The Seal(99)

He went to his little room above the stables, and there he spent some hours in silence.

He sat upon his pallet letting each hour that passed wrench from him his woes until there was nothing left in the marrow of his soul. He was a wasted man, broken and tearless and suffering a pain without which he would never again breathe and so he wished to stop breathing, to cease to see, to fall into a blindness of the heart and of the mind. Why had he not jumped from that parapet at Acre? Once again he had failed to save the mothers of his life . . . and he would ever be that boy, pious impious, sure-witted and unsure of everything, faithful and faithless, trembling upon the lip of the world!

The old woman at Puivert had been right: he was of two minds and two wills, and what was the third thing to come? He hoped it was death.

‘Jacques de Molay!’ he shouted to the emptiness of the room. ‘Wisdom has died in my heart and in my mind and in my will!’

There it was . . . the cause of all suffering, sitting upon his finger. He looked at the seal and was suddenly filled with a temptation to seek beneath its concealment. This in turn caused him to feel a great aversion and it was impious in his hands and he would not have it.

‘You are an evil thing!’ he told it and before he could think any more he threw it and it fell to the floor, with its lid unhinged and its inner content revealed to the day. A terrible guilt engulfed him in a wave of self-loathing. He picked up the thing and did not look upon it but closed its lid and replaced it upon his finger. The creature felt hot and neglected.

‘My will is not my own!’ he said to it.

When he emerged from the room he was a man grown old overnight. His hair was near to white and his now thin form gave him the look of a starved animal. He told a grieving Delgado that he would not think less of him if he should desire to go back to his country, to which the Catalan gave him a smile that recalled his old humour.

‘Should I not go with you, lord . . .’ he made a whistle while his eyes rolled in his head, ‘my Gideon would send me to a hell full of Norman whores!’

He left then to make ready.

Later Jourdain found Etienne harnessing the horses; he helped him at his work for a time before speaking. ‘You are healed now?’ he asked finally.

Etienne did not look at Jourdain, to see that youthful face so full of love and concern. ‘It is not that kind of wound from which a man may heal himself,’ he said. ‘It is better left to God.’

Jourdain nodded. ‘It is said that a king once suffered from a wound . . . it was his duty to wait for someone to ask him for what reason he was ailing . . . He waited, and suffered long.’

Etienne paused his work of lacing the harnesses and looked at Jourdain then, with pointed eyes. ‘I would not answer if I were asked!’

Jourdain nodded his head. ‘Then this duty shall give you great courage.’

Etienne did not look at this but continued his work. ‘Why should courage come from such weakness?’

‘Courage is born of pain, Etienne,’ he said, and left him to his work.





42


PIERRE DE BOLOGNA

And I looked and behold a pale horse; and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.

Revelations 6:8


Paris, 10 May 1310

Pierre de Bologna lay with his head resting on the mould-covered wall. Dozing with his quill still held in his hand he dreamed. A sunrise lit the rolling hills, purple and mist-laden beneath the rose and yellow. Light struck his eyes and he shielded them, but the light that was carried into him found no distinction between them. He had become the sunrise and the hills and the clouds.

The quill fell from his hand, splattering ink and breaking its point. Pierre sat up, feeling displaced, incoherent, confused. Glancing about with dream-clouded eyes he saw the diffused light that, coming from the little window, had landed upon his face and only slightly illuminated his meagre surroundings, the austerity of the cell he had occupied for three long years.

The cell was five paces wide and ten long, with a stone bench fixed to one wall that served as a crude pallet. In one corner, rats congregated around faecal remains; at another, a dirty bowl of water became the grave of cockroaches. He closed his eyes and tried not to smell the sour stench of his own body, unwashed and diseased. How many more days and nights would he be compelled to suffer this way? Deprived of food, of warm clothing, denied the sacraments? He blinked, a scholar from the illustrious University of Bologna, a priest and chief procurator for the Temple at the Roman curia, forced to exist like an animal, even worse than an animal. He knelt, tears falling from his eyes unheeded.