Brethren: An Epic Adventure of the Knights Templar (35 page)

Lucas shook his head. “The lazar hospital won’t want him.”

“We’ll say he’s a leper. They’ll have to take him then.”

Aimery and Lucas looked to Baudouin. Unable to see any better solution to the problem, Baudouin nodded. “All right then. Help me get him up.”

THE TEMPLE, PARIS, NOVEMBER
2, 1266
AD

When the office of Prime had finished, Will headed out of the chapel, yawning deeply. The service had been especially long as today was All Souls’, the day of the dead, and during each office special prayers were to be said for the faithful departed. It was a somber festival in comparison to the joyous All Hallows, although the weather was anything but. After days of wind and rain, the morning had dawned stunningly clear, the sky turning from black to turquoise to a dazzling, radiant blue. But they paid the price for it with the sudden drop in temperature. At dawn, the stable boys had had to hack through a layer of ice that had formed over the horse troughs during the night. Frost had hardened the mud and dusted the grass silvery white.

The knights were moving from the chapel in a line toward the Great Hall. Will, along with the other sergeants, would have to wait until they had finished before he broke his own fast and so he headed for the wardrobe to collect Everard’s robe, which he had put in to be mended by the preceptory’s tailor.

“Sergeant Campbell.”

Will looked around to see a servant in a brown tunic hurrying over. He looked rather furtive and kept glancing over at the knights. “Yes?”

“There’s someone to see you at the gate,” murmured the man.

“Who?”

The servant didn’t reply, but, after a quick look over his shoulder, held out his hand to Will. On his palm was a crushed square of blue linen.

Will frowned as he took it. “What is it?” he asked, opening up the cloth. He stared at the dried head of a jasmine flower crumpled within the folds of material.

“She wouldn’t say her name,” whispered the servant. “Just told me to give you that. She’s waiting out by the road.” He bobbed his head and scurried off.

Will closed his fist around the square of material and felt his heart begin to pound. But his mind was not so excited as his body and he felt a tremor of irritation that Elwen hadn’t heeded what he had said only last week; that she couldn’t come here like this. After a pause, he crossed the yard and moved toward the passage that led past the donjon to the main gate. He had not gone far when he saw a knight approaching him. It was Garin. The rest of the men had dispersed from the yard, the last of the knights disappearing into the hall.

Garin smiled in greeting. The expression didn’t quite reach his eyes, however, and when he spoke his jovial tone seemed forced. “I was hoping to catch you.”

“What is it?” asked Will, stuffing the square of linen into his tunic pocket.

“I wasn’t sure, but I thought I saw an old comrade of my uncle’s here the other day. A man called Hasan?”

Will nodded. “Yes, he’s here.”

“Robert told me that he is also a comrade of your master?”

“I’m not sure if comrade is the right word. My master sometimes uses Hasan to track down texts he wants to purchase. Why do you ask?”

“It’s nothing really.” Garin shrugged and gave an awkward laugh, although again, Will sensed a tension beneath his apparent humor. “I just wanted to thank him for trying to save my uncle’s life at Honfleur. I didn’t have a chance to after the battle, but I’ve never forgotten how he fought side by side with us.” He paused. “Do you know where he is?”

“I saw him yesterday evening briefly, but I don’t know where he is now. I think he has lodgings in the city. That’s about all I can tell you.” Will took a step toward the passage that led to the entrance. “I’m sorry, I have to go.”

“Are you leaving the preceptory?”

“I’m running an errand for my master. I’ll tell Hasan you are looking for him if I see him.”

After passing out of the long shadow of the donjon, Will made his way down the rue du Temple, which was overhung with a creaking canopy of windswept chestnut trees. Elwen was standing beneath one of the trees, ankle-deep in a rippling sea of crimson leaves. She was wearing a white gown and a blue woolen shawl was wrapped tightly around her shoulders. Will called her name. The sound was snatched from his lips by a gust of wind that rattled the branches above him. Elwen looked around. Her face registered relief. She ran toward him, then halted uncertainly short of him. Will saw she had tears in her eyes and his irritation left him like breath.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, going to her.

She put her face in her hands.

“Elwen, what is it?” Will grasped her shoulders gently. “Talk to me.”

After a moment, she took her hands away. Her cheeks were wet. “I don’t know where to begin. Will, I’ve done something terrible.” She shook her head fiercely. “It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. I didn’t think that anyone would get hurt.”

“What are you talking about?”

Elwen took a breath, then disengaged herself from Will’s grasp. “And the worst of it is, I feel like I’ve betrayed you.”

Will was silent as Elwen spoke of how Everard had come to her at the palace, asking her to take a book from the troubadour, Pierre de Pont-Evêque, a book, the priest had told her, that had been stolen from the preceptory six years ago. Then she told him how she had made a deal with the priest; that in return, Everard would initiate Will.

Will remained quiet for some time after she had finished. “Everard asked you to steal this book?”

“I’m sorry I went behind your back with your master, Will, but I know how much you long to be a knight and I thought I would be helping you by doing this. It wasn’t as if the book really belonged to the troubadour.” She bit her lip and looked at the ground. “Then the Dominicans arrived and I was so scared they would discover what I had done that all I could think about was getting rid of it. They arrested the troubadour last night before the performance.”

“Arrested him for what?”

“The Dominicans think the Book of the Grail and his performance are heretical.”

Will’s jaw tightened. “Well, all that matters is that you are safe.”

“It’s my fault, isn’t it? What happened to the troubadour? I heard that when the Dominicans couldn’t find the book they accused him of lying about a serving girl taking it. But he was telling the truth. I gave him a false name.”

“It’s a good thing you did. Elwen, none of this is your fault.” Will shook his head. “I cannot believe he has done this,” he murmured.

“Pierre isn’t a bad man. He took the book when his brother died. He just wanted to perform his poetry. They’ll kill him, won’t they?”

“His brother?”

Elwen recounted what Pierre had said about Antoine. “Everard thought Pierre might have been the one who had stolen the book from the vaults, but he wasn’t. His brother, Antoine, found it on his doorstep. Neither of them even knew that it had anything to do with the Temple.”

“Where is the book now?”

“I met Everard’s man yesterday evening, as we arranged, and I handed it to him.”

“Everard’s man?”

“Hasan,” she said in a small voice. “He told me that I had done well and that Everard would be pleased. I asked him where he was from and he said Syria. I mentioned that I wanted to go to the Holy Land. He told me that I should, that it was beautiful.”

“Hasan brought the book here, to Everard?”

“He was supposed to. But, Will, some of the royal guards were out on patrol last night and they found a body, not long after Hasan left me. I overheard Baudouin, one of the guards, reporting it to the captain early this morning when I was fetching water for the queen’s bath. I asked him about it and he said it was a Saracen and that he had been beaten and stabbed to death in an alley.” More tears slid down her cheeks. “He said they left him at the lazar hospital outside Saint-Denis’s Gate to be buried. It must be him, mustn’t it?”

“The leper hospital?”

“Because he was a Saracen.”

“Everard told me that Hasan was a converted…” Will trailed off, pushing his hands through his hair. He’d had suspicions about Hasan in the past, but Everard had bluntly dismissed his distrust. If Everard had concealed all of this from him and had gone behind his back to seek Elwen’s aid in retrieving this book, he now wondered whether the priest had lied to him about other things over the years. He brushed a tear from Elwen’s cheek with his thumb. “I have to go,” he told her, taking her hand and placing the jasmine flower, wrapped its cloth, in her palm. “Return to the palace and don’t tell anyone what you have told me.”

“Do you hate me?”

“Of course I don’t,” he murmured, drawing her into his arms and holding her tightly. “I’m grateful that you did this to help me, Elwen, I’m just angry that you were ever put in this position.” Will felt her body relax against his. He stroked her hair for a moment, then drew back and kissed her cheek. “I’ll come and see you soon. I promise.”

Garin stepped back into the doorway that led into the donjon, where he had been hiding, as Will came striding up the road toward the preceptory.

Yesterday evening, he had seen Hasan leave and, knowing the troubadour was due to perform that night, had guessed that the Saracen was going to attempt to retrieve the book. Garin had been about to follow when he had been cornered by the Visitor, who had kept him talking about a position that had become available in a preceptory in Cyprus. It was a high position, that of assistant to the Marshal, and the Visitor had wanted to know whether he would be interested in taking it. But all Garin had been able to think about was Rook back at the Seven Stars with Adela, waiting for the book, and Hasan getting farther and farther away. He had hurriedly agreed to take the position and the Visitor, pleased, had said he should leave for the port of Marseilles as soon as possible to board a ship before the winter storms set in. By the time the Visitor had left to draft a letter to the Master of Cyprus, Hasan had gone. Garin had thought of heading straight for the palace, but if he missed Hasan coming back, he might lose any chance of retrieving it and, in the end, he’d decided to stay put and wait.

When a company of knights, led by Nicolas de Navarre, had returned to the preceptory, Garin, who had seen them leave earlier that evening with two Dominican friars, had managed to corner one of them outside the stables, a young knight he shared a dormitory with.

“What happened at the palace, Etienne?” he had asked the knight quietly.

“You’re not supposed to know about that,” Etienne had murmured in reply, handing his reins to a groom.

“It’s hard to keep secrets in this place.”

After glancing over at Nicolas de Navarre, who had been in the yard talking to the Visitor, Etienne had leaned in closer to Garin. “We caught the troubadour and the Dominicans arrested him.”

“Good,” Garin had said, putting on a smile. “I’m glad you got the bastard.”

Etienne had nodded, grimly pleased. “I doubt he will be writing anything about us ever again.”

“What about his book? The one people think was written by the Devil?”

“We didn’t find it. The troubadour tried to feed us some nonsense about a serving girl having taken it from him, but Brother Nicolas couldn’t confirm it.”

“Why not?”

“He said her name was Grace, but the steward said there was no one by that name working in the palace and the troubadour’s description—pretty and gold-haired—didn’t give us much to go on.”

“Brother Etienne.”

Etienne had looked around at Nicolas de Navarre’s stern call. “I have to go.”

The rest of the night had passed sleeplessly for Garin, who had begun to worry that maybe Hasan wasn’t supposed to return with the book after all, that maybe the priest wanted it taken somewhere else entirely.

After speaking to Will, Garin had followed him along the passage, intrigued to see him turn off the road rather than continue toward the city. It had been a little while before he had recognized the woman Will had met beneath the trees. Garin had been surprised by Elwen’s transformation from the flat-chested scrap of a girl whose life he had saved at Honfleur into such a beautiful young woman. He hadn’t been close enough to hear their conversation, but had seen that she was upset and Will agitated. Watching them, Etienne’s description of the serving girl had returned to him and Garin had felt a jolt of excitement. Elwen was a handmaiden at the palace. For most of their conversation, Will’s back was to him and they were certainly far enough away for her to have passed Will something as small as a book without his seeing it. Again, Garin had felt resentment as he speculated that perhaps Will had taken the place his uncle had wanted him to have in Everard’s secret faction.

As Will passed by, face stormy, Garin pressed himself farther into the doorway. He had to get that book. If he didn’t, his life wouldn’t be worth living. Rook and Edward would make sure of it.

Will didn’t knock as he reached Everard’s solar, but pushed open the door and strode inside. In his fist he clutched Everard’s robe. After meeting Elwen he had continued to the wardrobe as planned to collect the mended garment, to give himself a chance to think and to calm a little before confronting the priest. It hadn’t worked. Every step he had taken toward Everard’s solar had reinforced his anger, until it was now a hard, coiled knot in the center of his stomach.

Everard looked up, startled, as the door banged against the wall. Will hadn’t seen him at Matins or Prime. The priest, who had been perched on the window seat staring out through the tapestry, was deathly pale; the only color in his face the dark, bruised-looking circles around his eyes. He looked as if he hadn’t slept all night.

Will tossed the black mantle on the floor at Everard’s feet. “How can a man as self-serving as you even wear this cloth?”

“What is the meaning of this?” croaked Everard. He dropped the tapestry into place, throwing the chamber into gloom.

“You tell me.”

“What are you talking a—?”

“I’ve just seen Elwen,” Will cut across him. “Do you know what she told me?”