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

  ‘Aye. Well, are we goin’ to join in or just sit and watch all the long day?’

  With that, the fair man gave a high, giggling laugh, and then suddenly he drew his sword, whirled it about his head a few times, and slapped it sharply on his horse’s rump. In an instant he was off, racing down the hill, his sword flashing in the sunshine like a torch in the wind, hair streaming behind him. The man-at-arms clicked his tongue, but he had already dropped the reins of the packhorses, and his rounsey was moving to follow the fair-haired knight.

  The warrior with the pockmarked face muttered a curse under his breath, spat, and then raked his spurs along his mount’s flanks. Before the other two could get far, he was level with them, his mount straining at the gallop, and Gregory could hear his hoarse roar even over the thundering of hooves.

  By now, the band of malfechores had scattered the pilgrims, and two had stopped to take up bundles where they had been dropped. As Gregory watched, he saw a sudden gout of blood, and saw the ‘King’ spinning, a rider raising his sword for a second hack. Suddenly a great slab of the King’s head seemed to separate from the rest of his body, a third of his face and skull falling away to lie on his shoulder, exposing the pink and grey horror of his brain. There was a fine, pumping mist of red, and then he fell, thrashing, to the ground. His attacker lifted his sword in triumph, but then the three were on them.

  First was the madly shrieking fairhead, who galloped full tilt at a group of four who were circling a pilgrim and taunting him. With a sharp sweep of his blade, he took the head and a shoulder entire from one man, rammed the horse of a second, bludgeoning the rider from his seat, and then stabbed a third through the throat; the dour man-at-arms came a little way after him, ducking below an ill-judged thrust like a tumbler, and stabbing viciously once, upwards beneath his opponent’s chin, so that his sword appeared through the top of his victim’s skull, then withdrawing it swiftly lest it become snagged as the corpse slumped and toppled from the saddle. Finally there was the apelike warrior, who gave a bull-like bellow like a berserker of old, and charged straight at the thickest mass of malfechores with a sword in one hand and a long-handled knife in his other. He rode with his reins dangling, gripping his mount with his thighs alone, guiding the horse by sheer force of will, apparently, or so Gregory thought, as his two blades flashed wildly, already red with the blood of his enemies. Gregory saw one man stabbed and bludgeoned from his horse, only to be trampled. Unconsciously, he had clenched his right fist, and was following the blows when he realised what he was doing and shamefacedly unfurled his fingers.

  The battle was over in moments. Suddenly the evil-doers were bested, and leaving nine of their friends dead on the field, the seven survivors fled.

  Last to go was their leader – the man with the curious set to his head. He screamed as the fair-haired warrior slashed at a young rider, and a thick jet of blood burst from the young man’s leg. The boy went white, and suddenly slumped, like a bullock struck with a spike in the skull, slowly toppling from the saddle, while the fair man hacked at him as though in a fury.

  The leader shrieked like a demented woman, and might have ridden back into the midst of the carnage, but his mount was unnerved by the smells and noises of death, and with wildly rolling eyes, it turned and fled the field, cantering after the others.

  Screaming with fury at seeing this new quarry escape, the fair man spurred his horse after them, but Pockface cast a look of exasperation at the heavens, sheathed both weapons, and set off after him, catching up with him and apparently remonstrating, throwing a hand back as though to indicate that their responsibility was to the wounded, not to killing any more. Gradually the two men slowed, and the fair man turned his horse’s head back to the battlefield, although his body language spoke of his reluctance.

  Gregory himself now hurried down the incline to see if he could help any of the wounded, and soon he was on his knees praying for the hurt and the dead, walking from one to another. It took some while and it wasn’t until he had eased the pain of the worst wounded and given some solace to those who would die, that he could rest. Then, when he glanced up, he saw the fair man standing nearby, a slight smile on his face.

  ‘My lord,’ Gregory stuttered, ‘I … I don’t know how to thank …’

  ‘Pray, do not mention it, friend,’ the man smiled. ‘It is the duty of all to protect and serve pilgrims.’

  ‘You fought well,’ Gregory observed, gazing about him in some astonishment. He felt dazed. The action had been so swift, the rout of the felons so absolute, that until now he had scarcely had time to take stock. Now he recalled the ferocious battle with a twinge of jealousy. It was a long time since he had witnessed – let alone experienced – such a magnificent charge.

  Near his knee was a hand, next to the long-bladed knife it had held, while its young owner lay a short distance away, his eyes glazed like those of a dead fish. Gregory would have felt sorry for him, but this was not one of the pilgrims: this was one of the malfechores.

  A little farther away lay a dead pilgrim, bearing an obscene abdominal wound that had been augmented by a vicious slash across his throat. As Gregory himself knew, corpses would often receive three or even four blows after death. As lines of men met in the clash of arms, those in the front would fall and be trampled, and as the battle rolled forward over them, the wounded – yes, and the already dead – would be stabbed or struck by the second line of their enemies, and the third, just to ensure that they wouldn’t suddenly spring up and attack from behind. Swift and brutal, it was the way of things, but in this case it looked unnecessarily cruel. The fellow couldn’t have survived with that terrible wound – no one could. There was no need to make sure of him by cutting his throat. He was no soldier, merely a pilgrim.

  Gregory could remember him. A rather dim-looking fellow, but always cheery enough. He had no boots, but never complained, just gave an occasional suck-in of breath when a thorn stabbed his foot, or a stone gouged a hole in his heel. A simple, happy boy, he didn’t deserve to die like this.

  They were evil devils, these malfechores. All too often a single malcontent gathered a gang about him and set out on an orgy of violence before their brief period of fear and domination was done. Just like that hunchback, Gregory thought. He glanced about the field and saw no sign of the man. Typical, he felt, that the leader should flee, leaving his companions to die on the field.

  The three strangers had saved their lives, and Gregory was deeply grateful, yet his attention returned to the corpse of the slender young robber. He would have liked to see this boy grow to maturity, lose his desire for blood, lose his urge to rob the poor pilgrims who passed by here. Gregory had seen too much of death and killing.

  ‘Are we to get on, then?’ It was Pockface again. He was riding about the field, staring at the bodies of the dead and wounded with a ferocious scowl, but Gregory felt sure that it was not an indication of anger, simply the way his face looked at rest. Where others might appear happy, or vacuous, this man would only ever look full of ire.

  ‘I think we should await Paul’s return, Dom Afonso,’ said his fair-haired comrade. ‘He has only been gone a little while.’

  Afonso grunted, then swung himself down from the saddle and stood gazing about with his eyes narrowed. Gregory suddenly realised that the man was afflicted with poor sight.

  ‘Come, Afonso. It will not be long before Paul is back again. Then we can go and find an inn.’

  ‘Not soon enough for me.’

  His accent was curious, a hard-sounding tone that held a mix of different tongues. Gregory couldn’t place it. For now, he was content to know that these men were safe.

  ‘Mmm. Well, while we wait …’ Afonso said, after a moment’s pause, and walked around the bodies. While Gregory watched, he rolled over the body of one pilgrim and opened his scrip. He stared at the few coins in his palm. ‘Hardly worth the effort, Charles.’

  ‘Every little is worth the effort,’ the fair man grinned as Afonso made his way
to the next body. ‘One should never leave money and goods lying around, in case another robber may happen upon it and enrich himself. That would never do!’

  The chuckle in his voice made Gregory glance at him. Although the man called Charles had a fixed smile on his face, there was something in his eyes that made Gregory shiver.

  He had the eyes of a man with no soul. The eyes of a mercenary.

  Never had he known such horror! Hidden, Domingo watched the men moving among the bodies, his heart pounding, the blood roaring in his ears.

  He and his men had waited here for more than a day, just to attack the band of pilgrims, and this group had appeared out of nowhere and destroyed his little force. They had sprung upon him and his men like wolves upon a flock, and he had been forced to dart sideways, leaving the lad there in the mêlée. He’d thought his boy would escape, would follow him as he pelted off away from the fight; no one stayed near a battle like that, not when there were knights joining in.

  Now, more than half of his men were dead, all because of the accursed three who had appeared so suddenly.

  Domingo rolled away and sat with his head in his hands, sobbing bitterly. Among the dead was his own son, Sancho. It was all his fault; he had taken on this attack, and he had lost. If his horse had obeyed his commands, he could have ridden back and maybe saved his boy, even at the expense of his own life. It was a trade he would gladly have made, but it was not to be.

  He had enough men left to charge again, but they wouldn’t. That much he could see in their eyes. As a fighting band, they were destroyed. It was no good even thinking about using them again. Now Domingo would have to go back and tell her that he had failed her.

  The thought wasn’t pleasant, but it was better than sitting here, staring out over the corpse of his son.

  ‘I shall kill them. I swear it!’ he vowed.

  Chapter One

  On arrival in Compostela, Baldwin knew immediately that coming here on pilgrimage had been the right thing to do.

  Just the weather was balm to his soul. The sky was larger here in Spain. He had noticed it before – it wasn’t as immense as Portugal’s, but definitely vaster than poor England’s. The plants looked greener here, the trees more robust, the buildings more comfortable. It was all because of the climate, which was warm and reliable. In the summer there was sun, in the winter there was cool. Rain fell in season – but it was always warm rain. In Devonshire, Baldwin knew that the rain was always chill, being blown in off the sea.

  He snuffed the air like a dog. There were the scents of rosemary, thyme and other herbs from the markets; the warm fug of many people crammed together in the heat, the smell of roasting stonework and heated timbers. Good God, he said to himself, how could I have lived without all this for so long? It was good to have returned to his old clothing. Today he was clad in white again, with a fine linen material that accentuated his body underneath. After the horror of the mad monk at Gidleigh, during which episode he had been forced to kill one man in order to defend another, he felt as though he needed every little bit of assistance that he could win, because he felt dirty. There was a deep, ingrained stain on his soul, because the man he had defended was more guilty than the attacker could ever have been.

  A nasty matter, that one. Bitter and devastating. He craved forgiveness, some solace for his unwitting homicide, and hoped that here in Santiago’s great Cathedral he might find it.

  The massive entranceway, the Pórtico de la Gloria, was enough to distract him and he looked up at it in awe. It was magnificent – daunting. Over a hundred years old now, it had been carved between 1168 and 1188, and the stonework was richly decorated with figures of prophets and apostles, each of them welcoming the pilgrims. Saint James himself was placed sitting prominently above the central column as though watching over all the poor folk as they reached this, his memorial.

  ‘A bit ornate,’ muttered his companion.

  ‘Different, that is all,’ Baldwin said, refusing to argue. In his opinion there was a grandeur about this entrance that showed how well men could honour God when they put their minds to it.

  Simon Puttock glanced up and his face twisted doubtfully. This experience was wholly new to him, and he wasn’t sure that he was enjoying it. He had been keen to come here at first, because it seemed a great adventure. Simon had never travelled abroad before. True, he was well travelled compared with almost everyone he knew, but this was the first time he had been somewhere where all the people spoke a different language. It made him feel very exposed, as though he stood out wherever he was. Like a pilgrim, perhaps, but as he told himself, he felt more like a blasted target, walking about on a field waiting for the archers to loose their arrows. It was as though everyone was pointing at him, gauging the distance before firing, and it made him jumpy and unsettled.

  Seeing Simon jerk his head to one side, staring suspiciously at a pilgrim jostling him, Baldwin had to laugh for sheer joy. It was hard not to feel delight here, among so many people thronging the church. Their joint pleasure and relief on reaching their goal was enough to make the tiredness fall away from Baldwin like a man shedding a mantle.

  Not so his friend, he knew. Simon, a tall man in his middle thirties, had the ruddy complexion of one who spent many hours a week on horseback in all weathers, but now he looked pinched with nervousness. Riding had given him his solid strength, the strong muscles in his legs and at his throat, but good food and a liking for good ale had fattened his belly and made his jowls grow over the years. The extensive travel of the last days had reduced his paunch, although it had not improved his temperament. That had grown more fiery with the weather as they had approached this southern city.

  Baldwin was sure that Simon’s moodiness stemmed from his feeling out of his depth. For the first time, Simon Puttock, Bailiff of Lydford, was aware of his own impotence. Here his voice would not summon officers to do his bidding; he had no power. Instead, almost anyone who understood the local language was better off than he, and this made him fretful, as though it reflected upon his lack of education. But he had been educated by the Canons of Crediton Church in Devon; he could speak, read and write Latin, and could understand much French, but he could make nothing of the language here in Galicia in the far northwest part of the Kingdom of Castile.

  His dark-grey eyes still held a measure of the stolid commonsense and piercing intelligence that Baldwin had noticed when they had first met all those years ago in 1316, but here the sparkle was dimmed, because Simon felt lost. Baldwin could easily comprehend his friend’s state of mind. He himself had been aware of that curious sense of ‘otherness’ which afflicts the traveller on occasion.

  Not today, though. Today Baldwin was determined to know only pleasure. He had never before been to the great city of Saint James, and wished to make the most of his visit. More than that, he also wanted Simon to enjoy himself.

  ‘Look at all these people! Hundreds of them,’ Simon muttered.

  ‘Yes. This is a popular place for pilgrims like us.’

  ‘And for knights.’

  Baldwin followed his gaze and saw several men who must surely be knights. One, wearing a light cloth tunic of slightly faded crimson, was clearly a secular man-at-arms. His shock of fair hair shone brightly in the sunshine and he met Simon’s gaze with reciprocal interest, as though he was gauging Simon’s ability as a fighter. A short distance away, stood another man wearing a clean white tunic with a red cross on his shoulder. It was at him that Simon stared.

  ‘He is a Knight of Santiago,’ Baldwin informed him. ‘A religious Order devoted to protecting pilgrims.’

  ‘The cross looks odd,’ Simon noted, then looked up to see that the shoulder’s owner was glaring at him, as though affronted that a mere pilgrim should dare peer so insultingly. He was a strong, heavy-set brute to Simon’s mind, with prognathous features and swarthy skin.

  ‘It’s made to look like a cross above, but the lower limb is a sword’s blade,’ Baldwin explained. ‘They call it the espad
a.’

  ‘They don’t like people staring at them,’ Simon noted.

  ‘Knight freiles, that is, “Brothers”, are as arrogant as you would expect, when you bear in mind that they are a cross between chivalric, honourably born knights and clerics. They feel that they have all right and might on their side. You know the motto of the Knights of Santiago? It is: Rubet ensis sanguine Arabum – may the sword be red with the blood of Arabs.’

  ‘That miserable bugger looks as if he’d not mind any man’s blood on his sword,’ Simon said, adding thoughtfully, ‘although perhaps that’s because of his guilt.’

  ‘Guilt? Why do you say that?’

  ‘Look at him. He’s with those women. One’s a nun, from the look of her, but the other is too bawdily dressed for that. I wouldn’t mind betting …’ Then Simon recalled where he was, glanced up at Saint James’s welcoming features high above him and cleared his throat.

  Baldwin, seeing his brief confusion, chuckled. ‘She may be his wife.’

  ‘What? He’s a Knight Brother!’

  ‘The Order of Saint James allows their freiles to be married,’ Baldwin said, but with a note of disapproval in his voice. He personally believed that religious Orders should all conform to the same principles of poverty, obedience and chastity.

  ‘At least I can admire his taste,’ Simon mused. ‘That young woman is a delight to the eyes.’

  ‘And I think the good knight has noted your admiration,’ Baldwin warned.

  They both turned away. To cause anger in a strange city was foolish, and anyone who did so by upsetting a man protecting his woman was a fool.