Sacred and Profane

by Nina Merrill

  Young Boudin brought her supper. It was stew again, with more ale. Jennie already had a headache from the ale at breakfast, and the wine Napier provided at midday. Boudin was easily cajoled into sharing her supper and chatting. He ate like any teenager, shoveling quickly, hardly chewing, talking around each mouthful. From him, Jennie learned her guard rotation would be fairly standard—Tibald from late in the evening until dawn, Napier from dawn until afternoon, Boudin after that. He, too, admitted Payraud was concerned they had already revealed too much.

  “But it may be that the king’s agent was at the commandery meeting the night I…arrived. The damage may have been done immediately. Or even before I arrived.”

  Boudin shrugged, chewing with vigor and mopping up the last of the juice in her trencher with a crust. “Still, keeping you here is safer.”

  “Not to mention easier.”

  He flushed at her tone, but did not deny the truth of her comment. “You don’t expect us to jeopardize the Temple for one woman, do you?”

  Her eyes flicked to his earnest, pimply face. “No,” she admitted slowly. But inside, she thought, Yes. Listen to me! Take action…do something to save yourselves! But perhaps they had listened. Immured here in the tower, how would she know?

  At least Tibald would have the night watch. He would allow her the light of the torch, but best of all he would talk with her and help pass the miserably long night. And maybe he would put his arm around her again. It was such a small thing to hope for, but suddenly it seemed the most important thing in her world.

  On the fifth morning, Tibald at last assented to Jennie’s desperate pleas to leave her room for the fresh air of the preceptory grounds, if she would remain completely covered by the hooded mantle and speak to no one. He agreed to escort her, ignoring Napier’s surly derision while they changed the guard in the early morning. Once out of the tower, Tibald sauntered alongside to match her shorter stride, clasping his hands behind him. Jennie relinquished her silly fantasy of the knight escorting his lady, arm held out before him with just the tips of her fingers resting on his arm. Instead she asked innumerable questions, which she could tell first took him aback, but he warmed quickly to his subject, pointing out what she knew, from her studies, to be the charnel house. They passed the chapel and hospital, turning to walk along the cemetery. There Tibald paused, drawing his sword to salute those buried in the hallowed ground, and bowed his head in a brief prayer.

  Jennie, never religious at the best of times, blinked but respected his silence. As they walked, she noticed the trees on the preceptory grounds showing patches of fall color. One was a bright, clear yellow on its uppermost branches. Birch? Her tongue roamed across her teeth, as clean as she could make them with a rag she had moistened, but she had read of people cleaning their teeth by gnawing on the brushy ends of twigs. She broke from their path to head for the tree, only to find her wrist captured by Tibald.

  “Where are you going?”

  She gestured with her chin. “Isn’t that a birch tree?”

  His gaze moved slowly from her face to the tree and back. He nodded.

  “I have a fondness for…uh, nibbling birch twigs. They’re sweet. May I gather a few?”

  His brows drew together in confusion. “Twigs? Jeanne, what foolishness is this?”

  Her shoulders drooped. “I need a toothbrush. You don’t have those here.”

  “A toothbrush? Such as you might use on your hair?” His gaze went to where her long braid dangled out from the hem of her kerchief.

  “If I had such a brush, yes.”

  “Very well. I will fetch one for you.” He moved toward the tree, his hand still linked around her wrist. Captive, but hardly objecting, Jennie moved with him, stupidly pleased when his grip shifted and he caught her hand. It was easy and pleasant to close her fingers around his and feel that unconscious grip returned. I am such a schoolgirl. What a stupid crush, to be so taken by holding hands. But the quickened beat of her heart was enough. She wondered if he could feel it and decided she wanted him to feel it, wanted him to know he could make her pulse race. She wanted him to see her as more than someone to be kept sequestered and under guard.

  Tibald plucked a whippy twig and presented it to her with a slight bow, as if he had given her a rose. With a smile, she bowed in return. She nibbled the severed end to crush the wood into a fibrous brush. It felt wonderful to clean her teeth with something besides her washcloth. The birch twig had a faint sweetness to it, something like sassafras or root beer. Tibald watched her, bemused, then broke a twig for himself to gnaw.

  “Humph,” was all he said, but he didn’t toss the twig away.

  They resumed their rambling, crossing the remains of old trenches leading away from the center of the preceptory, where the Templars had long ago drained the marshy land granted them by King Louis VII nearly two hundred years before.

  Across an expanse of grazing land loomed what Tibald called the Dungeon, a massive tower that dwarfed the one where her room was. Four stories pointed skyward, flanked at each corner by turrets capped with pointed roofs that made them look like freshly dipped candles. Jennie had read about the Dungeon, where, at one point, the treasury of the Templars had been stored. Was it there now? Excitement widened her eyes and she caught at Tibald’s sleeve.

  “Is that where you store your treasure?”

  His mouth quirked up, and it took only that to instantly derail Jennie from more coherent, scholarly thought. The real treasure of the Templars was standing in front of her: a man whose sandy hair glittered like gold in the sun; carnelian-red mouth smiling at her from its gilt-bearded nest; strong shoulders squared and straight; a ready, graceful hand at his hilt. Here was a man who believed in the ideals of the order and sought to make himself, already a good man, better.

  If only she could think about something other than coaxing him to toss away that one particular oath of chastity…

  “That depends what you mean by treasure, Jeanne.” He looked down at her and once again she was struck by the relative nearness of their heights. She was not a tall woman, but Tibald stood only about five-eight, she guessed. That brings his mouth into easy reach. I am an idiot. I should be thinking about getting myself home, not getting myself into bed or forming attachments. He’s probably got fleas anyway. Her hand was still on his arm and now he urged her over the grass. “It’s where we store some of the funds and assets of the Temple. It’s well-guarded. Not even the monarch comes there unescorted.”

  “The order has more money than King Philip. It’s one reason he seeks to bring you down.”

  Tibald nodded, frowning slightly. “I do fear what you say is true, Jeanne.” He bent his arm and pulled her hand through the crook of his elbow. “The footing here is uneven. The sheep keep the grass short, but sometimes the pigs root.”

  Jennie bit her lip to hide her smile. The footing was beautifully flat—Tibald simply liked having her near. Her stomach fluttered a little and inside she laughed at her girlish excitement.

  Their walk took them past the Dungeon tower and the knights standing guard at its doors. As they rounded the southeastern corner, Tibald turned west. He nodded his head at the long, low U-shaped building before them, built of stone and wood with a large courtyard. “The master’s house.”

  At last Jennie’s good sense kicked in. Perhaps here was a chance to retrieve her journal. “Commander de Payraud? Is he in residence? I haven’t seen him since I first arrived.”

  “The property belongs to Jacques de Molay as the master of all France, but since Molay prefers his home on Cyprus, Payraud is its custodian.”

  “Could we visit him, Tibald? I would like to speak with him again.”

  Tibald shook his head. “He is away from Paris on business.” From the firm, tight line of his mouth, Jennie guessed she’d get nothing more about Payraud from Tibald, and wondered if the master of the Paris commandery was truly away on business—or engaged in some secret work to prove or disprove the truth of her allegations.
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  “The courtyard is lovely. Could we have a closer look?”

  He hesitated, and Jennie feared he would refuse, but he nodded and agreed.

  The courtyard didn't host any of the preceptory’s livestock, though there was a grassy lawn sharing space with flagstones. Fruit trees shaded the yard, some with late apples still glowing among the slow-turning leaves. Jennie heard the drone of wasps, sleepy in the afternoon warmth and half-drunk with the cider in the overripe fruit.

  “I could spend hours here, reading.” She nodded to a stone bench that collared the oldest of the fruit trees. “If I had any books, that is.” She felt a pang when she thought of the shelves upon shelves of books in her apartment in Minneapolis. Would she ever read them again?

  Tibald leaned against one of the walls and watched, arms folded, as she moved about the courtyard. Jennie was conscious of his gaze upon her, a sensation somewhere between warm honey and electricity. She glanced through the wavy, thick glass of a window, but the gloom inside showed little detail. A furring of lichen and moss grew in a few of the chinks of the stone of the walls, soft to her fingers as she trailed them over the stone.

  “Warden de Bergère! There you are.”

  Jennie turned at the new voice, seeing Tibald straighten from the wall with a jerk, as if woken from a dream. She bit her lip, realizing his entire attention had been focused upon her. It was Maillet, whom she remembered seeing in the dining hall. Tibald met him and the two spoke in low voices. She turned back to the window, cupping her hands around her eyes to shut out the glare of day.

  The room inside was a study of some sort. Through the distorting glass, she could see a few books lying on a long, heavy table, along with ink bottles and quills in a shallow wooden box.

  Payraud’s office, perhaps?

  My journal! Her heart raced. She looked over her shoulder. Tibald and Maillet were deep in conversation, their backs to her. Only a few feet away was a doorway. Quickly she sidled into its shadow, trying the latch.

  It lifted.

  Chapter 11

  Jennie closed her eyes, gathering courage. This might be her only chance. She pressed gently at the door, willing it not to screech like a trodden-upon cat, and slipped inside the moment the gap was wide enough. Closing the door, she waited, listening for signs of someone else in the house. When her vision adjusted to the dimness, she saw that the books on the table were bound and latched vellum, thick and cumbrous. In the courtyard, Tibald was still occupied.

  It’s not stealing if I’m retrieving my own property, she told herself. Her search was necessarily hasty, but she did her best not to disarrange the contents of the room. The journal was not on any of the shelves, nor in the two cupboards she opened, though she found a number of other books that cried to her scholar’s soul to be opened. Illuminated manuscripts…new ones! She shoved her longings aside and continued her search.

  Nothing. Nothing! She was afraid to open one of the two doors that led to other rooms—she would surely be caught. Jennie turned wild eyes on the table. Perhaps one of the books piled there was a diary, holding clues. Her fingers fumbled with the latch that held a bound vellum book closed, and it sprang half open like a live thing, sudden and pale as a mushroom in the grass after rain.

  It wasn’t a diary, but neither was it entirely useless. The random page she opened was like a shout from Fate, for there was the series of letters she had run through her inside-out cipher to Hebrew and thence to Greek. Her mouth went dry. With the exception of her journal, this was the single most useful piece of information she could have found. Would unscrambling the letters yet again take her back to her own time and place? Or did the swirling currents of time require a particular confluence of events—like the ones that had brought her here?

  She flipped quickly through more pages, but found only geometry and biblical references. “God forgive me this desecration,” she whispered, turning back to the page she needed, and tearing it from the book. The vellum parted from its stitching with a series of pops, leaving chips behind. She folded it in half before slipping it up her left sleeve to lie along her forearm like the long cuff of a gauntlet. She was struggling to press the book closed when the door banged open and Tibald came rushing in, his dagger drawn.

  With a gasp, she froze. Caught, utterly, in the act.

  After realizing the room was empty save for the two of them, Tibald stood there, his face a dark glower. With a glance into the courtyard behind him, he closed the door. He strode across the stone floor and spun the book to face him, taking in the symbol on the front in a glance. He jammed his dagger into its sheath and quickly closed and latched the book.

  Jennie slid aside to keep the table between them. She could see his anger, but was that worry furrowing his brow and tightening his lips?

  “What do you think you’re doing, Jeanne? Women aren’t allowed here. This is our library.” As he spoke, he moved around the table toward her. She watched his hands, seeing they weren’t clenching in anger, and moved away, though slowly, allowing him to close the gap. Something in his purposeful movements made her pulse gallop madly—it wasn’t all anger, there was something more there, something darker but sweeter, something forbidden to him. She wanted to be caught by him, was excited by the excess of emotion she saw on his face. Her actions had broken through his eternal courtesy and restraint.

  “I only want to help. I swear, Tibald! I need my journal, and I thought—”

  “You must return to your chamber.” Tibald rounded the corner of the table and took her by the shoulders, turning her to face him. Her light woolen mantle, carelessly draped around her and not fastened at its neck, slid from her shoulders and spilled over his hands. Beneath, she was wearing the ill-fitting sack dress, with her cotton nightie under it to save her skin somewhat from the prickles of the wool. Tibald’s gaze went to the gaping neck of the dress and the low-necked cotton with its delicate frilled edging. Jennie heard him snatch his breath and was suddenly desperate to catch his gaze, even though she was fearful of what she would see there.

  “I only wanted to look for my journal—I thought perhaps Master de Payraud had stored it here. I know I shouldn’t have crept in like a thief, but I can’t stay in this century. Don’t you see?” Now she did look up and meet Tibald’s gray gaze.

  His hands tightened, then slid up her arms, bringing the mantle with them. He fumbled for a moment at her neck, unsuccessful at closing the brooch of the cloak. This close, she saw the muscles of his throat work in a convulsive swallow. She thought he might speak, but no words came. He was uncharacteristically clumsy and silent. To fill the uncomfortable silence, she babbled on.

  “I know you think I’m mad, that I’m imagining being from the future, from somewhere else, but I’m not. It’s real. I’m real. You’re real. The danger to your order is real. All I want to do is help! There aren’t many days left.” She took a deep breath and instantly realized her mistake when his gaze went to her rising cleavage, then leapt back to her eyes with a guilty flick. Jennie couldn’t be sure he was blushing, but there was a strange tightness near his eyes and lips.

  “I don’t think you’re mad. Mistaken, perhaps, or misled by some wicked demon. It’s I who am mad.” Once again he tugged her cloak closed, but since he didn’t fasten it, the moment he released the cloth to take hold of her shoulders again, it gaped open.

  “You?” She shook her head.

  “You don’t understand, Jeanne. I’m a knight of my order. I’ve taken oaths. I’ve made promises. But every time I see you I struggle to remember them.” His hands bit deep at her shoulders and a long, slow breath to control his emotions whistled out his nostrils.

  Jennie didn’t pretend to misunderstand his words. She knew he fought with his instincts when she was near—he had done so since the moment she appeared in the midst of their commandery.

  “Then help me find my journal, and I’ll try my best to return home. You’ve heard everything I can tell you about the doom the king has laid upon the Templar
s. It’s warning enough, so if I can go home again I must try.”

  Tibald’s hands clenched convulsively on her shoulders and jerked her a half-step closer. “But don’t you see, Jeanne? That’s precisely what I don’t want. I shouldn’t feel this way. My will should be stronger than my flesh. But I don’t want you to leave, and I don’t know what to do about this except—except—”

  Clearly there were no more words for either of them. Jennie found herself speechless, but also unable to speak, for Tibald bent his head and his mouth crushed hers with a pressure that revealed his frustration, anger, and despairing defeat. Part of her exulted in his fracturing control. His grip kept her from moving her arms, though every instinct told her to touch him, offer comfort, sweetness, pleasure… As the kiss went on and she felt the hardness of his teeth behind his mostly-closed lips, Jennie realized to her surprise that though Tibald was ferociously pressing his mouth to hers, he had no real idea how to kiss. Only impulse drove him, and it was the same impulse that pushed couples to deeper and deeper penetration in sex: the urge to be close, and closer still, for each to be inside the other, experiencing every sensation to its fullest.

  I could teach him what I think he wants to know. I could show him what it means to kiss, and be kissed, and touched. The knowledge shocked her, along with the depth of her sudden wish to be the woman who cleaved this sternly chaste man from his vows.

  In the same moment she felt herself gaining control of her surprise at his obvious inexperience, Tibald pushed her away with a harsh growl that sounded more bestial than human. She blinked, startled anew by the cessation of the violent kiss, and staggered. His grip kept her from falling.

  “I cannot.” He shook his head. “I will not. I am sworn.” He stared at her, tragic lines marking his brow and cheeks. He released her, wiping his hands on his tunic as though touching her had soiled them.