The Templar

It did not appeal. The toilet here was like others he had seen in England, but the whole structure looked extremely dilapidated. In his home, that didn’t matter. The outhouse was a light shack which was positioned over a hole in the ground, and every few weeks a new hole would be dug and the shack lifted over it. The muck could be dug out and used as manure, while a fresh crop was collected. Here, though, the toilet was a wooden projection from the wall of the barn. Because the barn had been built on a hillside, although the guests entered from the road’s level, when they walked out to the far side of the barn, they were one storey above the roadway. Here the owner had constructed a room which was in reality little more than a series of rotten-looking planks placed over the void and supported by the building on the opposite side of the alley. The intrepid person who wished to make use of this convenience, must dangle their buttocks over one of the two holes, trusting to faith that they would hit the target, which was a large wooden enclosure into which the muck from the cowshed underneath the wine store also drained.

Simon was not keen to experience this in the pitch dark, and he turned his mind to other matters in an attempt to forget the growing urges.

The dead woman had been murdered in a particularly brutal manner. It was possible that her lover could have done this. Ramon was her lover: it could have been him. Then there was the knight Don Ruy, who had followed her from the city. He could have been jealous because the girl shared her favours with Ramon and not with him. Or it could have been a passer-by, who had seen Joana there and decided to force himself on her.

Lost in thought, Simon yawned lengthily. Soon his breathing calmed and he slept once more.

In a large communal guestroom in the Cathedral’s precinct, Dona Stefania lay wide awake.

She was in a big, comfortable bed with a soft, plump mattress, trying to ignore the snoring coming from the far side. Her bedfellow was a whuffling, snuffling heavy breather, whose periodic snivels were an atrocious interruption to a lady who was used to the privacy of her own room. Dona Stefania was tempted to heave a shoe at her.

Still, before long she would be able to return home to the convent at Vigo. That was the thought that consoled her through the long hours of darkness. At least when she got there, she would be able to set up the new chapel, with the Bishop’s help, and display the relic.

It was all up to the Bishop. He might be reluctant. It had been known before. Sometimes a churchman was not happy to thieve another’s relic. Not often though, she reminded herself. A man would be a fool to thwart the Saint’s own will. In fact, no man would dare. She wasn’t sure, but the Dona had the impression that the Bishop of Compostela was not the sort to worry himself about that argument. He would reason that if he decided that the relic was not for Vigo, the Saint was making his opinion felt. However, it would be a big feather in his cap, were he to retain the thing. If it added to Dona Stefania’s prestige, it likewise added to his own.

She was content with that. The thing must remain with her, at all costs. It was the only way to ensure that her convent survived.

A particularly loud snuffle made her bite back a caustic response. If only Joana was still here! She could have taken up one of the spaces in the bed, and the two of them together would have been intimidating enough to drive off another, unwanted companion.

Poor Joana. All this was her plan, and now she would never see it come to fruition. She had been so keen for it to happen. Yet all had started to go wrong when she met Ramon. From that day on, Joana had grown more peevish and difficult — perhaps because of something he knew about her?

The thought was worth considering. He certainly seemed to have some sort of hold over her. Perhaps that was the matter: he was a difficult, jealous lover. Perhaps he wanted more than she was prepared to give him, or had decided to take more than she wanted to give. What if she had gone to the meeting with Ruy, and Ramon saw her return? Would he not be enraged to think that his woman could have gone secretly consorting with another knight? It was eminently possible.

But if that was the case, then where, she wondered, returning to the main point, where was all her money? Someone had taken it.

But who?

Simon was suddenly wide awake again, his belly rumbling urgently. It was almost pitch black outside, with no more than a faint luminescence to indicate the roofs and yards. As he reluctantly climbed to his feet, he could feel the beginning of a griping pain in his belly; there was no doubt that his bowels were out of order.