Brethren: An Epic Adventure of the Knights Templar (31 page)

When Everard returned to the West, Hasan had gone with him. The priest had filled him with the belief that there was something he could do in this life that could change everything. In Christendom, he had spent his time on the road, collecting information, documents and secrets. Always on the move, keeping to the shadows, a stable here to sleep in, a field there. Hasan believed with all his being in the Anima Templi’s dream, but lately he had found himself imagining how it would be to have a place, just a room, filled with his memories, his silence. There had been a woman once in Syria. He sometimes wondered what life he had abandoned. What his children looked like.

The door opened and Everard entered, holding a jug. “Damned servants tried to pass off some local piss water as Gascony wine.”

Hasan noticed that the priest seemed brighter, his movements more brisk.

“What is it?”

Everard turned, lip curled in a smile. “I’ve had an idea.”

E
lwen moved across the room and sat on the edge of the bed that she shared with one of the other handmaidens. She glanced around the empty chamber, then reached inside the pocket at the front of her apron and withdrew her find. Holding it between thumb and forefinger, she studied the pearl’s creamy, glossy surface in the strip of light that slanted through the window. She had found the pearl that morning whilst attending the queen. It had been lodged in a crack in the flagstones of the queen’s bedchamber, having fallen from one of her mistress’s gowns. While the queen was standing before her silver mirror, examining the complex braids and coils Elwen had made of her hair, it had been the easiest thing for Elwen to pluck it, unnoticed, from the ground. She didn’t think of it as stealing. She knew the gown the jewel had dropped from; there must have been a hundred pearls strung from it, like little eyes peeking out from the folds of samite. This one wouldn’t be missed.

Reaching under the bed, Elwen pulled out a long wooden box, stained black and decorated with silver flowers. She had seen the box in the market a year ago and had saved her earnings for two months to buy it, going back to the merchant’s stall whenever she could, worried that it had been bought by another. It was the only luxury she had ever bought; every other penny she had earned had gone into the fund that would one day take her to the Holy Land. Her desire to travel there, which had formed in her as a girl, had never left her. She was enraptured by stories of it told by visiting nobles, stories she would occasionally overhear while sewing one of the queen’s gowns, or putting fresh goose feathers in the silk pillows in the solar. No one else, handmaidens or servants, seemed to understand her desire. If not for a pilgrimage, they asked her, then why would she go there? Elwen couldn’t explain it in words. She felt it as a pull, as if someone had tied a piece of string to her insides and was drawing her inexorably eastward. She always felt the pull to be strongest at this time of year, with the fog and the cold closing around the palace towers like a sheet, pinning her within.

She crouched before the box, removing the chain she wore around her neck from which hung a tiny key. There was a soft click as the lock disengaged and she lifted the lid. Inside, the box was divided into rows of small compartments. The merchant had said it was a spice box, but Elwen didn’t use it for that purpose. In each of the compartments were treasures: a crimson ribbon from a handmaiden who had left to be married; a frost-white dove feather from the palace gardens; a dented gold coin rescued from the riverbank where it had been half buried in mud. Inside another was a strip of blue linen folded in a square that contained the dried head of a jasmine flower. Delicate and brittle; a keepsake from Will. Elwen never took anything that would be missed, nothing of real value to anyone else. The pearl was an exception, but too precious a find to abandon.

As a child in Powys, she had kept a similar collection, though her hoard then had been more earthy in nature. She had invested these tokens with their own unique histories: a blue-speckled stone was a gift to a knight from a sultan’s daughter; a misshapen twig was part of a ship that was wrecked off the coast of Arabia. They had served as talismans against the long nights when the only sounds were her mother’s fitful sleep-talk and the wind roaring through the valley to beat its fists against the walls of their hut. In the years since she had left Powys, Elwen’s life had changed, but her need for things to treasure remained.

Elwen placed the pearl in the compartment with the gold coin, then closed the lid. After locking the box, she pushed it beneath the bed. She was pulling the chain with the key over her head, when the door opened and one of the handmaidens she shared the chamber with rushed in.

“There you are! I’ve been looking everywhere for you.” The maid’s cheeks were flushed as if she had been running.

“What’s wrong, Maria?” asked Elwen, slipping the chain inside the front of her gown.

“There’s someone here to see you at the servants’ gate.” Maria, a short, fair-haired girl of about sixteen, grinned as she shut the door. “He has come from the Temple so I was told by the messenger boy.”

“From the Temple?” Elwen untied her apron. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.” Maria giggled at Elwen’s secretive smile. Taking the apron from her, she laid it neatly on the bed. “When will you tell me who he is? This man you see.”

Elwen smoothed down her ivory-colored gown. “Not yet.”

“But we are close as sisters! You cannot keep such things from me.” Maria clasped Elwen’s hands eagerly. “Do you plan to marry? If you do you’ll have to do it before he’s knighted, won’t you? Or he’ll have taken his vows.”

“I won’t say,” insisted Elwen.

Maria let go of her hands and feigned a pout. “I’ll not tell you my secret.”

Elwen smiled, but remained silent.

Maria sighed and sat on the bed. “Well, I’ll tell you, even though you don’t deserve to know.” Her eyes shone with excitement. “The troubadour is here.”

“You’ve seen him?” Elwen was intrigued. Along with most of the royal household—and many in the city—she had been awaiting the arrival of the famous Pierre de Pont-Evêque with great curiosity.

“I have,” replied Maria importantly. “And he doesn’t look like the Devil some have claimed him to be. I thought him most comely.”

“You think all men most comely.”

“Yes,” admitted Maria candidly, “but although my eyes appreciate variety, my heart desires one man alone.”

Elwen returned the smile, knowing that the handmaiden spoke of Ramon, a coal-eyed kitchenhand from Galicia, whom Maria held so close to her heart that not even he knew of his place there.

“I cannot wait for the performance,” said Maria, leaning back on the bed. “We are fortunate.”

Elwen nodded. The queen had permitted four of her handmaidens, including Elwen and Maria, to attend the performance held in five days. They would watch and listen from behind a heavy drape that covered the servants’ entrance in the side of the Great Hall. She straightened her cap. “How do I look?”

“Pretty as a dove.”

Elwen wrinkled her nose. “A dove?”

“Sorry,” said Maria, rolling her eyes, “I forgot that you hate all things dainty and sweet.”

“I don’t hate sweet things,” corrected Elwen. “I would just rather be compared to a…” She shrugged. “A raven, or an owl, something more…”

“Manly,” said Maria, shaking her head.

Elwen shot her a reproachful look. “Courageous.”

“I’m jesting,” said Maria with a giggle. She leaned back on her elbows. “You look like one of those women in the Romances you read. Beautiful and courageous and nothing like a dove.”

Elwen smiled as she headed for the door. “I will see you later.”

“Give your sweetheart a kiss for me,” Maria called softly.

Passing a cook with a basket of vegetables and two palace guards in their scarlet liveries, Elwen headed through the servants’ gate and came out in the paved alley that ringed the palace wall. One way led to the main streets, the other to the riverbank. Wondering why Will had come to see her without any warning, but hoping that he had finally come to his senses and would admit how he felt about her, she made her way along the passage, then passed through an arch in the low wall that led onto the banks. A line of oak trees flanked the water’s edge. Leaves, ripped from branches by recent winds, covered the muddy banks in a whispering, russet-gold mantle. Elwen halted. There was only an old man dressed in black standing beneath an oak and staring out across the river. Wrapping her arms around her, Elwen looked about. There was no sign of Will.

“Elwen.”

She turned at the thin, breathless voice and saw the old man walking toward her. Her heart gave a shocked little flutter as she recognized him. It was Will’s master, Everard de Troyes.

THE SEVEN STARS, PARIS, OCTOBER
27, 1266
AD

Adela opened her herbal and carefully turned the tattered skins. She found the page she was looking for and ran her finger down the list of ingredients. A fire was glowing dully in the small hearth, but something had blocked the chimney and most of the smoke was curling back into the room in a gray, eye-stinging fog. A dirty light came in through the gap in the sacking that was placed across the window. From the street below came the sounds of carts and horses, men calling to one another, a dog barking, a baby squalling. Adela didn’t look around as Garin moved up behind her.

“Come back to bed,” he murmured, pressing himself against her and running his hands over the cool crescents of her breasts and down her stomach.

Adela caught his hands. “I have to have these potions finished for the market tomorrow, or I’ll have nothing to sell.”

Garin looked over her shoulder at the herbal. One of the pages described how to make decayed teeth fall out by pressing a frog to them and how to make an infant who refuses the nipple, suckle by smearing honey on the mother’s breasts. “Why do you do this?” he asked irritably.

“Do what?” she said absently, her eyes on her herb shelves.

“Make these medicines.” He lowered his mouth to her neck and nuzzled it. “Don’t I pay you enough?”

“As it happens, no,” she replied, sliding out from between him and the trestle and going to the shelves where she took down two tall clay bottles. She caught Garin’s scowl. “What me and my girls earn barely covers what it costs us to live. Look at this place. You can see the state of it. If I don’t pay for repairs on the building soon, I won’t have a workplace, or a home left. When I first opened this house it was the most popular in the Quarter. Now, newer houses are starting to take my custom.” Adela put the bottles on the trestle by her pestle and mortar with a heavy sigh.

How disappointed her father would be to see what she had made of the place. When he had run the guesthouse, they had been wealthy enough. The trouble was most of his customers had been priests and scholars, visiting the Sorbonne and neighboring colleges. When she had taken over the business, the numbers of guests had rapidly dwindled. She had guessed because the priests and scholars thought it unseemly to stay in a woman’s household. When she could no longer afford to pay the tax to the provosts, she had been given the choice to sell up, or change it. Not bearing to part with her childhood home, she had chosen the latter and having no trade and no time to learn one, she had opted, aged sixteen, to sell the only commodity she possessed.

“I don’t have a choice but to make these medicines,” she told Garin. “And if I did, I would gladly choose it over this.”

“This? You mean me?”

“No,” she said quietly, cradling his cheek with her hand. “Everyone but you.”

Garin put his hand over hers. After a moment, Adela gently disengaged herself and sat down at her bench. Garin went to where his hose lay in a rumpled pile by the pallet. As he picked them up, he dislodged the small velvet pouch that had been lying on them. It clinked on the floor. Garin lifted it by the string. It was worryingly light. Once, he had anxiously hoarded every penny Prince Edward had doled out to him. Now his fortune was almost spent; one coin after another pressed into Adela’s palm each time she opened her door to him. He looked at her, shaking poppy seeds into her mortar bowl. His eyes traveled over her smooth white skin, the supple arch and curve of her back, the gap between her thighs that always made his stomach tighten. Her breasts pressed against the trestle edge as she leaned over and took up her pestle. Stone grated against stone as she pounded and ground the mixture. She looked so studious; violet eyes intent; mouth turned down at the corners; brow creased. Garin realized that this was how Adela looked when she was doing something she truly enjoyed. When she was in bed with him, or seeing clients downstairs she seemed happy enough. But watching her now, he realized how much of that was an act. He found himself smiling a little secretive smile, thinking how he was the only one she showed this face to. He wondered if this was what married couples felt. Had his father ever observed his mother perform some familiar task of an evening, content to watch and not to touch? He didn’t know. But, for a moment, he caught a glimpse of a possible future where two people could sit and be, safe in the silence of years.

As she rose to take another bottle from the shelf, Garin dropped his hose and the pouch to the boards and crossed to her.

“Garin…!” Adela started to say, as he turned her to face him. Her fist was full of lavender buds, their scent cloying.

“I can’t help wanting you.” Garin bent to kiss her neck, his mouth hot, hungry on her skin. “It’s not my fault.”

“Stop,” she breathed.

“No,” he murmured in her ear.

The door flew inward with a bang.

Garin whipped around, naked and startled, as a man strode into the chamber.

Rook took in the scene with a mocking leer. “So this is what knights spend their days doing? I was wondering why no one had recaptured Jerusalem from the Saracens yet.”

Garin crossed to Rook and shoved him toward the door. “Get
out
!”

Rook’s smirk vanished. He knocked Garin’s fists aside and one of his hands flew to Garin’s throat, which he gripped with crushing force. “I’ve told you before, you little shit. Don’t
ever
get above yourself with me!”

“Get off him.”

Rook glanced around at the cold, husky voice, to see Adela staring at him. She was still naked, but made no effort to cover herself. “Begone, whore,” he growled, flicking his head toward the door.

Garin was gagging from the pressure around his windpipe. He grabbed Rook’s hand and tried to prize it off him.

Adela walked calmly over to Rook, violet eyes glinting. “I will go nowhere. This is my property and you, sir, are trespassing.”

“Your property?” jeered Rook.

Adela didn’t answer, but craned her head and looked past him to the door. “Fabien!” she yelled.

“Let him stay, Adela,” croaked Garin, keeping his eyes on Rook.

After a moment, there came the sound of pounding footsteps in the passage. The door burst open. Rook was mildly surprised to see a colossus of a man with thick black eyebrows and a grim expression enter the room. He looked from Rook to Garin, then to Adela.