While Percy de Lacy and Felice de Preuthune are the principal protagonists in The Tale of the English Templar, it is Geoffrey - more than the principals - who is determined to undertake the quest for justice in face of the French king's tyranny. Once a Templar novice, who never took his final vows, once a crusader under Saint Louis, who lost his faith, he is now a widower and grandfather to Felice. He turns eighty in the course of the book, yet he plays an active, indeed decisive role.
In this excerpt, Geoffrey meets Percy for the first time.
A moment later [Felice] recognised the massive bay stallion that Niki rode and beside it her grandfather’s ageing destrier. Her first thought was that Hugh had taken him as a fresh mount, but then she saw Hugh lagging behind on a roan from the stables. Her grandfather himself was astride the old warhorse. She broke into a smile and started to run forwards. Maybe her mother wasn’t just being cynical; maybe her grandfather really would live to be one hundred and nine! He certainly looked far from his deathbed as he drew his stallion to a halt and swung down from the saddle. No, he did not spring down; he let his brittle bones down gently. Yes, he was thin with hair as white as the snow that mingled in it, but he was not feeble. He advanced stiffly but determinedly towards Felice.
She flung her arms around him and leaned her head on his bony chest. “Thank you for coming, Grandpapa.”
He squeezed her in reply; already, both of them were looking towards the ditch. Felice took her grandfather’s hand and led him. The Templar’s eyes were open again, glittering and penetrating. They met Geoffrey’s eyes as they had met Felice’s some two hours earlier, and Felice felt her grandfather start violently, then he went down on one knee as if in homage and murmured in awe, “Master de Sonnac!”
The Templar shook his head. “My name is Percival de Lacy.”
Felice was relieved that he could speak.
Her grandfather nodded calmly. “My grandson says both your legs are broken.”
“And his feet have been burned!” Felice burst out in indignation.
Geoffrey signaled for her to be still. “May I see?”
Percy nodded, confused by the question when he was helpless to resist — even if he had wanted to. Yet he trusted this man just as he trusted the girl. They were cut from the same sacred cloth.
Geoffrey folded back the blanket and considered the legs clinically. He had seen countless battle wounds and more than one broken leg; it would have taken more than what he saw now to shock him. He glanced up at Niki and found that his Cypriot squire was already holding the splint and leather straps which had been made for his youngest son years ago. Niki squatted down beside Geoffrey and started preparing the splint.
Suddenly Percy reached out and caught his arm, “Monsieur!” he exclaimed in alarm. “If you help me, you endanger not only yourself but your whole family.” The Sheriff had read aloud to his prisoners the royal writ which had placed them on the same level as outlaws and excommunicates. Any person who aided them was threatened with arrest.
In answer, Geoffrey put his hand to his sword and drew the blade out of its sheath enough to be able to show Percy the hilt. This was composed of a crystal tube encasing a finger bone — as if it were a relic. Then Geoffrey dipped the sword, and Percy saw that the pommel was white enamel with a splayed red cross set in it.
Percy frowned. Was the old man a Templar then? Perhaps one of the many noblemen who joined the Order for a fixed term of service before returning to their lands and families? He looked up at Geoffrey, questioningly.
Geoffrey smiled. “I am Sir Geoffrey de Preuthune, Brother. And my oath was never to abandon a brother in danger or distress.”
Geoffrey turned to attend to Percy’s legs, but Percy stopped him again, more desperately this time. “Wait! You don’t know what I’ve done.”
Geoffrey looked at him, waiting patiently.
Percy was sweating and his chest heaved in time to his short, shallow breathing. “I denied Christ. I said I spat upon him. I... No, no, I didn’t confess to idol worship. But I signed the confession. The inquisitor twisted what I had said but I signed it. I didn’t —”
Geoffrey didn’t appear to be listening any more. He was examining Percy’s legs with his cool, wiry fingers and the expression of a physician. When Percy fell silent, he looked back. “I will tell you what I said to Master de Sonnac at Mansourah. I told him: ‘Christ died on a cross in Jerusalem, but he was not the Son of God and not the Messiah.’”
Hugh cried out in alarm, as if expecting lightning to strike at any second. Even the loyal Niki blanched and crossed himself. Only Felice was not shocked. She had never heard this, but she knew that something terrible had happened in Egypt, something that had transformed her grandfather and ended his novitiate in the Knights Templar. Now, she understood that her grandfather had been angry with God.
Percy and Geoffrey stared at one another. Percy wondered why he was not outraged, and then realised it was that he had had similar thoughts as the weeks and months of his captivity passed.
“I had not been tortured,” Geoffrey continued, reaching inside his suede leather brigandine studded with brass tacks and withdrawing a flask of wine. He slipped his left hand behind Percy’s head and held the flask to his lips.
No wine had passed Percy’s lips since the night of his arrest. The wine tasted strong, and he coughed slightly. Geoffrey waited for the coughing to pass and then offered him the flask again. “It will go to my head,” Percy whispered, feeling the effect even as he spoke.
“It is supposed to,” Geoffrey countered and pressed it to Percy’s lips again.
Now Percy drank with a kind of dazed gratefulness. It seemed almost miraculous that someone could want to dull his pain rather than increase it.
When he had drained the flask, Geoffrey laid him back in his bed of snow and warned softly, “Brace yourself, Brother. This will hurt more than the breaking did.” He took hold of two pieces of one leg and, with uncanny strength and skill in his skeletal hands, set the first of Percy’s legs.
For the second leg they had to improvise a splint; by the time Niki lifted Percy out of the ditch and handed him up to a remounted Geoffrey, he had lost consciousness.
