The Templar

He was back in the nave of the Cathedral, praying as well as he could over the din of the newest batch of pilgrims, who were gawping up at the ceiling and telling each other just how magnificent it all was at the top of their voices. They had to talk loudly, because with everyone speaking at the same time, it was impossible to hear anything. Thus it was that Gregory’s concentration on the service being conducted forty feet away was regularly being shattered. The priest kept an expression of unconcern fitted to his face, as though this was perfectly normal and that speaking in the sure and certain knowledge that nobody more than two rows away from you could hear was natural, but Gregory was convinced that every so often there was a faint crack in his benign facade whenever a particularly pushy pilgrim braying about the decoration broke into his prayers. Curious, wasn’t it, Gregory thought, that so many people who could have declared their religious convictions with absolute sincerity, could behave with such brash insensitivity towards so many others who were trying to participate in the devotions.

To Gregory it seemed sacrilegious, but he knew that it was normal human behaviour. Even in his own home town, people shouted at each other as the service went on. In the Cathedral at Canterbury, the public conducted their business in the nave because it was a warmer, drier place than the market square outside, but here it was infinitely worse. Some of the folks here had travelled hundreds of miles in order to come and have their prayers heard. To have the words of the priest drowned out was a great annoyance, especially to Gregory, when he desperately needed to hear something soothing today.

He was feeling very raw after meeting his wife again. Stefania would keep popping up. What she wanted with a pilgrimage, he didn’t know. Since she had legally divorced him, there was little he could do about it, of course. He couldn’t even demand to know what she was here for; as she had haughtily pointed out to him, that was none of his business now. When she set her head back like that, peering at him like some slug she had found munching at her vegetables, he wanted to clout her, the disrespectful baggage. Her tone, when she coldly informed him that, as they weren’t married any more, she need not show him respect, merely added oil to the flames of his anger. It didn’t help — as she knew too well! It was typical of his luck that he should have chosen her for his wife.

At the end of the service, he stood and bowed his head. So far as he was concerned, his task here was over and done with; all he need do was return home now. Somehow he had to try to recover from this journey.

If he had not joined the Templars, his life would have been better, surely. He had gone there less from a feeling of conviction or devotion, much more because he wanted to get back at her for what she’d done. The cow! She’d even ended their marriage in a way that did most harm to him. It was — what? — a month after he joined them that the Order was swept away. One month, one miserable month, sleeping in clothing already foul, the new beard itching at his jaw, the sleepless nights as he was woken at some unearthly hour to go and pray. Good God! It was awful.

Not as bad as the arrests, though. When he had been taken, during his time in the preceptory at Montesa, it was typical of his bad fortune. His wife had left and divorced him, he was a laughing stock at home in England, and he had only joined the Templars to escape, thinking that by joining the richest Order, he could have an enjoyable life of moderate luxury. He had not realised that by joining the Order and being sent to Montesa, he would be going to the only blasted place in the Christian world where there were more Moors than anywhere else in Castile or Aragon. It was a sick joke. Still worse, that he should have been arrested and threatened with torture. How could they have threatened a man like him? He’d done nothing except try to join the most religious of all the Orders, and for that he was to be arrested and persecuted, if the Pope had his way.

At least Gregory was saved from that, because he was taken in by the Kingdom of Aragon and, as such, was safe from the depredations of the Pope’s torturers. At the earliest opportunity, he left the place where he had been held, and travelled back to his home country, England. But although he certainly didn’t feel like a Castilian or an Aragonese, nor did he feel truly English any more. He had lived away for too long. Gregory had been tempted to join another Order, perhaps one of the friars, for he wasn’t sure he wanted to stay in a big religious house again. A large monastery or preceptory would feel too much like a prison, after his past experiences of living in what seemed to be a condemned cell.