Brethren: An Epic Adventure of the Knights Templar (17 page)

A
light rain was falling, beading on the bowed heads of the men and clinging to the sail that hung limp from the mast with no wind to fill it. Everything was silent; the oars made no sound as they lifted and fell and no one spoke. The city that rose beyond the bend in the river was veiled by a watery haze; a dark smudge growing larger with every turn of the oars. Up ahead, the river broke in two, sweeping around to either side of an island that housed several grand and imposing structures, the tallest and most magnificent a gleaming white cathedral on the far side.
Opinicus
took the left-hand branch of the river, slicing the water between the island and the bank, gliding past a fortress with gardens that stretched down to the water’s edge where the ghosts of trees loomed out of the white air. The fortress fell away to reveal churches, monasteries, stately mansions, then flimsy wooden houses, a marketplace and tightly packed rows of workshops and inns, crisscrossed by narrow streets.

Will watched the people moving on the banks, entering inns, exiting churches, like so many ants in the shadow of their hill. They were all dressed in black. The rain was heavier now, falling soundlessly on the rooftops and spires, falling on the bodies of the nine dead men laid out on the deck, shrouded in their mantles; white for the knights, black for the sergeants and crew. The deluge washed the blood from the corpses, forming red pools that stained the boards. Elwen was kneeling beside Owein, her knuckles pressed to her eyes. Will watched the blood from the deck seep into her gown, soaking the thin material.

“Come away,” he said, his voice muffled.

The crimson stain spread up to her stomach, chest, neck.

“Elwen!” he called, urgently now. “The blood…”

Then she was before him, brushing his cheek with her finger, her green eyes laughing.

“Will Campbell,” she admonished him mockingly, “your master isn’t dead.”

Will turned to Owein’s body and saw that she was right.

“To be a Templar you must be willing to make many sacrifices,” said Owein, crossing the deck toward him.

Will’s eyes locked on the dagger protruding from his chest.

“You killed me, sergeant.”

“No.”

You killed me.

Will realized that Owein hadn’t spoken.

“I didn’t kill you,” Will shouted, desperate for Owein to hear him.

But the knight was gone.

Will stood on the banks of a black loch. Someone was screaming. The sound prickled his senses. Nearby, a young girl with honey-blonde hair was dancing, her scarlet skirts flying. She spun toward him, closer and closer, and as she twirled, her skirts became a red mist around her. The girl passed him and when she had gone Will saw a man standing before him. The man’s brown eyes stared out from a white nothingness where his face should have been. He slowly raised his hand, reaching for a flap of white skin that Will saw was hanging loose from his temple. He took hold of the flap and pulled. The whiteness ripped away with a sound like parchment being torn. As the mask fell, Will cried out.

“You killed her!”
said his father, reaching out and grasping his shoulder.

“Is he going to do this every night?”

The voice had come from the adjacent pallet.

The sergeant crouching beside Will turned. “Quiet, Hugues.” He looked back at Will. “Your cries woke us.”

Will pushed back his hair, which was hanging in his eyes. His blanket was tangled around his shins and his undershirt and hose were sweat-drenched, clinging coldly to his skin. He brushed the sergeant’s hand from his shoulder. “I’m fine.”

The sergeant, who had introduced himself yesterday as Robert de Paris, shrugged and headed across the chamber to his bed.

Will tugged off the blanket and rested his feet on the freezing stones. A loud, erratic snore issued from one of the beds as he rose. The sergeant called Hugues huffed and turned over, yanking his blanket up around his ears. Will moved to the table, on which was placed a ewer of water, a basin and the night candle. The candle had burned low, the molten tallow pooling and hardening around the base. Creamy-yellow drips hung suspended like icicles from the holder. Will cupped his hands in the ewer and lifted them to his face, the water shocking his skin. He went to the chamber’s single round window and sat on the ledge, resting against the curve of the stone. The wind was icy. He looked around as another snore sounded and Hugues sighed in annoyance. Will was an outsider here, disturbing their routine, their familiarity. He had told them fragments of the battle at Honfleur, but he hadn’t spoken of what it had been like afterward; chaos on the dockside and days on the boat that had passed in silence.

After the battle, the men who had chased the six fleeing attackers had returned to the docks having killed two, but losing the others. The knights wanted to stay to hunt them down and find out who sent them. But the captain of
Opinicus
had wanted only to leave the port immediately. “They were mercenaries!” one of the knights, a middle-aged man called John, had shouted. “We must discover who sent them!”

The attackers had been searched, but their corpses revealed no clue as to who they were, or how they had known about the shipment. The remaining crewmen hauled the bodies on the deck down to the dockside. Two of the skull masks floated in the river, twin white faces bobbing on the surface.

“Three of my crew are dead,” answered the captain, bitterly. “
Opinicus
leaves before there are no hands left to sail her.”

“They won’t make another attempt. For the sake of Christ, we killed most of their company! Let’s finish it.”

“You don’t know that,” insisted the captain, “there may be more of them.”

“We have to find those responsible,” said John in a low tone.

One of the sergeants drew his sword. “I think we should ask
him
who’s responsible.” He pointed the blade at Hasan, who was on the boat watching the exchange in silence.

Some of the knights and the captain turned to look at Hasan, whose gaze didn’t leave the sergeant. “You have reason to accuse me?” he questioned calmly.

“You are a Saracen,” spat the sergeant. “What other reason do I need? No one knows why you are here. No one knows you.”

“Sir Jacques knew me. Is the word of a knight not enough for you?”

“Sir Jacques is dead!”

“Enough,” said John, stepping forward and placing a hand on the sergeant’s shoulder.

The shouting had gone on for some time, until the captain of
Opinicus
had won his way and a sergeant was sent to the preceptory to wake the queen. The queen had arrived on the dockside with her entourage, the priest and several brothers from the preceptory.

The portly priest wrung his hands, staring about in disbelief as if expecting to awaken at any moment. “Lord have mercy!” he kept saying. “Lord have mercy!”

The queen surveyed the carnage with her hands pressed to her cheeks. The crowds, who had come down from the market square during the commotion, were still lingering around the harbor. They gazed at the queen as she passed, whispering to one another.

“The jewels?” Eleanor asked in a papery voice, her eyes on the bodies that littered the deck and the dock wall.

“Are safe, my lady,” said John.

The jewels had been collected from where they had been scattered about the broken chest, and placed in an unadorned box that had been stowed in the cabin.

As the queen and her entourage boarded
Opinicus
, two knights headed over to Owein’s body, which had been left on the dockside. So far, no one had seemed willing to disturb Elwen, who had draped herself across her uncle’s corpse. Will had tried to move her, but to no avail.

The knights weren’t so gentle.

“She is Sir Owein’s niece?” one of them asked, striding over to Will.

Will nodded.

“What in God’s name is she doing here?”

Will saw no point in lying. He told the knight that she had stowed away on board
Endurance
.

The knight cursed and shook his head in disgust. Bending down he grabbed Elwen by her arms. “On your feet, girl!”

Will stepped forward as Elwen screamed.

“Stand down, sergeant!” the second knight barked, helping his comrade to pull Elwen away. “Owein is dead. Her weeping won’t bring him back.”

Between them the knights half dragged, half carried Elwen onto the
Opinicus
, where they left her slumped on one of the benches. Their brutality shocked away her tears and she sat in an exhausted silence, staring blankly as Owein’s body was laid out on the deck and covered with his white mantle.

Three of the knights, along with the priest and the brothers from the preceptory, left to scour the port for any sign of the four surviving attackers. They soon returned. The knights ordered the men from the Honfleur preceptory to continue the search at daybreak. But no one held out much hope. The priest and his brothers were also given the task of burying the mercenaries.

“Don’t put them in consecrated ground,” John had added.

“Brother,” said the priest, shocked, “surely we cannot consign their souls to Satan without trial or fair judgment?”

“They’ll receive judgment in Hell.”

Will had climbed on board behind the knights, carrying Owein’s sword, which he placed next to his master. It was then that he had seen Garin kneeling beside Jacques’ body. Garin had drawn back the mantle from the knight’s head and was staring at his face, which was frozen in the grimace he had worn at the moment of death. Garin’s cheeks were wet and his hands were balled into fists on his knees. He reached out to his uncle’s face, then stopped, his hand hovering in the air over Jacques’ eye patch. As Will put a hand on his shoulder, Garin started and twisted around, his face contorted with grief.
“Don’t touch me!”

Will stepped back, startled by the vehemence in his voice. Leaving Garin to stare at Jacques’ body, he crossed the deck to a bench, where he sat, head in hands.

The chaos following the battle had been hard. But worse had been the silence that descended as
Opinicus
sailed down the Seine: a silence that had closed around the company like a fist. The queen’s guards and pages sat on the benches with the knights and sergeants. There was just enough room for the queen and her handmaidens in the cabin, cramped as it was with her belongings. Of them all, only Elwen seemed capable of expressing her sorrow. Her sobs had begun again in the night and continued through till dawn. Even Will, who shared her grief over Owein’s death, had wished she would be quiet. Eventually, one of the sergeants had shouted at her, his voice terribly loud in the stillness. The cabin door had banged open a moment later to reveal Queen Eleanor, her pale face framed in the doorway.

“Have you no heart?” she had said to the sergeant, who had stared at her open-mouthed.

The queen had gone to Elwen and helped her to her feet with soft-spoken words of encouragement that reminded Will of the way Simon always soothed the horses in New Temple’s stables in a storm. She led Elwen into the cabin, where they remained for most of the journey, which had passed, for Will, in a haze. There had been nothing to do but wait and watch the slow-changing landscape and the flies that buzzed around the bodies on the deck.

When
Opinicus
arrived in Paris, late in the evening, one of the crew went ahead to the preceptory to have carts sent down to the docks for the crates of salt and ale, and the dead. The queen ordered two of her guards to the palace, where her sister, Queen Marguerite, was expecting her. When a wagon and a carriage pulled by four black horses arrived, Elwen was ushered inside with the handmaidens as the queen’s belongings, everything except the crown jewels, were loaded onto the wagon.

“I will take her to the palace,” the queen said to the knights, stepping into the cushioned interior. “Your preceptory is no place for a woman. Certainly not one who is grieving,” she said with a glance at the sergeant who had shouted at Elwen.

As the carriage pulled off, the knights and sergeants had trudged through the winding streets of the Ville, past rows of workshops, the preceptory of the Hospitallers, then on up the rue du Temple to the preceptory, which lay outside the city walls in a pleasant expanse of fields. Will had taken in little of his surroundings. When they reached the preceptory, he had been shown to a dormitory where he had spent most of the following day.

Today was his second day in Paris, the day of Owein’s funeral.

When the Matins bell chimed, Will remained sitting on the window ledge as the other sergeants rose from their pallets with a chorus of yawns and muttered conversation. Their accents were strange to Will, but as they spoke Latin he understood them. In the preceptories, with so many knights from different countries living together, Latin had become the communal language.

The sergeants threw their black tunics over their hose and undershirts and took turns at the ewer and basin, splashing their faces. Outside, it was still fully dark. Three of the sergeants had already gone by the time Robert came to the table to cup his hands in the icy water. He patted his face dry with the hem of his tunic, swept back his fine blond hair, and nodded to Will.

“Are you coming to chapel?” he asked, heading to the armoire in the corner of the room and opening the cabinet’s double doors.

Will shook his head.

“Let him stay, Robert, if that’s what he wants.”

Will looked at Hugues, who was straightening his tunic.

Hugues gave him a pointed look. “Perhaps you should sleep while we are gone. Then we won’t have to share your dreams.”

Robert rolled his eyes. He had taken a twig from one of the armoire’s shelves and was scraping at his teeth, which were unusually white. “Don’t mind him,” he said to Will, removing the twig from his mouth. “Hugues just needs his sleep.”

Hugues glared at Robert. “Don’t speak about me as if I weren’t here! You always do that!”