Warlord (Outlaw 4)

by Donald, Angus

  We were admitted to the enormous Templar compound, and once again my ears were assaulted by the ringing of chisels on stone and my nostrils clogged with fine white dust. The knights had recently completed a very strong, three-storey stone tower as the core of their defences, and a big round church, which reminded me painfully of the Temple Church in London, where Robin had been tried for heresy by this same Order the year before. And they had also recently finished building the encircling walls of their stronghold, but the huge compound, perhaps six acres in size, still resembled a mason’s yard. The Knights were constructing a grand palace for the Master of France in the south of the compound, next to the great tower, and a hospital further to the north, and a dozen buildings of wood and stone – conventual houses, cloisters, farm buildings, stables, chapels – were slowly rising into the sky. But while the Paris Temple might have been unfinished, it still represented a formidable fortification; perhaps as strong as any castle in France. And the Brother Sergeant who manned the powerful gatehouse admitted me through a portal guarded by two round towers, a portcullis, and an iron-studded oak gate.

  After hearing my story, the gatehouse guard indicated that we should take our business to the largest stone building to the front of the Temple Church, the Counting House, where all the Order’s money matters with outsiders were transacted.

  I had the utmost respect for the fighting abilities of the Templar knights, and I had never met one who was not an extraordinary man, in one way or another – but the Order was cunning, too, and full of guile. And they were wealthy. Despite the vow of poverty that each knight took upon entering, the Order itself had amassed an abundance of treasure in the seventy years of its existence, and wide lands and estates, too, across the breadth of Europe. It was said that many a king or duke envied the coffers of the black-and-white knights – and part of the reason for their wealth lay in the nature of the exchange that I was about to make with them.

  The Templars had preceptories all over Christendom and each was staffed by the Order’s knights and their sergeants, clerks, chaplains and servants. For decades, the Templars had been conveying goods – food, wine, clothing, building materials, weapons and so on – to their bases in remote parts of the world, from Syria to Scotland, from Denmark to the Douro, and in doing so they had also, naturally, begun to take part in commerce. Moving goods over the face of the earth, and selling them here and there had meant that sometimes the members of the Order needed to carry large sums of silver coin; and they thus laid themselves open to attack by bandits and thieves in the wilder regions. So the knights had devised a simple method of money exchange: a traveller would not carry money in the form of specie or coin, he would carry a letter, written in code, which commanded a Templar clerk when he arrived at his destination to hand over a particular sum of money on receipt of the parchment. This proved to be a great success – as a piece of parchment could have no value for a back-country thief – and soon the idea spread to other knights, who were not members of the Order, and then to townsfolk and traders who were travelling to far-flung markets and wished to safeguard their own silver.

  On that fine morning in August, when Hanno, Thomas and I rode into the Paris Temple, there was nothing at all unusual in a knight with a large sum of money in heavy silver coin wishing it to be converted into a simple letter, to be redeemed in another preceptory, in another town, in another land, or indeed, almost anywhere in Christendom.

  The scouting plan, as such, was that while I conducted my business with the Templar treasurers, and perhaps reassured anyone who cared to listen that I believed that I had recently been attacked by mere footpads, Hanno would reconnoitre the interior of the fortress, wandering off in a casual manner like a bored man-at-arms stretching his legs, while Thomas looked to the horses. Hanno was my eyes and ears, he would explore the compound on foot, perhaps chatting to some of the Templar sergeants or some of the lay brothers and servants, and seeing if he could discover any evidence of the knights of the blue cross.

  When I had explained the plan to Thomas and Hanno, my squire had voiced the sensible worry that, if the knights of the blue cross were indeed Templars, and we were within their precincts, they might decide simply to kill us, and I had to agree that there was a risk attached to our stratagem. But not, I judged, a large one. At Fréteval, in a dense patch of wild woodland, secluded, miles from the main armies, the knights of the blue cross had felt confident enough to show their identity and display their animosity towards me. But when they had attacked me in the streets of Paris – in public – they had made an attempt to hide their status as knights and had pretended to be beggars. It had not been a very impressive masquerade – I have found that soldiers often stand out from the common run of men – but it demonstrated that they did not wish us to know, or anyone who saw us fighting to know, that they were knights. We would be safe in the Paris Temple, I argued, because they wanted to hide their identities. The knights of the blue cross could not openly attack us in this big, open semi-public place without being observed by many eyes, and this was something they were most unwilling to allow. We were as safe here, I told my friends, as we would be anywhere in Paris. This was my logic, anyway, and I prayed that it might be true.

  I left Hanno and Thomas with the horses outside the Counting House and walked inside. It was cool and airy – I came through a great wooden double door into a tall stone hall with a double row of columns supporting the huge roof, and a series of doors at the back leading, I assumed, to private chambers, perhaps treasure vaults or rooms where parchment rolls and accounts might be stored. Two Templar sergeants wearing black surcoats over mail and with long swords belted at their waists stood guard on either side of the main door. In the centre of the room were four long tables covered in green cloth, and at each table sat a pair of clerks. At two of these tables, the clerks were in the process of transacting business with clients: at one, a French knight was passing over two small linen sacks of coins to the clerks; at the other a wealthy merchant was carefully reading a parchment document, holding it close to his face and frowning at the words written upon it.

  I marched up to one of the vacant tables and by way of greeting wished the two clerks there the peace of God. The clerk on the left replied with a similar blessing and then asked who I was and what was the nature of my business that day. I told them that I was Sir Alan Dale, an English knight of Westbury in Nottinghamshire who had recently been attacked by thieves in the streets of Paris, and that I wished to lodge some monies with the Templars that could be redeemed at the London Temple at some future time.

  The clerk on the left nodded and asked if I had any money already lodged here in the Paris Temple, or at any other Templar preceptory, and when I admitted that I did not, he said that it was no matter and then explained the procedure to me and told me that a small charge would be levied for the service. The clerk on the right said nothing but scratched away on a scroll of parchment, presumably recording the size of the deposit and my personal details. I duly handed over three pounds of Tourangeaux silver from my money belt and the clerk weighed the entire silver horde on a set of scales in front of him, bit into several of the coins gently with his incisor teeth and noted the depth of the indentations, and muttered something to his fellow clerk that I did not catch. Finally, he counted the money out into stacks of twenty coins – each stack with the value of one shilling. The clerk then arranged the shilling stacks into three rows, with twelve stacks in each row – which made up a pound. And when he had finished this ordering, he again murmured to his colleague, then looked up at me.

  ‘These coins were minted by Count Bouchard of Vendôme and I’m sorry to say they are a little debased.’

  I looked at him, mystified.

  ‘They have been debased with lead,’ said the clerk. I was still none the wiser. ‘Some lead has been added to the silver in the smelting so that more coins may be minted from a certain weight of silver bullion.’

  ‘Are they no good?’ I said, suddenly alarmed
.

  ‘They are not the worst I have seen, nor yet the purest coinage either – do not be perturbed, sir, they still have a certain value, but if you took them to London you would not be able to exchange them for the equivalent weight in sterling silver English coins.’

  ‘So how much will I get in London if I hand them over to you here and now?’

  The clerk conferred with his colleague; again, irritatingly, I could not hear what was said between them.

  ‘We will give you four sterling silver pennies for every five of your Tourangeaux coins; and there will be our fee of three shillings in addition to that. Do you accept our offer?’

  ‘So what will I receive in London?’

  The clerk did not hesitate this time – he had made the calculation entirely in his head: ‘In London you will receive two pounds, one shilling and sixteen pence.’

  I was taken aback, this business was going to cost me nearly a pound. I could well understand how the Templars had amassed such riches. If I accepted their offer, I would have walked into this hall with three pounds and be walking out with a piece of parchment worth only a little over two. But I nodded my head and through gritted teeth agreed to the deal. I was worried that if I refused I would look foolish, unworldly. The Templars had a reputation for scrupulous honesty and I reminded myself that I would be exchanging my lead-tainted Tourangeaux coins for sterling silver, and that the risk of my being robbed on the way home had been eliminated. The risk that I was being robbed right here and now in this airy hall, however, I did not like to think about.

  I waited no more than half an hour, pacing the long hall and staring up at the high arched beams that held up the roof, and then the clerk summoned me back to his table and showed me a parchment letter, some of which was written in fine, clear Latin, including my name and the manors I held, and some in a gibberish of Latin letters and numbers all jumbled up so that it made no sense to me at all, but which the clerk assured me would be the key to releasing my silver when I presented the letter to the Templar knights in England. Then he folded the letter, placed it in a water-proof pigskin pouch that he sealed with wax and presented to me with another blessing for a safe journey.

  The first person I saw when I walked out of the Counting House, feeling somewhat dazed after what had just transpired and a good deal lighter around the waist, was Sir Aymeric de St Maur, the Templar knight who had threatened me with fiery torture the year before, and the man who tried to have Robin burned at the stake for heresy.

  ‘Sir Alan,’ he said, ‘I had heard that you were headed for Paris, but what great joy indeed to run into you here.’

  And his mouth smiled.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I am never at my best when I run into people unexpectedly and refined conversation is required in an instant and, I confess, I gawped a little at Sir Aymeric before I managed to clasp his outstretched hand and summon enough wit to pretend that I too was delighted to have encountered him. At the back of my mind, a fierce debate was raging: was his presence here outside the Counting House, on the day that I had chosen to visit the Paris Temple, a coincidence? Or did he have some sinister design in mind? He had every right to be here – more than I did: he was a Templar, he had only been following Richard’s army as an observer, and now that a truce had been declared, it was only natural that he should take the opportunity to visit his brethren in Paris. But I was not convinced. At Sir Aymeric’s shoulder, stood Sir Eustace de la Falaise, his dull-witted lieutenant, who beamed at me as genially as ever. I dipped my head in salute.

  ‘Are you in Paris for long?’ Sir Aymeric was asking. ‘If you are staying for a while, then I would take it as a great boon if you would dine with me. I should very much enjoy your company over a good meal – with some decent wine. And I have something I wish to discuss with you.’

  I found Sir Aymeric’s affability disconcerting. We were not friends, in any sense of the word; nor yet jolly dining companions. I had attached myself to his diplomatic mission into Vendôme out of necessity – not because I sought his company. What was wrong with the man? One day he was threatening to have me writhing under red-hot irons, and the next asking me to dine and drink heartily. Was he touched in the head?

  ‘I shall be in Paris for a few weeks,’ I said, smiling stiffly at him, ‘but I am not sure of my plans exactly.’

  ‘We must make it soon, then,’ said Sir Aymeric. ‘Let us say a week from today, at noon. If you come to the main gate and ask for my apartments, the Brother Sergeant will show the way. Excellent! It’s settled. Till we meet again.’

  I said, ‘Ah, well, you see …’ but Sir Aymeric was already striding away. Sir Eustace smiled cheerily at me: ‘God be with you, sir,’ he said, and went after his master.

  You may ask why I did not protest further, or call out after them that I would not be available – but the simple truth is that I did not think of it at the time. My wits were scattered by his suggestion that we should break bread and drink wine together, and I was quite disarmed by his friendliness. Besides, why not dine with him? I wished to know more about the Templars, and here was a potential ally who might enlighten me about the knights of the blue cross.

  Or have me murdered.

  In the event, when I walked over to join Thomas and Hanno by the horses, the first thing I did was to tell them that I would be returning at the same time the following week: for a feast with a Templar. The first thing that Hanno said to me was: ‘They are here – these knights of the blue cross have a place here in this very stronghold. Our enemies are Templars, Sir Alan, I swear it.’

  * * *

  We waited until we were well clear of the Paris Temple before I allowed Hanno to speak. ‘They have many chapels in that place, many, and I go in one, a small one to the north of the hospital, and say a prayer. It is an old chapel, made before all this new building is happening, I think; very dusty, not so well cared for now, but dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. And when I go inside I see their shields, two of them hanging on the walls, old ones, the faces very faded. But I saw the blue cross in a black border, for sure. And so I begin to look around the chapel, I search it, and I find a little stone, set in the wall by the chancel for the remembrance of a dead knight: Rodrigo of León. The stone was carved and painted, and bore the knight’s arms and the blue cross and black border. This dead Spanish knight is a member of an order: the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Our Lady and the Temple of Solomon – it says so on the memorial stone. And I think this is the order that the knights of the blue cross also belong to. And I think they must be Templars, or an order similar to the Templars, for sure.’

  Hanno was rightly proud of the information that he had gathered. We had ascertained a Templar connection, and knew that these killers were dedicated to Mary, the Mother of Jesus – which tallied with the dying beggar-knight I spoke to asking me to forgive him in the name of the Queen of Heaven. We were beginning to know our foe.

  On the way home, I stopped by the palace of the Bishop of Paris to see Brother Michel and ask if the Bishop had set a date for our meeting. After only a short wait, Brother Michel appeared looking flustered. He apologized handsomely for the delay and said that the Bishop had been especially busy during the past week but that his duties were lighter in the next few days and he was sure that there would be an opportunity for a meeting then. As I was leaving, I told the monk, as a form of security, that I would be dining with Sir Aymeric de St Maur the following week. I’d be less likely to be murdered, I reasoned, if a senior member of the Bishop’s personal staff knew my whereabouts. And if I was murdered, the monk’s knowledge of my engagement might allow my friends in Robin’s ranks to take a suitable revenge on Sir Aymeric.

  Brother Michel seemed stunned when I explained this to him: ‘You suspect that Templars – our own warriors of Christ – are responsible for your father’s murder?’

  I outlined to him my two encounters with the knights of the blue cross – or the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Our Lady and the Temple of Solomon, a
s we now knew they were called – and how on two occasions they had tried to kill me. Brother Michel was deeply angered: ‘This is quite insufferable, Sir Alan. Have you informed the Provost of this crime? I thought we were dealing with a tale from twenty years ago, but now this! We must bring these men to justice immediately. The Bishop is a close friend of Sir Gilbert Horal, the Grand Master of the Order – I will have him arrest these blue knights and drag them before the Provost in chains. We shall demand answers from them.’

  Brother Michel had become quite incensed by my words, two twin pink spots adorned his pale cheeks. I thought to myself: I have been in war and around warriors for so long now that violence has become commonplace, but this man of God has reminded me that not all of us live with a gore-slicked blade permanently in our fists.

  ‘Calm yourself, Brother,’ I said to the rage-trembling monk before me. ‘We must not seek to involve the Provost nor call hysterically for the Paris Temple to be ransacked – we have no proof. And they may not truly be Templars after all – merely affiliated to them, or a group that seeks to ape them. I have been thinking a little on what I have seen of their fighting prowess, and I must conclude that it is not up to the very high standard of true Templars. Besides, it would be viewed as a preposterous accusation from one English knight, a foreigner and enemy, unsupported by any other evidence. I’m afraid I must continue to seek the proof myself – but if you could hasten the time when I might have an audience with the Bishop, I would be grateful.’

  ‘Well, if you think that is the best course, Sir Alan,’ said Brother Michel, doubtfully. He seemed to have swiftly regained mastery of himself. ‘I will support you, of course, and keep my counsel. I will certainly speak to the Bishop about your case this very day. And I shall pray for your soul – and your father’s too.’

  ‘Thank you, Brother,’ I said, and left him.