‘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.’
Etienne frowned
under the weight of this and closed his eyes to dispel the vision that her
words extracted from his soul. Visions of the flesh that time and again he had
overcome,
suppressed and defeated through fasting, penitence
and prayer. He searched in his soul, where had he mislaid the Madonna, the
great mother Isis? He searched the room; there was no sign of her presence,
only the woman with the dark eyes staring from out of a dark face.
The Jewess stood
by the firelight, grim and determined. ‘I will live now only for the sake of
the other child.’ She pointed to a corner where lay a small crib.
The child in the
crib made noises and the woman went to it. Etienne closed his eyes lest he see
the apparition of the Madonna arise again to take him to God before his duty
was done.
A moment later
he looked to her and saw that the child was at the pale breast, one hand at the
tender skin. He closed his eyes again and reminded himself that a breast was a vision
of both heaven and hell.
‘Rest,’ she said
and began a song in the Jewish tongue, like a whisper into the child’s ear, and
he looked once more and her hand was fondling the hand of that infant, and she
was once more the picture of the Madonna, mother of all mothers.
This song
soothed him, and though his blood was thin, he sensed the pulse in it.
St Michael was right
,
he would live longer
.
He slept then.
I
terius
walked the empty streets lighted by a crisp white moon, a green velvet cloak
wrapped around his form with its cowl drawn well over the brown angled face. He
listened to the sound of his own mismatched steps. The cobbled stones were wet;
the soles of his boots squeezed out grit, filth, mud and excrement. He would
have his servant clean them on his return to the palace. His servant! He was
suddenly filled with fear . . . how long could such gifts of destiny last?
Surely sooner than later his forgery would be discovered and then no fortuitous
dreams, no concoctions, no promises would prevent his head being hung upon a
gibbet to be spat upon and pelted with rotted fruit.
‘Oh!’ he sighed
and tried to put his fears away. Once again he would have to use his cunning, as
he had done years before when he had saved himself at Famagusta by poisoning
the Grand Master so that he could bring him back to life, and then again at
Poitiers when he had listened at Etienne’s door. His ears had not only learnt
that Etienne was headed for a place in Hungary but that he carried with him
something of great importance, whose precise merits, though unknown to Iterius,
had so far allowed him to negotiate the polarities of hatred and affection
between king and pope, in an eloquent balance for survival. It had been useful
bait this mysterious something. The mere suggestion of it had been capable of
enticing a sick, feebleminded pope bent on advantage, and a king steeped in a
madness fed by greed. For such men anything and everything could be given as
proof of a belief habitually held in the heart – that the Templars were
more than they seemed.
He may have been
a counterfeit, but he was a shrewd counterfeit, one who knew how to put one and
one together so that it did not make two but a third thing which hovered above
commonsense and above conscience. Now the task was to produce this something,
belief and madness would do the rest . . . how difficult could that be?
For a moment
this thought calmed him and he continued until he rounded the rue des
Bourdonnais, where the public notaries and the wax merchants had their shops.
In the day one could buy candles, tapers and polishes here. In the night,
mysterious ingredients were bought and sold behind closed doors: powdered
snake, dried toad, cat entrails, tongues of the hanged, strange plants and
deadly poisons. It was here among the shadows that assassins and thieves
exchanged goods and services and strange alliances were sealed in blood.
It was the
street of the sorcerers, a perfect hideaway for fugitive Templars.
He paused before
a shop, telling himself to halt his speedy heart and to put from his mind
thoughts of failure. Above the door, a painted sign advertised Boufant –
Scribe. The sign was lit by falling specks of moonlight and played in the gust,
creaking and slapping. Beneath it he knocked twice. There was a noise and a
moment later a shadow peered from behind the door. What Iterius could see of
the man in that silver light was a deep socket stare and a grin-like movement
of the mouth that puckered two large scars on either side of that pale, sullen
face.
He recognised something about that face.
‘Monsieur . . .’
the man said with a strange lisp. ‘Come in.’ He took him through a dark passage
to a long room where there was the heavy smell of mould and stale air. He
departed then without a word and left him alone with the pitch-black walls and
the sounds of rats. In a moment the light of a candle was seen moving through
the corridor beyond, its brightness increasing as it approached.
The light threw
the room into chaos. Everywhere parchments and rat dung, and before Iterius the
figure of another man.
‘Who is here?’
Iterius squinted. He sensed the presence of an animal.
‘Your servant.’
The man stood behind the candle with his face wrapped in cloth, as if he were
expecting a sandstorm. The flickering candle, therefore, lit only the eyes
affected by tics that closed the right one now and again.
Where had he
seen those eyes before? It seemed this night all things were familiar. This
made him fall suspicious and once again ideas of treachery passed over his
mind. But Iterius reminded himself that whoever it was behind that cloth did
not know him to be working alone, but believed instead that he had come on the
King’s business and would not seek to see himself drawn and quartered.
‘Well, well,’
Iterius said, rubbing his hands of the matter, ‘are you ready to perform a
duty?’
‘I am ready to
perform it for payment,’ said the voice.
‘Are you
prepared to have a new master?’ Iterius peered in the darkness, wishing at
least for a glimpse of that face. ‘Or do you still call on the Beauseant?’
The voice was
quiet but in it Iterius discerned something violent. ‘I am for hire to him who
pays best. Gold is my master.’
‘That is well
for you, since those who think differently now suffer the boot, the rack and
other tortures.’
‘You have the
gold?’ The man put the candle down on a table.
‘Half now and
half on your return with the item,’ Iterius said, giving him a bag.
The man removed
a coin. It cast fragments of light over the darkness. Satisfied, he threw it
back in and drew the string. Those eyes moved over Iterius in a stare . . .
those eyes . . .
‘The King,’
Iterius began disconcerted, ‘will also keep the inquisitors from you
indefinitely . . . if you find what he seeks.’
‘Why does the
King stoop to seeking Templar help?’
‘A Templar must
know another, and therefore how to track him down.’
‘Who is this
man?’
‘His name is
Etienne de Congost. He is a deserter to your Order.’
There was
silence. ‘And what does he possess that is so sorely needed by the King?’
‘That is not
your concern – as you have said, you are for hire.’
The voice was
all restrained hostility. ‘I shall need to know what it is if I am to find it!’
There was that
familiar sense in the voice and in the eye. ‘That is what I pay you to find out
and to retrieve.’
‘You don’t know
what it is, then?’
‘Something
important, you have the means to coax it from the man . . .’ Iterius peered
more deeply at that face.
‘Where do I find
him, this Etienne de Congost?’
‘He is on an
errand to a far-off land.’
‘How do you know
where he is?’
The Egyptian smiled.
‘I have a knowing way.’
‘You perform
sorcery?’ the man spat at him.
‘Come now, is
that not what your Order and your Grand Master have been accused of? I suppose
that makes us . . . brothers twice?’
The man moved
swiftly over the parchments on the floor to take Iterius by the neck with one
strong hand. Looking into the Alexandrian’s eye he said to him, ‘I do not wish
to hear about the Order, nor concerning its ill-fated master, all of it has
long been from my mind. Nor do I wish to call you my brother!’
The Alexandrian
struggled and coughed until the man loosened his hold. ‘No . . . of course
not,’ he said out of breath, ‘you want only the money and that is admirable. A
man who knows what he wants . . .’
The man
tightened his grip. ‘Hush!’ he said, and at the point of asphyxiation let go
his hand so that Iterius swayed a moment and dropped to his knees, coughing and
vomiting. From the dark there came a dog or a wolf, he did not know which, to
lick up the mess upon the parchments.
Iterius, in his
bent state, stared at it, from eye to eye. The creature growled and Iterius
stood, nodding to himself. Yes, he had sensed an animal. After a moment he
wiped his mouth and, rubbing his neck, tried to bring clarity to his head.
‘If you will be
so kind as to tell me where I can find Etienne de Congost,’ the man said, ‘ I
will go.’
Iterius leaned
into him, attempting to understand the correspondence that seemed to his mind
disordered and confused. ‘He travels to Lockenhaus, a village in Hungary near
the border of Austria. He is not so easy to catch. I have sent some men to find
him before and they have not returned. You must not fail.’
‘I am not a man
accustomed to failure,’ the man said, and, nudging the Alexandrian with a
finger, caused him to lose his footing and fall into his vomit again, ‘and I
shall not tolerate it in others . . . Have my money ready for me when it is
finished or I shall cut off your hands, hack out your tongue, and feed them to
my wolf.’ He took the candle and at that moment, as it shone into those eyes,
Iterius saw something and he gasped.
He thought to
himself, for he dared not say it . . .
I know you! You are the Devil!
G
uillaume
de Plaisians, assistant lawyer to Guillaume Nogaret, walked briskly towards a
small room behind the hall of the episcopal palace of Paris and with each step
his full mouth affected a deeper smile. He stopped for a moment and in one of
the many mirrors that lined the halls he examined his face intensely. The smile
of self-contentment, which moved over the fine bones, wrinkling the soft, blue
eyes and ending in two dimples on either cheek, had settled upon his face some
days ago, with the first hearings of the papal commission, and he did not seem
to be able to quench it. He resumed his walk, past guards posted at every door,
reflecting on the auspicious evidence of the previous days given by de Melot,
his own spy, and Pierre de Sornay of Amiens. Today they would be interrogating
the Grand Master and he would be there to see it, whether or not he was a
member of the commission. What could prevent him from defying the secrecy of
the hearings? After all, he was the King’s lawyer, and a very tenacious man.