Copyright Mathew Burden, 2001
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~39~
The room was lit with a single torch, leaving the
corners shadowed in darkness. He sat on
the small wooden chair that faced the doorway, his fingertips tapping. His eye was closed, as if he
were merely taking a nap.
Footsteps resounded in the
corridor, followed by the sound of heavy breathing as a messenger entered the
chamber. “Sir!”
“Yes, what is it?”
“I saw them."
Jonathan rose from his
chair, his one eye now open and gleaming brightly. “Where?” he rasped.
“They were entering the city
from the south. We traced them to an inn
near the bridge. Alfred's still with
them.”
“How many were there?”
“Seven that I could see. Four knights,
Alfred and his brother, and the Jewess.”
Jonathan’s face lit up. “Good. And we
have eighteen.”
The brigand nodded and began
to leave, but stopped short before he reached the door.
“Sir…what will be done with Alfred? Most of the men still count him as a
friend. He was the one who brought us
all together in the beginning.”
Jonathan looked at him sharply, his lips turning into a frown.
“We will do what must be done. Our plan has no room for traitors.”
~ ~ ~
Edward sighed and collapsed
onto a straw mattress. Since the small chambers of the inn could
only accommodate two people at once, they had allowed Hannah to have her own
chamber, while the men split up into three separate groups.
Although Malcolm was not
staying in the same room as Edward, he had joined him for a brief conversation
before they retired for the night.
“Justin and the Jew haven’t returned yet,” he commented.
Alfred nodded. “But they were searching the area furthest
away. It makes sense that they would
take longer to return.”
“Or perhaps they’ve fallen
into trouble," said the Scot.
Edward shook his head. “I fear my hair will turn gray
before I’m twenty-six,” he groaned. “Do you remember, Malcolm,
how peaceful it was in Melrose?”
He nodded. “It will be good to be home when we are done
here.”
Edward smiled
wistfully. “I would sit out every morning
on the banks of the river and watch the sun break the mist off the
east-marches.”
Malcolm laughed. “I always thought you were crazy for it,
too. I much prefer the comfort of my bed
that early in the morning.”
Alfred chuckled and rose to
glance out the window-slit into the streets below. “It’s getting dark,” he noted.
Edward drew a deep
lungful of the stale air that clung to the chamber. “I
suppose if our friends do not reappear by morning we'll have to go looking
for them. Why is it that nothing can
ever go smoothly for us?”
Malcolm laughed and took
Edward by the shoulder. “I remember
something you told me once in your teachings.
‘Suffering produces perseverance, and perseverance produces character,
and character produces hope.’”
“I suppose,” Alfred replied
with a smile, still gazing out into the street.
“But I believe that by now we should have enough character and hope to
last us a lifetime.”
The Scot grinned.
“Well, I suppose I should be returning to my own bed. I only hope we can set out soon on the
road for home. Good night, my friends.”
“Good night,” Edward
replied. “Come on, Alfred. You should probably get some sleep as well.”
Alfred appeared frozen at
his place by the window. “There’s a good
deal of commotion in the street below,” he whispered, watching the dim
silhouettes of several riders approaching the inn.
Edward chuckled and pulled
him away from the window. “Stop
worrying. There’s no way that anything
more could happen to us in one night. No
one has that much bad luck.”
“I thought you didn’t
believe in luck."
His brother shook his
head. “In truth, I don’t. After what we’ve gone through, could you
believe in luck?”
“Probably not,” he
replied.
He was about to make another
comment when his words were cut off by the sound of several footsteps marching
quickly down the hallway.
~ ~ ~
Justin was half-asleep,
allowing his body to rest while his mind raced.
He knew that he would have to escape somehow, but that was a harder task
the second time. They would be watching
more carefully—much more carefully. He
counted off the seconds between each time a guard would walk by his door, until
he had discerned the system. Every
fifty-four seconds, the guard would walk by, peer in the door, and continue
on. Fifty-four seconds later, he would
return from the opposite direction and repeat the procedure. The guard would change every third hour, and
sometimes he could hear snatches of conversation during these changes.
While he was straining to
hear one such discussion, though, the door of the cell smashed in, creaking
angrily on its hinges. The Count swore
as he marched into the little cell, leveling a quick blow at Justin’s
legs. The prisoner groaned and drew
himself into a sitting position, the pain beckoning him once more to the
torture of full consciousness.
“Good morning,” Justin said
in hoarse whisper.
“It’s still nighttime,” the
Templar said, his eyes blazing.
“Then why are you waking me
up?”
He held up the long piece of
purple cloth in front of Justin. “Do you
recognize this?”
Justin squinted his eyes. “The
robe?”
The Count chuckled
softly. “Did you really think we
wouldn’t notice?”
He shook his head, still
disoriented from his lack of sleep and the abrupt interruption. “Notice what?”
The Templar Preceptor
gritted his teeth and leaned in toward Justin, to point where their noses were
nearly touching. “Tell me where the real
one is—the one you took from the Holy Land.”
“Isn’t that it?”
The Count slapped him across the face. “I
will not tolerate your games! Where is
it?”
“I’m telling the
truth,” Justin replied evenly, with as strong a voice as he could muster. “If that isn’t it, then I don’t know where it
is.”
The Count smirked. “I was examining this a moment ago, preparing
to send it to the office of the Grandmaster.
But when I held it up against the light of my lamp, I noticed something
strange on this corner.” He held it up
for Justin to see. “There is a seal printed
cleverly in the cloth--the seal of
an English tailoring guild! Now, you and I both know that there were no
English tailors during the time that the true relic originated. So I ask you again—where is it?”
Justin frowned, searching
his memory for any possible time when they could have been switched. The only answers he could come up with would
put his friends in danger, so he decided to avoid speculation in that
area.
“Perhaps I was bearing a false
relic the entire time.”
The Count shook his head,
his arms still quivering with anger.
“No! The Order does not pursue
deceptions halfway around the world! The
true one is here, somewhere.”
“Why do you want it?”
The Templar’s anger turned
directly on Justin. “We are not
discussing that! Tell me where it is!”
“I know why you want it. You style yourselves as defenders of relics,
but in fact you fear them, don’t you?
You know that Christian men would quickly fall behind a leader bearing a
holy relic. Rather than having these
relics used against you when your day of reckoning comes, you hide them away in your preceptories so that they become mere shrines, empty and
powerless.”
With a countenance darkened with fury, the Count began striking the weakened
prisoner over and over. Justin doubled
with pain, a blazing display of light dancing before his eyes. He fell heavily
back onto the stone floor, curling up in a ball to protect himself.
After a few minutes, he
heard the Count swear and march out of the room. As he fell once more into a tortured half-sleep, he
welcomed the cold blackness of his cell.
It comforted him, dulling the pain of his wounds to the point of
forgetting who and where he was.
He knew the Count would return in time, but until then he resolved to
spend time fighting in the only way that remained. Without even the strength to lift himself to
his knees, he stretched out on the floor with his face heavenward.
Tears ran down his
face as his prayers took him beyond the confines of the prison, to the one
place in which comfort could still be found for him.
“Lord,” he rasped, his voice hoarse. “I lift up the Count to you, for
in this moment, he is in far greater desperation than I am. Lord, have mercy on that man, and give me the
strength to love him in the same way that you do….”
His whispered prayer trailed off into silence
as he drifted slowly into the calming embrace of sleep.
~ ~ ~
The frenzied conversation
outside gripped Edward with fear.
“No!” they heard the
innkeeper’s squeaky voice exclaim. “I
cannot allow you to simply barge in here like this!”
“I told you, old man,” came
a deeper voice. “I
have urgent business with your guests.”
Alfred leapt up from his
mattress. “That’s Jonathan,” he hissed, pulling his
brother to his feet. “Let’s go.”
The inn was constructed in
such a way that most of the rooms were interconnected with one another by a
system of small doorways so that, if one knew the other guests, one could walk the length of the inn while avoiding the main corridor. Since their room was on the
end of the row, they burst through the little door into the next
chamber, where Thomas and Stephen were already asleep on their mattresses.
Edward closed the door
behind him as Alfred woke the two knights and pulled them into the third room, Hannah's. She was still
awake, and had been listening through the door to the conversation between the
brigands and the innkeeper. She followed
the four men into the fourth chamber, where the two Scots were already waiting
for them.
They had no idea who was in
the room beyond them, but they pushed through anyway and found that it was
unlocked. It was an empty chamber, and,
rather than lingering there to be discovered, they continued moving through
several more deserted rooms before coming to a locked door.
Alfred rapped loudly on the
wood, hoping that the brigands in the hallway would not hear. “Who is it?” came the voice of a woman
from within. “What do you want?”
Hannah spoke up quickly,
hoping the occupant would be more willing to trust a woman’s voice. “My friends and I are being pursued by
outlaws who have overrun the inn. We
must reach the far stairwell without going in the corridor. Can we pass through your chamber?”
“Outlaws!” the voice
resounded in a shocked tone, as if she had been offended by the very thought. The latch clicked and the bolt was drawn back
to unlock the door. It swung open
silently to reveal a graying matron, her dark eyes looking them over
carefully. “Very well,” she harrumphed,
gathering a long dark robe around her shoulders as she stood aside to let them
by.
The seven friends rushed
quickly through her room, and opened the door on the other side to find another
empty room. Just as they were about to
pass through, they heard the woman speak up again behind them.
“One moment, please. I’m coming with you.” The authority her voice carried left no room
for doubting that she did indeed intend on accompanying them.
“What?” said Alfred,
whirling. “We don’t have time to waste
here!”
She placed her hands on her
hips, staring directly into his eyes.
“It would not be decent for you fine folk to leave me in the hands of
outlaws! My husband
does expect to see me again in one piece, you know!” As she spoke, she was gathering up her
possessions into a small traveling bag which she slung over her shoulder.
“All right. I’m ready to proceed now,” she nodded. Just as she spoke the words, shouts rang out
down the hall, and they could hear doors opening and slamming shut again.
“Come on!”
Malcolm said, pulling them through the empty room through the final door, where
they found the darkened stairwell. They
raced down the steps and burst out a wooden door into the darkening
twilight. Without even stopping to catch
their breath, they began racing down a side street, hoping to lose their
pursuers in the darkness of the London
dusk. They ran for several minutes
without stopping, when finally the lady held up a hand and shouted that they
stop.
The young
travelers gathered around her, and she smiled at them while trying to catch her
breath.
“Come now, friends, this simply
isn’t a dignified escape.”
Alfred shrugged,
exasperated. “What would you suggest, my
lady?”
She gazed back on him with
an expression of mixed pity and revulsion.
All in all, he still looked very much a brigand.
“My husband owns a manor not so very far from
here. That’s where I’m heading, and I
certainly don’t intend to run the whole way.
And of course, you are all welcome.
You and your friends saved me from outlaws, didn’t you? And after what I’ve put you through, the
least I can do is be somewhat hospitable.
Come. I know the master of a set
of stables near here. I wouldn’t trust
another inn tonight anyway.” So saying,
she took the lead and began walking toward the eastern outskirts of the
city.
No sounds of
pursuit echoed behind them, and they were grateful for that at least. Edward walked beside Hannah in silence,
wondering when their lives would ever return to normal. Up to that point, the robe had been nothing
but bait for power-mad assailants set on destroying them.
“Just bring us home safely, Lord,” he prayed,
his breath forming puffs of steam in the cold air.