Free Dispensation of Death: (Knights Templar 23) by Michael Jecks

have been during Baldwin’s life as a Knight Templar, and that was a subject that was unfit for discussion – at least while others could overhear them. ‘It is very boring, though.’
    ‘At last you voice your feelings!’ Baldwin laughed. ‘Your face has grown blacker and blacker with every mile we have travelled since the Blackdown Hills, and that was three days ago.’
    Simon could not argue with that. Leaving his own lands had made him feel odd, like a snail which had left its shell behind. He felt exposed and threatened. All the sounds and noises seemed similar, but strangely different at the same time. The landscape was the most obvious manifestation of just how alien things were, this far from home.
    ‘You find the countryside here curious?’ The Bishop had ambled up on his old mare, and was peering about himself with the gently enquiring expression of those with failing sight. ‘I rather like it. Does it not give you more of a sense of God’s magnificence? With the openness all about me, I always feel more of an affinity for His works. Just look at the sky!’
    Simon had to murmur agreement with that. The absence of real hills made the sky appear more vast than usual – although he was sure that it loomed just as large from Higher Willhayes or Cawsand Beacon. Those two hills were so high, to climb to their summits was like ascending to heaven, almost.
    ‘What are they saying?’ piped up a voice.
    ‘Rob, whatever they –
we
– are saying is none of your concern. Just try to keep quiet!’ the Bailiff hissed to his wayward servant. He had no proof, but he was sure that on the second night out from Exeter, Rob had snared some of the Bishop’s guards into a game of hazard. Rob looked only to be some twelve years old, but he had learned his gambling and language from the sailors of Dartmouth. It was thought that he was the bastard son of one. For all that he had a wide-eyed innocent appearance, his speech was as filthy as any whore’s from theBishop of Winchester’s stews, and his ability to palm or move a dice was unequalled by any felon Simon had encountered.
    ‘I was only asking. Is that London, then?’
    In the distance they could already see the smudge of a great city. Its fires were belching smoke into the clear wintry sky, and Simon grunted.
    It was Baldwin who responded. ‘No, lad. That is still many miles away. This city is Salisbury. Soon you shall see the great spire of the Cathedral.’
    ‘Yes. We shall stay overnight with the good canons of Salisbury,’ Bishop Walter said. ‘I am sure that we shall be made welcome there.’
    Baldwin cast a glance in his direction. The Bishop did not sound convinced of their reception, and Baldwin wondered at that, but not for long. A Bishop should be able to expect his brother-Bishops to be courteous and friendly, but he knew as well as any in the Church that such men could be fiercely competitive. They often resented other Bishops, were jealous of their lands and profits.
    They had travelled only another mile or two when suddenly through the trees the mighty spire became visible, its structure supported by the poles of larch that comprised the builders’ scaffolding. ‘Look, Simon. Is it not immense?’
    Bishop Walter sniffed. ‘If I were not a man of God, I could be jealous of this. My cathedral rebuilding was begun what – fifty years or more ago? And we have only come halfway. Yet this was all constructed in less than that. I cannot hope to see the finish of my cathedral. Itbegan around my birth, and I shall be long dead before it is complete. Yet this marvel has been created in only some forty years or so.’
    ‘The spire is not finished, my Lord Bishop,’ Baldwin said.
    ‘No, but even now a man can see what it will be like,’ the Bishop said with sadness. ‘And I shall never see so much as the roof on my cathedral, I sometimes think. The plans I have for the west front are wonderful – but what chance will I have to see them executed? I