The Awful Secret (12 page)

Nesta sniffed peevishly. ‘You know more than you let on, John. What’s all the mystery?’

He was spared answering by the descent of de Ridefort down the rickety steps, and soon they were drinking ale and eating a pair of boiled fowls that Nesta had caused to materialise from the cooking shed behind the inn. Some other travellers had just arrived and she was dealing with them, so the two men had time for a low-voiced conversation, to the chagrin of Edwin, an incorrigible eavesdropper.

‘I have been absent from Paris these past six weeks,’ murmured Gilbert. ‘By now, the Master will have sent urgent news about me to London.’

‘How would they know you came to England?’

De Ridefort smiled sadly. ‘John, you should know after all your travels that the Poor Knights of Christ have the best intelligence in the world. There are Templars or their agents in every town and every port of any size. Nothing happens but they know about it – they need information to conduct their huge business transactions. They fund most of the kings of Europe and lend money to anyone who pays a sufficient levy on it. They will know that I took ship from Harfleur to Southampton. Soon, they will be after me, and their efficiency is legendary. I should know – I have been one of them these past fifteen years.’

He looked around the room, searching the faces of the merchants, tradesmen, travellers and harlots who made up the customers of the Bush, as if a Templar might be hidden amongst them already. ‘Sooner or later they will catch up with me, unless Bernardus and I can get abroad before they arrive.’

John was beginning to tire of this repetitive forecast of doom. ‘If you have not revealed this great secret of yours, whatever it might be, then what have you to fear?’

‘The very fact that we have left the Order and broken virtually all the rules laid down by St Bernard. That is enough. It may be a mortal crime, our lives may already be forfeit. Certainly, the best we can hope for if we are recovered by them is endless incarceration and penance.’

He tore at his chicken and as de Wolfe began thinking aloud. ‘There are no Templars in or near Exeter, that I know. There is a small Preceptory beyond Tavistock, almost fifteen miles from here.’

‘I know how they act, John. The main Commandery in London will send men to seek me out. They may well require any local Templars to assist them, but the thrust of the search will be from our New Temple on the banks of the Thames. The gravity of the secret is such that they will not entrust any great responsibility to rural knights or sergeants. It will be senior brothers who come after us.’

De Wolfe snorted with impatience. ‘You keep on about this bloody secret, Gilbert! How does your Order know you have it and that you might broadcast it? And why should you wish to do that, anyway? Don’t you have fifteen years of loyalty to consider?’

De Ridefort dropped the remains of his fowl and pushed the thick trencher of gravy-sodden bread away from him. ‘It torments me all the time. Bernardus and I were too outspoken and argumentative about many things in Paris. We thought we were indulging in academic discussion with our fellows, but as the truth began to dawn upon us, after I learned of certain matters we should not have explored, we were cautioned then reviled. I had already had enough of whispered innuendoes about my uncle, whom the younger Templars now accuse of incompetence at best and treachery at worst in his calamitous behaviour in the Holy Land.’

‘The sins of the uncles visited upon the nephews, eh?’ misquoted John cynically.

‘Not only did the brothers of the Order began to despise and suspect me, but the priests outside started murmuring heresy. There is great trouble brewing in France, John, especially in the south-west, where de Blanchefort comes from. Though generally the Templars have sympathy with the Cathars there, in their dangerously unconventional beliefs, the power of Rome and its army of priests are becoming both anxious and vindictive – and some of that is falling on Bernardus and myself.’

‘So this great secret is a matter of Christian faith?’ asked de Wolfe, trying to pin down this elusive tale more firmly.

‘You could certainly say that,’ agreed Gilbert cautiously. ‘When the time comes, you will know it, along with the rest of the world, unless we are silenced beforehand.’

He would say no more, however much as John probed, and when Nesta came back to join them, the conversation was bent to other subjects. De Ridefort was particularly curious about the other’s duties as coroner, for no such office existed outside England. As they finished their meal, and drank more ale and some wine, de Wolfe explained his functions to an attentive listener who had many searching questions. The red-headed Welsh woman sat and listened to the two men and John noticed that her gaze often strayed to the profile of the handsome Frenchman. Eventually, Nesta was called away to settle some shrieking dispute between her maids in the kitchen.

As soon as they were alone again, de Ridefort returned to his worries. ‘I’ll stay here in the inn for most of the day, John, and not show myself about the town.’

‘No one here knows you, that’s for sure,’ said de Wolfe, to reassure him, ‘but I’ll keep an eye open for you. Both my officer Gwyn and my nosy little clerk know everything that happens in this city. So does Nesta, for that matter – her intelligence is county-wide!’

De Ridefort reached an arm across the table and gripped John’s elbow with a strong hand. ‘Let me know of any strangers who arrive. They need not be in Templar dress – we do not always wear it when necessity demands.’

‘I know you do not wear a chain-mail hauberk, but surely you always have your white mantle with the red cross on the shoulder?’

‘It is so claimed, John, but not always adhered to in travelling away from the Commanderies and Preceptories. And only the knights and chaplains wear the white mantle – the chaplains have it fastened in the front, but we must let ours hang loose. The lower ranks, such as sergeants, wear brown or black, but all with the red cross.’

De Wolfe sighed. ‘White, black or brown, cross or no cross, Gwyn and Thomas will watch out for you these coming days. Now I must get myself home, or my wife will chastise me.’

Somewhat uneasily, he left de Ridefort in the company of his mistress and made his way back to Martin’s Lane. It was now late afternoon and he had nothing to divert him in the way of corpses, rapes or even a serious assault.

As he was passing through the cathedral Close, he saw a familiar figure coming towards him, enveloped in a full black cloak. The crinkled grey hair surmounted a lean, ascetic face from which a pair of blue eyes looked out serenely on the world. It was John de Alençon, Archdeacon of Exeter, one of de Wolfe’s favourite churchmen, who lived in one of the dwellings in Canon’s Row, along the north side of the Close. After they had greeted each other and passed the time of day, de Wolfe thought he might tap the senior cleric’s knowledge of some of the things hinted at by Gilbert de Ridefort.

‘I recently met an old Templar friend I knew at the Crusades,’ he began, adapting the truth slightly. ‘He caused me to become curious about their beliefs and the strange secrecy that seems to surround their order.’

The Archdeacon took his arm and steered him towards the line of prebendaries’ houses. ‘Come and talk with me a while, John. I’ve seen little of you since you let your warhorse fall on to your leg.’

The priest’s asceticism did not extend to a rejection of good wine and soon they were sitting at a rough table in his bare room, the only ornament a plain wooden crucifix on the wall. Between them was a flask of his best wine from Poitou and each man held a heavy glass cup filled with it.

‘Why this sudden interest in theology, Crowner John?’ he mocked gently. ‘I’ve never taken you for a man who has much time for the Almighty, more’s the pity!’

De Wolfe grinned sheepishly. It was true that his devotions were reluctant and perfunctory – he went to Mass occasionally, but only on High Feasts or when Matilda nagged him to accompany her to some dreary service at St Olave’s. ‘It was meeting this old Crusading companion again, who now belongs to the Templar establishment in Paris. Some of the things he mentioned intrigued me, that’s all. The Order is said by some to have a rather different view of Christianity from the rest of us – is that true?’

He was fishing for information without wanting to give anything away, a difficult task with someone as astute as John de Alençon – but the cleric was happy to discourse on anything touching the Faith. ‘I agree with you that their organisation is somewhat peculiar,’ said the archdeacon. ‘Though they are under the direct protection of the Holy Father in Rome, many in the Church have for long been uneasy with the favoured status of the Templars.’

‘Why is this?’ prompted de Wolfe.

‘They are immune from orders by even the highest bishops, only bowing their knee to the Pope. They recruit not only devout men, especially rich ones with wealth or land to donate, but also attract excommunicate knights and persons with unorthodox views of religion,’ he said disapprovingly.

At this the coroner’s heavy eyebrows lifted. ‘I have heard that some accuse the Templars of heresy – but how can that be, in a such a devout body of men so favoured by Rome and patronised by St Bernard?’

The grey-haired priest looked shrewdly over the rim of his glass at his friend. ‘This is a strange conversation for you, John. You are usually full of tales about murdered men and mutilated corpses. Why this sudden interest in the Templars?’

De Wolfe sighed – he seemed to be transparent to his old friend.

‘This man seems to have fallen out with his Order. I can say no more, but I wondered if his dispute with them is real, or whether he has some ailment of the mind that convinces him he is persecuted.’

The archdeacon looked puzzled. ‘To fall out with the Templars would be very unusual – their brothers are bound to them for life. And it would be a very grave situation to fall foul of them as they are not known for their tolerance and forbearance with those who cross them.’

‘Do they have any dark secrets that they would not wish spread abroad?’

‘Rumours abound, John, but most are probably idle tittle-tattle. They have been accused of many things over the years.’

‘Such as?’ persisted the coroner.

‘Idolatry, including worshipping a disembodied head named Baphomet – and even the denial of the crucifixion of Our Lord and spitting on the True Cross.’ He shuddered and crossed himself as he uttered the words, reminding de Wolfe of his own clerk. ‘But I think these must be foul slanders about an Order so favoured by Rome.’

John sensed that he was getting on to ground that might prove harmful to de Ridefort, if the established Church had some antipathy to the Order of the Temple. He let the conversation slide into less dangerous topics, though he knew that the priest was still intrigued by his interest.

He spent an hour with de Alençon and when the wine flask was empty, the archdeacon walked him to the door of his narrow house. As they parted, the cleric’s last remark proved that he had not forgotten their earlier discussion.

‘Advise your friend, John, that he had better keep a good watch over his shoulder, if he has become at cross-purposes with the Poor Knights of Christ. They possess a very long arm indeed!’

When he arrived near his own house, de Wolfe saw Gwyn hovering in Martin’s Lane, talking to Andrew the farrier as he hammered a shoe on to a roan gelding. The Cornishman looked scruffier than usual, his tattered thick leather jerkin more frayed than ever and his serge breeches crumpled above his muddy boots. The only acceptable part of his outfit was the large scabbard that contained his broadsword, hanging from the diagonal baldric strap over his right shoulder.

‘Have you been at war while my back was turned?’ demanded the coroner as he approached his officer, whose flaming ginger hair and beard were as unkempt and tangled as if he had been through six blackthorn hedges.

Gwyn grinned amiably and patted the hilt of his sword. ‘There was a riot down in the Shambles just now – you can barely have missed it if you walked up from the Bush.’

‘Any work for us there? What was it all about?’ demanded his master.

‘One dead, two badly wounded,’ replied Gwyn. ‘One I injured myself, after he had killed the other fellow.’

De Wolfe was already striding off towards the meat market, which was on the other side of the cathedral Close. ‘Come on, man, tell me about it as we go.’

‘A group of men came into the city, driving a score of pigs. They set up a booth on Bell Hill, half-way up Southgate Street, and began killing a few hogs, offering the joints at a price lower than the Exeter traders’.’

‘They must have been fools – or desperate!’ said de Wolfe, as they hurried along. ‘It’s not even a market day! The local butchers wouldn’t stand for that.’

‘They didn’t – not for more than a few minutes. They started shouting at them, then overturning tables. The pigs were running wild, the traders were fighting and the customers were screaming in panic.’

‘What about the portreeves and burgesses? Where were they with their bailiffs?’

‘They soon arrived and it developed into a free-for-all. Then the cudgels came out and the knives, even a couple of old swords. It was bloody chaos!’

They hurried through Bear Lane and out into South Gate Street where the Serge Market lay slightly downhill from the Shambles, in the dip before the road rose again to the gate. There were plenty of people milling around, but no obvious fighting. ‘It’s gone quiet now,’ exclaimed Gwyn, in a disappointed tone. ‘All hell was let loose here half an hour ago.’

John de Wolfe pushed past a crowd of onlookers near an overturned stall to get to the middle of the road. He was carrying no sword, but kept a hand on the hilt of his dagger in case there was more trouble. Above the hubbub of chatter and complaint, he could hear a familiar voice shouting a few yards away. ‘Gabriel! What’s going on?’ he yelled, pushing through the crowd to reach the sergeant of the castle guard, who was shoving at the crowd with four other men-at-arms, clearing a space around some bodies on the fouled ground.