The Templar

For once, Simon had little taste for wine. His head was aching, making him feel a bit woolly, and he demanded a pot of fresh, cold water from the well, watching the innkeeper as she went to draw a jug for him.

He was somewhat surprised by his second meeting with Maria. With her veil removed, she was a striking-looking woman, with an oval face that, if it had been cleaner, would have been attractive. Her face was lined with grief, and he remembered with a pang of guilt that she had mentioned losing her family. She looked as though she had suffered greatly.

For Baldwin, though, there was no time for kindness. ‘Why did you choose to hide?’

‘What would you have done? Waited out in the open for someone to kill you?’

‘Why should anyone kill you?’

‘I saw him. I was there. No murderer wants to leave a witness behind.’

‘You honestly believe your life is in danger?’ Baldwin said.

She looked at him, and let him see the full extent of her fear. Lifting her hands, she took up her hood and let it fall on her shoulders.

Without the protection of veil or hood, the two men could see her for what she really was. Dressed in her beggar’s clothing, she appeared a large, middle-aged woman who could have been any age. Without the camouflage of clothes, she was revealed as a slim, haunted-looking woman in her mid-twenties. Her great doe-shaped eyes were luminous with sadness, and there were bruises beneath them from tears. She had a delicate face, but where her complexion should have been a dark olive colour, she was wan, almost yellow. On her left brow there was an ugly brown and mauve bruise. ‘Look at me and tell me I don’t fear,’ she said hollowly. ‘I have suffered everything. I have lost my husband and my children, and now a man seeks my death in order to hide his guilt. I fear every footstep!’

‘The man who killed Matthew — have you seen him since?’ Baldwin asked.

‘If I had, I should have run away!’

‘Do you know who he was?’

She stared out over the garden. There was a curse, and the servant dropped a pot, the thing exploding on the hard floor. The sound made Maria duck with utter terror, a look so petrified on her face that Baldwin half-rose and put his hand on hers. ‘Don’t fear — it was a clumsy potman, nothing more. You are safe with us here.’

She gazed into his eyes to try to gain confidence from him, but then she shook her head and looked away. ‘All you want is to hear me accuse another man,’ she said sadly. ‘You don’t care about me any more than you care about a rat.’

That was the truth. These men wanted a trophy that they could hang on a wall. They weren’t interested really, not in a beggarwoman. Why should they be? She was just a victim of her circumstances. It was not her fault that she had been widowed, it was just something that had happened. Because of it, she was without a protector, and had become a beggar, regarded by some as a whore. She had so much to give, but now she must spend her time hidden in case she was hunted down.

With shaking hands, she pulled her cowl up and over her head again. From beneath its protection her voice appeared to gain a little strength. ‘His name is Afonso. He’s a young man in his mid-twenties, perhaps younger. A handsome fellow, so long as you don’t look in his eyes. He’s a mercenary — no loyalty to any lord. He was a Portuguese in the company of an Englishman and his squire. I saw Afonso run at Matthew with the knife in his hand. Matthew died; Afonso fled. I saw him run.’

‘Do you know why he did it?’

‘You think I should have asked him?’ she asked with slow, cold sarcasm. ‘While his hands were yet bloodied?’

‘The girl, Joana,’ Simon said hesitantly, glancing at Baldwin. He could sense that the knight’s mind was focused on Matthew’s death, but Simon was more interested in Joana’s. ‘She was killed in such a ferocious manner. I wonder …’

‘What?’

Simon saw Baldwin throw a look over his shoulder towards the inn, as if he could stare through the walls and see the beggar sitting, still weeping, where they had left her.

‘I just wondered …’

‘It makes no sense,’ Baldwin interrupted. ‘Why should a young man want to kill him? How on earth could someone like Matthew have offended a fellow of twenty-five or so?’

Simon sighed to himself. ‘It could have been anything. You know as well as I do that some men will take umbrage at the way another man looks at them. Remember that Knight of Santiago whom we saw on the day we got here? He was the sort of fellow who was prepared to take offence for no reason.’

‘The knight? Oh, yes — the man with the woman.’

Simon gave a low whistle. ‘I hadn’t thought: it was Ramon, wasn’t it? And the woman must have been Joana. Poor girl. She had no idea she was going to die that day.’

Baldwin shrugged. ‘Most victims have no idea of their impending end. I wonder if Matthew did?’