The Seal(129)

He could hear drums and chants and he held a dagger in his hands with a skull at its hilt. He was a priest. Beneath him a man lay on the killing stone. To look at him made the muscles of his arms tense to prepared the thrust. It came hard, down and upwards in the form of an angled snake. He held out a heart beating still in his hands.

But the pain made his eyes open and he saw the stag had come at him and he felt the air pushed from his lungs then and his last thought was sucked from his head and into the darkness.

Taotl!





61


ROUND ROOM

How dull it is to pause, to make an end, to rust unburnished, not to shine in use!

Lord Alfred Tennyson, ‘Ulysses’


Lockenhaus, May 1315

Etienne and Jourdain climbed the winding stairs and entered the room of stone where sat the senior brothers.

The fire of elm and oak blazed in the hearth and the men drank a little wine to warm them and to bring some fire into their muscles. Above the great round table the candles were lit in their brackets and Etienne could plainly see the faces wrapped in despair and dedicated to death. Their eyes, full of hunger, stretched and tore at his heart so that he had to cough before he could speak.

‘I have news,’ said Etienne. ‘Yesterday a dangerous expedition to the village is returned. It garnered two things: information and food. The information came by way of news that the Order has been suppressed at the Council of Vienne and therefore no longer exists for the world and that . . . that our Grand Master is . . . killed . . . burnt on the King’s pyre.’

There was not one sound to be heard save the wind and the fire.

‘The bishop of these parts is spying out the means of taking the old castle from us with the help of King Robert of Anjou. Together they arouse the hatred of the people and have them believing the lying tales of sorcery and that we are rich beyond measure . . . Soon there will be no food.’

He saw silent resignation.

‘I say we leave this place,’ said Robert of Bavaria.

‘To live a counterfeit life? Not I! I would rather die on the stake!’ said the Magyar Jozsef.

Etienne listened, having expected this. ‘My brothers,’ he felt old and grave as he said it, ‘we have been companions upon this mountain, living life by the rule as best it can be lived . . . knowing that this end would come. To face it with honour and courage is our last deed. It is not granted to all men to live the future in advance, but such men always must be found. We have been those men and we are now called upon to safeguard what we have lived for future lives. Let us recall our Order’s words of consecration, which resound in those who can hear it in their spirit.

‘Each man suffers in the service of the whole because the whole is far greater and more holy than any man alone could be. It is then our duty to let our will be surpassed by a higher will for the greater good.’ He looked at them. ‘It is true we are not now what we once were in ages past, so strong as to move the world! But what we were lives in us still, though weakened by destiny and hardship. Look with your thoughts to the glory of heaven stretched out before you, feel in your breasts the love of Christ, in every beat of your heroic hearts, and move His will into your limbs. To seek, to love and never to yield! To die courageously and joyfully for our pledge to dedicate our lives to higher aims, Non nobis Domine, non nobis sed nomini Tuo da gloriam! In the name of our Lord Christ Jesus!’

Each man stood then and raised his sword and cried out, ‘Not to us, our Lord, not to us but to Your name give glory!’

Outside, the wind moved the trees and rattled the shutters. The world prepared for its summer sleep, but in the round room a winter of the soul awakened the men to their destiny.





62


JOURDAIN

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

St John 15:13


Jourdain rang the bells for council and waited in the dead of night outside the chapel for Etienne to come. The air was cool with a breeze that promised to freshen. The moon for her part threw her silver mantle over the mountain of firs and over the castle, steadfast and true of purchase like an old hound.

It was a good castle of the Order, built square of edge, solid and steep. He observed the great blocks of masonry that made up its walls, the fortified beams and blocks, and looked upwards to its shutters. It had withstood Turks and Mongols and it was good in a siege since the well was deep and clean and in it a secret passage had been built that led underground to a village far off. This day new soldiery had come from Vienna to fortify the few who were encamped beyond the walls. Jourdain wondered how this great castle would fare as a battleground of a different kind: Christian against Christian. He looked away from this with sorrow and anger and impotence in his heart.