He had left her as he had found her, reciting poems.
Presently he put her out of his mind as he came upon the door to the room behind the episcopal hall. A guard stood barring the way.
De Plaisians smiled at the man.
‘In the name of the King I order you to allow me passage. I am assistant lawyer to Nogaret, Royal Keeper of the Seals of France.’
The man hesitated and looked straight ahead. ‘I have orders from the Archbishop of Narbonne to allow no one . . .’
‘And . . .’ He raised one brow. ‘Pray tell me, good man, are you a royal guard?’
The guard looked around him as though he were waking from a deep sleep. He nodded that he was.
‘Whose orders, then, do you follow?’
The man was suddenly confounded.
‘What do you say, guard?’
‘The . . . King’s, monsieur . . .’
‘And you know who it was that built this church?’
‘The King, monsieur.’
‘Of course, and is this not an inquiry conducted on royal grounds, instigated by royal command? Your charge in this regard is clear then. If not, I shall be forced to call upon the King’s own private guard to remind you of your duty to his Highness.’ He leant forward confidentially and whispered, ‘Tell me, my friend, what do you fear more: the possibility of eternal fire or the promise of an earthly one?’ He spread his lips over perfect teeth.
The man deliberated a moment, and moved directly to one side.
Thus de Plaisians made his obtrusive entrance and, after finding a suitable position, sat down among the notaries, junior priests, assistants and servants of the inquiry, who were situated on wooden benches that flanked both sides of the room.
De Plaisians scrutinised the bishops in their opulent cloaks, in particular the Bishop of Paris, whom he disliked intensely, for he considered the man’s intelligence to be as blunt as a pig’s snout. He was seated on a throne, whose width barely accommodated him, beside the presiding Archbishop of Narbonne.
The Archbishop of Narbonne, Gilles Aicelin, saw him and nodded his head very slightly. He was the godfather of Charles, the King’s son, and nephew of the last all-powerful Keeper of the Seals, Pierre Flote. De Plaisian remembered how Gilles had endorsed his words before Pope Clement at Poitiers, comparing the Templars to the perverted Midianites, when only months before he had given up the royal seals because he could not sanction the arrests. Many had thought the archbishop a vacillating fool, but de Plaisians had understood the man’s dilemma: how could a man who secretly coveted the papacy apply quill to paper before knowing the temper of the cardinals whose support he nurtured? And again, how could he risk losing the benefices that were hinged upon his Majesty’s goodwill? Gilles Aicelin’s frail and capricious life had allowed him only one alternative: to bow out gracefully, an act which signalled displeasure at Philip’s impatience and lack of consultation with the Pope, but did nothing whatever to impede Philip – no doubt he had hoped that his past acquiescence in the kidnapping of Boniface and the poisoning of Benedict would be remembered.
The Templars might imagine Gilles Aicelin to be their champion, a man whose thoughts fall upon their cares, but if the archbishop ever has a thought in that vacuous space between his ears, it is only for himself – he is his own darling.
This made a smile rise to de Plaisian’s lips.
He looked around, the other members he knew less well. There was Durant, the short, terse, Bishop of Mende; Bonnet Bishop of Bayeux, whom he had met only once or twice but whose foul, decaying breath had engraved itself on his memory. There was de la Porte, Bishop of Limoges, whose wet eyes and full pouting mouth gave him the look of a startled fish. The good-looking apostolic notary Matthew of Naples, renowned for his malodorous feet. The obese and foul-tempered Archdeacon of Maguelonne, as well as the Archdeacon of Trent, whose gaunt face promised the tortures of hell. Nogaret was present, and beside him the Inquisitor General, William of Paris.
The hall was cold. An icy draught chilled the bones despite cloaks and stockings. Before the commissioners sat Jacques de Molay shivering, tired, weak, pathetic.
He had known the Templar before the arrests. Then, de Molay’s heroic demeanour, his strength and firm morality had irritated him – his power he had envied fiercely. Now he did not even allow himself to feel pity, rather he felt a satisfying contempt, for if the truth were known he had never liked the man. At the funeral of Catherine of Valois he had commented to the Grand Master on the Order’s loss of Acre; the man had answered with extreme sensibility that the Order had survived Saladin, Baybars and Al-Ashraf, and that they would regain the Holy Land even if it meant that every man would spill his blood for Christ. Moreover, he had told him that only a lawyer would think otherwise, since lawyers were the darlings of courts and knew nothing of the hardships of battle.