The Seal (20 page)

When I was
seated I asked her if she had slept well.

She made a
beautiful frown. ‘How can anyone sleep? Those bells from the village church
wake me every night at matins . . . it is that priest! He wishes to send me to
my grave . . . well, that will come soon enough!’

I waited for her
to speak and sensed she was debating on the best way to begin.

Finally she
leant close. ‘Are you ready for it in your heart?’

I told her that
I had thought of nothing else since yesterday.

This seemed to
satisfy her. ‘Good, because we are coming to a difficult part and you had best
be prepared.’

At this point
she looked out to the avenue. The lime trees glowed in the broad light. ‘He is
waiting,’ she said. ‘Now, where was I?’ She gave a sigh and it was deep and
sorrowful. ‘Yes, of course! The arrest!’

T
hirteen days after the
feast of St Remegious, on the Friday after the feast of Dionysus, the sun rose
pale behind dark clouds and Guillaume de Nogaret set his golden spurs to his
horse’s dappled flank and proceeded from the palace. Behind him a mountain of
men moved like one predatory body, silent and watchful across the bridge they
called the Grand Pont. Nogaret’s pale features showed no opinion as he led his
men through the little cobbled streets wet by rain, past the Grand Chatelet,
where the men from the meat guilds were preparing their stalls, and onwards
towards the street of the Templars.

In that early
hour the citizens of Paris paused to observe the retinue as it passed with mild
curiosity and returned to their work unperturbed. After all, the King’s men
were often at the Paris Temple and not a soul suspected the mandate that resided
safely in Nogaret’s hand.

Nogaret did not
smile, but inwardly he was filled with satisfaction. All arrangements had been
made under the strictest confidence. Only the royal lawyers who had drawn up
the letters, the notaries who had written up the copies of the arrest orders,
and the lesser royal officials had known beforehand anything of the arrests. No
one else was privy to the instructions sealed with the King’s seal and
dispatched to royal officials, who were to proceed in groups proportionate to
the number of Templar houses to arrest all persons, seize all property and
mount guard. Certainly it seemed to him that this was the law at its finest moment.
A triumph that was sure to see his name go down in chronicles.

At that moment
the company emerged through the portal of the Temple, moving beyond the walls
of Philip Augustus, where the fields and horizons of animals and farmhouses
were dissolving in a sky of pungent copper. Nogaret shielded his eyes from the
rays that wounded the coolness of blue and green and pale yellow. They cast an
ominous radiance upon the Temple ramparts, and he sensed the hesitation in his
men; did they shake from chill, or fear?

This thought
annoyed him. The Order of the Temple, and not his men, should have much to
fear, since it would soon learn it did not stand upon higher ground, it was not
closer to God.

As they neared
the Temple gate, Nogaret observed the structure with some fascination. It was
approximately the width of two men and the height of five, supported by twin
flanking towers guarded by a drawbridge. He could give credit where credit was
due – they might not be closer to God but they were good builders.

The drawbridge
was down.

Nogaret took off
his left glove and held it up as he came to the gate, a signal for the company
to halt. He dismounted and proceeded with short, uncertain strides for the
gatehouse door, whose dense wooden surface resounded only a little as he
knocked.

‘Guillaume de
Nogaret, Keeper of the Royal Seals, I have orders that demand you yield this
gate in the name of Philip Capet, King of France.’ He held a paper up to the
aperture.

Silence fell and
the retinue waited, holding a collective breath in the way an archer does the
moment before he frees his arrow. A moment later there was a dissonance: the
heavy iron chain was lifting the great wooden beam that barred the gate.

Beyond the
threshold the compound was gradually comprehensible beneath the cover of fog.
Nogaret urged his men forward while he remained on foot, entering the
enclos
as the sound of hoofs and oily
steps bounced from the walls. For a moment he stood inside the irregular square
of the Temple in a state of concentration. Protected by enormous crenellated
walls it was an extraordinary fortress – he had always thought so –
with grounds large enough to hold at least two or three hundred knights
together with their horses and a full retinue of squires and servants. From
within they could easily defend against an army. He paced the now deserted
compound as the service of lauds resounded from the great round church of
stone. His guards followed him to the chapel. Nogaret noted its tower in detail
and made a mental note to check it for absconders. He thought, too, of the
cloisters and the refectory, the chapter room, dormitories and other communal
rooms, and sent men to guard all exits in and out of the cloisters and the
church. Further away, two other towers were darkened by shadows. The lesser
tower was the treasury of the Temple. To the left of the church he saw the
great tower of the donjon. He nodded to himself. ‘Both towers would make good
prisons.’

He stood before
the entrance to the church, adorned in its symbolic sculpture, and waited for
his men to compose themselves. He proved his glove and measured his next move
by the sounds coming from within. He had it in his mind that to effect maximum
surprise his entrance must fall upon the words, ‘Deus qui est sanctorum
splendor mirabilis . . .’ as the knights began their laudatory adoration, since
their minds, having turned to things pious and lofty, would least expect what
was to befall them. He permitted himself a smile.

A moment later
he burst through the great doors and headed with marked step over the threshold
down the central nave now lit by a faint sun. Ignoring the pinching at his
spine, he marched to the figure of Jacques de Molay whom he recognised to be
standing beside his officiating priest. All singing stopped abruptly, and men looked
about them in a confusion occasioned by meditation, the mystic gloom and the
sudden interruption of their praise.

Nogaret glanced
around at the congregation; many of the Order’s most senior officials were
present. They reached for their swords in a futile gesture since the King’s
archers were poured into the place and encircled the entire group, poised with
arrows at the ready. By the time Nogaret was standing before the Grand Master,
the entire church was secure.

In this state of
profound concentration, Nogaret took in the Grand Master’s face. He looked for
surprise, for disbelief, but found only resignation. The man’s brows met in
inquiry, lips framed by a well-kept beard formed unspoken words, eyes steady.

‘What is the
meaning of this?’ the Grand Master said. ‘Have you so little regard for the
holy office?’

The lawyer
neither liked nor disliked de Molay. To his mind the man was merely a means to
an end – the end of an Order that had outlived its usefulness. And as
Guillaume de Nogaret disliked useless things, Jacques de Molay was nothing more
to him than flesh awaiting a pyre.

The lawyer let
his stagnant eye rest upon the Grand Master a moment then brought the arrest
order forth and began to read it aloud. He liked the resonant sound of his own
voice.

‘A bitter thing,
lamentable, horrible to think of and terrible to hear, a disgrace, detestable,
wholly inhuman and foreign to all humanity has, thanks to the reports of
several persons worthy of faith, reached our ears. A crime so enormous that it
overflows to the point of being an offence to the divine majesty of humanity,
for it is a pernicious example of evil and a universal scandal!’

‘This is
preposterous, Nogaret,’ came the calm reply. ‘What universal scandal? What evil
do you speak of?’

Cries from the
Templar delegates echoed around the church and in Nogaret’s ears. ‘Lies!
Blasphemies!’

Nogaret sighed
with impatience; his gloved hand motioned for guards to seize the Grand Master
and place him in chains. ‘The charge is heresy, Grand Master, heresy most
heinous and foul.’

‘Who charges
us?’ Jacques de Molay raised his chin as chains encircled his wrists. ‘We are
exempt from secular laws.’

The man’s face
made a frown of Nogaret’s brows. Why does he not show more astonishment?

‘Who charges
you? Why, the Inquisitor General, William of Paris, de Molay.’ He made his
voice sound full with confident sarcasm.

‘He cannot
arrest us without the Pope’s regard! We have our sovereignty! We are not
ordinary men!’

Nogaret made a
yawn. He must get more sleep. ‘Sovereignty?’ He noticed a fleck of lint on his
cloak, which he summarily flicked off. ‘When the mighty fall, they fall further
and therefore lower than ordinary men, Grand Master.’

There was a
moment caught in a gasp. Jacques de Molay looked at Nogaret, and the lawyer
noted what was, to his mind, a calmness that suggested anticipation.

A feeling of unease spread from Nogaret’s temples to the backs of
his eyes.
Was it possible that the man had been
expecting it? No . . . he would not have allowed him passage, he would have battled
to the death . . . surely?

Words came then,
from out of the Templar’s mouth. To Nogaret they were no more than a whisper.

‘Maktub! ’
the
Grand Master said.

J
acques
de Molay sat upon the stone pallet of his dungeon, whose great dark cells in
better times had been used to store ale, wine, grain and other goods. A small
light came through the narrow aperture that went deep into the thick stone and
he could see the barest margin of blue. If he was very still he could hear the
twitter of birds.

He turned his
mind then not upon his fate, which to him was plain and visible and fastened to
his soul, but upon the fate of his brothers and of the terrible trials that
awaited them. He thought of Marcus and the gold of the Order soon to be
drowned. He thought of Etienne and his lonely task. His eyes filled with tears
for all his men, sergeants, knights, priests, preceptors and commanders. He
prayed that God would give him the courage he needed not only to do what was
expected of him but also to bear the destiny of so many men upon his old
shoulders. This thought made his breath come in labored bursts and he calmed his
speedy heart against the weight that sought to pull the life from his veins. He
grasped the pallet with his gloved hands and with his eyes closed tight clung
to his Order’s words of consecration.

I am in Christ.
Christ lives in Me, I feel in Christ. Christ feels in me, I will in Christ.
Christ wills in me.

When he opened
his eyes he had to shield them from
an effulgence
that, coming through the aperture, now filled the cell. A momentary thought
passed through his mind as he saw it. This part of the donjon faced west and
the sun could not so soon be setting. But the light would not be put off by his
thoughts and continued on its journey through that meagre opening as if to push
its way into him. He closed his eyes and saw the white heat of it gathering behind
his eyelids. It felt to him like the fluttering of burning wings or the
weightless wisp of hot snow. It took him out of himself to a place where his
brows met and made a movement to his throat, seeking a path to his heart. It
held him and, like that, in that space where there was nothing but the whirling
of the world and the movement of stars, he felt himself like a word in the
throat of God.

He did not know
how long he sat upon that cold pallet with his hands grasping at stone and his
legs straining at the chains around his ankles. The sound of men behind the
door brought him to his senses. The cell, he realised, was returned to its former
darkness and he was once again alone with it.

A key was
turning in the lock. He thought of his old friend in Famagusta, Christian de St
Armand, feeling the old leper’s spirit beside his own.

‘It begins . .
.’ he told him.

T
he
Keeper of the Royal Seals cast an uncertain shadow on the grey stone of the
cellar wall. Outside, the distant muffled bells rang out matins in the thick
stillness of night.