The Seal(49)

‘Credo in unum Dominum Iesum Christum.’

Nogaret yawned. ‘But Monsieur de Molay, how can you believe in Christ when I know that you have spat and urinated upon His cross?’

‘Credo in Spiritu Sanctum ...’

The lawyer frowned and wiped his brow. ‘Well, monsieur, your belief in the Holy Spirit is not helping you. Only I can help you, yes? If you tell me what I want to hear . . . Now, did you fornicate with your brothers?’

He was answered by silence.

‘Tormentor, again . . .’

The man turned the wheel and it was followed by a howl.

‘You commanded your oblates to kiss you and thereafter you fornicated in the most vile manner before the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ . . . Tell us everything, God will forgive you.’

‘Please . . .’ the Grand Master said.

‘More.’

The tormentor was uncertain.

‘Will he die?’ Nogaret asked, sniffing into his lace-edged cloth.

The tormentor peered into the face with professional detachment and sweat dripped from his chin and mingled with the blood on the features of Jacques de Molay. ‘Some are the stronger for it,’ he answered, ‘and some are the weaker for it.’

‘Well . . .’ the royal lawyer said, ‘death we must view as a heavenly release, and must not come before confession is full and voluntary. Shall we wait, or shall we proceed?’

The tormentor hesitated, scratched the pockmarks on his chin, spat a wad of phlegm at a puddle on the ground and nodded.

Nogaret narrowed his eyes and pointed them at the Templar Grand Master. ‘Answer me, Monsieur de Molay, did you kiss new entrants on the mouth, the navel, the buttocks?’

The Grand Master’s voice was weak but it could still be heard.

‘Sanctorum, communion  em, remissionem, peccatorum carnis ...’

‘Your sins shall not be forgiven unless you confess! Tighter . . .’ Nogaret rubbed the small of his back. ‘It aches,’ he commented. ‘Did you deny Christ your Lord, did you spit on the cross, did you fornicate with your fellows, did you kiss one another on the navel, the anus and the mouth?’

‘Resurrectionem vitam aeternam . . . Amen.’

‘Again . . .’

There was the sound of meat scraping bone. The Grand Master bit his lip but a yell tore through it that made Nogaret give a little jump.

He grabbed at his back.

‘Why resist,’ he shouted, kicking at the rack’s solid leg, ‘when you know that soon you will tell me everything? Come, water awaits you, your bed is dry and there is food. Tell me that you denied Christ. Tell me that you spat on the cross, that you committed despicable acts. All this is known! Indeed, you need only tell me these things are true to find yourself back in your cell, then you shall confess to a priest and be reconciled to the faith. God will welcome His black sheep into the abyss of his mercy.’

At that moment Nogaret was seized by something foreign to him, a feeling of ecstasy as he stared at the man’s stretched abdomen, where his ribs pushed unnaturally upwards. This was an unexpected excitement, almost sexual in nature, and it took him by surprise, for he was not a man easily aroused. It seemed to him too tempting, the vulnerability of that abdomen fully stretched and unguarded, and this quickened a sense of power in his limbs that made his heart beat faster. He wondered once again about the demons, and what they would reveal to him alone. The satisfaction that this thought provoked caused him to raise a closed fist over the man’s middle. There he stood, paused upon that moment, letting the feeling move to his fingertips. An instinctive welling-up of soul confirmed that there were indeed secrets to be had and that he was high and exalted, a priest among men. He was taken by the darkness of it and brought his fist down so hard above the Grand Master’s navel that he thought he could feel the spine at the back of it.

This brutal blow brought forth a spray of bile and a melancholic wail.

Nogaret shivered with disgust as he wiped a smear of yellow from his face. The excitement was gone, his back ached and he was once again a lawyer standing in a dreary dungeon with nothing but his miserable occupation to comfort him.

He gave a sigh and bent his mouth over the Grand Master’s ear and whispered into it, ‘Did you piss on the cross? Did you commit sodomy with your fellows, did you deny Christ? Speak, devils! Speak! I am listening.’

He waited.

The tormentor took himself to a corner and urinated against the wall; the hot liquid made steam rise in the fetid air. Nogaret observed this with annoyance and paused with his head bent, his ear to that wretched bloody mouth.

But there was only silence and the sound of the tormentor’s phlegm-full cough.