The commander stood upon that sand with the birthing sun making a shadow in the hollows and ditches of his face, waiting.
For his part Roger waited also, looking into that Templar gaze laid bare upon him. He was hoping that below the tone of insanity lay some intelligence. ‘Then the sea of Scotland shall be close enough.’
‘Close enough?’ The man peered down at him with wide eyes. ‘Close enough?’ He twitched and his entire body moved as if commanded by something other than his soul. This lasted but a moment and then something in his face changed, like a light going out in a room to leave only greyness where colour had once been. From his mouth came these words, ‘I go,’ and he walked away.
The afternoon was old and the wind freshening when Marcus sat atop the cliff overlooking the beach and the sea and the island some way off. He grieved for the gold, the titles and the archives, and as his mind fell upon the creatures of the sea, the grasses and the pounding waves, he prayed that they would do well by the Lord’s treasure.
He gazed down upon the blue expanse with his mind crowded with thoughts as still and curdled as old milk. He told himself that green wood could bend, but that he was old and dry and parched. Only fire could straighten him now and his fire was died down.
Finally his faith was spent.
Why had he not died with a sword in the hand at Acre or at Sidon? Why had he been forced to wait for this end of ends? With no zeal left in the hollows of his heart?
‘Ahh Jacques, my friend! You cannot send a man on such a journey, long and miserable, to dispose of the reason for his being, without it leaving him feeling betrayed!’ he said out loud and it sounded to his ear like a dying animal. ‘God has betrayed me! I shall not bear it!’
It was almost nightfall when he came down from the rocky point.
With no eye to the men and no word to Roger de Flor, he mounted the last pitiful surviving animal and took himself from the beach at a gallop.
At that moment it began to snow.
28
DEVILS AND ANGELS
Get thee behind me, Satan.
St Matthew 16:23
Etienne was once more taken up into a dream. Inside the cold tomb his body ached and fell numb. Then, as before, the light was extinguished and he was alone.
I rise like the sun, like the moon above the date palms. Into the light, I enter, complete. Where there is darkness, there is none of me. I am one among the stars. I am sworn to life and bound to death. I am the sun, a splendid eye set ablaze in the forehead of its father. I will drink the waters of Lethe.
I have come before you, Osiris, to purify evil.
The sphinx on the right that supported his tomb mocked him. ‘You are forsaken by Osiris! Your heart has been weighed and has been found wanting. Do you believe He shall find a dwelling place in you? Your soul is full of doubt . . . Jump, and the wind shall keep you from the ground and prove to your faithless soul that you are saved from the abyss!’
Ye shall not hold captive my soul. Ye shall not keep my shadow. I will lift up my mind and advance to the uppermost limits of heaven; I know the Light-god, his winds are in my body.
The sphinx on the left told him, ‘What moves among your quelled secrets is only a seeming of goodness that deepens not to piety but to the illusion. You defile the cross of life and your heart is full of hate for the Sun. Adore my darkness instead, it shall illuminate for you all things of the world’
You who set a seal upon the dead, and who would do evil to me, shall do no evil to me. Hasten, oh my Lord, on the way to me. Thy heart is with thee. My Heart-soul and my Spirit-soul are equipped; I look upon those who dwell in the uppermost limits of the horizon to whence I have directed the Powers of the ways, the wardens of the wide spaces, and of the Hemat House of heaven.
The chamber resounded with a voice from the deeps. ‘You are afraid, for your bread has turned to stone in your mouth and it shall be heavy in your belly.’
Etienne’s mind melted into the blackness of the earth, into the crags and clefts, and he felt himself firm, waiting for what would come.
There was day and night behind his lids, which fluttered open and closed again. He was pulled and dragged and suspended above the ground. There were bars all around and the sounds of birds, but when he tried to open his eyes he could not, and when he made to move his body a shot of pain came through his shoulders to his back and down to his heels and he lost his strength so that his head was drawn into nothing and away from the qualms of the world.
But a voice spoke then . . .
‘The cock crows twice, Etienne, once when you are descended to mortal flesh, and a second time when you have ascended.’
Etienne felt warmth enter into a deserted and forbidden place within him, and in this warmth a pulsing of sunlight caused a wakefulness more awake than the vision of life. This was, he knew, a moment bequeathed by grace, a conjunction of stars in the mighty fabric of the sky, or an eclipse of the moon or sun. He sensed a regard held fast upon him, a warrior-spirit in human form, frown-full with a look of concentrated piety.