The Seal (38 page)

‘Circumvent the
papal commission altogether . . .’ Philip said.

‘Yes, sire. You
see, we have been on the same track,’ de Plaisians adjusted his voice to exude
deference. ‘While I have prepared the trusting lambs, your Highness in his
superior cunning has made ready the axe. The Archbishop of Narbonne shall be
going about the futile business of inquiring into the Order and at the same
time the provincial council shall be outwitting him by trying and burning his
individual witnesses behind his back.’

‘Yes . . . yes .
. . But Plaisians, you forget that the papal com-mission has authority from the
Pope to offer protection to any Templar who comes forward to defend the Order .
. . what about that?’ The King sat forward.

‘Yes sire, but
it was also the Pope who set up the provincial councils whose task is not only
to inquire but to pass judgement on the individual Templars that belong to
their provinces. The Pope shall not see his stupidity until it is too late.’

The King sat
back and mulled this over. ‘But how many Templars are under the jurisdiction of
Sens, Plaisians? A paltry few.’

‘Some fifty men,
sire. Not a large number, true, but in prisons all over Paris and France there
are Templars who shall see themselves in those few brothers who come forward to
defend the Order under the protection of the Mother Church. Or else they shall
see themselves the same as those whose belief in the nobility of truth has kept
them from confessing. They shall be watching and waiting to hear news of the
success of the defence. When it is learnt that those who came forward were led
to the pyre, no man shall seek to do the same, and others who have perhaps
already done so and do not belong to the province of Sens shall retract their
retractions, since it shall dawn upon them that if it can be done in Paris it
can be done at other places where your royal supporters are chairing episcopal
inquiries – Orleans, for instance, Amiens, Bayeux, Auxerre, Cambrai,
Cahors . . . It shall become plain speech to them: “You have placed all your
hopes on a weak pope who is neither capable nor interested in defending you
from the machinations of a king who is your jailer, judge and executioner.”
Such truths brought home will see an end to the resistance in France, and as
the majority of the leaders are French, what is left of the Order in other
countries shall follow in their skirt tails.’

The King lifted
one brow and the corner of his mouth turned upwards in mild esteem. ‘We are
wicked, Plaisians.’

‘Not wicked,
sire, but rational. Such doings are demanded by the very nature of things, for
the common good . . .’

‘You put it very
well.’ Then his face was ashen, as though a grey curtain had descended over his
features. ‘Sometimes I am uncertain of everything, Plaisians,’ he said.
‘Sometimes I feel that I have burnt rather too many Jews . . . that I have
tortured and put to death rather an inordinate number . . . in truth a river of
blood runs through my reign. What do you think of that?’ He was sour. ‘All such
things in the balance would prove a means to an end . . . but where are my victories?
I’ve yet to see them!’

Could it be the
man was growing a conscience? De Plaisians knew he must keep him on track.
‘Sire, there are two worlds – one of personal morals and ethics, and
another of the public organisation. A good king must sacrifice his personal
salvation for the salvation of his kingdom, for his noble and glorious society
in which his subjects can grow strong and proud, wise and productive. A king
must exchange his private conscience for a public one. You do what you must.’

‘I do what I
must . . .’ He gave his counsellor a distrustful glance.

‘Shall I tell
Monsieur de Nogaret all we have discussed?’ de Plaisians asked, as innocent as
a lamb.

‘We are awake,’
he said, waving a hand as his eyes became preoccupied with something unseen.
‘Let others sleep.’ He gave two claps. ‘Call for my astrologer!’

The bleary-eyed
attendant, who had himself fallen asleep behind the curtains, was now flustered
and disconcerted.

‘Have him bring
me the brew!’

I
t was night and Etienne
knelt at prayer. He prayed since soon he and his men must leave the little farm
that had sheltered them for over a year, and the thought of it pressed at his
heart and made his soul disordered.

Here in the dark
space,
full-smelling
of animals and dung, he asked for
St Michael’s saintly vigilance in all matters pertaining to the Order and the
Holy Land. He asked concerning his brothers still alive and those who were dead
and in his presence, that
they might be honoured by God
for their sufferings. He asked that he watch over Jacques de Molay and prayed
for the wisdom to know the clear intentions of his Grand Master regarding this
deed, whose weight had only now once again begun to fall upon his mind and soul.

He began his
confession,
firstly, of his lack of observation of the holy
offices, which he knew required regularity. Secondly he told St Michael of his
failure to observe silence when eating – Manduca panem tuum cum silentio.
He asked forgiveness for not wearing the garments of the Order, and for not
fasting the vigils when unwell. Finally, the crown of all his sins was a
further and more serious breach of the rule: that of keeping, though not in the
most heinous sense, habitation with a woman. This brought back to him that
wayward brother, Alphonse, with the crossbow quarrel in his cheek. The man he
had punished at Famagusta for giving alms to his hungry mother. How high and
mighty had he been then, when he disrobed Alphonse before his brothers and
condemned him to eat from the floor for six months! He thought of this with
shame in his heart and this was added to by a sense of bewilderment, for even
now, fully awake to all his shortcomings, he was not certain how it had
happened. How the days had stretched out and kept him from noticing these
digressions from the rule. How the reach of time had held him between one hour
and the next, from one season to another, like a bird resting its wings upon a
breeze that does not lift it nor bear it downwards, but holds it at the far
edge of its life, suspended in a dream.

Left behind him,
war and blood and sparse living were overtaken by the quiet stillness of the
white world between the house and the stables, or by the full-worn days of
bodily toil, or the warm scented skies, the cold rivers and the rich brown
earth that parted before the plough. Peace and mildness had overwhelmed the
shadows of his past, of the Holy Land and Christ’s lost kingdom, that had for
so long settled over his soul like a cloak. And as his body mended, he began to
forget the grand dimensions of his faith and to seek the worship of Christ in
the smallest things. His breath was felt in the cooling breeze that moves over
the valley floor, His tears in the fine rain that falls on the tired lines of a
face after the heat of the day, His word in the wing-song of an eagle and His
will in the leap of an elk. He was built into the solid ground and consumed
Himself upon the hearth. He was the highest goodness of man and woman each, in
the eyes of the spirit and in the heart of the soul; in the blood that pulsates
that life which exists between child and mother, between man and woman.

Such were the
feelings that had grown inside him.

The men, for
their part, seemed content. They too had allowed this place to grow in them a
disregard for what had come before and what would come after. The Catalan and
the Norman saw to the buildings and the fields, he and Jourdain tended the
animals. All things between earth and sky were in conformity with the laws of
man and nature.

But the men were
mercenaries and Jourdain just a boy; he, on the other hand, was an old man
ancient and worn-down. Where had he hid his wisdom? How could he have let the
months pass in this state of domestic ecstasy, in this rustic intoxication? He
could not answer these questions, only that he had deceived himself and this
deception in all its clarity had stood before him bared to his eye one
afternoon after a conversation with Jourdain.

They were paused
watering the goats at a nearby creek with the verdant grass beneath them and
the canopy of limbs full before a blue sky.

Jourdain had
said to him, ‘Ovid will tell you that to cure the pains of love, no plant avails,
Etienne.’

Etienne with
eyes closed, hearing the sound of the breeze in the falling leaves, asked him
as he dozed, ‘The pains of love?’

It caused
Jourdain to laugh. ‘The love of nature, Etienne, the goddess which makes for us
this day, this grass and sky and creek . . . Ahh . . . truly! This is a love
most chaste!’ He leant back against the tree chewing on an apple and smiling
and chewing again. ‘For I am not dead, yet do I find myself in Elysium.’

Etienne smiled
to himself. ‘Elysium? What is this Elysium, something made up by your fancy?’

‘No! It is the
abode of the blessed, Etienne.
The paradise of the Greeks
that exists at the end of the world where those who are chosen by the gods are
sent.
There they live without tasting death, to enjoy an immortality of
bliss,’ he said. ‘There, Etienne, open your eyes, do you not see her?’

Etienne half
opened his eyes and looked at the day.

‘There she
walks, Demeter, among those Elysian fields with a basket of grain in her arms.’

‘No, Jourdain, I
do not see her, this Demeter.’

Jourdain
laughed. ‘Etienne, she is invisible to the eye, you may see her only in spirit,
a goddess most loving and nurturing. She brings a good harvest and heals the
sick. She is the mother known to have nursed the son of the King of Eleusis back
to health by feeding him on the nectar and ambrosia of the gods . . . but she
grew very attached to the young boy and decided to take him from his life and
make him immortal by placing his feet in fire to burn his mortal nature away.’

He paused to
take a bite of the apple.

‘And?’ Etienne
asked, sitting up now since something had stirred his soul to attention. ‘And?
Did he become immortal?’

‘Just as Demeter
was holding his feet over the fire, Etienne, the young boy’s mother entered the
room and the spell was broken.’

Etienne looked
beyond the creek to the harvested fields and looked for the goddess once again.
He did not see her. Instead his eyes fell over the earthly paradise and saw all
of its deceptions. At once every faculty of his being told him that this was
not his life, but the life of another man stolen. He was not made to be
immortal. He had fallen asleep to his duty, which lay elsewhere among hardships
and struggles. Not this life, of aimless days! Of rapturous, verdant ecstasies!
The entire meaning of this struck him like a slap, and it made a shaking in his
lungs and drove a pain through his heart. The ring upon his finger, so quiet
and tame these months, called to him now, its voice weak but insistent. This,
it said, was the simple thing: the deed accomplished and then to grow one with
the ground, thereafter to see not Demeter upon this earth but Sophia in heaven
where Michael awaited his arrival.

The pain in his
heart moved its burning towards his hands. He got up. ‘We have been in a dream,
Jourdain.’ He gasped for air. ‘We must go.’

Kneeling now, he
acknowledged in the full daylight of his mind that it had been his weakness for
the woman Amiel and not his love of pastural delights that had made him linger
in this dream. As once he had mistaken her for the Sophia, he had mistaken her
also for the goddess of nature, the soul of the world, and had become
intoxicated with this love, whose disposition, he realised with shame, was not
after all of metaphysical purity, but of physical proportions.

From the
beginning the woman Amiel had come to his little room in the stables to tend to
his wounds with capable, gentle hands. Then she noticed his ailment and made
him
an unction
for the pain that leapt from his heart
to his hand. As time passed he observed in her a knowledge beyond his own and a
talent for listening to words lost in the soul of another – a dialogue
that travelled the distance from eye to eye, heart to heart, without words and
yet exact in its understanding. Now this communication stood before him like a
new thing. Such exchanges, he now realised, left him bare and naked, they tore
into him a soft violation more deep and intimate than the sin of the flesh
since they went to the soul and the spirit which he had relinquished to Christ
and which he placed on an altar during every quiet moment of prayerful
contemplation. He was not, after all, a man to be made immortal! She could not
burn his mortal nature away!

After his
conversation with Jourdain, Etienne began the business of distancing himself
from the woman Amiel and her suckling child that now smiled and laughed and
tried to crawl to him as if he were its father. He distanced himself from the
house with its warm hearth and the animals and their needs and the tangle of
his sentiments whose precise nature he tried with all his will to purge behind
an ill temper and a desire for solitude.