Mathilde 01 - The Cup of Ghosts Read Online Free PDF Page B

offers him some of the plunder?’
    ‘But the other princes?’ I stammered. I knew a little of Templar affairs and recalled my uncle’s description of how the order owned houses from the wilds of Ireland to the borders of the icy lands in the East.
    Monsieur Simon hunched his shoulders.
    ‘There is nothing like treasure, Mathilde, to turn a man’s heart!’
    ‘And me?’ I asked.
    ‘If you go out into that street, if you are recognised for what you are,’ he wagged a bony finger in my face, ‘you will be arrested. You are no longer Mathilde de Ferrers but Mathilde de Clairebon from the town of Poitiers, my distant poor kinswoman come to act as a maid in my house. Don’t betray me, Mathilde. Don’t put me and mine in danger, otherwise I will turn you over to the royal serjeants. They’ll manacle you, load you with chains and drag you to the Grand Châtelet or some other dungeon where you risk either being buried alive, or facing a mockery of a trial before being taken out to be hanged or burned.’ He chewed on his tongue. ‘I could still do that. There will be a reward, money offered to those who betray Templars or their kin, not many will escape Philip’s net.’
    My hand dropped to the dagger in my belt.
    ‘Don’t threaten me!’ Monsieur Simon scoffed. ‘Your threats mean nothing to me. I have retainers. I have only,’ he fished under his robe and brought out a silver whistle on a gold chain, ‘to blow on this and your life will be over, as simple as snuffing out a candle. But I owe your uncle a favour. Many years ago he saved my life; since then he has always treated me honourably. I’m doing this for him, not for you. You are my prisoner. This chamber will become your world until I tell you the time of change has arrived.’
    ‘And my uncle?’
    ‘Believe me,’ Monsieur Simon replied, squinting his eyes, ‘if I could help your uncle I would. There is nothing I can do. Shall I tell you what I will do, Mathilde? What all the merchants and bankers of Paris will be doing tomorrow? They’ll be opening their ledgers and household books. They’ll be poring over their calculus. How much does the Temple order owe them? How much do they owe the Temple? They’ll find, like me, that they owed more than they were owed. So we’ll all keep silent. The king has removed a problem; if that’s what the king wants, then the king shall have it. The Templars have no friends! You have one friend, me. Now, Mathilde de Clairebon from Poitiers, do you understand? Do you understand?’ he repeated. ‘If you fail me, I shall betray you, as simply,’ he snapped his fingers, ‘as that!’
    I was too terrified, too anxious, too surprised to object. I nodded dumbly and moved across to the bed, I lay down, turning my back to him, and I crossed my arms and drew my legs up as I did when I was a child, when the shadows on the far side of my bedchamber were really phantasms of the night waiting to pollute me. I heard him leave.
    The next morning when I woke up, my door was locked and bolted. I couldn’t leave so I became Monsieur Simon’s prisoner. The chamber must have been used as a cell before. It boasted a small cubicle built into the outside wall with its own latrine, a jakes pot over a narrow gully. After two days the stench grew so offensive the steward brought up pails of rainwater to clean it.
    Monsieur Simon also brought me food, some clothes and a psalter, as well as a copy of Joinville’s Chronicle of the Crusades . He refused to tell me what was happening in Paris.
    Weeks passed. Looking out of the window, an arrow slit aperture, I watched the frost harden, the trees shed their leaves. One night Monsieur Simon came to see me. He asked how I was, said my imprisonment would soon be over and that tomorrow morning he would take me out. I was roused before dawn. The room was freezing cold, the small charcoal brazier had long smoked itself to ash and the candles had guttered to blackened wicks.
    ‘Quick, quick.’