The Seal(120)

He looked at her and made an annoyed grunt. ‘Go to sleep.’

‘Will you be working tonight?’

‘Yes.’ He struggled with his coat. ‘You are an inquisitive one this day!’

‘If you are working tonight then you will need your oil . . .I went to the Eustace quarter and got it myself.’ She curved her body to reach beneath the bed and brought out the bottle, which she gave to him.

‘Good! Alas, my dear! You do have a brain! This day begins with an amazement!’ He gave her a slap on the rump and left her smiling in the dark.





55


NEW COVENANT

We are members one of another

Ephesians 4:25


Three days Julian lay upon the sumptuous bed in one of the many apartments at the fortified personal residence of the Bishop of Paris, taken down with a fever. It was not a fever of the body, the physicians told the bishop. It was a fever of the soul.

For his part the young man dreamt strange dreams. In the shadows he heard the sound of wails and screams and the clatter of battle. He could smell smoke and fire and long blades were put to his throat. Then he was following the legs of tall men through streets that wound around as the world coiled in screams and wails.

He tossed and twisted, covered in perspiration while the doctors around him worked in a ring of activity trying to fathom the new and unusual disease. The bishop sat beside him, praying, but Julian did not see him, his visions turned to burning skulls that fell from the shoulders of bodies stripped bare by flames. To visions of oceans vast and blue, and horses and the smell of animals at the gallop ridden by ghostly figures dressed in white emblazoned with crosses made of blood.

On the third day of this, he woke to the sound of the bells of the great cathedral. The fever in his soul had broken and he sat up, feeling the room turning and his stomach lurching. For a moment he did not know where he was, and then he saw the snoring monk sitting beside his bed. It was the bishop’s assistant.

‘Wake up!’ Julian told him.

His eyes must have had fierceness in them, for the monk, having woken to find himself looking into their depths, crossed himself.

‘What day is it?’ he shouted at him.

‘Why ... why ... it is ...’ The man was disoriented himself.

‘I hear something . . . what do those bells call?’ He got up, swayed and fell upon the monk, grabbing him by his scapular. ‘What happens today?’

‘Today? Today the crowds gather outside the Notre Dame for the sentencing of the Templar Grand Master.’

Julian felt the cold-heat enter into his lungs; the faces of the dead swam in his head. This day is not yet written! he thought.

‘Fetch my clothes!’ he said, and fell back with the world whirling in spirals over him and the smell of angels in his nostrils.





56


VIA CRUCIS

For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?

Revelation 6:17


Paris, 18 March 1314

Anima autem mea exultabit in Domino: et delectabitur super salutare suo ...

Between the stone and God, Jacques surrendered to the vision.

And from his mouth emitted his own voice: ‘Slayed! The white-robed lamb . . . thirteen times after the feast of the carrier of holy oils!’

Jacques de Molay’s eyes rolled from inside his head and with a sudden rush he was knocked back into his chest and took the breath of a drowned man.

He was awake and there was a sound.

He flinched. Tears left his eyes and burned down his cheeks. He had commanded armies, governed provinces! He gathered what strength was left to him and waited for the bolt to move. From behind the door came two guards followed by the provost, Philippe de Voet.

He knew why they had come.

‘Get up!’ said the provost and went about removing the chains, leaving on the heavy iron anklets.

The Grand Master lifted his bony face upward to look into the man’s eyes. ‘You are not a bad man, Provost . . . Please, one last request, may I be allowed to wear a mantle of the Order, and not some dirty cassock? Today, it seems like to be my last.’

The provost’s face was blank but he turned to a lesser guard and ordered that a mantle be found.

Making their way through the dungeons to the outside, Jacques could barely lift his legs, weighted as they were with fetters. The tower steps, narrow and steep, made his progress slow.

Outside, his eyes were assaulted by light and his skin, porous and pale, was awakened by the chilly breeze that entered his nostrils and made him tingle from head to toe. A bird flew overhead and he found himself smiling. There was sky! How long had it been? Seven years? He was held by it, and in it he found a sudden lucidity. He looked around him. Alain de Pareilles stood waiting for him, beside a wagon. Behind it fifty or more soldiers were standing at ease. This man was captain of the King’s soldiers, he attended every execution, and had always accompanied the condemned to sentence. His presence con-firmed the significance of this day.