The Seal (15 page)

E
tienne
dreamt
he was flanked by priests who bore torches
.
They accompanied him through corridors made of stone to a crypt supported by
four pillars. In the middle of the room
the sarcophagus of
marble was supported by two sphinxes
; he looked into its depths and the
priests, oiled, fasted and purified, began their chant. He was dressed in white
robes and smelt of aromatic herbs. He knew this to be the day of his living
death.

The voices of
the priests faded into a darkness lit only by one light. The sanctuary door was
closed. He entered the tomb. Inside it was cold and his body ached and fell
numb. The light was extinguished then, and he was alone.

A terrible fear
overcame him as he felt his body lifted up.

Then a voice
came from the darkness and asked him,

Who is this Lord
of Terror?

His spirit spoke
the spell. ‘It is the Keeper of the Bend of Amentet.’

Who is this
Keeper?

‘He keeps me
from the knowledge of the heart of Osiris who is the father of the One who was
bidden to rule among the gods on the day of the union of Earth with the Sun.’

Who is it this
One?

‘He who was
bidden to rule among the gods is Horus, the son of Isis.’

Where have you
come from, neophyte?

‘From the
darkness.’

Where shall you
go?

‘Towards the
light.’

Etienne awoke
with a sudden rush as if he had been drowning and were only now reaching air.
He sat up disoriented.

He was in darkness
and in his ear a voice.

It was Jacques
de Molay, his Grand Master, stooping over him with eyes wild, whispering,
‘Hist!’ and with a finger to Etienne’s mouth and a jerk of the head he said,
‘Gather your things, Etienne, you leave tonight.’

‘Leave?’ Etienne
was shaking out the dream and taking hold of his senses. ‘What of Paris?’

Into Etienne’s
ears the Grand Master whispered, ‘
You
will not come to
Paris, you and Jourdain will travel disguised. Soon I shall send word to Tomar
. . . Marcus is to take the Eagle out to the sea . . .’ He paused like a man
who has bewildered himself, as if the words had escaped his grasp and would not
return without effort. ‘Out to the sea,’ he said, ‘he is to take the good gold
of the Order, Etienne, the titles, and the archives, and he is to drown them. He
is to drown them in the sea.’

Etienne’s tongue
was stuck to the roof of his mouth and he passed a hand over his brow as if to
dispel the vision of it. ‘Into the sea?’ The words felt strange in his mouth.
‘The meeting did not go well . . . we are forsaken?’

The Grand Master
was stiff and out of breath; he jerked his head and Etienne could see nothing
of it save the beard and a reflection in the eyes. ‘The King wishes to bury his
hands in our Lord’s gold, Etienne. He wishes to draw power from ownership of
our titles and all that is possessed in our archives. In the King’s hands these
goods shall no longer serve the spiritual life, but shall become a bulwark to
shore up his greed . . . I have long known his heart, but this night I have
learnt more . . . Clement is on the scent of something else . . . something . .
. far greater and more dangerous in the hands of Philip than the treasure of
the Order, and it shall give him more power than all our titles and holdings .
. . If we do not hurry, we shall not be in a position to prevent what will come
from the two of them.’

Etienne mustered
his attention. ‘You wish me to leave you in danger . . . to what end?’

Jacques de Molay
silenced him. ‘I am still the Grand Master and I can look after myself.
And as for you?
What lies before you shall not be so tame as
you imagine.’ He paused a moment, removing something from his belt. ‘You must
take this . . .’ He handed him something in the darkness.
‘A
token of my esteem.
It was given to me by a brother long dead . . .
There is a legend attached to it, it is a skull dagger brought back from a
place known only to our ships, a new world whose position is not marked upon
any map. It has served me well and will serve you also, when the time comes.’

Etienne took the
dagger, heavy and sharp in his hand.

‘Oh Etienne! I
remember receiving you into the Order . . . you were only a boy! Even then did
I know that heaven would find a use for you, and so in my heart I have put you
beyond all others . . . now it is made clear to me the aim which heaven, in its
wisdom, has prepared for you . . .’ There was a movement in the darkness and
Etienne’s other hand was taken by the Grand Master and something cold and round
was passed into it.

‘What is this?’
Etienne said, looking at it.

The Grand Master
was in his ear. ‘The sovereign seal of the Order.’

Etienne stared
into the dark at the form of his Grand Master, and he could not speak since his
mouth was dry and his tongue would not form words. He could hear his heart
drumming out his life in small measures. He needed to wet his mouth.

‘Listen
Etienne!’ Jacques said stark into his ear. ‘You will take it from this place,
and away.’ His head shook with an intensity held back by the silence of his
voice. ‘This shall be the last order you receive from your Grand Master. And it
shall be the last time we see one another in this life.’

Etienne let his
head hang back and tried to think of some word to turn around this strangeness
but found none. If Jourdain had been here he would have thought of something.

‘I don’t understand,’
he said, bewildered.

The Grand Master
let out a breath and it seemed to Etienne that in that one breath lay pain and
sorrow and years that exhausted faith. ‘This holy creature is more than a seal
upon our secret
documents,
it is more than a mark of
my sovereignty. The memory of its task has not been known, and should remain
so. You must find for it a dark, quiet place in which it can rest, forgotten.
Men are by nature not more than animals when they see something that is to their
advantage. You are my deputy, and on the surface you and I have shared the same
seal; mine, however, has a hidden compartment. The Sacred Seal lies beneath,
made of brass and iron. Do not look upon it for it shall steal into your
heart.’

Etienne tried to
fit these words into a coherent understanding but all he could say was, ‘Where
shall I take it?’

‘Follow the map
. . .’ The Grand Master gave him a parchment from beneath the folds of his
white habit. ‘The route is
marked,
it is long and
skirts around Paris to the north, and leads far from this place. Do not go to
any of our preceptories, it shall not be safe, all except one . . . It is
marked . . . there . . . in the north. From that place you may provision for
the longest part of the journey, travelling the pass through the Alps to a
place called Hungary from whence come the Magyars. Nearby the village of
Lockenhaus there is a castle of the Order. Your journey there shall be full of
peril . . . that is certain.’ He lowered his voice to the barest whisper. ‘Give
me your ring and place this one upon your own finger. If they come looking,
they will not realise the difference. Guard it until you are sure that all is
lost . . . when you hear that all is done you shall lay it to rest.’

At that moment
the entire meaning
of
his master’s words were made
plain to him. Weary and weighed down he bowed his head. ‘My lord.’ A coldness
swept over him and with it he saw pass before him the dreams of his heart
– the hope for Christ’s purposes on earth and the hope for the redeeming
of the Holy Land.

Jacques de Molay
looked at Etienne and placed a hand over his head in a blessing. ‘My brother,
my son . . . I wish to fight beside you when the time comes but it cannot be!
You have your task and I have mine . . . we shall meet them in different ways.’

There was a
noise outside the door to Etienne’s cell. The two men were wrenched from their
meditations to it and the shadows. They saw nothing but darkness.

By the time
Etienne and Jourdain had weighed down their horses with harnesses full loaded
with provisions, Iterius, armed with his secret, was at the monastery of the
Franciscans, begging an audience with Pope Clement.

The weather
moved in, and it began to snow again.

I
t was
cold,
Etienne hugged the lambskin over his shoulders as wisps of snow lay down over a
group of miserable trees bare of leaves.

‘What is this?’
Gideon asked Etienne, before the fire.

‘From the north
comes the wind,’ said Etienne, ‘it comes like this and hugs the edges of the
world.’

Three months ago
the four of them had left Poitiers. Their journey had been without incident
since they had travelled under the cover of darkness, moving northwards towards
the slopes of the mountains, avoiding the houses, mills and granaries that here
and there dotted the countryside. They kept to rough-worn tracks and rested in
wooded places. Then the country had begun to rise up into the mountains and
they had made their way through narrow valleys. Today the Norman and the
Catalan had hunted and slaughtered a goat, and as the dark day lay brooding
upon the forest they sat at meat.

The mercenaries
respected Etienne’s silence and spoke merrily amongst themselves, drinking the
last of the wine and eating roasted goat and leaving him to his thoughts. They
sat huddled by a great fire, looking in his direction and then upward to the
clouded sky, uttering what seemed to him curses.

Unlike the
mercenaries, Etienne liked the snow. It seemed fitting to him to sit with his
bones shaking and his teeth clenched from cold. To be on land and suffering
privation filled him with a sense of familiarity that would have been
comforting were he surrounded by brothers. But
he was not
surrounded by brothers
, he warned himself, he was among thieves, running
from the ruination of the Order.

The mercenaries
raised their voices in argument. Etienne ignored them and ran the plan over in
his head. The gold would be sitting at Atouguia de Balaia some distance from
Tomar. Marcus waited there for word. Etienne could not portend the consequences
of Marcus’s failure and, worse still, the consequences of his success! But it
seemed to him not altogether wrong, his wish that Marcus should fail and take
the galley with its gold and its slaves, the archives and titles somewhere safe
and return to France with what men of the Order would follow him to battle. He
looked down at the sacred ring of his Order. It spoke to him in a mysterious
tongue he did not understand. But this he understood: to take it to its resting
place was to mark the end of the life he had always known and this filled him
with an urge to disobedience. Once more this defiance was making itself felt
among the fear and disillusion in his heart, as it had once before, at Acre.
Now, however, he did not see the sin so plain to his eye and he prayed to St
Michael, the Archangel of the Lord, that he might find the sin in such an urge
and therefore the guilt, so that it might be duly punished.

The saint was
silent and reserved and did not heed him.

He dug his face
down into the cloak.

The snow stopped
and the wind-stirred trees moved above. Gideon stood, his argument with the
Catalan having abated, he was now in good spirits and left to look for
firewood. Etienne was, therefore, left alone with Delgado, who was crouched and
playing a small woodwind instrument.

Along their
journey Etienne had observed the mercenaries and had been struck to find in
himself a nascent longing to be as free
they
. It was a
feeling both surprising and dangerous, for he knew that he must not find
himself admiring men who were not party to his truth.

He looked upward
to that cloud-streaked sky and reminded himself that out in the world there was
more than one truth. He reminded himself also that his shape was bent a little
more each day he spent away from a cloister or house. Surely that was why he
could find no sin in thoughts of disobedience? Soon, he told himself, he must
become a stranger to himself. His eyes focused and he found the object of his
concentration staring back at him.

The Catalan’s
green orbs flickered in the firelight and were making study of Etienne under
straight, unclouded brows. The man’s head, covered with black hair tight of
curl and close to the scalp, was too small for a body that was long and broad
and made of lean muscle.
But his face was pleasant and
beneath that stare was announced a friendly disposition.
‘You did not
eat?’ he said, smiling, his full mouth and chin stained with goat fat.