‘Maybe the others will turn them up while they’re looking for de Mont’s writings,’ Tristán mused.
Arnau doubted it. Ramon and Balthesar’s squires were good men, but the level of care that had been taken with this conspiracy suggested that their search would bear no fruit. If even the mother house had been stripped of useful evidence, what hope was there at Rourell? He suddenly remembered the man he’d seen leaving the place as they arrived.
‘La Selva. I think La Selva has the documents.’
‘Then we’ll never get them.’
He sagged. Tristán was right. At least in Barbera they could gain access legitimately. What hope had they of getting access to La Selva’s library in his well-protected castle… None, of course…
‘We might as well leave,’ the squire muttered irritably.
Arnau stood, arms folded, and drummed his fingers on his elbows. ‘Perhaps. But despite what I said about wanting to be away from de Comminges, if we head back to Rourell we are more or less admitting defeat. I think there is one avenue left to us.’
‘There is?’
‘The paborda of Tarragona cathedral will have duplicates of these documents as part of his work, for he maintains the records of all land ownership within the territory of Tarragona, in addition to the cathedral’s own lands. Somewhere in the cathedral there will be another copy of everything we need.’
Tristán shuddered. ‘All within the domain of the archbishop, a man we know to be our enemy.’
‘The paborda serves the church rather than specifically the archbishop. He has to answer to the archbishop, of course, as his senior, but he is not his man, per se. It may be that the paborda can be persuaded to our aid. And if the archbishop has not thought to secure those records, we might just stand a chance.’ There was one worrying hurdle involved in all of that, but he kept his mouth shut over it. Better not to worry the squire unduly just yet.
‘Then we ride for Tarragona.’
Arnau nodded. ‘But not yet. Brother Bernard de Comminges is up to his neck in corruption, I can feel it, and by now he must know we’re here. If we rush off with empty hands, we will appear to be guilty men on the run and will draw extra suspicion. I want to leave quietly and unnoticed from this place, not followed, and be able to move as though we were returning to Rourell before diverting part way and making for the city of Tarragona. To that end, I think we should gather a few armfuls of files relating to Rourell for the look of things.’
Over the next quarter hour they gathered up a selection of files from the Rourell section and then, taking a steadying breath, they crossed to the exit. As they left the room, Arnau conscientiously locked it behind them. Balancing armfuls of files, the two men retrod the route back to the drapier’s office and rapped on the door. When the voice called out within for them to enter, they did so and Arnau placed the key on the desk.
‘We have locked up, Brother Esteban, and acquired our files. Thank you so much for your assistance.’
‘You were quicker than I could have imagined,’ the man said with an easy smile.
‘Brother de Mont has most of the files we need already,’ Arnau explained smoothly. ‘There were just a few more to secure. Not a lengthy task, once we had worked out the system. Might I ask who has access to the library? Brother de Mont, obviously. And yourself.’
The drapier nodded. ‘There is the key on this ring, which contains a key to every door in Barbera. De Mont should have a key, but I believe he left it with one of the sergeants who assisted him when he left for Rourell. The other key belongs to the master of the house. Brother Bernard has that currently.’
Arnau tried to keep his expression neutral. Who knew where this sergeant’s loyalties lay, but de Comminges had just been in audience with one of La Selva’s men, and there was a connection that almost certainly brought the interim master into the ranks of known conspirators, and suggested that it had been he who had overseen the removal of the files, if not de Mont himself.
‘Thank you for your time. If it is acceptable, we will forego the Sext service in the name of expediency. If we leave now we can be back at Rourell by mid-afternoon.’
Brother Esteban shrugged. ‘That is your decision entirely. I will have one of the sergeants escort you to the stables.’
Arnau thanked the man and waited patiently as their host ducked out and found a black-robed sergeant for them. As they waited, he kept his eyes on the door, half expecting de Comminges to make an appearance, and it was with considerable relief that he took his leave of the drapier and he and Tristán followed their guide down the stairs and along a corridor out into the wide courtyard.
As the morning sun once more glared down upon them Arnau blinked, and as his vision adjusted his eyes widened. The centre of the courtyard was a hive of activity as half a dozen horses were being saddled, all bearing the green tree emblem of La Selva. The riders were standing at the far side of the open space with their backs to him, looking down on the lands below, and Arnau tried not to move suspiciously in case one of them glanced his way. After all, he was a knight in white with a sergeant in black amid a sea of men similarly dressed. There was no reason for the visitors to look twice at him, and yet he trembled with tension as he and Tristán followed the sergeant.
Two of the La Selva men turned suddenly, mid-discussion, and marched over towards Arnau. For a moment, he felt a touch of panic that they were aiming directly for him and fought down the tension, grasping Tristán’s arm and turning him away from the two men in gold to examine a random horse’s saddle cinch. They stayed there, with Arnau needlessly explaining the leatherwork to the squire as the two La Selva men walked on past them and grabbed a sack of hay before marching back to their friends. Arnau heaved a careful sigh of relief and led Tristán on once more to the stables. All the way across that searing courtyard he felt the presence of those men. One slip and they might catch him. They may not belong to this monastery, but if the men somehow realised who they were and marched them to de Comminges, things could go bad fast.
Adjusting his shoulders to bear the bag of files they walked on, and it was only as they made their way into the darkened stable door that he felt any relief. Their horses had not yet been unsaddled, simply being ushered into stalls and fed hay, and it was the work of just moments to secure the files they had taken, retrieve the mounts and lead them back out towards the exit. Once more they moved out into the courtyard, and it was almost torture to pay attention to the path ahead of them and not look back over at the La Selva men. Even a single glance might be enough for them to realise something was wrong, and so, tension wracking him, he walked on with Tristán, keeping his back to the gathering.
As the castle’s heavy gate was swung open, he could almost feel the eyes of those six men upon him, but he still did not dare look back at them in case that drew the very attention he was trying to avoid.
‘Hey, you.’ The voice was authoritative, and cut through the chatter in the courtyard, silencing it. Arnau flinched, but kept walking. He just had to pass through the gate and mount up, then even if they chased him, he had a chance.
‘You!’ called the voice again, more urgently this time, and Arnau started to move faster while trying hard to seem casual. As they passed through the arch he finally glanced back, and relief flooded through him just for a moment. The voice had come from a brother, who was marching across the courtyard towards the gathered men at arms, calling to him. But then, one of the La Selva men turned and looked directly at Arnau, just as the wooden gate clicked into place behind him.
‘I have a feeling we’re not out of the woods yet,’ he muttered, as they left Barbera.
Chapter Six
Tarragona
1st October 1212
Arnau spied the golden walls of the city marching along the hill, enclosing an ancient huddle of buildings all crowned by that glorious grand cathedral, with a mixture of relief and trepidation.
The relief was more palpable than the trepidation, though. It had been a t
ense and nervous ride, and not without incident. Leaving Barbera, Arnau had become increasingly convinced that the men of La Selva in that courtyard had recognised them for who they were, and no good would come of that. They had ridden hard and fast from the mother house, back towards the pass, and it was only as they climbed high and turned to look back down upon the wide valley they had left behind, that they could see the small knot of horsemen in gold and green moving at speed along the same road.
He’d been wracked with indecision. To face them or run? To hide and evade? To make for Rourell instead now, or to continue with the plan to divert to Tarragona. In the end, as they watched the riders, he’d decided that the mission to retrieve the records from the Paborda in the city was paramount, and so they had to continue on for Tarragona. La Selva’s men would undoubtedly be heading back to his lands, which would take them close to Rourell along that same road. Thus, the best course of action seemed to be to hide and let them ride by, oblivious.
Moving on into the pass, they had looked to the village of La Riba on the far side of the Francoli, separated from them by the dozen mills that supplied flour and paper to the Tarragona region, yet connected to this bank by a high arched bridge. For a moment, Arnau had considered hiding among the houses of La Riba, but the faint possibility that the men might stop there and force an encounter drove him on. They rounded the shoulder of a high peak and passed a cliff upon which sat a few precarious dwellings before his eyes fell upon a narrow shepherd’s track climbing through the scrub towards the peak. Gesturing to Tristán, he led them from the road and up the slope. The track climbed at a vertiginous angle, curving around the hillside as it did so until some point, perhaps a quarter of a mile from the road below, it vanished between crags into a secluded and scrub-filled narrow valley at the peak. There a small army could conceal itself from the pass below, and Arnau and Tristán reined in and dismounted, tethering their horses and letting them graze on what slim pickings they could find, while they watched for La Selva’s men.
It was not long before the six figures rode past below. They were not moving at a chase speed, which filled Arnau with relief, for it suggested that they were not, in fact, following the two Templars after all. Still, they moved with purpose and without delay as they crested the pass and began to descend into the plains that led down past Rourell and towards Tarragona and the sea.
In order to avoid any possibility of bumping into them, the two men had remained in their hilltop hideaway for an hour, letting the small party of horsemen disappear entirely from view into the hazy distance before slowly descending once more to the road and continuing on their journey. Indeed, despite the importance of their mission, he had made certain then that there was as little possibility of blundering into the riders’ presence as possible. Ignoring any of the direct routes to Tarragona that came close to Rourell, La Selva or any of the troublesome lands that were being disputed with local lords, he had chosen to head east for a couple of hours, past the town of Valls and several small villages before turning south along minor roads and approaching Tarragona from the northeast.
Even then, he had known at times that they were passing through lands belonging to men claiming against the preceptory, and the possibility that those men might be fully in league with their enemies, rather than just grasping thieves lacking in morals, meant that the rest of the journey was carried out in a constant state of nervous awareness.
Now, as they finally approached the city, that tension was draining. It was simply a relief to have reached the city without encountering any more violence, or threat of such, on the roads. On the other hand, both men were well aware that the danger had not vanished, but rather intensified and changed form, for now they were walking brazenly into the den of the wolf that opposed them: Archbishop Rocaberti of Tarragona.
Eyes constantly strafing the scenery around them, Arnau and Tristán approached the simple arch in the walls of the city: one of the lesser gates. Two guards watched over the gate from within, though neither seemed to be paying more than passing attention to the sporadic stream of folk moving in and out, and Arnau and Tristán drew only a little more attention than the rest with their stark white and black mantles and the red cross.
As they moved into the city proper, the squire leaned towards Arnau. ‘I know it’s your intent to approach the paborda openly, Brother, and that’s fine, but I might question the wisdom of walking into the cathedral in our habits. It is unlikely our presence will not be brought to the attention of the archbishop swiftly.’
Arnau nodded. The time had come to admit to Tristán that the task ahead of them was perhaps even more troublesome than the squire currently believed. Gesturing to him, Arnau led Tristán into a narrow side street that stood empty and in shade.
‘How much money do we have?’
The squire rummaged in the purse at his belt as Arnau did the same. ‘One maravedi and twenty-two dinero,’ Tristán declared.
‘And I’ve two maravedi and eleven dinero. That’s plenty to see us through a day or two here. I think we must be prepared to spend at least a little time in the city, and I think it would be foolish to prevail upon the Templar presence in the city, given their potential links to our opponents in Barbera.’
‘So we look for an inn that has a view of the cathedral?’
Arnau shook his head. This was it. ‘The cathedral is not where we will find the records we seek, Tristán. The paborda will be based in the archbishop’s castle.’
‘The what?’ the squire exploded in disbelief.
‘You’re not local, and have spent no time in Tarragona, Tristán, but I know the place well enough. The cathedral is still under construction. Oh, the main structures are there, but work continues and will do so for many years yet. The archbishop occupies a veritable fortress known as the patriarch’s castle across the square from the cathedral and slightly further along the street – much of the episcopal bureaucracy is based there with him, leaving the cathedral to the canons.’
‘So you brought us to Tarragona with the intention of walking directly into our enemy’s bedchamber and sticking your foot up his—’
‘There was no alternative,’ Arnau hissed angrily. ‘We are clutching at our very last thread. There is no victory to be found in Rourell, no friends who can come to the preceptrix’s rescue, the mother house has proved to be less than worthless to us, and we are at the end of our short road. The only thing that could overturn these claims now are the Order’s records, and unless we besiege La Selva’s castle, the only place we can find them is here in the archbishop’s castle. If we are not willing to do what must be done, then all that remains is to go home and admit defeat. To watch Rourell and the preceptrix fall. What would you have me do?’
The squire fumed, gritting his teeth, but Arnau was right and the man knew it. Finally he nodded in resignation. ‘All right. So what is the plan?’
‘It seems unlikely that any sort of subterfuge will work. Access to the castle is usually restricted to those who live and work there, who have rank and duty within the cathedral and palace. While we could perhaps find a way in, even I do not know the interior, and it would take hours of blundering around just to find the appropriate rooms. No, we can only go in openly.’
‘That is beyond madness, Brother.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Arnau replied. ‘The way I see it, nobody in the castle will know us. We have met neither the archbishop nor the paborda, and they are probably as yet unaware that Rourell’s knights have returned from the crusade at all. After all, we have only been back for four days. As such, to anyone in there we are just Templars, and men of the Order are to be found in the city. We have a small house here and a chapel.’
‘So we pretend to be from the city?’
‘No. Our brazen approach worked at Barbera and I propose we attempt much the same here. We approach the place and claim to be from the mother house, seeking records held by the paborda. It is true – this should gain us access to that which we seek, and if
word reaches unfriendly ears, it might just be brushed off as unimportant.’
‘Ballocks, but you have some nerve, Brother.’
‘I can see no other realistic way. We can minimise our danger by timing our approach. What time would you say it is now?’
‘Mid-afternoon, if the growling of my belly is anything to go by.’
‘Then I think we have a little time on our hands. We should arrange to coincide our visit with the archbishop conducting a service in the cathedral, so that our main enemy will be absent. Most of the services will be small and held by the canons, but the archbishop will conduct the services for the major hours. His next one will almost certainly be vespers, not long before sunset. Let us find lodgings somewhere nearby and fill our stomachs while we wait. As soon as the bells begin to call the faithful to vespers, we shall make our way to the archbishop’s castle.’
Tristán, not entirely happy with the plan, but clearly unable to find a viable alternative, nodded. The two men rode their horses at a steady walk along the narrow side street, keeping parallel to the city wall and moving ever closer to the cathedral at the city’s highest point. Here, the buildings were truly ancient, formed of heavy brown stone and sporting the remnants of a thousand years of history, reused as building blocks. The crumbling walls of the Roman era jutted out from the more modern houses built within the shells of the ancient city, and they found a pleasant-looking tavern that inhabited a low, vaulted building which clearly belonged to that distant past. Speaking to the proprietor in the doorway, they confirmed that a room was available, and the man pointed to an arch nearby that led to a livery yard which had an arrangement with the inn. Dropping off their horses with the livery and paying a good price for one day’s stabling, they took their bags and returned to the inn.
The interior was cool and pleasant, and smelled of cured ham and wine, and with relief the two men took a seat at a table. There, they sat and whiled away the next few hours. Later, the innkeeper showed them to their room, which was basic and a little on the small side, but more than adequate for a night, especially for men used to monastic conditions, and without their bulky gear they returned to the table. They ate a hearty meal and drank a few small glasses, enough for comfort, but not enough to cloud the mind, and they sat and watched life go by.
The Last Crusade Page 10
