I Serve (27 page)

The greatest merriment was the dance that the king held aboard the
Cog Thomas
. He bade his minstrels play a song that Sir John Chandos had lately introduced to the court and ordered Sir John to stand up in the middle and sing the words. Sir John had a clear, sonorous baritone that would have served him well as a minstrel or troubadour. The sailors danced merrily to the lilting tune, and the king was diverted to no end by the jollity. Indeed, at such a time this, it would have been surprising to see the king in poor spirits. The Castilians had given him the very pretext he needed to engage their fleet. The anticipation of the conflict flowed through him like an elixir, brightening his eyes and quickening his step.

In his excitement over the expedition, Edward allowed his third son to leave the company of his mother and join the bellicose venture. The boy’s given name was the same as mine—John. He was called John of Gaunt, for he had been born in that Flemish city and had come well-knit into the world like all the cloth produced in the Low Countries. At the time of our expedition, he was only ten years of age, but tall like his father and brothers, and indeed, like all of the Plantagenets. He conceived a particular affection for me over the course of our voyage, and as we waited in the channel I entertained him with matches of dice or backgammon.

On one of our evenings at sea, the prince challenged Charny to a game of chess. A small pavilion was erected on the deck of the ship and beneath it they played by candlelight. Young John of Gaunt and I watched the match with interest. I was unsure in my own mind as to which was the probable winner. The prince, I knew, had rarely met his master, but my confidence in Charny’s powers had grown up overnight like a housewife’s leavened bread. The French knight was endowed with a simple shrewdness that I could not fathom.

The prince advanced his ebony queen early, and Charny’s pieces were soon hemmed in from all sides. His highness leaned forward intently on each move, stroking the short, dark beard on his chin and furrowing his brow. Charny reclined a little where he sat, the picture of a man at ease. He had lost a knight and a bishop now, but his demeanor remained unflappable.

In the midst of the match, a sailor entered; he told his highness of a party seeking leave to board our boat. The prince, in rapt concentration, waved me away to deal with the matter. I left the pavilion to greet our new guests.

“
Ha! Potenhale!” said a thick voice, and I recognized the speaker immediately. It was my erstwhile adversary, the Earl of Kent. A bedraggled squire helped Holland over the side of the boat. He wobbled unevenly on the deck, and I saw that he had drunk much wine in the early hours of the evening.

“
Sir Thomas,” said I, forced into civility by my role as the prince’s deputy. “The Prince of Wales bids you welcome. Will you join us on the rear deck?”

Holland grunted in assent. I returned with him to the pavilion. When I entered, I saw that of the prince’s ebony pieces only the king remained. Charny moved his ivory queen, and the black king toppled tragically onto the checkered squares below.

“
You have bested me,” said the prince gravely.

“
Nay, the Castilians have bested you,” said Charny with a smile.

“
How is that possible?” asked young John, the prince’s brother, for we had not yet encountered the Castilian fleet.

“
It is from a Castilian that I learned the game,” replied Charny.

“
I would like to meet that fellow,” said the prince, “for truly, you play like a master at this sport.”

“
I should like to meet the man as well,” said Charny with a shrug, “but he is dead these fifty years and more. He was the great-grandfather of the current Castilian king. His book,
Libro de los juegos
,
poses problem after problem for the chess player; I spent many hours with it as a boy. Has your highness never heard of it?”

“
Never,” said the prince. “Thomas Bradwardine taught me what small skill I possess. I did not think it possible to acquire it from a book.”

“
And yet, nearly all knowledge may be imparted through the written word,” replied Charny. “Name me a field of knowledge that may not be acquired in this way.”

“
The knowledge of knighthood,” said the prince promptly. “That must be learned upon the field of arms.”

“
Do you not rather mean the skills of knighthood?” corrected the Frenchman. “For the knowledge of knighthood and chivalry may be fully set forth and expounded with ink on a dozen sheets of vellum.”

“
Ha!” said Sir Thomas Holland scornfully, and the prince—as if just noticing his presence—turned him a brief glance of recognition.

“
Very well, Sir Geoffroi,” said the prince. “Prove that the knowledge of knighthood may be learned in this way. Show me the book that teaches it.”

“
Grant me a year, highness, and I will place it before your eyes.”

Sir Thomas, meanwhile, had set his large frame upon the bench beside his highness’s young brother. “What do the French know of knighthood?” he said loudly. He leaned forward into Charny’s face. “Look here, my good man, have the French anything of this sort?”—he fumbled with the garter on his leg. “Have the French anything like this?”—he held out the medal of St. George that swung from his neck.

“
You refer to your English order?” asked Charny politely, “The Order of the Garter?”

“
Aye!” said Holland, “Have the French an order that boasts so many fine knights and peers of the realm? Answer me that, Frenchman!”

“
Nay,” said Charny, “we have no such order now—although in past days many French knights won glory in the orders of the Hospitallers and the Templars.”

Holland snorted. “Monkish men, the lot of them! What kind of vows are poverty and chastity for a knight? Bah!” He reached forward and nudged the prince familiarly. “I wager
you
could not keep such vows, highness.” The prince glanced at him coldly, but gave no word of remonstrance, for he saw that the man was in his cups.

“
But were not the Templars guilty of witchcraft?” asked John of Gaunt, for he knew the stories as well as the rest of us.

“
Not so,” said Charny, “The Templars were godly men in the main.”

“
Godly?” roared Holland in a surly tone. “Do you call it godly to deny Christ and trample on his cross? The French have a strange form of piety.” The drunken earl began to wax obscene and called down imprecations on the defunct Templar order.

Ignoring him, the prince turned his attention back to Charny’s claim. “I have never heard high praise of the Templar order. In sooth, the scroll of judgment is heavily charged with their blasphemies and perversions. If they were godly men, as you say, then why did your Philip the Fair take such great pains to uproot them?”

Charny sat silent for a minute, just as he had done several months ago on the battlement of Windsor Castle. His silence at that time had been a prelude to his tale of the Crusade at Smyrna. I looked at him attentively and waited for the beginning of a new story.

*****

“
Long ago,” said Charny, “I had an uncle. He bore the same name as me, or rather, I now bear the name that was once made famous by him. He entered the Order of the Temple at the prescribed age—perhaps a little younger, for the preceptors often gave early admittance to young knights of promising quality. At the time of his entry, the Crusader outposts in Outremer were already in the throes of defeat. The Hospitaller Knights had just lost the city of Acre in a siege as bloody as Herod’s slaughter of the innocents. Acre was the pillar on which the remaining Crusader cities leaned, and when she fell, all else tottered. Sidon, Haifa, Beirut, and Tarsus disappeared before half a year had passed, all prey to the implacable foe.

“
In past times, the greatest enemy of the Crusaders was the Saracen. Your King Richard had much to do with Saladin, the prince of Saracens. That sultan was a cruel foe. He could slaughter a hundred Christian prisoners without a pang of remorse and frequently did so when a battle had been won. But he was also a chivalrous foe. When Richard’s horse was shot from under him, he sent him two others to replace it. When Richard lay ill of a desert fever, he sent him fresh fruits and ice. They say that when a Frankish woman’s babe was stolen from her, Saladin took the child from the slave market and restored him to her breast. There is a certain native nobility in the Saracen, and a man may take pleasure to fight such an enemy.

“
But the nobility of the Saracen is entirely absent in the Mamluk hordes of Egypt, and there is no such pleasure in taking arms against them. The Mamluks were the slaves of the Saracens before they overthrew them and so there is little wonder to find them base. A slave is a man who has been taught that all men are beasts. His master has done his best to drive this thought into him by the sting of lash and tongue. What horror then, when the beast-like slave becomes in turn the master!

“
You may wonder why the Crusader kingdoms toppled so easily before the Mamluks. Before Acre fell, the Crusaders had allowed the Mamluks to pass through our territory in the Holy Land. The intruders claimed that they only wished to do battle with the Mongols in the North. They pledged an oath that the Christian kingdoms would be left unharmed. But no promise binds an infidel. Once entrenched in our kingdoms, there the Mamluks remained. They attacked fortress after fortress, and in the heat of their fury, the Christian kingdoms of Outremer melted away like ice in the sun. By the time my uncle joined the Templars, only one small piece of Christendom was left in the East, the island of Ruad just off the coast of Syria.

“
My uncle entered the order in a time of change. Jacques de Molay had been newly elected Grand Master. This man had commanded a troop at the siege of Acre and knew the rapacity of the Mamluks firsthand. At the time of De Molay’s inauguration, the Templar headquarters sat on Cyprus in the Mediterranean. De Molay knew that Cyprus was too far offshore for launching effective strikes to regain the Holy Land; he moved immediately to garrison Ruad. My young uncle filled one of the posts on the island. It was not often that Ruad was free from attack, and he grew to manhood amidst the clash of sword and scimitar. For ten years, the Mamluks tried to take Ruad, and for ten years, the Templars held their island fortress.

“
While my uncle Charny grew inured to danger on the battlements of Ruad, the Grand Master de Molay contended with other dangers that threatened the Templars. Pope Boniface was dismayed by the continual losses in the Holy Land. Assessing the situation from his seat in Rome, he determined that the knightly orders were too decayed and disorderly to retake Outremer. He suggested that the Hospitallers and Templars unite into one single order and combine their efforts against the infidels. Both orders balked, unwilling to give up their insignia, their prestige, and their autonomy. Surely there must be some other way to contend with the Mamluk besides merging the two orders into one!

“
The Grand Master De Molay suggested cooperation with the Mongols. They harbored long-standing enmity for the Mamluks and might be willing to help the Crusaders. Full of hope for the enterprise, De Molay came to terms with the Mongol Khan in 1300. The Templars launched a sea-based attack from Ruad against Tortosa and waited for their allies to join them; yet despite many promises, the Mongol land force failed to materialize. By the time the Khan’s tardy troops arrived, two months had passed and the Templars had already withdrawn. De Molay tried the same tactic the next year and the year following, each time with the same results. Meanwhile, back in Italy, the pope grew increasingly impatient.

“
My uncle, by this time, had proved his worth at Ruad; beneath his redcross robe he had the sinews and the scars worthy of a defender of Christendom. De Molay recognized in Charny a leader of men and resolved to raise him to a higher position within the order. My uncle was remanded to France and took ship at once from Ruad.

“
The transfer came none too soon, for the Mamluks had wearied of the Templars as one wearies of a persistent gadfly. A swarm of sixteen ships came from the Mamluk nest in Egypt and put in at Tripoli. From there, they surrounded Ruad and starved the Templar garrison into submission. When the Templar commander negotiated a surrender, the Mamluks agreed that the garrison could leave the island unharmed and take ship for the Christian land of their choice. But as the Templars—120 knights, 500 bowmen, and 400 servants both male and female—exited the gates of the rocky fortress, the Mamluks’ mercy dried up within them like water in the desert sun. The infidels knocked arrow to string and struck down every Frank with a bolt through the heart.

“
My uncle Charny arrived safely in France, and at de Molay’s recommendation, filled the vacant position of preceptor of Normandy. It was an honorable post for a knight to hold but an unfortunate time for him to hold it. A new pope had taken office and had moved the papal see to Avignon. The changes in the papacy, however, did nothing to change the papal attitude toward the Templars. What is more, the pope’s displeasure with the Templars had planted seeds of hostility within the fertile minds of the laity. Rumors began to hover and dart like dragonflies, skimming over but never quite dipping into the placid pond of truth.

“
The Templars had always prohibited others from entering their preceptories, and now this very secrecy gave rise to speculation. What rites went on behind those closed gates? Whispers of impiety and perversion tiptoed among the people. The Templars, said some, had allowed the infidels to overrun the Holy Land because the Templars themselves had embraced the infidel faith. Inside their fenced fortresses they abominated the Christ they professed to adore, spitting upon the cross that should have been enthroned with honor. Along with forsaking their faith, they had forsaken the ways of nature. Ritual prostitution reigned in their halls, men with men committing what is shameful. So flared the flames of rumor, and try as they might, the Templars could not quench them.