He could recall the fighting: the screams, the blood, the chunks of flesh hacked from still-living bodies like joints butchered from a carcass and left tossed to the ground for the dogs. Fighting while the sweat ran in rivulets down his brow, down his back, down his breast. Fighting while he gradually lost all hope. Fighting while his strength ebbed, while his parched throat pleaded for a moment’s rest so he could take a slurp of anything to ease it. Fighting while his friends died around him. Fighting even when he could scarcely remember why he was there, why he had travelled all that way.
He shivered at the memory of those friends and comrades. Bodies of men he had known lying at the foot of the city’s walls. Some had become friends after the arduous journey from England, going like him to protect God’s lands from invasion. They had set off full of enthusiasm: hopeful, intrepid men, but when they arrived, the place was all but lost, and they began to die. Some sickened, losing their energy with their diarrhoea, and more fell as the arrows rained down, or as their legs were hacked from beneath them. Too many to remember. It was one thing to see an unknown dead Christian; infinitely worse when the man was a companion who had bought a drink, or spoken kindly and shown honour.
Baldwin could recall so many faces among the dead. In the desert their faces were ravaged by the heat, desiccating and mummified before they could rot, while those who fell in Acre seemed almost to melt in the humidity of the coast.
Yes, he could easily believe how calming this place would have seemed to him, had his Order survived long enough to permit him to come here as an old man. A cool place, in which sudden death and the odour of decomposing human flesh was unknown. A land in which the rain fell gently as rose petals; no parched throats here. A green and lovely land.
‘Baldwin?’
Simon’s concerned voice brought him out of his reverie, and he gave the Bailiff a shamefaced grin as he kicked his horse’s flanks and led the way the last few yards to the church.
The priest was nowhere about. Worse, Baldwin had expected the interior to be clean and tidy. Instead there were signs of neglect. The floor bore leaves and dirt which should have been swept clean, and when Baldwin glanced about him, there was a subtle impression of mess. At the altar, the cloth was slightly skew-whiff; a candle had been knocked and leaned drunkenly from its candlestick. Neither was significant, perhaps, but they indicated a hint of slipshod care towards the building that rankled with Baldwin. And then, he had to shrug as he recognised the injustice of him, a renegade Templar, a man who was a criminal because he had betrayed his oaths, thinking less of a priest because he was late to sweep his floor, had knocked a candle with his elbow after Mass, and had managed to catch the altar-cloth as he made his way from the church.
Baldwin left the building, glanced towards the little home and walked to it, rapping sharply on the door.
Made of planks of elm nailed onto a couple of horizontal bars, the door moved alarmingly as he knocked. Listening, Baldwin was sure he could hear a snore. It made him frown. First the effeminate Father Adam at Cardinham, now this. His mind flew back to the church. The man hadn’t done a thing in there yet today, and that was scandalous. He was lazy and degenerate, as Baldwin had first thought. Well, he would learn that a knight would brook no such sloth!
He thrust at the door firmly. It creaked as the peg which held it closed stopped it, but the creak became a loud crack as Baldwin angrily kicked it open. It bounced back against the wall and trembled as though it had the senses of a man and felt terror at his rage.
‘Priest?’ he roared. ‘Where are you?’
There was a sharp gurgling sound, and he peered into the gloom to see a quivering figure sitting bolt upright on a palliasse. The reek of sour ale permeated the entire house, and he curled his lip at the odour.
‘It is almost afternoon, priest,’ he said, and was just in time to move aside as the pathetic creature vomited over the place where he had stood.
Father John opened his eyes blearily and wiped his mouth. God’s bones, but it was hard to keep the stuff down nowadays. Gone were the days of his youth in Oxford when he could quaff a gallon of ale at a sitting, near enough, and wake refreshed. Now he had to sleep for practically a whole day. Not that it stopped his feelings of dullness and general lethargy.
‘Since you have chosen to enter already, Lording, I suppose there’s little point in asking you in,’ he said acerbically, eyeing his visitor without pleasure.
The intruder looked like a knight from an old romance: tall, well-formed, with little of the belly that a man might expect by his age. If anything the fellow had the look of a much younger man, although there was something about him which looked curiously out of place. Ah yes, the beard. A strange affectation, John considered. Why a man would wear a half-beard like that was beyond him. Perhaps a full-blooded chest-long beard would be all right, or none whatever, but this thin covering over the line of the jaw was plain silly.
Another wave of nausea smothered him for a moment. When he could open his eyes again, he saw three others: another belted knight — a younger, more disdainful fellow; also a rather scruffy-looking, big-built man who scowled at him darkly, and a clerk. Oh, God in Heaven save me from clerks! he thought. Weren’t there enough of them in places like London and Oxford? Did the Good Lord have to send them here to the moors too?
‘Ach! My mouth tastes dreadful!’ he muttered, and went outside. His trough was at the rear of the churchyard, and he plunged his head into it, coming up with a great exhalation. He smiled for almost exactly three heartbeats, thinking how refreshing it was, then puked again, thankfully missing the trough.
‘You have missed your Mass, Father.’
He turned and studied the tall knight. His belly was roiling like a boiling pan, but he felt better nonetheless. ‘Sir, I don’t know who you are, though I’m sadly afraid I’ll soon learn — no matter! I perform my functions here to the best of my abilities. Poor they may be, but occasionally, like last night, if I am out of sorts, I will pray to God and He will give me dispensation to miss an occasional service. If He feels able to allow me some peace, I see no reason why I should take complaints from a man like you, whom I neither know, nor wish to know.’ He sat back on the edge of his stone trough as a shiver ran through his frame. Soon, very soon, he would need to be sick again.
‘I am Sir Baldwin de Furnshill. What were you doing last night to cause such a foul illness in your belly?’
‘Perhaps it is your business, but …’ John pulled a face and considered before shaking his head. ‘No! I can’t see it’s any business of yours what I may or may not do when I have a few moments to myself.’
‘Really?’
John’s eyes widened as the man lunged at him. A fist gathered up the robes at his shoulder and lifted him bodily from the trough. ‘Don’t bandy words, priest! A man was murdered last night! I want to know what made you turn to your drink. The sight of so much blood, or the feel of it on you?’
‘Where is this blood?’ John asked rhetorically, glancing down at his robe so far as he was able with the knight’s fist bunching at his chin. ‘I see none. Granted, I do have some puke on me, but that is an occupational risk of drinking.’