The Seal(41)

Nogaret straightened his back and made a wince of his face.

‘Get that seen to, Nogaret!’ Philip told him. ‘You shall make a poor Keeper of the Seals if you are crippled.’

‘Yes, sire.’

He sat forward. ‘Now, to our plans . . .’

Nogaret grew attentive. ‘The Pope has the Grand Master at Poitiers, as you requested, sire, discussing the matter of a unification of Orders.’

The King raised his brows, thoughtful. ‘The old man is good for something! And how do you propose to bring the Grand Master from Poitiers to Paris before he scurries back to his little hole in Cyprus?’ He threw his lawyer a stare.

‘Well, sire, he is your daughter’s godfather, and an intimate of the court. There are various lures that you might use.’

‘He must not suspect anything! They are like pigs with their snouts always to the ground. What does the man look like? I fail to conjure his face before my mind’s eye! Come . . . come!’

‘Who, sire?’

‘Jacques de Molay, the Grand Master! Where is your mind this day? What in the Devil does the man look like?’

‘An old goat, sire, with a little beard and sad eyes . . .’

‘Ahh . . . yes . . . the eyes!’ He made a pause and considered his lawyer. ‘Shall I tell you something?’

‘I am all ears, sire.’

‘Do you know what I see in the eyes of a dying animal, Nogaret?’

Nogaret raised his brows, ‘In a dying animal, sire?’

‘In its eyes . . . what do you think I see?’

‘Well . . . I suspect . . . death, sire?’

‘Yes, one would suspect death, quite naturally, but would it astonish you to know that in a dying creature’s eyes I see the secrets of existence? Wide milky valleys and fields of low hedges.’ He looked out of his window. ‘I see harvests, forests, snow! The wild liveliness of being and the fragility of living things! The nobility of battle, the last remnants of strength, the honour of exhaustion without yield. All of it mirrored to me from the profundity of the eyes!’ Philip searched for surprise.

The lawyer moved his face accordingly. ‘Surely a holy communion  , sire?’

‘Yes . . . but what has it taught me, Nogaret? That is the point.’ Philip sat back, patting his animals. ‘What has it taught me?’

The lawyer waited for elucidation.

‘It has taught me how to act according to the nature of beasts. I have learnt from the fox and from the lion how to frighten off the wolves and how to recognise traps, how to keep myself alive . . . This is a most efficacious learning for a king, wouldn’t you agree?’

‘There is no doubt, sire, that such a learning is most profitable.’

Philip fell into his thoughts and his eyes took on a vague expression. ‘Now in man . . . it is rather a different matter.’

The lawyer made a sneeze. ‘It is, sire?’ he said after collecting himself.

‘Yes, Nogaret. In a man there lies something else! Have you never plunged a dagger into a heart, or a lung, Nogaret?’ He moved his eyes over the lawyer and waited.

He paused to think. ‘Well, sire, I –’

Philip interrupted him, ‘Mark my words, Nogaret, if you are in the right frame of mind when it is done, that is, if you are awake to it as the life is drained away, then something else is revealed. Deeper secrets . . . secrets that are hidden in a man’s soul are laid bare, secrets that exist only in the blood of a man and not in the blood of a beast. Is that not marvellous?’ He paused and stared then at Nogaret with unblinking eyes.

The lawyer yielded his own in acquiescence. ‘Most marvellous!’

‘Mark my words, Nogaret, such a knowledge is a valuable thing . . . but you might ask in what way is it valuable?’

‘Yes, sire, that is . . . perplexing me.’

The King’s gaze broke and he drew into himself, debating the wisdom of divulging his splendid secret. He paused a moment and made his resolve. ‘Listen now and don’t ask me how I have come to know it . . .’

The lawyer moved in a little closer, careful to stay clear of the dogs, whose eyes followed him, as if he were a hare painted in blood.

‘What do you know of demons, Nogaret?’ the King asked with quiet concentration.

‘Demons, sire?’

‘Yes, what do you know of them?’

The lawyer held Philip’s eye and blinked. ‘They are the Devil’s spawn.’

Philip narrowed his. ‘Ahh . . . but the Devil may yet serve the King and therefore God, Nogaret, that is the point.’ He paused, calculating his lawyer’s understanding. ‘Do you find this strange?’

‘Well . . . sire . . . I have not heard tell of it.’ Nogaret cleared his throat and fidgeted with his parchments.