The room beyond was dim, the window shuttered, but there was still enough light to see by. The chamber was largely empty. A couple of chairs and a cupboard, as well as pegs on the wall, hung with garments both liturgical and lay. Two doors led off.
Leaving the thief at the entrance, where the man hurried back to the junction of the oriel window, Arnau and Tristán walked on through the left-hand door, choosing it simply for the expedient reason that it would be a room on an outside wall and therefore have windows. It turned out to be some sort of study or solar, and an exploration of the room beyond that showed it to be a sleeping chamber. None of the interior doors here were shut, and Arnau was careful not to disturb anything, leaving it all as he found it.
They retraced their steps and moved into the other room. This one was much darker with no window. A little investigation turned up another door, as well as various furnishings into which they bumped quietly in the dark. The door was shut and Arnau wondered for a moment if he was going to have to call the thief over. Hurrying that way, he noted with interest the line of dim light beneath the door. It looked like daylight rather than lamplight, which was a relief. Lamps would have meant occupants.
Taking a breath, with his fingertips on the grip of the dagger at his waist, he tried the door.
It swung open, and Arnau’s eyes widened. This was a library not unlike the one at Barbera, though if anything it was twice the size, and with twice as many documents. It was lit by two windows that looked out into some sort of light well or courtyard in the heart of the castle, and they were high enough that the light was good, still bright and undimmed by the castle’s bulk.
‘Same plan as last time?’ Tristán asked.
Arnau shook his head. ‘This is a different thing entirely. The records we’re looking for will have been used recently and will be out from their racks, I think. I’m sure the paborda and the archbishop will have been looking at them. Just look for anything that seems out of place. This library is well-organised, so they should stand out.’
The squire nodded and hurried off among the racks and cabinets, peering at the contents. Arnau did the same. It occurred to him that since the archbishop was squeezing this land dry of gold with his appalling rents, then there was probably sufficient evidence in here not only to save the preceptrix, but also to see both the archbishop and the paborda drawn up on charges of their own. It was a nice thought, and it would certainly be useful, but he brushed aside the possibility with a sigh. They had so little time, and they had a specific task. They had to concentrate on the exact files that would save the preceptrix, not be side-tracked by fantastic notions of bringing justice to wicked men. After all, the effects of saving the preceptrix would be trouble for the archbishop and the paborda even without tackling them directly.
His gaze fell upon rack after rack of files, and he almost leapt with delight when he spotted a collection of records on a set of shelves near one of the windows that had to number two or three hundred and had clearly been moved there recently. Closer investigation, however, showed them to be the records of the Royal Abbey of Santa Maria de Poblet, not far from Barbera. That the paborda might have control of royal monastery records was worrying. La Selva might be even more powerful and influential than Arnau had given him credit for.
‘Gah, this is hard,’ the squire called from somewhere across the library. ‘They all look the same to me. Boats I can tell apart, but I wasn’t made to be a clerk.’
Arnau huffed his tacit agreement as he left the monastic records and moved on. Another set of recently moved files looked less likely, for there were too few, and they turned out to be from another administrative office at Tortosa. He was beginning to worry. Oddly, while he had considered all sorts of potential stumbling blocks with this plan, not being able to actually find the files had not occurred to him. They were tight for time here, for someone could come along at any moment, and they couldn’t afford to spend too long searching the room.
‘Aha…’ Tristán called, and Arnau looked up, relief flooding through him until the squire corrected himself in a resigned voice. ‘No, sorry. Mistake.’
‘Lord,’ Arnau murmured beneath his breath, ‘guide our efforts, for we surely do your work here.’
Taking another steady breath, he moved on. He was so surprised when he saw it that he’d almost walked on past before he realised what he was looking at. Five piles of records were stacked on the floor near a set of shelves, as though in the process of being filed. Heart beating faster now, he crouched and looked at them. The name on the first file was unfamiliar, and he lifted it aside to look beneath.
Pedro de Canet.
Excitement coursing through him at recognition of the name, Arnau moved it to look at the next. And the next. By the time he’d reached the seventh file, he knew these were the records he sought, for he found there the folder marked, Vallbona.
‘Tristán!’
The squire came hurrying across. ‘You found them?’
‘Here they are. All of them. More than two hundred records.’
His voice died in his throat. ‘How will we get them out of here? There are so many.’
The squire shook his head. ‘You don’t need them all. If we can prove that de Mont is cheating with even one of them, we can throw his whole investigation into doubt and force a re-evaluation.’
‘You’re right,’ Arnau grinned excitedly. ‘We can take a dozen, maybe a score. And that way they might not even realise anything is missing for a while, too. Brilliant.’
Reaching down, he pulled half a dozen files from the bottom of each pile, stuffing them unceremoniously into the bag the squire had retrieved and held open. ‘We’re finally winning, Tristán. We can do this. We can save Rourell and the preceptrix.’
He became aware suddenly of quietly padding footsteps approaching.
‘Company,’ hissed the thief across from the next room.
‘Come on,’ Arnau said, rising. ‘Time to go.’
Chapter Eight
A game undone
2nd October 1212
Arnau bustled from the library with Tristán at his back, gripping the heavy sack full of precious records and hurrying into the darker room beyond. Moving from the well-lit office into the dim chamber their eyesight was hampered in a moment, and both men staggered through the room, bumping into furniture repeatedly, blinking into the dark in search of the thief. As they adjusted, heading for the main door, it became clear that the man had already withdrawn from the room. Reaching that previously-locked door, Arnau looked out along the corridor. He could hear a single set of footsteps but could see nothing of the man who had helped them come here. Turning, he checked the room behind as best he could, but there was no obvious sign of the man. The thief had gone. How would they lock the door?
Foolish question. The door was fast becoming immaterial. If they didn’t get out of here now, the door wouldn’t matter at all. What had happened to the thief was a worry for another time, too. After all, he said that the moment this went bad he would disappear. Arnau hadn’t realised quite how literally the man had spoken, but clearly he was a man of his word, and he had done the job he’d been retained to do.
Ushering Tristán from the room, Arnau turned and pulled the door closed. He wondered as he looked at it whether there was some way he could somehow make it appear to be locked, but after a few moments shook his head at the futility of this line of thought and turned to run after the squire.
That was when he realised everything could come undone.
A guard in the red and gold stripes of the Archbishop Rocaberti appeared around the corner just as Tristán reached the junction with the oriel window. The soldier was not shouting yet, simply walking along the corridor, and in that heart-stopping moment Arnau wondered whether it was still possible to brazen this out as they had done so many times recently.
The guard turned to see the black-robed monk coming towards him and confusion and indecision passed across his face for a heartbeat until the force of stupid natur
e that was Arnau’s squire decided to surface once more. He watched with a sinking feeling as Tristán suddenly ripped his misericorde dagger from somewhere within his robes and went for the guard. The man only survived that first assault because the voluminous folds of Tristán’s habit slowed his retrieval of the weapon, and gave the man adequate time to draw his own blade to meet the threat.
The squire’s dagger punched for the man’s heart, one of the few weapons that stood a chance of making its way through a chain shirt and actually killing its victim; the wide-eyed soldier thrust his sword in the way, knocking it aside at the last moment. Still, Tristán had death in mind as he pulled the blade in for a second attempt, speedily, easily, while the guard with his much longer sword struggled to stop the blow once again. The sword knocked the second attempt back, but Tristán continued to push, both hands now on the hilt, edging it closer and closer as the panicked guard heaved on his sword to keep the needle point away from his armour.
Arnau was running now. The game was almost up.
Finally, even through his struggle, it occurred to the soldier to shout for help. He began to bellow warnings about intruders in a strangely high-pitched shriek. The call echoed along the corridors, sealing their fate. Any hope of overcoming this obstacle and escaping the place without being seen was gone. And now Tristán was about to kill one of the archbishop’s own men. He remembered with his spirits sinking further, even as he ran, the tale of the countess’s husband, Montcada, who had killed his uncle, also an archbishop, and had been flogged through the streets for his actions, driven away to redemption in the crusades and sanctuary with his Cathar brother in Occitania. No good would come from killings here. Thieving the records he could justify in the end as a righteous act, but the moment they killed an innocent man for simply doing his job, this whole thing changed.
‘No,’ he bellowed as he closed on the struggle.
Tristán continued to push at his blade’s hilt, and the guard continued to hold it off with desperation, though he was losing. Arnau could see the man beginning to slip, the squire’s blade inching closer and closer to its target despite the man’s efforts. Before he’d even realised what he was doing, Arnau had torn his own dagger from his side and was running. Realising how stupid this was, arming himself with a deadly weapon to try and stop the use of just such a weapon, he reversed his grip on the hilt. Closing on the fight, he was relieved to see the pair slowly rotating, stepping this way and that in the corridor in their struggle, and even now the guard was putting his back to the second and as-yet unseen black-robed accomplice racing from the shadows.
Arnau reached the pair, dropping his precious bag, and lifted his arm, slamming it down at the last moment, bringing the heavy iron pommel down on the guard’s bare head and driving the sense from him in an instant. Even as he knocked the man into unconsciousness, his other hand reached out and gripped Tristán’s wrist, just in time. As the falling man lost his strength and his arm dropped, the squire’s blade jerked forward, free of obstruction, and would have impaled the heart had Arnau not grabbed it in time. Still, as the man collapsed in a heap, Tristán was heaving onward, pressing for the kill.
‘Stop,’ Arnau hissed. ‘Let it go. He is innocent.’
‘Enforcing greed and crime is not innocence in my eyes.’
Arnau locked gazes with his squire. ‘Stop now. This is not who we are. This man takes a wage to serve a son of the Holy Church of Rome. Who are you to say that he knows his master is corrupt.’
The squire pressed on.
‘Tristán,’ Arnau snapped.
‘What?’
‘Tristán, our masters are corrupt. Would you have good men gut you for your service?’
The squire blinked and then frowned. Finally his pressure behind the dagger eased and he pulled it back. ‘You’re right.’
‘I know. It’s time to run, not to fight. This is about saving the preceptrix, not killing the archbishop.’
Tristán nodded. ‘Although innocence aside, if it becomes a case of us or them, you know I will not baulk.’
Arnau sighed. ‘And in that moment my blade will join yours. Come on.’ Passing the squire, he ran on, picking his bag up once more and slinging it over his shoulder as he gripped his blade in the other hand. New voices were now echoing up the corridor from the main area of the castle, drawn by the guard’s shrieking. Routes were swiftly being closed to them. Behind them, the paborda’s apartments were a dead end, and now the main corridor to the stairs had become a path straight into the enemy’s grasp. All that remained now was the door ahead, and Arnau was momentarily grateful for Tristán’s forethought to have the thief open that portal before they’d started all of this.
He ran ahead and tore open the door, ducking inside into the deeper gloom with his squire pelting along behind him. Though he could see little, they both knew where they were going and as Tristán pulled the door shut behind them, Arnau felt for the entrance to the servants’ stair in the dark. By the time he’d found it and the squire had caught up, both of them could hear voices out in the corridor, muffled and incomprehensible but angry and urgent. In moments, they would be here.
The two men began to descend, their confidence growing with every step that took them further from danger and closer to freedom. Descending to the servants’ region of the castle, they were vaguely aware of the increase in noise from above which told them that the guards were now in the dark room. They would undoubtedly bumble around for precious moments, bumping into things before they discovered the stairwell and put the pieces together.
They began to hurry through the subterranean world, going entirely by memory of their previous route. Twice, Arnau felt the panic rise as they took a wrong turn and ended up in a buttery or a grain store. Finally, though, they reached more recognisable ground and made their way to the door. Rounding a corner and spotting the familiar exit he heaved in a breath of relief, which slid towards panic as they reached the door and wrenched at it only to discover that it held fast. It was locked!
Shouts were now echoing around the cellars. They had been lucky thus far. Because it was just past noon, the majority of the servants were in other parts of the castle delivering food and setting up tables, and the two fugitives had skirted the kitchens, hearing the busy noises in their passing.
‘What now?’ hissed Tristán.
‘We either find another exit or the keys to this one.’
‘But how? And the guards are in the cellars now.’
‘With the help of our friendly barrel man,’ Arnau smiled, looking over Tristán’s shoulder. A man had turned into the corridor in which they lurked, and Arnau immediately recognised him as the fellow who’d used this very exit yesterday.
‘What?’
‘Follow me.’
Arnau hurried down the corridor towards the man. As he was about to accost him, however, he suddenly heard raised voices nearby and shrank away instead. Fortunately the ever-headstrong Tristán was there, and even as Arnau backed away the squire fell upon the unsuspecting servant, who was busy looking up and down a selection of barrels, contemplating which one he needed. Tristán wrapped his arms around the man, one hand clamped across the mouth yet exerting surprising pressure as the other came up and found the perfect point on the neck to push and break the spine, hovering there and pressing in warning. The servant emitted a brief cry into the squire’s hand, and then fell silent as he realised just how close to death he was. Arnau almost warned Tristán against doing anything stupid and unforgivable, but the squire simply backed into a side room, gesturing for Arnau to follow.
‘Tristán, you are going to have to explain to me one day how you know how to do things like this?’
The squire shrugged. ‘It is my understanding that my past sins have been washed away. And dealing with this shit, this is not a sin in my eyes anyway.’
‘Well, no, but…’
The sound of voices nearby silenced them, and both men shrank into the shadows behind a rack of barrels, the squ
ire’s hand still firmly over the servant’s mouth. The man suddenly began trying to call out, but all that emerged was a muffled gasp, and as Arnau produced his misericorde and held it in front of him, the servant soon stopped.
The three men remained silent, hiding behind a shelving rack, as soldiers in chain armour marched along the corridor calling out to any servants who might be there. As the man’s eyes bulged in Tristán’s arms, Arnau held up the knife to reinforce his threat, and they stood quiet and immobile. After a time, the guards moved on, shouting to one another to search certain rooms, and the Templars sagged, given a temporary reprieve. Once the voices had faded and they were sufficiently alone, Arnau turned to face the servant again.
‘There is a door at the end there. You will open it, let us out, then close it and forget you ever saw us.’
The man, still bulge-eyed, muffled some reply into Tristán’s palm, and Arnau nodded to the squire, who moved his hand. ‘I can’t,’ the man said.
‘Can’t, or won’t?’ Arnau said, trying his most vicious smile and holding up his blade.
‘Oh, that door?’ the man said, hurriedly, vision almost cross-eyed, peering nervously at the blade. ‘No problem.’
The servant produced a key from his purse and moved out into the corridor once more with Arnau’s blade hovering threateningly close to his neck. With terrified eyes he approached that same door through which they’d left last time and unlocked it, stepping aside and pressing himself back against the wall.
‘Be a good lad and just stay there and stay quiet for a while and all of this will be forgotten very quickly.’
The servant nodded and watched them warily as the two men passed him and pushed the door open, a wide beam of bright light suddenly invading the gloomy underworld of the castle’s lowest levels. Just for good measure, Tristán gave the man a warning look as the pair slipped out.
It came as no surprise, however, when the moment they were clear of the castle, the door slammed behind them and inside the servant’s voice could be heard bellowing muffled calls of alarm to the castle. Aware that pursuit was far from impossible and that they were still in the shadow of the great keep, the two Templars shared a look and ducked into a narrower street opposite, where they broke into a run.
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