The Winter Knight, page 2
Clad now in the black of a sergeant, he had been given to Arnau to train, to take as a squire. There was a general feeling that the young knight had more than proved himself in that disaster at Constantinople, and Ramon had declared him every bit the knight of the Temple. Thus, finally he had been granted all those things that proclaimed him a full brother: his mantle, three horses, lance, and now a squire.
If only Felipe would follow instructions instead of trying to do what he thought was best. Arnau had to fight down that annoying little voice that suggested the older brothers had probably said almost exactly the same of him a few short years ago. Probably still did, in fact.
Felipe was looking longingly at the black and white shield with the perfectly painted red cross, as yet unmarked with dents and scratches, lying in the dirt ten paces from where they trained.
‘When you have mastered using a blade without falling over or trying to impale yourself, we’ll throw a shield into the training. Until then concentrate on what you have in hand. And let go with your left. How do you intend to wield sword and shield if you insist on holding the sword with both hands?’
Looking abashed once more, Felipe removed his left hand from the grip, putting it behind his back and balling it into a fist, where he would not be too tempted to use it. The sword dipped immediately, and Arnau remembered just how young and new the lad was. He might have muscles, grown large through years of labouring over the plough, but there was a difference in the type of strength a man needed for most labours and the strength needed to hold a sword forth for any length of time.
‘Two more tries and we shall take a break,’ he told Felipe with a touch of sympathy now in his tone. The lad smiled with relief.
The pair stepped back into position, facing one another fifty paces from the preceptory’s gate on the dusty lane between fields. A breeze whispered across the flat farmland, bringing the chill and the faint salt tang of the sea eight or nine miles south. Arnau shivered. It might still be relatively warm for November, but the cold still got to him the moment he stood still and the sweat cooled. Only a few birds gave desultory hungry croaks in the silence, no hum of summer bees and cicadas now.
‘All right, Felipe,’ he said, changing posture. ‘I shall give you an advantage, but I need you to finish and be prepared. I am going to close my eyes and you will try and strike me, though when you fail, be prepared for the consequences.’
‘But if I…’ the young man began.
Arnau was shaking his head. ‘If you wound me, then I do not deserve to be wearing this surcoat. Do not worry about me. Just concentrate on yourself. Attack me, and make sure to be ready this time, as there will be a counterstrike, and I will not hold back.’
He straightened, lowered his blade and closed his eyes.
He could hear Felipe, could even hear in the silence that followed a strange doubt and nervousness. He heard the creaks and shush of mail as the lad changed position and lifted his sword ready. He heard the distant whispered murmurs of Balthesar and Ramon, which made him grit his teeth. He took a deep breath. Lütolf would have been proud to see him now. He almost laughed at that. Who was he trying to kid? The old German would still have found something wrong with him to pull him up on.
He heard the sound of the disturbed grit as the young squire’s boot moved. He heard Felipe begin his attack. The lad was nine paces away. Arnau counted. Three. Two. One.
As Felipe leapt, sword coming out into a powerful lunge, Arnau brought his own blade up in a wide sweep from left to right, low to high. It connected with Felipe’s blade at chest height and knocked the sword aside. Arnau stepped to his right, turning. His eyes opened.
Felipe had fallen forward a little and was staggering, desperately trying to bring himself back into a position to defend against an attack. Arnau continued to bring his sword up and right, and then swung it back down and across with the speed of a striking cobra.
The young squire had to leap out of the way, and only just managed. Arnau had deliberately pulled his blow so that should Felipe fail to defend he would not break a leg, and yet the way the squire had stepped, he almost walked straight into the blade regardless.
Arnau flashed a look around at the older knights in the gate as he pulled back his sword and lowered it. Both were wincing, and Arnau felt the frustration rising once more at being watched so. He was half tempted to complain to the preceptrix that if they had time to watch himself and Felipe training, then they were slacking in some other duty somewhere. The mistress of Rourell would take them to task over it, he was sure.
Heaving in a breath and sweating once more, he stepped back. Felipe was straightening.
‘Once more. This time I shall allow you your strike, but watch for me upon your recovery. That is where you need to concentrate. “Therefore be ye ready, for in what hour ye guess not,”’ he quoted. ‘Matthew twenty-four.’
‘Isn’t that about the coming of the saviour?’ Felipe asked quietly.
‘In this case about the coming of the blade. Be ready.’
Felipe stepped away and straightened, grasping his sword in both hands. Arnau simply cocked an eyebrow until the lad’s left hand pulled away from the hilt as though it suddenly burned hot, and jammed it behind his back once more.
‘Come at me.’
Felipe did. To his credit, it was a good strike. He leapt forward but, with a speed and grace that surprised Arnau, halfway through the advance he changed foot with an odd skip and now came from a slightly different angle. Moreover, where his sword had been pulled back ready to slam forward in a simple lunge, as he changed footing, so did he change his grip, and the blade came in a sweep, right to left, at waist height.
Arnau blocked the blade with relative ease, but could feel the force of the blow from his fingertips to his shoulder, reverberating through the blade. Felipe quickly danced out of the way, and Arnau was on him, sword up and sweeping around at neck height.
Felipe was doomed. With no shield, all he had to save himself were his sword and his legs. His blade was too far down to parry, having not yet recovered from his low cut, and his footing was wrong to sidestep. Arnau had been extremely careful with his blow. The last thing he wanted to do was break the squire’s neck in training, but he really had to be more prepared for counterattacks.
Arnau’s blade came in, and he pulled the blow hard so that it would stop an inch or so from Felipe’s neck, but that neck wasn’t there by the time the blade approached. Arnau blinked. Unable to leap out of the way or parry in adequate time, Felipe had simply dropped below the strike.
He looked down. The squire’s blade had been low enough for his own counter, and the tip hovered threateningly a hand’s breadth from Arnau’s groin. He blinked. Heavens, but the lad had been quick.
‘Now that was a counterattack,’ Ramon said from the gate, and Arnau looked around irritably to see both knights clapping their hands in appreciation. ‘Perhaps you could teach Brother Vallbona it next time.’
Arnau felt his lip twitch in irritation and straightened, stepping back.
‘Excellent, Felipe. Much better, and ingenious at that. You have earned a good half hour’s rest now. Go deposit your gear in the dormitory and find yourself a cold drink and a seat somewhere. I will call for you in due course.’
The squire, grinning from ear to ear, rose and hurried back into the preceptory. As he passed through the gate between the older knights, Balthesar clapped his hand on the young man’s shoulder in approval.
Vallbona spat out more dust and gathered up his rag, wiping the dirt from his sword before sheathing it and striding back towards the arch.
‘He’s good,’ Ramon said. ‘For his tender years and lack of experience, he’s very good. In a year or so, he’ll be excellent. Better than any of us were at that age.’
Arnau nodded. The man was right, of course. Arnau still had the edge, but then he had more than a decade of practice over the lad. In a year Felipe might well be just as good as him. It was something about the young man’s combination of strength, speed and endurance, earned through years of farming, but also to do with confidence, which the lad seemed to be gaining daily.
He huffed.
‘Training would be a lot easier without an audience.’
‘There is so little entertainment to be had in winter,’ Balthesar smiled. ‘But we were not here on an idle whim. The preceptrix has asked for you.’
‘And it took the two most senior knights in the house to find me and deliver the news?’
‘So little entertainment,’ repeated Balthesar with a grin.
Arnau followed the two older knights into the preceptory, noting with a roll of the eyes that Felipe had paused on his way in to lean against the well and leaf through his copy of the Rule, searching for some new minutia of conventual life about which to worry. With an oddly paternal smile, he passed the lad and the belfry, heading past the church and into the chapter house, Ramon and Balthesar at his shoulders. He paused at the doorway.
‘Any reason I am not alone?’
‘Moral support,’ replied Balthesar, just as Ramon put in, ‘Curiosity.’
Sighing, Arnau entered the chapter house. If anything this large hall, which was in many ways the heart of the monastery and the centre of the preceptrix’s power, was now grander than it had been when he’d first arrived. After the siege that had damaged so much of the place, the rebuilding had been thorough, but there had been no real damage to the chapter house, barring a few scratches and dents in the doors. Regardless, Ermengarda d’Oluja, the undisputed mistress of Rourell, had had new cushions made for the stone benches that ran around the edge, and one of the new sergeants, who had proved to be a talented artist, had painted upon the rear wall a grand red tree, each branch carrying the name of one of the brothers or sisters of Rourell, living or departed. Ermengarda herself, of course, was the bole that supported it all. Lütolf was there, and Matteu, and everyone who had passed away in that awful battle. And on one, until recently empty, branch: Sebastian.
It still made Arnau twitch to see all those names, and the latter in particular. He had never touched a mace since that day in Constantinople, his favourite weapon lost to him for the horrific memories it carried.
The preceptrix sat in her high seat beneath the painted tree at the opposite side of the room, austere and yet in an odd way imperious, a woman holy and far removed from the base world of men, like some Madonna made flesh. The door to the church was closed, and apart from the preceptrix, the only other occupant was Jayme, another recent arrival to Rourell the previous year and now the house’s scribe and clerk.
At a glance from the preceptrix, Balthesar turned and closed the main door behind them, shutting out the winter sunlight and throwing the room into a deep gloom. As Arnau’s eyes adjusted they strode across the room to stand before the preceptrix, heads bowed in respect. He shivered once more. Now with exercise done, the chill of November was much more noticeable, especially away from the feeble warmth of the sun.
‘Vallbona, good,’ the preceptrix said. ‘I am afraid I have a somewhat laborious and tedious task for you, which will take you from our walls for a time.’
Arnau frowned. If pressed, he would have had to admit that he was starting to feel a little bored and trapped with conventual life after more than three years since their return from the east. Admittedly, his last two journeys had been more than a little eventful, searching a Moorish island realm with Balthesar and enduring the dreadful sack of Constantinople with Ramon, and yet the very idea of setting forth into the great unknown once more made him itch with anticipation. He tried to force down the sudden growing excitement. It was not seemly. Moreover, a brother of the Order should not seek for self-indulgence, and he knew that above all. Still…
Balthesar and Ramon were sharing a look.
‘It is, I am afraid, little more than the job of a courier or dispatch rider. I need something delivered, checked, and then hopefully returned.’
‘What of the rising threat at home, might I humbly ask?’ Arnau said quietly.
There had been a lull in the war with the Moor across Iberia as the Almohads secured their possessions, including Mayūrqa, sadly. The new Almohad Caliph, al-Nasir, had temporarily turned his attentions away from his Christian enemies to put his own house in order in the Maghrib. Consequently, the kingdoms of Iberia had breathed easy for a while, regrouping and preparing. But the Maghrib, it was said, was now settled. It was also said that al-Nasir once more turned his gaze north, towards Aragon, Castile and Leon. Rourell, as every other noble or religious house, knew that the time was coming for war once more. That the Almohads would soon begin their final push to control the whole peninsula. The end days were coming for one people, for Iberia could only be one or the other: Christian or Moorish.
It seemed odd to send away a knight, even a relatively young one, on some administrative duty when the enemy might turn north at any time.
The preceptrix nodded her understanding. ‘It is the considered opinion of the Aragonese court and our mother house both that when al-Nasir decides upon his return to Iberia, the time it will take for his forces to assemble and prepare will be more than a year. We will have adequate warning. And while your task will take you far from home, it should not take a great length of time. I anticipate your return by the spring. I will, of course, keep your two brothers here at Rourell, against an unexpected call to arms.’
Arnau still fretted. ‘But Brother Jayme—’ he began.
‘No, Brother Arnau. Jayme is a valued member of this house, but his experience with arms is limited. This is the job of a knight, for the documents are valuable, and must be well guarded.’
Now Arnau frowned again. Jayme stepped towards him at a gesture from the preceptrix. He held out a letter, sealed with wax and bearing the twin knightly figures sharing a horse – the Order’s symbol. He peered at it. It did not seem much to require a knight’s protection. He looked up.
‘No, Vallbona, this is not your burden. This is simply instructions for the clerk at the mother house at Barberà. You will take your squire and all you require for a considerable journey. Jayme will supply you with appropriate funds to last. Journey to Barberà, and there use this document to retrieve a set of deeds. The mother house is, of course where we lodge records of all donations to the Order. There you will acquire the documents relating to the gifts of Lütolf von Ehingen.’
Arnau blinked. What in the world could those documents be needed for? As if reading his mind, the preceptrix leaned forward and gestured at the letter.
‘We have received word through the mother house that Brother Lütolf’s nephew, at a place named Renfrizhausen in Swabia, has produced a will, purported to be that of our beloved and missed brother, which promises to his nephew those lands currently held by the Order. Needless to say, the Order is far from keen to return to the family lands that have been in our possession for years, but there are niceties involved. The Order has little influence in the lands of the Germans, and they are a strange and unknown people. Their relationship with the west is troubled, their king often at odds with the great kings of Aragon, France and England.’
‘Surely, sister, our status as Knights of the Lord must overcome mere lay divisions?’ Arnau said.
‘The division goes deep, Vallbona. Our Order fought in strength alongside England and France in the Holy Land, while the Germans largely turned back at their emperor’s death en route, and few of our people helped them in their difficult time in Turk lands. Some of the eastern lords have close alliances with the Teutonic Order at the cost of our own connections. Our holdings within the German Empire are obscure and small, and favour is given to their own orders.’
Ermengarda leaned back in her seat. ‘Even their Crusaders usually join a German-only order, shunning the established ones. We must be seen to abide by the very letter of the law. If it turns out to be true that our departed brother had, indeed, promised those lands to his nephew, and our bequest has been superseded, then we will be forced to relinquish them, which creates many headaches.’
Arnau nodded. He could imagine how those lands and funds had been moved around, divided up, changed and exchanged in twenty years. They almost certainly were not in Rourell’s keeping, for a start. He sucked his teeth.
‘I am no lawyer, Preceptrix. Not like Brother Ramon.’
Ramon snorted. ‘This is very straightforward, Vallbona,’ the older knight replied. ‘As long as the documents are genuine, then it is simply a matter of dates. If their documents are real, then they will be sealed with the stamp of Lütolf von Ehingen, which remains with his few personal possessions that are kept in this very preceptory. If they bear any other seal, then they are fakes. If they are genuine, then they will also be dated. Very simply the latest date holds the precedence. If this new will postdates our bequeath and it is genuine, then we must give up the lands and finances to the nephew. If the date on the document you carry is newer, then we retain the bequest, and the family have no claim.’
Arnau straightened. ‘This is a great deal of responsibility.’
‘That it is, Brother Vallbona,’ the preceptrix agreed. ‘You are one of my knights. One of a trinity in whom I place all my trust and faith. Do not tell me that my trust and faith are misplaced. I charge you with this task. Collect the documents from Barberà, convey them to Renfrizhausen and compare them there with the new will of this nephew, one Rüdolf von Ehingen de Rottenburg. With the grace of God, our cause will be upheld and you will be able to return immediately with our holdings intact. If they are not to be held so, then you will leave our records with the family along with our apologies and return empty-handed. Jayme will find you Brother Lütolf’s preserved personal effects, which should perhaps be returned to the family.’
Arnau nodded slowly and straightened.
Swabia. Far-off German lands, away in the north. He shivered, and only partly with excitement.
