The Tale of the English Templar

Hugh was all too conscious of the fact that Felice and he might consider themselves poor compared to their older siblings, but their well-fed horses arrayed in good tack and their fur-lined cloaks betrayed them as travellers of substance. There were probably hundreds of men living in this region who would kill them for their cloaks alone — as long as they thought they could get away with it.

And why shouldn’t they get away with it? They were two lone travellers on an infrequently travelled road after dark on a night so snowy that the tracks of their assailants would be obscured. Hugh had no illusions about his ability to protect either himself or Felice. The farther they rode and the darker it became the more frightened Hugh felt. He cursed himself for not prevailing upon Felice to listen to common sense.

They passed two wagons filled with jolly, inebriated travellers escorted by a half-dozen equally tipsy men-at-­arms heading in the opposite direction. This reassured Hugh somewhat. Maybe any lurking cut-throats would have taken flight at the sight of the armed men. But shortly thereafter they were confronted by great splotches of red staining the snow and evidence of some mishap.

Hugh’s hair stood on the back of his head. “Christ in Heaven! Someone was murdered right here!” he exclaimed. “Look! You can see the blood and how they dragged the body off the road! Jesus, the corpse is still there!”

Felice first felt the same terror as Hugh, but then she caught the scent of wine and decided that the snow was coloured by spilt red wine rather than blood. Following Hugh’s outstretched finger, she expected to find something equally harmless: a piece of discarded tack or clothing. The sight of a body beside the road was such a shock that she grabbed her pommel, and her mare shied to the left.

Hugh looked frantically over his shoulders and around at the forest, which loomed ominously in all directions. “Oh, my God! Oh, my God! What if the cut-throats are still here? Jesus, what are we going to do? Felice! What are you doing? Are you mad?”

Felice had jumped down from her mare and was approaching the corpse. She could not have said why, but something about it wasn’t right. Clutching her skirts in one hand and leading her reluctant mare in the other, she approached the body cautiously. With a shock, she met its eyes, and her heart stopped. The eyes that locked onto hers looked through her to her very soul. She was more than naked. Her soul was on trial. The Day of Judgement would not be more merciless. The thought took her breath away and blood flushed her face. Yet all fear was gone. Shaking off her astonishment and determined not to go to hell, she rushed forwards to fall on her knees beside the man.

Her eyes ran over the long, greasy hair and beard crawling with fleas, saw the cracked lips and the blood oozing from the corner of his mouth. The man’s skin was so pale that it was almost translucent, and grime outlined the thousands of lines carved into his face by pain. His eyes were sunk deep in their sockets, and he had smears of dirt on his neck. Felice next noticed the half-hardened, half-wet smear of blood on the left breast of what had once been a white surcoat. Though the red cross itself was all but obscured by filth, straw and dried vomit, Felice did not need to see it to know what she had in front of her. Her eye continued down the length of his body past the hose blackened with filth to the swollen, bruised and deformed limbs below the knee. She gasped and her stomach heaved as her nose registered the revolting mixture of sweat, urine, shit and rotting flesh that emanated from the Templar.

“Hugh!” she shouted over her shoulder, appalled that her cousin was still astride his horse and staring at her rather than coming to her aid. “Hurry! Bring one of the blankets! No, bring me both the horse blankets and then ride for Najac.”

“Are you crazy? You don’t know who he is! He might be an outlaw or —”

“Don’t be stupid. He’s a Templar, and he’s close to death. We have to get him to Najac!”

“A Templar! Jesus God! Have you lost your senses entirely? If we help him, we’ll be arrested and excommunicated and probably hanged! Leave him alone! If he’s close to death, then the best favour you can do him is let him die in peace!” Hugh gingerly urged his horse close enough to be able to look down directly upon both Felice and the man in the ditch. Hugh now caught sight of the Templar’s broken legs, and he screwed up his face. “Ugh! He’ll never walk again from the look of those legs! We can’t possibly move him without killing him. Leave him be!”

The eyes of the victim were fixed upon Hugh’s face as he spoke. Felice was ashamed of what they must see, but Hugh avoided them. He kept his eyes averted, focused on the repulsive clothing and cast revolted but fascinated glances at the mangled legs.

Felice did not argue. She stood up abruptly and went to her mare. Hugh sighed with relief and turned his horse away from the embarrassing discovery on the side of the road. Then he realised that Felice was not mounting but dragging her saddlebag off her mare’s crupper. “Felice! What are you doing now?”

“I’d rather be excommunicated than damned!” she retorted as again she dropped down beside the Templar. She detached the heavy, felt blanket covered with grey hairs and smelling pleasantly of horse to which the saddle­bag itself was attached. She arranged this over Percy as gently as she could.