The Seal(39)

He was falling out of balance and the brother sergeant moved to help him.

‘No!’ Marcus yelled at him and stumbled to the octagonal church where he made his way like a blind man down the aisle to the altar. Here he fell as though struck down and before the bare-breasted image of his Lord he waited to hear something, to see a sign that would tell him what he must do.

He told himself he must make himself patient, as patient as he had been in the cave. After all, why should God not bend His form to reach him as the gold had done?

For three days he remained thus, without food or rest, waiting for a communication that never came.

In the end, he had to be carried off from fatigue.





15

THE ‘FAIR’ KING

Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast:

for it is the number of a man

and his number is six hundred and threescore and six.

Revelation 13:18


September 1307

The King of France, Philip Capet, entered his apartment in a state of agitation. His long strides crossed the room whose floors were everywhere adorned with embroidered rugs and tapestries, and upon whose walls torches flickered, adding to the light that came scant and pale from the windows. He paused a moment to observe the sun rise, silent over the valleys and forests in which he often hunted. He took in a breath to quell the hardness in his head. There was little time in a king’s life for sport.

He was in one of his dark moods. A frigid wind had swept over his mind, leaving his face etched in stone. Soon something would enter into his brooding solitude, something violent and fascinating. He waited.

Where in the Devil was Nogaret?

He paced with eyes darting from this to that, his teeth grinding beneath his cheeks, and his hands marking a stiff pace

behind his back. He sensed the tautness of his muscles moving against his bones, the rush of the kingly blood in his veins. He paused, listening, standing entirely still, waiting for something to speak to him, for some smell to stimulate his nostrils, for a sound to excite his ears. He waited and when it came it filled him entirely, like smoke fills a room to the very corners. A pale glow trembled in his heart:

He was a king with a kingdom to rule!

But then the question pressed at his temples and made them ache.

Where in the Devil was Nogaret?

A moment later, as if in answer, an attendant entered the apartment and with pomp announced the lawyer.

Guillaume de Nogaret was shown in.

Philip noted the disproportionate nature of the man’s body – long-waisted and short of neck, with legs like tree trunks. Philip gave him his most royal smile. ‘Nogaret! I was just thinking on you.’

Guillaume de Nogaret bowed low, making a sweep of one hand whilst holding with the other some parchments that he held out to his sovereign. ‘The arrest orders, sire.’ His voice made a dissonance in Philip’s ears.

The King waved the gesture away, and the lawyer remained half bowed, unsure of what to do next.

Philip turned to his dais. ‘What are the charges again?’

He heard a moan and recognised it. Nogaret was feeling a pinch at his spine. When Philip turned, the man was giving it a rub with his free hand and Philip caught the slightest expression of narrowness from those cavernous eyes.

The lawyer coughed and wheezed and riffled through the parchments with pale hands and pulled one out from the rest, reading out loud, ‘Bestiality . . . sire, worship of devils, defilement of the cross . . . sorcery and secrecy, necromancy and sodomy, the denial of Christ . . . etcetera . . . etcetera . . .’ He was paused awaiting a reply.

Philip chose for the moment not to answer, instead he made a whistle and two greyhounds came bounding towards him from their velvet beds. He patted them with an absent fondness and then sat down upon a throne too small to bear his long body comfortably.

‘Scandalous,’ he said finally.

‘An appalling business, sire!’ said Nogaret.

‘Worshipping devils, you say?’ Then he leant forward. ‘And?’

‘And, sire?’

‘What of eating the entrails of stillborn babies? Was there not something about a ceremony during chapter? Should that not be added . . . as we discussed?’

The lawyer stifled a yawn. ‘Sire, if I may . . . perhaps that is a little too astonishing?’

Philip moved a chill glance over his lawyer and made it come as still as a winter lake. ‘Astonishing?’

‘A little . . . far-fetched, sire?’ the lawyer explained.

The King made a slight gesture of the head, which Nogaret and the animals interpreted immediately. The dogs and the lawyer became attentive, their ears pricked up listening.

Philip did not look up from his dogs. ‘Far-fetched?’

The lawyer stood his ground. ‘I believe so, sire.’