Will squinted at me through red eyes. 'Sweet dreams, brother Patch?' he enquired.
'The pure of heart never dream, as you well know.' I lied. A dream of sorts had returned again and again. Cornish Owen pelted me with gold coins in a stinking tavern room, and I knew that, in a chamber above us, a man in a green cloak admired his knife. I heard my name, a whisper that slid down the staircase in the corner of the room. As I scrabbled at the door, which of course would not open, Owen burbled a mindlessly filthy ditty behind me.
'You, on the other hand, have not put the purity of your own heart to the test lately, Will. Your eyes look as if they need peeling.'
'Strange, my dearest brother, for they were peeled all last night, looking for your dagger-man.' 'I earnestly want to forget that bastard.'
"Well, of course. But as I said, I'm sure I have seen him before. So I sniffed around the palace-' Before I knew it I had grabbed Will's sleeve. 'Please, brother. Let us forget last night.'
We both looked down. My knuckles stood out white against the dark cloth.
'Softly, Patch,' my friend said. 'I'm sorry. I just wanted to warn you. Your friend – your acquaintance – is the Bishop's Steward. Or at least I am fairly sure he is.'
"What is a madman like that doing in the Bishop's service?' I asked, curious despite everything.
'I don't know. Making enough money to throw about the place, for one thing.' Will patted my hand soothingly. 'Don't worry, Patch. I'm sure he's forgotten all about you. On the other hand, according to my sources, he is a really unpleasant creature. Likes tying up girls and tickling them with his knife.'
'Oh yes? So your enquiries involved looking up skirts as well as around comers.' I was feeling a little better.
Will ignored me. 'He isn't a Norman: he's Breton. He has not long arrived from the Holy Land, it seems, and the Bishop keeps him as a strong-man of some kind. From what I gathered, his duties are of an-' He paused, and cleared his throat.'-An executive nature.' What do you mean?'
'I mean if someone is tardy with their debts, your man pays a visit. But I understand he is also employed in more complex matters. He tracks down heretics, apparently, and keeps an eye on anyone who strays from the true path.'
'He didn't look much like a scourge of the ungodly last night. More like a dandy with nasty Eastern habits.'
'Oh, yes,' Will added, taking a pull at my beer. 'He is, or rather was, a Templar Knight. Got kicked out over an affair of honour in Jerusalem.'
'Templars are monks first and soldiers second, I thought. They don't go in for affairs of honour.' 'As I said, he was kicked out.'
I spent the afternoon in the company of Aristotle, gazing at text, but thinking instead about the mad Templar. I knew about the Templars, of course: knights who served only the Lord, monks in armour who were the soul of honour and the scourge of the Infidel. Will's information explained the exotic dress and the sun-touched skin, not to mention the Moorish knife. It did not seem surprising that such a man would have found himself unsuited to life in an ascetic order. But now to be involved in Church matters? I suddenly remembered a nasty fact: he had known my name. How? How would a heretic-finder know the name of a lowly student, and, more importantly, why?
I was no heretic. I was plainly and honestly orthodox. Looking back, I can see that my spirituality had all the refinement of the tonsured rustics who taught me. I had an enquiring spirit, to be sure, but not in matters religious. I knew the beliefs of the moorland people, but those were nasty, odd superstitions. I was aware, of course, that the Mahometans and Jews followed a different path from ours, and had heard the uneducated slanders about idols and child sacrifice, which I did not believe. I knew that there were Christians who picked quarrels with Holy Writ, but I had little interest in that. In truth I cared little about doctrinal niceties. I fancied myself a historian, with a touch of the botanist to relieve all the dust and dead bones.
If anything, I felt a little safer now. I had sacrificed no children, after all. It was a coincidence, a malicious joke, a mistake. I began to shrug the encounter off along with my hangover.
And so I stayed at my books until evening, in that kind of near-trance that spidery writing, old pages and guttering tallow-light often conjures, much to the detriment of scholarship. It is now, when eyelids droop and the mind substitutes its own text for that on the vellum, that Satan reaches for ripe monastic souls. To my mind, bigger windows and a liberal expenditure on candles would keep more clerics on the strait path than a lifetime of hair shirts and midnight prayers. But forgive these maunderings. For the purposes of my story, however, they will perhaps deflect your attention from the boredom of that life, and from the fact that I have forgotten some of the smaller events of those days. Enough, I hope, to say that at some time after vespers I was walking past the great west doors of the cathedral, on my way, I suppose, to my lodgings. Balecester cathedral stands on the crown of a low but steep hill that rises out of a bend in the river. It is surrounded by a pretty, paved space, the Cathedral Yard. Shops and fine dwelling-places bound the Yard on three sides, and on the north side stands the great stone pile of the Bishop's Palace, more a fortress than a palace and guarded day and night by armed men bearing the crest of Bishop Ranulph: a yellow crozier and a white hound on a sky-blue field. The grim palace, such a contrast to the soaring, airy (if stone can be airy) presence of the cathedral itself, was the object of the townspeople's muttered resentment. If it was true to say that the Normans had replaced the ancient cathedral with a far more beautiful and majestic building, it was also true that the Bishop's palace was bald proof of the conquerors' power. But tonight my thoughts were still with the long-dead Romans and their legal tussles, and I heard nothing until a sudden rustle of clothing behind me broke into my reverie. I spun around, knowing as I did so that my tormentor had found me again.
There was a stronger moon tonight. It shone into the stranger's dark face, lighting the white crescents of his eyes, which stared unblinking into mine. I stood like a pillar of ice, all my fears, driven out by the boredom of the day, flocking about me like starlings returning to their roost. The man was dressed in the same green damask he had worn last night, but now a short surcoat of a darker green covered his body. Upon it I saw two long bones, embroidered in silver thread, forming an upright cross. Around it were four stars with long wavy arms, also in silver. The man put out his hand and, as my sinews clenched, laid it gently upon my shoulder. A smile appeared on his Hps. My terror only grew.
Well met, brother Petroc,' I heard. The voice was soft, nothing like the cold hiss I remembered from last night.
The man bent slightly and peered into my face. 'Petroc!' he said again, and shook me gently. 'Have you turned into a mooncalf, my young friend?'
I felt the power of speech return. My mouth was arid, but words began to form.
Who are you?' I managed. Not the most well-chosen words, I grant you. But the creature grinned. He gave my shoulder another companionable shake.
Your friend, Petroc, your friend – but you are still afflicted by last night.' Now there was concern in his voice as well. 'A game, truly, as I said it was. I would no more have cut you than…' his smile became rueful. 'Let us become friends, then? It is the least I can offer after curdling your wits like that. For which I beg your forgiveness.'
The advice of any sane man would be to mistrust anyone who calls you friend more than once in a single breath, but I was little more than a boy with country mud on his boots. God help me, I dropped my guard, and smiled.
'Last night was taken as no more than a game, sir. I struggle even to recall it.' Such a poor attempt at urbanity, but greater fates are sealed by less.