The Seal(93)

‘I do what I must . . .’ He gave his counsellor a distrustful glance.

‘Shall I tell Monsieur de Nogaret all we have discussed?’ de Plaisians asked, as innocent as a lamb.

‘We are awake,’ he said, waving a hand as his eyes became preoccupied with something unseen. ‘Let others sleep.’ He gave two claps. ‘Call for my astrologer!’

The bleary-eyed attendant, who had himself fallen asleep behind the curtains, was now flustered and disconcerted.

‘Have him bring me the brew!’





39


CONFESSIONS

Behold thy mother . . .

St John 19:27


May 1310

It was night and Etienne knelt at prayer. He prayed since soon he and his men must leave the little farm that had sheltered them for over a year, and the thought of it pressed at his heart and made his soul disordered.

Here in the dark space, full-smelling of animals and dung, he asked for St Michael’s saintly vigilance in all matters pertaining to the Order and the Holy Land. He asked concerning his brothers still alive and those who were dead and in his presence, that they might be honoured by God for their sufferings. He asked that he watch over Jacques de Molay and prayed for the wisdom to know the clear intentions of his Grand Master regarding this deed, whose weight had only now once again begun to fall upon his mind and soul.

He began his confession, firstly, of his lack of observation of the holy offices, which he knew required regularity. Secondly he told St Michael of his failure to observe silence when eating – Manduca panem tuum cum silentio. He asked forgiveness for not wearing the garments of the Order, and for not fasting the vigils when unwell. Finally, the crown of all his sins was a further and more serious breach of the rule: that of keeping, though not in the most heinous sense, habitation with a woman. This brought back to him that wayward brother, Alphonse, with the crossbow quarrel in his cheek. The man he had punished at Famagusta for giving alms to his hungry mother. How high and mighty had he been then, when he disrobed Alphonse before his brothers and condemned him to eat from the floor for six months! He thought of this with shame in his heart and this was added to by a sense of bewilderment, for even now, fully awake to all his shortcomings, he was not certain how it had happened. How the days had stretched out and kept him from noticing these digressions from the rule. How the reach of time had held him between one hour and the next, from one season to another, like a bird resting its wings upon a breeze that does not lift it nor bear it downwards, but holds it at the far edge of its life, suspended in a dream.

Left behind him, war and blood and sparse living were overtaken by the quiet stillness of the white world between the house and the stables, or by the full-worn days of bodily toil, or the warm scented skies, the cold rivers and the rich brown earth that parted before the plough. Peace and mildness had overwhelmed the shadows of his past, of the Holy Land and Christ’s lost kingdom, that had for so long settled over his soul like a cloak. And as his body mended, he began to forget the grand dimensions of his faith and to seek the worship of Christ in the smallest things. His breath was felt in the cooling breeze that moves over the valley floor, His tears in the fine rain that falls on the tired lines of a face after the heat of the day, His word in the wing-song of an eagle and His will in the leap of an elk. He was built into the solid ground and consumed Himself upon the hearth. He was the highest goodness of man and woman each, in the eyes of the spirit and in the heart of the soul; in the blood that pulsates that life which exists between child and mother, between man and woman.

Such were the feelings that had grown inside him.

The men, for their part, seemed content. They too had allowed this place to grow in them a disregard for what had come before and what would come after. The Catalan and the Norman saw to the buildings and the fields, he and Jourdain tended the animals. All things between earth and sky were in conformity with the laws of man and nature.

But the men were mercenaries and Jourdain just a boy; he, on the other hand, was an old man ancient and worn-down. Where had he hid his wisdom? How could he have let the months pass in this state of domestic ecstasy, in this rustic intoxication? He could not answer these questions, only that he had deceived himself and this deception in all its clarity had stood before him bared to his eye one afternoon after a conversation with Jourdain.

They were paused watering the goats at a nearby creek with the verdant grass beneath them and the canopy of limbs full before a blue sky.

Jourdain had said to him, ‘Ovid will tell you that to cure the pains of love, no plant avails, Etienne.’

Etienne with eyes closed, hearing the sound of the breeze in the falling leaves, asked him as he dozed, ‘The pains of love?’