‘They will expect us to try an escape,’ Hal persisted and Rossal laid a hand on his arm.
‘With the greatest of respect,’ he said, ‘they consider you three old men of little worth. It is the Templars they want and myself in particular. As long as they see us here, that is what they will fix on.’
The sick lurch of it reeled Hal sideways; he had not considered what the Order knights would do and realized it now, all in a rush.
‘We are the last Templars,’ Rossal declared simply. Nearby, faint as a moth’s breath, came the sound of de Villers praying. Non nobis, non nobis, Domine, sed nomini tuo da gloriam … not to us, not to us, O Lord, but to Your Name give glory.
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.