Arnau flexed his left hand and moved the arm. It still hurt like hell, but it was definitely on the mend. Slipping it back into the sling, he glanced down at the paper on the table where his account was now complete.
He had begun by writing of the recovery of Calderon from Cordoba, of their discovery of the mountain pass, and then of the battle that had been so nearly lost, but which had finally signalled the beginning of the end for the caliph Al-Nasir. He’d told of the aftermath of the battle, of the sacking of the Almohad camp, how the caliph’s banner had been sent to Rome for the Pope, of how the killing of the fleeing Moors had gone on into the night, hunting down those who continued to hide, so that the enormous force of the caliph was devastated, their corpses piled in huge mounds for burning.
He’d not spoken of the duel. He’d not even mentioned d’Orbessan, who had quit the crusade the next day, accompanying his master, the wounded Baron de Roquefeuil, back to their homeland. His was a face Arnau had not missed in the ensuing days, but the knowledge that the man lived and harboured a canker in his heart over the Templar sat badly still. Of Calderon he had spoken only briefly, telling of the man’s part in recovering the banner of his order. It was rumoured that the man might be raised to mastery of his own commandery when they returned to the north.
He wrote of how Balthesar had survived without injury, of how his own wounds had kept him from the fray, and regretfully of how Ramon was still being treated by surgeons, how he might or might not make it to winter.
He wrote of how the army had turned east once they were beyond the Sierra Morena, had taken three fortresses with little opposition, and had marched on the city of Baeza to find it almost empty, its garrison and population having fled at word of the crusaders’ approach. As a warning to the remaining forces of Al-Andalus, the city had been fired and all but demolished, its grand mosque dismantled stone by stone.
At Ubeda they had found a panicked garrison formed of the town’s own people and those who had fled Baeza together. Arnau wrote sparingly of the two week siege and the town’s capture, of the immense lines of slaves being sent back north to help repopulate the war-torn fields of Castile and Aragon. In none of it had Arnau had a part, of course. It had taken a week before he could properly put weight on his ankle, and it would still be months before his arm could be said to be mended, not to mention the cracked ribs and the cuts and bruises that still blossomed across his body.
Much of the upper Guadalquivir was now under Christian control, though maintaining these lands would be troublesome, and it was said that the kings would seek to offer terms to the caliph to see them through the autumn and winter without the need to risk disaster. They had achieved an incredible victory, certainly, but every man was well aware how their reduced army would have difficulty holding all these gains should the caliph manage to rally his forces from over the water and bring them to bear. A truce was a generally agreed sensible solution.
Still, Alarcos had been avenged and the caliph knew now that his dreams of Iberian conquest had turned to dust. The Christian kings had begun to conquer south instead.
All of this he had put in the letter.
He checked over his information, how carefully he had written the whole thing, the terms in which he had couched it all. This was no time to risk giving away anything of import. Nodding his satisfaction, he signed the bottom, affixed the seal of the Order and dripped wax over the folded letter. Sliding the papers into a wallet, he then slipped that into the case and held it up. The three men, each well-armed and hale, waited patiently.
‘Rourell, yes? Northwest of Tarragona. You deliver this to Brother Guillem and no other.’
The leader of the trio nodded his understanding and took the letter. Arnau watched them mount up. Three men should be a safe enough group to ride north once more through the newly conquered lands to deliver the account. What happened when it arrived, he was not so sure. He was not even sure the account was important anyway.
His hand slipped down to the letter that had reached him this morning with those same three men, penned by Guillem, the sergeant at Rourell whose duties included the office of scribe. If he was any judge, the brother had used the request for an account of the activities of the three men and their squires solely in order to convey one subtle and very important piece of information.
He picked up the letter again and read through it. He’d previously been hoping that the kings would continue to push and perhaps take Cordoba and had been taken aback at talk of a truce, yet now he wished for nothing more. A truce with Al-Nasir would allow them, after all, to return home.
And they needed to return home.
He read the words in the letter from Guillem yet again.
The preceptor wanted an account of his knights’ actions.
The preceptor…
He felt a chill run through him again. What had happened at Rourell while they had all been fighting in the south?