The sun lifted the sky, and the city of Vienne swallowed them into her cold streets. In that intrepid time what people were about stared at them. The silence in their faces grew loud in Templar ears. Women took their children in hand, guiding them to the houses; men bowed their heads and continued with their work. They sensed danger, like a pall, over the men in white.
‘They do not look at us,’ Andrew said, hunching over.
‘We are marked to their eyes,’ Roger answered merrily.
They pressed on. The wind picked up and swept them like leaves to the church; two men held open the doors and the others entered the nave on their horses.
Roger observed the ailing churchmen who sat huddled in communion . One sneezed and the others just opened their mouths.
‘We come to defend the Order!’ he cried into the damp space of the church and his voice was great and bold. ‘In the name of Christ! You offered us safe conduct!’
Incredulous silence circled the men in red and white sitting tall upon their horses.
Roger de Flor gazed down from his height at the men in whose hands lay the ending of the Order, at the stiffened bones of the church, and thought that it was a good day to die.
A cardinal stood; his strange eyes touched lightly on the men but his mouth said nothing. The stillness hung stiffly in the air.
Outside a cloud passed over the sun and the Pope’s men, having sat before the light from the rose window, were thrown into darkness.
‘Where is the Pope?’ asked Roger.
‘He is absent,’ said the prelate. ‘Leave and do not return.’
‘Tell the Holy Father,’ he said, ‘there are two thousand of us around these parts at the ready. We are innocent men, who have fought for Christ in the name of the Church. Let it be upon his head! Beauseant! ’
With their white mantles flung around, fluttering in the returned sunlight a brilliant moment, they were gone.
It was almost noon before the Pope’s men caught up with them. By then clouds had blackened the sky and the wind was lifting wildly. The men sensed a storm behind it.
When they saw the guards, the Templars whipped their horses into a gallop.
‘Head for the forest!’ Roger shouted into the wild air. ‘Circle back! We are outmatched.’
The Pope’s men came through the wind and into the thicket towards Roger, Andrew and another man who were now paused upon their horses and ready for battle with axes and swords. A gust blew the trees, and leaves struck their faces.
A moment later the Pope’s men came at them and there was storm and blood on the ground when the other six brothers came from behind with raised axes and ambushed them.
A man fell from his horse with his throat cut and another took a sword through his heart. Others fell and took men with them.
When Roger saw a break in the fighting he called out to, ‘Ride!’
And so they rode low and ducked the swaying branches. Andrew’s horse panted and snorted trying to get its breath, but there was no letting up. Behind them a dozen, maybe more, pursued them. Then it began to hail, big balls that struck the trees and splintered wood. One struck Roger and nearly flung him from his horse. It hit the enemy equally well, pushing down hard though it had now begun to lose its size and made the ground mush and the horses lose their grip.
Arrows found them and men fell to be trampled by horses. They were through and in open country. There were only the three of them now, and they pressed their horses hard and rode fast over the crest of a hill. They rode on, skirting the forest, not looking back, and when the sun shone its face again they pulled in at their horses and slowed to a trot.
Roger de Flor felt a strange sensation, a flutter in his heart, and he was out of breath. He saw himself slump upon the horse that, sensing no tension on its rein, paused, letting him fall to the ground.
By the time the others had come off their horses and made their way to him he was almost beyond himself.
He saw Andrew’s weatherworn face come over his and the smell of his stale breath as he said, ‘An arrow to the heart.’
Roger looked at it and it seemed to him an odd thing that Andrew had noticed it and he had not, but then he was reminded of Andrew’s good eyes and he tried to make conversation by saying, ‘I am killed.’
But even before his lips had said the words they were proceeding from out of a body below him that lay upon the leaves flanked by the two men. It did not concern him, that body. He had, by all accounts, discarded it since he was embarked upon a different journey, soaring over the waves of a vast blue space wherein he saw his life spread out like an ocean of light.
48
THE SUPPRESSION
It is finished.
St John 19:30
Vienne, April 1312
This city, Clement knew, was a perfect choice for the location of the general council, since it was not a fief of France but belonged instead to the kingdom of Arles. It was here that Clement controlled, through the Archbishop of Vienne, the suffragans of Geneva, Grenoble, Aosta, Tarentaise, Valence and St Etienne de Marienne, and this meant that his power extended over the borders of France, through the Alps and into Italy.