The Templar

‘No, but it might be easier if you were to do so. Perhaps I could see your pass? You have authorisation from your master to undertake the pilgrimage?’

‘I see no need to show you or anyone else my credentials!’

‘Very well. I shall mention this conversation to the Pesquisidor and leave the matter there.’

‘I am not scared by your threats.’

‘It is not a threat,’ Baldwin said, bored with his prevarication. ‘It is merely that I seek to assist the officer of the law in this city. If there is something he should know, I will tell him — it is my duty. You admit that it is suspicious that a woman of the cloth appears to believe you were blackmailing her; that her maid went, so she thought, to see you, and was murdered; and that all her money is gone. And you admit that you followed after the woman, but can’t tell us much about what you were doing. Can you really be surprised that I think you would do well to explain yourself?’

‘I am innocent of this crime!’ Don Ruy declared, but then appeared to reconsider. Reluctantly he slipped a hand into the bulky purse that dangled on his belt. ‘I am unfairly accused — an innocent man, but you seem determined to expose my shame. Here, read this.’

He passed a parchment to Baldwin, who took it up. He turned to Simon. ‘This says that he was found guilty of raping a woman in Ghent in Flanders.’

Simon stirred and eyed the man intimidatingly. ‘He’s a rapist? And the dead maid was raped, wasn’t she?’

‘Yes,’ Baldwin agreed, reading. ‘And he was sent on this pilgrimage to make amends for his crime.’

Don Ruy understood some of their words and now he burst into an angry denunciation of his conviction, but Baldwin had to hold up his hands to slow the torrent. ‘Don Ruy, please speak more slowly. Let me translate for my friend here.’

‘The woman I was accused of raping was in fact my wife,’ Don Ruy said heatedly when Baldwin motioned to him to continue, and pulled a second page from his purse. While Baldwin studied it, Don Ruy continued, ‘The accusation was a false one, designed to embarrass me and prove that my marriage was null. I was accused of abducting her and raping her, but she was a willing lover for me, and it was her father, who sought to ruin my reputation, who deliberately brought me to this farce.’

After relaying his words to Simon, Baldwin said, ‘This second sheet confirms your marriage to the woman. So you deny the rape?’

‘Of course! But the court chose to ignore my statement. The Bishop himself told me to leave and undertake the pilgrimage.’

‘Why the Bishop?’

‘I was in his service. The matter was an embarrassment to him.’

Baldwin sipped at his wine. ‘I fear that the officers of this city would be keen to know all this. Yet you cannot tell me exactly what you were doing yesterday, so that I can clear you of the murder.’

‘I was alone. What else do you want me to say? I didn’t try to blackmail anyone, I haven’t raped anyone, and I certainly didn’t murder that girl or steal any money. It’s ridiculous to suggest any such a thing!’

‘Ridiculous or not, it is what Dona Stefania has claimed. Word of her accusation may well reach the ears of the Pesquisidor, and if it does, he may decide that you should be held here for trial. The word of a noble Prioress in a religious city like this could be enough to see you hanged.’

Don Ruy said nothing, but stood and inclined his head very slightly. He was about to walk away when Simon, who had caught the gist of Baldwin’s words, interrupted quickly.

‘Don’t let him go yet! Wait, Don Ruy! Let’s say this girl was with her lover. She’s dead now. Did he see someone else there, apart from Frey Ramon?’

Don Ruy listened to Baldwin’s translation. ‘No, I saw no one else. But I wasn’t looking.’

‘So either Ramon killed her himself, or someone else was hiding there.’

‘Like the felon I saw leaving the city,’ Don Ruy muttered.

‘Why did you not try to have him arrested for attacking your band of pilgrims earlier?’ Baldwin wanted to know.

Don Ruy stared at him. ‘You seriously ask that? This man was a felon, on my honour! Yet it would be my word against his. If I were to draw my sword against a man who looked like a local Galician, I should expect to be captured and hanged for starting an affray in a cathedral city and for insulting Saint James. Look — the man was leaving the city. What purpose would my confronting him have served?’

‘It might have saved the woman’s life,’ Baldwin said coldly. ‘If you are right, and this man killed her.’

Don Ruy flushed. ‘My inclination was to avoid any involvement with women,’ he said, pointedly thrusting the parchments back into his purse.

‘You say the Prioress is mad to accuse Frey Ramon. Yet some men have been tempted by less money.’

‘By that, you mean that Joana did intend to rob her mistress? But Frey Ramon is a monk. He has renounced money.’