Requiem: The Fall of the Templars (38 page)

“What message?”

Simon glanced around as two men hurried past, feet splashing in the wet.

“He said,
You are in the lair of a wolf
.”

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“That’s it?”

“And you had to go to him. Only,” added Simon, catching Will’s arm as he dug his foot into the stirrup, “that might be difficult. Will, the whole city has been alive with the news all morning. On my way here I heard some dozen people talking about it.”

“What?”

“Royal guards have stormed the Jewish Quarter. The king has declared they be exiled.”

“From Paris?” said Will incredulously.

“From France.”

“I knew nothing of this,” Will murmured. He looked at Simon. “When did it start?”

“Dawn, from what people were saying.” The groom took a step forward as Will hauled himself into the saddle, the horse’s hooves squelching in the mud as it shifted its weight. “Do you want me to come?”

“I’ll be faster on my own.” Digging his knees into the beast’s sides, Will urged the horse into a canter.

The streets were almost deserted in the downpour. As he rode, Will thought of Elias’s ominous message and spurred the horse on faster, across the Grand Pont and into the confusion of streets that led to the Jewish Quarter.

Even before he reached it, he encountered signs of the eviction. Streams of people were hurrying past, all marked with the red wheel. He saw one man carrying a boy in his arms. Another child was clinging to his shoulders, red-faced and screaming. A woman struggled behind, dragging a sack through the sludge. Two girls, clutching each other, were crying as they stumbled along, long hair dripping down their backs. The street here was churned up, many people having passed through recently. Will glimpsed a couple of shoes, sucked from feet by the mud, the owner in too much haste to go back for them. A few people leaned out of windows, watching the exodus. Will caught one man cheering halfheartedly, but the sound was soon drowned in the tumult of the rain as he rode on into the quarter.

The place was crawling with royal guards. Will pulled up, his horse snorting and veering agitatedly. A woman screamed as a soldier pushed the man she was with to the ground and kicked at him. The man tried to rise and fend off the blows, but two more soldiers ran in to aid their comrade and the man curled up, disappearing under their mailed boots. Another was grasping a sack to his chest, yelling at a soldier who was trying to wrest it from him. Sounds of the fall of the templars

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shouting and things breaking echoed from the interior of houses, many of whose doors had been broken open. People’s possessions were strewn across the mud: a red cloak, a golden candelabra, a silver bowl, rain bouncing off it.

Farther down the street, Will caught sight of what looked like a pile of clothing, but he realized it was a body. Male, female, dead or unconscious, he couldn’t tell. There were carts piled high with treasures, the harnessed oxen lowing in the rain. He looked around as a royal guard, coming out of a building, challenged him. Ignoring the soldier’s shouts for him to halt, Will steered his horse off down a narrow side street heading for Elias’s house, past a synagogue where threads of smoke were creeping through the smashed shutters.

Approaching, he saw that the door of the orange house was hanging open.

Fear swelled in his mind. This street was quieter, but signs of devastation were all around him and there were more bodies here. Will tethered the horse to a post outside one of the booksellers’, then entered the dark hallway. Hearing noises beyond the kitchen door, he drew his broadsword. The balance was still awkward in his hand. The blade had been given to him by Wallace, after his falchion had been broken at Falkirk. Since then he’d rarely had cause to use it and he wasn’t yet comfortable with it. With his attention fixed on the closed door, he didn’t see the overturned stool in front of him. It skidded on the tiles as his leg connected with it and the noises in the kitchen stopped. Cursing, he shoved open the door and barged in.

The first thing he saw was a wide-eyed old woman, pressed against the wall behind a man, who looked no less terrified, but was standing protectively in front of her, wielding a kitchen knife. Crouched near the fireplace were three more men. They were surrounding a fourth figure, stretched out on the fl oor.

Will had time to see blood splatters on the tiles and on the prone fi gure’s robes, before he recognized him.

“Dear God.” He sheathed his sword. “Elias?”

“Get back!” commanded one of the Jews, rising to face him.

“William?” came a withered voice from the fl oor.

“Try not to move,” said one man, pressing a hand on the rabbi’s chest.

The Jew barring Will’s way moved aside reluctantly, as he pushed past. Will felt anguish slam through him as he saw the cause of the rabbi’s prostration.

The old man had been blinded. Both eyes had been removed, leaving ragged holes that wept blood onto his cheeks. He knelt and grasped the old man’s hand. “Who did this, Elias? What is happening here?”

“Royal soldiers,” answered one of the men, before the rabbi could speak.

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Will thought he had seen him before. His hands were fists on his knees. “They came before dawn. We had no warning. They said we were being banished on the orders of King Philippe, that all our possessions and properties were forfeit to the crown. Anyone who protested was wounded, some were killed. Elias tried to reason with them.”

“I must speak.”

The men looked around at the whisper. Elias was trying to sit.

“Rabbi, please!”

“No, Isaac. I must speak to William. Alone.”

Hearing the order in that voice, however frail, the men and the woman began to move out reluctantly. Isaac touched Will’s shoulder on the way past.

Bending down, he spoke into his ear. “We came back for him when the soldiers moved on.” He glanced at Elias. “But I do not think he has long and we must leave the city.”

“I will stay with him.” As they left, Will stared down at Elias, unable to believe the old bookseller, who had always seemed so filled with life, could be reduced to this. He had seen a lot of death in his years, but there was something so utterly senseless about this violence that it struck at the core of him, demanding explanation. Justice. “I am so sorry,” he murmured. “Simon gave me your message. If I had known anything of this attack on your people, I would have—”

“This wasn’t what that was about,” croaked Elias. His head turned in Will’s direction, causing more blood to dribble down his cheeks. “I did not expect this. My message was about the Temple. I needed to warn you.”

Will clutched Elias’s hand as his head fell back with a soft thud on the tiles.

After a moment, he heaved out a breath. “I was at the palace and I heard one of the ministers talking with the king. A lawyer called de Nogaret.”

Elias’s voice was so quiet Will had to put his head close to the rabbi’s mouth to hear him.

“I heard him say the pope will be their axe.”

“Their axe?” Will questioned, when Elias failed to continue. “What did he mean?”

“One swing,” murmured the rabbi. “One swing at the right time and the Temple shall fall.” His head jerked up, causing Will to sit back. “His coffers are empty. That is why he did this, here today.”

“Are you saying he intends to attack the order?” Will asked urgently.

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“I do not know,” breathed Elias. “That was all I heard of their conversation. It was the lawyer who said it.”

“It won’t happen,” said Will, after a pause. “It cannot. The pope is hardly an ally of the king’s.”

“Perhaps they mean to put pressure on him. Or worse?”

The question loomed in the hush. Will answered it quickly. “Yes, the king is in dispute with Boniface, but it is purely political. He would never move against Rome.”

“You can look upon me, upon what they did on his orders, and say that with such certainty?”

Will felt the accusation like a blow. He looked away from Elias’s ravaged face.

“Philippe is not the answer to your prayers, William.” Elias was grimacing, as if every word hurt him. “There is a devil behind that throne. But you cannot see it. You do not want to see it, because the king has promised to be your ally, your instrument of vengeance. Where will the money for your Scottish cause come from next?” Elias raised his hand weakly and brought it toward his face. “It will come from me. From the blood of my people.”

Will closed his eyes.

“Shame on you, William! Shame on you for refusing to see the truth. You let yourself be taken over by revenge, by its selfish, empty promise. You abandoned everything you swore to serve, everyone you pledged to protect. For more than a century men have given their lives in service to the ideals of the Brethren, those who worked directly for it and those who supported it. And for a personal vendetta, you throw all that away.” Elias was wheezing, but he gripped Will’s hand with startling strength. “You should have remained in the Temple as head of the Anima Templi. Instead, you left, doing nothing to prevent the grand master following his Crusade, nothing to stop the Brethren losing their purpose. But it wasn’t your cause to abandon. It was the cause of a hundred men before you. It was Everard’s and your father’s.
Kalawun’s
. Mine.

How dare you squander our hopes, our blood, on hatred and weakness! How dare you, William!” Elias wrenched his hand from Will’s and turned away, teeth clenching.

Will was mortified. “Don’t say that, Elias. I didn’t . . .” But he couldn’t fi nish. All his excuses for deserting the Temple and abandoning the Brethren stuck in his throat.

“You were a commander in the Temple, a man of honor. You were, Everard 224 robyn

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always told me, your father’s son. You were elected head of a brotherhood of men whose ideals lifted them above the prejudice of their age, who worked for the benefit of all people, no matter their faith. You were these things. What have you become? A bitter man. A mercenary. An errand runner for a tyrant king, who abuses his people, steals and lies.”

“Elias. Please.”

“In using Philippe against Edward you have been trying to fi ght darkness with darkness. What will come of that? No light, that is for certain.”

Will hung his head. He thought of the sense of purpose he felt coming into Paris with Wallace at his side and then the months that trundled into years since then, drawn along by Philippe’s promises of more aid for Scotland and his insistence, despite the truce, that his feud with Edward was far from over.

He thought of the scraps of money the king had given to their cause; token gestures, designed to keep the friendship of the Scots, should he ever need them to occupy Edward’s forces in the north. He had known this, but hadn’t let himself think about it. He had been treading water for more than two years, drifting, unable to move against the currents that surrounded him, pulling him this way and that. Elias had just pushed him under. “I . . .” His jaw tightened. “I do not know what to do. Hugues de Pairaud has taken over the Anima Templi and allied himself with Edward. My personal hatred of the man aside, I know the king has corrupted the Brethren and used them for his own ends. But Hugues would never let me back in, I’m certain of it. The only ally I have left in the Temple is Robert de Paris and he can hardly look at me these days. The things I have done.” Will stared at his hands, almost expecting to see the stains. “My daughter will not speak to me. And the war I fought and bled for is stalled, Wallace and his men gone to ground.” He shook his head slowly. “I have lost my way.”

“Then you must find it.” Elias sought Will’s hands with his own. He held them, weakly now. “Swear you will. Swear it on the lives of those who have gone before you, on the lives of those men and their hopes for this world. Do not let those hopes die with you. Make sure we go on.”

“But how can . . . ?” Will sat forward as Elias’s hands slipped from his.

“Elias?” He grasped the rabbi’s shoulders. “I swear it. Do you hear me, Elias? I swear it!”

But the rabbi was dead and there was nothing but silence to answer him.

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the temple, paris, august 28, 1302 ad

“After forty days, Perceval came to a land, blackened and scorched by a savage sun. And in the distance, he beheld a ruined tower.”

As the figure in the glittering fish-scale cloak stretched out his arm, Martin de Floyran followed with his eyes. In the candlelight, shadows swayed on the wall and the young man felt he could almost see a tower rising dark behind one of the masked men who lined the chamber. The air was stifling, but he shivered, trying to resist the urge to wrap his arms around his bare chest. He wore a loincloth, but felt naked under the hooded gazes of the others. There was a sick feeling in his stomach. It had begun during his night in vigil, fear and excitement bubbling up through him in the waiting darkness where he had knelt alone. He had longed for this moment, and its arrival was the culmi-nation of years of hopes and expectations, only the reality was far from what he had imagined. His uncle had told him this would be the proudest day of his life. But Martin felt no pride, just a mounting sense of fear, the sick feeling overwhelming him.

“Perceval entered the tower and by a winding stair came to the topmost chamber. He found himself in an empty room, the floor and walls scarred and bare. On a crumbling dais stood a broken throne. Windows looked upon a desert, parched and desolate. The fl oor around the dais was scattered with the bones and skulls of men.”

The cloaked figure stepped aside and Martin drew in a sharp breath as he saw the floor behind him was indeed littered with bones. Candlelight threw a ruddy glow across them.

“Upon the throne there was a man. His head was bowed, his body withered by famine.”

Two of the masked men moved forward and drew apart what Martin had thought was a wall, but now realized was a black cloth. Beyond was a recess. It was filled with a wooden dais, on which stood a battered throne, occupied by a hunched figure in a hooded cloak. As Martin watched, his breath suspended, the figure rose and lurched down from the dais, hands held out, palms upraised.