He showed it the dagger. With it he would make himself a red cross, he told it, and there in the warmth of it he would lie, in the blood that had been poured into him and would now be given back. This mantle of the Order, he told the animal, would cover the entire world! He smiled at that – a last gesture to this lie he had lived and to the God that had deceived him. One part of him welcomed it while another was afraid.
When he saw the apparition, he was leaning back on the gale preparing to thrust the knife. In the dark the vision, surely
peculiar and mystical, came to him without his bidding and carried no light of its own, no warmth, just an outstretched hand. Marcus with his broken faith let go the dagger and knelt in the snow before it.
‘Who are you?’ he said, but a gust sent him from his feet. ‘I stumble!’ And he fell backward in the snow.
Some time later he sensed wetness on his face and opened his eyes. Above him hovered the yellow orbs of a black dog. In them he saw intelligence and cunning
‘What is this?’ he asked it.
The dog sat up in the blizzard and waited. In the very gesture of the head and the limbs it spoke to him, then it stood on its four legs and moved away, waiting for him to follow.
He got up, shook his head of snow, and looked for his horse. ‘We go,’ he said with a shiver and stumbled through the snow after the beast.
30
CLEMENT V
I will shew unto thee the judgement of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters.
Revelation 17:1
Poitiers, May 1308
On one side of the large opulent hall at the royal palace at Poitiers sat the Pope upon his pontifical throne. A purple shield of cardinals and a large crowd of ecclesiastics surrounded him on both sides, suggesting to all present his spiritual power. On the other hand, directly across the hall from him, as in a game of chess, the fair king graced his own dais, flanked by a resplendent retinue of counsellors and laymen, whose size and number was a blatant show of Philip’s temporal power.
Even from this distance the Pope could see clearly the dis-tinctions between them. He was old, huddled together, blinking bloodshot eyes under inflamed lids, while his opponent was youthful, tanned and handsome and in full charge of his body.
Clement sighed.
Lately he suffered from the terrible fevers that resulted always in copious sweats which left him drained and fatigued. He was gripped by bouts of dysentery alternating with terrible constipation, which his physicians tried to cure by bleeding him so utterly dry that he was surprised he could stand at all. They poked strange, foul smelling concoctions into his body, and made him drink odious mixtures of herbs and salts, which made him vomit.
To fight so worthy a foe with his health threatening, looming over him, was surely a foolish act. But what was there to do? Philip had threatened him openly, and Dubois, a royal lawyer with a talent for writing pamphlets, had begun a hateful program to erode his character. In these little communications circulated throughout France, Dubois had accused him of nepotism, and this simply because he employed relatives, as all popes before him had done. He called him corrupt because he had accepted the Templar dioceses as gifts – and why not? Various communications had done nothing. The King – he was now certain – would see him dead before conceding to his authority, and this had never been more clear since his arrival at Poitiers, unannounced and aswarm with men-at-arms.
Of course the King had prostrated himself before his holy person, and shown him every dignity and respect, but Clement knew the viper too well. No sooner had Philip’s dainty feet alighted on pontifical soil than he had begun to turn the screws, since even before his copious luggage was removed from his carriage he was calling for a public consistory into the royal case against the Templars. Clement might be ill and, he was the first to concede, a little less endowed with the moral attributes of his predecessors, but he was a practical man who knew well the intrigues of court and how to take advantage of advantageous situations. He knew that art when it was applied and Philip applied it liberally. He was calling in the favour, and Clement must needs comply. Come now, he reminded himself, that was after all how he had come by the keys of Peter. It was a fair trade, the Templars for his papacy.
His philosophy may not have seemed to others entirely pious, but Clement knew that piety made short days for popes. Was it not piety that had ended Boniface, then Benedict? With Boniface and Benedict gone the curia, fearing for its own existence, had elected a French pope. What man with sense would have refused such an appointment? True, he had duped himself into believing that he could be a champion of Christ, a bastion of justice . . . in exchange for some minor promises. How could he have known that he would find himself no more than a puppet, at the behest of all men who, under the shadow of God’s grace, wanted something from him? How could he have presaged that he would have to wage constant battle with his curia? That he would discover himself exiled from Rome where he was hated, and living in Avignon where he was treated with contempt, aware that his enemies were not far behind and preparing to send him to the Devil? This fell sourly on his face and the servant, noticing the frown, brought him rosewater. The pontiff pushed it away with a swollen hand. Soon, he thought with dismay, they would have to cut the jewels from his fingers.