The Seal (16 page)

Etienne
considered this spectacle and said, ‘It is a rule, a Templar must not hunt, it
is also a rule that he must not eat meat certain days of the week. This is one
such day.’

The man’s brows
came together and he raised a flask to his lips and swallowed. After a moment
of serious contemplation he asked, ‘No hunting?’

‘Except for the lion,’
said Etienne, ‘since a lion comes encircling and searching for what it can
devour.’

‘And by no means
meat every day, if you can come by it?’

‘By no means.’

The Catalan
shook his head and smiled as if such things were lunacy, then his face took on
the cast of a man who may not have heard well. ‘How can you make war without
meat in the blood?’

Etienne sat
forward and made sure the man was attending closely before he said, ‘Inside our
hearts runs blood more red since it belongs to Christ.’

The other man
nodded at this additional strangeness, a peculiar look passing over the
friendly face. ‘Your blood is Christ’s?’

‘Most
certainly.’ Etienne was happy to have disconcerted the Catalan, and sat back
contemplating the sky with a triumphant silence.

A moment later
Etienne realised the Catalan was not to be put off and wished that Jourdain,
who was good with words, were beside him to answer such questions and not
keeping a watchful eye upon the road.

‘All knights of
your Order feel the same?’

‘They should.’

‘Is not my blood
Christ’s then? Did he not die for all men?’

‘Your blood is
Christ’s because he has died for you, my blood is His because I am prepared to
die for Him.’

‘Ahh,’ he said,
but looked no wiser. Then as a change of subject he asked, ‘It is a rich house,
this house to which we travel?’

Etienne
scratched at his bare chin. It felt strange, that hairless space below his
mouth. ‘I don’t know . . .’

The other man
shook his head. ‘You will not like it there.’

‘No,’ Etienne
said.

‘Where you come
from in the Holy Land, all is different?’

Etienne felt a
headache over his brows. ‘Here all things are altered.’

‘Well then, you
will get used to it, since you may not go back.’ The Catalan came closer,
putting the small instrument to his mouth, making a sweet sound.

Etienne observed
this without anger; he listened and glanced up to where, between snow and
cloud, the sun winked now and again through the treetops.

The Catalan
silenced his playing and nodded. ‘You and I are countrymen, we understand the
same language . . .’
Then
he sang a song in a light
lyrical voice.

Preguatz per mil salvayre

Quem guit a bon port,

Em guart de la mort

D’infer, don conort

Negus
homs
nos pot trayre

Per neguna sort!

‘Do you know it,
lord?’ he asked.

‘No, I do not,’
Etienne said to him.

‘It is true, my
family fought alongside yours during your war.’

Etienne did not
answer.

‘Your family was
a fine one, your castle was the home of troubadours and poets.’

‘That castle is
not mine, it is dead.’ In Etienne’s eyes there was the message that he wished
no further discussion. The other man smiled and bent his knees and sat upon his
ankles as Gideon returned panting with an armful of wood. The tall man set it
down and began to replenish the fire. The wood was half-wet and made smoke
billow up into the air.

‘Eh Gideon, you
have family?’ said the Catalan, looking askance at Etienne with mischief in his
eye.

Gideon did not
look upwards but continued working the fire.

‘Eh Gideon!’ he
called out again. ‘You are of an old family?’ He winked an eye at Etienne. ‘An
old family . . . of thieves!’ The Catalan blurted this out and immediately fell
about himself in merriment.

No sooner had he
said it than the Norman was upon him. Delgado threw off his sheepskin cloak
and, being slight and nimble, was able to outrun Gideon to the other side of
the fire, but Gideon caught him up and stood before him with a face twisted in
anger. Delgado’s own was round and merry and he was bending with laughter,
jumping from side to side as his companion took swipes with his knife. With
both feet splayed out, and joints as flexible as if they were sprung, Delgado
dodged a swipe to his middle and came out on the other side of the Norman.
Gideon turned his large body around and lunged. Delgado, overcome by his high
spirits, moved barely in time to preserve his neck and erupted in laughter as
the knife came inches from his stomach.

‘Oh!’ said he,
unable to express any other sentiment than that which seemed to spill from him
in waves of guffaws. ‘Oh!’ he said again.

‘I am no
thief !
’ shouted Gideon into the dim day as if he were an
animal run through with a blade and in the deepest pain. He gave a growl and
one last leap. The Catalan moved to escape the blade and his legs came out from
under him in the snow turned mud and he almost fell into the fire. There was
the smell of burning hair and Delgado said between gasps, ‘A murderer then?’

‘Of the highest
order!’ Gideon put away his weapon. ‘You are lucky that my knife is not in the
mood for blood today!’

Delgado called
out between small puffs of laughter. ‘I am lucky, for you are an animal, my
Gideon!’

The man observed
this and a sense of pride stole into his face. ‘And you are the son of a sow!’
he told him, now deprived of his anger. ‘Your mother was a dirty sow!’

‘It is true!’
Delgado was standing now, looking for wounds. ‘My mother was a fat whore from
Barcelona . . . but I am no
thief !
’

‘You see!’
Gideon sighed, raising his arms to Etienne and making a look of his face that,
to his mind, summed it up.

Satisfied that
he was in one piece, Delgado put on his cloak and, taking his instrument began
to play again as if he had but paused a moment for breath.

Gideon returned
to his position by the fire, gentling it with a stick. Then as an afterthought:
‘
That
knife I took from a Turk who had no ball sacs!
There is good magic in it.’

The other man
grew serious. ‘There is good magic in my flute . . . it makes Norman whores
look like angels!’

Gideon raised
his brows and nodded. ‘That is good magic.’

Etienne frowned,
thinking that he would never get used to these strange tempers and unrestrained
words. But there was silence and this caused Delgado to grow reflective at his
instrument. A moment later he paused to ask Etienne another question, ‘So, you
are a priest, a knight and a monk?’

Etienne sighed. ‘I
am priest, knight and monk.’

‘Oyee!’ Delgado
said
,
flipping the instrument up in the air and
letting it fall almost to the ground before catching it with a deft hand. ‘Did
you hear that, my Gideon?’

The Norman
turned his face, peaceful now, and flicked his head and therefore the bands of
hair fastened by ropes, beads and bones, as if to say, ‘What?’

‘These Templars
are so rich they can afford to be three things!’

‘I have heard
they are rich,’ he said.

Etienne turned
to the Catalan and spoke clearly and distinctly, keeping his eye upon the other
man until he was finished. ‘The rule states that a brother may not keep money
for himself. Any brother found with unlawful money on his person when he dies
is denied a Christian burial.’ And to make sure he had been understood, Etienne
raised both brows and when the man seemed about to speak he narrowed his eyes
in a challenge to further comment.

The Catalan
smiled and played.

Etienne wondered
at how anything at all could amuse these people.

Gideon bent his
head backwards then, and whistled. ‘It is a serious rule, lord!’

‘It is
even-handed,’ Etienne told him.

Delgado next to
him frowned and smiled at the same time. ‘It is strange . . . this rule would
not be suitable to Amulgavars . . . your Order is wealthy but you own no
money?’ He shook his head. ‘It is strange.’

‘How do you
manage without money?’ Gideon said, interested now.

Etienne was more
and more irritated at the need for explanation of things best kept silent. ‘The
Order provides us with everything we need, with horses and harness and
clothes.’

‘Not bad!’
Delgado made a turn of the mouth. ‘There are Templars in my country, and yours,
Norman? There are Templars?’

‘Yes, there are
Templars.’ Gideon lay down, bored.

Delgado shook
his head. ‘But so many rules! I do not like these rules, eh Gideon? No hunting,
no meat, no money . . . no women?’

‘They have many
rules,’ the Norman repeated, yawning and settling down to the business of
sleep. ‘
In the north there is another Order
,
they call themselves Teutons
. They have women . . . and
money . . . and they are all sons of sows.’

‘What else does
your rule tell, Lord?’ asked Delgado.

‘How to live,
how to fight and pray,’ Etienne answered.

‘We Almugavars
have one rule, it is to have no rules . . . What is yours, Norman?’

‘To kill is a
good rule,’ he said. ‘The most important is not to die.’

‘Yes . . . we
Amulgavars never die . . .’ Delgado flashed a smile. ‘Our cry in battle is
Desperte Ferre.’

Etienne looked
at this with a passive curiosity.

‘It means…iron
awaken! You see, lord, we never die because the iron is always awake!’ He held
himself between the legs and burst with merriment.

Etienne looked
up to the steely sky and hoped for peace, away from these questions and this
corruption. Soon he must relieve Jourdain and he found this thought comforting.

‘And yours,
lord? What is this Beauseant that you cry in battle?’

Etienne took his
eyes from the day. ‘It is our standard, our flag – white and black,
because we are meek and mild to our friends and treacherous to our enemies,’ he
said this, almost in anger.

The Catalan
merely nodded. ‘It is the same for us Amulgavars, we have two sides – bon
e malament, good and bad . . . it is natural for us . . .’

Etienne was much
struck by this, and the tangle of thought this comparison provoked made him
move down into the damp leaves and close his eyes.

Delgado crouched
on the tips of his toes a moment, like a panther ready to pounce, gave a laugh
and surrendered his questions to sleep.

But sleep did
not come for Etienne; he thought of the mariners’ tune sung by the Catalan, a
tune he had long forgotten and now remembered with uneasiness, since it was
proof that Etienne had once lived a different life.

Flors de Paradis,

Regina de bon ayre,

A vos mi ren clis,

Penedens
ses
cor vayre,

Forfaitz e mesquis:

Preguatz per mil salvayre

Quem guit a bon port,

Em guart de la mort

D’infer, don conort

Negus
homs
nos pot trayre

Per neguna sort.

The Norman and
the Catalan snored, and the fire consumed itself against the cold.

M
arcus returned from
Atouguia de Balaia and a visit to the galley as the early afternoon sun made
shadows of the trees that lined the road.

He looked about
him like a man who has been in a strange land and returns home to find all
things changed: the air was cooling, the lands were harvested and the grapes
picked. The smell of winter was in the air. He realised with some surprise that
it was now a year since the galley had left Cyprus weighed down by the Order’s
gold.

On their arrival
to a bay near Atouguia, Marcus had ordered the Byzantines removed from the
galley and put in a sea cave for safety. Andrew of Scotland was left in charge
so that none not loyal to Jacques de Molay knew where the gold was hid. After
that Marcus took himself to Tomar, to that great castle of the Order.

Now returning
from his second excursion to the gold, he remembered his first visit to the
cave, and his desire to hear from the gold itself what it had to tell him of
its impiety.

It had taken the
mercenary Roger de Flor the best part of a morning to find the hiding place.
From where they stood upon the sand they looked up to a vertical cliff that speared
the sky and fell down to a rock shelf pounded by surf. A path over a rock floor
pitted with pools and covered in shells and seagrass led to a small cave cut
off from the beach by the tide.
Beyond it nothing but sea and
sky and the edges of the world.