The Seal (52 page)

Iterius closed
his eyes as the surge of pain passed through him. Oh the blow fate had struck
him! The one time he had a true vision, he had not interpreted it correctly and
now he would die!

He opened his
eyes and saw only darkness in the place where the King had been.

In the distance
he heard a muffled command, some footsteps and then two hands were dragging
him. He heard a noise, a metallic sound and then of a sudden he fell a long
way.

He landed
awkwardly on rock and mud at the bottom of the pit, but he did not fall far
enough for it to kill him.

I
n the forest of
Pont-Sainte-Maxence the King galloped at full speed, past trees and plants
covered in whiteness,
among
the baying of the dogs and
the sound of breaking turf.

He was a man
abandoned in a hostile universe without help and responsible for a world he
hated.

He put spurs to
his horse. His mind raced with so many divergent thoughts and painful
apparitions that he was not looking for game, he was pressing on, hoping that
stupor and oblivion might find him, and therefore plunge him into a void of
quiet nothingness.

Since March he
had taken no interest in his kingdom. He was driven mad. He had thrust his head
inside an ants’ nest and now he could find no escape. Overtaken by voices and
thoughts and memories of deeds confused and misshapen, he walked about his
palace whispering and mumbling and clawing at the air, his soul in a state of
constant uncertainty and bewilderment. He had become a creature wholly engulfed
in loathing, aflood with passionate self-hatred and capable of no logical
thought. He called out for his astrologer and his draught. But his astrologer
had taken days to die. The nuns of the little abbey had complained that an
injured animal could be heard groaning about the grounds. It was a sound full
of despair, they said, an agony of the body and of the soul. Now, without the
draught, the immense and visible
presence which had fed his
madness
would not leave off but pierced him hungrily on every side.

He whipped his
horse but the animal, puffing clouds from its nostrils, was weary; the King
could feel its great heaving chest between his legs. It slowed down, unable to
go further, and came to a stop in a little clearing into which the rays of the
sun filtered through branches over the crisp, frozen snow. Philip’s head felt
heavy, in his temples a pain stabbed and gouged and burned. He raised his eyes,
feeling a presence not far from him, a stag, as large as that great stag he had
seen as a child of eight when he had made his first kill. The animal’s enormous
horns glistened in the half-light as it turned towards Philip with brilliant
eyes and a steaming snout wet with condensation.

The King
prepared to dismount, removing the crossbow from his saddle as he had done many
times before. The animal did not move; it stared, complacent, knowing,
defiant
. Did those eyes recall those of Jacques de Molay?
What madness! But there was a moment of mind stillness then, and Philip took in
a deep breath and looked again. In the light that filtered through the canopy
he saw not the stag, but yes, the figure of Jacques de Molay, standing upon
that earth. Jacques de Molay had freedom and defiance, and God in his eyes. A
pure object illuminated. Jacques de Molay sought to look into his bony mind,
into his hollow soul, into his cold eye . . .

‘I will not let
you see it! I will not let you!’ he told him.

But the face of
Jacques de Molay probed his heart until

there
was nothing that he could hide.
He was himself in a state of nakedness with those eyes boring into his soul.

The vision
raised an arm and pointed in his direction. Then it was gone. Only the stag
remained. Only the beautiful stag with the glistening horns raised. The King
pulled on the shaft and prepared to let go into the animal. He mused that all
the fury, hatred, fear, rancour and doubt that filled him lay upon the tip of
that quarrel and that to release it would be to free himself.

Something
fettered his hand, however. His mind was torn from its roots and there was an
explosion of tiny stars that blackened his vision. His legs no longer obeyed
him and his arms became flaccid at his side and he fell into the powdery white.

Lying with his
face half in snow he observed himself from without, like Titus observing the
ruins of Jerusalem. Had death fascinated him also? But death was drawing near,
dark death’s weaving fashioned him in a shiver. That same reflex he had so
longingly observed, the instinctive battle between life and death, light and
dark, warmth and coldness, the resistance to life’s dissolution, he
experienced. At this point, between an in breath and a last out breath, he saw
the cause of all things pass before his eyes as in a dream.

He could hear
drums and chants and he held a dagger in his hands with a skull at its hilt. He
was a priest. Beneath him a man lay on the killing stone. To look at him made
the muscles of his arms tense to prepared the thrust. It came hard, down and
upwards in the form of an angled snake. He held out a heart beating still in
his hands.

But the pain
made his eyes open and he saw the stag had come at him and he felt the air
pushed from his lungs then and his last thought was sucked from his head and
into the darkness.

Taotl!

E
tienne and Jourdain
climbed the winding stairs and entered the room of stone where sat the senior
brothers.

The fire of elm
and oak blazed in the hearth and the men drank a little wine to warm them and
to bring some fire into their muscles. Above the great round table the candles
were lit in their brackets and Etienne could plainly see the faces wrapped in
despair and dedicated to death. Their eyes, full of hunger, stretched and tore
at his heart so that he had to cough before he could speak.

‘I have news,’
said Etienne. ‘Yesterday a dangerous expedition to the village is returned. It
garnered two things: information and food. The information came by way of news
that the Order has been suppressed at the Council of Vienne and therefore no
longer exists for the world and that . . . that our Grand Master is . . . killed
. . . burnt on the King’s pyre.’

There was not
one sound to be heard save the wind and the fire.

‘The bishop of
these parts is spying out the means of taking the old castle from us with the
help of King Robert of Anjou. Together they arouse the hatred of the people and
have them believing the lying tales of sorcery and that we are rich beyond
measure . . . Soon there will be no food.’

He saw silent
resignation.

‘I say we leave
this place,’ said Robert of Bavaria.

‘To live a counterfeit life?
Not I! I
would rather die on the stake!’ said the Magyar Jozsef.

Etienne
listened, having expected this. ‘My brothers,’ he felt old and grave as he said
it, ‘we have been companions upon this mountain, living life by the rule as
best it can be lived . . . knowing that this end would come. To face it with
honour and courage is our last deed. It is not granted to all men to live the
future in advance, but such men always must be found. We have been those men
and we are now called upon to safeguard what we have lived for future lives.
Let us recall our Order’s words of consecration, which resound in those who can
hear it in their spirit.

‘Each man
suffers in the service of the whole because the whole is far greater and more
holy than any man alone could be. It is then our duty to let our will be
surpassed by a higher will for the greater good.’ He looked at them. ‘It is
true we are not now what we once were in ages past, so strong as to move the
world! But what we were lives in us still, though weakened by destiny and
hardship. Look with your thoughts to the glory of heaven stretched out before
you, feel in your breasts the love of Christ, in every beat of your heroic
hearts, and move His will into your limbs. To seek, to love and never to yield!
To die courageously and joyfully for our pledge to dedicate our lives to higher
aims,
Non nobis Domine,
non nobis
sed nomini Tuo da gloriam!
In the name of our
Lord Christ Jesus!’

Each man stood
then and raised his sword and cried out, ‘Not to us, our Lord, not to us but to
Your
name give glory!’

Outside, the
wind moved the trees and rattled the shutters. The world prepared for its
summer sleep, but in the round room a winter of the soul awakened the men to
their destiny.

J
ourdain
rang the bells for council and waited in the dead of night outside the chapel
for Etienne to come. The air was cool with a breeze that promised to freshen.
The moon for her part threw her silver mantle over the mountain of firs and
over the castle, steadfast and true of purchase like an old hound.

It was a good
castle of the Order, built square of edge, solid and steep. He observed the
great blocks of masonry that made up its walls, the fortified beams and blocks,
and looked upwards to its shutters. It had withstood Turks and Mongols and it
was good in a siege since the well was deep and clean and in it a secret
passage had been built that led underground to a village far off. This day new soldiery
had come from Vienna to fortify the few who were encamped beyond the walls.
Jourdain wondered how this great castle would fare as a battleground of a
different kind: Christian against Christian. He looked away from this with
sorrow and anger and impotence in his heart.

It was quiet
now. Far better, he told himself, to look upwards to the thick moon that stood
naked in her soft velvet bed – to look to Selene, daughter of the sun and
the dawn.

He was decided
that of all the goddesses of the Greeks this one was his favourite since she
cast her light upon all men without discrimination. Good man and bad, infidel
and Christian; she shone as well in the gutter as she did upon the spirals of a
cathedral! He smiled at that, and imagined her shining over Jerusalem, over the
great dome of the Temple and the mount of the skull, upon which his Saviour was
crucified. Such a thought filled him with longing. Their journey had taken them
too far from holy soil.

At that moment a
strange thing happened: the moon began to fade away. He had seen this once
before – it was an omen! A portent, he was certain, of evil. A cleft
opened in the cavity of his chest, he stopped breathing, the world stopped also
since he could hear no night noises, only a silence, full in his ears. Time
passed and he stood staring upwards, with feelings of dread enough to make his
hair to stand on end, and then a stream of cloud passed over the space where
the moon had been and in a moment it returned slowly to itself.

Someone was
beside him.

He turned his
head hoping to find Etienne’s disapproving face, instead he found the Catalan’s
bewildered one.

‘He is not
come?’ said Delgado, moving from one foot to the other. He too looked upwards
to the moon that came and went behind the clouds. ‘Storm,’ he said.

Jourdain nodded
but he was thinking other things.

Where is Etienne?

In five years,
Etienne had not missed a meeting or chapter. In five years! How must he miss a
council of war? Something had gone awry.

The old Magyar
Jozsef came out of the hall to find him. It was time to begin, he said, the men
waited. Jourdain’s fears for Etienne were weighed against the uneasiness of the
men and he decided he would proceed as best he could with the council until
Etienne arrived. If he did not return by daybreak he would send men to look for
him. Jourdain dared not think on what might have befallen him.

‘We go,’ he said,
his mind taken with concern.

As he made his
way to the knights’ hall he thought on Etienne’s illness. He knew what the pain
that often seized him meant, since his father had suffered and died of it.
Etienne’s heart was failing him. This did not surprise him, for how could a
heart so full hold its own weight? Then again, Etienne had survived betrayals
and plots in Cyprus, the contradiction of his very being in having to abandon
Jacques de Molay at Poitiers. He had survived battles and wounds, exhaustion,
hunger and finally the death of his faith in the nature of men. Such abuse
would have killed a lesser man. No, Etienne was destined to die with a sword in
his hand, crying out, ‘Beauseant!’

With this
thought he entered the thick darkness of the hall, broken only by a candle on
the bronze tripod. He saw the silhouette of the men as they knelt waiting in
their white mantles and he was struck then in his own soul by a full and sudden
load, such as he had never known, having always leant upon the firmness of
Etienne’s shoulders.