Rossal rolled his shoulders a little.
‘We will fight them in the narrow door and up the steps to the tower. It will take them a long time to overcome us and they must try and take at least one of us alive, in order to question.’
He nodded to each of them.
‘You will have the night, perhaps more if God is with us. Then they will come after you.’
Stunned, they watched him move away to kneel with the others. Kirkpatrick cleared his throat and exchanged glances with Hal.
‘Defending the treasure and the honour of his Order to the end,’ he growled. ‘No better way to end it.’
Hal heard the gruffness tremble all the same and remembered that Kirkpatrick owed his life twice to the intervention of Rossal de Bissot. He followed the man up the steps, with Sim grunting behind him. At the top, panting, Sim rounded on Kirkpatrick.
‘Whaur’s the treasure?’
Sim’s truculent demand was a blot in the mirror of the moment.
‘Seems to me,’ he went on sullenly, ‘you are placing a deal of trust in this Ruy Vaz.’
‘The Grand Master of Alcántara has flushed out his traitor,’ Kirkpatrick declared, ‘who thinks Templar treasure can be lifted and weighed in boxes. Ruy Vaz kens the truth of matters.’
‘I wish I did,’ Sim muttered. ‘Are you payin’ for good King Robert’s armoury with the blessings of God?’
‘No,’ Hal said, remembering the pouch and the whisper: Ordo ex chao. Order out of chaos. A fitting password to go with the Templar jetton. He explained it to Sim, who also remembered it from the time they had ransomed Isabel using one — more years ago now than either of them cared to recall.
A tally note for sums deposited elsewhere, it could be presented, together with the secret word known only to the deliverer and the recipient, in exchange for all or part of the sum. There was no gold in boxes or anywhere else, only a slip of scribbled parchment and a few spoken words.
‘There is a fearsome sum on this wee jetton tally note, stamped by the Templar seal and the Schiarizzi mercantilers of the Italies,’ Kirkpatrick declared, patting his tunic where the pouch was hidden. ‘One of those merchants waits in Villasirga with Ruy Vaz and when he gets this wee scrap o’ paper and the secret word, he will nod and Ruy Vaz will know his money is assured.’
Sim worried it in his head, licked his lips and nodded uncertainly. Once he would have crossed himself and spat over his shoulder at this, as clear an indication of unholy magic as there could be — how else could the Templars transfer a man’s coin from one place to another, unseen and unheard?
‘You must get to the port and see to the crew and the ship,’ Kirkpatrick went on, grim as old rock. ‘When I bring this to Ruy Vaz, he will scourge Guillermo and his supporters and we are assured of weapons and armour — but we still need to bring them safe to King Robert.’
Kirkpatrick’s eyes and sweat-sheened face seemed to gleam in the dark and the snake-hiss slither of the rope going over the side was loud. For a moment, Hal saw de Bissot and Kirkpatrick lock eyes with one another, saw the jaw muscles work Kirkpatrick’s beard. Then Kirkpatrick nodded once and turned away; he and Hal clasped wrist to wrist, brief and wordless, and Kirkpatrick, grunting with effort, levered himself over the belltower lip, hung for a moment and was gone.
Blinking sweat from his eyes and rubbing his palms, Hal remembered when he, Isabel and Sim had watched Dog Boy perform the same feat out of the window of a besieged Herdmanston. The three of them had had to lie together on the great box bed to stop it being dragged across the floor by the makeshift rope Dog Boy hung from; Isabel, smiling bright, had sworn them all to secrecy about her lying abed with the pair of them, easing the strain on the moment if not the rope.
Hal blinked back to the present, helped Sim grunt and pech his way over the lip and was not sure the big man had the strength of arm and leg to get him all the way down. Still, he heard no wild cry and thump so thought it went fine enough.
He wondered if he had that strength himself and was taking up the rope when a soft voice stopped him; he turned to see Rossal de Bissot, a shadow at the top of the belltower stairs.
‘Take this,’ the Templar said, holding out his sword, ‘and give me your own. I would not see this fall into the hands of Guillermo and can think of no one better to wield it with honour. You are a Sientcler, after all.’
Numbed and dumb, Hal took the sword and handed over his own; the new one felt heavier, though it slid into his sheath easily enough — all but a fingerwidth of blade below the hilt.
‘Hubris,’ Rossal declared with a smile like a sickle moon in the dark. ‘That sword is longer, heavier and has more decoration on it than was ever proper for a Poor Knight.’
‘I am honoured to wield it — though you put a deal of faith in the Sientcler name,’ Hal growled, dry-mouthed with the moment and aware, yet again, of that peculiar Sientcler connection with the Order, so that every member of that family seemed to have drunk from the Grail itself. And all because a female ancestor had once been married to Hugues de Payens, the founder.
‘You will not disgrace the blade,’ Rossal answered and Hal was not sure whether it was a statement or a command. Below, he heard de Villers chanting: Vade retro Satana, nunquam suade mihi vana — begone Satan, never suggest to me thy vanities.
He knew the Knight was facing his own fear and desire for life, rejecting any possibility of salvation. Preparing to die.
Hal glanced at de Bissot and saw nothing of fear or regret, only a slight sadness when the man revealed that Widikind had already died. The Templar raised his hand in a final salute and was gone like a wraith.
Hal stood for a moment, and then crossed to the stone lip, wriggled his hips to the balance point and, with a final fervent prayer for his own salvation, slithered over the edge.
Vade retro Satana, he heard as he scrabbled in a blind sweat for footholds. Ipse venena bibas. Begone Satan. Drink thou thine own poison.
Hal, his hands straining, the sweat in his eyes, wondered how in the name of all Hell had Dog Boy ever managed this.
ISABEL
Now am I ripe in the understanding of what the love of God means. You sent me the little nun, the one called Constance, who whispered to me briefly, so briefly I hardly believed I had heard it all. He is free, she said to me. Roxburgh is taken and Hal is free. Blessed is the Lord.
CHAPTER SIX
Chapel of St Mary and the Holy Cross, Lothian
Feast of the Invention of the Cross, May 1314
Dog Boy wondered how he had done it. He had never killed a woman before and felt strange about the fact of it, even though it had not been deliberate.
They had caught the raiders off guard; those who didn’t have their thumbs up their hurdies were howkin’ lumps of fresh meat out of a boiling pot with their stolen livestock lowing and cropping grass nearby — the lucky beasts that were not jointed and bloody under sacking in the carts.
Hunger was the reason the men had raided out so far and it had been their ruin, for they should just have taken their scourings and run for it, not stopped to boil beef. But there were no skilled fighting men here, only shoemakers and fishmongers, tanners and labourers from Berwick, out on a desperate herschip for supplies because none were coming up from the south and bread was ten times the usual price.
The fact that they raided into the lands of the Earl of Dunbar, who was on their side, did not matter to them when their bellies were notched to their backbones. The fact that they were eating the badly boiled kine of the lord of Seton, another ally, did not count one whit.
Dog Boy was of the opinion that they should have left the raiders alone, since they were doing Black Jamie’s band a service with their ravaging and, besides, most were Lothian men themselves. Some of them, it was clear, knew one end of a spear from the other and probably served in the Berwick town garrison. They might have kin standing with the army sieging Stirling for the Bruce. Some might even have kin among the men here.