The Spymaster's Protection (5 page)

People quickly moved out of their path, looking relieved once
they had passed. Their command of the street was unmistakable. Though she had
seen many Templars over the years, even she was impressed by their presence.
She decided some of that was due to the singularly handsome figure Lucien de
Aubric cut.

It had been a week since she had bid him goodbye at the
orphanage, but he had never really left her thoughts. Gabrielle was unnerved by
the excitement that raced through her as the two monks approached.

In no time at all, their long-legged strides brought them
directly up to her. But, to her surprise, Brother de Aubric did not seem to
recognize her. He squinted at her for a moment, then turned his attention to
the Arab beside her.

Gabrielle decided her veil prevented him from recognizing her.
She was dressed in the manner of Muslim women. Her head and face were covered,
leaving only her eyes visible.

"Hazir, it is good to see you again," he greeted her
steward with a glad grin. "How are those grandchildren of yours?"

"Much too active for an old man," Hazir laughed in
response.

"Have you met my brother-in-arms, Frère Conrad de
Morgarten?" de Aubric asked, narrowing his eyes on Gabrielle even as he
spoke. "He is from the Rhineland."

"I have not," Hazir replied. "Good day to you,
frère."

The German Templar returned the elderly servant’s greeting,
while Brother Lucien continued to stare unabashedly at Gabrielle. She saw the
exact moment he recognized her, for his mouth curled into a smile that was full
of warmth and pleasure, making her heartbeat accelerate even more.

"Lady de Châtillon," he said with a slight bow of
his head. "I'm sorry I did not recognize you initially."

She had no suitable reply except to greet him in return.

"How is your shoulder?"

His lingering scrutiny played havoc with Gabrielle's
composure. "It is healing nicely," she informed him, nervously
fingering the two lengths of silk in her hands.

"Either would make a lovely gown," Lucien offered,
dropping his intense dark-eyed gaze to her hands.

Heat rose to her cheeks. "Oh, they are not for me. I am
placing one of the girls at the orphanage with a merchant family, and I want
her to be able go to them proudly, in a new shalwar and veil. How is it you
know Hazir?" she asked in bemusement.

Hazir replied for his friend. "Brother de Aubric
intervened for one of my grandsons with the local magistrate some time ago. He
was most helpful in preventing my misguided grandson from being charged with a
crime he did not commit."

"And how is Jabr?" Lucien inquired.

"He is much wiser in choosing his friends now."

Lucien bowed his head, relieved that Hazir had not elaborated
on the other reason for their long-time friendship. The elderly Arab had
frequently provided him with valuable and useful information, but it was not
necessary that either his fellow Templar or the lady know of this.

"So, Lady de Châtillon, you do more than simply rescue
children in need? You find them homes, also?" he asked the woman before
him, fascinated by the way her long, sooty, black lashes lowered over her
sapphire colored blue eyes.

"I try to," she answered, unnerved by his open
admiration.

She had received precious little of it in the years since her
mother's death. To her cold, manipulating father and predatory husband, she was
nothing, often less than nothing. Never had any of them seen her as anything
more than a receptacle for their baser needs.

This man, though, had treated her with genuine concern and
respect since she had met him. To her amazement, she felt an unexpected crack
in the protective wall she had built around her lonely heart.

The encounter was brief, and after the two Templars departed,
Gabrielle turned to Hazir to question him about Lucien de Aubric.

"Brother Lucien is an uncommon man," her elder
friend elaborated. "Though he is a Templar, he has true concern for our
people. Like you, he has made many friends among us, but he also has some very
dangerous enemies. He is a warrior of much renown, and yet he walks easily
between both worlds here in this divided land. I am proud to call him
friend."

"He told me his mother was a Moor."

"Quite true. Though he was raised a Christian, he was
taught something of his mother’s Islamic religion, as well. I think that makes
it difficult for him at times."

"So he is a man of conscience and conviction?"

"He is that," the aging Arab replied without
hesitation. "He would be a good man to turn to for help, if one needed
it."

Gabrielle assumed the advice was meant for her. "He is a
religious man, a monk," she reminded her friend. "Templars are
supposed to have nothing to do with women. Did you not see how his fellow monk
appeared to disapprove of our conversation?"

Hazir smiled at his friend. "Lucien de Aubric is his own
man.”

+++

At the end of the week, Lucien decided to pay a visit to his
Hospitaller friend, Giles de Chancery. Motivated by his promise to come by, he
was looking forward to catching up with Brother Giles on what had transpired in
Jerusalem during his absence. His friend was a reliable source of information.
But in his heart, Lucien knew the real reason for his visit to the Hospitaller
preceptory. He wanted to see Gabrielle de Châtillon again. He wasn’t a man who
was dishonest with himself. Despite the dangerous nature of his interest in
her, he had not been able to put her from his mind.

She was a beautiful woman, and he was still a man beneath his
monk's robes. But he had admired beautiful women before, and though he had
strayed from his vows a couple of times, he had tried hard, for the most part,
to uphold them. Guy and Sibylla's court was full of lovely women. Many were
completely unscrupulous, too promiscuous and hedonistic to refrain from
tempting men of God. And he walked the corridors of the palace in Jerusalem too
frequently to go unnoticed.

But his vows meant something to him, and he had eventually
learned to be more determinedly disciplined. In his particular duties, though,
he could not avoid temptation the way his more protected brothers could. As the
Order’s spymaster, he moved among his secular brethren at will, both friend and
foe, gathering information to help defend the kingdom.

The Order of the Temple operated on impunity, answerable only
to the Pope himself, but in order to function effectively, it needed to know
not only what the Saracens were up to, but also what all the political factions
of Outremer were up to, as well.

After the conquest of Jerusalem in 1097, four Latin States had
been carved out of the region, Jerusalem, being the most important, then
Edessa, Antioch, and Tripoli. Now over eighty-five years later, the Christian
Kingdom of God stretched from Antioch in the far north to Ascalon in the south.
The coastal cities were in the hands of the Franks, but they had not been able
to expand their kingdom into Damascus, Jazira, or Egypt. There was never enough
fighting men, and always too much feuding between the nobility. The powerful
barons of the all the kingdoms reluctantly served a central throne in Jerusalem,
but they continually tried to wrest that power from the monarch.

When the kingdom was blessed with strong rulers, the barons
were quiet. When they were cursed with weak ones, like now, they struggled
mightily for superiority, each with their own selfish agenda. Then into the mix
came the churchmen; the bishops, the archbishops, and the patriarch of
Jerusalem, who was nearly as powerful as the Pope in Rome. Their interests were
sometimes divinely motivated, sometimes worldly motivated. The current patriarch,
Heraclius, was as temporal as they came. But, regardless of their motivation,
they always wanted a role to play in all political and military decisions. And,
as many a Grand Master of both military orders had eventually found out, there
was hell to pay if they ignored their prelate brothers.

Established within a decade or so after the seizure of
Jerusalem, the military orders considered themselves the only Latin standing
army in Palestine. Rarely were they in agreement about anything, but when
called to arms, they always fought, without fail, side-by-side.

For the past eighty-five years, waves of men from the West had
traveled to Palestine to free it from the infidel. Only a handful of lesser
nobility had stayed in the Levant after taking up the cross. They compromised a
meager third of the population, compared to the indigenous Orientals, Muslims,
Christians, and Jews.

The majority of Franks who landed on the shores of Outremer
came and went, uncommitted enough to settle in Palestine. All they really promoted
were the waves of Christian pilgrims that followed in their wake, thinking the
Holy Land was now safe to visit.

A few men and some of the frontier families, like Raymond III
of Tripoli, the Ibelins of Nablus, the Montferrats of Sidon, and the Courtneys
of Galilee believed that their relationships with the Muslims did not always
have to be rooted in conflict and warfare. Like them, Lucien believed they
could work a little harder toward peaceful coexistence. This worldly kingdom of
Christ did not have to flow red with the blood of martyrs, though there were
men on both sides who believed nothing else was possible.

As a whole, the Knights of the Temple of Jerusalem were such
men; fanatical supporters of military control of the Holy Land. Many of its
leaders believed the bloodier the conflict, the better. Lucien did not always
hold the same view, but as their chief intelligence officer, he was required to
spy on Christian and Muslim alike. He no longer worked undercover, behind enemy
lines, as he had done in the beginning when Master Torroja had assigned him the
task, but he traveled far and wide, managing and controlling the Order’s vast
network of spies.

He operated informants everywhere; at the court in Jerusalem,
in the homes of the nobility, the towns and villages, the ports, and the
various fortresses and houses of the military orders. His network stretched
into Saladin's camps and strongholds. Information was gathered from all over
the realm. He even had a contact at Rashid al Din Sinan’s headquarters in the
north. Not even the fanatical sect of Syrian Assassins or Hashshashin could
hide from his web of eyes and ears.

Sabotage was not the job Lucien had come to the Holy Land to
perform, but he excelled at it. He could easily pass for a Saracen when dressed
as one. He was nearly as dark as the native peoples with his black hair, dark
brown eyes, and dark golden skin. He spoke the languages of the region
fluently, and he was familiar with most of their customs and habits. He knew
the Koran as well as the Bible. He never traveled with a companion, the way all
of his brothers did. He did not tonsure his hair, nor grow his beard overly
long because he still traveled into enemy territory occasionally.

His life was a solitary one, and it had suited him well enough
for the most part, though he often felt torn between his dual heritages.

He had learned to respect his enemy. He called many Muslims
friends, and he understood and even sympathized with their hatred of the
occupation of their land. He was idealistic enough to wish for a better
relationship between the two races, but practical enough to know it probably
would not occur on this earth. They were too divided, despite men like Saladin,
who was more enlightened and merciful than his predecessors.

How could peace ever have a chance with men in command like
the current Grand Master of the Temple and Gabrielle's ambitiously greedy
husband, Reynald de Châtillon? And last year, they had lost the leadership of a
man Lucien had deeply respected, Baldwin IV. Despite his debilitating disease,
Baldwin had been a worthy King of Jerusalem. Even Saladin had respected him.
When not bed-ridden by his leprosy, he had led his countrymen with honor and
intelligence.

Unfortunately, the current king did not walk well in his brother-in-law’s
shoes. Crowned by his wife, Queen Sibylla, sister of Baldwin IV, this past
October after a bloodless coup, Guy of Lusignan was respected by few men in the
kingdom, most especially Lucien's friend Count Raymond of Tripoli.

Before Baldwin IV had died, he had made Raymond regent of his
underage nephew Baldwin V, Sibylla's sickly son. Awaiting word from Rome on who
would be the next King of Jerusalem, Raymond had tried to fulfill Baldwin IV's
wishes that Guy of Lusignan, Sibylla's second husband, not be put on the
throne. Then young Baldwin V had died this past August.

Raymond had sent the little king's body to be buried in
Jerusalem, while he stayed in Tiberius, the seat of his wife’s southern fief.
With the underhanded support of Gérard de Ridefort and Reynald de Châtillon,
Acre and Beirut were seized in Sibylla's name, while she and her knights met in
Jerusalem. The Templar Grand Master and the Lord of Oultrejourdan, Reynald de
Châtillon, had watched supportively while the Patriarch of Jerusalem,
Heraclius, had crowned Sibylla in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. She, in
turn, had then placed the crown of the kingdom on her husband’s head.

Her half-sister, Isabella, had been outwitted in her plot for
the throne, though at fourteen, her enthusiasm had been manufactured by a
second group within the kingdom that sought power. Nevertheless, that faction's
power evaporated when Isabella's comely youthful bridegroom made a secret
alliance with Guy and Sibylla in Jerusalem. Humphrey of Toron's defection ended
the rebellion and cemented the success of the coup.

Now, three months later, most of the opposing parties had made
their peace with the new rulers, although Raymond was still seething in
Tiberius, refusing to accept the powerful Court Party's triumph. It was rumored
that he was considering establishing a separate truce with Saladin. And, while
that was his right as Lord of Tiberius and Tripoli, it would be dangerous.