She walked around her table and lit the candle she had been using earlier. She had brought the cresset lamp over from the church and she put it down beside the candle. She glanced at the man. He was sitting on the stool, hunched into himself. His headdress was still drawn closely around his head and she could barely see anything of his face.
This will not do, she told herself. We are circling each other like two wary dogs.
She drew out her throne-like chair and sat down. Then she said, ‘I am Abbess Helewise. Tell me who you are and what you want of me.’
Sixteen
The young man seemed to take her revelation in his stride although since she could see so little of him it was hard to tell. When he spoke it was in the same gruff voice.
‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘For what?’
‘I ask to see you. You see me.’
She inclined her head. ‘You are welcome.’
He had turned away and when he spoke again, he appeared to be addressing the wall rather than her.
‘I tell you of Fadil,’ he announced.
It seemed an odd place to start but at least he was starting. ‘Very well.’
‘Fadil fight with Muslim army and is taken prisoner. He is beloved of man named Hisham. Hisham claim Fadil is his young brother but this is not so. Relationship is — different.’ He hesitated. ‘Bad.’
‘I see.’ Helewise thought she knew what he meant.
‘Hisham approach Knights Hospitaller and make offer to exchange Fadil for something of very great value. Knights agree and meeting in desert at night is arranged. But knights and Hisham are alike. Both wish to keep prisoner and ransom. Very bad things happen — I cannot describe for I not there — and Hisham is wounded and many of his servants die but Hisham very clever, very devious, and he hide more men — fighting men — and more horses out in dark desert. These men help others to kill knights. They take Hisham away to where healers treat his wounds.’
‘Both parties tried to cheat?’ Helewise asked.
‘Very much at stake,’ the young man said. ‘Even good men will do bad things in such circumstances.’
Helewise had noticed something. Careful so as not to alert him, she said, ‘The monk who survived took the prisoner — Fadil — and fled, didn’t he?’
‘Yes. He take ransom as well.’
She nodded. ‘So Hisham sent his men Kathnir and Akhbir to chase after them and the Hospitallers sent Thibault and his companions. Both pursuing parties wanted to recapture the prisoner and take possession of the ransom. Is that not so?’
The young man turned his swathed face her way and just for an instant the light of the candle flames illuminated his eyes.
Had Helewise not been paying such close attention and waiting tensely for just such a chance, she would have missed it. As it was she saw: just a glimpse in a split second. Her suspicion was confirmed.
Whoever this young man might be, he was not a Saracen. For one thing, as he told his tale the halting speech of someone speaking an alien language vanished. For another, Helewise was fairly certain that Saracens did not have jade-green eyes. He must not know that I have seen, she thought. For some reason it is very important to him that I believe in this false identity.
‘Two parties pursue, yes,’ he was saying. ‘But only one cares about Fadil.’
‘Hisham wanted his — er, his-’
‘His boy,’ supplied the young man. Helewise would have sworn that he was amused by her discomfiture.
‘He wanted him desperately enough to have offered something of great value in exchange,’ she said.
‘He did, but it was never his intention that the thing he offered would be given away. Thirty fighting men of his household hidden out in the darkness beyond the circle of light would see to that.’
‘So the monk and Fadil galloped off into the night,’ she resumed. ‘Then what?’
‘Fadil did not wish to be returned to Hisham. He had become a fighter to get away from his particular form of servitude, and when he was captured and imprisoned he hoped that by the time he was released Hisham would have found another sexual slave and forgotten all about him. When Fadil was told that Hisham was going to buy him back, he was so desperate that he thought about taking his own life. But he did not and in the end he was very glad, for the monk took him far away from the desert and Fadil will never see Hisham again.’
‘Where is he? What happened to him?’
‘When the Knights Hospitaller were attacked and slaughtered by Hisham’s men, Fadil slipped to the ground and went over to where Hisham had been lying on his divan. Hisham was intent on the fight, so Fadil helped himself to his purse. It contained not only a large sum of gold but also very valuable rings which Hisham had removed before he drew his knife. Hisham has fat hands,’ he added, ‘and the jewels that he wears are set in wide bands of gold, so it is hard to grip a weapon.
‘Fadil made a deal with the monk, who wished to take him back to Margat. But Fadil knew that if this happened, it would only be a matter of time before Hisham made another attempt to buy him back. Fadil said he would give the monk a third of what he had stolen from Hisham in exchange for his freedom. The monk agreed.’
‘Why?’ Helewise cried. ‘Surely his orders were to guard the prisoner closely and return him to his cell?’
‘That is true,’ agreed the young man. ‘But the monk understood what was waiting for Fadil in Hisham’s house and in his bed and he did not wish to condemn him to such horror. What Hisham did to him is a sin,’ he added primly. ‘Besides, the monk knew that what he had in his pack was inestimably more valuable, both to his Order and to everyone else, than any number of prisoners.’
What he had in his pack… She burned to ask but the moment was not right. ‘What happened to Fadil?’
‘The monk took him as far as Constantinople, where they crossed the Bosporus together. There Fadil felt safe at last and they parted company. Fadil had distant family in Constantinople and he was in no doubt that they would take him in. He was a rich man now, remember, and wealth has a way of smoothing the road.’
‘It has,’ Helewise murmured. So Fadil didn’t come to England, she was thinking. Josse and I were wrong. The monk’s companion was not Fadil but this man who sits so calmly and self-assuredly before me. ‘So,’ she said, carefully, ‘the monk decided that whatever Hisham had offered as ransom for Fadil was too dangerous to take to Margat or any other fortress of the Order?’
‘That is true. It is- That is to say, there were good reasons why he knew he must bring it to England.’
‘To the English headquarters of the Knights Hospitaller at Clerkenwell?’
He shrugged. ‘Perhaps. Yes.’
‘And how did you come to be travelling with him?’
‘I am his manservant.’ The young man bowed elegantly from the waist.
Helewise said nothing.
The young man raised his head and looked at her. She studied what she could see of the face and took in the green eyes in the smooth skin. She observed the graceful way in which he held his head. She remembered that pale, translucent skin on the inside of his wrist.
‘Stand up,’ she said.
Hesitantly, eyes on her all the time, he did so.
She was sure.
‘Before you knew who I am I told you that the Abbess of Hawkenlye was more inclined to mercy than to condemnation,’ she said quietly. ‘I also said that this Abbey offers sanctuary to those who flee. That beneficence is not in my gift, for it is the same in any religious house. Unless you have done or proceed to do something that I know to be a mortal sin, I shall not advertise your presence here to those who pursue you. Even if you were to confess that you have committed some crime, then it would be to our sheriff that I would give you up, and he is a just man.’
The man’s eyes had widened in alarm when Helewise had spoken of those who pursued him but as she concluded her short speech, he looked calmer. He said, ‘I have done wrong, but not without dire need.’