The Templar's Penance: (Knights Templar 15) Read online

  It was Simon who spoke. ‘It is this murder. We wondered whether we should trouble you, but it seemed only fair to tell you.’

  Munio jerked upright. ‘You know about the beggar?’

  Baldwin smiled. ‘No, what beggar?’

  ‘Only an old man. He was killed today not far from the square. Poor old devil. He was a loner in life and died the same way.’

  ‘A shame,’ Baldwin said.

  ‘He was so noble-looking, too.’

  A chill hand seemed to settle over Baldwin’s heart. ‘You can’t mean Matthew?’

  ‘You knew him?’

  ‘An older man with a grey beard? Narrow features, pale-grey eyes, had been fair-haired once, and had a deeply lined face with dark, sunburned skin?’

  ‘There was only the one man begging called Matthew that I know of.’

  Baldwin felt strange and a little dizzy. It had been many years since he had last encountered a brother Templar, and to have met Matthew only yesterday and learn today that he was dead, was a terrible shock, outrageous: it could have been torn from a Greek tragedy. It was as though the very last bond with his past had been sliced through and he must now sail on an uncharted sea without any aid to navigate. In a way, he felt he could glimpse the mournful loss that Matthew himself must have experienced over these last few years. Baldwin felt so bereft that even the memories of his wife and daughter failed to touch him.

  Simon could see Baldwin’s distress, and quickly broke in to change the subject. ‘One thing I never asked you, señor, is how long you lived in Oxford? You speak English so very well.’

  Munio set his head to one side deprecatingly. ‘I spent seven years in Oxford, when my father sought to have me educated as a philosopher, but then he lost his money and I had to make my own way in the world. I persuaded a merchant in the city to let me learn how he plied his trade, and some while later I managed to set myself up as a merchant in my own right. I came back here with my wife because it was the city I grew up in. I have always loved it.’

  ‘Your wife is not from here?’ Simon asked.

  ‘No,’ she laughed. ‘I come from Oxford.’

  Simon was astonished. To find a man who spoke English was pleasing in a foreign land, even if they had first met while the man held some suspicions of him, but then to learn that this beautiful woman was also English was a delight. ‘I can understand how you speak my language so well, having so charming a tutor,’ he said to Munio.

  Munio gave a grin. ‘When a man has a wife nagging at him, he learns her language soon enough.’

  ‘I don’t nag,’ she scolded, but with a trickle of laughter in her tone, and she glanced gratefully at Simon.

  Baldwin had recovered sufficiently to pour the wine that had arrived at last. ‘This Matthew – how did he die?’

  ‘It was murder,’ Munio said, and his eyes lost the humour which had flared in them for a moment. ‘A youth heard a scream and turned to see him fall. A beggarwoman was a little way behind him and must have witnessed the incident, but I haven’t met her yet. The youth saw a man run at Matthew, pause, and then run off. When he reached the beggar, he was dead, a wound in his breast. It must have punctured his heart.’

  ‘It takes only an inch or so of steel to stop the heart,’ Baldwin said inconsequentially. ‘Did he see the man who stabbed Matthew?’

  ‘No. The man was facing away the whole time. The lad said it could have been anyone. There are so many pilgrims, and they are changing every day, so it would have been a miracle if he had recognised the man.’

  ‘What of the beggarwoman? Did she recognise him?’

  ‘I haven’t spoken to her yet. I was seeking her when your messenger told me you wanted to talk. I was very busy. My apologies. I didn’t intend to be rude, but I think my response might have seemed so.’

  Baldwin gave a flick of the hand as though discarding any possible upset. ‘You had much to deal with.’

  ‘What was it you wanted to tell me?’

  Simon saw that Baldwin wasn’t quite recovered from his shock on hearing of Matthew’s death, so he began to tell Munio of their conversation with Doña Stefanía and Don Ruy.

  ‘So there are two other men from Don Ruy’s band of pilgrims with whom we should speak,’ Munio summarised. ‘This peasant who ravished the Prioress, and the priestly man, Frey Ramón, wherever he might be.’

  ‘There is a third man, of course,’ Simon pointed out. ‘The felon. We know Don Ruy saw him. Perhaps he had something to do with all this! It is too much of a coincidence that he should take back the horse and then be seen leaving the city. He made sure Joana went to pay the blackmailer, and then followed her.’

  ‘Yes,’ Baldwin said, trying to set his mind to the problem again. It was hard. All he could see was the careworn face of Matthew as he had seen him yesterday. It was only one day ago, and that made it so much more difficult to believe that the man was truly dead. There was an emptiness in his soul. It had been fine to learn that his old friend was alive, to see a comrade from the days of his youth, and now that last friend was dead. ‘I shall find him,’ he growled.

  ‘Who?’ Simon asked, but then he looked at Baldwin’s face and understood.

  ‘Munio, could I see Matthew’s body? I wish to say farewell to an old friend.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  Doña Stefanía got up from her kneeling posture and made her way out of the chapel. This was her third visit here today, and she would spend as much time here as she could over the next days. She had to make sure that her decision was right.

  It had been hard, deciding to steal the thing, but better that than seeing the priory collapse. That was her overriding concern, the survival of the priory. It was not a task made any easier by her nuns. Usually, a Prioress should be able to hope for the assistance of her Sisters, but in the convent of Vigo there were too many arguments as her nuns vied for power. It was frustrating, but there was little peace in her home. That was part of the reason why she had acquired this thing.

  There was a tingling in her breast at the thought. She had borrowed the relic from Orthez to help her convent and it had worked, bringing in many people from about the lands. Vigo was some way south of Compostela, and had always suffered from a lack of pilgrims, but with rumours of the relic’s miracles carefully disseminated by Doña Stefanía, suddenly folk made the short journey from Compostela down to her convent. People who had never heard of the place before had suddenly started flocking there.

  When the demand came for the relic to be returned, she hadn’t believed it at first. However, the request was confirmed by the Bishop of Compostela, and it was impossible to ignore. When she had asked to borrow the sacred relic, she had said she would want it for some years, and the church at Orthez had apparently had no objection. But now, after seeing how much profit Doña Stefanía had made from the relic, they had apparently changed their minds. One of the priests had passed by her convent, and when he saw how many travellers were stopping there, he obviously took back highly favourable reports about the success of her venture. After that, it took but a few days for the church authorities, especially that pathetic old cretin Sebastián, to decide to demand the return of their relic, Saint Peter’s finger bone.

  They should have been more polite. As it was, they were rude and discourteous, and that got her goat immediately. She swore that she wouldn’t return the thing to them, no matter what they demanded. In fact, she screwed up the parchment and hurled it into the fire. Damn them and their legalistic rubbish! They had forgotten that Doña Stefanía was the daughter of a lord, once wife to an important knight, or they wouldn’t have dared write in so curt a manner.

  She had been white-faced with fury, almost incoherent with rage when Joana had found her. Joana, the angel, had come in with a tray when Doña Stefanía had just consigned it to the flames, and soothed her with that calmness and calculation which were so much a part of her.

  ‘They demand the return of their relic? Then you must return it.’

 
; ‘I shall not! The thing was promised to us for years. Just because they can see that we’re better suited to attracting pilgrims, that doesn’t mean that they should have it back! It’s why the thing should stay with us in Vigo. It’s worth a fortune to us here.’

  ‘It is said that the Saint himself can decide where his relics stay,’ Joana said thoughtfully as she poured wine and passed the goblet to Doña Stefanía. ‘Perhaps the Saint would prefer to remain here with us, in the quieter atmosphere of the convent. That might be why he has favoured us with so many pilgrims when he did not treat Orthez with such generosity.’

  Doña Stefanía felt her mouth drop open. Of course there were many stories of churches and cathedrals stealing each others’ relics, and then claiming that they possessed them by right of the Saint’s own wishes – for if the Saint did not wish to be there, he or she could miraculously move him- or herself to another location – but it hadn’t occurred to Doña Stefanía to use that argument. Now, though, as Joana crossed the floor and placed the jug on the cupboard, she considered the idea and began to see its merits.

  ‘They’ll soon beg for the Bishop to return it if we refuse.’

  ‘Oh, I think the best thing would be to go to Orthez and give them back their relic in their box,’ Joana said, ‘but then come back to Compostela and ask the Bishop what he would advise.’

  ‘That’s no good! If I deliver it to them, we’ll never get it back.’

  Joana ignored her scathing tones. ‘They won’t have it back. You will give them the box, but with another small bone in it. We shall keep the original bone here, in our own little casket. We can have one made specially for it. Then, when you come home from Orthez, you can stop at the Bishop’s palace and ask him for his support. All you need do is point out that the Saint has made his will clear by showing you how to deceive the men of Orthez. Surely no Bishop would go against the plain will of the Saint himself? And then you can come back here to our little convent, and arrange a feast in honour of the Saint who has so honoured our little chapel.’

  The scheme was breathtaking in its simple beauty – and in its purity of revenge against Orthez – but Doña Stefanía felt a certain irritation that the suggestion had come from her maid and not from herself.

  There were plenty of precedents for such action, after all. There were stories of an English church which had lent a relic to a French one, but who then had demanded its return. The French sent back a relic, but later, when they were trying to tempt back more pilgrims, they let it be known that in fact they had sent back an imitation and had kept the original. The pilgrims dried up in the English church and began to drift towards the French church again, but then the whole story grew more confusing when the English declared that they had never sent the genuine relic in the first place. Knowing that their French brothers were unreliable in sending back loaned relics, the English had sent a copy themselves. The French had stolen a fake.

  This could have been true. Certainly Doña Stefanía knew perfectly well that the French and English clergy were about as unfriendly as their secular lords; all were at daggers drawn over the English territories like Aquitaine, which the French King had confiscated only thirty years before. Since then there had been continual disputes in the English lands. French churches also vied with each other for possession of relics. Vézelay had the relics of Saint Marie Madeleine, but Aix-en-Provence claimed that these had been stolen from them.

  Yes, it was a bold plan, Doña Stefanía acknowledged. More, if they could pull it off, the Bishop himself would have to approve. Otherwise, he was overruling the Saint, and that would never do.

  In less than an hour, Doña Stefanía and Joana had sketched out the plan. It was much as Joana had originally suggested, but with some minor amendments. First, Doña Stefanía was not prepared to let the genuine relic out of her sight, so she had asked for this little box to be made, and now she carried it with her all the time; Joana had also suggested that there should be a small guard to protect the ‘relic’ which they would deliver to Orthez. That was why Domingo and his men had gone with them, travelling up through Castile and Navarre to Aragon and then over the passes. The smug, fat priests in Orthez had been slimily grateful, thanking her with such obvious contempt, that it had been difficult not to laugh at them. They were so obnoxious, with their clear disregard for her and her convent, and so delighted to have their bauble back, that she longed to tell them that she had exchanged their relic for an old piece of pig’s bone which she had found in the rushes on the floor of her refectory and left in manure for a week to stain it a rich, dark colour.

  Joana and she had collapsed in tears when they left the town, but not for the reasons which the fat clerics would have expected or understood.

  In Doña Stefanía’s purse nestled the piece of the Saint’s finger still in its little casket. It was there now, and she pulled it out to look at it once more. The gold of the cross gleamed in the candlelight and she kissed it reverently. This was the saving of her convent.

  It was late. She must return to her room, for she didn’t wish to tempt Providence by going abroad alone in the dark, unlit streets. The place was full of pilgrims, which meant that there were bound to be cutpurses and other vagabonds wandering about. Pilgrims were easy prey to the nightwalkers of a large city. Walking out through the great door, she went down a side street, and had just turned up towards the square when a low voice almost made her heart stop.

  ‘My lady.’

  Her hand rose to her breast, and she felt suddenly light-headed with fear, but relief washed over her when she saw that it was only the grim figure of Domingo. He had been behind her, and now he overtook her.

  ‘I wondered who it was! Foolish fellow, leave me alone,’ she commanded. ‘I am going to my room.’

  ‘I lost my son for you, lady,’ Domingo snarled. ‘Don’t patronise me.’

  ‘I didn’t tell you to have him killed,’ she snapped. ‘If you were a better leader, he would be alive yet. Now leave me before someone sees us. I don’t want anyone to know that you are with me – understand?’

  ‘My men need food and drink but we haven’t any money.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Lady, you brought us here. It’s your fault we starve. We need some money.’

  ‘What happened to the sum I paid you? I gave you plenty of gold before we left Vigo.’

  ‘That was enough for us to live on for a month, but we’ve been travelling for fifty days now. It took twenty-five days for us to get to Orthez, and another twenty-four to come here. What do you expect us to live on – grass?’

  ‘I don’t have any more cash with me now.’

  ‘You have a full purse there, lady.’

  ‘There is little in it,’ she shot out, a hand covering it.

  Domingo was tired of her commands and penny-pinching. He had lost companions to Sir Charles and Dom Afonso, including his own poor lad, and now he needed food, and was desperate for wine. This woman, who had hired him and his men for the whole journey, hadn’t warned it would take so long, and now she was prepared to see them go hungry. With a quick sense of the injustice of her actions, he growled deep in his throat, then grabbed her sleeve and drew her to him. She gave an incoherent squeak of fear, and then his hand was on her purse.

  It was impossible! He couldn’t! ‘No! Don’t touch that! There’s nothing in it!’ she said and flailed at him with her fists.

  ‘Do you really think I’m that stupid that I don’t know what you carry about in your purse?’ he sneered. ‘I know what you took out and stared at each night, Doña Stefanía. Me and my men, we guarded you all the way up here, even though you treated us like shit! If you want to have our protection still, you can pay for it.’

  ‘There is only the relic, you fool,’ she hissed. ‘Touch that, try to steal that, and the Saint will see you die in the most foul and degrading manner!’

  He stared at her a moment, and she was sure she’d won. Her argument carried the authority of the Church, and she rose t
o her full height. Clearly the threat of a Saint’s enmity was enough to cow even the dimmest churl. ‘Now leave me, you idiot. I shall be returning to Vigo soon, and I want you and your men to be ready to come with me.’

  ‘You want us to come too?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I see. You call me a fool, Doña, but you stand there like a stuffed tunic talking about us coming to guard you on the way back to Vigo, but you’re prepared to see us suffer until you’re ready to go? Think again. You have enough in that purse to buy us all food and drink for a year, don’t you?’

  ‘Don’t be so stupid!’ she said, but then she realised that he had drawn his little knife from his belt, and she saw the wicked gleam of steel before her eyes. She slumped with terror. Never before had anyone drawn a dagger on her. It was terrible. She herself had hired this felon, and now she was suffering the consequences; he would kill her! Her mouth fell open but she couldn’t even scream, her terror was so complete.

  ‘Shut up, bitch!’ Domingo hissed. The blade moved, she snapped her eyes shut, and felt the hideous dragging at her belly. Then he released her. Drained, her legs collapsed beneath her and she fell to the floor.

  ‘Christ’s Bones!’ Parceval muttered as he saw the lady slump down. A dark shape stood over her – a large, threatening figure – and as Parceval shouted and began to run towards her, he saw the evil glint of a blade. He immediately slowed his pace.

  In the past he had killed, yes, but he wasn’t a very competent fighter. When he killed Hellin van Coye, he hadn’t worried about Hellin’s ability to strike back; he’d made sure of that by knifing him in the back when the man was walking away. Not the most honourable assault, perhaps, but Parceval wanted revenge, not a tribute for courage and honour.

  This man looked big and Parceval didn’t want to be brought before God quite yet. There was too much to enjoy on earth before that. He shouted again, moving his arms threateningly, but not moving forward. To his relief he saw the thief bolt, and when he was sure that he was safe, Parceval went on to the body.