church.
Josse and John Damianos were put in adjoining beds. Nursing nuns stripped them, washed them and dressed them in clean linen shifts, careful not to disturb their wounds more than necessary. Josse noticed that John tried to keep a hand on the strap of his leather satchel and as soon as the nuns had finished, he picked it up and put it on the bed. The infirmarer came into the recess and gave both men a thorough examination.
After her first close look at her patients’ wounds she met Josse’s eyes and said, ‘I believe I recognize the skilful hand that tended you.’
‘Aye.’
Sister Euphemia gave a brisk nod. ‘What luck that you were nearby when your urgent need arose.’
To which, Josse thought wearily, the only response was to say ‘Aye’ again.
But he noticed a frown on Sister Euphemia’s face as she put her hand on John’s forehead. She said bluntly, ‘You, young man, have a slight fever. I shall give you a sedative. You, Sir Josse, could do with a good rest as well. I shall send word to the Abbess that I would prefer you not to have visitors before tomorrow morning.’
John looked aghast. ‘But I must talk to Paradisa!’
The infirmarer looked at him compassionately. ‘And she is just as eager to talk to you. But you will both have to wait.’ With that she left the recess, drawing the curtains together very pointedly after her.
‘She means it, I’m afraid,’ Josse said quietly.
‘And Abbess Helewise will do as she says?’
‘In matters concerning the health of Sister Euphemia’s charges, aye, she will.’
Silence fell. A nun came in with John’s sedative and put it beside him. ‘Drink it all,’ she said as she turned to go. ‘I shall be back for the empty mug.’
John looked at it. Then he threw it under his bed.
‘You must take your medicine!’ Josse whispered urgently. ‘You have a fever!’
‘It is but slight,’ John said. ‘I’ve had fevers before and re covered. I can’t possibly sleep, Josse. If I am forbidden to speak to Paradisa, then I must talk to you.’
Josse looked into the light eyes, now clouded with fever and with anxiety. Knowing there was no alternative, he said, ‘What about?’
‘I’ve told you, or you’ve guessed, much of my story,’ John began, ‘and now I shall tell you the rest. Well, most of it,’ he amended, ‘for the last piece is for another to hear first. You know, Josse,’ he went on before Josse could query that, ‘how I went to Outremer with Gerome de Villieres and left his service to fight with the Hospitallers, meeting up with Gerome later and escorting him to his kinswoman, where I met Paradisa. You know I was involved in that prisoner exchange and had to abandon my brethren to escape with Fadil and the incredible thing that was to have paid for him.’
‘Aye,’ Josse agreed. ‘All of that is clear, as are the identities and the purposes of the three groups that pursued you back to England.’
‘England,’ John said softly. ‘Yes. It had to be England.’
‘Why?’
‘I will explain, but not yet. For now, let me tell you how I escaped death in the desert when all my brethren died.’ He smiled grimly. ‘It was quite simply because of childhood greed.’
‘What?’
‘When I was a little boy I stole a batch of marigold, saffron and cinnamon cakes and ate every single one. Not only was I punished but I was sick for the rest of the day and ever since I have not been able to abide the smell of cinnamon, let alone eat or drink anything flavoured with it. Out in the desert they gave us poison, Josse; the fat man’s smiling servants handed round pretty glasses of a cinnamon-flavoured drink and every monk but I drank it. Hisham intended to kill us all. He had only offered his treasure for Fadil to make absolutely sure we agreed to the exchange. He never intended us to take it away.’
‘You did not consume the drink?’
‘No, I poured it away in the sand beneath the rugs and when the servants offered more, I held up my empty glass and then poured that away too.’
‘It has been suggested that the Knights Hospitaller also intended to deceive,’ Josse said. ‘Was that why you fled? Because you could not trust your own Order with either Fadil or this treasure offered for him?’
‘Yes. But Josse, strictly speaking they are not my Order. I never took my vows.’
‘Then why,’ Josse hissed, leaning close, ‘have those two Hospitallers lying there at the other end of the infirmary gone to such extraordinary lengths to catch you?’ Light dawned in a flash and he said, ‘They aren’t after you at all, are they?’
And John Damianos patted his satchel and said, ‘No.’
Josse leaned back against his pillows. ‘You have to tell me what it is,’ he said. Or else, he added silently, my intense curiosity might just kill me. ‘Whatever it takes, whatever promises of secrecy you have to break, I must know.’ Turning his head, he fixed John with a piercing glare.
‘Yes, I appreciate that,’ John said quickly, ‘and you of all people have earned the right to be told.’ He paused, as if deciding exactly where to begin, and then said, ‘There were two special reasons why they selected me for the desert mission. One of them was that I was unavowed — not one of them — and therefore expendable. The other… Once again, it refers to my childhood. I was taught to read and write, Josse, and those skills are rare outside the ranks of the clerics. So there I was, the very person the Hospitallers needed for the mission that night. I was ordered to join the group as night fell and we rode out to the meeting place. Then as we all sat down, something extraordinary happened: my commanding officer turned to me, handed me a piece of parchment, a quill and a brass pot of ink and, nodding in the direction of the fat man on the divan, he said quietly, “When the fat man starts to speak, write down exactly what he says.”
‘I sat there straining my ears to catch every word. The fat man was reading from a manuscript and he made no attempt to speak slowly or clearly and I was scribbling faster than I had ever done in my life before. I was fervently hoping for the chance to write out a fair copy before handing it over, otherwise nobody would have made any sense of it at all.’
‘It must have been nerve-wracking,’ Josse said. Barely able to write, he readily understood the demands and the horrors of John’s task.
‘The main problem was that although I recognized most of the individual words, together they made no sense. Many of them were Latin words. I did not try to understand but merely scrawled them down just as the fat man spoke them. I kept thinking, if only I could have a respite! A few moments to go over what I had written so far and try to extract some meaning! If I’d had an inkling of what it was about, I would have stood a better chance of getting the rest right. But no such respite came. The fat man’s voice went on and on. My hands were damp with sweat and the effort of concentration was making my head pound, but I went on scribbling.
‘After an eternity, the fat man at last stopped speaking. It would probably be some time before I could study what I’d written and I was really worried that I wouldn’t be able to decipher it. I decided to have a look there and then, when everybody was cheerful and friendly and my monks were innocently sipping those lethal drinks. So I smoothed out the parchment and studied it.
‘All the time I’d been writing, I was so preoccupied with not missing anything that I hadn’t considered the piece as a whole. Now I read it right through and for the first time I understood the full import. As I sat there the heat died out of me and my sweat cooled on my skin. I sat in the brilliant luxury of that tent, looking down in horror at my piece of parchment, and my blood felt like ice in my veins.’
‘What had the fat man dictated?’ Josse asked in a whisper. Something came back to him — a word, spoken what seemed a long time ago. ‘John, what does simyager mean?’
John’s eyes widened in surprise. ‘It’s a Turkish word. It’s what Hisham is. However do you know it?’
‘What is he?’
There was an instant of perfect silence.
Then: ‘Hisham is an alchemist. The treasure with which he lured us into the desert that night was a deadly formula he’s discovered.’
‘What is this formula?’ Josse whispered fiercely. ‘What does it do?’
John was watching him as if, even now, he was reluctant to confide the secret that he had borne for so long. Then with a sigh he said, ‘It makes a black powder. If it is compressed and set alight, it explodes. If the balance of materials and the method of operation are accurate, it hurls a heavy object with incredible force.’
