The Templar's Penance: (Knights Templar 15) (38 page)

If only, he kept telling himself, he had gone with Baldwin. At least he would have been moving, doing something. Not only would he and Baldwin have been able to keep each other’s spirits up, Simon would surely have felt better if he had been occupied. All he could do here was keep on wondering where his old friend was, and how he fared. There was no point telling himself the truth – that he might have suffered a dangerous relapse, nor that he would have slowed Baldwin down; all he knew was the boredom of loneliness and uncertainty.

For there was uncertainty in any journey. The grimmest and
most fearful outcome of Baldwin’s trip to that place … what was it called? Oh, Tomar! Yes, the worst possible outcome was that Simon would never hear from Baldwin again. There were so many dangers – rivers in spate, bandits, mountains, rockfalls – even if Baldwin survived the terrible risks of a sea crossing. Having once sailed over the seas to Galicia, Simon had thought that the perils of seafaring would diminish, but he was perturbed to learn that his own travel had merely given him a livelier appreciation of the dangers, and now his every thought was bent towards Baldwin and his safety.

He was standing by the window in the late morning on the fourth day after the knight’s departure, feeling glum and lonely, when Margarita stole in quietly and studied him.

‘So, you are ready to ignore my words and climb from your bed?’ she asked with mock seriousness.

Simon smiled. ‘My lady, how could I remain in that bed knowing that you were about to arrive? Besides, my very bones ache from inaction. I’m not used to this!’

He would have said more, but he had a natural inclination to avoid rudeness before any woman, especially one who had nursed him through an illness.

‘It is like being caged, I suppose,’ she said, studying his body. He had lost much weight, and his face was quite haggard, with deep lines at his brow. What made him look worse was the constrained expression on his face, like a prisoner who can see and hear real life continuing outside his cell, but may not go out and experience it himself. She thought it made him look a little like a vulnerable boy-child, petulant at the unfair rules that held him here, but accepting their authority nonetheless. ‘Would you like to join me on a visit to the market?’

‘Madam, I should kill for the chance!’

In the bright sunshine, he put on the hat again. The long peak that felt so stupid did at least reduce the overpowering glare of the full sunlight. He wore a thin shirt and one jacket only, on Margarita’s advice, and although he could feel the enormous
power of the sun’s heat, it did not make him feel queasy or weak as it had the day he collapsed.

‘You should drink more,’ she said. ‘That is probably what affected you.’

‘I had drunk plenty,’ he retorted, but without rancour. ‘I had gone that morning with Baldwin to one of the troughs near the stables, I think.’

‘Sometimes the air in certain areas can be bad,’ she said. ‘If you can smell rotten eggs, the air can affect you, I have often observed.’

‘Malaria, yes,’ he said. ‘I have heard of it. But I thought that it caused yellowness of the flesh and similar ailments?’

‘In some people, yes, it can,’ she agreed. ‘Others are affected like you, and find that their bowels are loosened and they have a violent fever. I do not think you were so badly stricken, but it must have been a cruel fever.’

Simon nodded, but his mind was already on other things. A hawker was selling cockleshells, and when he looked past her, he saw a man with intricate little necklaces of shells. It was exactly the sort of trinket that his daughter would adore, especially since it came from a place so far from her own home and experience. He indicated the seller, and nothing loath, Margarita took him to the man and haggled on his behalf.

Afterwards, she was keen to acquire meat for the evening meal, and she walked enthusiastically along the benches on which were set out all the bleeding cuts from the animals which had been slaughtered that morning in the shambles, the blood still staining the cobbles where the apprentices hadn’t yet washed it away. While she was studying the slabs of meat and consulting with the butcher as to how she wanted it prepared, Simon went for a stroll. He saw a table set out with wines and made his way over to it, ordering a pot of red in a loud voice and draining it in two gulps. It was strongly flavoured and had a metallic taste, but Simon had been told to drink more after his illness, so he gulped down a second dose as soon as the
man had refilled the cup, and found that his attitude to the city was marginally improved.

Although he was used to working for long periods alone on the moors, this place was too alien for him to feel entirely at home. The heat, the crowds, the odd tones of the voices, all assailed his senses and made him feel more than ever like a stranger, or an outcast.

It was while he stood at the wine counter that he saw Gregory again. The cleric was standing pensively at a stall which sold many pewter badges for pilgrims to display on their clothes, and as Simon watched, Gregory picked up a large cockleshell and purchased it.

‘That should suit your hat!’ Simon said.

Gregory jumped and turned with a face bright red. ‘Ah! I had thought you were gone with your friend.’

‘You heard that Baldwin had left?’ Simon said, rather surprised.

‘I … I asked,’ Gregory said hesitantly. ‘You see …’ He was suddenly shy, glancing away from Simon and looking about them in the square. Taking the plunge, he spoke so low that it was all Simon could do to hear him over the noise of hawkers. ‘When we attacked the tavern that day – the day you were knocked down?’

A polite way to put it, Simon reflected. Aloud he merely prompted, ‘Yes?’

‘That day … I saw his sword when he drew it.’

‘So?’

Gregory looked at him quickly. ‘It’s nothing to do with me,’ he said, and would have turned away, but Simon realised what he had seen: Baldwin’s sword, the special little riding sword of which he was so proud. The sword into whose blade was etched a Templar cross in memory of his service and his friends.

Simon caught his shoulder. ‘I know what you mean,’ he said, speaking quietly, ‘but why should you ask about him because of that?’

‘He was … Well, so was I. For a time. A short time,’ Gregory said miserably. He looked up at Simon. ‘I was not faithless.
When my wife divorced me, I chose to take my own vows. It was just my luck to have married such a vicious shrew, and as soon as I could, I joined the Order. Best thing I ever did.’

Simon was aware of Margarita. ‘Shall we share some wine, Gregory? Let us take a seat for a while.’

Margarita wanted to return home, but she was prevailed upon by Simon to remain with him. To his shame, he insisted that he felt weak, and must have a few moments sitting. The call on her generosity of spirit was effective, although Simon saw that she did not believe him entirely, and he wasn’t certain whether the expression in her eyes was hurt and offence at being lied to, or simple amusement.

‘Now Domingo is dead, what will your wife do?’

‘Ex-wife,’ Gregory said dismally, his hand holding a cup. ‘I wouldn’t mind, but I still love her. It makes me feel a fool, but I can’t help it. Even after she had her servant attack me, and had him kill all those people, and clobber me again the other day,’ he said, his hand rising gingerly to touch the egg-shaped lump on his tonsure, ‘I still can’t bring myself to hate her.’

‘What will she do? She will need some form of guard to return to her Priory, won’t she?’

‘I suppose so. From what I have heard, she will have the services of another bully boy. Some damned Fleming she’s taken up with.’

‘I seem to recall …’ Simon murmured, and was then quiet. The man with whom she had enjoyed an affair: Don Ruy had said that he was a Fleming. ‘Wasn’t there a Fleming as well as Don Ruy in your band of pilgrims?’

‘Yes. That was the same man. I had heard that he had a fling, but I had no idea then that the woman he had had a fling with was my own wife!’

‘So Domingo actually attacked the very same band in which you travelled, along with her own lover?’ Simon mused. Two things had occurred to him. First, Domingo was evil and dangerous, but he clearly wasn’t mad. Second, Domingo was a very competent killer. He didn’t draw back at the last moment. If
he had struck down Gregory, the latter would have remained down. He might have killed Joana, but there was no possibility that he had knocked Gregory down as well.

So the man who had attacked Gregory must have been someone else altogether.

The ship rocked gently as it passed down the Portuguese coast, and Baldwin was content. In the glorious sunlight of a summer’s day, his wide-brimmed travelling hat pulled down tightly against the breeze, his head rammed deep into the bowl-shaped crown, he felt as though he was achieving something – and he was filled with excitement at the idea of seeing a Templar church.

In the distance off the port side of the ship lay another small town. Fishing boats painted in bright colours with large sails, moved slowly over the clear, blue water, the crews throwing their great nets into the water or hauling on the ropes that would pull up the pots for catching lobsters. These were the things that Baldwin remembered from his last visits to Portugal – the prevalence of fresh fish throughout the country, and the broad, azure sky.

When he boarded, he had asked the master of the ship where they would dock, and he had told Baldwin that their course would take four days to reach the estuary that led up to the great city of Óbidos, which the Portuguese still called the ‘Wedding City’, since King Dinis had given it to his wife as a present when they married some forty years before.

‘Not long now, Dom Baldwin,’ the master called.

To port Baldwin saw a series of white beaches, and then there was a gap, a narrow space, filled with water, at which the master was pointing. Baldwin felt a slight anxiety to think that this was the place where he would leave the ship, which must continue on its way to Lisbon, where the master had material and leathers to sell. Baldwin himself would be set on land so that he could either sail to Óbidos, or perhaps hire a horse. That, he considered, glancing about him, looked unlikely. There might be a sturdy
mule or two here, but he reckoned that a boat would best suit his purposes.

He climbed from the ship into a small fishing vessel, and that set him down safely on shore. Knowing little Portuguese, he felt daunted by the thought of explaining himself to the fishermen who stood idly watching him while their hands automatically moved wooden lumps through old nets as they threaded new string through holes. So this, he thought, is what Simon felt like in Galicia. It made Baldwin realise how disorientating a total inability to communicate could be.

By signs and regular repetition of the name ‘Óbidos!’ he managed, he thought, to make his wishes plain, and many of the men about the nets smiled contentedly, their sun-browned faces wrinkling, eyes all but hidden in the tanned flesh from long years of staring at the sun glinting off the sea. It was only when a black-robed priest appeared that he realised that they had understood not a word.

‘I wanted to sail to Óbidos,’ he explained in Latin.

The priest looked a little bemused and when he spoke, his accent was so strong, Baldwin found it very hard to understand. ‘Aha. The city is easy to reach.’

He had a fawning manner, which put Baldwin’s back up at first, but then he reflected that this man was probably unused to meeting strangers from over the seas, and knowing that Baldwin was heading for the great city, he might feel that respect was a suitable response.

There were no boats sailing that afternoon. Baldwin had to content himself with sitting outside a small, cheap inn on a sun-whitened bench and sipping at a rough local wine. Tomorrow he would be moving on. With luck, once at the city he would be able to buy or hire a horse. Tomar was some way beyond Óbidos, maybe another fifty miles, which meant at least two days of travelling in this heat. Perhaps he could make up time by riding at night, he thought, but that was dangerous without a guide. Munio had given him some gold to help him, arguing that Baldwin would need more than hope to carry him onwards, and
as the murders were committed on Munio’s land, he had an interest in seeing to it that his colleague was successful. That was his argument, and Baldwin had little enough money with him, so he was in no position to refuse.

It would be a hard journey from Óbidos, he knew, and he must make it as quickly as he could. Perhaps he should hire a guide. It would make the expense much greater, but it would probably shorten the journey time.

Yes, when he reached the city, he would try to get a guide, he decided. But for now, all he was aware of was his sudden hunger as he caught a whiff of fresh sardines roasting on a charcoal brazier nearby. They smelled and, so he soon learned, tasted delicious.

The next morning, Baldwin was woken by an insistent pulling at his shoulder. A weather-beaten face peered down at him, dark eyes shielded by heavy lids, and he was glad at first that a man had come for him. Then the old woman cackled to see his dull, unaware expression, and he jerked upright, pulling the sheet back over his nakedness.

Last night the weather had been delicious, with balmy breezes wafting over his body out here on the bench by the door. The warmth and the gentle sound of waves slapping at the sand had made his sleep all the better, and he had not been disturbed by dreams but had merely sunk down into the deep slumber of the exhausted.