The Seal (50 page)

‘The hour has come,’
he whispered to himself.

‘The accused are
therefore condemned to perpetual imprisonment, that they may obtain the
remission of their sins by means of their repentance. In nomine
Patris ...’

There was a
resigned silence from the crowd. The cardinal sat down and rolled up his
parchment.

‘I protest!’

The crowd
gasped. The council was thrown into confusion. The cardinals were perplexed.
They whispered to one another and exchanged looks of amazement.

The Archbishop
of Sens was on his feet moving forward with thin lips taut and limbs trembling
with rage. ‘Liar!’ he called out to the man in rags. ‘Liar!’

‘I have
yielded.’ Jacques de Molay turned to the crowd. ‘I have yielded to promises, to
threats and tortures. My bones have been broken and my flesh has been torn, I
have succumbed because the flesh is weak! God who hears us knows I am innocent,
innocent of all these crimes!’

The crowd
stirred with uncertainty. Marigny watched it with disbelief and called out to
the man, ‘But you have confessed to heresy!’

‘Under duress, from
pain and fear of torture!’

‘To indecency,
sodomy, corruption, sorcery!’

‘Under torture
all of it, from hunger and cold! What man who is possessed of blood and sinew
would not have done the same? I retract it! I retract everything! I retract all
that I have said in the name of our Lord!’

Then his friend
Geoffrey de Charney next to him called out, ‘
And
I, I
retract it all! I am guilty only of believing in goodness and truth. I refused
to see the plots and the treachery of the King and his men. Before God I vow
that I am innocent!’

A man escaped
the guards and came out into the open space then. He ran into the centre of the
square. He was young and fair and his eyes were rimmed with red and his face
was full with fever. Before the guards could take him he yelled to the crowd,

‘These men are
innocent! They are innocent! I have observed their confessions and I have seen
their tortures!’

The guards moved
to seize him but he struggled and freed himself. ‘I was present when the Grand
Master was nailed upon a door! Upon a door
he was sacrificed
like our Lord, by the Grand Inquisitor
! These champions of Christ are
honourable men. There!’ He pointed to the tribunal. ‘There is the face of the
Devil in the countenance of those men! Rise up! Rise up against these injustices!’
He stumbled.

The Bishop of
Paris stood, crying out words that went unheard in the din from the crowd since
it had broken loose and a great chaos had ensued.

The people took
these words to heart and were now prepared to champion the men. The
sergeants-at-arms bore down on the crowds with blows from their staves.
Everywhere guards lined up, their pikes levelled at the people, who raised
their fists and shouted out, spitting and swearing.

Philippe de
Marigny observed the turn of events and rage mingled with trepidation on his
face. Jacques de Molay watched it, but did not feel exhilarated, he felt a
sense of amazement and relief wash over him and he grasped his friend’s hand.
‘Who is that boy?’ he said.

The archbishop
raised his episcopal crosier in a suggestion that he was about to speak, but
there was no expected silence, instead he was insulted and shouted at. The
crowd swelled towards the platforms and fear overtook the cardinals, who rose
from their seats en masse and began a rushed scramble for the stairs. The
platform started to rock and sway and the ropes seemed likely to loosen.

‘I pronounce
these men relapsed heretics!’ the archbishop said quickly and with a flailing
of arms called the Provost of Paris to him whereupon he whispered in his ear
and the man began shouting orders to his archers to remove the prisoners to the
King’s prisons.

The Bishop of
Paris tried to make his way down to the square but guards prevented him.

When the
prisoners were taken away and the people were forced to move off, he went to
the square, looking for Julian, and found him upon the ground. His throat was
cut and the blood made a halo of red around his head.

The bishop knelt
before the figure of his charge. Filled with grief he brought the boy’s head to
his lap and closed his eyes.

T
he
bell tolled the hour of vespers from the Sainte-Chapelle and across the water
on the small Island of Jews; a crowd gathered in great numbers waiting
impatiently, expectantly, to see the sentences carried out.

For many, this
morning’s outburst had given way to resignation. They no longer clamoured to
see justice. Their excitement, their loyalty to truth, had been drowned in wine
and lunch, pacified by a good sleep and the harsh realities of life and death.

However placated
his people might seem, the King had taken no chances, and a circle of armed
horsemen and many more on foot guarded the little clearing where two stakes had
been hastily erected.

Only a narrow
channel separated the island from the palace, and this afforded the King and
his entourage a perfect view of events. On the King’s right stood Enguerrand de
Marigny and the Archbishop of Sens. De Marigny was now his chief counsellor
since Guillaume de Nogaret’s unseemly death the previous spring. He stopped to
think on it; the man had died with his tongue thrust out between two rows of
teeth sunk deep enough to draw blood, while his eyes had been forced wide open
by some unknown hand – a tortured death, most likely poison. He wondered
vaguely if he had ordered it in one of his moments of aggravation, and decided
that it didn’t matter one way or the other – the man had served his
purpose.

Next to his
counsellor stood his brother the Archbishop of Sens, full of contentment, and
beside him William of Paris, Inquisitor General of France. The Bishop of Paris
was a little aloof from the group and with good cause. Had Philip known about
the bishop’s charge, the boy would now be on his way to the pyre to burn
alongside his saviours, adding another fine note to the exquisite tragedy.

There was a
noise to his left. His sons were making a jest. Philip looked askance at the
pitiful issue of his loins. Louis was weak-willed and stupid, Charles was sour
and full of rancour,
Philippe
was detached and
empty-headed. In truth Philip had managed only one kingly child, Isabella, whom
he had joined to the English sodomite Edward.

Pity.

He took a glance
at Guillaume de Plaisians standing nearby – why couldn’t his sons have
been more like him?

De Plaisians met
his glance, his youthful face was smooth,
a
look of
grave intelligence sprang from those eyes and was mixed with cunning at the
corners of the mouth. De Plaisians tilted his head respectfully and Philip made
a gesture of returned affection. The lawyer was ruthless and dispossessed of
morals – he would make a fine Keeper of the Seals.

His attention
was taken then by his brother Charles, who, having seen this exchange, was all
smiles of ingratiation beside Guillaume.

The King ignored
him.

He turned his
eye instead to the population of Paris, seen from the balustrade of the loggia.
The light from a hundred torches bathed the multitude in a warm glow. These,
his people, were excited. He took a moment to listen to his own heart –
it was racing – and why not? After so many years of waiting, after
endless infuriating frustrations, his bitterness would now be reconciled!
Jacques de Molay could not escape him. In a moment, those long-awaited secrets
would be laid bare as promised. After all the conjunctions were in place, the
draughts had done their task. He did not need the absconding astrologer to know
that the great spirit he had spoken of was even now swelling within him,
marking his path into the depths of the Templar’s death-ridden eyes, where all
would be laid bare. There was no taboo, no crime, however terrible, from which
Philip would shrink, to see this revelation.

The pyres
awaited their consummation but the weather looked bad, clouds trembled above and
a chilly breeze picked up, blowing the fire from the torches in a frenzied
manner.
The gathering hummed with expectation; no doubt
afraid that it might rain.
Suddenly a hush descended on the island. The
two disgraced Templars were ushered through crowds towards the clearing by a
monk carrying a large cross and surrounded on all sides by men-at-arms.

Someone shouted
out, ‘Save your souls!’

Jacques de
Molay, looking all of his seventy years and more, raised his pale face in the
direction of the voice. ‘I have only ever fought for your salvation.’

Another cried,
‘Why must you die without consolation?’

‘Because of a
wicked king and an antipope,’ Geoffrey de Charney told them.

A shiver ran
through the crowd, and all looked in the direction of the palace.

Those tongues
will soon lie silent, the King said to himself. I am a patient man.

At the foot of
the pyres Jacques de Molay cast off his shirt and asked that his hands be left
free so that he could pray. He asked also if he could be tied facing the Notre
Dame, towards the Virgin, ‘in whom our Lord Christ was born’.

The crowd
roared. The provost Philippe de Voet hesitated and then made a nod for Jacques
de Molay to ascend the pyre.

When the two men
had been sufficiently tied, the monk carrying the large cross, held it up to
them, making one last exhortation. ‘Confess your faults and repent or face the
flames of everlasting hell!’

The crowd
listened.

Jacques de
Molay, a ghostly figure, already detached it seemed from life, looked down on
the monk and shook his head. His colleague did the same.

‘Let it be
known,’ the monk said, ‘that both men have not repented and refuse to confess,’
then he fell to his knees and began his prayers.

All eyes turned
to the loggia. But the King’s eyes were locked on his adversary. Standing at
the balustrade their glances interlocked.

This, their first,
was a silent conversation.

Even the crowd
sensed something implicitly significant, something meaningful between them. A
moment longer and the King tore his eyes away from the other man; his hands
trembled slightly, he felt a deep nausea rise up to his throat. Images of death
danced before his eyes, his head felt light, then heavy. He raised his arm and
the executioner, seeing his sovereign’s command, placed the lighted brand under
the faggots.

The Grand Master
cried out, ‘Let evil swiftly befall those

who
have wrongly condemned us. God
will avenge our death! I summon all those who have betrayed us to the tribunal
of heaven before the year is out, to answer for their crimes!’

The crowd
sighed. A mixture of admiration, horror and relief as the flames began to
consume the pyre.

Then they lit
Geoffrey de Charney’s pyre. It caught brightly. He cried out, trying to escape
the flames that licked at his feet.

The Grand
Master, opening his mouth in an effort to breathe, glanced over, ‘Brother . . .
brother . . .’

The man, seeing
his master and hearing his words, answered, ‘I follow in the way of my master,
as a martyr . . . On this day I shall die with my master.’

The flames
consumed them in a brilliant light that whipped them in its ardour, burning
beards and hair to ashes, bones to dust. In that instant through the flames the
Grand Master’s eyes widened and Philip from his balustrade could see them
clearly. Eagerly he sought his way into the man’s soul as he had done so many
times with others.

For a moment the
King was filled with a terrible confusion; a deep doubt broached the surface of
his consciousness for he was observing the sharp contrast between their souls.
He pushed this doubt back with another emotion that like fingers plunged into
his heart and filled it with a fierce and powerful sentiment.

‘I am God!’

But the Grand
Master’s eyes would not let him be. He could not help but look, and in them he
saw the panorama of the entire colourful world pass: the unsolved secret, the
stillness of a lake arrested by light, a weeping child, old age, the branches
of a tree, the pinpoints of stars, the whirling of planets, the red earth, an
effulgent light, a radiance golden like that of the sun as it rises over
Jerusalem, and it told him:

Est
deus
in nobis
.

There is a God
inside us.

C
lement lay in his bed at
death’s door. His body, racked with spasms, wasted away while his doctors came
and went, bleeding, purging and blistering. He was weak beyond comprehension
and covered in festering wounds that would not heal.