The Templar

He felt the bitterness bubble up again, and tried to force it down. There was no point in anger now. He had done what he needed to do, and that was that. He was here to show his remorse — ha! Remorse for the death of that devil’s spawn? With a cynical shake of his head, he told himself that when he returned to Ypres, that would be enough to earn him rewards from people who would assume him to be still more decent a man with whom to do business, because he had made this journey (a notably expensive trip, after all). And if some refused to deal with him because of his ‘crime’, others would come to him because he was known to be someone who would stand up for his rights and his property, surely a notable citizen.

The tears were back. Him notable, after all his crimes?

He brushed the tears away and took a deep breath. There was no reason for him to feel guilt. Guilt was for the guilty. He was here to show that he was accepted as an innocent not only by the city’s ruling elite, but even by Saint James himself. He had not meant to do anything wrong. It was the fault of beer — and of Hellin van Coye.

Pleased with this conclusion, he squared his shoulders. Just then, gazing ahead, he caught a glimpse of her — the Dona Stefania — and his heart began to beat a little faster. He could remember every curve of that delectable body from the time they had met. Beautiful. The memory hadn’t dimmed. Christ alive, no! If anything it was thoughts of her which kept him awake in the early hours.

‘Dona Stefania,’ he murmured to himself. She wouldn’t have forgotten him; she couldn’t have. No, so why not renew their acquaintance? Forgetting entirely the attack in which he could so easily have been killed, Parceval began to forge his way through the crowds, but even as he thrust himself onwards, he realised that he would never be able to reach her before she got to the Cathedral’s doorway. There were simply too many people here in the square.

Cursing under his breath, he was bemoaning his bad luck when he saw the lady start to climb the stairs that led to the great doors. All there were slipping their hands into the niches about the main column, atop of which Saint James himself sat gazing down with a welcoming expression on his stone face. While Parceval watched, he saw a man arrive at Dona Stefania’s side, a stolid, slightly hunched man, with a curious way of holding his head, as thought it was too massy on the left side to be supported.

‘Get away from her, you bloody bastard!’ he muttered.

Chapter Two

On arriving at the great column, Simon and Baldwin knelt and reached in with their hands, in the ritual of holy greeting to the Saint, Baldwin gazing up at the Saint with a murmured prayer, soon after repeating the paternoster.

Simon was bemused to see his friend so overcome.

Sir Baldwin de Furnshill, as he well knew, had been a Templar, and Simon also knew that his friend was deeply embittered by the destruction of his Order. It wasn’t the kind of act that could ever be forgiven: Baldwin had been a driven man since the end of the Templars. Before that, Simon reckoned, Baldwin must have been focused on the ruin of the Moors who had evicted the Christians from their most holy city and forced them from the Crusader kingdoms in 1291 when they kicked the last of the garrison of Acre from the Holy Land. Baldwin was deeply religious, though he detested the Pope and eyed the Church askance, and Simon reckoned he must have been a ferocious enemy of the Moors.

Since that terrible year of 1307, Baldwin’s life had utterly changed. He had lost his friends, many of whom were murdered by the French King’s men and the Church’s own ‘Hounds of the Lord’, the Dominicans, who manned the inquisitions and tortured the poor warriors, most of them unlettered, who had been held for so long. Men who had devoted their lives to God and His Holy Land were persecuted by another of the Pope’s own Orders. It was no surprise that Baldwin had been so deeply disgusted, nor that he blamed the avaricious instincts of a corrupt and ignoble King and his lackey, the Pope at Avignon.

And yet Baldwin still trusted and believed in God. Simon wasn’t so sure whether, if he himself had undergone these same trials, he would have been able to maintain the same faith as his friend. Baldwin seemed convinced that the Pope was responsible, and that had left him untrusting of politics and power, but he still had a strong belief in God and God’s determination to protect His own.

Simon sniffed. If it had been him, he might have renounced his religion entirely and joined the ranks of the Moslems in the face of such dishonour and treachery. Others had, from what he had heard. Poor devils, once they realised that their own faith was turning against them, they bolted and found comfort in the ranks of the Moors. At least there they were respected.