The Seal(107)

Now as the Bishop of Paris’s carriage drove through the porte Saint Antoine he reflected at the speed of the judgement. There had been no pretence of legality, no reviewing of evidence, and no witnesses were summoned. A judgement had been ascertained before he and the other suffragans had even warmed their seats in council, for even before the judgement had fallen, the prisoners had been divided into classifications, with the recalcitrant brothers placed in chains and repaired to waiting wagons that would take them to their execution.

His carriage rode to the convent of Saint Antoine des Champs outside the city walls on the road to Meaux. The convent was a huge fortified complex, with buttressed walls and a large deep moat, surrounded by agricultural lands, orchards and vineyards. The sky was hung with clouds that scattered over the horizon. The sun slanted noon. The heat bore down and the bishop, dressed in the regalia of his investiture, could feel its piercing hands.

People were making their way toward a spot past the mill of St Antoine, in the fields between it and the abbey. There, a crowd of citizens had gathered. Tradesmen, charlatans, pickpockets, people selling produce and wares made a wide circle around a wagon overflowing with brothers of the Order. Two guards were releasing four horses from their bridles whilst another was piling faggots and straw beneath the wagon.

The Bishop of Paris alighted from his carriage. His round, richly dressed figure was immediately recognised as he pushed past the crowds. He reached the scene as the guards set the straw alight.

Guillaume de Baufet stood before the spectacle, breathless, staining his sacerdotal robes with perspiration, his eyes wide and incredulous. ‘My Lord,’ he whispered under his breath, ‘there is no time even to erect a stake!’

The flames began to lick sluggishly at the floor of the wagons, and the men inside cried out.

‘We are innocent! We have done nothing!’

The crowd was quiet. There were no jeers or insults, just a deathly silence. Even the merchants and hawkers were paused.

‘Save us!’ cried one man. The bishop recognised him – it was Laurent de Beaune, Preceptor of Mormant from the diocese of Langogne. ‘For the glory of Christ we die!’

‘We have not had the sacraments!’ wailed another. ‘Lord protect us!’ he gasped and went down on bended knee.

‘Gloria in excelsis deo. Et in terra pax hominibus bon voluntatis! ’ The Templar priest, William de Landres, whom the bishop also recognised from the trials, recited the gloria. ‘Laudamus te Benedicimus Adoremus te. Glorificamus te. Gratia agimus tibi propter magnam gloriam tuam.’

The fire rose upward and began to brush the sides of the wagon and heat was coming through the floor causing the men, crowded upon the wagon, to scramble over one another to get away from it, but there was no escape.

A man stepped out from the crowd and shouted at the circle of armed men, ‘There is not enough straw!’

The smell of burning hair sulphurous and rank and the odour of sizzling flesh mingled with the cries and screams of terror.

‘More straw!’ the crowd called out, moving towards the wagons.

The Templars danced to escape the flames, pleading and praying, calling for help. Peasants began to throw under the pyre straw and faggots that lay unused upon the ground.

The guards themselves, comprehending that an inadequacy of flame could occasion a late lunch, reached for more fuel, and soon guards and commoners were aiding each other in piling what they could around the wagons. Promptly, the flames obeyed, reaching higher. The men would not die of the smoke, however. They would observe in horror as their flesh dissipated, melted to reveal the cavities of their bodies gnawed by conflagration.

It seemed to take a long time before each man in his turn fell into the flames and the field was quiet again with only the sound of the fire crackling and spurting. From it the Bishop of Paris averted his eyes, not wishing to see more.

When the wagons and bones were reduced to dust and what would not burn was taken away so that no relic could be collected of the martyrs, the crowd, a little sombre, dispersed, anticipating its midday meal, leaving the bishop alone, his mind a blank.





45


ATONEMENT

. . . thou art lukewarm and neither cold nor hot . . .

Revelation 3:16


18 May 1310

Julian woke early. He dressed in his capa and repaired to the church to attend lauds. Present at that canonical hour was Gilles Aicelin, the Archbishop of Narbonne, who had walked out on Pierre de Bologna and his appeal before the commission.

When the service was ended and the brothers had filed silently out of the church, Julian approached him and drew him into the shadows.

‘Your Grace,’ Julian said, ‘grave and serious matters have come to my notice, matters of importance to you that cannot wait.’