Entry to the city was easily attained, given their clear Templar credentials, and they were shown to some ancient and palatial building in the city’s centre, overlooking the river. There they recovered from the first week of their journey, partook of their first food cooked indoors and with a good range of ingredients in all that time, and waited. Bochard had sent messages to the grand master as soon as they arrived and had become irritable and tense awaiting his summons.
It was some four hours after their arrival that a messenger arrived at their door from the grand master, requesting Bochard’s presence. Though Ramon and Arnau had not been included in the invitation and thus remained in silence in their room, both men were secretly glad to be rid of the preceptor for even a short time. His constant tenseness and barely contained anger was wearying to be around, and they had been in its presence now for an entire week without respite. It was only when he had left the room that the other two knights realised just how tense they had become themselves, exhaling slowly and allowing their limbs to unknot.
Bochard’s squire Hugues had accompanied his master, and the other three men exchanged knowing looks as the door clicked shut and the booted footsteps beyond echoed into the distance.
‘That man is going to be trouble,’ Arnau said quietly.
Ramon gave him a warning look. ‘No matter your opinion, Vallbona, or even mine for that matter, it is not our place to condemn our superior. No man becomes a preceptor without some strength of character and devotion to the Lord driving it. Bochard may well have hidden depths.’
‘So does a latrine,’ Arnau replied archly, earning himself another disapproving look.
‘He is a martinet and a man, I would say, with a shadow in his past that seems to still be haunting him. You will find more than one brother in the Order whom that description fits. You would find them in Rourell, even. One day, a man might just say that of you. Remember your values as a good Christian and as a soldier of God. It is our place to serve Bochard, and our mission is a peaceful, worthy one.’
‘That’s another thing,’ Arnau said, ignoring the warning signs in Ramon’s expression. ‘We’re going to Constantinople to try and secure promises and contracts that the emperor will maintain his alliances with the Order and the kingdom of Jerusalem and not shirk his duty in the Christian defence of the East. An emperor whose entire reign is coming under threat from a Christian force of whom even the Pope has now accepted validity.’
‘Of this I am aware,’ answered Ramon quietly.
‘Does it not strike you as odd that the grand master would choose the preceptor as the emissary of peace for this duty?’
‘Vallbona—’
‘Seriously, though, Brother. If you had the pick of every man of the Order to send as an emissary into a fractious and uncertain court, would you really have chosen Preceptor Bochard?’
Ramon sat silent for a long moment, and finally sagged. ‘No. In truth I would not. In fact, I might worry that assigning a man known to have been active in suppressing the Greek Church on Cyprus might be too much of a provocation. But the grand master is the leader of our order and a man with the ear and support of the Pope himself. If he has selected Bochard then there is a reason, even if it is not ours to know.’
‘And us as his escort, Ramon?’
‘Pardon?’
‘Newly arrived? Straight from Iberia, setting foot in the Holy Land and immediately being whisked off to play ambassador to the imperial court with Bochard? We know next to nothing of the imperial world and its ways. There will be men in Acre who are familiar with Constantinople and its court. Men who can speak their language and would be better suited. And more men indeed. If Bochard is right that pomp and glory is what impresses the empire, then it would be sensible to send an entire conroi of knights, rather than two tired and rather out-of-place men.’
‘We do speak Greek,’ Ramon replied somewhat feebly.
‘But we didn’t until we began our journey, and neither Bochard nor the grand master could know that. Something here does not add up to me. Something is not quite right. And the timely reminder from the preceptor that one of the most critical rules of the Order is unquestioning obedience does nothing to quell my worries.’
Ramon nodded. ‘All we can do is our best, Vallbona – obey our orders and trust in the Lord. Unless the preceptor himself flaunts and abuses the Rule, then it is not our place to question or doubt him.’
Arnau sighed. It was true, but that didn’t mean he had to like it. He was experiencing something new and entirely unwelcome on this journey. From the day he had put his foot across the threshold of Rourell half a decade ago, he had seen nothing in the Order to shake his faith and his confidence. Despite the unusual presence of a female preceptrix at the house, she instilled nothing but strength and confidence in her people. The sergeants and sisters he had known there had been beyond reproach, pious and wise, and he would have walked off a cliff with a heart full of faith had they but asked. Even the three old knights of the preceptory had managed to secure Arnau’s utter loyalty. Lütolf had some dark past in Germany that had driven him to the sandy and dry end of the world, where he gave his life for the Order. Balthesar had been a killer both for and against the Moors in his old life, and despite his worrying obsession with the relic during their recent mission to the emir’s island, Arnau had never considered disobeying him. Ramon held his respect in exactly the same way, and he had found no reason to doubt any man of the Order he had met in Acre. Bochard, though, worried him. Whenever he looked at the preceptor, all he could see in their future was trouble.
They sat in silence for some time until the clanging of bells across the city announced the time for none, and Arnau sat up suddenly. ‘I think I saw a church back on the road we arrived along.’
Ramon shook his head. ‘We shall perform our devotions right here in case the Preceptor returns.’
The two men moved a chair out of the way and dropped to their knees before the plain cross on the room’s east wall and Sebastian joined them, hands clasped tight before him. Their devotions lasted a little more than half an hour, after which Ramon turned to whetting and polishing his sword and Sebastian to repacking their gear a little more neatly, while Arnau returned to fretting silently.
All three men stopped what they were doing and straightened at the sound of marching footsteps outside. A moment later the door slammed violently open and Bochard entered with a face like thunder, his squire hot on his heels. Arnau and Ramon remained silent.
‘The grand master has seen fit to refuse my request for more companions,’ snapped Bochard in answer to an unasked question.
‘Then we are to continue on our mission as we were, Master?’ asked Ramon quietly.
‘Yes. A grand entourage of five men as a deputation to the emperor of a dangerously hedonistic and heretical land, who puts great stock in appearance. And two of those mere squires,’ he added dismissively.
‘With respect, Master,’ Ramon said carefully, ‘how confident are you that we could influence the decision of the emperor, whether there be five of us or five hundred?’
Bochard shot him a look like a loaded crossbow. ‘That depends on many factors, de Juelle. On how persuasive we can be, on what the Venetians and their ships full of Franks decide to do next, on the Byzantine court’s current leanings, on events here in Outremer, and even on the mood of the emperor on the day we meet. I can predict nothing as yet. All I know is that with more of us we stood a better chance of making an impression. As we are, we shall be little more than a troublesome horsefly to the emperor.’
The two knights remained silent. Provoking Bochard into further ire would only be counterproductive. In the end, the preceptor drew from his baggage a thick book. Arnau immediately assumed it to be a rare personal Bible. Few men had such a treasure, and brothers of the Order rarely owned personal possessions of any kind, let alone such valuable things. To own a book would require the dispensation of the knight’s own superior. Peering myopically across t
he room, Arnau tried to examine the outside of the book as Bochard lifted it to read.
It came as some surprise to note that there was Greek script on the cover, and he had little or no chance of identifying it. While it came as no shock that Bochard knew Greek – the man had ruled over Greek-speaking Cyprus for a year and had been chosen as an ambassador to the Byzantine court – there was little chance of the book being a Bible. It had to be either some Orthodox religious text or some sort of history from Byzantium – not what Arnau could have anticipated being in the strict preceptor’s belongings. Perhaps Bochard was more prepared than he had assumed? Certainly he had voluminous and well-packed bags that were jealously guarded by Hugues when not on the horse in transit.
They attended the other liturgical services together, all five of them, at some grand church in the city’s centre, where Arnau had his first glimpse of three of the most important people in the world. The king had not attended, for he was busy with affairs of state and was not bound to the liturgy as were the brothers. However, the grand master of the Templars stood with a number of old knights directly facing a party of Hospitallers, surrounding their own grand master, and the papal legate was also in attendance.
It was with some regret that they rose the next morning and prepared to move on. Antioch was clearly a city of marvels and here, in Arnau’s mind at least, the familiar world would end. Once they left Antioch and marched north and west, they would be entering lands controlled by utterly alien cultures.
With their gear neatly repacked by Sebastian, and Hugues loading the preceptor’s pack beast with heavy bags, they exited Antioch by the gate through which they’d entered, and rode north. Just a few miles north of Antioch, cutting inland through hilly terrain to bypass a great curve in the coastline, they passed through what Arnau could only describe as an echo of Hell. The land seemed to be intermittently forbidding and mountainous terrain and flat dry land, but there were endless signs of strife around them. Every third village or so they passed had been partially or entirely burned, and perhaps two thirds of them were depopulated and exhibiting clear signs of violence. Graveyards they saw showed signs of greatly increased use, and small fortresses and watchtowers stood crumbling from recent destruction.
Arnau found himself shivering as they rode, taking in the desolation. He noted that Sebastian had lost his sense of ease since their time on Cyprus and had once more taken to vigorous clutching and thumb-rubbing of his icon.
‘What is this?’ he asked. ‘Is it the Seljuks of Rum or the Saracens breaking their truce?’
‘Neither,’ grunted Bochard, riding slightly ahead. The man had hardly said two words to them since they had left Antioch and had exuded an atmosphere of disappointment and resentment throughout. ‘This is the result of the Antiochene war. This was King Leo’s advance on the city last year.’
Arnau felt bile rise at the thought. The king of Armenian Cilicia was a Christian. Perhaps every bit as weird and Eastern and heretical as the Greeks, but a Christian nonetheless, and a noted ally of Rome at that. Antioch and its other claimant, Bohemond, were Franks of the Roman Church. This was Christian fighting Christian over a title in the very midst of a world under threat by the Saracen and the Turk. The idiocy and short-sightedness of it made Arnau nervous. In these dark days, all good Christians should be putting aside their differences for the good of Christendom as a whole.
On they rode through miles of ruin and death, through a world that had not recovered from the violence of the war even half a year on. The road they followed passed the eastern edge of a spur of hills some fifteen or twenty miles north of Antioch, and here, as they rode in unhappy silence, they drew up at a gesture from Bochard. Beside the road ahead sat a low stone compound, resembling a toll station or some such, a large banner fluttering above the dry brown walls. As the wind caught the flag and momentarily snapped it flat, Arnau saw a rearing lion in red on a field of white. He frowned, remembering the royal banners he had seen on Cyprus, of which it seemed an almost direct copy.
‘Armenians,’ Bochard said quietly.
Arnau shivered. This was it. The kingdom of Armenian Cilicia might be Christian and nominally allied, but their Armenian origin made them more distant and exotic and less like the Western Europeans than even Byzantium. These people had come from the eastern steppe, in the lee of the Turks’ homeland. And they had been at war in Antioch for years. Everything remotely familiar to Arnau was about to end.
‘Do we need to be on our guard?’ Ramon asked quietly.
‘Always worthwhile,’ Bochard replied. ‘I have not met them often, but they are not to be trusted. Their king is devious and dangerous and cares not who he aggravates in his quest to acquire all in sight.’
There was something in the preceptor’s voice that suggested he felt personally aggrieved by the king and oddly, as he spoke, his gaze was drawn up and left as though caught by a hook and dragged in. The others followed his glance, but all they could see was a craggy and wooded spur of hills. Arnau turned a frown on Ramon, but the older brother’s gaze had returned along with Bochard’s to the small fortification by the road.
The five men rode slowly towards the walled enclosure, and Arnau’s sense of unease rose as they neared and half a dozen men emerged from the building, each with a shield on their arm and a long spear with a gleaming point. They wore glittering coats of wool with small steel plates stitched into a flexible yet protective surface. They did not give off an overwhelmingly welcoming air. Sebastian’s attention to his icon became somewhat urgent.
‘Be prepared. The Order does not currently face open hostility with the king, but our peace is a fragile thing and liable to break at any moment.’
Arnau nodded. He had no interest in going to war with other Christians simply over who held the title Count of Antioch. Ramon was also nodding and both Iberian knights tried to look imposing, yet with an air of pacific alliance. Bochard, Arnau noted, rested the palm of his hand on his sword hilt.
As they neared, the six Armenians filed into a line, blocking the road. It was a statement, clearly. If the Templars had so desired, they could easily leave the road and pound across the fields, circumventing the footmen and returning to the road perhaps a mile further on. But what the Armenians were doing was defying the knights.
As they closed, and showed no sign of slowing to a stop, the preceptor cleared his voice.
‘Make way,’ he called in French. ‘We are a deputation from the grand master of the Temple to the emperor in Byzantium. Make way, I say.’
The soldiers did not move and from their general attitude it was clear that this was a deliberate decision and not a matter of language. Arnau could feel his muscles beginning to tighten. He was almost certain he knew what was coming. Though Bochard still only rode at a walk, he was showing no signs of stopping as he bore down on the soldiers.
‘Make way, or we shall be forced to teach you a lesson in manners, you curs.’
Arnau winced. Clearly the soldiers comprehended French well enough. The Armenians flinched, and changed on their spears, preparing to face potential violence. Though Bochard was hardly defusing the situation, Arnau had to admit that it had been the Armenians who had begun matters by blocking the road in a warlike manner.
The spearmen stood resolute in the face of the advancing horses, and two of them shouted something in what must have been their own language. Arnau had no idea what they said, but the tone was derogatory, even mocking. He did note emphasis placed on the word or name ‘Gaston’ and by the time he’d turned to look at Bochard, the preceptor had turned a plum colour in anger, his sword slipping an inch free of his scabbard.
‘Preceptor…’ muttered Ramon in calming tones, but Bochard ignored him, rising high in his saddle and addressing the soldiers in a loud voice.
‘Gaston was an insult. There can be no true peace between your heretical king and the Order until Gaston is returned to us.’
‘Uh-oh,’ murmured Ramon, his own hand now going to his sword. He loo
ked at Arnau, who nodded, reaching for his hilt. The older knight then turned and made emphatic motions at Sebastian. He may be young and but a squire, but for months now he had been practising with a blade under Ramon’s tutelage.
‘Halt there, Templar,’ shouted one of the soldiers in thickly accented French.
‘Make way, lest we be forced to ride you down.’
‘Preceptor…’ tried Ramon once more, readying himself. Arnau wanted to call out too, to try and unwind this dreadful tension. There was still time to ride out and circumvent the line, or even to halt and simply talk this out. Arnau knew little about the Armenians, and they clearly had no qualms about making war on other Christian lands, but still they and the Order were Christians in a world surrounded by enemies, and with no open hostility between them as far as Arnau knew. Yet that word – Gaston – had moved Bochard up from prepared to defend himself to ready to open hostilities.
‘Forgive us to our debtors, as we forgive our debtors,’ sang Ramon suddenly and meaningfully, directly from the Lord’s Prayer. ‘Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.’
Bochard turned his angry, puce-coloured face on Ramon.
‘Debtors they are. And so are we, Brother. We owe them for Gaston.’ He turned to his squire, Hugues. ‘Guard my bags. You know the ones.’
Arnau shook his head. This was it. The men in the road had regrouped, lifting their spears and holding them forth in the age-old manner to thwart cavalry. One of them shouted something again, and once more the name Gaston was the only word Arnau caught.
Bochard charged.
Taken by surprise despite everything, Arnau immediately put heel to flank to join his preceptor, and Ramon did likewise at the far side.
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