The Seal(130)

It was quiet now. Far better, he told himself, to look upwards to the thick moon that stood naked in her soft velvet bed – to look to Selene, daughter of the sun and the dawn.

He was decided that of all the goddesses of the Greeks this one was his favourite since she cast her light upon all men without discrimination. Good man and bad, infidel and Christian; she shone as well in the gutter as she did upon the spirals of a cathedral! He smiled at that, and imagined her shining over Jerusalem, over the great dome of the Temple and the mount of the skull, upon which his Saviour was crucified. Such a thought filled him with longing. Their journey had taken them too far from holy soil.

At that moment a strange thing happened: the moon began to fade away. He had seen this once before – it was an omen! A portent, he was certain, of evil. A cleft opened in the cavity of his chest, he stopped breathing, the world stopped also since he could hear no night noises, only a silence, full in his ears. Time passed and he stood staring upwards, with feelings of dread enough to make his hair to stand on end, and then a stream of cloud passed over the space where the moon had been and in a moment it returned slowly to itself.

Someone was beside him.

He turned his head hoping to find Etienne’s disapproving face, instead he found the Catalan’s bewildered one.

‘He is not come?’ said Delgado, moving from one foot to the other. He too looked upwards to the moon that came and went behind the clouds. ‘Storm,’ he said.

Jourdain nodded but he was thinking other things.

Where is Etienne?

In five years, Etienne had not missed a meeting or chapter. In five years! How must he miss a council of war? Something had gone awry.

The old Magyar Jozsef came out of the hall to find him. It was time to begin, he said, the men waited. Jourdain’s fears for Etienne were weighed against the uneasiness of the men and he decided he would proceed as best he could with the council until Etienne arrived. If he did not return by daybreak he would send men to look for him. Jourdain dared not think on what might have befallen him.

‘We go,’ he said, his mind taken with concern.

As he made his way to the knights’ hall he thought on Etienne’s illness. He knew what the pain that often seized him meant, since his father had suffered and died of it. Etienne’s heart was failing him. This did not surprise him, for how could a heart so full hold its own weight? Then again, Etienne had survived betrayals and plots in Cyprus, the contradiction of his very being in having to abandon Jacques de Molay at Poitiers. He had survived battles and wounds, exhaustion, hunger and finally the death of his faith in the nature of men. Such abuse would have killed a lesser man. No, Etienne was destined to die with a sword in his hand, crying out, ‘Beauseant!’

With this thought he entered the thick darkness of the hall, broken only by a candle on the bronze tripod. He saw the silhouette of the men as they knelt waiting in their white mantles and he was struck then in his own soul by a full and sudden load, such as he had never known, having always leant upon the firmness of Etienne’s shoulders.

Now he had to steady himself at the realisation of what Etienne must have suffered all these years. This was the Order: between man and God! The Order of the Temple stood between what was and what would be . . . soon to be extinguished . . . too soon, before the performance of its glory! To all intents and purposes in its prime! And those men, spare and dwindled in their mantles, the last of the Templars, had placed their souls in the hands of their caretakers. He was one of them, he realised now. Without Etienne, how must he command these last remnants to their deaths?

The Catalan disappeared behind the closed doors and the Magyar took his place inside them.

Jourdain waited a moment longer, hoping for Etienne’s appearance. When it seemed he would not come he stood upon the short dais and, looking at the puzzled faces, began the formulas in Latin. The men followed and soon the hall was full with the sound of voices in their adoration of God.

But it did not last long, this ecstasy of brotherhood, for at that moment the door to the hall burst open in splinters making the darkness suddenly lessened by the moonlight coming through to touch upon a confusion complete and disproportionate to their meditative mood. The wind was stirring now and it carried the sound of the cries of his men – easy prey to a multitude of soldiers that spread over the chapel shouting and hacking with their swords in the dark light.

His brothers fought back as best they could. He heard the Catalan’s cry and saw a fleeting glimpse of a sword. It took the light into it and came down again and again, then it was gone into the disorder of bodies. Jourdain punched and kicked and struggled, seeking for his weapon in the fray. The immensity of it reached him then: Christian men murdered at prayer by Christians in the name of God! Had the beast been favoured by God above his servant Theseus? But even as he thought this a shadow like that of the great Minotaur passed before his eyes and blotted out the moonlight and the sounds of the men in their screaming. There was no struggle, only two blows: one to the middle which cut off his breath and another to the leg.