The Seal

by Adriana Koulias

  ‘As easy as that, Count! If only it were so.’ He scowled and a dull gleam appeared in his cloudy eyes.

  ‘For his part the King is willing,’ the other man offered, ‘to remit Templar property to special curators appointed to administer it until the completion of the trials. The overall surveillance should be the responsibility of the bishops in whose diocese the goods are situated. Good, faithful persons, who are discreet and prudent shall be named by both the Holy See and the King, accountable to the King’s officers and the prelates. He suggests that your Holiness might provide superintendents to inspect the entire account annually, whose safekeeping would be the responsibility of the Kingdom of France – of course. Meanwhile he proposes that the persons of the Templars should be placed into your hands, Holy Father; however, as it is impossible for the Church to safely guard so many men – being ill prepared for such an arduous undertaking – the King will extend the courtesy of his prisons and guards, at the request of the Church. The prelates, your Holiness, should then be allowed to do what concerns them.’

  Clement was silent, listening beyond the outer skin of words. What the King was in fact offering him was a way to do what they had conspired to do all along – Clement would hear the confessions with his cardinals; they would all be suitably enraged and disgusted, after which, none could contest his consent to a reopening of the inquiry, and, when all was said and done, the King would remain in control of the Templars, their gold and their property. Clement knew that, in turn, he must squeeze what little juice he could from the lemon himself.

  He said nothing for a long time. He looked to the tapestries on his walls, to his canopied bed framed in sumptuous silk, but he was not perusing the grandeur of his apartment, he was measuring his words.

  ‘This proposal goes against my honour,’ he said finally, taking a cup of warm spiced wine that had been prepared for him. He sipped it slowly. It made his gut move like a snake.

  ‘How so, your Sublimity?’ gasped Charles of Valois, blanching to the roots of his sparse grey hair.

  Did you believe that you had me where you wanted me? thought Clement, suffused with satisfaction. Then aloud: ‘I shall be short and blunt, my dear Count of Romagne, hoping that you should hear what I say and return it unchanged forthwith to your brother. Perhaps this tiresome affair might be over at last . . . hmm? Now I cannot take any decision whatever concerning the inquiry until all the members are handed over to me. Having said that, the Church may require, from time to time, the use of the King’s prisons, this would be agreeable as long as the Templars are at my every disposal. And as to Templar property, I may also require the King’s assistance in its safekeeping. However, like the members of the Order it is to be made available to the Holy See at all times. My own men shall be responsible for auditing all accounts – not the King and the men in his counting house. My bishops shall appoint curators of the properties belonging to the Templars for each diocese, whose task will be to administer the goods on behalf of the Order until a decision is made about their future. As to the fate of the entire Order, I will say once again that I am not in a position to condemn it if only the Templars of France are heretics. Think of Spain, Portugal, England! No, it is out of the question entirely.

  ‘Should I decide to restore the powers of the inquisitors, they will act on behalf of provincial councils formed to make inquiry against individual Templars. Each metropolitan will then be responsible for those Templars who belong to this province. At the same time I will set up a commission to make inquiry against the Order as a whole. Eight commissioners will go personally to the city province and diocese of Sens and make a separate inquiry of the truth with diligence, on our authority. After all things are taken into consideration, all confessions extracted and all evidence given, then both the provincial councils and the commission will bring their findings to a general council at Vienne where the fate of the Order shall be decided, two years from now. If the Order is suppressed, and I say if, all goods are to be dispatched at my discretion.’ He said this with no sign of the inner triumph he felt. Clement had bought himself time.

  Charles of Valois was obviously perplexed. He knitted his brows and gave a slight evasive nod.

  ‘To that end, Valois,’ added the Pope, ‘I reserve the right to see Jacques de Molay and the chiefs of the Order so that I may, thereby, later find myself in a better position to judge the Order by their conduct. I wish them to come to Chinon.’

  ‘Chinon?’

  It was expected that Clement would ask to see the leaders of the Order. The ordinary knights were one thing, but the chiefs of the Order were another thing entirely. His curia, the Romans and the Spaniards, would not be satisfied to see just the ordinary knights. They suspected torture to be at the back of the confessions and knew that the leaders would be more confident in recanting them into their friendly ears. Philip, on the other hand, was now encouraging it, for two reasons. He knew that if the leaders recanted, his French cardinals could use it against them.

  A confession was one thing, it signalled a desire for the soul to be reconciled to God and to the Church. But a retraction of that confession, a recanting, signalled that dissent had taken deeper root and lay unrepentant and stubborn in the soul. Such men were seen as relapsed heretics, men beyond the Church, and were handed over to the King for burning. On the other hand, a confirmation of their confessions could only speed up the condemnation of the entire Order and this would put pressure on Clement to bring forward the general council. Either way Philip would have his blood and Clement could stand to lose his advantage.

  But Clement had anticipated it and knew how to circumvent the entire affair. After all, he was an expert at prevarication, his only tool. He would feign illness and instead of going to Chinon himself he would send three cardinals. They would return to him with their opinions as to the innocence or guilt of the Templar leaders, the efficacy of which he would need to deliberate before making his own decision on the matter. And since he would make a decree that no man need be examined again after being examined by a cardinal, he would not be in a position to do so and would be forced, on the pains of his conscience, to withhold his decision until the pontifical commission came to its end . . . years from now . . . Time would bend Philip to his will.

  Once again he must dance among thorns.

  The pontiff could see that the count sensed something in the air, but his lack of political intelligence prevented him from seeing these evasions. ‘I shall have the leaders of the Order sent to you, your Holiness,’ he said.

  ‘I will leave it to you, Charles.’ The Pope gave a benevolent smile.

  Charles de Valois bowed deeply. ‘There is one more thing, your Holiness,’ he dared to say.

  ‘One more thing?’ The Pope raised an annoyed brow.

  ‘There is the matter of Monsieur de Nogaret . . . and his excommunication.’

  ‘What of it?’

  ‘The King wishes him absolved, your Holiness.’

  ‘Well, the King wishes for the impossible!’ Clement said, more flustered than he felt.

  ‘Your Holiness,’ Valois said softly, ‘it does not fare well for a king to have an excommunicate as Keeper of his Seals.’

  Clement shrugged. ‘Philip should mind the company he keeps, then!’ Stifling a belch he said, ‘The man is a devil! For goodness’ sake, Valois! He tried to kidnap a pope! How would it look if I absolved such a thing?’

  ‘If your Holiness will pardon me . . . but Boniface was a heretic, a whoremonger and a sodomite. And so, your Holiness, the King wishes his bones exhumed and burnt.’

  ‘The King, my dear Valois, cannot have everything he wants! I shall look at the charges against Boniface . . . etcetera... etcetera . . . but on Nogaret, I will not bend.’

  Valois hesitated and then made a deferential bow of the head and a sweep of the hand. ‘Your sublimity.’

  ‘Now away with you, my dear Count. I expect a swift reply.’

  The man kissed his ring, bowed once again and left.


  When Clement was alone he could not escape the voice of Pope Boniface in his ear, ‘Vain, deplorable coward! The Devil take your soul!’

  32

  THE HERBALIST

  We have been among the stars and among the Spirits of the stars and have found the old teachers of the occult knowledge.

  Rudolf Steiner, THE TIME OF TRANSITION

  July 1308

  It had taken Etienne and his men seven months to travel along the ancient route that led through the mountains on a slow journey through steep gorges and narrow valleys. Summer had made a pleasant day that hung blue and cool among the clouds and now they were paused south of the river to rest until dark, when they would continue their journey.

  Etienne was unwell.

  The wound in his side had closed over after they had left that ill-fated house of the Order, but it had opened soon after to reveal a deep, ulcerous, foul-smelling hollow that would not mend. Now struck with fever, it had taken all his strength to come off the horse and lay himself beneath a tree while Jourdain set off to fetch wood and the mercenaries took themselves up the river to catch fish. In the meantime, this outburst of inactivity meant that Etienne’s illness, kept restrained by a concentrated force of will, now began its proper task, so that he lay with his head aching and in his side a pain that travelled to his jaw and to his fingertips, burning blood through his veins.

  He lay like that with his head resting upon the trunk of an oak when, through some knowing sense, he opened his eyes and saw that a man was making a slow way beside a mule along the track from which he and his men had just come. The man paused some distance away, and Etienne saw that he wore the garments of a peasant and that his face, what Etienne could see of it under the Spanish hat, was creased and brown and frowning.

  He took the hat off, revealing an oversized balding head. He wiped his brow on his sleeve and left the animal to graze while he took a walk over to where Etienne lay.

  Etienne had the sense, through the fever haze, that the man’s walk had a purpose to it, and he seemed to draw the world in so that it became diluted into dimness around him. Etienne, therefore, put a hand upon his short blade making, as it were, a feeble attempt to look less like this was his dying day.

  The traveller paused a few paces from him and said something he did not understand.

  Etienne shook his head and the man spoke again, this time in French.

  ‘Master.’ He bowed low. ‘I believe there are herbs in this valley to cure your ailment.’ His voice was a gentle rasp upon the half-dream of the day. ‘I shall find them for you.’

  Not pausing to hear Etienne’s reply, he left his line of vision and came back a moment later carrying some green stems.

  ‘Put these in your mouth and chew them, don’t swallow mind, just chew.’

  Etienne took the herbs, and if the thought of mischief had occurred to his dazzled mind it was immediately lost under the gaze thrown down from out of those kindly eyes.

  It was surely a dream, Etienne told himself. ‘What is it?’ he said, looking at the herbs.

  ‘For your malady.’

  Etienne, not removing his eyes from those of the man, put the greenery into his mouth and immediately the bitter taste made a grimace of his face and he was near to spitting it out when the older man cried out to prevent it.

  ‘No!’ He made a laugh. ‘No, master, it is more potent the more foul it tastes!’

  This logic struck Etienne since he knew that goodness seldom walked hand in hand with pleasure and so he continued with his chewing and grimacing and chewing again, while the man sat not in the shade thrown by the young oak, but in the sun to watch him, taking a blade of grass and then another, weaving something small in his hands.

  ‘Where is your wound?’ he said, not looking at Etienne.

  Etienne, still chewing, knew it pointless to pretend he was anything other than what he seemed, and so he lifted up his shirt and took away the cloth wadding that Jourdain had placed over it to reveal the meaty hole the size of a plum.

  The man did not make a move to come nearer; he nodded and nodded again. ‘Chew . . . it will ease the fever in the chewing.’ Then, as if speaking to himself, ‘A dirty razored knife put into the belly of others or into wild animals, used perhaps to cut cheese or to flick dung from the floor of a boot, such a knife goes into flesh and makes a home there for all manner of foulness.’ Then out loud, ‘Come now, take out that paste and put it in the hole, squeeze the juice into it, that’s right, do that three or four times a day after you have washed out the dead flesh with spring water. That herb grows in this valley, you should find it everywhere.’

  Etienne took the green substance into his hand and looked at it.

  ‘Go on!’ the man encouraged with his hands.

  He put the green paste into the wound and drew in a breath when it touched the rotted flesh. He put the wadding back over it and raised his eyes to the man. It was a moment before he could speak and his voice sounded very far away to his ear.

  ‘Who are you?’

  The man smiled a long straight row of teeth at him. ‘I am no one, and I am everyone!’

  This strangeness seemed less strange to him since he was without pain for the first time in a week. ‘Where are you from?’ he asked.

  ‘I spend my days in forests and valleys.’

  ‘Do you not have a home? A village?’ Etienne moved to find a comfortable place.

  ‘God is my home,’ the man said simply.

  The emphasis of these last words made Etienne cautious and he chewed the remnants of the bitter herb in silence, tasting heresy.

  ‘God is in that herb and in this blade of grass,’ he said, weaving the green things in his deft hands. ‘My soul creeps into the plants and it sees through them and I become one with them. In them I see how God rejoices. In the heart he is also to be found, but there he does not rejoice, he is made sad by sin. When you find God you find the healing power in everything . . . I have found the healing in those herbs in your wound . . . God shall work in them and it shall not be the cause of your undoing.’

  His eyes stared into Etienne’s a moment and in that stare Etienne observed the spirit of the blade of grass and the spirit of the tree and the spirit of the sky and cloud and river, and all of it seemed to speak of wide spaces and heavenly distances, as if his life had only been a dream and only now was he awake and flying up to the heights to see it. All things lay spread out before him: the waves of cloud that gathered around the peaks of the high cliffs of the mountains, throwing their long shadows on the world; the river running, foaming and rolling over polished rocks; the meadow, covered in purple flowers that stretched towards the line of fir trees. Scarcely had he time to think on it than he saw himself a youth full of fresh notions and unspent years. In the old man’s eyes he observed it, therefore; the young man and the old man who looked upon him as he, now and again, observed Jourdain.

  ‘No,’ Etienne said to him and dropped a speck of a glance, a fidget of the eye, towards the seal. ‘The wound shall not be my end after all. I thank you.’

  The man got up stiffly, as if his bones were hinged and rusty and creaking. ‘I will go, for nature is old and revelation is young . . .’ He threw the item he had been weaving into Etienne’s lap.

  It was a cross.

  ‘The sword will be forgotten one day,’ the old man said to him, ‘but the memory of the cross will live, not as it does now, the black cross of death, but a living cross entwined with roses.’ He looked at Etienne. ‘Some day!’ Then he took himself to his mule and went on his way and a moment later – it seemed to Etienne as short as a passing thought – the mercenaries returned with fish and Jourdain with wood and the world was restored to what it had been.

  In his side the herb worked its potent magic and Etienne, suffering exhaustion of his mind and of his flesh, was lulled into a dream of Puivert, and the rough-hewn cross surrounded by roses outside the old woman’s hut of stone. He became one with it, feeling it the dead w
ood of his body and the roses of his soul.

  After that he fell into a deep sleep.

  33

  THE TREASURER

  To what do you not drive human hearts, cursed craving for gold!

  Virgil, AENEID

  Paris, December 1308

  John of Tours II leant over his books in the pale light of a large horizon of vaulted space dissolving in darkness. The new Temple treasury was vast, labyrinthine, and cold. A fire had been lit in the hearth but it ill warmed the space where sat the treasurer, and every now and then he had to stamp his feet and rub his hands to prevent them from going numb.

  It was Sunday, a day of rest for the Dominicans, and so it was possible to work without the repertoire of screams and wails that flowed over the winding stairs, around the vaults of the treasury, and through tunnels filled with strapped oak, beech boxes, barrels and coffers. These sounds swung around corners and made their way to his ears, causing him to mislay his thoughts and stain his ledger with ink blots. Today there was tranquillity and still his hands were shaking. He paused a moment to calm himself. How long before he too would suffer similar horrors? And yet, it seemed to him that this game of show and tell he played with the King’s assessors was possessed of its own peculiar torment, since each day drew him closer and closer to that inevitable and painful end which he could no longer delay. It was the price he would pay for being the only man who understood the complex workings of the Temple ledgers.

  Sounds echoed to him from other rooms where worked the King’s notaries. He made a stretch at his back and bent to his work – he must keep himself busy. He must note and categorise and duplicate, add up, subtract and multiply. Today he would face the dragon. He would give a report to the King on all revenues from Templar preceptories and deposits from crowned heads, independent cities and states. There were donations to the Temple to be accounted for, securities against loans to be adjusted, papal taxes to be reckoned, and rents collected from the properties on behalf of rich lords to be reconciled.