‘A man.’
‘I thought it was the Devil.’ Etienne shook his head and looked at the face in the dark.
Then he heard Jourdain’s voice. ‘Etienne?’
‘It is I. You are alive!’
‘I am a little abused,’ Jourdain said. ‘You are worse. Come . . .’ He swung a deer-hide cloak over Etienne’s shoulders, steadying him. The horses, harnessed with provisions, stood with ears twitching in the freshening breeze. All was silent except for Delgado, who returned with weapons: an axe and Etienne’s sword without its scabbard. It felt good to Etienne to have it back. He took it and heavy now it seemed to him.
‘All of them are dead, lord,’ Delgado told Etienne, rubbing his hands. ‘The women, shall we put them down the well?’ There was a laugh. ‘They may not fit and we shall have to heap one over the other . . . eh, Norman? These women are like those of your country!’ He said this and then his voice turned grave: ‘But they are not as ugly as my sisters.’
The Norman shrugged, unamused. ‘That is why a man must get drunk,’ he said and walked away towards the horses.
Etienne felt perspiration on his brow. ‘What women?’
Jourdain helped him to his horse. ‘We have been here more than a week, Etienne,’ he said, ‘and you have been sorely wounded, but they have tended your wound for they wanted you to live long enough to torture you into telling them something. Tonight they brought women from the village, Gideon made a friend among them, a Norman. He made them believe he would join them in their business, that he had no loyalty to us, and they let him join in their debauchery. He waited for the occasion and took the knife to the Norman’s throat and the keys from his hands and opened our cells and your cage. He has done well. Eh, Gideon! You have done well.’
The mercenary beamed his white teeth at them in the oncoming morning. It was a strange gesture placed over a melancholic landscape.
Etienne gave a sigh and turned to Delgado. ‘Let the women go, they shall not harm us.’
The Catalan nodded once and stepped lightly away.
Etienne then made a gesture of the head towards the donjon. ‘Who are they?’
Jourdain said, ‘Our hunters, Germans, on hire. It seems, Etienne, that . . . well, that our Grand Master lies in the French King’s prison and the Order is arrested . . . They accuse us of heresy!’
‘It has begun then,’ Etienne said with a sigh. ‘And the bodies?’
‘The brothers of this small house.’
Etienne closed his eyes; Michael and the dream lurked behind his lids. He hung his sword on a leather thong and Jourdain helped him mount. His legs were weak and the wound in his side was crawling towards his chest. He held tight to the reins and leant on the neck of the animal. He looked out for a moon but his head not yet cleared went giddy and he looked down until it passed lest he fall off the horse.
‘Has the world turned mad, Etienne? What does it mean?’
Etienne looked across to Jourdain as it began to snow and the wind turned and made the trees sway and slap beyond the walls of the house. In his half-awareness, Etienne heard it as a language he did not understand. Perhaps it told of his death, that wind? Perhaps he and the Order were one in the veins and the heart, and the death of one meant the death of the other? He felt for his wounded side, bending before the pain of it and holding tight to the reins. ‘This can only mean one thing, my Jourdain, it means it is the end of us.’
At that moment Delgado returned with a group of seven or more women tied at the wrists. He told them, ‘Go!’ and shooed them like chickens. They scampered in silence out of the gate and into the dawn.
‘We too had better hurry a little,’ Etienne said, ‘soon it is light.’
They galloped knee to knee out of the empty house of the Order and headed for the bodies that lay beneath a shroud of snow.
They buried the carcasses of their dead brothers in the hard ground as the sun rose over the trees. Etienne said a meagre prayer over their graves. He prayed for himself also, that St Michael might keep him from dying as long as it took to find the resting place of his Order’s mystery, and if it should please his Lord, he should then like to close his eyes and offer his soul to the soul of the world and be done with it once and for all.
29
FALSE FRIENDS
Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.
Matthew 7:15
Marcus placed one foot beyond the other, clad in wet and wind, a mind half waning, half waxing, showing a face that was storm-eyed and peering through the driving snow. It was night. He had set free the horse to find itself another master but the creature would not leave him. It stood some way off, watching him. He told it that soon he must die with his cheek to the snow among the disordered world of elements that whirled and sprang to life about him. But still it did not move.