The Seal

by Adriana Koulias

  The knight Templar set down his candle, removed the grille in the stone pavement, let down the rope ladder that led down into the chapel and made his difficult descent one rung at a time. His bones made a stiffness in his back when he landed on the stone flooring beside the bowl . . . Do you know the bowl?’

  ‘The stone bowl of water set into the floor of the chapel?’ I asked her.

  ‘What else? The tourists put coins in it now, for good luck, but once, in those waters, were reflected visions . . . but you must not interrupt me . . . Now, where was I? Oh, yes . . . the knight pulled the ladder and it came down . . . he would not need it now. He stood paused, taking in a difficult breath, for you see the pain in his side, the pain that came from his heart, had seized the fingers of his left hand in a stronghold of spasms. He was dying, he knew it, and there was little time to do what had to be done. Bent and pain-ridden, he took himself through the darkness lit by a meagre light to the altar in the south. He placed the candle at the foot of the little effigy of Christ; it made shadows over the Vesica Pisces carved into the altar’s stone face. He traced the grooves with his fingers – the bladder of the fish, the womb of God, beneath it the twin circles of duality. Raising his eyes he saw only vaguely what lay inscribed with pigment on the domed ceiling; and despite the chill, the damp cold that sunk to the bones, the symbols filled him with warmth. It occurred to him now that his strange Egyptian dreams of the great sarcophagus of stone, the dreams of the small flickering flame, had been a prediction of this end. But he had little time to think on it for he was once more struck by the pain that yawned in his chest and left him gasping for air. He made a grunt and gathered the forces that lay unspent in his soul and in his spirit. He must keep from dying long enough to lay the seal to rest, before that part of him that was wedded to evil made a move to prevent it.’

  ‘The seal?’ I asked her.

  ‘Shh . . . Listen . . . Kneeling on one knee and holding on to the altar, he took into his lungs an in-sweep of breath, and it was as his mind was returned to itself and he prepared to pray that he realised, by the chill in the air, that it had come, and that he was no longer alone with the darkness . . .’

  The old woman made a gasp and blinked the sun from her eyes, as if waking from a nightmare. On her face a dull and anxious expression. ‘Oh Lord!’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I am an old wasted woman. I have started at the end. No . . . no! If it is to make sense to you we must begin at the beginning of the end. Only then will the truth be revealed . . . Come closer . . . écoutes . . .’ she said.

  And I listened.

  THE FIRST CARD

  JUDGEMENT, DEATH AND RESSURECTION

  1

  THE FALL OF ACRE

  Babylon is fallen, is fallen . . . that great city.

  Revelation 14:8

  Acre, 9 May 1291

  It was near dawn when the armies of Al Ashraf came again at the double walls of Montmusard. In the half-light, where the ramparts met the sea, the Templars beheld the mantle of torches spread across the hem of the sky and the rolling of mangonels and catapults questing for the city of Acre. It was a scene spurned by heaven and earth which journeyed toward no end but stretched on forever.

  The three men, crouched beside the wall, observed the figures of their companions from the Hospital who stood some distance away near the tower of their castle, shouting something and waving their arms through the storm of ash and arrows and smoke.

  ‘What is it?’ Marcus said.

  ‘I do not understand it,’ said Jacques, ‘there is too much smoke to see.’ The tall Templar called Etienne squinted. ‘Sappers,’ he told them. ‘They come again to mine the wall! They wish us to pound them . . .’

  ‘Those engineers are like rabbits,’ Marcus shouted back, above the chanting of the Mameluks. ‘At every moment there are new ones coming to make holes and we are run out of stones! What are we to throw down to pound them, Etienne – our own carcasses?’

  Jacques went to the apertures and put an arrow to his bow. He waited for movement below and drove the last of his shafts through the wide grates. There was a cry from below.

  The men waited. Overhead a multitude of arrows tipped with torches made a path towards the roofs and stables and burst into flames. Some came down over the wall and pierced the flesh of those wretched victims whose terror-filled screams were wedded to the din coming from the Saracens. Below, the city was a maze of fires, since there were none to tend them as all men were upon the wall, and what was left, the old, the women and children, had long since headed for the quays or were shut up in their houses waiting for death.

  Two days before, the armies of Hama and Damascus and the army of Mameluks began to fill the moat with the bodies of dead men and horses. Drummers on camels had encouraged the enemy on ladders over the walls and a thousand engineers protected by storms of arrows were sent to mine the twelve towers. The Accursed tower fell first, then the gate of St Nicholas by catapults and battering rams. The army of infidels began pouring into the city and were forced back after a long battle with the Temple and the Hospital. Torches and the last of the oil were thrown into the moat then to burn the rotting carcasses and to make a wall of flame that sent plumes of smoke into the parched air. The troops of the commune of Acre dragged what had not been killed in battle to the ramparts, cut off first the hands and then the heads and threw them into the conflagration. It so enraged the enemy that by that night the Saracens had once again breached the fortifications and the Franks were forced to take refuge behind the inner wall, upon which the Templar garrison now stood perched.

  At the northern end of the battlements, where the water lapped at the seawall with tempers of its own, the Templars heard the sound of the great kettledrum and a battery of trumpets and cymbals, and they knew this to be the sultan’s word for the final on-fall to begin. The Order of Hospitallers and the Teutons, the Venetians and Pisans knew it also, and what was left of them began to make for the stairs, leaving the troops of the commune of Acre to stand alone.

  ‘Shall we go?’ Etienne said.

  Marcus made a shrug. ‘Almaric’s troops are gone . . . the King’s brother will be halfway to Cyprus by now!’

  Jacques de Molay, all frown and sharp eyes, lifted his head over the wall a little. ‘More siege towers have arrived, tall enough to reach heaven, and a hundred columns of a thousand men each. Sixty-six times a thousand on horses!’ He took up his weapons.

  Etienne glanced upwards to where another wave of lit arrows curved and poised poetically before falling with a whish over the city. There were more cries of agony from the walls and from below and the smell of burning flesh filled Etienne’s nostrils. ‘What shall men tell of this day?’

  Jacques raised a frown-full brow. ‘They shall say the Temple deserted the people and left them to die . . . They will say nothing of the Devilry between the Pisans and the Genoese who took sides against one another and made pacts with the heathens, nor of the truces that were broken. Nor shall they speak of Brother William’s effort to make the people listen to the sultan’s conditions. They called him a traitor! Now look at them! Forty days of this . . . and to end it all, a massacre! They could have paid a piece of gold for every citizen. It was a small price.’

  Etienne took off his metal cap and moved a hand to where a wound had made itself under his nose guard. He wiped his brow. ‘You believe they shall say this?’

  ‘I know they will.’ Jacques turned his old eyes on him. ‘It is the way of men to find blame.’

  ‘Well then, it would seem to me a fine thing to remain upon this wall,’ Etienne said to them.

  ‘What!’ Marcus gave a snort. ‘Even the Hospitallers have deserted their own castle! See how they run with their skirts between their precious legs? The towers are left to fall! How may you fight, one man against the world?’

  ‘One man or a thousand, is it not the same?’

  ‘Well, for my part I shall not join you to die for this sorry lot, these are a conquered people and I ha
ve heathen souls to kill!’ Crouching, he gathered his weapons to him. But he was sent down upon his belly by the sound of thunder as balls of fire were shot from the black oxen over the walls. They exploded in the streets and set the world aflame.

  ‘Look!’ Jacques said. ‘The marshal has signalled our retreat . . . this is not a day for fancies. Tonight Commander Thibaud will take a galley to Sidon. He will need good men.’

  Ahead of them the knights of the Order began to move for the stairs.

  Etienne did not immediately make to follow but stood straight instead upon the rampart with his face to a world swallowed up into the darkness of Mahomet. Into the cold throat of the enemy, that menace lit by a throng of torches, Satan’s body

  – that much he was sure of – covering the plains and the mountains of the land. He had felt this one time elsewhere, standing on the lip of another rampart, gazing over a world in ruins. Now it was his wish to tempt an arrow or a dagger, or to bend over the wall and allow his body to fall into that field of battle. To die among the heathen, in that elegant moment, a champion of Christ! Such would be a worthy end after a lifetime, it seemed to him, of war.

  He was paused only a moment considering these whims of his will and of his heart and the spell was broken by the call of his brothers on the stairs, and with it his spirit was returned to him and he was prevented from making good his sinful thoughts of disobedience. ‘My will is not my own!’ he yelled over the drums to the vast enemy, by way of apology.

  By the time he was on the ground, ducking arrows and making his swift way through smoke and burnt bodies, Marcus and Jacques had already drawn together with the brothers of his Order.

  At that point there arose a despondent cry from the inhabitants and troops of the commune of Acre that remained upon the walls. They knew that a Templar retreat served better than a blowing of the horn or a ringing of bells. It was a silent mark of the hopelessness of their condition.

  The Templars were not halfway down the street that ran to the quays when trumpets deafened their ears and a voice was shouted into the night behind them: ‘The wall is breached! The wall is breached, God help us!’

  But the brothers, having orders to abandon the fight, walked southward, unhurried and without a backward glance, while all around them lay remnants of a city abandoned in haste. Only two days before there had been merchants, pilgrims, artisans, diplomats and their families stumbling over one another with their belongings falling from their hands. Behind them the scribes of king and regent had dropped parchments and scrolls that now lay scattered about the streets to be trampled upon.

  Jacques stooped to take a scorched one in his hand and looked at it squinting as he walked. ‘Look at this . . . and to think how closely they guarded their secrets! A divided city, one side against the other, each defending only its own castles and quarters, each side suspicious of its neighbour, could never conquer a force such as this!’ He let the parchment fall.

  Marcus’s voice was full of sneer, his short legs marking a pace beside Jacques. ‘Days ago they gave chase to their own shadows, that was a merriment to see! Today most are drowned in the bay and tomorrow what is not dead will go to the markets at Damascus. The only good thing to come of it, my brothers, shall be that in a week a slave will fetch no more than a drachma!’

  Etienne took a glance at Marcus’s smoke-stained face. Such words were spoken for the most part of Christians at the hands of infidels and this grew a burden upon his heart. But a greater burden pressed upon him – the knowledge that all things were changed, since to walk away from this battle was to admit defeat, and this defeat, added to every other, meant that soon they must walk away from Christ’s kingdom, as they were now doing, upon His blood-soaked soil in which lay buried all who had struggled and died to secure it. He looked around him at the darkened corners. These are strange thoughts for a knight of the Temple! he told himself and looked instead to his task of walking, one limb after another, with his brothers beside him, mere shadows scraping iron feet over the cobblestones.

  They caught up to the knights of the sword of St Lazarus. Those of St Thomas were not far ahead. To their left, they were coming upon the English knights of Syria, and the knights, sergeants, and squires of the Hospital. To their right those of their own Order. All of them headed for the sanctuary of the Temple castle. Behind them morning broke blood-red and angry through the smoke.

  There was heard a cry then and the world erupted in activity.

  Etienne spun around and stopped a weapon with his shield, gritting his teeth, making a push that of itself little moved the force that seemed as big as a mountain and twice as broad behind it. It was a Mameluk patched over one eye with his mouth making a smile in his dark face that showed no teeth but issued from it one great yell. Etienne veered to one side in time to avoid the lunge, but Marcus had come upon the man’s blind side and now brought his blade down wide and low to cut off the man’s leg. It fell to the ground with a thud and the great infidel landed upon his own bone and skin and blood, with the life pumping out onto the streets like a river.

  A number of knights had paused to observe this little battle. They now walked on, leaving the three Templars.

  Etienne put away his blade, but Marcus stood holding his, looking down upon the infidel in his misery. The man was making a strangled cry in the throat and mumbling words Etienne did not know.

  ‘He wishes to meet with Allah,’ Marcus told Etienne. ‘Who am I to prevent it?’ He made an elegant sweep with his sword, cut off the man’s head and was covered with blood for his trouble.

  He came to Jacques and Etienne wiping the sockets of his eyes with contentment.

  Etienne looked on this enjoyment from butchery with gravity. He scratched below the metal of his helmet and to Marcus he said, ‘You are God’s merciful angel! Much more of this and you shall make blunt your blade.’

  The smile on the other man’s face broadened. ‘God shall see to the sharpness of my blade, my dear Etienne, since I am at His work of sending heathen souls to hell!’ He clasped a hand over Etienne’s shoulder and made a grunt of pleasure. ‘Ahh, St Hilary be praised! I am full of satisfaction for it!’

  Near the Genoese quarter they came upon a man outside the tailor’s shop holding an infant boy no older than five springs with a knife to his throat. Both man and child stared at the three Templars moving past.

  Etienne for his part made a pause, and the others walked ahead until they realised he was not with them.

  This is something! Etienne thought, considering the moment; the steel blade on the boy’s neck, the old man’s face.

  ‘Leave it, Etienne, we are left behind,’ Marcus told him. ‘At any rate, this is a show for our benefit.’

  The tailor mumbled and then spat, ‘Maktub! ’ at him while his knife dug into the boy’s neck and drew blood.

  Etienne looked behind him, Marcus was right, the air was sweet with the smell of blood and burning hair and the world was erupting in screams and wails. Above, there were outlines on the rooftops that came and went. This peace in which they found themselves was a short-lived creature.

  ‘What does he say, Marcus?’ Etienne asked him.

  ‘Destiny,’ Marcus answered. ‘Maktub, destiny, Etienne! It means they were dead the day Al Ashraf arrived before the walls. It means this infant is already dead, it would feign life!’

  Etienne could not deny it, he had seen so much blood: women and children slaughtered, whole cities and fields of battle deep with bodies! There was no reason why one more should concern him, why he should lose his breath and mislay his calmness, why his temper should be confused over one more child. But his soul had met a change upon that wall between Acre and Satan, and a memory long forgotten had risen up in his mind of another child such as this that now stared hate and fear into him.

  ‘Give us the infant!’ He was annoyed now at himself and at the man for delaying him. ‘We are to take him to the Temple, beyond the gates!’

  Marcus, with an indolent eye, tr
anslated from the Frankish language to the Arab tongue, but the old man shook his head, in his own eyes defiance, as if to say, ‘This life, at least, is mine to dispose of as I wish.’

  Etienne gave a sigh. He could not let it go now. Then he surprised even himself, for he made a shout, ‘Give him to me!’ and moved, between one thought and another, upon the old man, pushing him aside and scooping up the boy with a hand and away from the knife.

  The tailor fell and began a dull, woeful cry into his hands. Meanwhile the boy with eyes wild and green struggled and kicked against Etienne, biting him on the exposed part of his wrist where his glove did not reach. Etienne set the child down and took him by the shoulders and bent a stare of fear into those eyes, into the centre of each iris. He let go of the child and began to walk away, nursing the bitten hand. But he could not keep from turning around to see the child give a look to the old man, who, between wails, said something to him in their language. The infant hesitated and then turned away, making a run to reach him and to grasp his mailed leg as if it were the centre of the world.

  He felt this newfound love a strange thing and had no com-pulsion to return it, so he pulled the boy from him and told him, ‘Come!’, being all he could say.

  After that Marcus was the picture of self-satisfaction beside him. ‘Do you know what the old man said to that infant, Etienne? “Go . . . boy!” Do you hear that? “Go,” he says . . . for it was their plan to win your sympathy . . . it was a show and you were duped, my Etienne, duped!’