‘Oh — I am sure it is nothing.’
‘Tell us, anyway,’ Thibault invited. ‘It cannot be more far-fetched than some of my ideas.’
She returned his smile. ‘I wonder whether something even worse would have happened if this English monk had stayed with his brothers. If they had each received a fatal blow and he had escaped injury, he would have been the only Hospitaller left to carry out the mission.’
‘The prisoner exchange, you mean?’ Josse asked.
‘Yes. You said, Thibault, that the knights and men of your Order are renowned for their obedience?’
‘Yes, indeed.’
‘Then as the sole survivor, would not this Englishman have taken upon himself the task of fulfilling the mission?’
‘Ye-es,’ Thibault said slowly.
‘The knights and the enemy had both suffered many casualties,’ she said, excited. ‘You said, Thibault, that the surviving enemy removed their dead and injured?’
‘That is correct,’ Thibault confirmed.
‘It must have been a terrible fight,’ she said. ‘In the midst of it, the Englishman could have seen that although it was too late to help his brethren, he might still get the prisoner away to be exchanged at a later date. Wasn’t that the purpose of the night’s excursion?’
Thibault was thinking. ‘I suppose it could have happened like that,’ he murmured. ‘It is possible that the English monk regarded the order to guard the prisoner as more important than attending to his brethren.’ His eyes lit up. ‘He might even have been ordered to take the prisoner away — perhaps that was what Brother James was trying to tell me!’ He turned to Helewise. ‘Thank you, my lady. You have given me something to think about while I lie here.’ He added something else; she was not sure she caught the words but it was enough to make her feel a sudden heat in her face. She turned away and suggested to Josse that they leave Thibault to rest.
She thought he said, ‘I was wrong about you. You are a woman to reckon with.’
She would have to confess and do penance for the sudden rush of pride the remark had brought in its wake…
Outremer, September 1194
He had to get away.
Those few who were left alive of the enemy had removed their dead and wounded and gone. He had heard their wails as they had ridden away. The servant with the deep cut to his cheek had stemmed the blood and managed to get the fat man to his feet and outside to the horses. The fat man, groaning and wheezing, had been clutching his right arm, into which Brother Andreas’s sword had bitten deeply as the fat man drew his vicious, curved knife and sliced into Brother Theobald’s throat. The fat man would live; Theobald would not.
Brother James was still alive — just — although the poor man could not have very long. The young man knelt beside him, his face close to James’s mouth, for he could see that James was trying to talk.
‘You must — go,’ he whispered.
‘No! I will look after you until help comes!’
‘NO. That is an order and you will obey me. Take the prisoner and go.’
‘But-’
Brother James steeled himself for a last effort. ‘If you stay here, others will come and they may arrive before our brethren come looking for us. Then you too will die, the prisoner will be lost and, most important, that which you now carry will not reach its destination.’
‘I can’t leave you!’ he whispered.
‘You must,’ Brother James said. ‘God bless you, my brother, and keep you safe.’ Then, with one last direct look into the young monk’s eyes, his lids fluttered down and he turned his face away.
It was an order, the young monk thought in anguish. I have been given a direct order by a senior monk. I must obey.
They had to get away…
He looked across to the prisoner, huddled on the sand with his thin arms clutched around his raised knees and moaning softly. He strode over and took him not ungently by the arm.
‘Are you hurt?’ he asked in Arabic. The boy shook his head. ‘Then we must leave.’
The boy stood up and trotted along at his side. Outside, all the horses had gone — the wounded servant must have cut them loose after he had grabbed mounts for himself and the fat man — but the young monk stood quite still and presently he heard the sound of a tentative neigh. He called out softly the words he had heard the native grooms use and out of the darkness a group of ten or twelve horses slowly appeared. Some of them were the Hospitallers’ mounts but he passed them over, instead selecting two of the smaller, lighter horses of the enemy which travelled so swiftly in desert conditions.
He told the youth to mount up. He put his hand on his leather pouch to make sure the contents were secure, then he patted the horse he had selected for himself, put his foot in the stirrup and mounted. He paused to lengthen the stirrup leathers — he was considerably longer in the leg than the animal’s former owner — and then, with one last look at the silken tent, kicked his heels into his horse’s sides and, with the youth at his side, galloped off into the night.
Part Three
Nine
Josse was with the Abbess in the refectory finishing the noon meal. They were seated apart from the rest of the community, discussing Thibault’s story.
‘I keep returning to the conclusion that this runaway English Hospitaller and the Saracen whom Kathnir and Akhbir are hunting just have to be together,’ Josse said. ‘And I feel sure that the man calling himself John Damianos is Fadil.’
‘Fadil?’
‘The prisoner who was to be exchanged.’ He frowned. ‘Although I thought Fadil was a younger man.’
‘The meeting in the desert was two years ago,’ the Abbess pointed out. ‘Fear, privation and a hard road can greatly age a man in two years. And you never saw John Damianos’s face.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Well, then. For the time being, let us work on the principle that the runaway monk and his charge — Fadil, going under the name of John Damianos — have travelled all the way from the desert outside Margat to the south- east corner of England.’
‘Where are they going?’ Josse demanded. ‘Why would the Hospitaller bring the prisoner so far? The obvious thing to do was go straight back to Margat, return the prisoner and make a full report.’
She thought about this. Eventually she said, ‘Thibault suggested that the prisoner’s family might have tried to cheat the Hospitallers so that they went home with both Fadil and whatever they were offering in exchange for him. Is it not possible’ — she had softened her voice to a whisper — ‘that the Knights Hospitaller did the same?’
‘Gervase suggested something similar,’ he whispered back. ‘When I protested that the Hospitallers were renowned for their honesty and dependability, he replied that it only takes one man to instigate treachery.’
‘I agree,’ she said. ‘If the English monk knew that the tragedy in the desert had been caused because a senior Hospitaller had decided to cheat both his brethren and the prisoner’s family, then returning meekly to Margat and the monk who had sent his brethren into danger would have been the last thing he would do.’
‘It’s possible,’ Josse said reluctantly, ‘although I still find it hard to believe the great Order of the Knights Hospitaller would behave so shabbily.’
‘One of them might,’ she persisted. ‘Keep an open mind, Sir Josse. As to why the English monk made for
