Warlord(73)

I marched up to one of the vacant tables and by way of greeting wished the two clerks there the peace of God. The clerk on the left replied with a similar blessing and then asked who I was and what was the nature of my business that day. I told them that I was Sir Alan Dale, an English knight of Westbury in Nottinghamshire who had recently been attacked by thieves in the streets of Paris, and that I wished to lodge some monies with the Templars that could be redeemed at the London Temple at some future time.

The clerk on the left nodded and asked if I had any money already lodged here in the Paris Temple, or at any other Templar preceptory, and when I admitted that I did not, he said that it was no matter and then explained the procedure to me and told me that a small charge would be levied for the service. The clerk on the right said nothing but scratched away on a scroll of parchment, presumably recording the size of the deposit and my personal details. I duly handed over three pounds of Tourangeaux silver from my money belt and the clerk weighed the entire silver horde on a set of scales in front of him, bit into several of the coins gently with his incisor teeth and noted the depth of the indentations, and muttered something to his fellow clerk that I did not catch. Finally, he counted the money out into stacks of twenty coins – each stack with the value of one shilling. The clerk then arranged the shilling stacks into three rows, with twelve stacks in each row – which made up a pound. And when he had finished this ordering, he again murmured to his colleague, then looked up at me.

‘These coins were minted by Count Bouchard of Vendôme and I’m sorry to say they are a little debased.’

I looked at him, mystified.

‘They have been debased with lead,’ said the clerk. I was still none the wiser. ‘Some lead has been added to the silver in the smelting so that more coins may be minted from a certain weight of silver bullion.’

‘Are they no good?’ I said, suddenly alarmed.

‘They are not the worst I have seen, nor yet the purest coinage either – do not be perturbed, sir, they still have a certain value, but if you took them to London you would not be able to exchange them for the equivalent weight in sterling silver English coins.’

‘So how much will I get in London if I hand them over to you here and now?’

The clerk conferred with his colleague; again, irritatingly, I could not hear what was said between them.

‘We will give you four sterling silver pennies for every five of your Tourangeaux coins; and there will be our fee of three shillings in addition to that. Do you accept our offer?’



‘So what will I receive in London?’

The clerk did not hesitate this time – he had made the calculation entirely in his head: ‘In London you will receive two pounds, one shilling and sixteen pence.’

I was taken aback, this business was going to cost me nearly a pound. I could well understand how the Templars had amassed such riches. If I accepted their offer, I would have walked into this hall with three pounds and be walking out with a piece of parchment worth only a little over two. But I nodded my head and through gritted teeth agreed to the deal. I was worried that if I refused I would look foolish, unworldly. The Templars had a reputation for scrupulous honesty and I reminded myself that I would be exchanging my lead-tainted Tourangeaux coins for sterling silver, and that the risk of my being robbed on the way home had been eliminated. The risk that I was being robbed right here and now in this airy hall, however, I did not like to think about.

I waited no more than half an hour, pacing the long hall and staring up at the high arched beams that held up the roof, and then the clerk summoned me back to his table and showed me a parchment letter, some of which was written in fine, clear Latin, including my name and the manors I held, and some in a gibberish of Latin letters and numbers all jumbled up so that it made no sense to me at all, but which the clerk assured me would be the key to releasing my silver when I presented the letter to the Templar knights in England. Then he folded the letter, placed it in a water-proof pigskin pouch that he sealed with wax and presented to me with another blessing for a safe journey.

The first person I saw when I walked out of the Counting House, feeling somewhat dazed after what had just transpired and a good deal lighter around the waist, was Sir Aymeric de St Maur, the Templar knight who had threatened me with fiery torture the year before, and the man who tried to have Robin burned at the stake for heresy.

‘Sir Alan,’ he said, ‘I had heard that you were headed for Paris, but what great joy indeed to run into you here.’

And his mouth smiled.





Chapter Fourteen