The Templar's Penance: (Knights Templar 15) Read Online Free PDF

so his friend, he knew. Simon, a tall man in his middle thirties, had the ruddy complexion of one who spent many hours a week on horseback in all weathers, but now he looked pinched with nervousness. Riding had given him his solid strength, the strong muscles in his legs and at his throat, but good food and a liking for good ale had fattened his belly and made his jowls grow over the years. The extensive travel of thelast days had reduced his paunch, although it had not improved his temperament. That had grown more fiery with the weather as they had approached this southern city.
    Baldwin was sure that Simon’s moodiness stemmed from his feeling out of his depth. For the first time, Simon Puttock, Bailiff of Lydford, was aware of his own impotence. Here his voice would not summon officers to do his bidding; he had no power. Instead, almost anyone who understood the local language was better off than he, and this made him fretful, as though it reflected upon his lack of education. But he had been educated by the Canons of Crediton Church in Devon; he could speak, read and write Latin, and could understand much French, but he could make nothing of the language here in Galicia in the far northwest part of the Kingdom of Castile.
    His dark-grey eyes still held a measure of the stolid commonsense and piercing intelligence that Baldwin had noticed when they had first met all those years ago in 1316, but here the sparkle was dimmed, because Simon felt lost. Baldwin could easily comprehend his friend’s state of mind. He himself had been aware of that curious sense of ‘otherness’ which afflicts the traveller on occasion.
    Not today, though. Today Baldwin was determined to know only pleasure. He had never before been to the great city of Saint James, and wished to make the most of his visit. More than that, he also wanted Simon to enjoy himself.
    ‘Look at all these people! Hundreds of them,’ Simon muttered.
    ‘Yes. This is a popular place for pilgrims like us.’
    ‘And for knights.’
    Baldwin followed his gaze and saw several men who must surely be knights. One, wearing a light cloth tunic of slightly faded crimson, was clearly a secular man-at-arms. His shock of fair hair shone brightly in the sunshine and he met Simon’s gaze with reciprocal interest, as though he was gauging Simon’s ability as a fighter. A short distance away, stood another man wearing a clean white tunic with a red cross on his shoulder. It was at him that Simon stared.
    ‘He is a Knight of Santiago,’ Baldwin informed him. ‘A religious Order devoted to protecting pilgrims.’
    ‘The cross looks odd,’ Simon noted, then looked up to see that the shoulder’s owner was glaring at him, as though affronted that a mere pilgrim should dare peer so insultingly. He was a strong, heavy-set brute to Simon’s mind, with prognathous features and swarthy skin.
    ‘It’s made to look like a cross above, but the lower limb is a sword’s blade,’ Baldwin explained. ‘They call it the
espada
.’
    ‘They don’t like people staring at them,’ Simon noted.
    ‘Knight
freiles
, that is, “Brothers”, are as arrogant as you would expect, when you bear in mind that they are a cross between chivalric, honourably born knights and clerics. They feel that they have all right and might on their side. You know the motto of the Knights of Santiago? It is:
Rubet ensis sanguine Arabum
– may the sword be red with the blood of Arabs.’
    ‘That miserable bugger looks as if he’d not mind any man’s blood on his sword,’ Simon said, adding thoughtfully, ‘although perhaps that’s because of his guilt.’
    ‘Guilt? Why do you say that?’
    ‘Look at him. He’s with those women. One’s a nun, from the look of her, but the other is too bawdily dressed for that. I wouldn’t mind betting …’ Then Simon recalled where he was, glanced up at Saint James’s welcoming features high above him and cleared his throat.
    Baldwin, seeing his brief confusion,