The Last Templar aktm-1

by Michael Jecks

  “I thought he was going to pass out when we walked up the steps to the chamber! Clement sat there on his throne, and when we walked in wearing our Templar tunics, he went bright red and, if his throne’s arms were not so high, I think he would have fallen out!

  The clergy were grateful for us, I think, because they honestly wanted to know what our evidence was, and they listened to us carefully. But when we said that there were more of us near Lyons, nearly two thousand of us, the pope seemed to have a fit of the vapours! He ran from the chamber, and we were told a little later that we were to be arrested. I think it was because his palace was close to Lyons, and he feared for his life with almost two thousand Templars so close to his home. Anyway, the other clerics all clamoured for our release because they had promised us safe passage, and we were set free in a short while. We left Vienne by night, unobserved, and returned to our friends.

  “After that it seemed clear that there was nowhere safe for us. It was obvious that the pope was willing to see the Order destroyed, so there seemed no point in continuing. Many of us left and returned to our homelands, and many joined the other Orders. Some joined the Teutonic Knights, some went to the Hospitallers, and many joined the monks. Some of us, though, wanted to know what had happened, and we determined to find out, and if it was possible, we wanted our revenge.” He sipped from his mug. “It took two years, but at last we found out the truth.”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Simon sat gazing at the knight with a mixture of consternation and disbelief. It seemed incredible that the tall man’s story could be true, but every word spoke of his conviction. Baldwin sat relaxed, his eyes roving slowly from Simon to Hugh, and moving on to the fire, occasionally resting on Edgar. He seemed to have passed beyond worry, as if he knew his tale would not be believed, as if he knew he was to die and cared little for the fact. He seemed to have given up, as if he had dreamed of rest and peace down here in the quiet of Devon, but had found only a new struggle to cope with.

  His eyes were half-lidded now, making him look tired, as if weary from the strain of recollection, but Simon could still see the glitter in them. At first he had thought it was the gleam of anger at being discovered, but now he felt sure it was directed not at him but at Oliver de Penne, the man he had killed, as if killing him had not been enough to wipe away the depth of the crime he had committed against Baldwin and his friends.

  Hugh shifted uneasily in his seat as the knight continued.

  “It was obvious we could not stay in France. The French king and the pope seemed to be dedicated to the destruction of the Temple, and to the death or removal of all Knights Templar. The punishments were varied, but any man who had confessed under torture and then retracted his admission was to be burned at the stake.

  “The Order was fortunate in having one man who could defend it, Peter de Bologna, a man who had been Preceptor of the Temple in Rome, and a man of great learning as well as a man who understood the Church. With his knowledge he could fight the case using the Church’s laws. When he examined the witnesses against the Order, it soon became clear that there was no concrete proof of anything. The witnesses referred to hearsay, or were proved to be liars, and de Bologna took full advantage of our enemies’ confusion.

  “Now, at about this time, the old archbishop of Sens died, and a new man had to be found. The new archbishop was a friend of the French king, Philip de Marigny. As soon as he took office he moved quickly. He confirmed sentences on the individual Templars in prison – even while their trials were continuing. In one morning he had fifty-four Knights taken out to the stakes and burned.”

  Baldwin’s head dropped, as if in prayer, and Simon felt a chilly stab of pain as he saw the tears falling down the knight’s face. Baldwin put a hand up to his brow, holding his head for a minute in silence. The only sound in the room was the fizz and crackle of the burning logs on the fire, and Simon’s eyes were drawn to them as he thought about the deaths of those men.

  The knight sat up, wiping his face. “My apologies, but I had friends among that group,” he said, his eyes on the floor. “Peter de Bologna was taken by this same archbishop and sentenced to life in prison. He was not allowed to continue his defence of the Order. But Peter was a shrewd and resourceful man. He managed to escape from his bonds in his gaol, and made off, living rough in the countryside until he managed to make his way to Spain. I met him there.

  “Peter was ever a stalwart figure, as I remembered him.

  “When I found him in Spain he was soldiering again, but not with one of the Orders. I had gone there because I had the idea of joining the Knights Hospitaller. The Spanish were never convinced of the guilt of the Templars, as, indeed, our own king, Edward, was not. The Spanish had always fought alongside the Templars in their struggle to keep the Moorish hordes at bay, and they knew that the Templars were an honourable Order, so it seemed a good place for me to go to. I thought I could join another Order and find peace.

  “But Peter de Bologna wanted none of that. You see, during his trial, he had been able to see some papers while he was trying to defend our Order. He could not join another Order afterwards – he was too bitter. He remained as a soldier of fortune, fighting for what he believed, fighting to protect Christendom.

  “I should explain, for you probably don’t know how the Templars were organised, but as the Pope is Christ’s vicar on earth, and therefore has power over all men, even kings, so the Knights Templar were answerable only to the Pope, because they were the most holy of all Orders, being created to protect pilgrims. What Peter saw during his defence of the Order was a paper that gave the names of all of the men who had given false witness against us. One of the commissioners was helpful and allowed Peter to see more when he asked, I think because he wanted to see the Order have a fair trial, and some of them showed that there was a conspiracy against us.

  “At first, Peter could not believe what he saw, because it seemed too awful. The papers showed that the French king and the pope were in league to destroy the Order, but not because of the crimes alleged. No. For one reason only – they wanted our money! That was all!” He was sitting forward now, his despair at the futility of the destruction of his Order plain on his face as he stared unblinking at Simon, as if trying to transfer his feelings of betrayal and anguish in that single, penetrating and concentrated gaze.

  Simon found his own feelings stirring in sympathy and he had to struggle to control his own composure. Now, at last, he could understand the dreadful scars of pain and loss he had noticed when he had first met this man.

  “The king wanted our money because he owed the Order for several debts, and he wanted to be able to forget them. We had loaned him money for his daughter’s dowry when he had arranged her marriage to Edward of England. We had loaned him money for his wars. We had helped him in many ways, and he wanted to be able to take all that we had and not repay the debts. He decided to destroy the Temple so that he could take everything, everything we had. The pope was in his power, because he lived in Avignon, not in Rome, and he wanted to have our money too. Not for the Church, but for himself.” He gave another short, sharp laugh. “And it worked! We never considered that the pope could betray us so badly, and we believed, in our innocence, that the French king was grateful for the help we had always given him. We never realised that because we helped him he would decide to destroy us!” He subsided and glared into the fire again, his eyes full of the hurt of the betrayal.

  “When Peter saw that, he swore never again to serve king or pope. From then he chose to serve God in his own way, and he did, fighting the Moors in Spain until his death a year ago. But before he died, he told me what he knew.

  “The French king had a helper called Guillaume de Nogaret. He was the devil himself, an evil man. He was bright and intelligent; he had been brought up by the Church after the death of his parents, and yet he seemed to hate it. It was he who decided that the way to destroy the Templars was to accuse us of heresy, and he went about it with vigour. He
organised false confessions for money. Wherever there was a Templar who had been ejected from the Order, de Nogaret would search him out and bribe him to give false witness against the Order.

  “One man helped him more than any other. He arranged for false confessions of murder, of heresy and of idolatry, and then made sure that they were published. He spread tales of the evil-doings of the Order.

  “The same man arranged for confessions from among the Templars’ servants, admissions of idol worship and of new members being forced to spit on the cross…”

  Simon interjected with heat. “But how can you say this? Are you telling me that all these accusations were false, all these crimes were invented? There were many, even I know that. Surely you cannot expect me to believe that they were all untrue?”

  The knight looked at him with a small, sad smile. “But, my friend,” he said, “can the reverse be true? Think! All men who joined the Order were knights in their own right. All joined because they were holy, because they were committed, because they wanted to become members of an Order that demanded of them that they take the vows of a monk, that demanded them to be honourable and godly, demanded their obedience and demanded their poverty. If you were to go to join an Order like that, would you then spit on the Holy Cross on your first day? Of course not! If you had decided to dedicate your life to Christ, if you had decided to give everything you had, if you had decided to fight whenever you were told in the Holy Land, would you as a first step defile the very symbol of God’s power? Could you believe that a monk would do that? Why should you expect a Templar to? It is not possible.” His sad eyes stared at Simon for a minute or two, until Simon was forced to nod. Put like that, it did seem improbable.

  “So, this man invented these things. He was not motivated by honour, he wanted money and power. And he won them. Oh yes, he won them!

  “We did not know his name or anything about him, he was too well guarded. All we knew was that he had been a Templar, a knight who had been recruited but who was evil. A twisted, vicious, greedy man who should never have been able to join our ranks. But how could we find his name? How could we discover his identity? Peter never did, but I managed to.

  “In thirteen hundred and fourteen, we who remained found out that there was to be a show of penitence for our Order. You must realise that even now, even knowing about this man who had betrayed us all, it seemed that something must have been wrong with the Order, for the very reason you gave just now – how could so many crimes have been invented? And why?

  “In that year, only two years ago, the Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, and three others were to confess their sins in front of the whole of Paris, before Notre Dame cathedral. When I and some friends heard of this, we drew straws to choose a witness. I was chosen.”

  He fell silent again, his head dropping almost on to his chest in his sadness at the remembered pain, and when he continued his voice was low, as if he was recollecting the deep injustices done to him and his companions from far in his past, not events from only two years before. He had withdrawn again, seeming to sink in upon himself, as if he was not in the same room as the others and was talking to himself, like an old man recalling ancient memories and forgetting the existence of his audience.

  “I went to Paris. I stood in front of the platform until they all arrived, draped in chains like common thieves. They all denied the accusations, and a little later Jacques de Molay and the others were all burned at the stake in front of the cathedral. A huge crowd went to see them die, but I did not. I could not! Jacques – dear, strong, honest Jacques! How could I go and see him destroyed by the flames? How could I?” He turned to Simon, his face full of grief, his eyes searching his face as if hunting desperately for his support. “When the soldiers went back the next morning to clear up the ashes, they could find no bones. The people of Paris had collected them all and taken them. After all that had happened they knew that the accusations were false. They believed the bones were holy relics. Even small finger bones.” His eyes stayed fixed on Simon as his hand went to his throat and pulled at a string. A small leather pouch was attached to the cord, and Baldwin looked at it for a moment, then nodded at the bailiff before dropping it back down the front of his tunic.

  “I had to tell my friends what had happened, and then we went our own ways, to tell of the end of the Order and to keep die memory alive of Jacques de Molay and his final martyrdom. But I had to find out who had betrayed us.” His mouth twitched in a sardonic grin. “And it was the pope himself who told me who it was!”

  Simon started, his eyes wide in astonishment. “ The pope told you? How…”

  Laughing quietly, as if to himself, Baldwin took the jug and refilled his mug. Still smiling, he gazed at Simon. “No, he didn’t mean to! It happened this way. After the farce of the Notre Dame confessions, I decided to find out who was responsible, as I said. At first it seemed impossible, but Edgar and I travelled widely and talked to many who had been members of the Order, and gradually some threads seemed to come together to point to a few men. But each that I saw seemed to have suffered for his admissions. Each seemed to have benefited from the fall of the Temple. None was wealthy, in fact most were monks – and not senior, just unknown men who were dedicated to God and their new lives. Many, in fact, were as bitter as I about the way that the Order’s high ideals had been perverted. But with many of them, one name kept appearing. One man seemed to have spoken to many while they suffered in their dungeons. He was another prisoner, but he seemed to have been moved to any number of gaols and, wherever he went, men admitted to crimes that they denied to me.

  “I kept my own counsel, but continued on my hunt. He was in Paris, he was in Normandy, he was in the south, he even appeared in Rome! Why, I wondered, would a man who was a suspected heretic be moved around so much? Wherever he had appeared he was in chains with the others, but no one ever saw him being tortured. Where he went, the other prisoners heard about the tortures being inflicted upon their brothers, they were told of the dreadful pains being suffered and made to fear their own ending. They were told what would happen if they did not confess, and this man, this Templar knight” – he spat the words out in his disgust – “This poor suffering knight told them what to say, told them how to ensure that they were saved from the fires.

  “Then I heard from a man in Rome about him, about how he had told the men there that even the Grand Master had confessed, that he had admitted to the sins of the Order. It seemed odd to me at the time, but I could not see why for several months. Then I realised.

  “At the time he had been in Rome, the Grand Master had not confessed to anything. It was too early. At last I began to suspect this man and to wonder whether he could have been installed in all of these prisons as an agent of the king and the pope, to persuade the Templars to confess and thus avoid their punishments. It was only later that I realised that I was right, and it took me another six months to prove it.

  “It was after the death of a friend near Chartres that I saw the final proof. I went there to pray for him as soon as I heard that he had died, and was there for the burial. Another friend in the same abbey heard that I had arrived and insisted that I stay with him. His abbot had heard of my past and showed me a great deal of sympathy, listening to my story and allowing me to stay with him for some weeks. By then I was exhausted in body and spirit, deeply wounded by the trials of my search and almost ready to give up after a year of continual travelling, but the abbot showed me a papal bull which had been issued some time before which soon renewed my energy.

  “It was a statement about the men whom the pope wanted to deal with personally. The pope had chosen some men for special treatment; they were to be punished by the pope himself, their treatment to be decided by no other man. There were several names there, including the Grand Master, some preceptors and others – I cannot remember them all – but one stood out for me. It was the name that I had heard all over Europe during my travels: Oliver de Penne. He was an ordinary brother in the Order,
a man of no consequence, not a great leader like Jacques de Molay, just one of the warrior monks. He had been chosen with the others, the greatest men in the Templar brotherhood, for special treatment. Why could that be? A monk? Singled out for personal attention by the pope? Now I was sure I had the right man.

  “Of course, I wanted to be certain, so I tried to find what had become of him. It took me weeks of travelling, weeks of speaking to the few who survived, talking to men whom I had hardly heard of before, and I suffered any number of setbacks. Some of the men would not talk to me; twice I was denounced and had to fly: once I had to fight. But at last I had my information. At last I discovered his punishment, his penance for his Templar crimes. His punishment was severe: he had been elevated to archbishop in southern France: the Pope’s punishment was promotion, and not that alone, for the king rewarded him as well, with lands and money. Now I was absolutely without doubt. All the evidence pointed to him.

  “But when I tried to come close to him – this would be a little over a year ago – it became obvious that it would be impossible. He never left his palace, and the building itself was guarded so well as to make an attack on him inconceivable. Edgar and I waited for weeks, but it seemed clear that we could do nothing. And all the time I was getting more and more ill, with weakness in my body and mind from the constant searching and living out of doors. In the end I decided to come home to England and forget my revenge, mainly thanks to Edgar, who said that if we stayed any longer I must die. He was right, it was time to forget and try to find a new life, return to England and forget my past.

  “It seemed as if God had forsaken me. All I had wanted was to avenge the destruction of His Order, but he had even put this villain out of my reach. I was tired from travelling, my mind was damaged from all that had befallen us on our way, and as we came home I fell into a fever that almost killed me. Edgar managed to help me back to health, but then we were told that my brother had died and that I could return here, to Furnshill, and take up the manor. We resolved to come here and forget revenge, to live quietly and in peace. And I confess that I began to wonder whether God really was interested. We decided to relinquish any opportunity of repaying de Penne for the crimes against our Order and our friends. We chose retirement to the satisfaction that our souls craved.