a vocation. Simon’s but not yours.”
For the first time he turned to me, maudlin gratitude in his eyes. “You’re a good man, Brother. You try to understand. But you can’t know what it’s like to be a prisoner, shackled to someone else’s piety.”
“I understand that a man may come to hate the one who fastens fetters upon him. I have seen it often: the boy put to a life of religion by devout parents who have no concept of the burden they are piling on him. With every penance, every paternoster, every recitation of the holy office resentment grows and slowly love turns to hatred.” The tears were now streaming down de Benville’s grimy cheeks. I changed the subject abruptly. “These villains who have made off with the gold – were they the murderers, do you think?”
“It’s what everyone supposes.”
“You knew them, I believe – in London, before we set out on this terrible venture?”
He scowled suddenly. “Who told you that?”
“Captain Leyburn mentioned that you had recommended them to him.”
“The man’s a liar!” de Benville shouted. “Leyburn came to me. I remember it well – it was in the White Lion at Queenhythe, next to the Salt Wharf. He was having difficulty hiring men. Any who had experience of arms were away fighting for de Montfort or the Prince of Wales. I told him that the only ‘soldiers’ he was likely to find along the waterfront were ruffians and fugitives. That was the beginning and end of my advice to him. Leyburn’s the one who employed thieves and murderers and he can’t shrug the blame off on to me. If we don’t track down the men who stabbed my brother to death I’ll require vengeance at their paymaster’s hands, as he well knows.”
“Oh, we shall find the murderer,” I said, confidently.
De Benville looked at me sharply. “You sound very sure of yourself, Brother.”
I allowed myself a smile. “Not of myself; of the one who witnessed the crime.”
“Someone saw? Who?” he demanded eagerly.
“Your brother’s servant. He’s too frightened to tell at the moment but I shall have the truth out of him before we reach London.”
It was soon after our midday rest that John Barnet went missing. He was observed eating with some of the soldiers at the roadside and someone swore that they had seen him mount and set forth at the rear of the train. As we approached the village of Sittingbourne I turned and went in search of him. The column had become well spaced out as it wound through thick woodland and the servant was not to be found. In response to my earnest inquiries men told me that they had not seen him for an hour or more. I went urgently to de Vaux, told him that I feared that Barnet had fled and that it was vital that I talk to him. In response to my pleading our leader ordered a group of Leyburn’s men to ride back along our way in search of the missing man.
When they rejoined the column towards evening they came bearing Barnet’s body tied across the saddle of his own horse. We were traversing a stretch of open heathland and the entire party gathered in a circle as the soldiers told their mournful tale. They had first come across Barnet’s mare tethered close to the spot where we had rested. Probing further among the trees they discovered the corpse in a clump of bracken. There was no mystery about how the poor man had met his violent end: a deep gash across his throat had all but severed head from neck.
It would be foolish to claim that this second death deeply shocked the company. Barnet was a mere servant and no one had had much to do with him. It was only when I pointed out my conviction that Barnet had been murdered by one of our own number because he had vital evidence about de Benville’s assassination that de Vaux ordered anyone who knew anything to speak. The appeal was fruitless and, as we rode on the leader mournfully suggested, “I suppose we shall now never know what happened to poor Simon.”
“On the contrary,” I assured him. “I can now make my report to the Master. But I beg you to say nothing of this to a living soul. It is vital that the murderer should believe that my investigation has been frustrated.”
The outcome of all this can be briefly narrated. When I had reconstructed the crimes for the Master he placed Philip de Benville in custody and within days personally conducted the knight’s trial on a charge of fratricide. The prisoner, of course, denied the crime with fervent oaths but his own character was the most effective prosecutor. His brethren knew well his mode of life, his dislike of the cloister, his resentment against his brother. Leyburn repeated the story of de Benville recommending London ruffians for service on the expedition. I explained how I had, regrettably, told the younger brother that John Barnet was a witness to the crime, not, at that moment, knowing myself the identity of the murderer. Thus, unwittingly, I had doomed the hapless servant, for de Benville had wasted no time in silencing him. The Templar jury did not hesitate in reaching their verdict. They concluded that Philip de Benville had plotted with some of his city cronies to kill his brother and make off with sufficient money to enable him to live in that style which he believed was his due. His own absence in the fleshpots of Dover was meant to distance him from the crimes. To the very last, on the scaffold, the convicted man protested his innocence but no one was moved by his tearful entreaties. The Master was relieved to be able to bring the painful sequence of event to a swift conclusion and also to rid the Temple of a very unsatisfactory member. And he had other reasons for rapidly veiling the affair at Dover, as only I, his confessor, later discovered.
Thus was I the instrument of God’s vengeance on the de Benvilles. Not a day has passed during the last twenty-six years when I have not recalled to mind the invigorating events of the summer of 1265. But still more vivid is the memory of 1249. Of a terrified fifteen-year-old boy watching through a tear in the hayloft thatch as the de Benvilles and their armed men rode through the village brandishing their holy banners, crying “Death to the Cathars!,” “Death to the heretics!,” and hacking down indiscriminately men, women, children and even animals before setting their torches to our homes and barns and crops.
I was the only survivor, somehow crawling out of the blazing building to safety. I think I knew then, that very day, that I had been spared for a work of importance to the Father of Spirits. My total devotion to him had already been recognized. Months before I had received the Consolamentum, admitting me to the number of the Perfect, the small band of Cathar holy ones enabled by divine grace to live here on earth a life of purity. The only approximation to that life that I could find after our brotherhood had been all but destroyed was among the Franciscans, the best of whom embrace a pale sort of piety.
I did not deliberately seek out the agents of Satan who had butchered my family and our peace-loving friends in Carcassonne but when we were brought together in London I knew why and I only had to await my opp
ortunity. When I learned that both the brothers were making a journey to the Holy Land I had to make sure that I accompanied them. Still I had conceived no plan; I attended only on divine prompting.
In the Franciscan priory at Dover the moment came, the moment for which I had waited most of my life. There was nothing of high art about my scheme. I simply lingered in the cloister till the chapel was empty, fortifying myself with the words of Psalm 139:
Wilt thou not slay the wicked, O God
for they speak unrighteously against thee?
Do I not hate them, O Lord, that hate thee?
Yea, I hate them right sore
even as though they were mine enemies.
Then I slipped inside and struck down Simon de Benville who was still kneeling at prayer. Having, as I thought, fulfilled my destiny I was fully prepared for death. I believed that I would that very night be freed from my mortal body. When I woke still in the flesh it was in my mind to confess to Geoffrey de Vaux but the theft of the treasure threw everything into confusion. I was still praying for guidance when the Master’s instructions came ordering me to investigate my own actions!
What followed was play acting – solemnly asking all those questions! But through this foolish mummery I learned what I still had to do. John Barnet had obviously, as I half suspected, remained lurking in the chapel to guard his master. I was glad to hear that Simon de Benville had been given a premonition of his end. Barnet must have seen everything and was terrified that I might realize this. I let all my “suspects” know that the serving man had vital information. I suppose it occurred to me that one of them might silence Barnet because of something he might have discovered about the theft. In the end it was I who had to conceal myself in the woodland and waylay him on the pretext of further discussion. It was all made absurdly easy. Barnet was deliberately hanging back, with the obvious intention of running away. When I confronted him he became almost incoherent with terror. He still insisted that he had left the chapel before his master’s death. By that time it mattered nothing whether or not he was telling the truth. His murder was a part of my plan, a perfect plan, the plan of a Perfect. Thus God avenged himself for the massacre of his people. He continues to punish the perfidious Templars. This very day news has arrived of the fall of Acre and their expulsion from the Holy Land. But the time of their final visitation is yet to come. May I be spared to see it.