The Seal (23 page)

Jacques de Molay
opened his eyes and in them the inquisitor noted something . . . a resignation
mingled with passionless horror. He lifted his chest away from the knife.

‘You will do
well not to struggle, you will do well to stay still lest I make an error and
pierce through your heart, then all this will have been for nothing, all this
pain, Grand Master . . .’

The Templar
closed his eyes and bit down on his mouth until the blood ran down his chin. ‘
Pater noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur
nomen tuum
,’ he whispered.

‘No!’ the
inquisitor yelled at him now in a rage. ‘You may not call on Our Father when
you have not confessed and you

have
not been absolved of all the evils you have committed! Listen to
me! You shall be ending it, soon, in the name of the Devil! In his name and for
his name’s sake if you do not speak!’ The pointed tip moved to the left,
creating a circle of blood.

Jacques de Molay
gasped.

‘Confess!’

‘I will . . .’

He leant in.
‘Yes, my son?’

‘.
. . not!’

The inquisitor
was vexed beyond words, having missed by so narrow a margin the store of
words which
, by nature of their content, could have ended
this dismal ritual. It was therefore made plain to him that the Grand Master
was in need of further persuasion. With his blade he had already begun to make
a push and it needed little urging to slice deep into the chest between the
ribs. There was the ever-familiar sound of parting flesh and he watched the
chest collapse with a loud whistle of air and a rush of blood that flowed from
it like water from a spring. The inquisitor put his hand to it and let it run
through his fingers, bringing the blood to his face. ‘Your blood, the blood of
the damned, have I seen and touched and tasted.’

The night was
dark and silent, almost spent.

There was a
ripple deep in the throat. ‘To what . . . shall I?’

‘Confess?’ The
tone was mild, paternal, underneath it excitement, anticipation. ‘Yes.’ He
waved a hand for the notary to come from out of the shadows. ‘You are tired,
Grand Master, damaged and broken, I shall remind you of your transgressions!’

The man’s eyes
fluttered.

‘You have denied
Christ,’ the inquisitor said. ‘Do you remember it? How you desecrated the
cross? How you fornicated with your fellows?’

A look of
confusion passed over the ashen face and breathlessness seized the man and he
tried to speak, or so thought William of Paris, who called for the tormentor,
but the man was still asleep and so he took a few steps to where he lay snoring
and put the boot into his side. ‘Hold him up!’

The tormentor
came to his feet, rubbing the exhaustion from his face, and paced toward the
door.

‘Take it up . .
. his body! He wants to speak.’

The tormentor
took hold of the naked torso and lifted it. There was a groan.

‘Yes?’ asked the
inquisitor, bowing his head and inclining his ear. ‘I am listening.’

The voice was
small and feeble. ‘They . . . they . . . they . . .’

‘They? Who, my
son?’

‘They . . . the
evil . . . ones!’ The Grand Master’s eyes opened wide then and seemed to the
inquisitor to be filled with horror. They looked beyond William as if they were
seeing something other. ‘Leave this place, foulness! The Tabernacle is not
secure!’ The man’s breath was sour and bloody and the inquisitor gasped having
stood close, so that now he could not speak for coughing.

‘What did you
say?’

‘Who comes here?
By what proof?’

The inquisitor
calmed, knowing it to be only a moment, allowing the man some private
reflection upon the matter of his confession.

A moment passed
and he continued the catechism. ‘You denied the cross,’ he said, ‘inspired by
evil spirits, you denied it.’

‘But it was
Judas . . . not . . . not . . . I! The kiss was . . . not . . . O Lord!’ His
eyes rolled into the back of his head. ‘Take it away! Take it away!’

The inquisitor
persevered, gesturing for the tormentor to let the body go.

There was
another feeble groan and a sigh from the hole in the chest.

‘Confess now!’
he yelled. The man would soon drown in his own blood. ‘I shall not be
merciful.’

Jacques de Molay
opened his eyes, aroused from his stupor.
‘
Adveniat regnum tuum.
Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo
et
in terra.
’ Then he cried so suddenly that the
inquisitor was startled and nearly lost his footing. ‘Satan! No . . . no . . .
I did not! No! No! The pain . . . the kiss on the cheek . . . the money, the
coins . .
. !
’

‘A kiss on the
buttocks . . . write it down!’ he told the notary standing in one corner of the
room, and returning to the Templar he said, ‘
Did
you
deny Christ as Peter denied Christ, is that what you are saying?’

A warm breath
escaped the Grand Master’s lips. It hung before his face a moment. The Grand
Master seemed to be lost, gazing into this space, and then he gave a howl long
and terror-filled. ‘Ba . . . pho . . . met!’ the man said between gasps of
terror.

‘What did you
say? What is this . . . a . . . pho . . .
et
? Or is it
a . . . met? Notary, are you writing this down? What did he say? What did he
say?’

Julian moved
away from the shadows, passing an ink-stained hand over his eyes.

‘Come, boy!
Sitting in that dark corner with your heart pounding and your breath coming in
short bursts! Now is the time to do your duty to our Lord!’

‘I don’t know what
he said . . .’ he answered.

‘Stupid boy, did
you not hear?’ A thought occurred to him. ‘Mahomet? Mahomet! Oh dear Lord,
yes!’

‘His eyes,’
Jacques de Molay said then, ‘shine black into my head. He is made of stone, or
is it bread? I did not adore him . . . Tell me,’ he looked at something in the
near dark, ‘shall I be forgiven?’

‘An idol of
stone with black eyes . . . a denial of Christ. Write it down! Yes . . .
Mahomet! Of course! Did you deny Christ who gave up His life for you? Did you?
Did you deny him to worship Mahomet?’ The inquisitor searched the expression in
those eyes. ‘You desecrated His holy cross! You denied it!’ He was like a horse
that has been on a long journey and now sees his own barn. ‘Confess to me!
Confess now!’

Those pale grey
eyes ran all to white as the pupils disappeared into the head.

The inquisitor
slapped the man across the face. ‘Answer me!’

Breathing
shallow breaths, the eyes rolled forward and the inquisitor was taken aback by
their sudden, lucid regard. In this stare there was something reflected,
something that recalled a strange triumph, even defiance.

The inquisitor
was taken with a feeling of disquiet. Somewhere a cock crowed.

‘Yes . . .’
Jacques de Molay said into the space between them, as calmly as if he and the
inquisitor had been having a polite conversation. ‘All those things do I
confess.’

The inquisitor
did not move. He stood bewildered as if the ground were shaking beneath him.
Something in that voice had opened a chasm in his soul and he lifted his eyes
with the realisation of it. What did he discern? The Grand Master seemed to be
speaking not from pain, but rather, in spite of it.

William of Paris
rubbed his face and paced the floor, sweeping the notary aside with a hand.
After a moment of thought he walked back to his prisoner and stared hard at
him. He stared hard and the harder he stared the less he understood. Had the hunter
ignored the elk in order to snare the rabbit? Had he not asked the right
questions? Without the right questions he could not receive the right answers .
. . and so, to his mind a crucial matter in the entire interrogation had been
overlooked . . . since there was something, after all, to be confessed.
Something besides this paltry, half-hearted admission, but what?

The inquisitor
stared once again and tried to enter into the mind of the man and suddenly the
realisation came.

It came and with
it a certainty.

In such a
confession there lay a species of concealment.

The inquisitor,
unable to shake off his misgivings, instructed the notary as to the wording of
the confession. After he had finished he ordered the tormentor to wrap the
Grand Master in a cloth and to take him back to his cell. The man must not die
since he had one more task to perform – to validate his confession before
the papal courts.

‘
Consummatum
est
,’
he said to him. ‘It is finished.’

At the same time
as the inquisitor was pronouncing those words, a figure upon a horse arrived at
the royal palace gates. There was an exchange and momentarily iron and wood
were set in motion. Iterius looked around him from out of his cowl like a fox
from behind a thicket. A moment later he had crossed the threshold.

T
he chapter room was dark.
Brooding men, silent beneath lit lamps, waited in a circle as Marcus entered
the round chamber observing and being observed by fellow monks, knights, sergeants
and brothers, all that remained of the Order in Portugal.

It had been some
weeks since he had read the message from Jacques de Molay, and in that time he
had felt more and more like a horse that mistakes twigs for snakes: startled by
shadows and thoughts that, though small and held close, provoked in him a
feeling of doom.

It did not seem
strange to him, therefore, that he could find no time appropriate for the
execution of his duty. And so he could not pray, since to do so would mean to
open his heart and all his sin of disobedience to God and he wished to remain
asleep to it, poised on a moment that never passes, suspended and
dispassionate, with all the passion in his heart stored up for another season.

Two days before,
however, grave news from France had come to force his mind to wakefulness. Now
finally what he had so long feared, what had kept God from his
thoughts,
was at hand, and his determined mind fell upon a
judgement. He would not take the gold out to sea to drown it as he had been
ordered by Jacques de Molay, instead he would take it to Scotland, where the
Templar fleet was headed. He would not think on what would follow after that.
He would think only of the gold kept safe, for this at least was something in
his power to command, something that gave him the sense that his life was not a
wasted, useless thing.

After all
– the gold had whispered to him from its resting place – the Grand
Master and Etienne, together with the leaders of the provinces, the commanders,
knights and sergeants in France, were now languishing in the King’s prisons.
The marshal and those left in Cyprus, traitors and loyal men alike, no doubt
suffered the same fate. Marcus was therefore more alone than Moses in the
wilderness, left to guard an Order that was falling into crumbs with no rule to
support it. Who could blame him for following his own insights and inspirations?
The gold had shown him how it was: a colossal act of disobedience now could be
seen as a great act of bravery in future times.

Thus was he held
by thoughts as he stood upon the threshold of the chapter
house.
His mind was dulled by what he knew was a lucid madness.

He looked about
the circle of men, hearing his breathing in his ears. Unlike him, they were
full of the wide-awake despair that sanity brings. Full of despair because
nothing in their demeanour recalled what once had been. Nothing spoke of the
army that had moved like a god through the Holy Land, a force so mighty and
impregnable as to cause the sun to pale beside its power. In their eyes he saw
them, a few scarred men, less than

twenty
in total, diminished by the weight of their crosses that seemed to
have grown from out of the heart and were drawing strength from the blood.

This made his
face full of activity: a vein pulsed under his eye and the skin around the scar
contorted the muscles of his cheeks into a dance of unbidden smiles.

Andrew saw it,
tipped his head to him and made room for him on the step of stone.

Marcus cast the
knight a look that in the passage from eye to eye told him: ‘Beware, my
brother, for I am standing upon the edge of an abyss, and all that is needed is
the slightest wisp of a breeze to send us both downwards.’