Page 7 of Under a Spanish Sky

It was unusually quiet in the car from then on as both of them spent the rest of the morning turning the problem over in their heads.

At just before noon, they stopped for a cup of coffee in Etsaut, just about the last bit of relative civilisation before the final climb to the pass.

The café was warm and smelt of freshly baked bread.

From where they were sitting Luke could see into the bleak square of dour stone houses.

Behind them were the mountains. He described the view to Amy and then their conversation returned, naturally, to their story.

‘We’re agreed that our medieval friend’s travelling through the mountains at this time of year.

Right?’ He saw her nod and continued. ‘So, if we work on the basis that he’s trying to cross the mountains this same day of the year, albeit a good few centuries ago, he’s going to be in trouble.

It’s still only April, after all, and the mountains are seriously high around here.

The snow’s still up there on the pass, although it’s pretty much melted away down on the plains.

I would say that the pilgrimage season, at least in the days before snowploughs and four-wheel drive, wouldn’t even have started.

If that’s the case, then the person he’s going to see must’ve spent the winter in the abbey. ’

She nodded again pensively and suggested, ‘So who, then? A monk? Could he be going up there to meet a monk?’

‘Yes, that could be it, although the question of why has to be answered.’

‘For help of course. Our man’s fleeing justice, either temporal or spiritual or both, and he hopes to be able to hide at Santa Cristina.

’ It sounded a very plausible explanation, but neither of them was totally happy with it.

It was a bit too simple somehow. He saw the concentration on her face and strove to give it serious consideration. He was sceptical.

‘Not that it would be that easy to do. A mountain hospice in the winter must have been a bit like a ship in the middle of the ocean. Everybody would have known everybody else, through and through, right down to the ship’s cat and a few of the rats.

A new face would stick out like a sore thumb.

In a month’s time it would be a different story.

By then there would be hundreds of pilgrims coming and going every day, but not yet. ’

He watched the expression on her face as she concentrated, desperately trying to find a solution. He did his best to help.

‘So rather than why, let’s think about who.

Who is our man? And, for that matter, when is this all happening?

The Middle Ages lasted an awfully long time.

After all, the pilgrimages to Compostela have been big business since before the first millennium.

’ He sipped his coffee and racked his brains for a solution.

Her voice interrupted his reflections. ‘I’ll tell you when.

’ She sounded really excited. ‘I’ll tell you.

I’ll tell you precisely, Mr PhD History Professor.

’ Her voice was triumphant and her expression rapt.

‘This was all happening in exactly the year…’ There was a pause, while she did a rapid calculation.

‘It happened in exactly 1314. Yes, April 1314 it definitely was, and I even know why he was escaping up the valley and why they were after him.’ She gave him a challenging look and sat back to finish her coffee while he struggled to find the answer.

In fact it wasn’t that hard. Here in France, if not the whole of Christendom, the first years of the fourteenth century were dominated by one main event: the fall from grace of the Knights Templar.

Few people could have been unaware of the reputation of these warrior knights who had battled in the Holy Land for two hundred years.

Their war cry of Beaucéant had struck fear into enemy hearts since the early twelfth century.

Luke made a suggestion that was far less tentative than it sounded. ‘So you’re saying our man is a Templar escaping from the clutches of the Inquisition? Could that be right?’

Amy’s face shone with the sort of expression normally reserved for winners of Crufts in the presence of their victorious pets. She slapped the tabletop hard enough to rattle the teaspoons and leant towards him. ‘Okay so far, but why April?’ There was a distinct challenge in her voice.

‘How far is it from Paris to here?’ Now it was his turn for the mental arithmetic.

‘Say about seven hundred kilometres. At an average of, say, twenty, maybe even thirty kilometres a day, how many days would it have taken a man on foot to get here from Paris? I never was much good at that sort of problem at school.’

‘Twenty into seven hundred goes about thirty-five times.’ She was happy to supply the answer as he worked it all out in his head.

‘If my memory serves me right, although the Order of the Temple was officially suppressed in 1312, nobody much outside France paid a lot of attention until the Grand Master of the Templars, Jacques de Molay, was executed in mid March 1314. He was burnt to death over a slow fire on an island in the Seine along with the Preceptor of Normandy, Geoffroi de Charny.’ She was showing off a bit.

‘Quite so.’ He decided he might show off a bit as well.

‘And I presume you know the significance of the slow fire. That way, they really burnt to death, with all the agony you can imagine. Normally on a big bonfire, most people actually died of asphyxiation, when the fire consumed all the oxygen, before the pain of the flames really bit.’

Her cocky air left her and she looked bleak. He didn’t notice, as he was still caught up with his calculations.

‘Anyway that was the moment the whole of Christendom realised that the Templars’ time was finally up.

The last few still at liberty would have made for safety elsewhere.

’ He did another calculation and realised it really did fit.

‘So four or five weeks from the middle of March brings us pretty close to where we are now in April.’ There was amazement in his voice. ‘So that’s what it’s all about.’

‘But why was he heading south, and who was he going to see?’

‘Remember that the kings of Spain and Portugal took scant notice of the order to arrest the Templars. They owed a great deal to the Templars, who’d helped them over the years to rid the Iberian peninsula of the Moors. Escape through the Pyrenees wasn’t such a bad idea.’

‘All right, then, he was a Templar escaping from Philippe le Bel.’ She didn’t sound totally convinced. ‘But who was he going to see at Santa Cristina?’

She leant forward on her elbows towards him.

His eyes fell upon the open neck of her shirt, presenting him with an unsettling glimpse of white lace and shadowy curves.

He cleared his throat guiltily, swilled the remains of his coffee, and did his best to drag his thoughts back to who on earth could have been waiting for a fleeing Templar in a mountain hospice.