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Authors: Mario Reading

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TWELVE

Try as he might, Hartelius found it impossible to ignore the two girls concealed behind the tapestry leading to the princess’s bedchamber.

‘I know nothing of love, Princess.’

‘But you have been married. Did you not love your wife?’

Hartelius had never in his life been asked such a question by a woman. And certainly not in the presence of two of her servants. He looked pained, as if the princess was asking him for a loan of money he did not possess but which he still felt duty bound to give her. His eyes swivelled across to the tapestry again.

The princess caught his look. ‘Both of you. Get out.’

‘But, Princess. . .’ said a disembodied voice.

‘Get out, I say. You have lovers amongst the camp followers. Go and visit them.’

The two girls crept out from behind the tapestry and sidestepped towards the pavilion entrance. Each one curtseyed before backing out through the opening.

‘That was ill done, Princess. There will be talk.’

‘There is always talk
de bas en haut
. What are they going to do? Ride three weeks back to Mainz and report to my brother that I am entertaining the commander of my knight escort without a chaperone?’

‘No. But they might send a message by courier from the next town.’

‘And what will my brother do? Send men after me to take me back to the nunnery?’

‘No, Princess. He will send men after me.’

Both fell silent for a while, looking at each other.

‘Tell me something, Hartelius. Tell me something you did in battle.’

‘But I thought you didn’t want to hear about war?’

‘I lied.’

Hartelius had encountered very few women during the course of his life. And certainly none like the princess. When a man told him something, he assumed it to be true. Otherwise why say it? But the princess seemed to say things purely for effect. As though she was trying them out on him for size.

It occurred to him then that she, too, had had very little to do with the opposite sex during the course of her eighteen years of life. She had been sent to the nunnery immediately following the king’s death, eight years before. Now, aged eighteen, she was probably better educated than he was – better educated even than his late wife – but infinitely more sheltered. She would have been taught Latin, Greek and French. She would have studied philosophy and the
humanities. She would have read the classics. And now she wanted to hear about war. Well, he would tell her about peace.

‘Very well then, Princess. I will tell you a true story. Eight years ago – three weeks before the king, your father’s, death – I was involved in a skirmish.’

‘What is a skirmish?’

‘A small battle. What you might call a minor attack. They happen all the time on campaign.’

The princess stood up and walked over to her marriage chest, which doubled as a sideboard. She poured them both a little wine from a pewter flagon. She carried the two chargers across to Hartelius. He made as if to stand up but she motioned him back down again. Once he had his wine, she sank to the floor at his feet, crossed her legs, and looked up at him expectantly.

Hartelius took a deep breath. The princess’s perfume wafted up from below him. He was aware of the litheness of her body. Of her youth. Of the burnished copper sheen of her hair. All these things he forcibly tried to damp from his mind. But his mind wouldn’t listen to him. He looked down at her, as she sat cross-legged below him, and he lost sight of himself. Of what he was. Of what he represented. A sort of madness overtook him.

‘That day, after a long pursuit, I found myself separated from my companions. I had been pursuing one man. A wounded Saracen. He had been struck a glancing blow on the shoulders by one of our pike men. I had seen him fall forwards, clutching his horse’s mane, and then ride off. He was mounted on the
most beautiful destrier I had ever seen. I wanted this horse. I wanted to kill him and take this horse for my own. Such a thing is permitted under Templar Law, Princess. I was within my rights.’

‘So you followed him?’

‘Out of greed. Yes. I followed him.’

‘Horses mean so much to you?’

‘Horses mean everything to a knight. They are our eyes and ears. They are our soul.’

‘Is this why you don’t need women?’

Hartelius met the princess’s gaze full on. ‘We need women. I need women. There is no link between what occurs on the battlefield and what happens off it. A man is only a man, Princess. Although certain of our clerics would have you think otherwise.’

‘And a horse is only a horse.’ This time it was the princess who turned her gaze away.

‘Yes. The horse.’ Hartelius’s mind turned inwards. Back to that time, eight years before. ‘I have never spoken of this. There are aspects to this story that would not be forgiven if they were told in certain quarters. Maybe I should not continue?’

‘Continue, Hartelius. You have my word that your tale will go no further.’ Still the princess would not look at him.

‘I rode. Far too far and far too fast. I was greedy. I had forgotten caution in my lust for my prize. I had forgotten good sense. I came to a valley. A fertile place in an area that was otherwise parched and blasted. A river ran through the
valley. Trees climbed up either bank. Along the river lay a pasture. It was not far from dawn. Mist was rising still. I could make out the passage of the horse I was pursuing through the grasses as clearly as I can make out your face. The line of your neck.’ Hartelius felt the madness come upon him again. He forced it away. ‘My mare was exhausted. I climbed off her and led her to the riverbank. I tethered her there and left her to forage. I went to where the trail left by the Saracen and his horse began. I followed it for a short while on foot, looking for spoor. I could see the line the horse had made through the grasses snaking far away in front of me. I was safe. Every few yards, blood gouts coated the downtrodden herbage. My lust was leaving me. I had become aware of just how far I had travelled in my pursuit of the Saracen. Of the danger I had put myself in.’

‘Did you turn back?’

‘No, Princess. I was very young. My companions had seen me ride off after the wounded warrior. I did not wish them to laugh at me. I wanted to astonish them. To prove my manhood to them by killing the Saracen and returning to the camp with my prize.’

‘So you continued?’

‘No.’

‘Why so?’

‘My horse, standing on the riverbank, whickered. There was an answering whinny. The Saracen’s horse came galloping back down the valley. Riderless. He had smelt my mare, you see, who was in season. Caught her scent on the wind. He
was a stallion. He had thrown his weakened rider and was returning to court her. This was clear to me.’

‘He could smell her? That far?’

‘Just as I can smell you, Princess. It is a natural thing. Between animals. And also between men and women. Otherwise how would the world procreate?’ Hartelius knew that he was edging ever closer to the precipice. But he no longer cared.

The princess trembled. Yet still she looked away.

Hartelius lost himself in looking at her. He could see both her and the valley he spoke of. Each was as real to him as the other. ‘I took out my sword and followed the blood spoor left by the Saracen. It didn’t take me long to find him. He had drawn himself up against a tree. He held his scimitar in his left hand. No Muslim fights with the left hand. I knew that his right must be injured. That the blow on the back had damaged his fighting side, and that the fall from his horse had probably weakened him further.’

‘You killed him?’

‘I circled him, watching. Fighting men are trained to sum up their opponents. Often it is what makes the difference between dying and living. This man was close to exhaustion. As I watched him he slid down the tree and lay pressed against its trunk, his scimitar still held towards me.’

‘“Yield,”’ I said, “and I will not kill you.”

‘“I cannot,” he said.

‘I watched him for some time. He had a beautiful face. Noble. Open. The face of a man I should like to call my
friend. I approached a little closer to him. He no longer had the strength to raise his scimitar to fend me off. I had only to wait. It was simply a matter of time.’

‘Then?’

‘I dropped my sword and walked towards him. I cannot tell you why I did this. I still do not know. I brushed his scimitar aside with my hand and helped him stretch forwards, onto the ground. I removed his cape. Inspected his chainmail. Neither of us said a word. It was as if we were living in a place outside time itself. Outside the world’s envelope.’

‘Is such a thing possible?’

‘It is possible.’ Hartelius laid one hand on the princess’s neck. He caressed her hair and her shoulders, lightly, as you would caress a child. ‘The pike had driven through the linkage in his mail and damaged his right shoulder, here. . .’ Hartelius touched the princess’s back ‘. . . to the left of the shoulder blade. I made a pad with moss from a nearby tree and packed it into the wound. The Saracen was no longer fully conscious. I took his scimitar and drove it into the ground near to my sword. Later, when I had finished tending to his wounds, I collected our horses. His stallion had mounted my mare. Such a thing was clear from the condition of her hindquarters. Now they were both still. Grazing together. At peace. That night I chanced a fire. The valley was closed. What you would call a combe. It would have needed a man to walk his horse at the very top of the ridge to see the glow. And still the Saracen slept.’

‘And your companions? Back at the camp?’

‘I knew they must think me dead.’

Hartelius’s hand was still resting on the princess. She was not evading it. Once, even, she raised her own hand and touched his lightly with her fingers.

‘I felt as if I and the Saracen were in an enchanted place. Outside the war. Outside the madness of the faiths we both represented. I too slept, knowing that if he woke, he might kill me. But I knew that he would not. At that moment we were one. One soul. One unity. In the morning, when he awoke, he could move a little. I sat him up against the tree and gave him some of my biscuit and a little water. We broke bread together.

‘“You wish for my horse,” he said. “I can see it in your eyes. You must take him. As a gift from me. For you have given me life.”

‘I raised the Saracen and placed him high into the saddle of his destrier. He bent forwards at the waist like an old man.

‘“I have your horse,” I said. “Inside mine. Last night he took my mare. I can wait eleven months.”

‘He laughed. I handed him his scimitar. He sat for a long moment looking down at me.

‘“Why?” he said. “Why did you not kill me?”

‘“I would have been killing myself. Such a thing is a sin, is it not?”

‘He laughed once more and sheathed his sword.

‘“My men are camped all around this valley. It is a miracle you were not discovered. I am their commander. You are young. I would be worth much to you in ransom.”

‘“You are worth more to me than any ransom.”

‘The Saracen nodded. “I shall call them off. Leave by the way you came. You will be safe. I promise you.”

‘He took my hand. We kissed, as brothers would.

‘“Your name?”

‘“Johannes von Hartelius. Of Sanct Quirin.”

‘“My name is Amir Maan Ibn Fakhr-al-Din. Of Baakleen. In the Chouf. Remember or forget. The choice is yours.”

‘He rode slowly away. My mare called after his stallion, and the stallion called back. I mounted the mare and rode back towards our camp. I knew his men would not pursue me. I knew that I was safe.’

‘And your mare? Did she have her foal?’

‘Oh yes. I am riding him now. He is seven years old and in his prime. He looks just like his father.’

The princess took Hartelius’s hand in hers. ‘You smell of him. However hard you wash, you still smell of horses.’

‘I am sorry, Princess.’

‘Don’t be. I like it.’

Hartelius no longer knew or cared what he was doing. Given his birth, he knew exactly the degree of mild flirtation the
hohe Minne
tradition allowed him. He was already way beyond it.

He dropped to his knees beside the princess. She was looking up at him – meeting his gaze now, equal to equal. Her eyes were large and all-encompassing – they seemed to drink him into their centres as if he were diving into a deep well. He kissed her and she responded. He lay her on the floor
of the pavilion and lost himself in her scent and the tender touch of her arms about him.

‘Why, Princess? Why?’

‘I asked you to tell me of love.’

‘But I told you of war.’

‘No, Hartelius. You told me of love.’

THIRTEEN

Hartelius visited the princess every evening after that. The moment she heard his step she would send her handmaidens back to their lovers so as to be able to entertain her own. They would talk. Kiss. Hold each other. After dining together, he would return to the camp to do his round of the pickets. Then, later, when night came, he would return to the princess’s pavilion through the darkness of the camp to lie with her. His men would look the other way. There was no point trying to disguise what was happening. A moveable camp is a busy place. There are guards, blacksmiths, cooks and camp followers. Coopers, seamstresses and leatherworkers. Fires burn. Braziers glow.

Hartelius and the princess were indulging in a sort of madness, one with the other. Only people in their position could think to be so blatant. Hartelius was the commander of the column and the Guardian of the Holy Lance. The princess was the sister of the king. As long as the column kept moving,
their affair could continue with relative impunity. But they were storing up trouble for themselves and both of them knew it. Neither cared.

Two weeks into their alpine crossing, somewhere near the Brenner Pass, the column was attacked by Italian
banditti
. Despite the explicitness of his indulgences, Hartelius had somehow managed to maintain the loyalty of his knights. Perhaps it was the otherworldliness of his infatuation? The near sanctity of his position as the Lance carrier? For whatever reason, his Templar knights fought nobly, despite the odds against them. The
banditti
were guerrilla fighters – mountain men. Used to dealing with merchants and their wagon trains. Soft targets.

The knights drove them off for the loss of seven of their number. Fifteen camp followers were also killed, and two of the women stolen, including one of the princess’s handmaidens.

At one point in the skirmish, Hartelius had placed himself in front of the princess’s pavilion, burning tents all around him, the dead and dying calling on God to save them, and had raised his sword high above his head, as a Viking berserker will, and had run at the approaching enemy, with no thought for his own life, but only that of the princess.

Three
banditti
had marked him out – men used to fighting as a team – but they had wilted beneath Hartelius’s onslaught. They had merely been seeking booty – their souls were not involved in the fight. To Hartelius, death was a small price to pay for his annexation of another man’s intended bride. He left it up to God whether he would live or die. The lengths of the odds he faced seemed somehow apposite.

He killed first one, then another of his assailants. Twice he was struck from behind, but his chainmail deflected the blows. A third time he was caught on the neck, near the trapezius muscle. He felt his arm go limp, and switched hands, as he had so often trained himself to do. The third
bandito
, sensing weakness, attacked low. Hartelius parried and dropped to one knee. He made as if to fall forwards and the
bandito
lunged. Hartelius feinted to one side and the man hesitated for one fatal second, uncertain what was happening. Hartelius scythed anti-clockwise with his sword arm and cut the
bandito
’s leg to the bone. The
bandito
fell and Hartelius lunged across the man’s upper body, his sword nethermost. The dead weight of him as he dropped, confident that his chainmail would protect him from his own sword edge, was enough to almost sever the man in two. Hartelius lay on top of his assailant. He could feel the blood pulsing from his neck wound onto the ground.

He rolled away and tried to rise to one knee, but he could not. The princess ran from the safety of her pavilion, a dagger held out before her. She crouched by Hartelius and feverishly searched his body for wounds. His eyes were wild with looking for other assailants. Two of his knights, seeing their commander down and their princess out in the open and with no cover, made a shield round Hartelius, while the princess tried to staunch his wound.

Later, when the skirmish died down, they carried Hartelius into the princess’s pavilion and laid him on her bed. The bleeding, by this time, had stopped, thanks to a pad the princess had made of part of her shift, which she had tightened
in place by using her dagger as a tourniquet handle and her ornamental leather belt as a strap. The
bandito
’s sword cut had struck no artery, or Hartelius would have been dead. His wound was purely muscular.

The princess, as skilled a seamstress as all young ladies at the convent were, cleaned the cut with Rhenish wine and sewed it together with Persian silk from her depository. With the aid of the two Templar knights she stripped Hartelius of his chainmail, and then later, when they were alone, she took off his cambric shirt and sheepskin breeches and climbed into bed beside him, warming his fever-ridden body against hers.

The princess’s party remained where they were for three days, burying their dead, tending to their wounded, and regrouping. On the final day, Hartelius, still weak as a kitten, emerged from the princess’s pavilion to thank his men, and those camp followers who remained alive, for their loyalty. He handed out money to the injured, and small gifts to those who had distinguished themselves. All knew that the princess had been tending their commander personally, in her pavilion, but none dared speak openly of it. It was as if the princess’s guilt in betraying the man she was destined to marry might infect anyone who publicly acknowledged it.

This silence carried over even to the remaining Knights Templar, many of whom stood in awe of Hartelius’s insane feat of arms. For one knight, in only partial armour, to overcome and kill three of the enemy, who were attacking him simultaneously, was beyond thought. The only possible
answer was that the Holy Lance had protected their leader and had made his victory possible. But what did this say about his conduct with the princess? Was God condoning it? If not, why had He allowed Hartelius to live, when any normal man, in similar circumstances, would have died?

This uncertainty continued on the far side of the Alps and down through Padua to Venice. Part of it stemmed from the fact that no priest had been detailed to travel with the princess. It had doubtless been assumed by the king that one would have been provided at the instigation of the Abbess of Rupertsberg. But the princess had been so adamant about leaving on the very eve of Hartelius’s arrival, and the king’s orders so very fluid, that no vicar of God had been allocated. This alone had facilitated Hartelius and the princess’s affair. And the continued absence of such a figure now facilitated its prolongation.

A Venetian merchant ship had been ordered, by advance courier, to be laid to and provisioned in expectation of the princess’s party. The ship had been ready to sail for two weeks now, its captain provided with letters of marque enabling him to engage any enemy vessel that might dare to interfere with his itinerary via Dubrovnik, Modon, Candia, and finally Famagusta, to Acre.

Hartelius’s wound had healed well in the five weeks that spanned the
banditti
’s attack and their arrival in Venice. More letters now awaited him from the king. A second marriage chest, far larger than the first, awaited the princess. It was a gift from the princess’s intended husband, the Margrave
Adalfuns von Drachenhertz. The marriage chest, which had arrived by sea from Outremer, was in painted leather, with various scenes etched into the front. A rider with a falcon. A rider hunting. A Crusader knight killing a Saracen enemy. A queen on horseback with a scourge in her hand.

‘Is that meant to be me?’ asked the princess, pointing to the queen.

‘I fear so,’ said Hartelius.

‘You fear so?’ said the princess.

‘I know so,’ said Hartelius.

‘But why am I carrying a scourge?’

‘It is meant to be symbolical,’ said Hartelius. ‘Your future husband is trying to tell you something. Something along the lines of “when you marry me you will enjoy unbridled power”.’ He forbore to say ‘and maybe even become Queen of Jerusalem one day’, but he knew that this was the hidden subtext of the margrave’s message. The man was renowned throughout greater Germany both for his relentless ambition and for his cold-heartedness. He would not embark on a Crusade unless he had something significant to gain from it. Such as a kingdom.

Despite such reminders, both lovers found it next to impossible to acknowledge the true purpose of their journey. Whenever something untoward slipped out, or whenever events took over and imposed themselves on the pair, neither one nor the other would confront the reality of their situation. There was always more time. More travelling to be done. More facts to be ignored.

Venice itself was the most perfect distraction. La Serenissima was a maelstrom of different nationalities. It was, in addition, the source of ninety per cent of all European trade. Complete unto itself.

Hartelius took lodgings for the princess and his men, arguing that he and his party would need time to prepare for what could prove to be a lengthy and dangerous voyage. The captain cavilled – his secondary trading mission was already running late.

But one did well not to alienate the sister of the man who would soon be Holy Roman Emperor. Such seeming slights had the habit of catching up with a man and destroying him further down the line.

The captain reluctantly agreed to postpone the voyage for an extra week. He immediately returned to his mistress’s arms. While the princess returned to Hartelius’s.

BOOK: The Templar Inheritance
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