by DAVID B. COE
A few souls prayed in rough wooden pews, but otherwise the sanctuary was empty.
Landry and the others knelt at the doorway, whispered prayers, and crossed themselves before standing and making their way toward the chancel.
As they did, a priest emerged from the north transept. Short and rotund, he wore a coarse white robe, belted with a length of rope. His hair was dark and tonsured. Seeing the Templars, he stopped and crossed himself.
Godfrey placed a hand on Draper’s shoulder and raised his chin in the priest’s direction.
Draper addressed the man in his language. The priest smiled, nodded, and answered in what sounded like the same tongue. Then he said, “Be welcome, brothers,” his accent warm and rich.
“You speak French.”
“Some, yes. I am Father Dawid. How can we be of service?”
The easing of Godfrey’s fears seemed to lift years from his face. “I am Godfrey. With me are Draper, Landry, and Tancrede. We need food, Father. And healing herbs. For ourselves, for our fellow Templars, and for the men, women, and one child who sail with us.”
“Of course. And do you have need of a healer?”
“Brother Draper has tended their wounds,” he said, indicating the Turcopole. “But we have been short of food since we set sail some weeks ago.”
“You were at Acre?”
Godfrey straightened, clearly taken aback by the question. “Word of Acre’s fall has reached you?”
“Yes, though only within the past day or two.”
“We were there. We were driven out by the Mamluks, and only by the grace of God did we escape with our lives. We’ve been at sea ever since. Were it not for a small bit of food that we secured before being chased from Cyprus, and the kindness of a sea captain who happened upon us a few days ago, we would have starved.”
“You were fortunate to have encountered such a captain. Most who sail these seas are pirates who care not for the well-being of others.”
Godfrey merely smiled and said, “God has been kind.”
“How many are you in all?”
“We are twenty-two.”
Concern creased his brow for just an instant. “That is many. Our means are limited.”
“You will be repaid and then some by the Templars,” Godfrey said. “You have my word on this.”
“Thank you. We’ll do what we can. For tonight, we can offer you some coin to spend in our marketplace. Provisioning you for longer than that will be more difficult. Can you give us until morning?”
“Of course. Thank you, Father.”
Dawid stepped to the north transept and vanished into a small chamber. He returned moments later, bearing a small purse that rang with coins when he handed it to Godfrey.
“It is not much, but it should suffice for this evening.”
“Again, our thanks.”
“Do you require shelter for tonight?”
“Thank you, but we can sleep on our ship.” Godfrey paused, then asked, “Does our Order still hold the fortress in Bagras?”
Another frown crossed Father Dawid’s face. “They do.”
“You hesitate. Why?”
“I know what I am told. No more.”
“And what is that?”
“That they hold it, but only just. Their numbers are few, and they are harried constantly by bands of mountain brigands, and, sometimes, by companies of Saracens.”
“Then they will welcome us,” Tancrede said.
“If you reach them. The road to Bagras is said to be very bad. Brigands prey on those who attempt any crossing of the mountains.”
Landry couldn’t suppress a smile. “I mean no disrespect, Father, but we are Templars. Highwaymen do not concern us.”
“They should, brother. They roam in bands of twenty or thirty, and though they may lack your skill with a blade, they are rough, capable men. You take them lightly at your own risk.”
Landry thought to say more, but Godfrey silenced him with a small gesture.
“Thank you, Father,” the commander said. “We are grateful for your aid and your counsel.”
“Of course. Will you pray with me before you take your leave?”
Godfrey’s smile this time was genuine and open. “We would be honored.”
The Templars followed Dawid to the altar, where they knelt in prayer while the priest offered a blessing. When he had finished, they rose and left the church. Gawain and the others awaited them outside. Godfrey, Landry, and their companions descended the stairs and, as Gawain and the other knights fell in step with them, started back through the town in the direction of the marketplace. Along the way, Godfrey related all that Father Dawid had told them.
“Brigands on the road do not frighten me,” Gawain said. “And if the Templars at Bagras are under siege, they will welcome our arrival all the more.”
“Landry and I said much the same,” Tancrede told him.
“I don’t worry about brigands any more than you do,” Godfrey said, sounding impatient. “If it was only us, I would set out for Bagras as soon as we have provisions. But we have a responsibility to those in our care. I don’t want them on the road with us. Not if what Father Dawid told us is true.”
“You spoke of parting ways with them,” Landry said.
“That is my intention. But I won’t leave them here – or anywhere else, for that matter – against their will. If they don’t wish to remain here, in this town, we may have to sail farther.”
They came to the market a short time later and, using the coin from Father Dawid, purchased food and wine for the evening’s meal. Then, as the sun set over Armenian Bay, they took their supplies to the Tern. Some of their passengers had returned already, Simon and Adelina among them. Others, though, had not yet boarded the ship.
* * *
He kept to himself, conversing with no one, hiding from them all, though he remained in plain sight. It worked.
They thought him broken. They dismissed him the way they would someone insensate. Even the dark-haired Templar, who clearly had taken it upon himself to protect the Jew and his brat, appeared to have lost interest in Egan. Perhaps he no longer thought him a threat to any of them. Good. Let him believe this. He would realize his error soon enough. All of them would.
He shuffled off the ship behind the others, slowed by his injuries, and fueled by them as well. The others spread through the town, scattering like bugs. He made a point of not following the Jews. Instead, he limped after one of the old women. She didn’t notice.
Soon enough, he fell behind even her, his ribs aching. Silently, he cursed the captain’s daughter.
He continued through the market without stopping, searching for a place where the less reputable might gather. He found it on the southern edge of the town, along a stretch of shoreline that stank of dead fish, rotting seaweed, and human waste.
Men sat on a pier long neglected and worn gray by years of wind, sun, and rain. The vessels tied to its wooden bitts appeared as ill-used as the wharf. So did the men. Their clothes were tattered, their beards untended, their hair – those who had it – unruly. They passed a flask among themselves, cackling at jokes Egan could not hear.
Long before he was close enough to speak with them, they took notice of him, pointing and elbowing one another. Their rough laughter drifted over the strand, causing him to falter, to wonder if he had been foolish to come here.
He halted, looked back the way he had come.
The men called to him, beckoned him on with waves and waggles of their fingers. He couldn’t make out their words, and it occurred to him that they might not even understand him. One of the men held up the flask and pointed to it. More laughter greeted this.
Egan walked on. He had made his choice.
As he drew near, the men quieted and marked his approach. Two of them drew knives. Egan raised his hands and walked on, hoping they would understand that he did not want trouble.
He stepped onto the wharf, avoiding a space where a plank had once been. One
of the men said something in a language he didn’t know. His heart sank. He shook his head.
“French,” he said.
The men traded looks. Most of them appeared perplexed by this. But one dipped his chin. He was tall, thin, with black hair that fell in a swoop across his brow. A wine-colored birthmark marred the skin surrounding one dark eye.
“A little,” he said, his accent as thick as fog.
Egan blew out a breath.
Another of the men said something. His friends chuckled.
“He asks what was done to make you… make you look like that. Your face. The cuts. The—” He brushed at the skin near his eyes and nose on his own face. “The dark marks.”
He wasn’t sure how to answer. If he told them a woman had beaten him, they would mock him until midnight. And if he revealed what he had done, he would get nowhere with them. The answer, when at last it came to him, struck him as uncommonly clever.
“Jews did this. You know that word? Jews, yes?”
The man’s expression darkened and he nodded before telling his companions what Egan had said.
“Do you know the Knights Templar?” Egan asked them.
The man went still. “Yes,” he said, his mouth barely moving.
Another of his friends asked a question, but he put the man off with a raised hand. “What of Templars?”
“I have been voyaging with them. On a small ship. The Gray Tern.” He broke off, unsure if the man understood him. “We are on a boat, yes?”
“The Gray Tern. Yes. Go on.”
Egan wet his lips. “It is a small ship. Slow. There are only a few of the Templars. Nine.” He held up nine fingers.
The man gestured for him to continue.
“The ship can be taken. It is weak. If you can find someone who will take it. Someone who—”
“Pirates.”
Egan smiled. “Yes, pirates.”
The man stood, and Egan fell back a step. He opened his hands. “No worry. Not hurt you. But take you somewhere. They will want to hear from you. Yes?”
A question from one of the others made the man turn. He said something, shook his head. His friend repeated the question, and the man cut him off with a sharp motion. But he pointed to one of the others. This one was also tall with closely shorn hair.
The second man stood. The first walked past Egan and off the wharf.
“Come,” he said.
Egan hobbled after him. The second man fell in behind him.
They followed the shoreline away from the town. By now, the sun had started to set. Egan did not wish to be with these men and whomever they were on their way to see after dark, but he saw no way to put this encounter off until morning without raising the men’s suspicions. He walked after the man with the birthmark, his ribs aching, and he glanced repeatedly to the west, unnerved by the sun’s rapid descent. He was conscious of the second man behind him, but he refused to look back and reveal how frightened he was.
“Where from you come here?” the first man asked over his shoulder.
Egan wasn’t certain he wanted to answer. The more he considered what he was doing, the greater his doubts. He halted.
“It’s getting dark,” he said.
Both men stopped as well. The one with the birthmark frowned, and shook his head.
“The sun.” He pointed. “It is setting.” He lowered his hand.
“Yes. So?”
“I—I need to get back. It will be dark.”
“Not far now,” Birthmark said. He didn’t wait for a reply, but walked on.
Egan remained where he was until the man behind him said something. He didn’t understand the words, but the harsh tone made his meaning plain enough. When Egan chanced a peek at this second man, he saw that he had drawn his blade. Egan resumed walking.
The distance proved greater than Birthmark had suggested. With every step Egan took on the uneven sand, the ache in his legs grew. The sun slipped below the horizon and as darkness fell, he despaired of ever finding his way back to the town.
At last, mercifully, they rounded a small bend in the shoreline, which opened onto another shallow inlet. A ship – a galley much like the Melitta, though even larger – was anchored offshore. Several skiffs rested on the sand. Beyond them, men sat around fires, talking, eating, drinking. Egan counted at least fifty. A cluster of women stood nearby, and as he watched, a man approached them, spoke to one woman, and placed something in her hand. She pocketed whatever it was – a coin? – took him by the hand, and led him away from the fires along the contours of the inlet.
Birthmark halted and turned. Looking past Egan to his companion, he spoke in their tongue. Once again, Egan did not understand most of what he heard, though he thought the man uttered the word “Templar.” The second man offered no response, but when the first man finished speaking, he gave a curt reply and continued toward the gathering on the beach.
“We wait here,” Birthmark said to Egan. “They interested, they come. If not…” He shrugged.
The uncertainty of this bothered him, but he could think of nothing to say, beyond asking what the man meant. And he wasn’t completely certain he wanted an answer to that question. He waited, trying to follow the progress of the second man as he spoke initially to men arrayed around the nearest of the fires, and then moved on, deeper into the gathering. Eventually, Egan lost track of him.
In time, however, a band of several men left the fires and started toward where they stood. Egan’s mouth went dry.
There appeared to be eight of them in all, including the man who had accompanied Egan here. Two carried torches. The man who walked at the fore, beside Birthmark’s companion, was half a foot shorter than both the men who had accompanied Egan. Yet, something about him made him appear more formidable. He was broader, more powerfully built. But he also carried himself with a swagger that the other two lacked. Egan sensed that the other men – those following – answered to this one. He had thick, dark hair, a hooked nose, and dark eyes that put Egan in mind of a hawk. Gold rings flashed on several of his fingers, and a long, curved blade hung from his belt.
This man said something to Birthmark as he neared them. Birthmark nodded a response.
The man turned an appraising gaze on Egan.
“I am Gaspar,” he said, his accent pronounced, but less opaque than Birthmark’s. “And you are?”
“My name is Egan.”
“Egan,” he repeated. “You are French?”
“Yes.”
“You are journeying with Templar Knights?”
He glanced at Birthmark and his friend. “Didn’t they already tell you all of this?”
“I wish to hear it from you. Where you sailed from, how you came to be here.”
He wanted to ask for something to drink. Wine. Or better, liquor. “We were at Acre,” he said.
“We heard of the siege there. Is that when you left? When the city fell?”
He swallowed, nodded. He then proceeded to relate all that had befallen the Tern since its departure from Acre: the failed landing in Cyprus, the storm, the encounter with Killias’s ship.
“You say she is called the Melitta?”
“That’s right. Her captain calls her a ship of fortune.”
Gaspar thinned a smile. “I am certain he does. They are pirates. Skilled ones at that, though not so powerful as to be a danger.” He motioned for Egan to go on.
“There is little more to tell. They escorted us here. The Templars are buying provisions.” Likely they already had, and were back on the ship, safe and comfortable. This he kept to himself.
“They will sail from here? With the Melitta?”
“I don’t know what they intend. They might sail. They also spoke of a Templar fortress in the mountains.”
“In Bagras.”
“That’s the name, yes.”
“There are risks to either choice,” Gaspar said, as much to himself as to Egan. A second later, he eyed Egan again. “You would like us to strike at them. On th
e sea or on the road. That is your purpose in being here, yes?”
His pulse quickened. “Yes. There are only nine of them. They shouldn’t be difficult to defeat. You can kill the knights and take the people who are with them. Do with them what you will.”
“Templars are always difficult to defeat, no matter how many there are. But you are correct: we can take their ship. First, though, I want to know why you do this.”
Egan felt his cheeks burn, and he turned his head to the side, wishing he could hide from the glow of the torches.
“Your bruises. They came from the Templars?”
“Not precisely,” he said, his voice dropping.
“From who then? Why?”
“Does it matter?”
Gaspar spread his hands. “You are betraying them. Or that is how it seems. Perhaps this is a trap, a way of luring us into danger. So yes, it matters a good deal. We will do nothing until you answer.”
He kept his gaze averted. “There are Jews on our ship. A man and his daughter. She—she claimed that I did something. The others believed her, and the Templars punished me. When she repeated her tale to those on the Melitta, one of them beat me. I want revenge.”
“The girl lied?”
Egan cursed himself for hesitating. He knew Gaspar would notice.
“You did something to this girl? Forced yourself on her, perhaps?”
His eyes snapped to the man’s face. “Certainly not. I am no animal.”
“Then what did you do?”
Again, his face blazed. “We were hungry. All of us. I—I took food. And I blamed her.”
“Ah,” the man said, with a wry grin and knowing nod. He said something in a different language. The men standing with them laughed. “I believe I understand,” he said in French. “Humiliation does this to us. You suffered doubly. Once on your ship, and again on the Melitta. Is that right?”