The light threw the room into chaos. Everywhere parchments and rat dung, and before Iterius the figure of another man.
‘Who is here?’ Iterius squinted. He sensed the presence of an animal.
‘Your servant.’ The man stood behind the candle with his face wrapped in cloth, as if he were expecting a sandstorm. The flickering candle, therefore, lit only the eyes affected by tics that closed the right one now and again.
Where had he seen those eyes before? It seemed this night all things were familiar. This made him fall suspicious and once again ideas of treachery passed over his mind. But Iterius reminded himself that whoever it was behind that cloth did not know him to be working alone, but believed instead that he had come on the King’s business and would not seek to see himself drawn and quartered.
‘Well, well,’ Iterius said, rubbing his hands of the matter, ‘are you ready to perform a duty?’
‘I am ready to perform it for payment,’ said the voice.
‘Are you prepared to have a new master?’ Iterius peered in the darkness, wishing at least for a glimpse of that face. ‘Or do you still call on the Beauseant?’
The voice was quiet but in it Iterius discerned something violent. ‘I am for hire to him who pays best. Gold is my master.’
‘That is well for you, since those who think differently now suffer the boot, the rack and other tortures.’
‘You have the gold?’ The man put the candle down on a table.
‘Half now and half on your return with the item,’ Iterius said, giving him a bag.
The man removed a coin. It cast fragments of light over the darkness. Satisfied, he threw it back in and drew the string. Those eyes moved over Iterius in a stare . . . those eyes . . .
‘The King,’ Iterius began disconcerted, ‘will also keep the inquisitors from you indefinitely . . . if you find what he seeks.’
‘Why does the King stoop to seeking Templar help?’
‘A Templar must know another, and therefore how to track him down.’
‘Who is this man?’
‘His name is Etienne de Congost. He is a deserter to your Order.’
There was silence. ‘And what does he possess that is so sorely needed by the King?’
‘That is not your concern – as you have said, you are for hire.’
The voice was all restrained hostility. ‘I shall need to know what it is if I am to find it!’
There was that familiar sense in the voice and in the eye. ‘That is what I pay you to find out and to retrieve.’
‘You don’t know what it is, then?’
‘Something important, you have the means to coax it from the man . . .’ Iterius peered more deeply at that face.
‘Where do I find him, this Etienne de Congost?’
‘He is on an errand to a far-off land.’
‘How do you know where he is?’
The Egyptian smiled. ‘I have a knowing way.’
‘You perform sorcery?’ the man spat at him.
‘Come now, is that not what your Order and your Grand Master have been accused of? I suppose that makes us . . . brothers twice?’
The man moved swiftly over the parchments on the floor to take Iterius by the neck with one strong hand. Looking into the Alexandrian’s eye he said to him, ‘I do not wish to hear about the Order, nor concerning its ill-fated master, all of it has long been from my mind. Nor do I wish to call you my brother!’
The Alexandrian struggled and coughed until the man loosened his hold. ‘No . . . of course not,’ he said out of breath, ‘you want only the money and that is admirable. A man who knows what he wants . . .’
The man tightened his grip. ‘Hush!’ he said, and at the point of asphyxiation let go his hand so that Iterius swayed a moment and dropped to his knees, coughing and vomiting. From the dark there came a dog or a wolf, he did not know which, to lick up the mess upon the parchments.
Iterius, in his bent state, stared at it, from eye to eye. The creature growled and Iterius stood, nodding to himself. Yes, he had sensed an animal. After a moment he wiped his mouth and, rubbing his neck, tried to bring clarity to his head.
‘If you will be so kind as to tell me where I can find Etienne de Congost,’ the man said, ‘ I will go.’
Iterius leaned into him, attempting to understand the correspondence that seemed to his mind disordered and confused. ‘He travels to Lockenhaus, a village in Hungary near the border of Austria. He is not so easy to catch. I have sent some men to find him before and they have not returned. You must not fail.’
‘I am not a man accustomed to failure,’ the man said, and, nudging the Alexandrian with a finger, caused him to lose his footing and fall into his vomit again, ‘and I shall not tolerate it in others . . . Have my money ready for me when it is finished or I shall cut off your hands, hack out your tongue, and feed them to my wolf.’ He took the candle and at that moment, as it shone into those eyes, Iterius saw something and he gasped.