DEATH AND THE KNIGHT

Introduction

In 1952 I attended the world science fiction convention in Chicago and there encountered a young lady named Karen Kruse. We quickly became inseparable, right through the last party in the hotel penthouse, where Stuart Byrne sang Gilbert and Sullivan till, side by side with Anthony Boucher, we saw daybreak over Lake Michigan. Afterward we kept in touch-only by mail, she being a Kentucky girl now living in the Washington, D.C. area, but the letters grew more and more frequent. Committed to go back to Europe next summer, on the way I visited her for some days, and we realized we were in love. We both wanted a change of scene and decided to try the San Francisco Bay area. I’d already seen it and liked it. Besides, through science fiction we’d become friends with a number of people there. She moved out to Berkeley and got a job. After I returned in the fall I joined her. She soon lost the job, but that was a liberation. We were married late that year. Our daughter Astrid was born in 1954. In 1960 we bought a house in suburban Orinda where, except for travels, we’ve lived ever since.

Anthony Boucher, co-founder and at the time co-editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (later sole editor until he resigned), become one of the dearest of those friends. He was also a mystery writer, a book reviewer, an expert on Sherlock Holmes, a linguist, an opera buff with a radio program on which he played items from his large collection of rare recordings, a gourmet who could cook to meet his own standards, a limerickologist, a fluent and witty public speaker, a tolerant but devout Roman Catholic who knew more about his faith than most priests do, a fiendish poker player, and an all-around delightful human being. So was his wife in her quieter way.

He never let friendship affect his editorial or critical judgment, but he did buy quite a lot from me. This was where the Time Patrol stories got started and most of them appeared. They have been collected in two volumes, The Time Patrol and The Shield of Time. Then, just a few years ago, Katherine Kurtz invited me to contribute to a book she was getting together, Tales of the Knights Templar, and it seemed a good place for another. Since that paperback is probably less readily available by now, I’m letting this item represent the series; but I hope Tony would have liked it.

Ms. Kurtz moved its exposition of the background assumption from the body of it to the front. She was right, and I’ll put those few words here.

“‘What is truth?’ said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer.” What is real, what is might-be or might-have-been? The quantum universe flickers to and fro on the edge of the knowable. There is no way to foretell the destiny of a single particle; and in a chaotic world, larger destinies may turn on it. St. Thomas Aquinas declared that God Himself cannot change the past, because to hold otherwise would be a contradiction in terms; but St. Thomas was limited to the logic of Aristotle. Go into that past, and you are as free as ever you have been in your own day, free to create or destroy, guide or misguide, stride or stumble. If thereby you change the course of events that was in the history you learned, you will abide untouched, but the future that brought you into being will have gone, will never have been; it will be a reality different from what you remember. Perhaps the difference will be slight, even insignificant. Perhaps it will be monstrous. Those humans who first mastered the means of traveling through time brought about this danger. Therefore the superhumans who dwell in the ages beyond them returned to their era to ordain and establish the Time Patrol.

PARIS, TUESDAY, 10 OCTOBER 1307

Clouds raced low, the hue of iron, on a wind that boomed through the streets and whined in the galleries overhanging them. Dust whirled aloft. Though the chill lessened stenches-offal, horse droppings, privies, graves, smoke ripped ragged out of flues-the city din seemed louder than erstwhile: footfalls, hoof-beats, wheels creaking, hammers thudding, voices raised in chatter, anger, plea, pitch, song, sometimes prayer. Folk surged on their manifold ways, a housewife bound for market, an artisan bound for a task, a priest bound for a deathbed, a mountebank in his shabby finery, a blind beggar, a merchant escorted by two apprentices, a drunken man-at-arms, a begowned student from the university, a wondering visitor from foreign parts, a carter driving his load through the crowd with whip and oaths, others and others and others in their hundreds. Church bells had lately rung tierce and the work of the day was fully acourse. All made way for Hugue’s Marot. That was less because of his height, towering over most men, than his garb. Tunic, hose, and shoes were of good stuff, severe cut, subdued color, and the mantle over them was plain brown; but upon it stood the red cross that signed him a Templar. Likewise did the short black hair and rough beard. Whether or no the rumors were true that the Order was in disfavor with the king, one did not wish to offend such a power. The grimness on his lean features gave urgency to deference. At his heels trotted the boy who had brought his summons to him.

They kept close to the housefronts, avoiding as much as possible the muck in the middle of the street. Presently they came to a building somewhat bigger than its similar and substantial neighbors. Beyond its stableyard, now vacant and with the gate shut, was an oaken door set in half-timbered walls that rose three stories. This had been the home and business place of a well-to-do draper. He fell in debt to the Templars, who seized the property. It was some distance from the Paris Temple, but upon occasion could accommodate a high-born visitor or a confidential meeting.

Hugues stopped at the front door and struck it with his knuckles. A panel slid back from an opening. Someone peered through, then slowly the door swung aside. Two men gave him salutation as befitted his rank. Their faces and stances were taut, and halberds lifted in their fists-not ceremonial, but working weapons. Hugues stared.

“Do you await attack already, brothers, that you go armed indoors?” he asked.

“It is by command of the Knight Companion Fulk,” replied the larger. His tone rasped.

Hugues glanced from side to side. As if to forestall any retreat, the second man added, “We are to bring you to him straightway, brother. Pray come.” To the messenger: “Back to your quarters, you.” The lad sped off.

Flanked by the warrior monks, Hugues entered a vestibule from which a stairway ascended. A door on his right, to the stableyard, was barred. A door on his left stood open on a flagged space filling most of the ground floor. Formerly used for work, sales, and storage, this echoed empty around wooden pillars supporting the ceiling beams. The stair went up over an equally deserted strongroom. The men climbed to the second story, where were the rooms meant for family and guests; underlings slept in the attic. Hugues was ushered to the parlor. It was still darkly wainscoted and richly furnished. A charcoal brazier made the air warm and close.

Fulk de Buchy stood waiting. He was tall, only two inches less than Hugues, hooknosed, grizzled, but as yet lithe and possessing most of his teeth. His mantle was white, as befitted a celibate knight bound by lifelong vows. At his hip hung a sword.

Hugues stopped. “In God’s name … greeting,” he faltered.

Fulk signed to his men, who took positions outside in the corridor, and beckoned. Hugues trod closer.

“In what may I serve you, Master?” he asked. Formality could be a fragile armor. The word conveyed by the boy had been just that he come at once and discreetly.

Fulk sighed. After their years together, Hugues knew that seldom-heard sound. An inward sadness had whispered past the stern mask.

“We may speak freely,” Fulk said. “These are trusty men, who will keep silence. I have dismissed everyone else.”

“Could we not always speak our minds, you and I?” Hugues blurted.

“Of late, I wonder,” Fulk answered. “But we shall see.” After a moment: “At last, we shall see.”

Hugues clenched his fists, forced them open again, and said as levelly as he was able, “Never did I lie to you. I looked on you as not only my superior, not only my brother in the Order, but my-” His voice broke. “My friend,” he finished.

The knight bit his lip. Blood trickled forth into the beard.

“Why else would I warn you of danger afoot?” Hugues pleaded. “I could have departed and saved myself. But I warn you anew, Fulk, and beg you to escape while time remains. In less than three days now, the ax falls.”

“You were not so exact before,” the other man said without tone.

“The hour was not so nigh. And I hoped-“

Fulk’s hand chopped the protest short. “Have done!” he cried.

Hugues stiffened. Fulk began pacing, back and forth, like one in a cage. He bit off his words, each by each.

“Yes, you claimed a certain foresight, and what you said came to pass. Minor though those things were, they impressed me enough that when you hinted at a terrible morrow, I passed it on in a letter to my kinsman-after all, we know charges are being raised against us. But you were never clear about how you got your power. Only in these past few days, thinking, have I seen how obscure was your talk of Moorish astrologic lore and prophetic dreams.” He halted, confronting his suspect, and flung, “The Devil can say truth when it fits his purposes. Whence comes your knowledge, you who call yourself Hugues Marot?”

The younger man made the sign of the cross. “Lawful, Christian-“

“Then why did you not tell me more, tell me fully what to await, that I might go to the Grand Master and all our brothers have time to make ready?”

Hugues lifted his hands to his face. “I could not. Oh, Fulk, dear friend, I cannot, even now. My tongue is locked. What I-I could utter-that little was forbidden-But you know me!”

Starkness responded. “I know you would have me flee, saying naught to anyone. At what peril to my soul, that I break every pledge I ever swore and abandon my brethren in Christ?” Fulk drew breath. “No, brother, if brother you be, no. I have arranged that you are under my command for the next several days. You shall remain here, sequestered, secret from all but myself and these your warders. Then, if indeed the king strikes at us, I can perhaps give you over to the Inquisition-a sorcerer, a fountainhead of evil, whom the Knights of the Temple have discovered among themselves and cast from them-“

The breath sobbed. Pain stretched the face out of shape. “But meanwhile, Hugues, I will hourly pray, with great vows, pray that you prove innocent-merely mistaken, and innocent of all save love. And can you then forgive me?”

He stood for a moment. When he spoke again, the words tolled. “It is for the Order, which we have plighted our loyalty under God. Raoul, Jehan, take him away.”

Tears glistened on Hugues’s cheekbones. The guards entered. He had no weapon but a knife. With a convulsive movement, he drew it and offered it hilt foremost to Fulk. The knight kept his hands back and it dropped on the floor. Mute, Hugues went off between the men. As he walked, he gripped a small crucifix that hung about his neck, symbol and source of help from beyond this world.

SAN FRANCISCO, THURSDAY,

8 MARCH 1990

Manse Everard returned to Wanda Tamberly near sunset. Light streamed through the Golden Gate. From their suite they saw cable cars go clanging down toward the waterfront, islands and the farther shore rising steep from a silver-blue bay, sails like wings of some wandering flock. They had hoped to be out there themselves.

When he came in, she read his battered face and said quietly, “You’re on a new mission, aren’t you?”

He nodded. “It was pretty clear that was what HQ had in mind when Nick phoned.”

She could not keep all resentment out of her voice. Their time together had been less than two months. “They never leave you alone, do they? How many other Unattached agents has the Patrol got, anyway?”

“Nowhere near enough. I didn’t have to accept, you know. But after studying the report, I did have to agree I’m probably the best man available for this job.” That was what had kept him since morning. The report was the equivalent of a library, most of it not text or audiovisual but direct brain input-history, language, law, customs, dangers.

“Ol’ noblesse oblige.” Wanda sighed. She met him, laid her cheek on his breast, pressed close against the big body. “Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later. Get it done and pop back to the same hour you tell me good-bye, you hear?”

He grinned. “My idea exactly.” He stroked the blond hair. “But look, I don’t have to leave right away. I would like to get it behind me”-on his intricately looping world line-“but let’s first make whoopee from now through tomorrow night.”

“Best offer I’ve had all day.” She raised her lips toward his and for a while the only sound in the room was murmurs.

Stepping back at last, she said, “Hey, that was fine, but before we get down to serious business, suppose you explain what the hell your assignment is.” Her voice did not sound altogether steady.

“Sure,” he answered. “Over beer?” When she nodded, he fetched two Sierra Nevada Pale. She settled down on the couch with hers. Restless, he kept his feet and loaded his pipe.

“Paris, early fourteenth century,” he began. “A field scientist, Hugh Marlow by name, has gotten himself in deep yogurt and we need to haul him out.” Speaking English rather than Temporal, he perforce used tenses and moods ill-suited to chronokinetics. “I’ve had medieval European experience.” She shivered slightly. They had shared a part of it. “Also, he’s my contemporary by birth-not American: British, but a twentieth-century Western man who must think pretty much like me. That might help a bit.” A few generations can make aliens of ancestor and descendant.

“What kind of trouble?” she asked.

“He was studying the Templars, there in France where they were centered at the time, though they had chapters all over. You remember who they were?”

“Just vaguely, I’m afraid.”

Everard struck fire to tobacco, drank smoke, and followed it with ale. “One of the military religious orders founded during the Crusades. After those failed, the Templars continued to be a power, almost sovereign, in fact. Besides war, they went in for banking, and ended up mainly doing that. The outfit got hog-rich. Apparently, though, most of its members stayed pretty austere, and many remained soldiers or sailors. They made themselves unpopular, being a hard and overbearing lot even by the standards of that era, but they seem to have been essentially innocent of the charges that were finally brought against them. You see, among other things King Philip the Fair wanted their treasury. He’d wrung all the gold he could out of the Jews and Lombards, and his ambitions were huge. The Pope, Clement V, was his creature and would back him up. On October thirteenth, 1307, every Templar in France who didn’t manage a getaway was arrested in a set of very well-organized surprise raids. The accusations included idolatry, blasphemy, sodomy, you name it. Torture produced the confessions the king wanted. What followed is a long and complicated story. The upshot was that the Templar organization was destroyed and a number of its members, including Grand Master Jacques de Molay, were burned at the stake.”

Wanda grimaced. “Poor bastards. Why’d anybody want to research them?”

“Well, they were important.” Everard left unspoken that the Time Patrol required full and accurate information on the ages it guarded. She knew. Oh, but she knew! “They did keep certain of their rites and gatherings secret, for more than a century-quite a feat, huh? Of course, in the end that proved helpful to getting them railroaded.

“But what really went on? The chronicles don’t say anything reliable. It’d be interesting to know, and the data might be significant. For instance, could surviving Templars, scattered across Europe, North Africa, and the Near East, have influenced, underground, the development of Christian heresies and Muslim sects? Quite a few of them joined the Moors.”

Everard puffed for a minute and admired Wanda’s head, bright against the deepening sky, before he proceeded.

“Marlow established an identity and enlisted in the Order. He spent a dozen years working his way up in it, till he became a close companion of a ranking knight and was let into the secrets. Then, on the eve of Philip’s hit, that knight seized him and confined him incommunicado in a house. Marlow’d talked too much.”

“What?” she wondered, puzzled. “He was-is-conditioned, isn’t he?”

“Sure. Incapable of telling any unauthorized person he’s from the future. But you have to give operatives plenty of leeway, let ‘em use their own judgment as situations arise, and-” Everard shrugged. “Marlow’s a scientist, an academic type, not a cop. Softhearted, maybe.”

“Still, he’d have to be tough and smart to survive in that filthy period, wouldn’t he?” she said.

“Uh-huh. I’ll be downright eager to quiz him and learn what beans he did spill, and how.” Everard paused. “To be quite fair, he did have to show a bit of occult power-forecasting events now and then, that kind of thing, if he was to advance within the Templars in anything like a reasonable time. Similar claims were common throughout the Middle Ages, and winked at if a blueblood thought they were genuine and useful to him. Marlow had permission to do it. Probably he overdid it.

“Anyhow, he got this knight, one Fulk de Buchy, believing that disaster with the king and the Inquisition was imminent. The conditioning wouldn’t let him go into detail, and my guess is that Fulk realized it’d take impossibly long to get the ear of the Grand Master and convince him, if it could be done at all. However that is, what happened was that Fulk nabbed Marlow, with the idea of turning him over to the authorities as a sorcerer if the dire prediction came true. He could hope it’d count in the Templars’ favor, show they actually were good Christians and so on.”

“Hmm.” Wanda frowned. “How does the Patrol know this?”

“Why, naturally, Marlow has a miniature radiophone in a crucifix he always carries. Nobody would take that away from him. Once he was locked up alone, he called the milieu base and told them his problem.”

“Sorry. I’m being stupid.”

“Nonsense.” Everard strode across to lay a hand on her shoulder. She smiled at him. “You’re simply not accustomed to the devious ways of the Patrol, even after the experiences you’ve had.”

Her smile vanished. “I hope this operation of yours will be … devious, not dangerous,” she said slowly.

“Aw, now, don’t worry. You don’t get paid for it. All I have to do is snatch Marlow out of his room.”

“Then why do they want you to do it?” she challenged. “Any officer could hop a timecycle into there, take him aboard, and hop back out.”

“Um-m, the situation is a bit delicate.”

“How?”

Everard sought his drink again and paced as he talked. “That’s a critical point in a critical timespan. Philip isn’t simply wrecking the Templars, he’s undermining his feudal lords, drawing more and more power to himself. The Church, too. I said he has Pope Clement in his pocket. The Babylonian Captivity of the Popes in Avignon begins during Philip’s reign. They’ll return to Rome eventually, but they’ll never be the same. In other words, what’s in embryo there is the modern, almighty state, Louis XIV, Napoleon, Stalin, IRS.” Everard considered. “I don’t say that aborting it might not be a nice idea in principle, but it’s part of our history, the one the Patrol is here to preserve.”

“I see,” Wanda replied low. “This calls for a top-notch operator. All kinds of hysteria about the Templars, fanned by the king’s party. Any incident that looked like sorcery in action-or divine intervention, for that matter, I suppose-it could make the whole scene explode. With unforeseeable consequences to later events. We can’t afford to blunder.”

“Yeah. You are a smart girl. At the same time, you understand, we’ve got to rescue Marlow. He’s one of ours. Besides, if he gets questioned under torture … he can’t admit to the fact of time travel, but what the Inquisition can wring out of him could lead it to our other agents. They’d skip, sure, but that would be the end of our presence in Philip’s France. And it is, I repeat, a milieu we need to keep a close eye on.”

“We did remain there, though. Didn’t we?”

“Yes. In our history. That doesn’t mean we inevitably did. I have to make certain.”

Wanda shuddered. Then she rose, went to him, took his pipe from him and laid it in an ashtray, caught both his hands in hers, and said almost calmly, “You’ll come home safe and successful, Manse. I know you.”

She did not know that he would. The hazards of paradox and the wounds to the soul would be overmuch, did Time Patrol people go back to visit their beloved dead or forward to see what was to become of their beloved living.

HARFLEUR, WEDNESDAY, 11 OCTOBER 1307

The chief seaport of northwestern France was a logical site for operations headquarters. Where men and cargoes arrived from many different lands and internationally ranging bargains were struck, occasional strange features, manners, or doings drew relatively scant attention. Inland, all except criminals lived in a tightly pulled net of regulations, duties, social standing, tax collection, expectations of how to act and speak and think-“sort of like late twentieth-century USA,” Everard grumbled to himself. It made discretion difficult, often precarious.

Not that it was ever easy, even in Harfleur. Since first Boniface Reynaud came here from his birthtime nine hundred years futureward, he had spent two decades creating the career of Reinault Bodel, who worked his way from youthful obscurity to the status of a respectable dealer in wool. He did it so well that nobody wondered much about a dockside shed that he kept locked. Suffice it that he had freely shown the proper officials it was empty; if it stood idle, that was his affair, and indeed he talked about someday expanding his business. Nor did anybody grow unduly suspicious of the outsiders who came and went, conferring alone with him. He had chosen his servants, laborers, apprentices, and wife most carefully. To his children he was a kindly father, as medieval fathers went.

Everard’s timecycle appeared in the secret space about 9 A.M. He let himself out with a Patrol key and walked to the merchant’s place. Big in his own era, gigantic in this, he left a wake of stares. However, his rough garb suggested he was a mariner, likeliest English, not one to mess with. He had sent a dispatch capsule ahead and was admitted immediately to Maistre Bodel’s upstairs parlor. Its door closed behind him.

In one corner were a high stool and a table cluttered with things pertaining to business and religion or personal items-ledgers, quills, an inkwell, assorted knives, a fanciful map, a small image of the Virgin, on and on. Otherwise the chamber was rather stately. A single window admitted sufficient light but no real view of the outside, for the glass in the cames, although reasonably clear, was blurringly wavy. It was noise that seeped through, Asianlike clamor of the street below, mumble and bustle of work within, once bell-thunder from the cathedral nearby. Smells were of wool, smoke, bodies, and clothes not washed very often. Yet, beneath everything, Everard had a sense of crackling energy. Harfleur-Hareflot, they still called it, as had its Norman founders-was a rookery of merchant adventurers. From harbors like this, a few lifetimes hence, men would set sail for the New World.

He took a chair across the table from Reynaud’s. They had backs, armrests, and cushions, an unusual luxury. After a few hasty courtesies, he snapped in Temporal, “What can you tell me about Marlow and his situation?”

“When last he called, the situation appeared unchanged,” replied the portly man in the fur-trimmed robe. “He is confined to the strongroom. It has a pallet for him to sleep on. His guards bring him food and water twice a day, and at such times a boy empties his chamber pot for him. They speak to him no more than is barely necessary. I think my message described the neighbors as being wary of the Templars and therefore leaving them strictly alone.”

“M-hm. But what about Marlow? Has he told you how much information he let slip, and in what style he did it?”

“That is our main concern, of course. Correct?” Reynaud rubbed his chin. Everard heard the bristles scratching; contemporary razors didn’t shave smooth. “He dares not speak to us at length or often. A listener at the door could too easily realize that he isn’t actually at prayer, and so may be talking to a familiar spirit or casting a spell or the like. From what he has said, and what he earlier entered in his periodic reports-until recently, he was careful. You know he had leave to make a few predictions, describe a few events in distant places, et cetera. He explained this to the Templars partly as dreams and visions, partly as astrology. Both are everywhere taken seriously; and the Templars are especially disposed to occultism.”

Everard raised his brows. “You mean they are, in fact, doing forbidden things?”

Reynaud shook his head. “No. At least, not to any great degree. Everybody nowadays is superstitious. Heresy is widespread, if mostly covert; likewise witchcraft and other pagan survivals. Heterodoxy in a thousand different forms is almost universal among the illiterate majority, ignorant of orthodox theology. The Templars have long been exposed to Islam, not always in a hostile fashion, and the Muslim world is full of magicians. It is no surprise that their leaders, their intellectuals, developed certain ideas and practices that they feel are legitimate but had better not be made public. Marlow’s accounts of these are fascinating.”

Everard couldn’t resist. “Okay”-American word-“what is this idol Baphomet they’ll be accused of worshiping?”

“‘Baphomet’ is merely a corruption of ‘Mahomet,’ a smear by their enemies. It’s true that the object has the shape of a head, but it is a reliquary. The relic, acquired long ago in the Holy Land, is believed to be the jawbone of Abraham.”

Everard whistled. “Heterodox for sure. Dangerous. Inquisitors might recall that the ancient Greeks kept the jawbones of heroes for oracles. But still, yes, inner-circle Templars could well imagine they can venerate this while staying Christian… .

He sat straight. “Let’s stick to our work.” Wincing, he muttered out of an irrational need, “Sure, it’s unpleasant. A lot of men, mostly simple, harmless rank-and-file, are going to be jailed, terrorized, tortured, some burned, the rest left with their lives wrecked, just to glut that son-of-a-bitch Philip. But he is the government, and governments are like that, and this is the history that produced us”-and everybody and everything they cared for. Their task was to safeguard it. Louder, harshly: “What did Marlow tell his knightly friend, and why?”

“More than a friend,” Reynaud said. “They became lovers. He admits now, he could no longer endure the thought of what would happen to Fulk de Buchy.”

“Hmm! So the allegations of homosexuality aren’t false?”

“Not entirely.” Reynaud shrugged. “What do you expect in an organization supposed to be celibate? I don’t imagine more goes on than does in the average monastery. And how many kings and nobles keep favorites?”

“Oh, I’m not passing moral judgments. On the contrary.” Everard thought of the lengths to which he might go were Wanda so threatened. “People’s bedrooms are none of my business. But hereabouts, the state makes them its business, and may put you to the stake because you loved the wrong person.” He scowled. “I’m just trying to understand what we’re up against. How much did Marlow let out, and how convinced is Fulk?”

“Marlow told him in general terms that the king plans an attack on the Templars and it will be soon. He begged Fulk to make an excuse to leave France. Kings elsewhere won’t follow suit at once, and in such countries as Scotland and Portugal the Templars never will be persecuted. The warning was plausible. As you doubtless know, accusations have been circulating for several years, and an investigation, officially impartial, is in progress. Fulk took Marlow seriously enough to send a letter to a cousin of his, who commands the Templar fleet, urging him to keep his crews alert for trouble.”

“Hey!” Everard exclaimed. “I remember-but my briefing only said it’s a historical mystery what became of the fleet. It was never seized, nor heard of again, as far as the chronicles go… . What will happen?”

Reynaud was, naturally, kept informed about future developments, as the Patrol’s field scientists traced them out. “When the arrests begin, the ships will put to sea,” he answered. “Most will go to the Moors, like many individual Templars ashore, the men feeling betrayed and disgusted. The Moors will, quite wisely, disperse them among the naval forces of various emirs.”

“So already Marlow has had a real impact,” said Everard bleakly. “What else might Fulk do, even at this late hour? Once we’ve rescued Marlow, we’ll have to deal with that gentleman … somehow.”

“What is your plan for Marlow?” Reynaud asked.

“That’s what I’m here to discuss and arrange,” Everard replied. “We’ll have to work out fail-safe tactics. Nothing that’ll smack of the supernatural or anything else extraordinary. God knows what that could lead to.”

“I expect you have ideas,” Reynaud said. An unattached agent was bound to.

Everard nodded. “Can you find me a few bully boys who know their way around? My notion is that, tonight, we break into the house in Paris. Evidently nobody’s staying there but the prisoner, two guards, and a scullion-a novice, I suppose. A robber gang could hear about that and decide to take advantage of it. We’ll steal whatever portable goods we find and carry Marlow off with us, presumably to hold him for ransom. What with everything that’s about to take place, who’ll give him further thought? The robbers figured they couldn’t get a ransom after all, cut his throat, and dumped him in the Seine.” He paused. “I hope we won’t hurt any innocent bystanders too badly.”

Sometimes the Patrol must be as ruthless as history itself.

PARIS, WEDNESDAY, 11 OCTOBER 1307

After curfew, when the city gates had closed, none went abroad without necessity, save for the watch and the underworld. The timecycle appeared in a street wholly deserted. An outsize machine bearing saddles for eight, it settled onto the cobblestones with a squelp of mire that seemed loud in the silence.

Everard and his men sprang off. Narrow between high walls and elevated galleries, the street lay blacker than any open field, its air foul and cold. Glow from two small windows well up in one housefront merely deepened the dark. The raiders saw clearly. Their light-amplifying goggles ought to be taken for grotesque masks. Otherwise they wore the patched and dirty garments of the poor. All bore knives; two carried hatchets, one a cudgel, one a quarterstaff; Everard’s belt upheld a falchion, short, its blade broad and curved-plausible weapons for bandits.

He squinted at the dim windows. “Damn!” he growled in English. “Somebody awake in there? Maybe just a night lamp. Well, in we go.” He switched to Temporal. His team had birthdays scattered through several future centuries and around the globe. “All right, Yan, shoot.”

Marlow had described the front door as massive. It would be barred on the inside. Speed was vital. When the racket began, neighbors probably wouldn’t dare come to help, but they might send someone looking for a squad of the watch, or by itself it might attract that primitive constabulary. Everard’s men must be gone before then, leaving no trace that lacked an ordinary explanation.

Yan, who would stand by at the transporter, saluted and swiveled around a mortar mounted on the frame. Everard had suggested the design, after which its forging and testing had taken many man-hours. It boomed. A balk of hardwood sprang out. A crash resounded. The front door sagged, splinterful, half torn from its hinges, the bar snapped. The timber could be left behind, evidence that the marauders had used a battering ram. That they must have been uncommonly strong men would be cause for alarm, but the Templar sensation ought to take minds off it.

Everard was already running. Tabarin, Rosny, Hyman, and Uhl came after. Over the threshold, through the gap and the vestibule-its own inner door open-into the workroom! There they deployed in a line, their leader at the middle, and peered about them.

Pillared and stone-floored, the chamber reached hollow. The kitchen entrance at the far end was shut for the night. The furniture remaining here was an iron coffer, three stools, and the big sales counter, on which four tallow candles in sticks made a wavery dusk to see by. They stank. In the right wall was the door to a separate room below the stairs from the vestibule, formerly for storing valuables, now secured by an ornate built-in lock. A tough-looking man in the brown habit of the Order crouched before it, gripping a halberd and yelling.

“Hold!” Everard cried in the Parisian gutter dialect he had acquired. “Lay down your pole and we’ll spare you.”

“God’s bones, no!” the Templar clamored. Had he been a common soldier before he took his vows? “Jehan! My lord! Help!”

Everard signaled his followers. They dashed for either side of the guard.

They didn’t want to kill. Sonic stun guns were nested inside their weapons. Let them close in, distract him, give him a jolt. He’d wake up supposing he’d been whacked from behind-yes, it’d be needful to bang his head with the club, but cautiously.

Two more men sprang out of the vestibule. They were naked, as folk wontedly slept, but armed. The shorter, grubby one likewise carried a halberd. The tall one lifted a long, straight sword. Its blade caught the wan light in a ripple as of fire. Its wielder-Everard knew that aquiline face. Marlow had often surreptitiously recorded it with a microscanner, to put in his reports along with other views. Did he mean to look at it, over and over, when his mission was done and he must return home?

Fulk de Buchy, Knight of the Temple.

“Ho!” he bayed. “Go for the watch, someone!” Laughter gibed at Everard. “They’ll cart away your corpses, swine.”

Others clustered in the entry, half a dozen men and boys, unarmed, dismayed, imploring the saints, but witnesses.

Goddamn it, Everard groaned inwardly, Fulk’s spending the night, and he’s recalled the household staff.

“Careful with the stunners!” he barked in Temporal. Don’t strike the opposition down with an invisible, sorcerous blow. Maybe he needn’t have warned. These were Patrolmen he commanded. They weren’t cops like him, though, they were simply the most promising he’d found among personnel familiar with this milieu, hastily briefed and drilled.

They mixed it up with the halberdiers. Fulk was plunging at him.

Too flinking much visibility here. I can’t stun him unless we get so close I can fake something-or I can maneuver him in back of a pillar-and his sword’s got the reach of mine, and chances are he’s better. I know fencing techniques that haven’t been invented yet, but they aren’t a lot of use when blades like these play. Not for the first time, Everard saw that he might get killed.

As always, he was too busy to feel scared. It was as if his inner self stood aside, watching, interested in a detached fashion, now and then offering advice. The rest of him was in action.

The longsword flashed at his skull. He blocked with his falchion. Metal rang. Everard shoved. His was the advantage in mass and muscle. He forced Fulk’s weapon up. His free fist doubled. No knight would expect an uppercut. Fulk disengaged with feline smoothness and flowed out of range.

For an instant they glared across two yards of stone. Everard realized how the posts hemmed him in. It could prove fatal. Almost, he reversed his sword to use the gun in the pommel. He could then move quickly enough that none would notice his enemy had fallen before being struck. But while others rioted around this chamber, Fulk stepped forward. His glaive leaped.

Everard was in karate stance. Reflex eased the tension he kept on one knee and swung him aside from the slash. It passed within an inch. Everard struck for the wrist.

Again Fulk was too swift. Rising, his blade nearly tore the Patrolman’s hilt loose from the hand. He kept his left side half toward the foe, arm slanted over breast. It was as if he bore a phantom crusader shield, cross-emblazoned. Above, he grinned with battle glee. His steel snaked forth.

Everard had already cast himself downward. The sword whined barely above his head. He hit the floor in full control. Such martial arts were unknown here. Fulk would have slain a man who flopped while he tried to scramble erect. Everard was coiled, his torso up. He had perhaps half a second until the knight hewed. His falchion smote the thigh.

It bit to the bone. Blood spouted. Fulk howled. He went to his sound knee. Once more he raised his sword. Once more Everard had time only to strike. Now the metal caught the belly. Momentum drove it deep and across. A loop of gut slipped out through a red torrent.

Fulk crumpled. Everard jumped back to his feet. Both swords lay unheeded. He bent over the sprawled man. Blood had splashed him. It dripped down into what was pumping forth and spreading wide. Even as he stood, the spurt lessened, the strong heart failed.

Teeth gleamed in Fulk’s beard. A last snarl at his slayer? His right hand lifted. Shakily, he drew the Christian sign. But the words he gasped were “Hugues, O Hugues-“

The hand fell. Eyes rolled back, mouth gaped, torn bowels went slack. Everard caught the reek of death.

“I’m sorry,” he croaked. “I didn’t want that.”

But he had work to do. He looked around him. Both pikemen were down, unconscious but apparently not seriously hurt. It must have happened seconds ago, or his squad would have come to his aid. Those Templars put up a good fight, they did. Seeing him hale, the Patrolmen turned their attention to the help huddled in the entry.

“Be off or we’ll kill you, too!” they bawled.

The attendants weren’t schooled in battle. They bolted in abrupt, trampling panic, with a backwash of moans and screams, out the vestibule and the broken door beyond.

Stumbling through the night, they might nonetheless find city guards. “Get busy,” Everard ordered. “Collect an armful of loot apiece and we’ll clear out. That’s as much as a gang who’d raised this kind of ruckus would stop to take.” His mind couldn’t keep from adding in English, If they hung around, they’d assuredly hang. A thought more real nudged him. “Try for well-made things, and handle with care if you can. They’re going to museums uptime, you know.”

And so a few bits of loveliness would be saved from oblivion, for the enjoyment of a world that, possibly, this operation had also saved. He couldn’t be sure. The Patrol might have managed some different corrective action. Or events might have shaped themselves to restore their long-term course; the continuum has considerable resilience. He had merely done what seemed best.

He glanced downward at the dead man. “We had our duty,” he whispered. “I think you’d’ve understood.”

While his team hastened upstairs, he sought the strongroom. The clumsy lock would have yielded to almost any burglar tools, but those in his pouch were special and it clicked directly over. He swung the door aside.

Hugh Marlow lurched out of lightlessness. “Who’re you?” he choked in English. “I heard-Oh, the Patrol.” His gaze found the knight. He forced back a shriek. Then he went to the body and knelt beside it, heedless of the blood, shuddering with the effort not to weep. Everard came after and loomed above him. Marlow looked up.

“Did-did you have to do this?” he stammered.

Everard nodded. “Things happened too fast. We didn’t expect we’d find him here.”

“No. He … returned. To me. He said he could not leave me alone to face … whatever was on the way. I hoped … against hope … I could talk him into fleeing … but he wouldn’t desert his brothers, either-“

“He was a man,” Everard said. “At least he-I’m not cheerful about this, no, but at least he’s been spared torture.” Bones crushed in the boot or hauled apart on the rack or the wheel. Flesh pulled off them by red-hot pincers. Clamps on the testicles. Needles-Never mind. Governments are ingenious. If, afterward, Fulk had recanted the confession twisted out of him and denied the dishonor in it, they would have burned him alive.

Marlow nodded. “That’s some consolation, isn’t it?” He leaned over his friend. “Adieu, Fulk de Buchy, Knight of the Temple.” Reaching out, he closed the eyes and held the jaw shut while he kissed the lips.

Everard helped him rise, for the floor had gone slippery.

“I’ll cooperate fully and freely,” Marlow said, flat-voiced, “and I won’t ask for clemency.”

“You did get reckless,” Everard answered, “and it’ll lead to the fleet escaping. But that was ‘always’ in history. It just turns out that this was how it came about. Otherwise, no harm done.” Aside from a death. But all men die. “I don’t think the Patrol court will be too hard on you. No more field assignments, obviously. However, you can still do useful work in compilation and analysis, and that way redeem yourself.”

How smug it sounded.

Well, love doesn’t excuse everything by a long shot. But is love in itself ever a sin?

The men were descending with their plunder. “Let’s go,” Everard said, and led them away.