Arnau took a deep breath and tried not to be irritated by Tristán’s constant low-grade grumbles. Sometime after the noon stop, he had finally snapped at the man’s never-ending torrent of grunts and complaints and had most uncharacteristically wagged an angry finger at the squire and told him to shut up. All that had really done was to decrease the volume, while the grumbling went on, covering everything from lack of planning to soreness at being so long in the saddle, to the quality of the provisions, to the fact that his knight planned to dump him at Toledo.
Arnau had let him get away with the moaning in the end, largely because he knew that last was at the root of it. That Tristán was more than a little put out that the plan was to leave him with the crusaders in Toledo while Arnau would go on to perilous adventure in enemy lands. He couldn’t really blame Tristán, in fairness. He would be annoyed in the same situation, after all. Still, jealousy was sin, and needed to be overcome.
‘James three,’ he said, musing aloud.
‘What?’ grumbled the squire. Arnau turned to him.
‘James, three sixteen,’ he said a little louder. ‘Where there is jealousy and strife, there is unsteadfastness and all vile work.’
‘Ire hath no mercy, and strong vengeance breaking out hath no mercy; and who may suffer the fierceness of a jealous spirit?’ Tristán grunted in reply. ‘Proverbs twenty-seven.’
Gritting his teeth, Arnau ignored the man and looked up ahead. On the far side of the river a heavy-walled fortress sat on a golden crag in the late afternoon sun, towering over the village of Miravet that nestled beside the water. The banner of the Temple snapped in the breeze over the castle’s battlements. Several brothers awaited the column at the castle, the next calling point after Rourell, and it would be the natural place for Arnau and Tristán to spend the night, which was fast drawing in, but he had settled instead on finding a secular hostelry despite that being frowned upon when a house of the Temple was available. He felt that the questions that might arise as to why he was travelling ahead of the Order’s contingent might be uncomfortable. And accommodation was just another thing Tristán had been chuntering about.
The road passed the Templar castle of Miravet and hugged the river’s south bank. Despite the lateness of the day, the road appeared to be busy. Ahead, some distance away, a large group of riders wound their way west, armour glinting in the setting sun, labelling them knights, very likely heading to the muster at Toledo. Arnau had kept his pace deliberately slow, trying not to catch up with them for the same reason he chose not to stay at Miravet: potentially uncomfortable questions. Unfortunately, despite deliberately slowing, they seemed to be catching up with the slow-moving column anyway.
As did the lone traveller between the crusaders and the Templars on the road, a single cloaked figure on a small riding horse with a pack pony trailing along behind. Now that they were catching up with both the column of knights and the rider in between, Arnau frowned, squinting at the figure. He waved a hand over at Tristán.
‘Isn’t that our friend the Moor?’
The squire peered into the sunlight ahead, shading his eyes with a hand.
‘Could be, Brother. Same colour cloak, and they look like the horses he had at Rourell. Why would he be heading for Toledo?’
‘Not necessarily Toledo. I suspect he is crossing the mountains and then turning south for Morella and his own lands. He is probably avoiding the coastal area, since the constant skirmishes with the Almohads of Valencia make it dangerous for a lone traveller. More dangerous than the mountain roads, anyway.’
He was answered with a grunt. The pair rode on, their spare horses walking along placidly behind. Gradually the three groups on the road closed up, the knights of the column ahead moving with frustrating slowness. Arnau could imagine Amal on the road between them sweating at being caught between two groups of Christian knights, for he couldn’t know that the two Templars behind him were the ones he had met in Rourell.
‘How far do we have to go yet?’ grumbled Tristán.
Arnau sighed. ‘The next inn we pass, if that lot do not stop, then we will. If they do stop, we’ll keep on to the next village and overnight there.’
The squire subsided into inaudible muttering and Arnau kept his gaze on the road ahead. They were getting very close to the other travellers now, and he could see colours and banners among the knights. No banners he immediately recognised. They were not members of any military order, but then knights from all over Aragon and Catalunya as well as beyond the peninsula were making for Toledo.
Amal suddenly seemed to have made a decision. Faced with being caught between unknown Christian knights and two brothers of the Temple, he suddenly kicked his horse into a gallop, pulling off the road to the south and riding at a slightly faster pace across the dusty ground, skirting around the edge of the crusaders ahead.
Arnau watched him and realised that Tristán had fallen silent for the first time in hours as the squire also watched the Moor attempt to get ahead of them all to perceived safety. Amal drew level with the column of knights and Arnau could see him keeping his pace at a deliberate level, fast enough to pass them by, but not so fast as to look too suspicious.
Arnau winced as one of the knights in the column called out, still too distant for the Templar to make out what he said. The lone rider made no reply, but his horse picked up the pace a little. Arnau shook his head. This had all the makings of a problem.
Voices were calling out at the rider now, and some of them sounded angry. They were speaking the Frankish tongue, and Arnau silently cursed them. Amal could have at least understood them and perhaps even bluffed a reply in Castilian or Aragonese, but he would have no command of such a foreign tongue, unlike Arnau, who had been brought up at court speaking the language.
‘Be Thou, O Lord, his protection, who art his redemption; direct his mind by Thy gracious presence, and watch over his path with guiding love,’ Arnau prayed as he watched Amal, and then winced in dismay as he saw the disaster begin to unfold. With the increased pace, the wind caught the hood of Amal’s cloak like a sail and it whipped back from his head, revealing his clearly Moorish colouring for all to see. Shouts of consternation and fury suddenly arose from the column, which exploded into activity.
‘God’s bones,’ Arnau cursed, ‘we need to help him.’
‘Why?’
He turned to Tristán with a frown. ‘Because he is an innocent man, and that lot have blood in mind.’
The squire shook his head. ‘He is the enemy, Brother Arnau. A Moor. We are bound for a crusade against him and all his kind.’
Arnau threw him an angry glance. If twelve years in the order and more than thirty summers on the Earth had taught him one thing, it was that good men could be notionally enemies, while vipers could nestle inside the garb of brothers. ‘We are the Order of the Temple, Tristán. We were founded to protect the innocent from the malicious, no matter who they are.’
‘If you think a Moor who only risked his life coming to us for the acquisition of gold is innocent, then I question your judgement as a poor knight of Christ, Brother,’ grunted Tristán. ‘How hard it is for men that trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God. It is lighter for a camel to pass through a needle’s eye…’
‘If you’re done excusing cruelty by way of faith, follow me,’ snapped Arnau and kicked his mount into a trot and then a canter, still leading his spare horse on a long rein. He knew that the squire was at least following from the sound of the hooves pounding along behind him, and aimed for Amal.
Suddenly the Moor’s horse reared, the lone rider clinging on desperately as the animal shrieked in pain, and then the beast fell, crashing to the dust. Arnau saw one of the knights in the column shoulder a light crossbow, making a gleeful comment to the man beside him.
Even as Arnau raced towards the fallen Moor, three knights peeled off from the group and bore down on Amal, who was trapped and struggling to pull himself out from under the writhing horse. He was almost certainly done for already. Arnau knew the danger of staying mounted on a falling horse. The weight could easily crush a man’s limbs. Amal’s leg would be shattered beneath the screaming beast.
He began to slow as he approached, holding up a hand to have Tristán slow along with him. Racing to help a beleaguered man was one thing, racing to save a mortally injured man was another. Even as he closed on the gruesome scene, he saw the three knights surround the fallen horse, leaning down from the saddle, swords and maces rising and falling, putting an end to both horse and man.
Arnau felt his gorge rise at the sight of Amal. His head had been stove in with a mace, and all that remained was an unrecognisable gory mess, accompanied by half a dozen wide and deep sword wounds across his form. With God’s mercy, Arnau hoped the first blow to his head had killed him before all this happened.
‘Filthy heathen,’ sneered one of the attackers in Frankish as he sat straight in his saddle and spat on Amal’s smashed form.
‘Kill the other beast,’ another said, pointing at Amal’s terrified pack pony with his sword.
‘No,’ said the third. ‘Too valuable. Take the pony and search the pack.’
‘I don’t want a benighted heathen beast near me, let alone any of his godless things. Just kill it.’
A new voice called out, and as Arnau came to a halt nearby he saw another knight emerge from the column, waving to the three attackers.
‘If you’ve had your fun, get back into line. We must be closer to enemy lands than we had guessed, and I do not wish for any major incidents while we are guests in a foreign kingdom.’
Arnau peered at the man. The colours on his horse’s caparison were familiar. He’d seen them from time to time at Santa Coloma, he thought. Some Frankish lord, from somewhere like Béziers perhaps? A man of authority and rank, clearly.
The three men around Amal’s corpse looked up at their master and turned their steeds, heading back towards the column. One of them took just a moment to spit on the body and then swing his blade, hacking into the pack pony’s neck before rejoining his column. The animal cried out and tried to bolt, but it was almost dead on its feet, and before it could move, its legs gave way beneath it and it collapsed to the ground, thrashing spastically.
The senior Frankish lord’s face showed displeasure but no regret as his three men came alongside the rest. Arnau wasn’t sure how he felt about that. The blood-spattered warriors sat close to the column, which had come to a halt, as the lord turned now, registering the presence of the two Templars for the first time.
‘Brothers,’ he acknowledged with a bow of the head.
Arnau opened his mouth to reply, but Tristán cut in.
‘Shall I search Amal’s bags?’ he asked.
Arnau winced. Idiot. Why could he not just conveniently keep his mouth shut for once?
‘You know that thing?’ snapped one of the three killers, turning an angry, disbelieving look on the Templars. Arnau sighed. Damn Tristán, but why did he have to blurt that out. Arnau turned to the knight.
‘In passing. He delivered a message to our house yesterday from the Order of Calatrava.’
‘He was a Christian?’ hissed one of the other killers, his voice suddenly near panic.
‘No,’ Arnau said in a defeated voice. He’d have liked to have passed all this by, and he certainly didn’t want to have to explain everything to this bunch of foreign crusaders, but to deliberately lie to them would be to fly in the face of the Rule. ‘He was Almohad, you had it right.’
‘See,’ said the third killer with a look of relief. ‘That’s why the Templars were coming. To help us.’
‘I don’t think so,’ spat the first of them, fixing Arnau with a wicked, suspicious look. ‘I think they were coming to help their friend.’ He had a mane of white-blond hair and a shaggy beard, was wearing a yellow surcoat with a red lion rampant clutching a ewer. Arnau knew trouble when he saw it, and this man was trouble – a Frankish knight in the very same mould as those who had sacked Constantinople. Without having intended to, Arnau suddenly found himself hating the man, loading him with culpability for everything that had happened in that great eastern city. Heavens, but the man had probably been there. Arnau might even have faced him on those ancient walls.
‘Mind your tongue, d’Orbessan,’ the senior lord barked, pointing angrily at the blood-spattered knight. ‘These are Brothers of the Temple, not backstreet harlots, and you will adopt appropriate manners with them, lest I decide that your fealty is not worth the effort of putting up with your ways.’
The blond knight flashed Arnau a dark look, then turned and bowed his head to the Frankish nobleman, who glared at his man. ‘Get back to your places, the three of you.’ Then he turned to Arnau. ‘My apologies, good Brothers. His manners are bestial, but his sword arm is strong and will be of sufficient value on the field of battle to make up for the rest. If this man was in your employ somehow, I would be pleased to make reparations.’
Arnau shook his head. He tried not to be offended by all of this. In truth, he owed Amal nothing, though the offhand manner of his murder rankled regardless. Still, this nobleman was being polite and deferential, even had he been the man who ordered the killing.
‘No, that is not necessary, my lord,’ he said calmly. ‘The man was no warrior, but the time for appeasement and tolerance is past, I fear. With the Papal call, such men have become our enemy as much as any slavering Berber horseman.’
‘Quite so, Brother,’ the nobleman agreed, and Arnau tried to ignore the accusatory glare he could feel burning into his back from Tristán, who had held that very stance against him moments earlier. ‘Whence are you bound? Toledo, I presume?’
Arnau chewed his lip. Yes, he was, but not yet as part of the Templar contingent and not to gather at the muster for the main event. He had a feeling that the information that he was bound for Almohad lands in search of a captured knight might not be greeted by some of this group with wild enthusiasm. Circumspect and non-committal was the way to play it, he decided.
‘We are,’ he replied, willing Tristán to keep his mouth shut for once.
‘Toledo and no further,’ added the squire as if on cue, a touch of bitterness in his tone.
Arnau ground his teeth and turned, shooting a warning glance at Tristán. ‘Not until the main contingent of the Order arrives,’ he said. Not a lie. A sin of omission, perhaps, but at least not a lie. Lord, but he had been around Ramon too long to make a good monk.
‘Then you should travel with us,’ the nobleman said inevitably, and Arnau swallowed his argument. It would sound extremely suspicious if he were to refuse such an offer. He pasted a smile on his face.
‘That would be most welcome. Thank you, my lord.’
‘I am Count Raymond, Vicomte de Creyssel, Baron de Roquefeuil, and these are the knights of my household. We make for Toledo at the Pope’s insistence to answer the call of the kings of Aragon and Castile. I am most pleased to make your acquaintance, Brother…’
‘Arnau de Vallbona,’ came the reply. ‘And my squire, Brother Tristán.’
‘Vallbona. I know the name from somewhere,’ frowned the count.
‘I suspect we met many years ago at Santa Coloma.’
A smile washed across the baron’s face. ‘You are one of Berenguer’s men, of course!’ He shrugged and gestured at the white habit with its red cross. ‘Were one of his men.’ Arnau bowed his head, and the baron folded his arms. ‘Then you are most welcome in our company. I do hope your vows do not entirely foreswear comfort, for my seneschal and his men rode ahead to have all made ready for us at the next town, while my baggage train follows on. Tonight we shall eat rich game and drink wine and talk of the campaign to come. I would be grateful for any information you can give me on what we are to face, for the Moor is something of an unknown menace to my knights and I.’
Arnau chewed his lip again. What he really wanted was to avoid this lot entirely. Perhaps at least he could do something to shatter the image of the Moor en masse as enemies of God. To say all Moors were alike was as farcical as saying the same of all Christians, after all. There were Moors still who did not share the fanaticism of the Almohad caliphate, and it preyed on Arnau’s conscience that men like Amal would die in droves in the coming days for their connection to the conquering Almohad zealots.
As the nobleman ordered the column on once more, Arnau and Tristán fell in alongside them. Fortunately, one of the other knights engaged Count Raymond in deep conversation and the Templars were left to their own devices. Arnau made sure they rode on the far side of the group from d’Orbessan and his fellow blood-spattered killers, and the other knights only occasionally politely engaged them in conversation, mostly leaving them to ride in peace. At least Tristán seemed to have stopped complaining, though now he glared repeatedly at his commander instead.
The sun was close to disappearing behind the hills when they reached a small village by the name of Benifallet, where the local inn had been cleared of other guests and given over entirely to the passing crusaders. Arnau tried not to feel guilty for such preferential treatment. It rather went against the grain of his monastic vows, and he was grateful when it became clear that there was not enough room at the inn for the entire group and that three locals had offered to open their houses to the travellers for a generous recompense. Arnau and Tristán accepted accommodation with a merchant in the village, sharing the house with two other knights who seemed to keep themselves to themselves.
As they were shown to a small, basic room, he heaved a sigh of relief, thanked their host, blessed him and closed the door.
‘Go on,’ he said finally and wearily to Tristán.
The squire spun around. ‘That was hypocritical, Brother. To take so against me and then steal my own stance a moment later.’
‘I know. I apologise. I was trying to smooth over a potentially volatile situation. It was not my intent to insult you or be so hypocritical.’
The fire in Tristán somewhat quenched by the ready contrition, he grunted. ‘And I accede that perhaps Amal’s death was unnecessary.’
Arnau nodded. ‘I would have liked to see him safe. You are young, Tristán, and ardent in your beliefs, and that is to be applauded, certainly. But I have seen much change in the past few decades, and the world is a more complex place than simply good Christians and bad Moors. Amal was no fanatic, for all his adherence to their heathen ways. In my youth, the more learned and peaceful Moors were valued, even heretical as they are. The crusade will change all of that, of course. And perhaps that is inevitable. Perhaps it is even a good thing in the end, for Iberia cannot be truly part of Christendom while the Moor holds any sway. Still, I fear I belong to an older, more tolerant time.’
The squire shrugged. ‘They can renounce their false god and kiss the Christ on his cross and be welcome in the new world, Brother.’
Arnau nodded sadly. ‘Certainly these Franks can only see enemies of God in the Moor. We must be on our guard among them. Especially d’Orbessan and his friends.’
‘He is an arsehole, isn’t he.’
Arnau turned a shocked expression on Tristán, but his admonition turned to a forgiving smile at the sly grin on the squire’s face. ‘Watch that language, Brother.’
‘My apologies. But he is.’
Arnau chuckled. ‘We’d best just leave everything here and disarm. It will be time for vespers shortly.’ The two men removed their sword belts and chain shirts, unbuckling their spurs and neatly arranging everything on a cupboard. A quick splash of tepid water from a bowl to remove the dust of the day’s journey, and the two men, now dressed only in their habits, the white of the full brother and the black of the sergeant, left their room and descended the stairs, emerging out into the purple light of the evening. Almost on cue the single bell of the village church began to clong, and the two Brothers fell in with the various Franks and locals as they made their way to the service.
Arnau could see the village priest’s nervousness in his facial twitches as he watched the massively extended congregation pour into his small plain chapel. Foreign lords and Templars were not his standard fare, and the look he threw towards Arnau suggested he half expected the two Brothers to step in and take over his service. Arnau gave the poor priest an encouraging nod and then he and Tristán found a small space at the periphery where they took up a role as merely part of his flock.
The service was simple and understated, yet all the more powerful for it, to Arnau’s mind. There was something unusually divine about stripping away the golden trappings of the great churches and the martial accoutrements of the military orders and listening to the heartfelt piety of a poor village priest. Clearly, from the serene and pious look on his face, Count Raymond was of a similar opinion. Despite Arnau’s recent prejudice against the Franks and the unpleasant situation in which he had met this particular group, Arnau found himself warming to the man. Raymond seemed genuine. The same could not necessarily be said for his men, of course.
Arnau’s gaze slipped around the room as his head rose from prayer, but in the press, he could not see the blond mane of d’Orbessan. Perhaps that was a blessing. It would be quite a journey to Toledo, and it was going to be increasingly difficult staying away from the man, yet deep in his soul, Arnau knew that there was no chance that they were ever going to be comfortable with one another, so there was little point in attempting to reconcile with him. They would just have to muddle through as far as Toledo and from there he could lose these Franks and very likely never see them again. His attention slipped back to the priest, who was moving to close his service with a prayer and dismissal. The man surveyed his congregation and raised his face to Heaven as he spoke.
‘Almighty God and Heavenly Father, who of Thine infinite love and goodness towards us, hast given to us Thy only and most dearly beloved Son, Jesus Christ… we humbly beseech Thee to grant unto all here who call upon Thy holy name, that we may daily increase and go forwards in the knowledge and faith of Thee and Thy Son by the Holy Spirit, so that Thy holy name may be for ever glorified, and Thy blessed Kingdom enlarged; through Thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the same Holy Spirit, world without end. Amen.’
Arnau nodded his approval and smiled as he felt the piety wash out from the crowd in the church. Clever fellow to adapt an old form and make it sound as though he was personally advocating the reconquest of Iberia on behalf of the Lord. He had appealed to the crowd before him on their own personal level, and had he a mind to do so, this simple village priest might have had his fill of bounty from the lords there assembled. He was a good man, though, and simply sought to enhance the sanctity and strength of their endeavour.
‘Go forth in peace,’ the priest announced, making the sign of the cross over the room’s occupants.
The service ended and the congregation began to depart, funnelling through the narrow door and out into the warm evening air, and Arnau and Tristán waited for the rest to leave first, then brought up the rear after they had thanked the relieved priest for a wonderful service and complimented him on his work and his church.
Most of the crowd had already made their way into the inn, and only a few locals and one or two Franks milled about in the village. Arnau’s attention was drawn by a low rumbling noise, and he watched with interest as the count’s baggage train arrived, more than an hour behind their master. The horses were detached from their traces and led off to the inn’s stable, the carts parked up beneath a sloping roof at the rear of the building and the important gear that would be required for the evening ported into the place for their master. Two dozen servants busied themselves about the work, and Arnau’s spirits sank as the figures of d’Orbessan and one of his cronies emerged from the inn’s back door.
The two had not noticed the Templars nearby as they laughed over some private joke. The unnamed knight crossed to one of the wagons where a buxom girl was helping to unload a bundle of linens. Sneaking up behind her with a grin on his face, he slipped a hand beneath her dress. The girl shrieked in shock, and the man fell backwards laughing and staggering away.
Messire d’Orbessan moved across to them and said something quietly to the girl, who gave him a worried look and then nodded with apparent gratitude before scurrying off with her linens. The knight crossed to his friend and slapped him around the side of the head. ‘You have less class than a piggery, you know that, Jean?’
The man objected to the slap, but then slid into a sheepish grin. ‘Fun, though.’
Arnau was just about to slip away when d’Orbessan turned to him. Arnau flinched. He’d thought the man was unaware of his presence. ‘Have you finished ogling while Jean here gropes harlots? Vow of chastity getting to you, is it? Perhaps you can find one of your Moorish catamite friends to ease your discomfort, eh?’
He spat on the floor and then he and his friend stomped off into the inn, laughing.
‘Sometime, when he’s least expecting it, I’m going to punch that grin through to the other side of his head,’ Tristán grunted and for once, despite himself, Arnau was minded to agree with his belligerent squire.
This was going to be a long trip.