Reading Online Novel

The Seal(122)



Did they not sense the soul of the world, merging and separating, entering within and expanding without, dividing the unity into individual parts and unifying the particular into a universal whole? A man was, therefore, not merely the mirror for another man, but was entered into him and became one with him . . . and when two men were entered into one another, how could they not think the same thoughts or breathe together the air in their lungs? How could their hearts not beat in rhythm to experience the same pains and sorrows or move their limbs towards the same goals?

His old friend Christian came before his mind’s eye and he knew what his friend had meant to tell him. The knowing of it gave him an astonishing strength and it rose up through his legs and to the rest of him and stirred his tired, old veins. He would not die in murus strictus! He would not languish in a dungeon surrounded by rats and faeces – he would die with will in the lungs! The old man with the long beard and tattered mantle would then be truly free. Free because this would be his deed – not a deed demanded of him by duty or rule, but one that had welled up from the nature of his own being – to take the evil of the world into himself, to fill himself up with it and to transform it to good through love!

This was a new thing.

The sun came out then, patient and clean, and the streets became his, familiar and jovial. They no longer carried him to his execution; they were the avenues whose direction pointed to the accomplishment of his task. He was not afraid. These people were his brothers and he would fight for them and die for them upon a different battlefield.

‘We need no outward country, my brothers. Jerusalem exists in our souls and we battle there against evil upon the soil of the spirit!’

Outside the Notre Dame two temporary platforms had been erected in order to ensure that the multitude of citizens gathered at the Place de Parvis were able to witness the event. One platform stood ahead of the open doors of the great portico and was occupied by the special council convened to hand down the final verdict on the Templar leaders. The council consisted of William of Paris, Enguerrand de Marigny, his brother the Archbishop of Sens, the Bishop of Paris, together with Cardinal Nicholas de Fréauville and the cardinal legates from Rome, whose presence, in the absence of the Pope, signified that the sentence was without appeal. These men were then flanked by various bishops, canons and clerics, and it seemed to many that the hasty construction, erected as it was on timbers lashed together, would soon collapse from the weight of so many well-fed churchmen. The second platform faced the tribunal. Upon it stood the chained, tortured figures of Jacques de Molay and his three brothers, their backs to the crowd.

A weighty silence fell and it made the day seem more brightly coloured: the sky, the sun, the cardinals’ robes, the ermine and velvet, the golden pectoral crosses. All of it blinded Jacques de Molay and he barely heard as Cardinal de Fréauville read out the heads of judgement.

The cardinal spoke with unctuous majesty, pomp and ceremony. But the Grand Master heard only as his name was called.

‘Monsieur de Molay, who under interrogation has confessed and admitted the following . . .’

Seven years of lies, of tortures and indecencies. Seven years! The cardinal appeared almost satisfied as he read that during the reception ceremony brothers were required to deny Christ, that the brothers committed sacrilegious acts upon the cross, that the receptors practised obscene kisses on new entrants, that the priests of the Order did not consecrate the host, that the brothers worshipped a cat, or a head, that the brothers encouraged and permitted the practice of sodomy, that he, the Grand Master, and other officials absolved fellow Templars, that they held their receptions, ceremonies and chapter meetings in secret and at night, that they abused the duties of charity and hospitality and used illegal means to acquire property and increase their wealth...

But his mind was recalling how the wind felt on his face when he charged across the desert sands – the ancient movement of those winds that cracked the lips and made hoarse the throat. How the skies were washed with blue! How the battle flags unfurled, fluttering the Beauseant crosswise that sky! And the valiant nature of men! The courage and self-sacrifice of his departed friends!

How we have sat and drunk below a metal moon and wet our lips with water from icy rivers!

A tear fell down his face and flowed unseen into his beard. Frustration welled up inside him, pain and humiliation, sorrow and guilt for his confessions, regrets at his own incompetence. All of it came flooding out of him, pouring out, loosened.

‘The hour has come,’ he whispered to himself.

‘The accused are therefore condemned to perpetual imprisonment, that they may obtain the remission of their sins by means of their repentance. In nomine Patris ...’