The Seal(81)

He wondered if she were not his mother then, returned to take him to her heaven, emptying the very blood from his heart, drawing out the mystery from his soul, to make it a vessel for the blood of Christ.

He held these thoughts inside his head and looked at them. Yes, he was certain he would die now from that pain which was giving birth to another more deep, making him out of breath. He felt himself drowning in a place where all things seemed white and dissolving. St Michael would have to find another finger to hold the mystery of the Order, for in a moment he would breathe out his soul to let it depart from the body that had served him all these years.

But at that moment inside his chest there was felt a release, like the opening of a tap releases the wine from the barrel, and the blood flowed and warmed his body.

A breath came then and with it life.

The fire spluttered and roared and he gasped. Outside, the whooping air spoke to him, and told him that his soul was profane for desiring death before he met with the performance of his duty, and he saw the remonstration on the face of St Michael and on the brothers of his Order that were now dust and had died for the glory of Christ and the advancement of His Kingdom.

Looking now upon the great expanse of those faces, he saw their disapproval and wanted to flee from it.

I am not whole. A part of me is with the gold of the Order somewhere in the deeps of the ocean by now, while another part lies in France with my Grand Master. A further part has been left in Cyprus, and before that, a part was surrendered to the Holy Land. I am that part and this, this part and that, separated out, and all that is left to me are small, spare bits, like crumbs left for birds. How must such a small thing accomplish so great a task as that of killing the Order?

The woman stood and poked the fire with a stick. The hut of stone was dark. There was the smell of goat milk and sheepskins.

He closed his eyes and prayed that his brothers might forgive him, that God might forgive him.

‘My child is dead,’ the woman said to him, interrupting his meditation. ‘My man is dead and now my child.’

Etienne laid back his head and let the spit come into his mouth. How must he think upon these earthly things when his heart was not on the earth but in the air? He looked at the woman and her face enticed from him a question. ‘Who killed your husband, Jewess?’ he said finally.

‘I am a baptised Christian, my name is Amiel.’

He nodded and looked at the fire and almost fell asleep again, thinking that it was a good name, Amiel.

‘Those men,’ Amiel said, with a jerk of the head, ‘from the village . . . they killed my husband and my child. They came on the eve of Passover. My husband was bloodied from killing a lamb for the holiday. They accused him of killing Christians and took him to the bishop. They tortured him until he confessed to murder and named fifty others as helpers. They were all burnt in the village square. Why is a Jew worth less than a dog?’ She shot him a look, her eyes dry and distant. ‘The child died from the heartbreak. They made the poor thing watch his father burn. They baptised me, and this young one, the old man too, with a knife to our throats.’

‘What village is it?’

‘We are near the river, not far from here is the village. Do you not recall your hardships?’

He gathered his thoughts together and looked to the woman. ‘I cannot.’ He sat up a little to clear his head, and it began to return, the house of the Order, the bodies, the gruelling journey over mountains and valleys, rivers and creeks, with little food, only what they could gather or kill, sheltering in caves. That had taken them many months, for he had made it a slow work since the wound in his side had not properly healed. He remembered the pass over the great mountains and the herbalist. The cure had taken long . . . and now he did not know how long it had been since he had taken himself from his Grand Master at Poitiers. He did not know and this made his mind go into a fog and his heart give a lurch for he remembered that Jacques de Molay and the brothers of his Order lay in the King’s prisons.

‘You have been sick in your travels,’ the woman said, ‘and starved nearly to death . . . You have slept for a week or more.’

He shook his head of the fog and looked at the woman. ‘You speak French?’

‘My father was from Lyon.’

He contrived to sit up further but the pain made inroads to his throat and he coughed into the fire like a tired old man – a dead man.

‘I have had a good piece of luck in your arrival for I have only my husband’s father with me, and he is very old. Your men are mending the hole in the roof of the barn and are seeing to the animals. If you stay until winter is passed I will not die in these forsaken hills. I will care for you and feed your men, you can build your strength and wait for good weather for your leave-taking.’ Then she said, as an afterthought, though it came out as if it were a knife through the throat, ‘You must know that I will not freely give my body. I will die first.’