Sir William’s headshake was brief. “I know not, but I suspect we will find two dead guards, and the preceptor, Sir Arnold de Thierry, either dead or being held captive. We have been infiltrated, Admiral. Our defenses have been breached, and all I know of our visitor is that I saw him last in the company of the King’s chief lawyer, William de Nogaret, less than two weeks ago in Paris. I do not know his name, but he gave the English name of Godwinson to Sergeant Tescar at the gates and was admitted. He is dressed as a knight of the Temple, but he is no Templar and no friend of our Order.”
“You recognized him?”
“No, I have not yet set eyes on him, but I recalled him from Sergeant Tescar’s description.”
St. Valéry was frowning. “Then how can you know this is the same man? Descriptions are vague at best. This man may well be a visiting brother from England.”
“Then where are your guards, Admiral? Or did this Godwinson merely see fit to dismiss them? Tescar’s description left little room for doubt. A big man, wearing a full, red beard with a bright white streak down the left side of it. Now, there may be two men in France with long red beards so singularly marked, but until I know I am wrong, I’ll act as though I’m right. Please, go and put on your armor. We will wait for your return. Whatever has occurred within that room is long since done, and plainly no one is anxious to come out.”
Tam Sinclair’s four sergeants arrived back moments after St. Valéry left to put on his armor, and Sir William drew them aside and explained what he wanted them to do. Two of them then took up positions on each side of the double doors, their backs to the wall, while the other two lay on their bellies on the floor, their bodies angled away from the entrance, their loaded, drawn weapons trained on the doors. Sir William would enter first with the admiral, he told them, and would thrust the older man aside as they went in, in the hope of saving him from attack. He himself would dive to the other side, leaving the crossbowmen free to shoot from the floor into the open room. To the best of his knowledge there were only two men inside, he told them, but he could not be sure of that. Treachery spread in France like dry rot today, he said, pointing out that William de Nogaret had spies and employees everywhere. In any event, there would likely be only one crossbow inside the room, and once it had been fired, its wielder would have to reload. If the two men on the floor could not finish him, it would be the turn of the two by the doors. They would enter the room immediately, at the run, and switch sides. Among the four of them they should be sure of dealing with one bowman. Sinclair himself would take care of the red-bearded impostor.
Admiral St. Valéry returned, looking distinctly larger and walking with far less ease, his sword slung from his shoulder. Sir William swished his own sword through the air and then concealed it behind his back.
“By me, if you will, Admiral, on my left, and let’s find out what lies in wait for us. Those doors do open inwards, do they not?”
“They do…Ready?” St. Valéry went quietly forward until they stood facing the doors, side by side. He took hold of the black iron rings of the handles, raising them gently, one in each hand, then drew a deep breath, twisted both handles, threw the doors wide, and stepped inside.
At first Sinclair could see nothing at all. The large room appeared to be empty. But then he saw the broad smear of blood on the floor to his left where someone must have dragged a body aside, and at the same time he saw a flicker of movement to his right.
He reacted instantly, thrusting out his arm, straight and hard, in a blow to the admiral’s shoulder. The older man had been tense, and the unexpected push sent him spinning, barely in time as a hard-shot missile smashed into him, jerking him bodily off his feet and hurling him sideways to crash on the floor against the wall. Sinclair had used the strong, straight-armed blow to push himself sideways, in the other direction, and even as his shoulders slammed into the open door he saw another blur of motion from his left, and a second steel bolt, this one intended for him, half buried itself in the solid oak of the door by his head.
From below him he heard the thrum of a crossbow then and looked to see the man who had tried to kill him, his crossbow still at his shoulder, transfixed by a bolt from one of the sergeants on the floor of the passageway. Angled upwards as it was, the bolt passed cleanly through the man’s neck, beneath his chin, and shot out through the base of his skull before digging itself into the crevice between two of the stone blocks of the wall.
Sir William thrust himself forward from the door, whirling, sword in hand, as the rest of his men stormed into the room.
The red-bearded man in the knight’s mantle stood against the wall, still holding the crossbow that had struck down St. Valéry, and as he looked at Sinclair and the men pouring through the doorway he opened his hands and dropped the useless weapon, then shrugged out of his great Templar mantle and let it fall to the floor behind him as he drew his sword and fell into a crouch. Beneath the beard, his mouth was a snarling rictus.
“Mine,” Sinclair said.
The red-bearded man circled away from him, and Sinclair followed, waiting for him to make a move. Then came a whirling blur, a loud, meaty-sounding blow, and the stranger fell to his knees and pitched onto his face as Tam Sinclair’s dirk clattered on the stone floor beside him.
Sir William straightened slowly from his crouch. “Was that well done, Tam?”
“Aye, sir, it was. A perfect throw, hilt first. Unless, of course, ye really wanted to give the whoreson a second chance to kill ye.”
“He would not have killed me, Tam.”
“No, likely not. But you would ha’e killed him, and there would ha’e been an end o’ it. But now he’s still alive, I think, and we’ll ha’e a chance to find out what he came here for.”
“I know what he came here for, and he succeeded. He came to kill the admiral and the preceptor.”
“Shit, aye, but why?”
“To cause chaos tonight. In preparation for tomorrow.”
“Then he’s missed his aim. The admiral’s alive. The bolt but caught his hauberk and threw him away, but it didna hit him. He’ll be fine. Battered about a bit, but he’s no’ even bleeding.”
Sir William turned quickly to look to where a couple of his men were raising the limp form of the admiral from the floor. “Thank God for that. I thought I had been too slow. Send someone to the infirmary to fetch a surgeon or a physician, and have someone else remove the admiral’s armor before the fellow comes. Where is the preceptor?”
“Over here, sir.” The voice came from the far end of the room, where another sergeant was standing looking down at the floor behind one of the room’s long tables. “Him and the two guards. All dead.”
“Ah, God!” Sir William slowly walked the length of the great room until he stood looking down on the three corpses that had been dragged out of sight behind the table. Two were sergeants of the Order, their brown surcoats now black with blood. The third man was much older, dressed in the white mantle of the knights, with the Temple cross embroidered on its left breast. He, too, had been killed by a crossbow bolt, shot from a distance short enough to drive the lethal bolt clean through his chest, so that half of its length protruded from his back. There was little blood, apart from the exit wound itself, so the elderly man’s death must have been instantaneous.
Sir William knew the old preceptor’s story as well as he knew his own. Arnold de Thierry, a childless widower of one-and-twenty, had joined the Order on the island of Cyprus, thirty-one years earlier, on the fourth day of July in 1276, and had become one of the Temple’s most honored knights in fifteen years of campaigning in the Holy Land. His career there had ended when he was wounded in the earliest stages of the final siege of Acre in the year 1291 and was shipped out by sea and committed to the care of the Knights Hospitallers at Rhodes. There he was expected to die, but he fought instead for life, earning himself an undying reputation for futile bravery by refusing to allow the surgeons to amputate his wounded arm when it was deemed to be gangrenous. The wound, it transpired,