The Complete Kingdom Trilogy (113 page)

‘Cover,' he snapped and Hal, glancing backwards as he scurried behind a table, saw the figures move smoothly out on to the gallery, latchbows ready. Behind them came the tall, saturnine figure of Guillermo, a scowl on his handsome face.

‘Ach,' Sim declared with disgust, cranking the arbalest like a madman. ‘There are times when I wish you were no' as sharp in your thinkin', Kirkpatrick, but I prig the blissin' o' the blue heaven on you for it.'

‘God be praised,' Kirkpatrick answered piously.

‘For ever and ever.'

Guillermo stared down at them and silence fell, broken only by the harsh of breathing and the clank of Sim resting his arbalest on a steadying edge. That slight sound seemed to break the moment.

‘You would be wise not to trigger that monster,' Guillermo warned. ‘Those tables will not stand against the quarrels from my own bows at this range.'

‘You dare not kill us,' Rossal said quietly and stepped from behind cover. Hal moved as if to drag him back and felt Kirkpatrick's hand on his forearm; when he looked, he was given a quiet smile and a shake of the head, which only left him more bewildered than ever.

‘You do not know which of us holds the secret of the treasure you seek,' Rossal went on, ‘now that you have discovered the truth.'

Hal's gaze was wide-eyed, matched only by Sim, but Kirkpatrick merely flashed them a smile and put his fingers to his lips.

‘Sand,' Guillermo declared with disgust. ‘Boxes of sand. And some lead for the weight. Clever. Now you will tell us where you have hidden the treasure. You will do this or suffer.'

‘You should not', Rossal flung back, ‘have left the likes of us our arms, for you cannot inflict suffering without a fight and we will neither step back nor surrender, so you will have to kill us. You cannot do that, my lord, if you want the secret you seek. So your threats are an empty mistake. And not nearly as bad as the one which led you to this betrayal. You are a serpent in Eden, my lord, whose own bite will be fatal for you.'

‘Three Poor Knights,' Guillermo sneered, ‘one half-dead already. And three old men. A jester with a bladder on a stick could overpower you.'

‘Bigod!' Sim bellowed. ‘I will send a bolt to rip away his liver and lights.' He was held back only by the combined efforts of Kirkpatrick and Hal and eventually forced silent.

‘You have one hour to consider matters,' Guillermo declared, unfolding his arms and sweeping back through the archway, the two archers filtering warily after him.

The breath came out of them sudden and together, so that it sounded like a small wind; Kirkpatrick and Hal let go of Sim, who shook himself angrily, like a bristling dog.

‘You had better explain this,' Hal said wearily to Kirkpatrick, ‘for it seems to me everyone kens the meat of it save myself and Sim. I am sick of your close mouth, Kirkpatrick, particularly when you drag me and those I care for by your side.'

‘Guillermo is an ambitious wee scrauchle,' Kirkpatrick answered blandly, ignoring Hal's scowls, ‘winsome, but with a wanthrifty soul, whose sister is as black-avowed as he is. Guillermo wants to be Grand Master of his Order and the one who occupies that space is no capering fool – his name is Ruy Vaz and he had his suspicions.'

‘He might well be behind it,' Hal pointed out and Rossal shook his head, a quiet, sad smile lifting the black beard.

‘Ruy Vaz is the one who sent warning to us and a solution. The warning came by one of his agents, one close to the sister.'

‘Piculph,' Sim declared, remembering the hissed revelations of Widikind; all heads turned to where the German, bundled in a cloak, lay trembling and rolling-eyed. Dying, Hal thought dully.

‘So it appears, though we were not told of it,' Kirkpatrick went on. ‘But we devised this cheatry about the gold. Even sent out decoy ships as if it was real.'

‘It is fake?' Sim demanded truculently. ‘We came all this way – I boaked up my guts for a ruse?'

‘The fish send their thanks,' de Villers declared, grinning as he arranged the trestles round the door leading to the belltower.

‘The treasure is here,' Rossal answered before Sim bubbled up, ‘and we must get it to Ruy Vaz to exchange for the weapons we have promised King Robert.'

‘It is not in the carts,' Kirkpatrick explained, seeing Hal's bewilderment, ‘nor is it on the ship, which Guillermo suspects and will have confirmed. Widikind—'

‘Brother Widikind has said nothing,' Rossal interrupted sharply. ‘Else Guillermo would know the truth of matters. He is no fool, all the same, and will work to the meat of it in the end. Even without Brother Widikind.'

Hal heard the bitter sadness in his voice and realized that de Bissot already considered Widikind as dead. Worse occurred to him as he recalled the German's halting last words.

‘The others have been taken,' he said. ‘We have no ship, then, and if we have a treasure as you say I cannot see how it is to be got to this Ruy Vaz, nor the weapons all the way back to King Robert.'

He stopped, seeing Rossal and de Villers scramble out of their black priests's robes, so that they stood in white undershirts, each with a small red cross on the breast. Rossal hauled out a leather pouch and handed it to Kirkpatrick.

‘The treasure,' he declared solemnly, and leaned closer, so that his next words were low and hissed.

‘
Ordo ex chao
,' he said and Kirkpatrick took the pouch, nodded and stuffed it inside his own tunic.

‘It is my task to get to Ruy Vaz,' he said lightly, grinning at Hal and Sim. ‘It is yours to get back to the coast and find out what has happened to the
Bon Accord
. De Grafton is the traitor who nearly did for Somhairl.'

He broke off and shook his head in genuine sorrow.

‘He has fallen a long way from grace. He may well now have thrown in his lot with Guillermo and his sister. Whether de Grafton has shackled himself to her or not, he is an agent of the English, I am sure of it.'

‘Christ betimes, how are we to achieve any of this?' roared Sim, scrubbing his head with confusion. ‘You have contrived to fasten us up in a prison, Kirkpatrick.'

‘Mind yer station, ye moudiewart,' Kirkpatrick replied, his wry smile balming the sting of it. ‘I hope you are as clever at getting down a long drop as you are at scaling one, Sim Craw. I will need your belts and those black robes, for we do not have one of your cunning ladders.'

De Villers returned, grim and spade-bearded, to tell them he had muffled the bell with his own small clothes, cut the long bell rope and refastened it securely.

‘It is short,' he replied tersely and Hal knew what they were about to do, for he had seen the commanderie, perched on the edge of a ravine: the belltower rope would lead to the base of the rock it was built on and then there would be another drop, a good ten ells, to the bottom of the brush-choked ravine. A man could break every limb in such a fall. A man could break his head.

‘The belts and cloth strips should make the difference,' Kirkpatrick said cheerily and Hal looked at him; they were three men past their prime for hand-over-hand descents down makeshift ropes and his look said it all.

Almost all. Sim, as ever, had his own thoughts on the drop and the dark.

‘God be praised,' he declared piously and crossed himself.

‘For ever and ever.'

Rossal came to Hal, looming sudden as a wraith.

‘Brother de Grafton', he said, his French soft and sibilant, ‘was released into the care of Sir Henry Percy after the Order was proscribed in England and all Templars arrested. It is possible that he has renounced his vows to God in favour of King Edward, but probably works only for Percy. De Grafton was the only one of us who did not know the truth of the Templar treasure. Like this Guillermo and his sister, he believed that the wealth was boxed and in our carts.'

Hal nodded, frowning and trying hard to keep pace with it all. Guillermo, if he had any sense at all, would wonder where the boxed treasure had vanished. If not here, or on the ship, it could only have been spirited away on a rest halt and that under the eyes of the escorting knights.

Rossal nodded at this, his smile a sardonic twist in the dim.

‘De Grafton will know by now, for he is of the Order. He may even tell Guillermo the truth of it, though I am sure he will look for his own advantage first. If he does not tell, Guillermo will be left wondering. We are the Templars, after all, who worship Baphomet and have strange powers. Who is to say what spells such magi could cast on the eyes and minds of men? Or even on gold.'

‘If you have one to make us fly, now is the time to conjure it up,' Sim Craw growled. ‘Better still, turn us invisible.'

‘God be praised,' Rossal answered, cross-signing Sim's blasphemy away.

‘For ever and ever,' Hal intoned frostily, glaring at the unrepentant Sim. Then he looked at Rossal. ‘Mark you, he has a point – Guillermo is not so much of a fool that he will have forgot to have the tower surrounded.'

‘Not down in that ravine,' Kirkpatrick answered, bustling up. ‘Mak' haste – we have little time.'

‘They will expect us to try an escape,' Hal persisted and Rossal laid a hand on his arm.

‘With the greatest of respect,' he said, ‘they consider you three old men of little worth. It is the Templars they want and myself in particular. As long as they see us here, that is what they will fix on.'

The sick lurch of it reeled Hal sideways; he had not considered what the Order knights would do and realized it now, all in a rush.

‘We are the last Templars,' Rossal declared simply. Nearby, faint as a moth's breath, came the sound of de Villers praying.
Non nobis, non nobis, Domine, sed nomini tuo da gloriam
… not to us, not to us, O Lord, but to Your Name give glory.

Rossal rolled his shoulders a little.

‘We will fight them in the narrow door and up the steps to the tower. It will take them a long time to overcome us and they must try and take at least one of us alive, in order to question.'

He nodded to each of them.

‘You will have the night, perhaps more if God is with us. Then they will come after you.'

Stunned, they watched him move away to kneel with the others. Kirkpatrick cleared his throat and exchanged glances with Hal.

‘Defending the treasure and the honour of his Order to the end,' he growled. ‘No better way to end it.'

Hal heard the gruffness tremble all the same and remembered that Kirkpatrick owed his life twice to the intervention of Rossal de Bissot. He followed the man up the steps, with Sim grunting behind him. At the top, panting, Sim rounded on Kirkpatrick.

‘Whaur's the treasure?'

Sim's truculent demand was a blot in the mirror of the moment.

‘Seems to me,' he went on sullenly, ‘you are placing a deal of trust in this Ruy Vaz.'

‘The Grand Master of Alcántara has flushed out his traitor,' Kirkpatrick declared, ‘who thinks Templar treasure can be lifted and weighed in boxes. Ruy Vaz kens the truth of matters.'

‘I wish I did,' Sim muttered. ‘Are you payin' for good King Robert's armoury with the blessings of God?'

‘No,' Hal said, remembering the pouch and the whisper:
Ordo ex chao
. Order out of chaos. A fitting password to go with the Templar jetton. He explained it to Sim, who also remembered it from the time they had ransomed Isabel using one – more years ago now than either of them cared to recall.

A tally note for sums deposited elsewhere, it could be presented, together with the secret word known only to the deliverer and the recipient, in exchange for all or part of the sum. There was no gold in boxes or anywhere else, only a slip of scribbled parchment and a few spoken words.

‘There is a fearsome sum on this wee jetton tally note, stamped by the Templar seal and the Schiarizzi mercantilers of the Italies,' Kirkpatrick declared, patting his tunic where the pouch was hidden. ‘One of those merchants waits in Villasirga with Ruy Vaz and when he gets this wee scrap o' paper and the secret word, he will nod and Ruy Vaz will know his money is assured.'

Sim worried it in his head, licked his lips and nodded uncertainly. Once he would have crossed himself and spat over his shoulder at this, as clear an indication of unholy magic as there could be – how else could the Templars transfer a man's coin from one place to another, unseen and unheard?

‘You must get to the port and see to the crew and the ship,' Kirkpatrick went on, grim as old rock. ‘When I bring this to Ruy Vaz, he will scourge Guillermo and his supporters and we are assured of weapons and armour – but we still need to bring them safe to King Robert.'

Kirkpatrick's eyes and sweat-sheened face seemed to gleam in the dark and the snake-hiss slither of the rope going over the side was loud. For a moment, Hal saw de Bissot and Kirkpatrick lock eyes with one another, saw the jaw muscles work Kirkpatrick's beard. Then Kirkpatrick nodded once and turned away; he and Hal clasped wrist to wrist, brief and wordless, and Kirkpatrick, grunting with effort, levered himself over the belltower lip, hung for a moment and was gone.

Blinking sweat from his eyes and rubbing his palms, Hal remembered when he, Isabel and Sim had watched Dog Boy perform the same feat out of the window of a besieged Herdmanston. The three of them had had to lie together on the great box bed to stop it being dragged across the floor by the makeshift rope Dog Boy hung from; Isabel, smiling bright, had sworn them all to secrecy about her lying abed with the pair of them, easing the strain on the moment if not the rope.

Hal blinked back to the present, helped Sim grunt and pech his way over the lip and was not sure the big man had the strength of arm and leg to get him all the way down. Still, he heard no wild cry and thump so thought it went fine enough.