The Seal (7 page)

‘To be but a
leaf falling from a tree,’ Christian added.
‘To be a tree.
The grass and the sky and the dirt in which lives the creative power behind
it!’

Now a look
passed over Jacques’ face that creased his scars and raised his brows. ‘You
seem like those Persian mystics, who spin words into mysteries.’

‘I shall let you
in on a secret . . . these words are a mystery to me as well!’ He smiled and
chuckled and gestured for the water, which Jacques gave him little by little
from an earthenware cup.

‘Come,’ he said,
when he was finished. ‘Move closer, I am weary and you are right, I prepare to
join my friend Eisik in that great sea of souls who bask in the eternal, in the
arms of the great wise mother of God . . . but this dawn we sit as friends, one
last time, so let us talk now, you and I. What keeps you in your faith as all
things fall to pieces?’

Jacques de Molay
answered readily, his eyes far away. ‘My love for Christ.’

Christian looked
at the man, at the hooked nose and bones of the face too thin of
skin scarred
silver over the cheeks. The greying hair, the
straight-cut shoulders. There were many Templars and many Grand Masters but
only a man such as Jacques de Molay could be the last Grand Master of the
Order. He wondered where a man such as sat beside him might find comfort.

‘What is this
love of Christ, Jacques, if not a murmur? Something fleeting that is felt in
the heart and as soon as it is felt it vanishes? It is a thought as fragile as
a rose that blooms only in the mind, an ideal that fires up the will and dies
down again, Jacques, and can easily become only a dream that slips from the
memory into darkness like a rock thrown down a well. You have lived this love
of Christ for
all the
world! Forging ahead upon the
backs of the gods! And in this swift life there is no room for those who cannot
follow. Some must fall behind. Too much too soon . . .’

Jacques de Molay
nodded. ‘This is so, but what shall remain of our struggles when all is lost?’

‘A shape formed
from the sacrifices of so many into which Christ can drop his heart . . . it is
as yet no more than a
seed ...’

‘This is a
pleasant dream.’

‘What a man dreams today is carried on into eternity.
It creates the world for those who come after him. So tell me, what
is your resolve?’

Jacques de Molay
looked up at this. ‘To follow my duty to its end,’ he said. ‘I shall not resist
what the Lord has waiting for me . . . We shall sacrifice ourselves rather than
be sacrificed.’ The Grand Master looked into Christian’s eyes and it seemed
then to the old monk as if a rush of surprise and wonder and grief entered into
them. He was struggling, Christian knew, to rein in a passion that was like a wild
horse headed for doom.

‘You are a
patient man, Jacques, you have never asked me why I have spent my long and
sinful life in this place, surrounded by walls, scribbling on parchment . . .
why you have sequestered me and kept me safe. I shall now tell you that I have
been setting down with my unworthy faculties what shall remain hidden and unknown
– the secrets of the Order.’

Jacques looked
upon the old man with surprised intensity.

‘Yes,’ Christian
nodded. ‘The secrets . . . these things too shall remain for tomorrow, though
hidden. I have written how one day men will accept into their souls the essence
of Christ, in the way that a seal makes an imprint in wax . . . This day shall
come, but there is something I shall impart to you now that I have left
unwritten in my history, something you should know – sacramentum regis
– the kingly sacrament. Come . . . come closer still . . .’

Jacques let out
a breath like a man full of dying thoughts and stretched his neck forward to
lean in to him, every muscle taut.

‘The seal which
you carry upon your finger,’ he said, taking Jacques de Molay’s hand in his,
‘it is a symbol of the wisdom of the Order handed to our first Grand Master,
Hugues, bless his soul . . . It was something known only to those who were
initiated into the secret Gospel of the two Johns, into the mystery of the sons
of the widow . . . vouchsafed by Ormus, disciple of St Mark who was the
disciple of Paul. You see . . . there on the surface, the seal tells of the
Holy Sepulchre, as does the second seal, the replica that is worn by your
seneschal . . . However, as you know there is something that lies hidden,
something peculiar and unknown, a mystery behind the mystery of its miracle . .
. Bring me the quill,’ he gestured to the rough-worn wooden table by the
window.

Jacques did as
he was asked.

‘Open it.’

The Grand Master
raised his brows. ‘But I cannot! No man has looked upon it since Solomon!’

‘Open it once
and then never look upon it again.’

The Grand Master
pressed the pointed end of the quill on a particular spot along its edge. The
topmost portion of the ring snapped open, revealing something beneath.

‘You know of its
existence . . . all Grand Masters do.’

Jacques de Molay
looked perplexed. ‘How do you know it?’

‘It is a bane to
know it and it shall now be your bane. Thankfully the knowledge of it has been
lost except that it belonged to Solomon and to David before him . . . all Grand
Masters are admonished never to look upon it. But I shall tell you what it
means . . . because it is the end . . . and it now presents a danger.’ He
lowered his voice. ‘The Temple has had many tasks, some of them secret, some of
them open-faced. Some come to us from the past but one, however, lies in wait
for the future . . . the seal points to this. This is the thing, Jacques, the
Kingly secret. The secret of the King belongs not in our time but is of the
future. David knew of it and he passed it on to his son, Solomon, who knew how
the Temple had to be built though he could not build it. This task fell to
those of Hiram’s line since they knew how to transform and redeem the world.
You have heard tell of the legend of Cain and Abel? David and Solomon were of
Abel’s line, from him have spawned the priests, the thinkers, those who know.
Hiram was of the line of Cain, from him came the sons of the widow, those who
have fire in their will,
those
who do. We brothers of
the Order are children of the widow. Below her veil she conceals the secret of
the divine marriage. There is good reason why much of this has been forgotten.
It is a dangerous secret, since it does not discriminate between good men and
bad . . . it shall have any master that claims it . . .’

Christian
motioned with his gnarled hands and the Grand Master looked below the lid to
the hidden seal.

Outside a cloud
swept across the sky and covered the sun.

Afterwards, the
Grand Master closed the hinged lid and sat paused for a long time, looking down
to his hands, to the ring. His face was drained of blood.

He moved his
head with a jerk and stood awkward and out of
breath
.
He did not speak
,
his eyes formed a
question
.

Christian closed
his own to dispel the images that those eyes made upon his mind. ‘The wisdom of
God is inscrutable,’ he said.

After a long
moment the Grand Master said, ‘I will go now and prepare the men.’

Christian nodded
and tears filled his eyes. ‘St Michael protect you.’

He watched the
Grand Master’s thin, square-shouldered form leave the room. Those shoulders
were bent a little now, for they had grown a further burden.

T
hey
came out onto the dry sand, casting no shadow and seeing little. The bay of
figs was empty of bigger ships, except for the galley that lay down in the
water some way off. Nearer to shore, boats and barges lit by stars mingled
polite and circumspect in the pleasant night, with only the sound of a gentle
ocean lapping at the edges of the sand.

The three
knights gathered together under the sickle moon that, resting over a cloud,
cast ghostly wisps of light over their dark apparel and the wooden barrels at
their feet.

To Etienne its
light reflected the sun’s body force and gave it the look of a monstrance
wherein dwelled the dark image of the sun’s spirit. He let his gaze linger on
it a moment, allowing the strength of such a thought to fill him, and then,
squinting, moved his eyes firstly towards the line of short waves polishing the
west face of a rock wall and secondly to a distant light that flickered and was
gone. Etienne cupped his hand and made the sound, and another flicker of light
appeared in answer.

Beneath his
unyielding countenance he felt good and bad at once – loose and
stretched. Happy to be beyond the gates of Famagusta, which had seemed to him
more and more like a prison, and at the same time anxious that all go smoothly
and without incident.

‘It is the
Eagle, I see her beak,’ said the old Scot Andrew behind him. A veteran of two
Crusades, he cast his two small eyes like beads over the indistinct line of the
galley. ‘Aye, the slaves are shackled, by what I can see of it . . .’

‘You have good
eyes, Andrew!’ said Marcus. ‘On a clear night might you not see Syria then?’

‘My eyes are all
that works aright in this carcass of mine. I should throw myself against a
spike if they were gone.’

A warm breeze
moved over the water and the tide making small boats bump together. The men
tuned their ears to sounds and their eyes to shadows.

Etienne turned
to a whisper that came between pants from the darkness.

‘It is I . . .
Jourdain.’ A shadow moved towards them.

When it neared,
what was visible of the young captain was his blond hair, lit up strangely in
the meagre moonlight.

‘The horses are
hid?’ Etienne asked him.

Jourdain got his
breath back. ‘Behind that hill, there is a small deserted house, not far . . .’
He seemed to be smiling, since his voice had a note of lightness about it.
‘This is all a guarded business, then.’

‘Did you see
anyone?’ Marcus pressed.

‘No.’

‘Well then,’
Etienne said, ‘we shall sit and wait for the galley.’

The night
sounded with insects and Etienne felt
a restlessness
for Marcus to be off so that he could think upon the happenings of these last
hours. He took up a handful of the coarse sand and let it fall between his
fingers.

‘Where does the
galley go then?’ Jourdain asked.

‘To Portugal,’
Marcus told him.

‘That is a small
thing. What shall be found on the way there, that is what troubles me.’

‘Perhaps it
shall find calm weather on the deep, respite from winds in trouble, rest and
sleep,’ Jourdain put in.

‘Shall I turn to
stone with numbness?’ Etienne told him. ‘You sound like the troubadours of my
country, Jourdain!’

‘I have heard
tell that all men from your land of the south are poets,’ he said. ‘Do you not
remember one song?’

Etienne gave a
half-smile to the darkness. This being out of doors and in the open air with
brothers and a deed to perform gave his soul a semblance of youth, and he
deigned to tell one. ‘Behold, the pleasant and longed for spring, brings back
joyfulness, violet flowers fill the meadows, the sun brightens everything,
sadness is now at an end – déjà les chagrins se dissipent!’

‘Well . . .’
Andrew slapped a knee. ‘That is a fine one!’

Etienne now
regretted it. ‘It is only a memory.’ Then because he wanted to move on from
such foolishness he said, ‘The wind picks up, if they do not hurry our
deception will be discovered.’

‘Roger de Flor
captains that vessel.’ Andrew had forgotten his merriment and became
melancholy. ‘The deserter took the Falcon to the sea at Acre after he made his
fortune from the old and weak, and never returned . . . full of fleeing
merchants and weighed down with the town’s gold!’

Marcus grunted
in return. ‘I found out his history – in the east he worked for Frederick
of Sicily and then for Andronicus using mercenaries and Catalans to keep out
Turks. He was made Admiral of Romania – they tried to assassinate him for
his cruelty.’

Etienne rubbed
his hands of sand. It seemed always to fall on him to ease Marcus’s spirit.
‘Here in Cyprus the Temple is thought cruel, and in the Holy Land also . . . It
is the way of people that they despise those who are their saviours and soon
forget the cruelty of the oppressors from whom they were freed – those
men who raped their women and cut off the noses of their priests. At any rate,
Roger de Flor saved your life at Acre, and he saves the Order now.’

Marcus shifted,
kicking at the sand. ‘Saving my life is no more than any brother would have
done, saving the Order is no more than any man paid well might do. At any rate
it leaves a bad taste in the mouth.’

‘Well,’ Andrew
remarked, ‘much more of this and we shall not know brother from foe.’