“I think we are being followed,” he said, very softly. “In the corner by the ale keg, the man in the green woolen mantle and felt hat.”
Richard shifted slightly so he could see Guillain’s suspect. He looked to be in his forties, of average height, his brown hair and beard closely clipped, with a thin white scar creasing his forehead above thick brows and heavy-lidded dark eyes. He was well dressed, obviously a person of means, and he wore the sword at his hip like a man who’d feel naked without one. He’d been nursing an ale while regarding the other customers with studied disinterest, but when Richard glanced his way, he drew farther back into the shadows.
“I saw him first at the stables,” Guillain confided, pitching his voice for Richard’s ear alone. “He was entering as we were leaving. I saw him next when we were looking for an inn, loitering in the marketplace. And then he turns up here. Udine is not Paris, but it is no small village, either, and it seems odd that every time we look around, there he is.”
Richard agreed with him. After a low-voiced exchange with Guillain, he waited until Arne returned and then rose without haste, dropping coins on the table for the servingmaid. Following his lead, his companions drained the last of their ales and pushed away from the bench, trying to cloak their urgency in nonchalance. Once they were out in the street, Guillain slapped a few backs as if jovially parting from friends and disappeared into an alley that overlooked the alehouse. The others broke up into smaller groups and took different routes back to their inn.
A brisk wind had sprung up as the daylight ebbed, and the inn’s sign was creaking and swaying with each gust. Der Schwarz L?we. The Black Lion. The beast was crudely drawn and looked grey in patches where the paint had flaked away, but it was not a sight to give them comfort, for the black lion was the emblem of the House of Hohenstaufen. The inn itself was as dilapidated as its sign, and the innkeeper had been astonished and delighted when they’d taken two rooms, for privacy was a luxury few could afford and most travelers not only shared rooms with strangers, they shared beds, too. His curiosity and his avarice aroused in equal measure, he made a pest of himself upon their return, offering wine, more candles, extra blankets, even female company if they wished, swearing he could provide them with women who were young, pretty, and free of the pox. Having been so ill-served by his merchant disguise in G?rz, Richard had decided to pass as a Templar, a more plausible identity for a man whose very walk had a soldier’s swagger, and Arne finally got rid of the insistent innkeeper by telling him they were all Templar knights and sergeants, sworn to vows of chastity.
The rooms were small, and with all twenty of them crammed into one chamber, there was barely space to stand, much less sit down. They waited in a tense silence, broken only by the occasional hoarse coughing of one of the crossbowmen, and it seemed like years to them before Guillain rapped twice on the door and then slid inside. The news he brought was good, though. He’d kept vigil in the alley until the bells had chimed for Vespers, but the man in the green mantle had not stirred from the alehouse. “I suppose I was seeing shadows where there were none,” he conceded, with an abashed smile.
Now that they were able to relax, the men could admit how tired they all were, and the Templars and crossbowmen soon departed for their own room. Richard’s companions set about spreading out their blankets, taking off their boots, mail, and weapons, but planning to sleep in their clothes. Richard sat on the edge of one of the two beds, and began to study his map again, as he did whenever the opportunity arose, tilting the candle to avoid dripping wax onto the parchment. Anselm was thumbing through his psalter, Morgan was trying to patch a hole in his boot with leather cut from his belt, and Warin was grumbling as he used his knife to remove the stitches from the hem of his mantle; the money not stuffed into their saddlebags had been sewn into their clothes, but Warin had spaced the coins too close together and discovered to his dismay that he jingled when he walked. He was still bent over the mantle, awkwardly wielding a needle as the others began to snuff out their candles, lusting after sleep as they usually lusted after women. It was then that a soft knock sounded on the door.
Richard paused in the act of removing his boots and gestured to Arne. Most of the men assumed it was the meddlesome innkeeper making one last attempt to earn a few more coins, but they still sat up on their pallets, for they were learning to be as wary as stray cats. Yawning, Arne shuffled toward the door. “Wer ist das?”