So, on a gleaming day in late August, Hanno, Thomas and I crossed the Seine at the Grand-Pont, turned right on the Ruga Sancti Germani, and left again to head north on the Rue St Martin. We were retracing the steps we had taken almost two weeks earlier when we entered Paris – but I was not reneging on my vow to St Michael to remain in the city until I had discovered the identity of the ‘man you cannot refuse’. We were heading to the Paris Temple, the huge new compound of the Order that was being constructed just outside the northern boundary of the city, next to the Priory of St Martin where we had spent the night on our arrival. I had a broad and bulging money belt around my waist, which held nearly four pounds in silver, and I wished to make a deposit at the Temple, so that the money would be secure from thieves – footpads like the men who had so recently attacked me. At least, that was what I would be telling the Knights of the Order when we presented ourselves at the gates and demanded entry.
In truth, we were on a scouting mission: while I had been idle during the past few thundery days thinking about the mystery, a single word kept popping into my head. The word was: ‘Templar’. The one thing that all the knights who had attacked me had in common, both in Paris and at Fréteval, was that they were bearded. Now, of course, the Templars were not the only hirsute knights in Christendom, but most of the members of the Order of the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Solomon favour beards. I believe it may even be one of the many vows they take when joining the Order.
And there were other signs, too. The cross was a well-known Templar symbol, although theirs was red not blue, and the black border on a white field echoed the famous black-and-white flag under which the Templars fought. The knights of the blue cross, I reasoned, might well be Templars of some kind, or have some link with them: and by going to the Paris Temple and making a deposit of money into their safekeeping, I would have a perfect excuse to inspect the inside of their stronghold and perhaps learn something about my enemies.
As we rode up the crowded Rue St Martin, I saw that Hanno kept glancing behind us. After a while, he put out a hand and the three of us reined in and stopped, allowing the heavy traffic to push past us on both sides.
‘What is it?’ I asked my Bavarian friend, who was twisted in his saddle and scanning the street behind with narrowed eyes.
‘I do not know,’ he said. ‘Perhaps it is nothing, but I have a feeling in my backbone that someone is following us, watching us.’
I looked behind me and saw shopkeepers, tradesmen and workers striding up and down the street, going about their lawful business, a monk or two, a knot of black-robed students, laughing together and drinking wine from a large earthenware jug, a pair of glum men-at-arms standing outside a church. A very dirty man was tending a herd of pigs, who were foraging in the remaining muck in the centre of the thoroughfare that had not been swept away by the storms. A lone mounted man, evidently a rich townsman by the quality of his clothes and horse, was coming closer: but he showed no interest in us and when I looked into his face I realized I had never seen him before. I had never seen any of them before, as far as I could recall.
‘There is nobody following us,’ I said to Hanno, releasing the hilt of Fidelity.
‘I cannot see him,’ my friend replied, scowling, ‘but I feel him in my marrow.’
Jumpy, I thought, he’s jumpy, that’s all – and perhaps he feels a little guilty because he was with his butter-sweet ale-wife when I was attacked last week. Nothing to worry about, Alan, just fix your mind on the task at hand.
We were admitted to the enormous Templar compound, and once again my ears were assaulted by the ringing of chisels on stone and my nostrils clogged with fine white dust. The knights had recently completed a very strong, three-storey stone tower as the core of their defences, and a big round church, which reminded me painfully of the Temple Church in London, where Robin had been tried for heresy by this same Order the year before. And they had also recently finished building the encircling walls of their stronghold, but the huge compound, perhaps six acres in size, still resembled a mason’s yard. The Knights were constructing a grand palace for the Master of France in the south of the compound, next to the great tower, and a hospital further to the north, and a dozen buildings of wood and stone – conventual houses, cloisters, farm buildings, stables, chapels – were slowly rising into the sky. But while the Paris Temple might have been unfinished, it still represented a formidable fortification; perhaps as strong as any castle in France. And the Brother Sergeant who manned the powerful gatehouse admitted me through a portal guarded by two round towers, a portcullis, and an iron-studded oak gate.