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  Arnau sighed. ‘You know as well as I, Ramon, that your Arabic accent sounds awful, and that you might look dark enough, but you’ve never spent time among them. Balthesar cannot go, you’re quite right, but neither can you. If someone must go, it is clearly me.’

  The room’s occupants uniformly turned their gazes upon him. Arnau sagged. ‘My Arabic has come on in leaps and bounds with Balthesar’s teaching, and while I might not sound like a native, I might be able to get away with being an escaped slave from Christian lands. My colouring is enough to label me anywhere in the north or middle of the peninsula. I might not know their culture like Balthesar, but I have more than a passing familiarity with it, and am certainly better prepared than Ramon. We cannot leave Calderon there, both for the benefits to Rourell, and for the salvation of his soul. One look at poor Joana would have me saddling my horse even if it were not the right thing to do. It has to be me.’

  The preceptrix nodded slowly. ‘Can you do it?’

  ‘There is one way to find out.’

  ‘Is your squire up to it?’

  Arnau blinked. He’d not even thought about taking Tristán, not that he’d thought about it much at all yet. The young man might be an impediment, given his tendency to wear his heart, and more importantly his mouth, on his sleeve, but a knight should have his squire, and Arnau would feel better facing such a task with company. On the other hand, he mused, he had lost Felipe in Germany, and felt that perhaps taking another squire on such a mission might be pushing the boundaries of good fortune.

  ‘Sayid Amal,’ he said, turning to the Moor and dropping into Arabic, drawing looks of interest from the knights, and surprise from Joana; from the preceptrix, nothing. ‘Would you be willing to act as a guide and an escort on the road to Cordoba?’

  He had worried that his Arabic might not be good enough despite more than two years now of intense instruction from Balthesar, but clearly the messenger understood, for his eyes widened just as he began to shake his head. ‘No. Not me. Too dangerous. You speak well, but you will still be captured, and then I will be skinned for helping the infidel. No, I will not.’

  Arnau chewed his lip for a moment, wondering whether to push, cajole or even bribe or threaten, but the look on the man’s face made it clear that he was beyond simple persuasion, and in truth Arnau could understand. One man alone risked only himself, but with a man of opposing faith on the journey, the danger was increased tenfold. Arnau would almost certainly refuse were he in the same position. He took a deep breath as he turned back to the preceptrix.

  ‘Amal will not risk escorting me through his homeland, and it would not be right to insist. Instead, I will take Tristán with me part of the way. Travelling directly from here to Cordoba would mean that for most of the journey we would be in Almohad lands. If we travel west, however, on the route we plan to use to reach Toledo for the muster, we will remain in Christian lands until we are much closer. There I can leave my squire with the crusaders and take the shortest and most direct route south to Cordoba. It seems likely that the rest of our brethren will be only days behind me, and Tristán can await them in Toledo. With good fortune and the Lord’s favour I can track down Brother Calderon and bring him to Toledo before the army is fully gathered and we can rejoin the Templar camp in time to take part in the great venture, alongside a grateful Calatravan force.’

  ‘It will be extremely dangerous alone,’ Ramon argued, his face folded into a frown of concern.

  ‘It would be more dangerous in the wrong company than alone,’ Arnau retorted. ‘I have a reasonable knowledge of the Moorish people and the land, both Almohad invader and old Moor, can speak their tongue well, and Balthesar can spend this evening filling me in on anything that might be of import. The simple fact is that this can only be done if it is done fast. I need to get there, find Brother Calderon, and flee north straight away. I will work faster alone.’

  He turned to Amal, dropping into Arabic again. ‘Where will I be able to meet your employer?’

  The Moor sucked his teeth like a greedy merchant. ‘There is a caravanserai on the western edge of the city, just inside the Bab al-Chawz. It is not the most… savoury… of places. Calderon is to be found there daily before the Salat al-Duhr.’

  ‘A caravanserai in a city? Is that not a little redundant?’

  ‘It is a favoured place for those unpopular with the lords of Al-Andalus, where they have all they need without being required to move too freely in the city. You are aware of the strictness of the caliphate? Be sure that any who do not conform are watched carefully.’

  Arnau nodded. In the morning, then, before the noon prayer. He would need a description of the man, and the best he could achieve would be a composite of that from both Amal and Joana, for she knew him well, while the Moor had seen him recently. Between them, they should be able to provide an adequate description. He straightened to address the preceptrix.

  ‘If it is your will, Mother Superior, I will take it upon myself to find Brother Calderon and bring him back.’

  The preceptrix nodded her head slowly. ‘I am loath to send you, Brother Vallbona, but I cannot find it in my heart to leave the man languishing in the hands of our enemies, especially at the very time we will stir amongst them the greatest contempt for our faith. Hurry, and return before the crusading army engages the Almohad, lest you find yourself trapped within enemy lands.’

  Arnau took a deep breath. ‘Then I shall spend today preparing, and will depart first thing in the morning. In the meantime, Balthesar can tell me anything that might help, and Amal and Joana can tell me everything they know of Brother Calderon.’

  Ramon nudged Balthesar, nodding at Arnau. ‘I live in hope that one day he will decide not to throw himself into peril with just clean underwear and a stupid grin.’

  3. The Long Road

  5 June 1212, Miravet, Catalunya

  Arnau took a deep breath and tried not to be irritated by Tristán’s constant low-grade grumbles. Sometime after the noon stop, he had finally snapped at the man’s never-ending torrent of grunts and complaints and had most uncharacteristically wagged an angry finger at the squire and told him to shut up. All that had really done was to decrease the volume, while the grumbling went on, covering everything from lack of planning to soreness at being so long in the saddle, to the quality of the provisions, to the fact that his knight planned to dump him at Toledo.

  Arnau had let him get away with the moaning in the end, largely because he knew that last was at the root of it. That Tristán was more than a little put out that the plan was to leave him with the crusaders in Toledo while Arnau would go on to perilous adventure in enemy lands. He couldn’t really blame Tristán, in fairness. He would be annoyed in the same situation, after all. Still, jealousy was sin, and needed to be overcome.

  ‘James three,’ he said, musing aloud.

  ‘What?’ grumbled the squire. Arnau turned to him.

  ‘James, three sixteen,’ he said a little louder. ‘Where there is jealousy and strife, there is unsteadfastness and all vile work.’

  ‘Ire hath no mercy, and strong vengeance breaking out hath no mercy; and who may suffer the fierceness of a jealous spirit?’ Tristán grunted in reply. ‘Proverbs twenty-seven.’

  Gritting his teeth, Arnau ignored the man and looked up ahead. On the far side of the river a heavy-walled fortress sat on a golden crag in the late afternoon sun, towering over the village of Miravet that nestled beside the water. The banner of the Temple snapped in the breeze over the castle’s battlements. Several brothers awaited the column at the castle, the next calling point after Rourell, and it would be the natural place for Arnau and Tristán to spend the night, which was fast drawing in, but he had settled instead on finding a secular hostelry despite that being frowned upon when a house of the Temple was available. He felt that the questions that might arise as to why he was travelling ahead of the Order’s contingent might be uncomfortable. And accommodation was just another thing Tristán had been chuntering abou
t.

  The road passed the Templar castle of Miravet and hugged the river’s south bank. Despite the lateness of the day, the road appeared to be busy. Ahead, some distance away, a large group of riders wound their way west, armour glinting in the setting sun, labelling them knights, very likely heading to the muster at Toledo. Arnau had kept his pace deliberately slow, trying not to catch up with them for the same reason he chose not to stay at Miravet: potentially uncomfortable questions. Unfortunately, despite deliberately slowing, they seemed to be catching up with the slow-moving column anyway.

  As did the lone traveller between the crusaders and the Templars on the road, a single cloaked figure on a small riding horse with a pack pony trailing along behind. Now that they were catching up with both the column of knights and the rider in between, Arnau frowned, squinting at the figure. He waved a hand over at Tristán.

  ‘Isn’t that our friend the Moor?’

  The squire peered into the sunlight ahead, shading his eyes with a hand.

  ‘Could be, Brother. Same colour cloak, and they look like the horses he had at Rourell. Why would he be heading for Toledo?’

  ‘Not necessarily Toledo. I suspect he is crossing the mountains and then turning south for Morella and his own lands. He is probably avoiding the coastal area, since the constant skirmishes with the Almohads of Valencia make it dangerous for a lone traveller. More dangerous than the mountain roads, anyway.’

  He was answered with a grunt. The pair rode on, their spare horses walking along placidly behind. Gradually the three groups on the road closed up, the knights of the column ahead moving with frustrating slowness. Arnau could imagine Amal on the road between them sweating at being caught between two groups of Christian knights, for he couldn’t know that the two Templars behind him were the ones he had met in Rourell.

  ‘How far do we have to go yet?’ grumbled Tristán.

  Arnau sighed. ‘The next inn we pass, if that lot do not stop, then we will. If they do stop, we’ll keep on to the next village and overnight there.’

  The squire subsided into inaudible muttering and Arnau kept his gaze on the road ahead. They were getting very close to the other travellers now, and he could see colours and banners among the knights. No banners he immediately recognised. They were not members of any military order, but then knights from all over Aragon and Catalunya as well as beyond the peninsula were making for Toledo.

  Amal suddenly seemed to have made a decision. Faced with being caught between unknown Christian knights and two brothers of the Temple, he suddenly kicked his horse into a gallop, pulling off the road to the south and riding at a slightly faster pace across the dusty ground, skirting around the edge of the crusaders ahead.

  Arnau watched him and realised that Tristán had fallen silent for the first time in hours as the squire also watched the Moor attempt to get ahead of them all to perceived safety. Amal drew level with the column of knights and Arnau could see him keeping his pace at a deliberate level, fast enough to pass them by, but not so fast as to look too suspicious.

  Arnau winced as one of the knights in the column called out, still too distant for the Templar to make out what he said. The lone rider made no reply, but his horse picked up the pace a little. Arnau shook his head. This had all the makings of a problem.

  Voices were calling out at the rider now, and some of them sounded angry. They were speaking the Frankish tongue, and Arnau silently cursed them. Amal could have at least understood them and perhaps even bluffed a reply in Castilian or Aragonese, but he would have no command of such a foreign tongue, unlike Arnau, who had been brought up at court speaking the language.

  ‘Be Thou, O Lord, his protection, who art his redemption; direct his mind by Thy gracious presence, and watch over his path with guiding love,’ Arnau prayed as he watched Amal, and then winced in dismay as he saw the disaster begin to unfold. With the increased pace, the wind caught the hood of Amal’s cloak like a sail and it whipped back from his head, revealing his clearly Moorish colouring for all to see. Shouts of consternation and fury suddenly arose from the column, which exploded into activity.

  ‘God’s bones,’ Arnau cursed, ‘we need to help him.’

  ‘Why?’

  He turned to Tristán with a frown. ‘Because he is an innocent man, and that lot have blood in mind.’

  The squire shook his head. ‘He is the enemy, Brother Arnau. A Moor. We are bound for a crusade against him and all his kind.’

  Arnau threw him an angry glance. If twelve years in the order and more than thirty summers on the Earth had taught him one thing, it was that good men could be notionally enemies, while vipers could nestle inside the garb of brothers. ‘We are the Order of the Temple, Tristán. We were founded to protect the innocent from the malicious, no matter who they are.’

  ‘If you think a Moor who only risked his life coming to us for the acquisition of gold is innocent, then I question your judgement as a poor knight of Christ, Brother,’ grunted Tristán. ‘How hard it is for men that trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God. It is lighter for a camel to pass through a needle’s eye…’

  ‘If you’re done excusing cruelty by way of faith, follow me,’ snapped Arnau and kicked his mount into a trot and then a canter, still leading his spare horse on a long rein. He knew that the squire was at least following from the sound of the hooves pounding along behind him, and aimed for Amal.

  Suddenly the Moor’s horse reared, the lone rider clinging on desperately as the animal shrieked in pain, and then the beast fell, crashing to the dust. Arnau saw one of the knights in the column shoulder a light crossbow, making a gleeful comment to the man beside him.

  Even as Arnau raced towards the fallen Moor, three knights peeled off from the group and bore down on Amal, who was trapped and struggling to pull himself out from under the writhing horse. He was almost certainly done for already. Arnau knew the danger of staying mounted on a falling horse. The weight could easily crush a man’s limbs. Amal’s leg would be shattered beneath the screaming beast.

  He began to slow as he approached, holding up a hand to have Tristán slow along with him. Racing to help a beleaguered man was one thing, racing to save a mortally injured man was another. Even as he closed on the gruesome scene, he saw the three knights surround the fallen horse, leaning down from the saddle, swords and maces rising and falling, putting an end to both horse and man.

  Arnau felt his gorge rise at the sight of Amal. His head had been stove in with a mace, and all that remained was an unrecognisable gory mess, accompanied by half a dozen wide and deep sword wounds across his form. With God’s mercy, Arnau hoped the first blow to his head had killed him before all this happened.

  ‘Filthy heathen,’ sneered one of the attackers in Frankish as he sat straight in his saddle and spat on Amal’s smashed form.

  ‘Kill the other beast,’ another said, pointing at Amal’s terrified pack pony with his sword.

  ‘No,’ said the third. ‘Too valuable. Take the pony and search the pack.’

  ‘I don’t want a benighted heathen beast near me, let alone any of his godless things. Just kill it.’

  A new voice called out, and as Arnau came to a halt nearby he saw another knight emerge from the column, waving to the three attackers.

  ‘If you’ve had your fun, get back into line. We must be closer to enemy lands than we had guessed, and I do not wish for any major incidents while we are guests in a foreign kingdom.’

  Arnau peered at the man. The colours on his horse’s caparison were familiar. He’d seen them from time to time at Santa Coloma, he thought. Some Frankish lord, from somewhere like Béziers perhaps? A man of authority and rank, clearly.

  The three men around Amal’s corpse looked up at their master and turned their steeds, heading back towards the column. One of them took just a moment to spit on the body and then swing his blade, hacking into the pack pony’s neck before rejoining his column. The animal cried out and tried to bolt, but it was almost dead on its feet, a
nd before it could move, its legs gave way beneath it and it collapsed to the ground, thrashing spastically.

  The senior Frankish lord’s face showed displeasure but no regret as his three men came alongside the rest. Arnau wasn’t sure how he felt about that. The blood-spattered warriors sat close to the column, which had come to a halt, as the lord turned now, registering the presence of the two Templars for the first time.

  ‘Brothers,’ he acknowledged with a bow of the head.

  Arnau opened his mouth to reply, but Tristán cut in.

  ‘Shall I search Amal’s bags?’ he asked.

  Arnau winced. Idiot. Why could he not just conveniently keep his mouth shut for once?

  ‘You know that thing?’ snapped one of the three killers, turning an angry, disbelieving look on the Templars. Arnau sighed. Damn Tristán, but why did he have to blurt that out. Arnau turned to the knight.

  ‘In passing. He delivered a message to our house yesterday from the Order of Calatrava.’

  ‘He was a Christian?’ hissed one of the other killers, his voice suddenly near panic.

  ‘No,’ Arnau said in a defeated voice. He’d have liked to have passed all this by, and he certainly didn’t want to have to explain everything to this bunch of foreign crusaders, but to deliberately lie to them would be to fly in the face of the Rule. ‘He was Almohad, you had it right.’

  ‘See,’ said the third killer with a look of relief. ‘That’s why the Templars were coming. To help us.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ spat the first of them, fixing Arnau with a wicked, suspicious look. ‘I think they were coming to help their friend.’ He had a mane of white-blond hair and a shaggy beard, was wearing a yellow surcoat with a red lion rampant clutching a ewer. Arnau knew trouble when he saw it, and this man was trouble – a Frankish knight in the very same mould as those who had sacked Constantinople. Without having intended to, Arnau suddenly found himself hating the man, loading him with culpability for everything that had happened in that great eastern city. Heavens, but the man had probably been there. Arnau might even have faced him on those ancient walls.