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The Seal(4)

By:Adriana Koulias


He felt this newfound love a strange thing and had no com-pulsion to return it, so he pulled the boy from him and told him, ‘Come!’, being all he could say.

After that Marcus was the picture of self-satisfaction beside him. ‘Do you know what the old man said to that infant, Etienne? “Go . . . boy!” Do you hear that? “Go,” he says . . . for it was their plan to win your sympathy . . . it was a show and you were duped, my Etienne, duped!’

Etienne looked down to the child walking with silent deter-mination at his heels, and frowned. ‘Would you not do the same if it were yours?’

Marcus gave a great guffaw. ‘Mine? Well, there is one certainty, my brother, I would have made a swift clean cut of that little throat before you could have fetched him and I would have cut yours as well!’

Etienne smiled at him. ‘I don’t doubt it.’

But the old man was stretching his sorrowful howl in their wake and Marcus stopped in his tracks and looked behind him. ‘It seems that all wish to die this night! Shall I once more finish what you have started?’

Etienne did not pause but said over his shoulder, ‘Best to move on, brother. Soon the gates close.’

Marcus stood a moment, striving to ascertain quarrel from reasonable logic, then narrowed his eyes and chose to make a smile of it, nodding to himself. ‘This day has you full of strange tempers, Etienne!’ he shouted after him. ‘First you wish to die a paragon, then you add to it by wishing to save the world! Well . . . perhaps I am of the same mind! I am decided to leave him as a gift . . . for Mameluks!’

Etienne continued his walk with the boy child entangled in his skirts until he caught up with Jacques. He felt a familiar pain travel down his left arm then to the tips of his fingers. He shook the hand and it began to lift its grip. He had not paused his stride and no one could tell that he felt as though something unfamiliar had entered into him and was now moving about in his head. He put his hand, still trembling, to his brow and found it wet. Fear, he thought to his surprise – not of Mameluks or Turks, certainly not of death. He said nothing. He walked on faster than before, and the child beside him had to double its pace to keep up.

Jacques de Molay craned his neck to look at the boy with knitted brows. ‘I wonder, Etienne, what we shall do with this creature? Surely it shall be misplaced in our world?’

Jacques was his better and could have ordered him to leave the child behind, but Etienne knew he was not in the habit of bending men to his will. Such liberties given to men used to living by rules provoked a search of the heart more deep, it gave a man more weight to bear, and this either made a strength in the soul or a weakness.

Etienne searched for reasons and settled on this: ‘These wars wear out hope.’ He looked at Jacques and left it at that.

Jacques nodded, thoughtful, and looked ahead. ‘That, Etienne, is the way of children, they give us hope they do not have for themselves.’

‘Ahh!’ Marcus said, kicking out at the child who ducked to escape behind Etienne’s leg. ‘There will not be room for him in the galleys, and tomorrow or the next day or even the next day after that, when the evil of mankind storms the Temple gates, it shall spill forth its hatred upon him and every other like him . . . As I said, better a knife to the throat.’

Etienne had no adequate counter to this plain fact and so he ignored the boy whose small hands grasped at the scabbard at his leg and the shield upon his back for balance. Tonight or tomorrow they would leave this place with Thibaud de Gaudin. The fortress and all pertaining to it would belong to the Saracens soon enough. He gave the child a push and it fell on its back. ‘Go!’ he shouted. But the child caught up with him. Etienne did not resist it, and the two continued their awkward walk.

The Templars were now passing the Genoese quarter and could see the Tower of the Temple that lay at the seaward extremity of the city. On either side of them behind the barred doors and shuttered windows, the city lay quiet, awaiting its fate.

A hawk landed on the edge of a roof and Jacques de Molay paused to look at it. It belonged to Al Ashraf, they had seen it the day before upon his arm. The bird was proud and magnificent and viewed them with disdain; presently it flew away, trailing behind it its jesses and ribbons, startled at the sounds of footsteps on the roof tiles.

Etienne put the child to one side and looked into its eyes again. ‘Stay here!’ he commanded, and this made the child quiet and begin to suck his thumb. Etienne looked upon this with severity and he gave himself up to a sigh. He drew his long sword from out of its scabbard, stuck a little from dried blood, and slid his shield from his back, slipping it through an arm. Together with his brothers he readied himself as five shapes lit by the new sun came off the rooftops and landed on the street ahead of them.