The Templar's Penance: (Knights Templar 15) Page 5

  He had thought the man was a mere outlaw, a felon set on stealing the few belongings of the pilgrims on their way to Compostela, and when the attack had failed and the survivors had been routed, he fully expected the leader to have bolted like the cowardly scum he must be, and he had; he had fled the field without standing by his men.

  Gregory observed the two as closely as a man some hundred feet away could, and felt sure that the robber glanced about him as though checking that they were unobserved, and then, he thought, they passed their hands together as though touching – a clandestine signal of affection, he assumed at first, but then he looked at the man’s hunched back and twisted neck, and his air of utter misery, and revised his opinion.

  As he watched, he saw the foul-looking scoundrel stow something away in his purse. What could it be? A token of her affection?

  The idea made him wince. His wife was of noble birth, and was painfully aware of the barriers between serfs and those who were freeborn. She would have looked down upon a squire, from her elevated position, let alone upon a miserable cur like this one. No, it couldn’t be a sign of her love. Perhaps he was her servant … but no. He was not steward to a nunnery, not from the look of him, not unless affairs in Castile had changed greatly since his last visit.

  But it could, he reckoned, be a payment.

  There was some irony there. It was just his luck that he should have been close to being attacked by one of his ex-wife’s own servants.

  But that made no sense! Why should his wife pay a felonious son of a bastard Breton pirate and a Southwark whore money? It made no sense at all.

  For Caterina, seeing her brother Domingo was a relief. He was a figure who had always loomed large in her life, up until her marriage, and spotting him in the square with his head held at that curious angle – the result of a fall from a pony when he was very young – made her heart lurch as though this in itself was a sign that her luck was about to change.

  ‘Domingo! Domingo!’ she called, but he paid her no heed.

  That was odd. Domingo, always a man to have a finger thrust up to the knuckle in any pies available, was habitually cautious, always keeping a weather eye open for any officials. It was most strange to see him apparently deaf to her voice. Not like him at all.

  Caterina pushed her way through the crowds until she was a great deal nearer, her forcefulness earning her curses and one hack on the ankle. At last she got close to him, just in time to see how he was ordered away by the Lady Prioress.

  Caterina had heard much about her, of course. Doña Stefanía de Villamor was spoken of in hushed voices by Caterina’s family, mainly because she had enjoyed a rather sordid history, being a married woman who gave up the world for a place in the convent. Not everyone liked her. They thought her to be a grasping woman, remote and unfriendly, with her eyes firmly fixed upon whatever pleasures she could win for herself on this earth, rather than the gains she would make in heaven.

  That, so far as Caterina was concerned, was fine. She too had lost faith in heaven. All she wanted was a little peace here on earth.

  ‘Domingo!’ she called again, this time a little more peremptorily as he made to pass by her and go back out into the square.

  His face was black with ingrained dirt, sunburn and a kind of grim misery that was so palpable, she felt his look strike her like a blow.

  ‘Go away, peasant!’ he snarled.

  ‘Domingo, it’s me – Caterina.’

  ‘It can’t be,’ he declared, scowling at her closely.

  ‘You look terrible,’ she said gently. ‘What is the matter?’

  ‘My son. He’s dead.’

  ‘Sancho?’ She listened aghast as he told her of the ambush on the pilgrims. ‘But why did you attack them in the first place?’

  He wouldn’t meet her eye. ‘It was for a good reason,’ he said evasively. ‘But the bastards cut my poor Sancho down as if he was nothing more than a calf. Just struck him down like a calf.’

  She opened her arms to him, and he went to her, his sister, the widow who begged in black in the great square at the foot of the Cathedral. The sister who was dead to him.

  When the two men had finished their prayers at the shrine of Saint James, they made their way out through the Cathedral to the northern square.

  Simon was mentally drained after visiting the Saint’s shrine and kissing the relics. The incense used had affected him like a strong wine, making him warm and comfortable, yet the rest of the experience had been unsettling. Although the words spoken by the priests were the same Latin ones he knew and expected, the intonation and accents were strangely different, as though being pronounced by children or untutored priests who were pretending a greater understanding than they truly possessed. To think that they should be guardians of such a magnificent cathedral!

  And it was truly magnificent. He absorbed as much as he could, walking about the place after they had given their thanks for their safe arrival, drinking in the pictures and symbols all about. At the south portico he saw the Virgin Mary and he stared at her with adoration, admiring the way that the artist had depicted her with her child in Bethlehem, the three kings nearby, offering their gifts, and finally the angel warning them to leave and not return to Herod because of his evil plan.

  There were other pictures, too. Simon’s judicial soul rather enjoyed the scene painted near The Temptation of Christ. It showed The Woman Caught in Adultery. In her hand she held the head of her lover, which her husband had hacked from the body, ordering her to kiss it twice a day if she loved the man so much, even though it was putrid and rotten. Of course he found the punishment repugnant, but Simon privately wondered if there weren’t some women who could benefit from such a salutary lesson in justice. He’d seen some during his lifetime who were little better than whores. With that thought came the reflection that many men deserved the same treatment.

  The tomb of Saint James was magnificent, and Simon was intoxicated with the gold and rich crimsons. The altar cloth itself must have been a good nine by twenty or more hands-breadths in size – huge! Surely the patron who gave that must have been rich beyond imagination. The whole place was massive but beautifully proportioned, bright with light and constantly humming with the noise of hundreds of people talking and murmuring prayers.

  This was the busiest time of the year, Simon had heard, and as he stared out over the multitude in the square, he acknowledged that he himself had never before seen so many people gathered together in one place. It was two days before the great feast day of Saint James, and it appeared to him as though the whole of Christendom had gathered here in order to honour the city’s patron saint.

  Of course, many of these people were only here to provide services for pilgrims. There were money-changers, people offering lodgings, shoe-sellers, wine-sellers, men selling herbs and spices – and everywhere were the folk hawking cockleshells, real or made of lead or pewter, to celebrate arriving at Saint James’s Cathedral. Some fellows simply loitered around, Simon noticed, and he saw some of them spring up and stride over to a man leading a horse. There was a short discussion, and one lad took the horse away, over the paving slabs, up towards a beautiful well, next to which stood a large trough. Another man brought up a bucket of water and filled the trough for the horse, standing at its side as it drank its fill. This was clearly where riders left their mounts when they were in a hurry, Simon thought.

  When he and Baldwin had first left the Cathedral, the sun was like a blast from an armourer’s forge after the cool stone shelter within, and Simon had felt his energy being sapped as the first rays struck his heavy woollen tunic and cloak. He was sweltering in moments. Now he was less aware of the sun’s warmth as he stood gazing out over the great square.

  People were everywhere, dressed for the most part in their ordinary, day-to-day clothing: peasants in rough unmended hose and tunics that were all but rags; wealthier freemen with their pathetic bundles but more colourful jackets and shirts; merchants clad in expensive velvets or fine
linens; knights with their slightly poorer quality clothing, but the swagger of the man-at-arms; clerics with their robes and slightly bowed heads. The scene was filled with reds and greens, ochres and yellows. Faces were blackened by the sun, shaded by their great broad-brimmed hats, many already wearing that symbol of Saint James, the cockleshell. Some wore real examples, the pale pink colour showing up clearly, while others had dull pewter versions which they would have purchased from the vendors along the Via Francigena or from a thousand other places all along the route here from Tours, Vézelay, Le Puy or Arles.

  ‘My God,’ Simon murmured.

  ‘Has the heat affected you?’ Baldwin asked quickly.

  ‘That must be the seventh time you’ve asked me that so far today,’ Simon noted.

  ‘It is important, Simon. You are not on Dartmoor now.’

  ‘Dartmoor can be hot enough in summer.’

  ‘Perhaps so, but here the temperature is that much warmer, and people do collapse from the heat. It affects everyone differently.’

  ‘I can cope with heat,’ Simon said confidently.

  ‘Perhaps in England, but here you should be careful. It is something that my Order taught: always take refreshment when you can, for you need more in the sun. During my first years in these warmer climes, I had to be taken from my weapon training several times because of the heat. It is a terrible malaise, Simon. You become weak and sickly, dizzy and disorientated. I was thoroughly laid low and had to be given a cool bath and plenty of water.’

  Simon pulled his hat over his brow without comment. It was, to his mind, a foolish piece of headgear. The felt of the brim was swept up and folded over to form a long peak at the front, like a duck’s beak. It was designed, so he had been told, to keep the sun from his eyes, because it could weaken his vision. He was sure that this was another old wives’ tale, to be treated no more seriously than the other tales he had once heard, of fevers being passed on by foul waters, when all knew that they came from vapours in the air; or the idea that taking blood wasn’t good for a man, when all knew that letting some blood was the only way to balance a man’s humours.

  ‘What I need right now is some liquid inside me – and I don’t mean water,’ he said with determination.

  ‘I doubt you’ll find any ale here,’ Baldwin said.

  ‘They must have something to slake the thirst.’

  ‘Yes …’ Baldwin agreed doubtfully, eyeing the nearest wine-seller. Then he saw a cart with a larger barrel. ‘Ah – cider!’

  Simon followed the direction of his gaze. ‘Yes, that will do perfectly. A pint or so of that will definitely help clear my head!’

  Caterina led her brother away from the tumult at the Cathedral gates, and out to the square. A line of trestles stood in the shade of some chestnut trees and she took him along here.

  The man selling cider and a thin beer didn’t seem to care that Caterina was a beggar. He ignored her black clothing and veil, but waited until he saw that there was some money in Domingo’s purse before serving them.

  ‘What happened?’ she demanded.

  Domingo told her all about the attack, how he and his men had swept down only to be repulsed when the three strangers slammed into their flank, five men falling in the first few moments.

  ‘It was evil! The fair man, he could have been a devil. A devil with yellow hair.’

  She said nothing. In her life she had already experienced enough misery – she had lost everything. It was hard not to feel sympathy for her brother, though. His bereavement was all but unbearable, she knew. It was obvious in his eyes, and she squeezed his large, horny hand.

  In a moment, he had snatched his hand away. Seeing the hurt in her eyes, he gave a twisted grin. ‘I shouldn’t be with you.’

  ‘I was comforting you, Brother.’

  ‘But you are no longer known to our family. You married against our will, and when you did that, you left us for ever.’

  She felt the blow like a dull stab over her heart, but the pain was brief. Soon it had dimmed, like the memory of her husband’s death.

  He had been such a handsome, bold fellow. Brash, too, she could admit to herself now, from the vastness of the years. A young soldier in the service of the King of Navarre when they first met, she had been attracted by his courage and his stories of adventures near the mountains. He told them with a mock seriousness, but in each story there was a bawdy ending, or a sharp edge that showed him to be self-deprecating in attitude, a good trait in a man whose entire life was bound up with searching for honour and fame.

  They had known each other only three days when they ran away and married. Caterina’s father had refused to acknowledge her afterwards because for him, there could be little more dishonourable than that his own daughter should marry one of ‘them’. He and his family had learned to cope with the continual raids, had learned to fight back and defend themselves, and now his daughter was marrying one of the enemy.

  ‘You should never have married him,’ Domingo said roughly. She knew he wasn’t a man who could show love readily, and yet he meant to be kind. They had not spoken in years, and he was finding it difficult to talk to her, she knew.

  ‘How is Joana?’

  He grunted. ‘Your cousin is much as she always has been – loud and demanding. Seems to think she can order people around for no reason. She asked me and my boys to come east, to guard her mistress; now my Sancho is dead, she’s completely lost interest. Just wants …’ He broke off, rubbing vigorously at his eye. ‘Always wants things her own way or not at all. That Lady Prioress has turned her head. Gives Joana her old dresses, and then the silly mare thinks she’s got the position to go with it.’

  ‘She was once my best friend,’ Caterina said sadly. Now she’d be lucky for Joana to acknowledge her in the street.

  ‘You shouldn’t have married a mudéjar,’ he said harshly.

  She wouldn’t have if she could have helped herself. The thought of wedding a man who had Moorish ancestry was appalling to her, and yet when she saw him, his white smile, his lazy grin wrinkling those deep brown eyes, his tanned, dark face, when she felt his solid frame and those wiry muscles beneath, Caterina had simply congealed with desire. He was perfection, and a kind and attentive husband to boot.

  But Domingo could never see beyond the colour of his brother-in-law’s flesh. No matter that he had renounced the religion of his father and grandparents, that he had become a Christian; to Domingo, he was still the enemy, and Caterina was sure that on the day Domingo had heard of Juan’s death, he would have danced with joy. If she had enough cruelty in her, she would have asked about Sancho – and then she would have danced before him for the death of his own son. Except she wasn’t cruel enough – or perhaps she was too drained with exhaustion to work herself up to such an emotion.

  ‘He died in the famine?’ Domingo grunted.

  She nodded. ‘He was in France with his lord, six years ago now.’

  Six whole years. Since then, nothing to live for. Only survival. The mere thought of all those years gone was daunting, as though she had blinked and a quarter of her life had disappeared. She had been married for five years, from fourteen to nineteen, five wonderfully happy years. And since then, her life was empty.

  ‘Yeah. And he died there,’ Domingo said laconically. He had finished his pot of cider, and now ordered another. He didn’t offer Caterina a second drink. ‘Best thing. Saves you from being pointed out and laughed at. It’s better.’

  ‘I’m better off being a beggar?’

  Since Juan’s death, everything had fallen apart. Her son had died, her daughter had been adopted by Juan’s sister, and Caterina had been left desolate. No money, no home: Juan’s master wanted no women about the place. There was nothing left for Caterina, so she had packed her few belongings and returned to her home a little south of Compostela. But her father rejected her, denying that he knew her.

  ‘I had a daughter, but she is dead to me. Be gone!’

  There was nothing else fo
r her but to come here, to the city, and make the best of things. She begged, and occasionally, when a man was interested, she sold her body for the cost of a meal, using the name María to protect her daughter. In her time, she had serviced many men, for as her resources dwindled and she began to feel the pangs of hunger, she learned that nothing was so precious to her as life itself. Only someone who had experienced hardship like this could understand how valuable life was, she sometimes thought.

  Just then, Domingo’s head shot up. ‘There he is,’ he spat. ‘The murdering bastard!’

  ‘Where?’ She followed his gaze and saw a man on a tall, high-stepping horse. It might have been an Arab, from its spirit, a beautiful, glossy beast that scorned the feeble humans all about its massive hooves.

  ‘He’s the man who killed my boy,’ Domingo grated, and he stood up.

  ‘Will you get him?’ she asked with some trepidation. She had never seen Domingo in this mood before. He looked like a man on a suicide mission, who would dare an entire army for his own justice.

  He made no response, but sprang over a low wall, and then pelted away across the square, darting in and out of the people standing before the Cathedral.

  She cried out, but he was already out of hearing, and as she felt the intimidating presence of the cider-seller looming over her, she dug out the few coins in her purse and dropped them on the table, before quickly striding away on her long legs.

  Domingo ran at full tilt, but in moments he was swallowed by the crowd. Although the fair knight was on top of a horse, Domingo was too low with his hunched back to be able to keep an eye on him. He ran on until he came to where the rider had been, and stopped to take a squint about him. Clambering onto a low wall, he saw one man riding along an alley.