The Seal(128)

‘That’s right…’ Iterius gasped.

There was the sound of satisfaction in his voice. ‘Pity we shall never know it now, Iterius,’ he said, and gave a laugh.

Iterius closed his eyes as the surge of pain passed through him. Oh the blow fate had struck him! The one time he had a true vision, he had not interpreted it correctly and now he would die!

He opened his eyes and saw only darkness in the place where the King had been.

In the distance he heard a muffled command, some footsteps and then two hands were dragging him. He heard a noise, a metallic sound and then of a sudden he fell a long way.

He landed awkwardly on rock and mud at the bottom of the pit, but he did not fall far enough for it to kill him.





60


THE STAG

And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever.

Revelation 14:11


29 November 1314

In the forest of Pont-Sainte-Maxence the King galloped at full speed, past trees and plants covered in whiteness, among the baying of the dogs and the sound of breaking turf.

He was a man abandoned in a hostile universe without help and responsible for a world he hated.

He put spurs to his horse. His mind raced with so many divergent thoughts and painful apparitions that he was not looking for game, he was pressing on, hoping that stupor and oblivion might find him, and therefore plunge him into a void of quiet nothingness.

Since March he had taken no interest in his kingdom. He was driven mad. He had thrust his head inside an ants’ nest and now he could find no escape. Overtaken by voices and thoughts and memories of deeds confused and misshapen, he walked about his palace whispering and mumbling and clawing at the air, his soul in a state of constant uncertainty and bewilderment. He had become a creature wholly engulfed in loathing, aflood with passionate self-hatred and capable of no logical thought. He called out for his astrologer and his draught. But his astrologer had taken days to die. The nuns of the little abbey had complained that an injured animal could be heard groaning about the grounds. It was a sound full of despair, they said, an agony of the body and of the soul. Now, without the draught, the immense and visible presence which had fed his madness would not leave off but pierced him hungrily on every side.

He whipped his horse but the animal, puffing clouds from its nostrils, was weary; the King could feel its great heaving chest between his legs. It slowed down, unable to go further, and came to a stop in a little clearing into which the rays of the sun filtered through branches over the crisp, frozen snow. Philip’s head felt heavy, in his temples a pain stabbed and gouged and burned. He raised his eyes, feeling a presence not far from him, a stag, as large as that great stag he had seen as a child of eight when he had made his first kill. The animal’s enormous horns glistened in the half-light as it turned towards Philip with brilliant eyes and a steaming snout wet with condensation.

The King prepared to dismount, removing the crossbow from his saddle as he had done many times before. The animal did not move; it stared, complacent, knowing, defiant. Did those eyes recall those of Jacques de Molay? What madness! But there was a moment of mind stillness then, and Philip took in a deep breath and looked again. In the light that filtered through the canopy he saw not the stag, but yes, the figure of Jacques de Molay, standing upon that earth. Jacques de Molay had freedom and defiance, and God in his eyes. A pure object illuminated. Jacques de Molay sought to look into his bony mind, into his hollow soul, into his cold eye . . .

‘I will not let you see it! I will not let you!’ he told him.

But the face of Jacques de Molay probed his heart until

there was nothing that he could hide. He was himself in a state of nakedness with those eyes boring into his soul.

The vision raised an arm and pointed in his direction. Then it was gone. Only the stag remained. Only the beautiful stag with the glistening horns raised. The King pulled on the shaft and prepared to let go into the animal. He mused that all the fury, hatred, fear, rancour and doubt that filled him lay upon the tip of that quarrel and that to release it would be to free himself.

Something fettered his hand, however. His mind was torn from its roots and there was an explosion of tiny stars that blackened his vision. His legs no longer obeyed him and his arms became flaccid at his side and he fell into the powdery white.

Lying with his face half in snow he observed himself from without, like Titus observing the ruins of Jerusalem. Had death fascinated him also? But death was drawing near, dark death’s weaving fashioned him in a shiver. That same reflex he had so longingly observed, the instinctive battle between life and death, light and dark, warmth and coldness, the resistance to life’s dissolution, he experienced. At this point, between an in breath and a last out breath, he saw the cause of all things pass before his eyes as in a dream.