“Etienne said nothing of this to anyone at the time, not even to us, his own family, preferring, as he ever did, to keep his own affairs secret and safely shielded from the eyes of others. He then went back to England, leaving the running of their activities in the hands of this Bar Simeon, and their venture prospered beyond belief, it would appear, for almost twenty years, until Bar Simeon fell ill two years ago. He was very old by then, a full score and more years older than Etienne. He knew that he was dying, and the nature of his agreement with my brother forbade him from delegating the work or passing it on to anyone else to execute.
“And so the old man sold off all their holdings everywhere and deposited the entire proceeds with our brethren, in the preceptory at Marseille. The preceptor there at the time, a fine man called Theodoric de Champagne, issued all the proper recordings of the transaction, but instead of taking them into his own possession, Yeshua Bar Simeon requested that the documents—the principal one being a letter of credit to be drawn on the Preceptory of Marseille—be sent directly to Etienne in London.”
St. Valéry set his tumbler down carefully beside him on the floor and then rose from his chair and began to pace the room, his hands now clasped at his back and his head bent to splay his long, forked beard against his chest. “Unfortunately, that was a request that could not be met, because it contravened our rules…the rules of our system.”
He stopped pacing and glanced sideways at Sir William. “You are a man of action, Sir William, a knight and a member of the Governing Council, but I suspect you may have had little experience in the commercial side of our undertakings, and so I know not if you are familiar with the precise way in which these things work.” He stopped, waiting for Sinclair to respond, and when the other man shook his head and waved for him to continue, he resumed his pacing, holding one hand still behind his back and gesturing with the other to emphasize the points he was making.
“Above all else, and I know you are aware of this, it is fundamentally simple. A man facing a long and dangerous journey brings his money to whatever Temple or commandery is closest to him. We take the specie into custody and issue him with a document, a formal letter of credit attesting to the amount of the deposit he has made, and he then carries that on his person and presents it to the nearest Templar presence when he arrives at his destination. In the meantime, using our own fleet as a direct courier, we have supplied a record of the transaction, including an enciphered code word for recognition, to whatever preceptory the man has decided to use at his journey’s end.
“Once there, our traveler presents his bona fides and proves his identity—a necessary precaution against fraud—and provides the code word, upon which he receives the full value of his letter of credit, minus a small administrative fee. It works very well as a system, but it has limitations. The man designated in the letter of credit must carry it and present himself in person. The letter of credit cannot be transferable to anyone else—no deputies, no assignees—for if that were possible, the system would break down, with no one truly able to verify anyone’s right to claim the monies involved.
“Thus, in this particular case, an impasse had been reached. Bar Simeon knew he was dying. He suffered a virulent attack of some kind, there in the preceptory, and was convinced he would last no more than a few days. He told de Champagne he had been ill for months, growing worse all the time, and did not expect to live to see his home again, and from the look of him, and the convulsions he had witnessed for himself, de Champagne knew it was the truth. Thus it would be useless for the old man to have the letter issued in his own name, for with his death the unclaimed deposit would be lost forever, declared forfeit and absorbed into our system. And for the same reason, he was in no condition to withdraw his funds again from Marseille and take them away with him. That left Theodoric in a moral quandary.”
“Aye, it would. So what did he do?”
St. Valéry had stopped pacing and now stood staring into the fire basket. “He prayed. And then he made a decision that ignored the rules that were impeding him, in this instance, from doing what he knew to be morally correct…
“Old Bar Simeon had told him the entire story, probably in desperation, once he realized that he had placed himself unwittingly in a cleft stick, so de Champagne knew that the monies belonged rightly and legally to my brother Etienne. He therefore acted upon his own authority, defying all our rules, and wrote the letter of credit in Etienne’s name. He then sent the documents to me under seal, accompanied by a letter explaining the situation and informing me that Bar Simeon had assured him that Etienne would know the code word involved, because it had been a password between the two of them since their first collaboration. De Champagne and I have known each other for many years and he trusted me to respect his confidence. Yeshua Bar Simeon was dead by then, of course. He died within two days of completing the transaction.”
“Hmm.” Sir William had been sitting forward in his chair, listening closely, and now he was impatient to hear more. “And what did you do?”
“Nothing at first. I was caught unprepared, never having known about, or even suspected, Etienne’s venture with the Jew, whom he evidently—and with good reason, it transpired—held in the highest esteem. But once I had thought about it for a time, I conferred with my friend and colleague here, Sir Arnold de Thierry, as the Preceptor of La Rochelle, because although I thought I knew what must be done, it seemed an arrogant and prideful course for me to steer, so far outside the confines of our rules. But Arnold believed I would be doing the right thing, and he encouraged me to proceed.”
“So you sent the letter to your brother in England.”
“No. That I could not do. That would have been flagrant defiance of our law. I held it in trust for him, here, where he must collect it in person. But I wrote to him in England, informing him that I had the documents in my possession.
“It must have been around that point that de Nogaret got wind of it, although we did not know that at the time. But until that transaction took place, and the documents were sent to me, no one, including myself and the rest of our family, had ever known that Bar Simeon and Etienne were connected in any way. None of us had even been aware of Bar Simeon’s existence. So the betrayal must have come from within our own ranks—from one of our brethren in Marseille, a corrupt knight or a sergeant in the pay of de Nogaret. It hardly seems believable, and it galls me more than I can say, but I can find no other explanation. But be that as it may, the word was out—de Nogaret was informed, and the reputation of our Order was besmirched.”
“How do you know the information was betrayed from Marseille? The spy might have been quartered here and read your letter before you ever sent it.”
“Not possible, Sir William, because I wrote and sealed the letter myself, at my own desk, and sent it off the same day aboard one of our galleys headed directly for London. And by the time it arrived in England my brother had already sailed for France on an urgent summons from the King. He had been preparing to come back anyway, and to bring the Lady Jessica with him, to visit our mother, who loves her dearly, so he merely advanced his plans and left as soon as he received the King’s summons. Fortunately for the Lady Jessica, and thanks to the urgency of his recall, he left her on the coast on making landfall, in the care of the Temple at Le Havre, and went directly to Paris on his own. He was arrested upon his arrival, we learned later, and thrown into prison, where he was tortured at great length and eventually died.”
Sir William sat silent, mulling over what he had been told, and then he slumped backwards, chin in hand, his elbow propped on the arm of his chair. “So why has de Nogaret not been beating down our doors? If they put your brother to the torture for an extended time, he must have told them everything he knew.”
“Aye, true, but he knew nothing…at least nothing that de Nogaret could use. Etienne left England before my letter arrived there. He had not received it and did not even know that Bar Simeon had been sick, or that he was dead. He certainly did not know that all his assets had been sold and the proceeds lodged with us. All he could tell the torturers was what he knew up to the time before the old man fell sick. De Nogaret had blundered badly; he had moved too soon. He knew the funds were in our hands, because of the report