The Seal(50)

THE THIRD CARD



MOON, DOG AND WOLF





20



THE NOTARY

What thou seest write in a book . . .

Revelation 1:11


The notary walked with haste, his coat behind him like a black sail in a full breeze. Gusts, like wicked devils, sought to steal his skullcap from his head, the parchments, inks, quills and the pumice stones from his hands. Ahead of him the impatient monk led the way through the dark streets, looking behind now and then to see if he was following.

‘Come!’ the monk cried out to him, full of annoyance. ‘Young scholars! Lazy idlers!’

The young man hurried his step, longing for his warm bed and a cup of heated ale. Of all the notaries numbering in the hundreds gathered together in the city of Paris, why had the Inquisition sought to fetch him from his pallet at this ungodly hour? A gust swept his cap from his head and sent it swirling into the night. He did not dare follow it since the black shadow of the monk had already disappeared behind a building. He hurried his step, rounding the corner, and walked into a monkish shout.

‘You! In that carriage and hurry up!’

The carriage bounced along the streets and headed out of the city gates towards the meadows. The monk, silent and dismal, sat opposite him, but the notary could not see his face, hidden as it was by the darkness and the hooded cowl.

‘The wind,’ Julian said by way of conversation, ‘it picks up early this year.’

The vehicle thrashed and jostled from side to side, the driver hurrying his animals along at a cracking pace.

‘The wind laments the agony of devils brought to judgement,’ the monk answered, ‘whose souls are this night thrust into the abyss. Lucky are they who have a part to play in it, this side of hell.’

Against this Julian buried his chin in his cloak and looked out at the steep darkness. Such words spoken between full night and morning and caught in the close chill of the carriage made Julian shiver. A deep feeling of dread descended over him and he wondered where he was being taken and for what extreme purpose.

Presently the carriage began to slow and it came to a halt at a great gate. Julian recognised it. It was that which stood before the enclos of the Temple fortress.

The driver opened the door to the carriage, and the notary and his guide made their way through the wind-turned-gale. Night pressed and slammed at the stone buildings of the Temple, winding and twisting and following the two men as they passed royal guards through the doors of the great donjon.

He wanted to ask why there were royal guards at the gates and why a Dominican monk was entering the donjon as if it were owned by his Order. But the wind circled the turrets, the crenellations and spires and allowed no conversation. Instead Julian hugged himself against it and followed as he was led through the main door and into the vaulted spaces. Here upon the threshold a deathlike silence startled at the sound of their footsteps.

This place was familiar to Julian, he had lived and played within these walls for seven springs after arriving in France as a foundling from Acre. It was here among the snorting and neighing of the warhorses that he had grown a boy’s hope of becoming squire to a grand and gallant knight, of following the Beauseant wherever it would lead him. Now he remembered the day the bishop’s monks came to take him from the knights in their armour and the ordered metre of life at the Temple, to live a different existence among the luxuries and caprices of the bishop’s house – that night had been windy like this, and he had not thought on it for a long time, until this evening.

The long-legged monk moved rapidly on through a maze of corridors and Julian found himself lagging behind. In his haste he managed to glimpse a suggestion of stonework, the wide gaping mouths of vast vaulted rooms lurking with secrets behind arched shadows. Everywhere a faint smell of incense and, to his profound concern, peril. He shuddered; why should peril lie shallow beneath the quiet?

There was a sound, a woeful desperate sound.

‘What is that?’ he said, startled.

‘Devils,’ answered the monk.

‘Devils?’

‘Quiet!’ the monk said. ‘I should keep that mouth shut, for it is through the mouth that devils enter into the souls of lustful, useless boys, and this place is full of them! You will see soon enough . . .’

Julian thought he could smell blood, and forced himself to calmness. Surely he was imagining it?

‘Will you not tell me why I have been sent for?’

The monk halted abruptly before double oak doors and turned around. From behind his cowl came the mocking voice, ‘To record the corruption and heresy of these sorcerers!’ He pushed the doors open. ‘Look for yourself!’





21


JUDAS OR PETER?