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

chuckled. ‘She may be his wife.’
    ‘What? He’s a Knight Brother!’
    ‘The Order of Saint James allows their
freiles
to be married,’ Baldwin said, but with a note of disapproval in his voice. He personally believed that religious Orders should all conform to the same principles of poverty, obedience and chastity.
    ‘At least I can admire his taste,’ Simon mused. ‘That young woman is a delight to the eyes.’
    ‘And I think the good knight has noted your admiration,’ Baldwin warned.
    They both turned away. To cause anger in a strange city was foolish, and anyone who did so by upsetting a man protecting his woman was a fool.
    ‘I don’t know why I allowed you to persuade me to come here with you,’ Simon said mournfully. ‘Look at me! I’m a Devon man, through and through. What am I doing all this way from my home and family?’
    ‘Be content. We might have travelled all the way on foot like so many others,’ Baldwin reminded him.
    The memory was not enough to soothe. ‘You think that makes me feel any better?’ Simon snapped. ‘And don’t snigger like that. I’ve never felt so near to death in my life before.’
    ‘I only feared that you might intentionally hasten your end,’ Baldwin chuckled.
    ‘Hilarious.’
    Their initial journey had been violent, as they aimed for la Coruña, and Simon’s belly had roiled in response. He had sailed many times, as he had said to Baldwin before they first boarded their ship at Topsham, but he had never seen seas such as those they encountered on their way here. Baldwin, he was sure, had felt poorly, but that was nothing compared with the prostration which Simon experienced. Following the advice of a sailor, he had remained in the bowels of the ship, and although he tried to lie down and sleep, he could find no ease. Blown from their course, they made landfall farther east, near Oviedo, to Simon’s eternal gratitude, while Baldwin had remained up on deck for the entire journey, and denied any illness.
    ‘A fine officer you will be for the Keeper of Dartmouth!’ Baldwin chuckled.
    ‘To be the Abbot’s man in Dartmouth I won’t ever have to set foot on a ship,’ Simon retorted. He was soon to become the Abbot of Tavistock’s representative in Dartmouth, now that the King had granted Abbot Robert the post of Keeper of the Port of Dartmouth, a lucrative position for both Simon and the Abbot. ‘Anyway, even you agreed that the sea was about the worst you’d ever seen.’
    Baldwin showed his teeth in a brief smile. He was slightly taller than Simon, and although he was prone to run to fat, he drilled daily with his sword and clubs to keep his belly flat and his chin from doubling. It had not been a conscious effort to keep trim, but a continuation of his regime of training. Baldwin had learned weaponry when he was young, but later he had joined the
Poor Fellow Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Solomon
, the Knights Templar, and while in the Order had learned to respect their attitude towards constant practice with weapons. Only by using the sword and lance effectively as a part of God’s army could a knight bring honour to himself and to God, Baldwin believed.
    But then the Templars were destroyed.
    When the Templars had been arrested, Baldwin had been distraught. For two years he had travelled about Aragon, Navarre and other lands, hoping to find a new purpose to his life, for until Friday, 13 October 1307, when the Templars of France were arrested and imprisoned, he had believed utterly in his Order, and had no other life than that of a Knight Brother. But then, when the Pope himself declared the Order dissolved in his bull
Vox in Excelso
, in 1312, Baldwin was left without home, faith or hope. His Order existed solely to support God and the Pope; the Pope was the man to whom all the Templar Knights ultimately gave their loyalty, yet this Pope had destroyed them. God had allowed him to see the most holy Order brought to destruction.
    It was in memory