by Andrea Japp
He left the little church44 that stood near the Seine less than an hour later. The horse he had left with an ostler was waiting for him, together with his meagre baggage.
South to Perche, the commandery at Arville and Clairets Abbey. South to the Sign.
Clairets Abbey, Perche, August 1304
The tall figure scaled the walled enclosure around the abbey, placing its feet in the crevices as though it knew exactly where the mortar was worn away between the rough stones. It crept quietly along Notre-Dame church and made directly for the long building containing the Abbess’s chambers and the nuns’ dormitories.
Éleusie de Beaufort woke up with a start. She had had difficulty sleeping since the arrival of that creature she so feared and detested, and since the hallucination that had revealed to her his true nature. Nicolas Florin was, without doubt, an emanation of the Dark Forces. The Abbess had just drifted into sleep, although troubled by impenetrable nightmares, when a repetitive scratching at the window of her study, next to her bedchamber, had wrenched her back to consciousness. She pulled herself out of bed and walked unsteadily into the adjoining room. She paused, fearful. Who was that man out on the stone ledge? How had he contrived to be there? She saw him raise his hand and pull back his cowl to reveal his face.
‘Jesus be praised …’
She hurried to open the window. The figure hopped nimbly into the room and took her in its arms.
‘Aunt, how happy I am to see you again at last! Shall we go next door? Let me take a better look at you.’
‘Francesco, you scared me out of my wits! I hope nobody saw you. The majority of my girls are not strictly cloistered.’
Her delight at seeing him and embracing him was so great she cried out:
‘What joy! You seem to have grown even taller. Oh! I have so many things to tell you, so many dreadful things, so many riddles I hardly know where to begin.’
‘The night is still young, aunt.’
‘My God … The emissary they found burnt to death but with no trace of any fire, my vanished letter, the Pope’s death by poisoning, Agnès de Souarcy the object of an inquisitorial inquiry, falsely accused by someone, we suppose, for she is certainly innocent, the visions that have returned and are driving me mad, the Inquisitor, Nicolas Florin, who as he speaks to me changes into a repulsive flesh-eating insect. He has installed himself here in the abbey. You must on no account let him or any of my nuns see you. Little Mathilde de Souarcy is here and her uncle insists on taking her.’ She let out a dry sob that caught in her throat, causing her to cough. ‘Oh Francesco, Francesco, I thought I would never see you again and that all was lost. My nephew, my dear sweet nephew.’
A look of contentment flashed across Éleusie’s pretty face, and she observed:
‘You look more and more like your mother, my sister. Did you know she was the prettiest of us all? Pious, charming Claire. Her name could not have suited her more.’
Francesco had grown tense at the mention of another name. He led the Abbess into her bedchamber. The study windows overlooked the courtyard and they risked being seen.
‘You say Agnès de Souarcy is threatened with an inquisitorial inquiry?’
‘That evil man Florin refused to divulge her name when he arrived. It was Madame de Souarcy herself who confirmed it to me over two weeks ago now, when she came to implore me to look after her daughter. Our guest mistress, Thibaude de Gartempe, has taken the girl under her wing, but Mathilde is proving unruly.’
‘What more did Madame de Souarcy tell you?’
Éleusie sat down on the edge of her bed and clasped her hands together. She was shivering. A deadly cold coursed through her veins despite the heat of the past few days. She saw in it a sign of her impending demise. But this coming end did not worry her, for there was no end. She was more afraid of not having the time to help her nephew.
‘She said very little. She was aware the Inquisitor was staying with us and was concerned lest she compromise my situation in relation to him. Nicolas Florin’s foul odour pollutes the air and suffocates us – well, some of us anyway. Jeanne, our Extern Sister, has never been so long about her rounds and spends as little time in the abbey as possible. Annelette Beaupré, our apothecary nun, no longer leaves her herbarium, and gentle Adélaïde stays close to her pots and spit as if her life depended on it. As for my good Blanche, the silent reveries her age permits grow longer every day. There are plenty of others who let themselves be taken in by the perfect façade of that insidious creature. Indeed, he is so beautiful, so refined and so devout that I even wonder sometimes whether I am not losing my mind in suspecting the worst of him. He has the face of an angel. I dare not confide in my friends for fear of placing them in an awkward position. And besides, most of those whom I sense are on my side have no doubt found the right solution in fleeing. However, some of my girls surprise and worry me. Berthe de Marchiennes, our cellarer … I knew I should have got rid of her when I first arrived at Clairets. As for Emma de Pathus, the schoolmistress, her brother is a Dominican monk and an Inquisitor at Toulouse. I do not trust one inch these alleged purists who have never experienced doubt.’
Éleusie sighed, her eyes gazing off into he knew not what space before continuing:
‘I shall not list all those of whom I am unsure: Thibaude de Gartempe and even the delightful Yolande de Fleury … Did it take this creature coming into our midst for me to discover that I knew some of them only as a smile and a face? I am just beginning to reach an understanding of what lies in their hearts.’
She was straying from the point, but Francesco sensed her relief at being able to confide these secrets and waited.
She started suddenly, exclaiming:
‘I have forgotten my duties as your second mother. Are you hungry?’
For a split second the Knight felt the immense burden he had been carrying for so long lighten. A wave of infinitesimal memories, warm and pleasant, washed over him from his Éleusie years, as he referred to them. The years that followed the horror.
Éleusie, sweet Éleusie, and her husband Henri de Beaufort had taken him in after the death of his father and the massacre of his mother and sister at Acre. Éleusie had brought him up with love and care, in place of Claire, whose memory she evoked daily in order that the child keep the image of his mother alive. Éleusie, who with her ceaseless love had contrived to soothe a little the terrible pain of the child he still was. He had clung to her and it was she no doubt who had saved him from developing a desire for vengeance. He owed her his soul. He owed her more than his life, and how good it felt to owe her so much.
‘I am famished, for I have eaten nothing since I left Paris last night. But my stomach can wait. Speak to me of Agnès de Souarcy and the deaths of these messengers.’
Éleusie related what Agnès had told her and what she thought she had understood from her silences, and went on to tell of Eudes de Larnay and his destructive passion, Mathilde, Sybille and her heretical past, the repulsive role played by Mabile, and, above all, Clément and his devotion to his mistress, before concluding:
‘As for the messengers, I received only one. As I explained to the Chief Bailiff, Monge de Brineux, the others never came to the abbey. Do you suppose they were on their way to see me when they encountered their killer? The thought torments me. For if so, then what became of the missives they were relaying from Benoît to me? Did they fall into the hands of our enemies? Is there some connection between their contents and the Pope’s recent poisoning? What were their contents? Now that they have murdered our dear Holy Father we have no way of knowing. Day and night my mind is assailed by questions I am unable to find the answers to.’
Daylight was tentatively beginning to push back the darkness when they entered the secret library. They had both agreed on this hiding place, where he would be out of sight of the Inquisitor and the nuns and able to consult the rare manuscripts he had purchased from that crook, Gachelin Humeau.
Éleusie de Beaufort took advantage of the pre-d
awn lull to go down to the kitchens and fetch some food for her nephew.
She then took an hour’s sleep, free from nightmares, awakening just before lauds. The peace she felt filled her with wonder, like a sign. Death could come, she had fulfilled her duty. Francesco had returned.
What must be would be.
The light was fading when Leone awoke. He stretched and groaned, his body sore from the hardness of the flagstones, which was barely attenuated by the two hangings he had laid one on top of the other to form a mattress.
He was surprised to find a water jar and a wooden basin beside him. His aunt had attended to his toilet before going about her various tasks.
Leone immediately spotted the Knight Eustache de Rioux’s distinguished notebook on top of some heavy volumes that filled one of the shelves. Eustache, his godfather in the order, who had guided his first steps as a Knight. Eustache, one of the seven Hospitallers who survived the siege of Acre.
A series of the kind of coincidences that only occur during the most terrible events had placed in the Knight de Rioux’s hands the revelations which he had consigned to those pages. During the massive assault on the Temple Keep, Eustache, already twice wounded, sensed that all was lost and the slaughter was about to commence. He was ready to die in combat to defend the ‘lambs’, as he called them, and his faith. Death meant nothing to him since he had already sacrificed his life when he joined the Order of the Hospitallers. Enemy soldiers killing one another, whether they were friars or not, was for him part of the cycle of life. But not all these women and children … If he managed to save even a handful of them, then his life would not have been in vain; he offered it willingly in exchange for theirs. Accompanied by two Knights of the Order of the Templars, he had made one more attempt to break out, leading a flock of panic-stricken women and children into the tunnels that came out near the beaches – near to where the Frankish ships were anchored off the coast, unable to reach harbour due to rough seas. By then the Temple Keep, a veritable fortress made up of five towers and considered impregnable because it had resisted longer than the New Tower of Madame de Blois, had begun to collapse and a mass of rocks as high as a man had fallen, blocking all the exits. Eustache de Rioux had tried hopelessly to calm the twenty-odd women and thirty-odd children who had followed him. His warnings and prayers were drowned out by the cries of the children clinging to their mothers’ skirts, and by the women’s sobbing and occasional outbursts of hysteria. In every crowd there is always one man or woman who believes they know best, and whose incompetence and stupidity is matched only by their self-assurance. They are the ones who drive the herd over the cliff’s edge to their death below. And that is what happened. Eustache de Rioux would never forget the tall, skinny woman whose name he never knew. She had exhorted the women to surrender, insisting they should trust the infidel soldiers to spare their lives. He had shouted at her, almost struck her. They had without exception followed her, dragging their children behind them. Eustache, beside himself with rage at the stupid woman, had refused to escort them back to the slaughter. In contrast, the two Knights Templar had gone after them, despite the certain knowledge that none of their little flock would escape. As if proof were needed, the older of the two had turned towards Eustache and handed him a notebook stained with his own blood, which he had been carrying under his surcoat next to his skin. In a hopeless but brave voice he had murmured:
‘My brother … the end is near. My whole life’s research is contained within these pages. I owe much of it to the tireless efforts of a few other Templars. It was born of an encounter in the souks of Jerusalem with a Bedouin from whom I purchased a roll of papyrus written in Aramaic. It did not take me long to realise that I had in my possession one of the holiest texts in the whole of civilisation. I kept it hidden in a safe place – at one of our commanderies. A series of other events ensued, events so incredible they could not have been simple coincidences. They convinced me that I, that we, were not suffering from a delusion or some other form of insanity. Time is running out. This quest far outweighs me and must not be allowed to perish here with me. You are a man of God, of war and of honour. You will know what to do with it. My life has been directed by a higher force and I believe I was meant to give you this notebook on this day in this place and that none of it has been fortuitous. Live, my friend, I beg you. Live for the love of God and continue the sublime quest. Pray for those of us who are about to die.’
They had disappeared around a bend in the collapsed tunnel. The battle raged above. Cries mingled with the whistle of stones launched from catapults and the clash of blades and arrows raining down.
In the now deserted passage, Eustache collapsed to the damp earth floor, sobbing like a baby and clutching the thick notebook of worn leather. Why was he not up there with the others, fighting destiny alongside them? Why was he not sacrificing his life in a lost battle?
The Knight of Light and Grace Eustache de Rioux had survived and returned to Cyprus. As soon as he arrived on the island refuge, overwhelmed by the scope and complexity of the quest, Rioux had sought the man who must take up the burdensome torch with him and continue bearing it after him. A very young man, still almost an adolescent, had crossed his path by a curious route. Curious because from its very inception it was the tradition in the novice’s family for the men to join the Order of the Templars. It was almost inevitable, therefore, that he would do likewise. And yet he had requested to join the Hospitallers. When Eustache asked him why this was, the young man had been at a loss to reply. Of course, he argued, the element of caring for the poor and sick had influenced him, but if he were to be honest, his choice had been guided by an intuition. Rioux had seen in this the sign that they should continue their path together.
They had copied out the notebook belonging to the Knight Templar who had died at Acre, and in an attempt to unlock its secrets had scoured the libraries of the world to try to penetrate its many mysteries. Some of these had gradually revealed themselves, though the majority had remained stubbornly hidden.
The Knight Eustache de Rioux had spent the last seven years of his life regretting by turns having not followed his two brothers and believing that the notebook was destined to be saved, and that some mysterious divine intervention had meant him to take possession of it. He was to suffer until the very end, like some ordeal, the burden of his life being spared at Acre.
When finally Rioux died in the Cypriot citadel, Leone had vowed to him that he would continue their quest to find the Light and would keep it secret until at last the Light burst forth.
Despite Leone’s tireless efforts, at times he felt he had barely made any progress since his godfather’s death. Except perhaps in the matter of the runes, which a Viking he ran into in Constantinople had explained to him.
Eustache and he had mistakenly thought they were Aramaic. They were not. The alphabet was known as futhark, and the Scandinavians had almost certainly adapted it from the Etruscan. These ancient letters gradually transcended their own meaning to become symbols, divinations. One evening, many years before, at a stall serving refreshing drinks made from the leaves of the chai tree, Leone had placed the strange cross upon a table before a merchant seafarer. The smile had vanished from the Viking’s face. He had shaken his head and pursed his lips. Leone had urged him to speak and offered him money. The man had refused, muttering:
‘No good. Witchcraft. Forbidden.’
‘I need to understand the meaning of these symbols, pray, help me.’
‘I not know all. That one Freya’s cross.’
‘Freya?’
‘Freya twin sister Frey. Woman-god.’
‘A goddess?’
The man had nodded and continued:
‘She woman-god beauty and love … love of flesh. She woman-god of war, like Tyr, he man-god. She lead warriors. Twin brother Frey. Other man-god, riches, fertility, land. Freya’s cross to know if we win war.’
The sailor had but one desire: to leave the stall as quickly as possible. L
eone had held him back by his sleeve and insisted:
‘But what do the other symbols mean?’
‘Not know. All forbidden.’
He had pulled away brusquely and disappeared into the colourful maze of the grand bazaar.
It had taken Leone more than a year to unravel the mystery of the almonds. He had had to wait for another of those unlikely coincidences, those improbable encounters the Knight Templar had evoked in the tunnel under Acre.
That morning, Francesco de Leone had been leaving on a mission to see Henri II of Lusignan. The hopes they had entertained of forcing the King of Cyprus to permit them to reinforce their numbers on the island had once again been dashed. He was approached by a small young girl dressed in rags, with long curly brown hair so tangled it resembled a clump of straw. Her head bowed, she silently held out a small grubby palm. Smiling, he placed a few small coins there – nothing much, enough to buy a little bread and cheese. Finally, when she looked up at him with her pale amber, almost yellow, eyes, Leone was astonished. The expression in them was so profound, so old for one of her years that he wondered whether she might not indeed be older than she looked. In a strikingly deep voice, she said to him:
‘You are a good man. That is as it should be. I have been looking for you. I am told you possess a paper cross whose meaning you do not understand. I can help you.’
For a brief moment the Knight imagined he must be dreaming. How could this little beggar girl, one of many on the island, know about the mystery and address him as though she were a thousand-year-old woman? How could a Cypriot child decipher symbols belonging to an ancient alphabet known only to a handful of Vikings?
