The Templar Inheritance

by Mario Reading

  The guard shook his head. It was clear that he had been ordered to maintain strict silence in the face of any of the prisoner’s questions.

  Hartelius could feel the eyes of the camp upon him. He looked here and there for familiar faces, but saw none. Maybe they were keeping the Templars away from the execution in case they attempted to rescue their old comrade-in-arms? A likely story. Most would spit on his unmarked grave.

  Hartelius was forced to mount a platform that had been erected at the exact centre of the encampment, near to the pile of discarded Saracen weapons. Hartelius looked with longing at the abandoned scimitars and crossbows. Just one was all that he would need. But he was not even able to attempt a run. His guards held him fast. And he was surrounded by a phalanx of them. He would not manage a single yard unmolested.

  He submitted to being chained at the very centre of the platform. The guards dispersed. Hartelius sat down and waited.

  He forced himself to drift inside his head. To clear his mind of what was about to happen and to concentrate on the princess. There was nothing any longer he could do about the position he was in. Last night, when he was briefly free from his chains, had been the last time he might have actively influenced his fate. But he had not done so. Why?

  Because there is always hope.

  He fixed on this, and tried to conjure up a picture in his head of him meeting the princess once again. Embracing her. Drawing her to his chest. Drinking in her fragrance. Touching the gentle swell of her stomach where his child quickened inside her.

  His one comfort was that no one knew where to find her. And that when he did not return, von Eisenbrand would do his duty and conduct the two women under his tutelage – one of whom he loved and one of whom he served – to the court of King Frederick in Sicily.

  Hartelius returned to the present moment. He looked around himself. Men were seating themselves in tiers ranging back to fifty yards from where he sat on the platform. None bore arms. Hartelius managed a smile. So von Drachenhertz distrusted his own people, did he? Thought they might riot if the Guardian of the Holy Lance, a former comrade-in-arms, was publicly and humiliatingly killed in front of them?

  Hartelius watched as a man mounted the platform. Was this the torturer? But no. The man held the parchment he had written his apologia on the night before. He also held the Holy Lance, secured from Gadwa’s saddlebag. Well. This had been inevitable.

  The man raised the parchment and began to read.

  ‘In his own words the Baron von Hartelius condemns himself as a traitor to his king and station. Here. Listen all of you. And weep.’

  ‘I, Johannes von Hartelius, Baron Sanct Quirinus, hereditary guardian of the Holy Lance, lawful husband of Adelaïde von Kronach, lawful father of Grimwald, Paulina, Agathe, and Ingrid von Hartelius, former Knight Templar, exonerated from his vows of chastity and obedience by Frederick VI of Swabia, youngest son of the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick Barbarossa, acting lawfully in the name of his brother, Henry VI Staufen, do dictate this letter on the very day of my execution, to be placed inside the Holy Lance as a warning to all those who may come after me. Swayed by my unlawful love for Elfriede von Hohenstaufen, former lawful sister of the king and former intended wife of Margrave Adalfuns von Drachenhertz, military governor of Carinthia, I turned against my king and misused the Holy Lance which had been placed in my care. In doing this I refused to heed Horace’s warning, passed down to me with the guardianship of the Lance. Vir bonus est quis? Qui consulta patrum, qui leges iuraque servat. Instead, I purposefully misunderstood the words Catullus handed down to all unvirtuous men – Mulier cupido quod dicit amanti, in vento et rapida scribere oportet aqua. I thus deserve my fate. May God have mercy on my soul.’

  Well, thought Hartelius, if they wanted the job done correctly, who better than the condemned prisoner to do it for them?

  It was at this point that he watched in dismay as the parchment was formally sealed inside the Holy Lance so that everyone present might witness the act of concealment. Clearly the idiots who had read it had not discovered the hidden writing – or had chosen to overlook it or not draw attention to it. Or had chosen to copy it privately, and use it later. Any of these was possible. What had he been thinking?

  Hartelius felt the dismay of a man grasping, and failing, to reach the final straw.

  The sun was now beating down on the top of his head. It was midday. He waited. The men around him were drinking and feasting, just as von Drachenhertz had ordered. Pitchers of wine were being handed down the lines. He could smell the odour of roasting meat. Very soon that roasting smell will be me, he thought to himself. And I will have been entirely responsible. I will have acted as my own nemesis.

  The noise emanating from the thousands of men surrounding him was rising in volume by the minute. Hartelius could now make out the Amir, in the very front row, held between two guards. As he caught the Amir’s eye, the Amir raised one hand in salute, and then opened both his hands in the universal sign of powerlessness. Ten rows back he could see Heilsburg and Fournival, unarmed like everybody else. Hardly a threat. An entire unarmed army, watching him. Surely this said as much about von Drachenhertz as it did about Hartelius’s nominal crime?

  Hartelius waited some more. Three hours had now gone by since he had been brought to this place. Was this all part of the plan? Part of the torment? This uncertainty? Hartelius was almost relieved when von Drachenhertz himself mounted the podium. The monster had timed it well. His men were mostly drunk. The volume of noise near its peak. Von Drachenhertz smirked at Hartelius and turned to address his army.

  ‘Men. Men. Am I carrying out a justified execution?’

  There was a roar of approbation. By that point, thought Hartelius, the men would have approved anything. Even their own excommunication, if it coincided with the appearance of more drink.

  Von Drachenhertz motioned to a man, dressed all in black, who started up the steps to the podium.

  Ah, the torturer. Hartelius could feel his innards liquefying in fear. He swallowed back the bile that was threatening to rise into his gorge and overflow. Damn the wine the guard had brought him. And damn him for drinking it. But still. He was relieved that von Drachenhertz was not going to conduct the preliminaries, in terms of torture, himself.

  ‘I demand the right to trial by combat.’ Hartelius’s voice was drowned out by the howls of the melee. ‘As the Guardian of the Holy Lance I am still the king’s representative. As such I have the right to such a trial. I demand trial by combat.’

  No one took any notice of him.

  Von Drachenhertz leered at him. He leaned close, so that Hartelius could smell his sour breath and see the vaginal secretions encrusted on his beard. ‘Did you really think I hadn’t thought of that one? Why else do you imagine I have wasted a fortune on feeding wine to this mob? No. You will not have your trial by combat. You will have your trial by me. And I pronounce you guilty.’ He stepped back. ‘Do your duty,’ he said to the torturer. ‘As from now your payment is doubled for each and every time you make him scream.’

  Hartelius attempted to draw himself back, but there was nowhere left to go. Four soldiers vaulted onto the podium and took his arms. He felt himself being stretched out. He felt the sun warm on his face. In the distance he could hear the gentle plashing of the surf. He tried to imagine the princess, but he could not. He was too scared to think clearly any more.

  He heard shouts from the crowd of soldiers surrounding him. What sounded like howls of glee. Then all fell silent as if in the prelude to a storm.

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  For some time now, the Amir had been watching the soldiers around him. Judging their lack of sobriety. Noting their absence of arms.

  Before he had begun his disastrous attack on von Drachenhertz’s camp, the Amir had sent messengers back to the Chouf by every route he could think of, each bearing the same message. ‘Your Amir needs you. At Uluzia Pass. Come swiftly. The tyrant von Drachenhertz has broken the truce. Your Amir will try to br
eak through. But if he fails, you must become the backbone of your people. You must clear the Franj from our lands. You must take revenge for the dishonour done to your brothers.’

  It should have been enough. But nothing had happened. And now the Amir was about to see his friend tortured and shamed in front of a gang of drunken ruffians.

  He looked to one side and noted that none of the Templars had been drinking. Was this part of their culture? Or were they preparing to rescue their commander? But no. When he looked closer he saw that they, too, had been disarmed.

  So where were his people? What better moment to attack a camp? When its entire host were at your mercy. Surely his scouts would have seen what was happening?

  The Amir struck the guard to his right full in the throat with his stiletto. In the confusion caused by the sudden spray of blood, he ran forward and vaulted onto the podium. The torturer turned to face him.

  The Amir feinted to the right, and as the torturer shadowed his movement, the Amir sliced through the man’s doublet and emptied his stomach contents onto the stage.

  It was only when he withdrew the stiletto that he realized the point had shattered. He searched for the torturer’s dirk with which to kill Hartelius but it was too late. The guards were upon him.

  The Amir cursed the futility of his action as the guards bore him down. He should have made straight for his friend, and not dallied with the torturer. But the man had been in front of him. Standing like a dam between him and Hartelius.

  There was uproar in the camp. Men were running in every direction. Shouting. Screaming.

  The Amir fought his way to the surface of the men weighing him down as if he were fighting his way back from beneath the waves.

  He felt his arms being pinioned. Saw von Drachenhertz approaching him with sword unsheathed.

  And then the arrows started to flow. Like water they fell on the unarmed host. Like a great curtain, blotting out the light of the sun.

  The Amir lay and watched the slaughter, his eyes alight with joy.

  Drunken men ran for their weapons and tripped over each other, offering even larger targets for the descending quarrels. Men started fighting each other for possession of a weapon. Any weapon.

  Von Drachenhertz stood at the very edge of the podium, his sword tip lowered, his mouth open as if frozen in the very act of speaking.

  As the Amir watched, von Drachenhertz abruptly returned to his senses. He pointed to the Amir and signalled to his men to bring him. They grasped the Amir by the shoulders and upper arms and dragged him to where von Drachenhertz was standing. Von Drachenhertz put his sword to the Amir’s throat, but there was no one to see him do it.

  All was flux around him, his men decimated three times over by the arrows falling upon them. Those not killed were being herded together like tuna fish by black-clothed Saracens on horseback wielding mighty pikes.

  Von Drachenhertz waited. On the podium everyone waited. The guards surrounding him and the Amir. Hartelius, hunched forwards under his chains. The still-twitching torturer, with his entrails hanging out like the tentacles of a squid.

  An unarmed and drunken army cannot stand firm against sober, well-armed men. Von Drachenhertz had been the author of his own misfortune. But still he stood, his sword against the Amir’s throat, his few men backing him as if, via this thin lifeline, they might seek to turn the tide of the fiasco facing them below.

  Saracen crossbowmen ran forwards. First they picked off all the soldiers surrounding the margrave and his prisoner. To men used to firing at moving targets from horseback, this was child’s play.

  Still the margrave stood stock still, his sword never wavering from the Amir’s throat.

  The Amir called instructions to his captains. Men darted to and fro, clearing the podium of bodies, releasing Hartelius from his bonds. Still the margrave did not move. Still he stood over his prisoner.

  Hartelius staggered to his feet. He walked towards where the margrave and the Amir were perched.

  ‘Stop. Stop there,’ said the margrave.

  ‘My life for his.’ Hartelius held out his hands. ‘I am unarmed.’

  ‘The king will ransom me,’ said the margrave. ‘I have no need to barter.’

  ‘We want no ransom,’ said the Amir. ‘We will call for no ransom. Your name is lost for ever, Margrave. No one will know of your end. Only of the ignominy of your actions.’

  ‘And if I kill you, Muslim?’

  ‘Another will take my place. Nothing will change for you.’

  ‘And if I fight you in single combat and win? As you suggested?’ The margrave was looking directly at Hartelius. At the state of him. At his lack of chainmail. At his obvious exhaustion.

  ‘If you win, you may go,’ said the Amir, noting his friend’s brief nod. ‘Freely and without hindrance.’

  ‘And my men?’

  ‘They too. What is left of them. Without arms. But freely.’

  Von Drachenhertz stood up and lowered his sword. The Amir moved away from him. The Amir signalled to one of his men to throw up a sword to Hartelius. At first the man raised his scimitar to throw, but the Amir shook his head and pointed to a Templar sword, abandoned near the stage.

  Von Drachenhertz was already circling Hartelius, his own weapon at port arms, his gaze unwavering. Hartelius stooped to pick up a spent arrow with which to defend himself, but von Drachenhertz darted to the right and cut him off.

  The Amir slid the Templar sword across the floor of the podium to Hartelius’s feet. Then he jumped down and ordered his men to fall back, so that all could view the combat.

  Hartelius could feel the strength slowly returning to his limbs. Could feel the blood infusing him, as if it had been lying in wait, or skulking somewhere deep in his recesses, as far from the torturer’s knife as it could get.

  He felt the sun on his head as a blessing now, and not as the penance he had before. He breathed the air in through lungs unpunctured and unburned. His limbs responded in their entirety, without let or hindrance. Without intercession from alien interests.

  Von Drachenhertz had little to lose. His nature was one which did not indulge in retrogressive thought. He ran directly at Hartelius and the two men set forth at each other. Hartelius was shocked at the sheer brute strength that von Drachenhertz showed. The absurd power he wielded at each blow.

  Hartelius found himself being forced back to the edge of the podium. There, he knew, lay disaster. Once he lost his footing, he was easy meat.

  He tried, by sudden movement, to speed up the return of blood to his body. To restore his lost energies. But fear had sapped him. The deep fear that a man cannot show, but that is still there nonetheless. The fear of losing one’s dignity. Of finding oneself bereft of courage after a lifetime in which the manifestation of courage is the one defining marker by which a man is judged.

  Hartelius had not lost his courage, of course. But he would have. He knew that only too well. Ten minutes into the torment he would have been screaming and begging the torturer to stop. He had seen other men, braver than he, succumb to the knife.

  Von Drachenhertz sensed that his opponent’s mind was wandering and made his move. He feinted to the left and then, when Hartelius responded clumsily to the feint, he struck right. Hartelius had been expecting this. He dropped to the ground and rolled, just as he had done with the final Italian bandito who had attacked him all those many months ago in the Alps. Von Drachenhertz, his weight dispersed far beyond his right leg’s capacity to carry it, pitched to the ground on top of Hartelius’s upturned sword.

  This time Hartelius was wearing no mail. As von Drachenhertz fell, Hartelius dragged wildly at his sword to clear it from landing back onto his own chest. Von Drachenhertz cried out and fell upon him, his sword arm clear.

  Hartelius thrust back in, catching von Drachenhertz beneath the ear, a little above his chainmail’s upper curtal.

  Von Drachenhertz’s eyes widened, just as his bodyweight fell dead. Finally, after a series of convulsive movements,
he lay at full stretch on top of Hartelius’s prone form, his eyes turned inwards, his mouth drooping open like that of a sleeping cat.

  Hartelius could feel the Amir’s Saracens lifting the margrave off him. He stood up, the blood streaming from him like liquid mercury.

  ‘Your blood or the margrave’s?’ said the Amir.

  ‘In truth I am not sure,’ said Hartelius. He stared at the carnage around him. ‘It is one of many things I am no longer sure of.’ He limped to the edge of the platform and looked out over the camp. ‘My Templars?’

  ‘Yours to command. They held back from the slaughter of my men when ordered to participate by von Drachenhertz. I have given orders that they are to be spared. I shall have their arms returned to them.’

  ‘And my stallion? Gadwa?’

  ‘Look,’ said the Amir. Gadwa was being led through the wounded and the dead towards them.

  ‘He is yours, Amir. I return him to his rightful master. Please honour me by accepting my gift.’

  The Amir saluted Hartelius from high above his brow. Then he clapped his hands together like a child who has just been given a much wanted toy. ‘Be assured, my friend. Your gift is my joy. This one thing I swear to you. That the very first of my maidens who has a colt by Gadwa, it shall be yours.’ He canted his head to one side and contemplated the stallion. ‘The pleasure, of course, will be Gadwa’s.’

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  Millook Haven, Cornwall

  WEDNESDAY 14 MAY 2013

  ‘You look like a blind man who has lost his guide dog.’ Amira crunched down the pebble-strewn beach towards Hart, who was sitting on a rock, staring out at the sea.

  Hart half turned towards her. Then he turned back again. ‘Isn’t that rather an inelegant way to begin a conversation?’

  ‘To hell with elegance.’ She sat down beside him.

  The sea churned back and forth along the length of the shore. Both of them watched it, mesmerized.