The Seal(24)

The galley moved off and away from land and Etienne said to himself, This was a good harbour once.

On their way to Salamis Jourdain had told him the history of the city where a great battle between the Persians and the Greeks had taken place. Later there were earthquakes and great waves engulfed and destroyed it, and now it lay covered by sand.

Etienne smiled wearily. How the boy knew such things between heaven and earth astonished him!

It had once been the largest port before Famagusta and it was said that St Paul had sailed there from Antioch. Etienne grunted and turned his head upwards. ‘If the Apostles had visited all such places as are believed by men, it seems to me there would be no time for anything else but sea travel!’ But the sails filled with breeze and he was not heard by any man, nor even the gulls that swooped over the galley hoping for a last meagre fare.

His mind turned to the strange predicament in which they found themselves, he and his Grand Master, and their conflict with the Order. Overnight, it seemed, they had become enemies of some, perhaps all of the Order, and as he glanced about the decks and the men for hire whose task it was to see to the driving of the little ship he felt a weight in his heart. For he realised that even if the Grand Master were to best the poison that was ailing him, even if this was possible, they were headed for a hostile kingdom whose king was bent on their destruction, and into the succour of a brotherhood for whom the wars in the Holy Land were a far-off history and no more than a stone poking out of the sand, like the walls of that city Salamis. It was therefore only a matter of time, a matter of what day or hour, what weapon, lance or poison would find Jacques de Molay and kill the Order with him.

Etienne had before him, then, a struggle that seemed to him more testing than what he had experienced face to face with Mahomet over the walls of Acre. That had been Satan in those fields and the Devil in his heart, and they had been plainly visible. But this was a thing new to him, this unseen foe, this enemy hidden in the hearts of brothers, and it required a new discipline. If he was to become the Grand Master’s watchdog then he must learn new tricks.

He contemplated asking God, His Son and the Holy Spirit to help him in this task but, he asked himself, why should God turn his countenance upon him? He imagined the great seas, swift-flowing rivers and shallow streams that he knew ran inside his heart and limbs, and wondered if upon those vast expanses there was not a creature gazing upwards at him wondering if its struggles and labours were of any consequence to him.

Etienne, mystified by such a thought, all but smiled at himself – surely Jourdain was making his thoughts run in strange channels! He saw the impiety of philosophy since it covered blasphemy with logic.

‘I am one with God and God is one with me. So that whatever God is, that am I!’ he called out to the sea, and the sky traded places with the waves and made him cling to the rails until he felt the workings of his muscles and sinews in their extremity.

And Salamis was forgotten amid the great sea that stretched out to the end of the world.





THE SECOND CARD

STRENGTH AND COURAGE





8

FRANCE

For the good man is not at home he is gone on a long journey

Proverbs 7:19


November 1306

They had seen the signal from the galley. Delgado and Aubert had left some days before for Richerenches, a house of the Order in Provence. Jacques de Molay knew that his close friend and brother, Geoffrey de Charney, would be there. The mercenaries were to take themselves to him with a message and return with horses.

When the sun went down and the grey sky fell to black, Gideon rowed Etienne, Jourdain, the Grand Master and Iterius to the inland sea that became a series of lagoons formed by the intrusion of desolate salt marshes and sandbanks and dunes. Above them they heard the flapping of wings and the call of ducks and other birds. To the east the faint lights of the old port of St Louis flickered and died away as they progressed to the west and into a little arm of the Rhone. They allowed the tide to push them down the narrow inlet, and when they came to a deserted seawall Jourdain attached the rope to a rusted ring in the rock and they waited.

The river was tame at this time of year, except for the cold breeze that picked up the swell and caused the little boat to hit the wall.

Etienne was put off by the frailty of the arrangement and said to the Norman, ‘When will they come?’ scanning as he did so the silver-coloured water and the perimeter of trees beyond the rock wall.

‘They will come,’ said Gideon.

But it was full night upon the delta by the time they heard the voice from above. By then the wind had strengthened and the boat was slapped against the crumbling stone and it was all they could do to fend it off.