The Seal(36)

‘Eh Gideon, you have family?’ said the Catalan, looking askance at Etienne with mischief in his eye.

Gideon did not look upwards but continued working the fire.

‘Eh Gideon!’ he called out again. ‘You are of an old family?’ He winked an eye at Etienne. ‘An old family . . . of thieves!’ The Catalan blurted this out and immediately fell about himself in merriment.

No sooner had he said it than the Norman was upon him. Delgado threw off his sheepskin cloak and, being slight and nimble, was able to outrun Gideon to the other side of the fire, but Gideon caught him up and stood before him with a face twisted in anger. Delgado’s own was round and merry and he was bending with laughter, jumping from side to side as his companion took swipes with his knife. With both feet splayed out, and joints as flexible as if they were sprung, Delgado dodged a swipe to his middle and came out on the other side of the Norman. Gideon turned his large body around and lunged. Delgado, overcome by his high spirits, moved barely in time to preserve his neck and erupted in laughter as the knife came inches from his stomach.

‘Oh!’ said he, unable to express any other sentiment than that which seemed to spill from him in waves of guffaws. ‘Oh!’ he said again.

‘I am no thief !’ shouted Gideon into the dim day as if he were an animal run through with a blade and in the deepest pain. He gave a growl and one last leap. The Catalan moved to escape the blade and his legs came out from under him in the snow turned mud and he almost fell into the fire. There was the smell of burning hair and Delgado said between gasps, ‘A murderer then?’

‘Of the highest order!’ Gideon put away his weapon. ‘You are lucky that my knife is not in the mood for blood today!’

Delgado called out between small puffs of laughter. ‘I am lucky, for you are an animal, my Gideon!’

The man observed this and a sense of pride stole into his face. ‘And you are the son of a sow!’ he told him, now deprived of his anger. ‘Your mother was a dirty sow!’

‘It is true!’ Delgado was standing now, looking for wounds. ‘My mother was a fat whore from Barcelona . . . but I am no thief !’

‘You see!’ Gideon sighed, raising his arms to Etienne and making a look of his face that, to his mind, summed it up.

Satisfied that he was in one piece, Delgado put on his cloak and, taking his instrument began to play again as if he had but paused a moment for breath.

Gideon returned to his position by the fire, gentling it with a stick. Then as an afterthought: ‘That knife I took from a Turk who had no ball sacs! There is good magic in it.’

The other man grew serious. ‘There is good magic in my flute . . . it makes Norman whores look like angels!’

Gideon raised his brows and nodded. ‘That is good magic.’

Etienne frowned, thinking that he would never get used to these strange tempers and unrestrained words. But there was silence and this caused Delgado to grow reflective at his instrument. A moment later he paused to ask Etienne another question, ‘So, you are a priest, a knight and a monk?’

Etienne sighed. ‘I am priest, knight and monk.’

‘Oyee!’ Delgado said, flipping the instrument up in the air and letting it fall almost to the ground before catching it with a deft hand. ‘Did you hear that, my Gideon?’

The Norman turned his face, peaceful now, and flicked his head and therefore the bands of hair fastened by ropes, beads and bones, as if to say, ‘What?’

‘These Templars are so rich they can afford to be three things!’

‘I have heard they are rich,’ he said.

Etienne turned to the Catalan and spoke clearly and distinctly, keeping his eye upon the other man until he was finished. ‘The rule states that a brother may not keep money for himself. Any brother found with unlawful money on his person when he dies is denied a Christian burial.’ And to make sure he had been understood, Etienne raised both brows and when the man seemed about to speak he narrowed his eyes in a challenge to further comment.

The Catalan smiled and played.

Etienne wondered at how anything at all could amuse these people.

Gideon bent his head backwards then, and whistled. ‘It is a serious rule, lord!’

‘It is even-handed,’ Etienne told him.

Delgado next to him frowned and smiled at the same time. ‘It is strange . . . this rule would not be suitable to Amulgavars . . . your Order is wealthy but you own no money?’ He shook his head. ‘It is strange.’

‘How do you manage without money?’ Gideon said, interested now.

Etienne was more and more irritated at the need for explanation of things best kept silent. ‘The Order provides us with everything we need, with horses and harness and clothes.’