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hypocrites up here.’
    The friar came to stand at the battlements and looked towards the harbour, his face in silhouette. The Dominicans.
Domini canes
, as some wits would have it, ‘the bloodhounds of the Lord’. The order had been founded by the Spaniard, Guzmán, the one they now called St Dominic, during the crusade in the Languedoc. They had set themselves the task of eradicating heresy and bringing Europe under the heel of the clerics.
    They had the Pope’s ear. A Dominican had held the position of Master of the Sacred Palace, personal theologian to the Pope himself, since the days of Guzmán. In 1233 Gregory IX had entrusted them with the holy work of the Inquisition.
    They were all meddlers and murderers, in Josseran’s opinion. The one thing you could say about them was that they were not hypocrites like the bishops and their priests; they did not get their housemaids pregnant and they kept to their vows of poverty. But they were cruel and joyless creatures. The tortures and burnings they were responsible for in the Languedoc were simply unspeakable. All done in the name of God, of course. Josseran hated every single one of them.
    ‘It seems we are to be companions,’ William said.
    ‘It would not have been my choice.’
    ‘Nor mine. I have heard of the vices and treachery of Templars.’
    ‘I have heard the same things said of priests.’
    William gave a short, barking laugh. ‘I have to know. Why were you chosen?’
    ‘You heard what Bérard said of me. I know how to use a sword and I ride passably well. And I am skilled in certain languages. It is a gift it pleased God for me to possess. Do you have anything besides Latin?’
    ‘Such as?’
    ‘It is hard to make any commerce in Outremer unless you speak a little Arabic.’
    ‘The language of the heathen.’
    Josseran nodded. ‘Our Lord spoke Latin, of course, when hestrolled through Nazareth.’ William did not reply and Josseran smiled to himself. A small victory. ‘So you speak only Latin and German. A fine ambassador the Pope has chosen for the East.’
    ‘I speak French passably well.’
    ‘That should be useful in Syria.’
    ‘If you are to be my interpreter I expect you to serve me faithfully.’
    ‘I am to be your escort, not your servant.’
    ‘You should know that I shall tolerate no interference in my plans.’
    ‘Should I get in your way, you can always go on alone.’
    William reached out his hand and touched the crucifix that hung on a silver chain at Josseran’s throat. Josseran knocked his hand away.
    ‘A pretty piece,’ William said. ‘Where did you get it?’
    ‘That is none of your business.’
    ‘Is it gold?’
    ‘Gilded copper. The stones are garnets. It is very old.’
    ‘It is just that you do not appear to me to be a man of much piety. And yet you have come here to fight in Christ’s army. Why the Templars? They shelter all sorts of criminals, I hear.’
    ‘I may not be a man of much piety but you do not appear to be a man of much diplomacy. And yet they have sent you here as an ambassador.’
    ‘I hope your master knows the kind of man in whose hands he has entrusted my life.’ William turned on his heel in the darkness. Josseran scowled. Priests! But the charter of the Templars required that he guard him well and endure his arrogance all the way to Aleppo. With God’s speed the journey should take no longer than a month.
    He turned back to the night and its stars, wondering where fate might bring him by the time the moon waxed full.

IX

    T HE NEXT MORNING , at dawn, Josseran arrived at the wharf with his sergeant-at-arms, one Gérard of Poitiers, and provisions for the journey. He brought three horses. His big war horse, his destrier, he left behind but he had brought his favourite white Persian, Kismet. Gifts for the Tatar prince were locked in an iron-bound money chest; there was a damascened sword with gold quillon and motifs in Arabic script, an ebony inkstand ornamented with gold, a suit of chain