The Last Crusade

by S. J. A. Turney

  ‘I have no regrets,’ de Comminges said flatly. A lie, but this man would have to respect strength and conviction. He certainly wouldn’t respect cowardice and contrition. And that crossbow could pin de Comminges before he even reached the door.

  ‘Oh, I think you do. We are human. We all have regrets. My main regret is that I never saw Rocaberti gasp his last, nor the end of your other friend, just over a year later…’

  * * *

  Ramon de Sant Llorenç, Lord of Albiol and La Selva, sat back at the desk in his study and heaved a deep sigh of satisfaction. A year of investigation had finally paid off and he could at last end all of this. Following the defeat at Muret, La Selva had come away better than many. He’d managed to flee the battlefield unharmed, leaving his men to hold back the vengeful killers from Rourell. He’d come home to essentially step back into his life exactly as he’d left it.

  But that was not to be. The next two years had stripped him of a great deal of power and influence. De Comminges had turned on him first, knowing that La Selva had left the man to his fate on the battlefield in order to save his own skin. That meant that neither the Templars nor the Occitan lords who survived would support him in anything. With the death of the king, his influence at court had vanished. The king’s heir, young Jaume, had become monarch in the aftermath of the battle, but even before Muret the prince had been in the hands of the crusaders, having been betrothed to de Montfort’s daughter in an early attempt to halt the war. A year after his father’s death, de Montfort sent the boy back to Aragon, where he was placed in the care of the Templars of Monzón until he came of age. As such, all doors to power and influence in the royal court had been closed to La Selva.

  He had continued his campaign of harrying the lands of the witch Titborga de Santa Coloma, but somehow word of this reached the boy king and his Templar masters and he was ordered to cease all such action. He could not even revenge himself on them, now. Worse, somehow the woman had managed to acquire sizeable wealth once more and had rebuilt and re-staffed the estate to an impressive level, swiftly undoing all his work. He suspected the patronage of de Montfort, but he knew that the woman was a good friend of the Baroness Castellvell. Damn it, but the woman was better connected these days than La Selva.

  Word also spread that he had cheated the local lords in keeping for himself part of Rourell’s lands that they should have taken back, which was partly true, admittedly, but still… With no Templar support, no royal backing, and no influence in local politics, La Selva had fallen ever more in with Archbishop Rocaberti, even when the man went money and power mad and sent troops to kill his own tenants.

  Fate had caught up with Rocaberti and he’d been strangled in his own chapter house. The last support La Selva could look for had vanished, as a new archbishop took control and vowed to undo the wickedness of his predecessor.

  But La Selva still had money and land, and lots of it. It had taken more than a year after the death of Rocaberti, and had cost him an absolute fortune, but finally he had tracked down the location of the files that those criminal Templars had held over him. It had taken even more money and a massive grant of lands to one of the more pliable masters of Calatrava to recover the files, but finally they were in his grasp. The only evidence that he had ever done anything untoward.

  He looked at the old and dusty files, now, on the desk. All other evidence had been neatly disposed of years ago, and while the local lords might distrust and suspect him, there would never be proof, for he was the man who kept the records. There was no evidence but this, and the potential testimony of the men and women of Rourell. That would soon change too. He’d been unable to move against them overtly, for fear of these files being turned over to the court or the Church, but now he was free to dispose of the inconvenient brothers and sisters.

  His door opened, and he looked up. He wasn’t expecting anyone else now but there was no alarm in him. He was in his own castle, and no harm would come to him here. It took him a moment to place the figure who entered, bowing his head, and then striding across to the desk.

  ‘De Mont?’

  The Templar nodded. Should La Selva worry? De Mont was, potentially, a loose end, but then he had been complicit in the whole affair and had not been an ally of Rourell. Another figure lurked in the doorway, still out in the corridor, and it made La Selva frown that the man seemed to be wearing the cross of Calatrava. But the brothers who had delivered the records had left…

  ‘Milord,’ de Mont acknowledged, and stepped around the side of the desk. La Selva now realised that something was very wrong and struggled to rise from his chair. De Mont was on him in a moment, one arm grabbing his shoulder even as the other hand struck.

  The Templar stepped back and La Selva looked down, wide-eyed, at the hilt of the misericorde dagger jutting from his chest.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I am tainted by corruption because of what you and the others did, La Selva. Because I cannot seek justice from de Comminges, for obedience is paramount in our Rule and he is still my senior, but there are limits to my patience and forgiveness. Because I seek to put it all right, and have become the master of Rourell, which we ruined. Because even though you are the very corroded heart of wickedness, the men and women you destroyed will not simply come to kill you as they should. So I do it for them.’

  ‘You… fool,’ La Selva managed to gasp before dropping back in his chair, twitching hand reaching up to the blade in his chest and touching it once before, with a sigh, he sagged and died.

  ‘These belong to you, I believe,’ de Mont said sadly, gathering up the files and carrying them over to the door to place them in the hands of Brother Calderon.

  * * *

  ‘De Mont turned out to be the good man I’d suspected from the first time I actually spoke to him. It should have been us that finished La Selva, but Muret almost did for us all,’ Vallbona said from the windowsill. ‘Tristán took a year to recover from his injuries. Balthesar never truly did. He retired to a monastery, as I expect you know, where he lived in calm and tranquillity for another six years until God took him peacefully. Ramon took wounds that would end his fighting days. He lives still, in Santa Coloma where he and the lady nursed me slowly and painstakingly back from the edge.’

  The figure shifted for a moment, changing position, and de Comminges’s eyes stayed locked on the crossbow as Vallbona continued.

  ‘The damage La Selva had done to the estate was easily rectified. Our share of the spoils from Muret left us with a healthy vault, which was augmented by gifts from Castellvell. None of them would take La Selva, though, even if they could. I think they were leaving him for me, the same as they have with you. I’m thankful to de Mont, for I do not think I could have been merciful with La Selva. I would have done what Tristán did, and would carry that with me forever, as you will with what you did to the men of Pujol in that square in Toulouse.’

  ‘You were there?’

  ‘We all were. It is one of the reasons you have to die. Not just for what you did to us, but for what we saw you do to others.’

  ‘You realise that I am no threat to you,’ de Comminges said. ‘I have nothing over you and little in the way of power and influence on your lands. Only here in Occitania have I any control, and even then it is little and granted solely at the will of men like de Montfort. Killing me will not improve anything for you. I am no danger.’

  ‘As long as men like you live, there will always be danger,’ Vallbona said quietly. ‘You are the last. The King of Aragon dead on the battlefield. The archbishop dead in his chapter house. The paborda dead in his castle. Only you remain. We have the records that protected us once more, and all those responsible are gone, or are about to go. It is finally over.’

  ‘You think…’ de Comminges began, but was interrupted by a thwack!

  He looked down at the crossbow bolt jutting from his chest.

  ‘Justice needed to be done,’ Vallbona said wearily. ‘But I am tired of death. I am a me
rciful man, and not a fierce one like Tristán. Not for me, the garrotte. A swift death and as neat and painless as I can make it. Go to your rest in peace, Lord de Comminges.’

  The ageing Templar sagged back against the wall, feeling the pain in his chest, and yet oddly at peace with it. ‘I…’ he began, but couldn’t draw breath to talk, for when his chest moved the pain increased greatly. He strained and forced himself. ‘I am sorry for what was done. To you and here in my lands. War makes men cruel, but I was perhaps one of the cruellest.’

  ‘And your remorse is what confirms that I do the right thing now. This is the Lamb of God,’ Vallbona said, dropping from the windowsill and limping towards the bed, ‘who takes away the sins of the world. Happy are those who are called to his supper.’

  Relief flooded de Comminges, and gratitude. The real fear of death was neither the pain nor the ending, but that he would pass unpardoned and denied Heaven. He struggled, wincing at the agony that speaking brought on, but persevered anyway: ‘Lord I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed.’

  Vallbona leaned close and slipped a communion wafer between his lips. De Comminges, tears streaming now from both pain and relief, ate the small dry morsel as Vallbona said quietly, ‘The body of Christ.’

  ‘Amen,’ de Comminges sighed and lay back, breathing shallowly, feeling his bedsheets soaked with warm blood.

  ‘May the Lord Jesus protect you and lead you to eternal life.’

  In another two heartbeats, de Comminges passed from the world.

  In the darkness of the castle’s lofty chamber, Arnau de Vallbona leaned over the body and closed the count’s eyes. With this man’s passing went all the violence Vallbona would ever perpetrate. He left the crossbow on the bed and walked away.

  Epilogue

  9th March 1225

  ‘It is over?’ Titborga said, as Arnau swung from the saddle and dropped to the dusty ground of the courtyard. He was feeling strangely light, lighter than he had felt since the day after Las Navas before their real troubles had begun. Other than the limitation of his eyesight, he was as lithe and healthy now as he had ever been. Oh, he had a slight limp, but it was no more than a minor inconvenience, and he was no painting of beauty, but it seemed that such a thing did not matter to her. She seemed to look beneath his scars.

  He nodded. ‘The last one is gone, and in spite of myself I was merciful in the end.’

  ‘I knew you would be. You are not a vengeful man. It is one of your best qualities.’ Arnau smiled, as the servant took his reins to lead the horse away. ‘Ramon will be pleased to see you,’ Titborga added.

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Where do you think? Atop the tower trying to kill wooden planks with the preceptrix’s sword. He will never be a warrior again, but nothing will stop him trying.’

  ‘At his age, waving a spoon could be too much, the idiot.’ Arnau looked around at the thriving castle of Santa Coloma. Filled with busyness and life, freshly made banners snapping in the breeze and the smell of fresh bread just removed from the oven.

  Titborga de Santa Coloma Vallbona smiled again, and Arnau was about to speak of de Comminges when young Sebastian’s voice called from the keep door.

  ‘Papa!’

  As he watched the boy run, gangly and ungainly just as he’d been at that age, Arnau crouched and held his arms out in an embrace. All things considered, life was not so bad after all.

  Historical Note

  More than any book in this series, the last volume has been driven by historical fact. From the very beginning I have known that the series had to include certain aspects in its finale. Firstly, the preceptory needed to decline, for just three decades later, in 1248, the preceptory is gone, sold by the Order. Thus I needed a reason for Rourell’s decline and disappearance. Most Templar preceptories lasted until the fall of the Order in the early fourteenth century and were then either transferred to other orders (usually the Hospitallers) or sold off. Those that disappeared while the Order thrived were usually sold because they were not profitable, the Templars being in their later years at least as driven by money as by faith. Moreover, I needed the preceptrix Ermengarda to be removed, for she has already disappeared from the historical record by this time, and the preceptor recorded next in the sporadic list is one ‘de Mont’.

  This, of course, meant that our hero and his friends either had to fall with the preceptory or to distance themselves from it. It seems nice and neat to end up with Arnau more or less where he was at the start of the first book. So, my initial issue was to attempt to discern the reason for Rourell’s decline and sale. The answer to this was provided by the impressive El Rourell, Una Preceptoria del Temple al Camp de Tarragona by Josep Maria Sans i Trave. This work, in Catalan, is the only piece of solid research I have ever located on Rourell, and is quite thorough, given the sparsity of surviving remains and written records.

  The author of this document weighs possible reasons for the sale of Rourell and points to a steady decline in the property, along with the fact that at the same time Rourell was sold, the Order purchased the castle of Pira, close to the mother house of Barbera, suggesting that the reasons were a mix of economic viability and administrative ease. So what, I wondered, could cause such a decline?

  This document cites a number of claims by local figures against lands owned by Rourell. Herein, I believed I found a viable plot. In truth, it seems highly likely that the preceptrix Ermengarda was actually only in control of Rourell for a few short years, rather than the thirteen I have given her in this series. This is one of those moments where the fiction angle of historical fiction comes into play. Sometimes, in order to tell a great story, we have to take small liberties. I try to do so at a minimal level and with the least important aspects, sticking to the historical record wherever possible.

  Thus it is that the claims against Rourell in my tale are documented, including many of the names I have used. Barring the knights and squires who are my protagonists, most of the characters in this book are true. The Baroness de Castellvell and her husband are among the most interesting, even if they are peripheral in the story. The Lord Montcada’s strange and dubious history is true. In fact, he disappeared for so long that his wife remarried believing him dead until he suddenly reappeared! If ever I wrote another book set in this time and region, he would make a wonderful character. De Mont is real, though we know virtually nothing of him, other than that he was preceptor of Rourell after Ermengarda. Ramon de Sant Llorenç, Lord of Albiol and La Selva is a real character, and was the paborda of Tarragona. He was probably not the villain I have made him. Archbishop Rocaberti, on the other hand, probably was. The story of his taxes driving a rebellion in Riudoms to which he sent soldiers to put down is part of historical record. Bernard de Comminges is a real character, too. He was one of the most powerful lords in Occitania and was a prime mover in the Albigensian resistance to the crusade. There is no direct record that he was part of the Templar Order, but the possibility is raised in more than one academic work, and so I extrapolated from this and placed him at Barbera. The fourth and most important member of my four-man team of villains, the king, is also a real character, clearly. In the Book of Deeds of James I (his son) Pedro II is noted to have drained the treasury through his lavish coronation and his wars. Linking him to the claims against Rourell was therefore rather easy. Pedro is a strange one, having been so pious that he went to Rome to be crowned by the Pope, drove a crusade against the Moors, and gained his epithet ‘The Catholic.’ Yet in the temporal world, he was so closely tied to the lords in Occitania that he could not afford to let them be stamped out and have their lands taken away by the crusaders, and so he turned against the crusaders in support of the Cathar heretics and was excommunicated for it. As a last note on characters, the somewhat larger than life Simon de Montfort is another major historical figure I have used, though anyone familiar with the reign of King John in England and wondering how he came to be in Occitania might be relieved to
know that this Simon is the father of the equally infamous Earl of Leicester involved in the barons’ revolt.

  For the first time in the series, I had the characters spend time in Tarragona, and this presented me with a problem. I know the city fairly well, am familiar with its layout, both now and in the Roman era, but I was forced to piece together a map of the city in the medieval era, between the two. The cathedral was not yet finished, and there was no way the archbishop was going to be based there. The lavish archbishop’s palace was not built until much later, and so I needed to research where the archbishop would have resided in the period. I was somewhat surprised to discover the existence of the castle that once stood in the centre of the city. It must have been a short-lived building, and not a trace now remains. My description and interpretation of the building is based entirely on the wooden maquette of the medieval city that sits in one of Tarragona’s museums. It is only my plot that places the paborda’s offices in the same fortress, though as a colleague of the archbishop, it is far from impossible. Certainly La Selva also administered from his own castle, which is why I had him in the story in the process of moving from one to the other.

  My history of Tristán in San Sebastiano is fictional, of course, and there is no record of such a mafia-type criminal organisation there. My plot, here, is based upon the history of the Garduña, which is a semi-legendary criminal secret society that supposedly arose in Toledo in the early fifteenth century.