He saw the aloes look he had back and realised he was not going to get his money. It was not, he thought to himself crossly, his fault that he had been sent to fetch a named man from a place where all the people, it seemed, were called the same. Now this man with a face like a kicked arse was scowling at him and denying him fair payment; not for the first time, he wished he had never met Malise Bellejambe.
He was no stranger to abuse, all the same; everyone seemed to believe they could gull, con or spit upon the likes of him, for all his pilgrim’s badge. You would think folk would honour someone wearing the shell that told of a trip all the way to the Holy Land and, to be fair, most of the simple folk did. The ones with some money and a little power always assumed he was a liar and had never been to the Holy Land at all, but had stolen the shell badge.
Which was not true, he thought indignantly to himself. He had traded for it – a tooth of the Serpent from Eden, no less, only slightly chipped but a fine specimen. Not as fine as the other three he had, admittedly, but a fair exchange for the shell of a pilgrim. And, if he had not been to the Holy Land exactly, he had been to the Sicilies – which still had paynim influences everywhere – and to Leon in Spain, which was the next room to the heathen Moors.
‘Dio grande, he said with weary bitterness to Malise. ‘God is great. I carry out my task and this is my reward. A esas palabras respondieron los ignorantos con decirle infinitas injurias como ellos acostumbran, llamdndole perro, cane, judio, cornudo, y otros semejantes . . .’
‘Speak English,’ Malise finally spat, irritated beyond measure, and Lamprecht shrugged, as if the man was a fool for not comprehending either the Lingua, or decent Castilian, tongues understood by every traveller around the eastern Middle Sea.
‘The ignorant,’ he said haughtily, ‘reply by uttering numerous insults as they are accustomed to do, calling me hound, dog, Jew, cuckold, and similar epithets. Mundo cosi – such is the world.’
‘Give me no airs, you purveyor of St Pintle the Apostle’s ball hairs,’ snarled Malise, angry now. ‘I have known you for a time – long enough to know that you would steal the contents of a dog’s arse and put it in a pie if you had found someone with a taste for such a thing and had a handy bag.’
He glared at Lamprecht.
‘You would sell the stolen skull of an infant and claim it to be Jesus when he was a baby,’ he added viciously and saw that he had stung Lamprecht, who did not like his wares denigrated.
‘Questo non star vero,’ he protested, then shook his head with exasperation and translated it into English. ‘That is not true. Que servir tutto questo? You should not say such things, even in anger, for God is watching. Dio grande. Besides, se mi star al logo de ti, mi cunciar . . . bastardo. If I was in your place, I would wait. The other Sir Henry will come, certes, to see after his amico, and here you hold him. Dunque bisogno il Henri querir pace. Se non querir morir. So the Henry will want peace. If he does not wish to die. CapirY
Malise understood and Lamprecht saw it. He yawned ostentatiously.
‘Mi tenir premura,’ he said. ‘I am in a hurry. Let me dip my beak a little, then I go. Mi andar in casa Pauperes Commilitones.’
Lamprecht did not need to translate the latter, for he saw Malise had understood perfectly. The Pauperes Commilitones - the Poor Brother-Knights – was a name he calculated would make Malise think twice about keeping him here.
Malise knew what Lamprecht was up to, knew also that the pardoner was headed to Balantrodoch purely in the hope of persuading the Order knights there to add their seal to the provenancies of the relics he carried; the Templars made part of their fabled wealth from selling relics.
Malise glanced to where his scrip sat carelessly on a bench, the Templar writ snugged in it. He marvelled at how a piece of parchment with some seals and words could be worth the astonishing amount of 150 merks of silver.
The money, he knew, had been deposited at Balantrodoch and Malise wrestled dimly with the concept of how you could take the parchment to any Templar Commanderie, present it – and be given the money, as if it had magically transported itself there while folk slept. He shivered; from what he had heard of the Templars, such a thing was not beyond them.
No matter – if Lamprecht had the divine favour and miracles of the Pope himself, it would serve him no better.
‘You remain,’ Malise declared curtly and Lamprecht managed an insouciant shrug and a smile, while inwardly seething. He had been doing well recently in a land turmoiled by war and the rumour of it, for people were eager for quatrefoil amulets of St Thomas and St Anthony, the former proof against just about everything, the latter particular to ague and fever.