The Pegasus Secret (33 page)

He put down his suitcase and wandered over to have a look. A woman was clearing dishes from the continental lunch advertised on the hotel’s sign.

Lang startled her when she looked up and saw him. “Oui?”

His French wasn’t any better than his Italian. “Chambre?” he asked hopefully.

Lang was pleasantly surprised when he got something resembling whatever he asked for in French. At his only stay at Paris’s oh-so-snobby Bristol Hotel, he had used a English-French dictionary, stumbling syntax and a heavy-tongued accent to ask room service to send up a cold drink. Minutes later, he got the cold just fine, only it was a very dead fish. The incident had colored his opinion of both his linguistic ability and the French. He held neither in particular esteem.

“You are American?’ the woman asked in perfect English.

“German,” Lang replied with appropriate Teutonic stiffness.

She wiped her hands on her apron and smiled as though indicating the difference was insignificant. “We have a room,” she continued in English. “One with the view you see here.” She indicated the glass behind her.

She led him back to the foyer and opened the register. He reluctantly gave her both Schneller’s Visa card and passport. With just a little luck, the passport wouldn’t hit the computers in Paris for several days and she wouldn’t run the credit card through until he checked out. She seemed disappointed in both. She recorded the number of the passport before making an imprint of the card.

Lang was trying to remember how long it had been since he had seen that done to a credit card instead of an electronic swipe when she handed it back and reached into the key rack behind her and headed for the stairs. Lang had to trot to keep up. Along the gallery, she opened a door and silently motioned him inside. The room was unremarkable other than the promised overlook of the Aude. The travel magazines would have described the view in superlatives, something like shimmering diamonds
in the midday sun as the river meandered between chalky cliffs.

As soon as the woman was gone, Lang opened his new luggage and changed into jeans and a heavy shirt. The Mephistos were even more comfortable than they had been in the store. He took out a coil of rope, ran his belt through it and secured the trenching tool to his belt.

Locking the room as he left, he stopped to pull a single hair from his head and use spit to glue it between door and jam. If a visitor came, he wanted to know it.

An Account by Pietro of Sicily
Translation from the medieval Latin by Nigel Wolffe, Ph.D.

After six days, we reached the destination our gaolers intended. Had I more pigment and paper with which to record it, this record would be replete with the cruelties and privations inflicted upon us, but those facts are no longer important.

I know nothing of the place in which we are confined other than that it is a twin-towered castle of the king in a city upon a high hill looking down upon a river. Each Brother is in a sperate cell so that there can be no congress among us. The cell which is my lot is below the surface of the earth so that I have no window, its walls so thick I hear nothing but the scurrying of rodents in the straw which is my bedding and only furnishing. Water and dampness drip from the walls and the smell is of rot and decay.

Once a day a trencher of swill I would not have considered fit for swine is shoved beneath the door without spoon or knife so that I must defeat the rats in competition and then eat like a dog. After the third day’s confinement, I learned to thank God for the little sustenance it gives me.

When taken, we were allowed no possessions other than what was on our backs. Had I not kept with me the material with which I intended to labour after the evening meal, I would not be able to record the events that have transpired.

On the first morning after arriving here, I was roughly dragged into a large room and set in front of a high dais, upon which sat a man made known to me as a myrmidon of the Grand Inquisitor of Paris. He read to me allegations similar to those made by the bailie. I denied them, whereupon I was taken forth to another room from which I heard screams and moans.

I supposed this to be the place where I was to be tortured so that I might confess to the falsehoods urged against the Brethren of the Temple of Jerusalem. I know not what was worse: waiting while listening to such suffering in anticipation of my own or the torture which was inflicted upon me.

I wanted to pray God to grant me strength for what I was about to endure but, alas, the knowledge from that accursed cave deprived me of the devotion to do this, for I knew not to whom to pray.

From the room now came quiet and from it was carried the broken form of the old cellarer who had not survived. Indeed, he was one of the fortunate members of the Temple.

I was fastened in an iron frame in a sitting position so that my leges extended toward a screen, on the other side of which was a fire. My feet were greased with butter and the screen removed so that my feet were roasted like venison over a hearth. The screen was moved back and forth to regulate the heat. Each time my tormentors again read the scurrilous charges, which I again denied even though I could smell my own flesh as it sizzled in the flames. I deafened myself with screams before blessed darkness overtook me.

My tormentors would not let me be, but revived me and began anew.

The next day, two of my teeth were drawn out. The day after, I was placed in the strappado.

I know not how long I lay in the straw of my miserable cell, my burned flesh an enticement to rodents and other vermin and my torn muscles making repelling them painful, before a boy appeared before me. At first, I thought he was but a vision, one of many as the pain made me drift in and out of cognizance. Instead, he had been sent to tend to such wretches as I in much the same manner of a stable hand, to replace the straw and to replenish the water, green and stinking in its bucket.

His name is Stephan and he is the fountainhead of any news I receive. Through him, I learned that even the pontiff, Pope Clement V, has abandoned us, banding with King Philip to destroy the Order in spite of the promises of his predecessor. I also learned that His Holiness had proclaimed all the Brothers apostate, the riches of the Order forfeit and the Order abolished. A number of the Brethren, much treasure and the Order’s ships have disappeared.

I also learned that brothers refusing to confess to the insinuations and impeachments against them will be burned before the Temple in Paris.

It is an enigma: Whether to perjure myself by admitting the accusations, thereby avoiding further torment but damning my soul, or alternatively to cleave to the truth, suffering further mortification of the flesh and death by fire? Would that I still believed the latter course meant thereby gaining salvation! Then there be no choice indeed. Because of what I learned on Mount Cardou, I know not if salvation exists.

Had I but remained a humble monk in Sicily, had I not lusted after fine victuals and raiment, I would not now be at this pass. Would that I . . .

My transcription of these events was interrupted and I was forced to secret pigment, pen and paper, for they surely would be forfeit were they discovered. I am nearly at the end of the pigment I mix with the foul water to make the ink with which I write. It is as it should be in that I have little left to
tell, a short time in which to live and can write only with the greatest of pain, my arms having been wrenched from their joints and my fingers swollen from the forcible removal of the fingernails by my inquisitors.

I anticipated further infliction of pain. Instead, I was taken before the same inquisitor and instructed to divulge my initiation into the Order, a simple ceremony in which I was put before the Chapter during the presence of Jacques de Molay, the Grand Master. I was told that it would be a very hard matter to be the servant of another, meaning Our Lord and the Chapters superiors, having no will of my own. I was required to answer several questions: Whether I had a dispute with any man or owed any debts? Whether I was betrothed to any woman, at which point I and a number of Brothers, remembering I had been but a noviate in Sicily, smiled despite the seriousness of the intent of the question. Had I any infirmity of body? Whereupon the assembled chapter was asked if any had objection to my admission and upon unanimous answer that they did not, I was received into the Order.

My inquisitor frowned as scribes finished their transcripts, inquiring as to the nature of any oaths required of me. I spoke truly, that I swore upon the Book and upon the Cross that I would forever be chaste, obedient and live without property, whereupon the Grand Master kissed me upon the mouth, admonishing me to the following effect: I was henceforth to sleep in my shirt, drawers and stockings, girded with a small cord, to never tarry in a house where there was a woman large with child, to never attend a wedding nor the purification of a woman, to never raise a hand against another Christian except in self-defense, to be truthful.

Upon giving such testimony, I was returned to my cell. Later Stephan told me that my words were the same as the other brothers examined that day, yet the inquisitor found it all to be perjury.

Had not Stephan so confided in me, I would have believed
the multiple inquisitors set upon me who told me my brethren had all confessed. Indeed, these new askers of questions were more fearsome that the original ones who imposed torture, for several showed me kindness, weeping at my fate while cajoling me to purge my soul of corruption and confess, while their alternates slapped my face, threatened and prevented me from voiding either bladder or bowel except upon myself.

Pain is but transitory, while damnation is eternal. I chose not to swear falsely against my brethren or the Order. I pray God may inspire my executioner to strangle me before my body is consumed by the flames. Of more significance, I pray my time in purgatory will be short before my Lord and all his saints receive me into heaven. I pray I may be forgiven the sin of pride which lured me from my original station, which made me seek knowledge I should have not sought, which has caused me to question those things that are a matter of faith and to die in a state of torment of revelation I do not wish to heed.

I ask that you who find this writing pray for me also, for time on this earth and my supply of material with which to write quickly expire.

Conclusion by the Translator

There is no surviving complete list of the Templars who were burned at the stake in Paris between October of 1307 and April of 1310, if there ever was such a document. We know that de Molay made no effort to escape, believing to the last the name of the Order would be restored.

It is likely no such list ever existed, the very anonymity of the victims being part of the terror Philip wished to inspire in those hesitant to confess. To die without name was to die without sacrament or burial in consecrated ground, and, hence, without unction and subsequent hope of resurrection—a fearsome prospect in the early fourteenth century.

Whatever Pietro may have found in the cave that so shook his faith, we will never know, nor is it significant. What matters is his first hand account of life as a Templar, albeit a non-combatant, in the days after the retreat from Palestine.

His narrative will be of interest to historians for years to come.

N. W.

Rennes-le-Château

It was only a few minutes drive to Rennes-le-Château on a road as twisted as a bedspring and almost as narrow. A cluster of stone and plaster buildings clung to the top of a hill. Francis had been right about Sauniêre being something of a tourist industry. Two or three couples festooned with cameras wandered through narrow, mostly empty streets. A small visitors’ center hawked postcards with Sauniêre’s picture and books in multiple tongues on the possibilities of what he had found. Signs in three languages reminded guests it was illegal to dig on public property. Apparently the priest’s find had inspired tales of buried treasure.

The small Romanesque church was no larger than the town’s other buildings, its only remarkable feature the gilt border around its low door. The Church of Mary Magdalene, the guidebook said, built in 1867.

Sauniêre’s church.

Lang went inside.

Just beside the door, he was surprised by the leering face of a carved stone devil, his twisted body painted red and squatting under the weight of the holy water stoup. The vaulted ceiling was about twenty feet high and richly decorated with painted designs. The church itself was no more than a simple rectangle, with a center aisle dividing eight pews. The single room could not have held a hundred people. And yet every detail was as richly done as the largest cathedral.

The pulpit was carefully carved with the scene of an angel standing beside an empty cave.

The discovery that Christ had left the tomb.

Appropriate.

Everywhere Lang looked, he saw evidence of what had probably been the most skilled artists available. He understood Sauniêre’s intent, to erect a place of quality and dignity that avoided ostentation. The priest had not intended to become an ecclesiastical parvenu.