by Dan Davis
“And what makes you believe you will be admitted into their lands?”
“It is known that the tartars allow free passage to envoys,” Thomas said. “And we have already sent word and have heard that we would be welcomed.”
“Forgive my confusion,” I said. “But are you this envoy? Or is it the monk?”
Thomas pressed his lips together before replying. “Friar William wishes only to proselytise to the heathens. You see, he has heard from another monk that some among the tartars are Christians. In fact, he has heard how the son of the local prince is a follower of the Christ and so he wishes to go to them and beg to be allowed to preach amongst them and so bring more of the heathens the word of God.”
I could not help but scoff.
Thomas the Templar tilted his head. “I do not altogether disagree. I would sooner the tartars be scoured from the Earth and sent to Hell.” He took a breath. “But that is a base desire. The friar will be doing God’s work.”
“That may be,” I said. “But it may also be that God wants them all dead. Not baptized.”
The look on Thomas’ face suggested his own desires would align with God’s will if that were indeed the case. I was not curious as to why the old Templar would have strong feelings about the tartars. They were terrifying brutes. Savages who had emerged from nowhere, from the nothingness in the east decades ago. Wherever they met the armies and cities of Christendom, our brothers in Christ had been slaughtered, most terribly. Towns and cities reduced to rubble and the peoples slaughtered or enslaved.
The tartars had pulled back from conquest of all the kingdoms of Europe but no one I had spoken to really knew why. It is God’s will, they would say. A phrase which has ever been no more than an admission of profound ignorance.
“So,” I said, unwilling to let myself be deflected from my enquiry, “why are you accompanying the friar and his holy companions?”
“The King of France asked me to do so.” Thomas said no more.
King Louis of France. A king whose grand Crusade had ended in disaster. His army defeated, utterly, by the Egyptians and he himself captured. The great king who almost shit himself to death and had to pay a fortune to the enemies he had come to vanquish. King Louis now squatted in Acre, one of the last cities held by the Franks in the Holy Land.
“Are you not too great a man to be sent on such an errand?”
“I am no great man,” Thomas said, wrinkling his nose at the suggestion. “I am a humble knight in the service of God. No more. And this is no errand. My order protects pilgrims, does it not? I can think of no more appropriate duty than to escort these men in their own duty to spread the word of God to the heathen barbarians. And I was with the King on his crusade and he made a request of me, which I accepted. It is really no more than that.”
“Of course,” I said. It was a nonsense that he was spouting. A yard of yarn he was spinning. A Templar had no business heading into the wild north.
What his true intentions were, I had no idea. All I did know, was that he was a lying old bastard.
But then, so was I.
He had to ask it, finally. “And why,” Thomas said, “if I may ask, are you seeking to journey north of the Black Sea?”
I leaned back on my ancient chair, which creaked beneath me as though it were in pain. I drank my wine, looking across the table at the old man. I tried to think. Never my forte. “You want me to come with you. That much is clear. You would not be here, wasting your time with me, if you did not. But why?”
“I witnessed your victories on the tourney field today. I asked about who you were, I was surprised to discover this rumour that you wished to head north. And, truth be told, we would be safer with another knight, and his squire, to protect us.”
“And why ask me? There must be a thousand men-at-arms you could ask.”
“None of your obvious ability, nor your renown, and your stature. They tell me you fought in a number of tourneys. I must confess, I am surprised at your youth. In fact, I was told that you fought in the crusade of King Theobald and Richard of Cornwall but that was clearly a mistake, considering it has been fifteen years and you are scarcely old enough.”
I could not resist smiling at that. The first time I had fought the Saracens had been sixty years before.
Not that I could admit such a thing to the Templar. “I started young. And flattery will not deflect my question. I know of a dozen men more noteworthy than I. A hundred.” I wagged a finger at him, still smiling. “Allow me to guess. No one else that you asked before me would consider going into the lands of the tartars. Only a madman would do so.”
He returned my faint smile and leaned back. “Many men would have gladly joined us, in return for payment upon our return. Yet, I could never trust a man so desperate for silver that he would make such a journey.”
“Why, then, do you go?”
“The King of France asked me to.”
“You are a knight of the Order of the Temple. You are not subject to him.”
“I said that he asked me. He made a request, which was granted by the Grand Master of my order.”
“And, when you return to him, what will you ask for in return?”
“That is not your concern.”
I nodded. “And your other man? The French knight. What of him? What is his name?”
The Templar’s face clouded. “He was once highly favoured by King Louis. A favour he no longer holds.”
I smiled at that. “Must have done something bloody awful to get this for punishment.”
Instead of being offended, the Templar nodded slowly. “Nothing that could be proven. But have no doubt, Bertrand is a magnificent knight who won his name and fortune through the pursuit of war. Rich men surrendered to him on sight rather than cross swords with him.”
At the mention of the knight’s name, the realisation gripped me.
“What did you say his name, was?” I said, grasping the edge of the table. “Bertrand? Bertrand de Cardaillac? The coward I defeated on the field? He is one of yours?”
Thomas clenched his jaw. “We both travel with Friar William of Rubruck into the lands of the Tartars, yes.”
I laughed in disbelief.
“Did he send you here?” I said. “Is this all some ruse in order to avoid paying his forfeit to me?”
The Templar spread his hands in the air. “I swear, that is not the case. When you performed so admirably in the tourney, your intentions for travelling north were mentioned to me as a rumour. I come here in truth to ask if our ambitions perhaps aligned. We could each help the other, and travel together. That is all. He will still have to pay you his forfeit, it is not about that. Indeed, Bertrand does not know that I am here at all and if he did then he would be dismayed, to say the least. Also, he does not believe we need any additional men. And yet, he has no say over who joins us.”
“Sounds like more trouble than it is worth,” I said. “It seemed as though, even though he was so newly arrived here, he brought with him a reputation for arrogance.”
“Bertrand was well favoured at one time and won a number of victories in tourneys. I am surprised you have not heard of him.”
“I have not been to France for a long time.”
He smiled to himself at that. What he saw, sitting across from him, was a young man. I died when I was twenty-two years’ old. I had found that if I claimed to be older than thirty years, men would be surprised, or disbelieve me. Thomas assumed that, for me, a long time was a year or two. As much as five years, perhaps. A fair assessment, for young men often feel that way regarding the passage of their own years.
In truth, I had been born eighty-two years before. Older than the ageing knight before me, certainly.
“Say I was to join your company,” I said. “You have yourself and your squire. And you have another knight and his squire. How many men do you mean to take with you? It seems to me that your small party, as you call it, is not so small after all.”
“You and your own man
there would complete our company to my satisfaction.” He paused. “As soon as you reveal your reasons for seeking the tartars.”
What reasons would he believe? Not the whole truth, certainly. But he may accept a partial truth.
“There is a man,” I said. “An Englishman. His name is William. Once, he was a knight. A lord. But he committed murders. Then he fled. For quite some time now, I have been seeking his whereabouts. I have heard that a man named William is living amongst the Tartars. Is favoured by them. From what I know of this man, I believe these stories tell of William.”
Thomas’ face creased in concern. “Vengeance? You want to wreak vengeance on this man?”
I could sense my opportunity fading.
“Justice,” I said. “All I seek is justice.”
The Templar radiated disappointment. “In the lands of the tartars? A man who, if he exists, can only be there on the sufferance of the tartar lords? No, no. Impossible. You would risk our entire company with your act of vengeance, should you carry it out. You, sir, shall not be welcome in my company.”
I held up my hand until he allowed me to respond. “May I provide you with my intentions? I have heard how the tartars allow no foreign man through their lands, unless that man is a known trader or envoy, with express leave to travel. Any other man may be murdered with impunity, for the Tartars reason that such men can only be spying for their enemies. When I discover the location of this man William, I shall send word to him and to the local lord that I am present and that I wish to discuss his crimes. My request shall be a simple one. William has committed a number of specific crimes that I can list. If the tartars consent, I ask only for single combat with William. A trial by combat. If I win, or if I lose, there must be no revenge upon my fellow Christians and we should be allowed to leave, as freely as we arrived in that land.”
“And if the Tartar lords decline your proposal?”
I held my arms out to either side. “What could I possibly do but accept their decision? I am no Assassin, seeking to murder a man in plain sight. Nor would I murder a man in his bed. I would leave, and wait for the day that he leaves the protection of the tartars.”
“What did this man do to you, that would drive you to this… this risk?”
“He murdered my brother, my brother’s wife and their children,” I said. “And I swore an oath to see William brought to justice.”
And he killed my wife and he killed my wife’s son, who was also my dearest friend. William poisoned King John to death, as well as William’s own father. And he killed hundreds of others, men, women, children. From England to the Holy Land, he had bathed in the blood of an uncounted multitude.
My brother, William de Ferrers. The evilest man who walked the Earth. And no man but I had the strength to end his life.
Of course, I could say none of this to Thomas. The Templar would think me a madman.
“I have seen men drunk on vengeance before,” Thomas said, fixing me with his blue eyes.
“Justice,” I said, before finishing my cup of wine and carefully placing it down. “And I am not drunk on anything. But if you believe I will be a detriment to your company, then I accept your wisdom with a good heart. I shall make my own way. Perhaps we shall see each other there?”
The Templar drummed his fingers on the bone-dry table top. “So, you do wish to join us?”
He said no more and waited for me to make my decision.
“When Bertrand de Cardaillac sends me the value of his forfeit,” I said, “and swears that he will cause me no trouble on the journey, then I will join you.” Behind me, Eva coughed. “Myself and my squire.”
Thomas the Templar smiled and we agreed our terms.
The Sun was setting as he walked away between the tents on the field, heading back to the city.
“This is precisely what we wanted,” I said to Eva. “Official leave to travel into the Tartar lands, with the concealment and protection of a monk and his party.”
“Yes, indeed,” she said, standing by my side.
“So why do I feel as though I have just been swindled?”
She snorted. “How do you think they will feel when they meet me?”
***
It was another two weeks, on the Nones of May 1253, that the party was due to set off from Constantinople by ship. We would cross the Black Sea for Pontus, in the North across that great body of water.
Before we could set off, however, I had two hurdles to cross. The most important task was to convince Thomas and the others to accept a woman in their party. The other was to avoid coming to blows with Sir Bertrand and, if possible, establish a peaceable rapport with him.
“What is the meaning of this?” Thomas said, staring at Eva as she and I arrived together at the Neorian Harbour.
On the north side of the city, the harbour was the centre of trade for the Venetian, Pisan, and Genoese, all of whom hated the other with greater fervour than any had for the Saracens. They all traded in taking furs, amber, and slaves, to the east and bringing silks, spices, and jewellery back to the city, and from there into the Mediterranean. The harbour was heaving with cogs and galleys, a forest of masts sticking up toward the cerulean sky. Everywhere, men loaded and unloaded cargo and the shouted mix of Italian dialects, Greek and French was interspersed with barks of laughter and cries of warning. It stank of the salt sea, rotting fish, and the exotic mixture of spice and strange perfumes. Wealthy merchants in fine clothes stood in groups here and there, arguing with ship owners and ignoring the sweating men who toiled in the sun repairing the vessels or carrying heavy loads.
Thomas was garbed in the clean, white robe and red cross of his order, and had been engaged in a heated discussion with a member of the ship’s crew.
But he broke off the moment he clapped eyes on Eva. She was garbed much the same as I was. That is to say, in a tunic and wore a close-fitting cap with her dark hair tucked tight into it. A sword in its plain scabbard hung at her hip. With her breasts wrapped as tightly as she could stand, and her lithe, square-shouldered frame, she did not present an overly-ladylike figure and yet Thomas had spotted her at twenty paces. Then again, the Templars were supposed to be celibate so perhaps it was no wonder he had noticed.
“What is the meaning of this?” Thomas asked again.
“Thomas,” I said, pretending to be somewhat slow on the uptake, “we have come in good time for the tide, I take it?”
The knight gestured at Eva. “Why is this woman here?”
“Oh, this woman?” I asked, innocently. “She is coming with me.”
Colour drained from his skin. “She is not. Absolutely not. You will leave her here. By the docks, where she belongs.”
I sighed. “You may never speak to her like that again, Thomas. Do you understand? And she is certainly coming with us. Without her, I could not possibly join in your endeavour.”
He stared at me, then at Eva and back to me. Finally, he spoke to the crewman without taking his eyes off me. “If you please, Guido, could you board the ship and ask Friar William to join me here? Soon as you can.”
The crew member stepped back, bobbed his head and hurried off.
Thomas seemed stunned, so I spoke into the silence.
“May I introduce my wife, Eva? Eva, this is Thomas, of the Templars.” The old knight stared at me in confusion. “Thomas, Eva is my wife and my squire. She squires for me in battle. She attends to my every whim, both on and off the battlefield.” I risked a glance at Eva and saw that she was irritated by my minor exaggeration where her obedience was concerned.
“You have lost your wits,” Thomas said, after a long pause. He quite rudely ignored my wife. “You cannot take a woman into the lands of Tartary. Did you take a blow to the head in that tourney? Or were you never blessed with wits in the first instance?”
“I do not—”
“A woman?” Thomas cut me off. “A woman? As a squire? A woman squire?”
“I will grant that it is somewhat of an unusual—”
Eva and I had known that it would be difficult to persuade Thomas to accept. In our time serving in various mercenary forces in Spain and the Holy Land in the previous decades, Eva had acted as my squire. Often, we pretended she was a young man and most of those who noticed that she was not, chose to say nothing. Indeed, it often became a shared secret within the company we served with. Sometimes, the men adopted her and protected her. They would share in jests at the expense of our superiors and delighted in assisting us in the deception. But someone important would find out. I would anger someone, generate some resentment or suspicion, and she would be turned in and no matter the good will I had built up, we would invariably be required to flee.
Fleeing from Thomas the Templar and Friar William when we were in the lands of the Tartars would not be possible. A lone man with a woman crossing the grasslands of the north, and no permission or reason to travel, would be a death sentence. And so, we had to drop any pretence from the start. By arriving to the ship as late as was possible, we hoped to give them little time to make a decision. Take us or leave us, I would say.
It was a slim chance, but our best chance. If it failed, I would have to become a merchant, as originally planned. I did not want that. One may as well attempt to make a horse into a duck.
“She is my wife,” I said, turning to Eva.
She nodded at Thomas. “It is the truth. I am also his squire.” Eva glanced at me. “And I can fight.”
Thomas scoffed. “I think you had best take your leave,” he said, addressing me alone.
Perhaps I should have considered who Thomas was before taking such a direct approach. He was no poverty-stricken man-at-arms, signing up to fight for one lord in a local land dispute with another in Castile. Thomas was a senior knight of the Order of the Temple, a man who had taken a vow of celibacy. Perhaps taken the vow as a young man. I had the impression that Thomas was a man who tended to keep the vows that he took and so it was likely that he knew very little of women. Perhaps had never known a woman. And what we do not know, we often fear.