Brethren: An Epic Adventure of the Knights Templar (30 page)

THE TEMPLE, PARIS, OCTOBER
21, 1266
AD

“You’re locking your wrist again.”

Simon frowned and loosened his grip. He swung the sword, trying to roll it fluidly in his hand like Will had shown him. The sword whirled out of Simon’s grasp and Will just managed to duck as it came sailing toward him.

“Holy Mary!” Simon’s hands flew to his head. “Will! I’m sorry!”

“No harm done,” said Will, straightening and looking at the falchion, the point of which had embedded itself in a hay bale. He let out a breath as he went to retrieve it.

“It’s no use, I can’t do it.”

“You just need more practice.”

Simon managed to cover up his dismay as Will handed him the falchion.

“Sir!” called a young stable boy, peering timidly from around a stall. “I can’t find the grooming brush.”

“In the storeroom,” said Simon, “second shelf, where you left it last.”

“Thank you, sir,” said the boy, dipping his head and blushing.

“Sir?” said Will, grinning at Simon. “You seem to be settling well into your new role.”

“Yes,” responded Simon, sweeping a hand grandly across the stables. “Lord of all I muck out.” He motioned to the hay bales stacked in a corner. “Why don’t we take a rest?” He made a show of studying his wrist. “I reckon I’ve sprained something.”

Will laughed. “You aren’t enjoying this, are you?”

Simon sat heavily on one of the bales and laid Will’s sword across his lap. “I just don’t reckon I’ll ever get good enough to be a half-decent partner for you.”

Will sat beside Simon. “I cannot ask Robert, or Hugues to train with me. Now they are knights they don’t have the time and Everard won’t let me attend the training sessions. Not,” he added irritably, “that I would want to. The sergeants in the groups are all younger than me. I’m old enough to be an instructor!” Will cupped his hands and breathed into them. They were chapped and sore, bitten by the recent icy winds.

For the last few months, everyone in the preceptory had been busy with the harvest and the preparations for winter. The cote and barns had been cleaned out for the doves, hens and goats, ready for the colder days. The orchard trees had been stripped of their fruit, which was then stored, ready to be made into wines and jams. Fish had been taken from the ponds, dried and salted, and honey collected from the hives. When the stores had been filled there had existed, for a short time, an air of contentment in the breath’s pause between autumn and winter.

Will had been occupied with several new treatises that Everard had bought for the preceptory and the priest had made him rebind a stack of books. Will had sat in the orchard to do his work, balancing the tattered books on his knee, threading the needle carefully through the skin along the spine. Often, Simon sat with him and, occasionally, Robert had managed to take a moment between prayers and meetings to talk with him. Robert, who saw Will’s frustrations at being kept from knighthood, would make Will laugh by lamenting over the chapter meeting he had just attended at which Brother so-and-so had argued for three hours over what stitch the tailor should be using to darn holes in their hose. Will had spoken to Garin very little. There was an awkwardness between them that made him uncomfortable and he tended to avoid the knight. It wasn’t difficult; Garin was often out of the preceptory.

“Don’t fret about your training,” Simon told him. “I’ll get good enough if it kills me.” He scratched his head. “Or you.”

They both looked around as a figure darted into the stables. Will rose, shocked, as Elwen grinned at him. She was wearing a black cloak, fastened with a red pin in the shape of a rose. Her hair hung loose around her shoulders.

“What are you doing here?”

Elwen frowned at Will’s abrupt tone. “I wanted to see you.”

Simon was looking at both of them, his expression uncertain.

Will took Elwen’s arm and led her away from the entrance, out of sight of anyone who might be in the yard. “How did you get in?”

Her grin was back. “I came in through the servants’ passage. Don’t worry,” she added, seeing his look, “no one saw me.” She pulled the hood of her cloak up, hiding her hair and most of her face. “I asked a sergeant where I might find you,” she said, putting on a deep, manly tone. Laughing, Elwen flicked back the hood and looked around the stables. She wrinkled her nose. “How can you stand the smell in here?”

“That’s how all horses smell,” said Simon, rising from the hay bale. His voice was stiff, awkward.

Elwen smiled at him. “You’re Simon, aren’t you? I saw you once in London, when I was staying at New Temple. Will told me you had come.”

“Did he?” said Simon, glancing at Will.

“I’m Elwen.”

Simon looked back at her. “I reckoned you might be.”

Elwen found Simon’s lingering gaze uncomfortable. She felt like he was sizing her up and finding her lacking. “Aren’t you pleased to see me, then?” she asked Will, to break the silence and the groom’s stare.

As Elwen gave him a sly, sidelong look, Will felt his stomach muscles tense. He couldn’t understand how she only had to look at him a certain way and his insides would liquefy. “Of course I’m pleased,” he murmured. “But if you’re caught, it will be me who will take the blame for it, not you.” He watched as Simon picked up a broom and began sweeping out a stall. “You cannot come in here like this. It’s too risky.”

Elwen sighed. “I wouldn’t have come if you hadn’t kept avoiding me. You rarely reply to my messages, or visit me at the palace.” Her expression grew solemn. “I thought we were friends, Will?”

“We are.” Will leaned against a bench and folded his arms across his chest.

Her brow furrowed at his insouciant posture. “And anyway, if anyone saw me I would just say I was here to visit my uncle’s grave.”

“In the stables?”

Elwen rolled her eyes. “I’d say I was asking you for directions to the cemetery.”

“I cannot give Everard any more excuses to keep me back, Elwen. You know that. It isn’t that I don’t want to see you, just that I can’t. Not now. Just give me time to work this out.”

“Time? You’ve had years. You said you were planning on speaking to the Visitor about your inception? That’s what you told me when we last met. Will, I can’t bear to see you give up like this.” Elwen tossed her hair back impatiently. “Surely doing something is better than doing nothing?”

Will traced a circle in the dust with his foot. “He wouldn’t see me,” he said flatly.

It was a lie. After the argument with Everard, in which he had given the priest the ultimatum, Will had never gone to the Visitor. His father thought he was a knight. How would it look if he turned up as a sergeant and had to confess he had lied? How could his father welcome him with open arms and forgive him then?

“Listen,” said Elwen, crossing to him. “I’ve saved most of the money I’ve earned in the queen’s employ. I want to go to the Holy Land too, I always have. In the next year or so I’ll have enough to buy us
both
passage. We can go together if Everard won’t initiate you.”

Simon was still sweeping the stall, but he stopped and looked around at this.

Will glanced at her. It was a touching suggestion, but it made him irritated. He didn’t want to go to the Holy Land as a peasant on a pilgrim ship. He wanted to go there as a knight and the only place he was interested in seeing was the place where his father was stationed. “Thank you,” he told her, “but I need to do this on my own. I just have to find a way to get Everard to agree my inception. I haven’t been able to think of it yet.” He forced a smile. “But I will.”

THE TEMPLE, PARIS, OCTOBER
24, 1266
AD

“This doesn’t leave us much time.”

“I know, brother. I failed you. Forgive me.”

“I do not blame you, Hasan,” said Everard, turning from his pacing of the chamber. “It wasn’t an easy task.”

“I have accomplished more difficult tasks than this. And in far less time than three months.” Hasan pushed a hand through his black hair. “The troubadour gave his true name in some inns he stayed in, but must have given false names in others. I believe he kept to the tracks and forests rather than the roads. I do not understand. I doubt he knew I was on his trail. I was careful.”

“I am sure you were.”

“I would have searched for him for longer, only I worried that he would arrive here before me if I left it much later.”

“You were right to return when you did. It may have been simple bad luck that you didn’t find him, but Pierre de Pont-Evêque certainly does have reason to be cautious.” Everard sat beside Hasan on the window seat. “Friar Gilles was here the other day, making sure everything is ready. Nicolas de Navarre will lead the group that goes to the palace. They plan to arrest the troubadour just before the reading to be certain he has the Book of the Grail on him. We have to get it before then, or we’ll lose it for good.” Everard shook his head. “I asked the Visitor if I could be allowed to study it, but both the book and de Pont-Evêque are under the Dominicans’ jurisdiction. Our knights are just going along to dissuade the king from interfering.”

“I could keep watch on the southern gates, snare de Pont-Evêque in the city when he enters?”

“The troubadour could arrive at any time in the next five days and a man of your appearance lingering around the walls would rouse the suspicion of the watch. Besides, the gates are barred after nightfall. He will only be allowed entrance during daylight and the streets would be too busy for an ambush then. No. We need to do this quickly and silently.”

“I could attempt to seek an audience with him when he is in the palace?”

“The king has never been fond of foreigners, Hasan.” Everard paused. “But I may be more affably received. I have certain works that Louis would be keen to lay his hands on for his collection. I could gain entrance to the palace under the pretense of offering the king a manuscript I was looking to trade. While there I could…”

“No.”

Everard frowned. “No?”

“I will not allow you to walk into danger when my failure is the cause of our predicament.” Everard opened his mouth to speak, but Hasan cut him off. “How will you take the book from the troubadour? By stealth? A known Templar priest stealing through the palace corridors would not go unnoticed. By force? You have not wielded a sword in over twenty years.”

“There is still strength in this body,” snapped Everard, “frail though it might appear to you, my young Khorezmian soldier.”

Hasan was silent for a long moment. “I gave up that title when I met you, Everard. I am no soldier.”

“No,” said Everard roughly, “you are my bloodhound and hounds should look up to their masters, not talk down to them.”

Hasan looked away, his dark eyes glittering.

Everard huffed and went to the table where a jug of wine stood. He poured the dregs into a goblet. “My life, your life, they do not matter. One day we shall both die. But our cause, Hasan, must live.” Everard shivered as a gust of wind blew in, scattering the embers of a low-burning torch. “We must do whatever it takes to safeguard that.”

“What about your sergeant?” offered Hasan in a low voice. “Perhaps if we sent Campbell to the palace on an errand he might be able to—?”

“I haven’t spoken to Campbell of this,” interrupted Everard, setting the goblet on the table.

“You agreed, brother.”

“No,” corrected Everard, “I agreed to think on it. I have thought on it and I don’t believe he is ready yet.”

“Whatever it takes,” murmured Hasan.

“I have need of fresh wine.”

“I will fetch it for you.”

“No,” said Everard, heading for the door. “I also have need of air.”

Hasan walked slowly to the armoire when the door was shut and ran his fingertips lightly over the wood, tracing the whorls in the grain. The chamber seemed darker now that Everard had gone. Hasan felt like a trespasser. The room and everything in it were part of the old priest; every sheaf of parchment covered with his delicate script; every piece of furniture marked with his fingerprints; every flagstone with his footsteps. Hasan had never had a home. The year before he was born, Genghis Khan’s forces had destroyed Khorezm, the homeland of his family and the most powerful Muslim state in the East. Khorezm was swallowed by the Mongol empire and the survivors had scattered. As a child, Hasan had lived a nomadic existence with what remained of the Khorezmian army. In the wastes of northern Syria, his father, a commander, had raised him as a warrior and they had eked out a life for themselves, living off the land, hiring themselves as mercenaries, planning their revenge. But Hasan had never felt bitterness for the loss of a country he had never known, and had been a reluctant soldier.

Twenty-two years ago, Ayyub, Sultan of Egypt, had asked the Khorezmians for their aid in overthrowing the Franks in Palestine. Hasan, aged nineteen, had gone with the ten-thousand-strong force to Jerusalem. On the journey, his father and the warriors had been heady with ambition. Their lust for retribution had grown indiscriminate and they had believed that the payment for their aid would be great enough to sustain a new campaign, if not against the Mongols then against Egypt itself. The Khorezmian army had stormed through Jerusalem like a black wind, leaving a trail of corpses in its wake. Thousands of Christians had evacuated the city, making for the coast, but Hasan’s father had ordered the banners of the Frankish knights lifted on the battlements and many of the fleeing Christians returned, believing they had been saved. Hasan had watched them come, like herds of confused sheep to the slaughter. And slaughtered they were, down to the last man, woman and child. To celebrate their victory and the city’s emancipation from Christian hands, the Khorezmians sacked the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and massacred the priests left inside, all but one, who had hidden under the bodies after killing two of the warriors.

Hasan had done things on that day he believed he could never atone for, though he had asked Allah for forgiveness in his prayers each day since. Leaving the city in flames, the triumphant warriors had headed for Herbiya. There they would meet the Mamluk commander, Baybars, and the rest of the Mamluk army to destroy the Frankish forces that had set out against them. Hasan, hiding on the ramparts, had watched them go; his father at the van, yelling the victory. That evening, trailing numbly through the ravaged city, Hasan had found Everard. And in the priest, the deserter had found his purpose.