The Seal(109)

‘Where is he, you lice-infested vermin?’ Aicelin shouted, having found himself outwitted.

The jailer, cowering, with sweat dripping over his chin and nose, answered, ‘He is food for the birds . . .’

The Archbishop of Narbonne then sent a curt note to the Archbishop of Sens seeking an explanation. He awaited a reply that never came.

A month later the Archishop of Narbonne felt the final sting of Philippe de Marigny’s machinations. During a sitting of the provincial council, Renaud de Provins was stripped of all his clerical privileges and deprived of the habit of the Temple, which immediately disqualified him from defending the Order.

Days later the archbishop sought to question Renaud de Provins personally and could not find him – his name had been struck from the prisoners’ list.

It was no surprise to Gilles Aicelin that afterwards no man dared to formally defend himself or the Order.





46


JACQUES DE MOLAY

O death where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?

I Corinthians 15:55


March 1311

Jacques de Molay sat upon his pallet in the lamplit dungeons of the Paris Temple with his body all a-tremble and his teeth and jaw clenched from cold. He could barely open his mouth to take in the mouldy bread or drink down the thin, pale soup full of weevils. His abused limbs would not keep still and, despite his efforts, the soup drizzled over his long beard and found its way into the cassock of rags over his weary old bones.

Something made him wince with pain and he reached into his mouth. The broken tooth was jagged and sharp and when he brought the finger to his eye to look upon it he saw that it was red with blood from the bite to his cheek.

If he had a knife, a short sharp one, he would dig into the flesh of his gum and cut out the tooth that ripped his mouth open like glass and thumped with pain in the night. But he did not have a knife, and perhaps if he did, he might make better use of it. He might wait until the guard came to take away his bowl and he might then find the right moment to direct the knife’s length into that space between the shoulders or to the base of the neck and into the brain pan. He pictured it, the knife parting flesh and drawing blood, the guard falling upon the dirt of the cell. Such a thought did not bring him satisfaction. He put down the metal bowl, spilling soup and weevils, and chastised himself. He was in a cage but he was not yet turned animal. Not yet.

He gave a sigh; he was weary and spent of mind, but his heart made a flutter when at times the sun shot its rays through the aperture and he was able to feel it upon his face. He was able also to hear the birds that came to compete for space on the branches of a nearby tree in spring and summer. Their song fell upon his soul and made a picture of the world, recalling wind and cloud, sun and oceans and rivers. It conferred upon his soul the seasons, each one made known by the tone of their song.

How many winters and summers had he seen with his soul’s eye upon that pallet of stone? He took his face to the markings made each night with the metal bowl upon the wall, and let his fingers trace each one. After counting, and counting again, he came to a surprised conclusion. Four years! he told himself, rubbing the soup from his beard. Four years, dear Lord! And how many more to come? The rise of emotion that this realisation provoked caused him to hold tight to the pallet with bent-broken fingers until the lightness in his head had passed.

He took a deep breath into his wounded lungs. ‘I am Jacques de Molay!’ he whispered to the walls and the floor and the light coming through the aperture. ‘I am Jacques de Molay, Grand Master of the Poor Knights and the Temple of Solomon! I am not afraid of you for I have conquered you!’ he said to the still dank air. ‘I have not succumbed to despair, to hate, to fear!’ He took in great gulps of air, holding on to the pallet as if to let go would mean to fall into an abyss from which he would never recover.

At that moment the sun entered the aperture and fell upon the half-full bowl beside him. This was not the season, for winter had not yet surrendered to spring. And still the light broke into the quivering soup like stars playing upon the surface of a lake. A familiar feeling, dizzy and faint, began to steal over his skin, his bones, his mind – a tingling ripple, and in his ears, wide-placed tones, far-off and insistent. His soul was peeled away from being to nonbeing, and his spirit left the flooring of the world to hover over the bowl’s profundity.

He saw a vision. The walls of his prison were torn down brick by brick, and beyond was revealed the centuries, time itself, rushing, wild-starred and heaving, pitching, tumbling from sunrise to sunset, again and again until the past stormed the present and passed ahead to the future. He saw the people of the earth surrounded by fire and smoke and blooded steel, headed for thunders and lightnings towards the cliffs and screes and crags that rose above a great abyss. There were calls for Brotherhood! Freedom! Equality! And before his sight stood the figure of a bewigged king whose bent form lost its crowned head beneath a great blade that came thrusting down from out of the night.