The Seal (45 page)

He took the bowl
and placed it on the clay floor and lay then, upon his pallet, hugging at his
sides to stop his trembling.

And his mind,
having found it unbearable to remain in the world, drew a veil over his eyes
and he fell to sleep.

R
oger de Flor looked up at
the fat moon held about by clouds. ‘Soon it is dawn. Look, there is old Saturn,’
he told Andrew beside him.

‘I don’t know
what they shall think of it,’ said the Templar with a temper held in and
anxious. ‘This is a madness!’

Roger de Flor
smiled. ‘Then they shall think us madmen!’ He laughed out loud. The others
laughed too – brothers in hiding they had met in their travels. In a
nearby paddock sheep bleated, and the cold came in from the mountains, and the
men upon their horses returned to their quiet, with their white mantles
flapping, tilting against the leaves and dust that hit them like needle points.

‘He shall call
the bluff,’ Andrew warned, ‘and we shall be dead by nightfall. Why do you come,
Roger of Flor? To die with dead men?’

Roger made a
frown over his disordered face and such a grin spread out below it as to light
up the night. There was, after all, truth in such a question. Had he not also
found it a marvel that a mercenary of his calibre, devoted to his
faithlessness, had maintained faith in the worthless enterprise begun at
Famagusta? And as for fidelity, at any time – while they lay in wait at
Atouguia for orders from the Grand Master – could he not have taken the
gold and sailed on to Syria or Egypt or the ends of the earth? Yes, he could
have saved himself the headache of an ill-fated journey, for one thing, and for
another he would still have his galley. As it was, the Eagle was drowned and if
that were not enough, he was finding himself on a fool’s expedition to Vienne
to throw down a gauntlet under the Pope’s nose! Under the nose of a world that
wished to burn him and to throw his bones to dogs! What strange wonder had
passed through his heart to make his previous life dwindle to a small thing?
The realisation had come to him in small measures, little by little, so that by
the time he was sat upon that miserable beach before the figure of Marcus in
the throes of his madness, he recognised how much he himself had altered.

Since Cyprus,
Roger had known the true intentions of the Grand Master: if the Order
was
to face peril, the gold’s fate would be to drown in the
sea. He had known it at Atouguia when he observed Marcus’s worship of the gold
grow, and he had known it when the galley had left Portugal for Scotland. With
this knowledge, Roger had of necessity thrown his galley in the way of the
English ship – how else could he alone have prevented Marcus from
accomplishing his doings of making a god out of the gold?

Jacques de Molay
had mistrusted a commander of the Order and had laid all the hopes of his heart
upon the shoulders of a mercenary! How had the old man known that such trust
and loyalty and brotherhood would make an inroad into Roger’s soul?

Jacques de
Molay, it seemed, had known the two men better than they had known themselves!

He looked at
this and it filled him with bewilderment, and a moment later he realised he had
not answered Andrew. ‘Why have I come? The burden of trust is a good weight, my
friend, it builds muscles of faith . . . I have come because I have begun to
remember the Order and why I once thought it valiant and good. Besides, I am
immortal, old man, and petulant at that! I wish to see the commissioners when
we wave the Beauseant in their faces. History shall record it. The people will
know it. Nine knights on horseback ride into the grand cathedral before the
Holy Father! What a marvel!’

Andrew huffed
but the others laughed at this and brandished their blades in the waning night.
The sheep answered by moving off as they approached the city gates.

The sun lifted
the sky, and the city of Vienne swallowed them into her cold streets. In that
intrepid time what people were about stared at them. The silence in their faces
grew loud in Templar ears. Women took their children in hand, guiding them to
the houses; men bowed their heads and continued with their work. They sensed
danger, like a pall, over the men in white.

‘They do not
look at us,’ Andrew said, hunching over.

‘We are marked
to their eyes,’ Roger answered merrily.

They pressed on.
The wind picked up and swept them like leaves to the church; two men held open
the doors and the others entered the nave on their horses.

Roger observed
the ailing churchmen who sat huddled in communion. One sneezed and the others
just opened their mouths.

‘We come to
defend the Order!’ he cried into the damp space of the church and his voice was
great and bold. ‘In the name of Christ! You offered us safe conduct!’

Incredulous
silence circled the men in red and white sitting tall upon their horses.

Roger de Flor
gazed down from his height at the men in whose hands lay the ending of the
Order, at the stiffened bones of the church, and thought that it was a good day
to die.

A cardinal
stood; his strange eyes touched lightly on the men but his mouth said nothing.
The stillness hung stiffly in the air.

Outside a cloud
passed over the sun and the Pope’s men, having sat before the light from the
rose window, were thrown into darkness.

‘Where is the
Pope?’ asked Roger.

‘He is absent,’
said the prelate. ‘Leave and do not return.’

‘Tell the Holy
Father,’ he said, ‘there are two thousand of us around these parts at the
ready. We are innocent men, who have fought for Christ in the name of the
Church. Let it be upon his head! Beauseant! ’

With their white
mantles flung around, fluttering in the returned sunlight a brilliant moment,
they were gone.

It was almost
noon before the Pope’s men caught up with them. By then clouds had blackened
the sky and the wind was lifting wildly. The men sensed a storm behind it.

When they saw
the guards, the Templars whipped their horses into a gallop.

‘Head for the
forest!’ Roger shouted into the wild air. ‘Circle back! We are outmatched.’

The Pope’s men
came through the wind and into the thicket towards Roger, Andrew and another
man who were now paused upon their horses and ready for battle with axes and
swords. A gust blew the trees, and leaves struck their faces.

A moment later
the Pope’s men came at them and there was storm and blood on the ground when
the other six brothers came from behind with raised axes and ambushed them.

A man fell from
his horse with his throat cut and another took a sword through his heart.
Others fell and took men with them.

When Roger saw a
break in the fighting he called out to, ‘Ride!’

And so they rode
low and ducked the swaying branches. Andrew’s horse panted and snorted trying
to get its breath, but there was no letting up. Behind them a dozen, maybe
more,
pursued them. Then it began to hail, big balls that
struck the trees and splintered wood. One struck Roger and nearly flung him
from his horse. It hit the enemy equally well, pushing down hard though it had
now begun to lose its size and made the ground mush and the horses lose their
grip.

Arrows found
them and men fell to be trampled by horses. They were through and in open
country. There were only the three of them now, and they pressed their horses
hard and rode fast over the crest of a hill. They rode on, skirting the forest,
not looking back, and when the sun shone its face again they pulled in at their
horses and slowed to a trot.

Roger de Flor
felt a strange sensation, a flutter in his heart, and he was out of breath. He
saw himself slump upon the horse that, sensing no tension on its rein, paused, letting
him fall to the ground.

By the time the
others had come off their horses and made their way to him he was almost beyond
himself.

He saw Andrew’s
weatherworn face come over his and the smell of his stale
breath
as he said, ‘An arrow to the heart.’

Roger looked at
it and it seemed to him an odd thing that Andrew had noticed it and he had not,
but then he was reminded of Andrew’s good eyes and he tried to make conversation
by saying, ‘I am killed.’

But even before
his lips had said the words they were proceeding from out of a body below him
that lay upon the leaves flanked by the two men. It did not concern him, that
body. He had, by all accounts, discarded it since he was embarked upon a
different journey, soaring over the waves of a vast blue space wherein he saw
his life spread out like an ocean of light.

And Boniface?
Boniface came to him now day and night and he experienced no respite from
horror, tortured even at the most inauspicious moments by that face whose
admonition rang out, ‘Coward! Murderer!’

He made a sigh.
Since the opening of the Council of Vienne, he had been expecting Philip but he
had not come. Fifty prelates had gathered in the chill of October mornings, in
the gloom of the unfinished, draughty cathedral to hear the monotonous findings
of the papal commission and the provincial councils. Evidence they had heard
many times before.

When the royal
embassy arrived at Vienne, it was comprised of the King’s half-brother, Louis
Count of Evreux; the Count of Boulogne; the Count of Saint-Pol and, together
with the Royal Chamberlain Enguerrand de Marigny, the Keeper of the Royal
Seals, Guillaume de Nogaret and the lawyer Guillaume de Plaisians. They battled
across a negotiating table with Clement’s cardinals and nothing would come of
it. Then Philip arrived accompanied by an impressive entourage. Once again
their meeting had been tempestuous. The King would have nothing else save the
suppression of the Order and he reminded Clement of his promises. Surely Philip
realised Clement must be seen to make some fuss over his requests, considering
the kings of England, Spain and Portugal had not been as enthusiastic about the
Order’s demise? Besides, it amused him to see Philip harassed and red-faced.

When the time
came his fifty prelates voted overwhelmingly for suppression, and in truth, he
was glad it was finally over. He might not have learnt the Templar secrets but
neither had Philip, who, despite having applied torture liberally, had not been
successful in extracting anything of value from Jacques de Molay. Poor Philip
had not known to ask the right questions before the Templar Grand Master had
been sent to Chinon to be questioned by the cardinals. He smiled discreetly.
The King had been looking for a fortune that had never been in his grasp, when
all the time he had been in the presence of a true fortune and had not known
how to ask for it . . . The Secrets of the Order would die with Jacques de
Molay and all that was left to Philip Capet were meagre leftovers.

From his throne
in the cathedral of St Maurice, Clement looked down on the potentates of the
Church, arranged in a semicircle in front of him, with vague detachment.
To his right, on his dais, a little lower than he, sat King Philip
with his son Charles.
To his left
was
Philip’s
eldest son Louis and other nobles, with the cardinals, archbishops and bishops
in all their regalia making up the rest.

The choir and
nave resounded to the Veni Creator without sentiment and Clement barely
followed. He had long ceased the struggle to find God. His life had been that
of a man who is singled out like Abraham, obliged to perform exemplary acts
with the eyes of mankind upon him. How would he be judged? Values were always
too vague, always too broad. Circumstances had been against him, and what he
had done had not, perhaps, shown his true worth.
Had there not been a Philip or a Templar question, I may have been a
pious man, a good pope,
he told himself, and a belch came hot and sour.