‘So they are – almost. The wee saint’s warriors are busy protecting the proper pilgrim route, the Way of St James. Since there are two roads to Santiago, it takes them all their time – though the northern route is used less these days, now that the Moors have been expelled from the road from Aragon to Castile.’
‘This is what happens when you try and cheat God,’ Hal added with a grin.
He had lost the humour in it by the time the day died in a blood and gold splendour, wiped from his lips by too much heat and dust, the ten different languages that made the psalms a babble, the quarrels that broke out on every halt, the stink that hung with them in the dust.
Hal was sharply aware that this was but a lick of what Crusaders had experienced here and that it was worse by far further south and east, in the Holy Land itself; his estimation of his father went up when he thought of him enduring this in the name of God. By the time they turned off the road and into a tree-shaded avenue, Hal was heartily sick of the Kingdom of Castile and the commanderie of St Felix was a blessed limewashed relief.
Stiff-legged, he climbed off the palfrey he had been given and had it removed by a silent figure, blank and shadowed as the dark which closed on them. Led by flickering torches, Hal and the others were escorted into a large room with a stout door to the right and a curtained archway to the left; there were tables and benches, fresh herbs and straw.
‘It is not much,’ said a smooth voice, the French accented heavily, ‘but it is what we use as bed and board.’
They turned to see a tall man with the Alcántara cross on a white camilis that accentuated the dark of his face and the neatly trimmed black beard; his smile was as dazzling as his robe and Do?a Beatriz hung off his arm with a familiarity intended to raise the hackles of the black-robed Templars, even if it was only his sister.
‘I am Don Guillermo,’ he announced, raking them with his grin. ‘I assure you, this is really how we live – you see, we can be as austere as Benedictines. Up to a point.’
Rossal, unsmiling, bowed from the neck; the others followed and Hal saw the scowl scarring the face of the German.
‘Our thanks for your hospitality and escort. I will see to my charge before prayers.’
‘Of course,’ Guillermo answered smoothly. ‘Be assured, our best men guard those carts.’
‘I have no doubt of it,’ Rossal answered. He turned to look briefly at Kirkpatrick and then went out, trailed by de Villers. Sim stretched noisily and farted.
‘Not a bad lodging, mark you,’ he declared, glancing at the wall whose bare, rough whiteness was broken by a trellis of poles supporting a short walkway reached by an arched doorway. It was the height of two tall men from the floor.
‘A gallery for minstrels,’ he said and grinned. ‘Some entertainment later, eh, lads?’
In a commanderie of a religious Order? Hal looked at Kirkpatrick, who held the gaze for a moment, and then moved to the nearest door, which was beneath the gallery. It was clearly locked. The curtained archway on the other side of the room led to some steps and Kirkpatrick was sure they reached up to a belltower he had seen on the way in.
‘As neat a prison as any you will see,’ he offered to the returned Rossal, who nodded grimly, and then turned to the door he had been escorted through; the rattle of the locking bar was clear to everyone and he frowned.
‘Where is Brother Widikind?’
The Lothians
At the same time
They roared through the March, looting and burning and with no care now that they had rid themselves of the Welsh. Using fire, using blade, using lies and deceit, they harried the wee rickle of fields and cruck houses in Byres, Heriot, Ratho and Ladyset. They felled ramparts and broke wooden walls, ravaged the Pinkney stronghold at Ballencrieff and showed their faces to the frightened burghers of Haddington.
Fell and bloody were the riders of Black James Douglas, who gorged on fire and sword and pain and never seemed to have enough of it to drive out the hatred he felt for all that had been taken from him.
Then they came down on the weekly market at Seton, because that lord was firmly in the English camp and Black Jamie wanted him scorched for it. They rampaged through the screamers, scattering them with half-mocking snarls and a waved blade. There was little of fodder anywhere, Dog Boy noted, and Jamie nodded, pointing to the church.
‘You can rely on God to make sure of his tithe,’ he said, and bellowed at the others to be quick and to take only the peas and barley, the live chooks and the dead coneys.
They were good, too, careful when loading the stolen eggs and ignoring trinkets – well, in the main. Everyone took a little something, as a keepsake or a token for a woman somewhere, while a bolt of new cloth was blanket and cloak both on a bad night.
Jamie and Dog Boy rode up to the stout-walled tithe barn and Dog Boy skipped off the garron and kicked open the double doors; it was an echoing hall, bare even of mice, and Jamie’s eyebrows went up at that. At the nearby church, the door of it clearly barred from the inside, the priest stood outside, defiant chin raised.