by Deryn Lake
And now, last night, the ultimate sweet rite. A boy and a baby had died while the men had performed unspeakable acts together.
“I wish Isabeau were here,” de Giac had groaned. “How she would have enjoyed joining in with us.”
“Be that as it may, most women are sickening creatures,” Gilles had responded. “Particularly that stupid wife of yours. It’s high time you got rid of her. At least the widow Catherine is wealthy.”
“And fat! Wonderfully, wonderfully fat.”
“Yes, she is obscene looking enough, I grant you that. So why don’t you marry her? Then her money is yours.”
“And Bonne?”
“You’ll think of something to do with her.”
“Yes,” answered de Giac thoughtfully. “I might at that.”
The ritual took place at night and lasted until dawn. As soon as darkness fell, the novice was brought into the Chapter House and the doors locked and guarded against intruders. Then, in the dimness, the postulant knelt, waiting for the questioning to begin. This ceremony of initiation, like all others, followed the precise rules laid down for the Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon when it was first founded as an Order early in the twelfth century, its origins mysterious and not easy to discover.
It was St. Bernard himself who had helped draw up this code of conduct adopted by the Knights Templar, as the Order later came to be known. The Templars were to cut their hair but not their beards, take a vow of chastity, poverty and obedience, while diet, dress and daily tasks were to be a strange combination of both monastic and military life. Rules for the battlefield were also carefully specified. An endangered Templar was not allowed to beg for mercy but must fight on to the death. Further, only the Knights Templar were allowed to wear the white surcoats that so distinguished them in battle, the great splayed red cross, adopted by the Knights as an emblem in 1146, emblazoned on their chests.
By the time that the Templars were asked to accompany King Louis VII of France on the Second Crusade they were renowned throughout the world, enormously wealthy landowners, their ranks swelled to thousands, their bravery and arrogance spoken of in hushed tones. They had become a magnificent fighting force, fiercely disciplined, a force which members of every great family in Christendom hastened to join.
By the thirteenth century, the Knights Templar were seen as one of the most powerful groups of people in existence. They had become the primary money handlers of their time, the first bankers; they employed the finest military architects and engineers, the best stonemasons, the most skilled armourers, leather workers and artisans. The Templars had their own group of physicians and surgeons, used Arabic medicines, grew mould extracts with which to treat disease. Not only did they have fighting men, but fleets and ports. They employed Arab secretaries and many were fluent in the language, having learnt it in captivity. The Templars, too, had forged sympathetic links with the Jewish community, with whom they exchanged both financial interests and scholarly thought. They were a crack fighting force who had become internationally all-powerful.
It was obvious that no organisation could exist on such a scale without exciting jealousy, greed and fear in the hearts of other rulers, and in 1306 the King of France, Philippe the Fair, finally moved against them. A list of charges was set out, the evidence supplied partly by the King’s spies, partly by an ex-Knight who had turned against his Order. And on Friday, 13th October 1307, a dawn raid was made on every Templar holding in France, every knight found arrested, all their goods confiscated. Yet strangely, the fabulous treasure of the Templars was not discovered in this strike or any subsequent search.
Accusations were made, of homosexuality, of anal kisses at the time of initiation, of occultism and infanticide, of blasphemy, of appalling drunkenness. The Templars were burned, imprisoned and tortured, and in 1312 the Order was finally dissolved by the Pope, the Grand Master Jacques de Molay being roasted to death over a slow fire in March 1314, watching the execution, Philippe the Fair himself. As the flames engulfed the Grand Master he called on both the Pope who had decreed the Order finished, and the King who had used it so cruelly, to join him within a year at the throne of God to answer for their crimes. Both had been dead within twelve months.
They had been a mighty and mysterious group, now vanished from the world stage, or so it would appear. Yet to eliminate such a powerful body entirely was to prove difficult. In England, the Templars escaped terrible punishment and were given sentences of light penance; in Lorraine, they simply melted into the local population; in Germany and Spain, they joined the Teutonic Knights and the Hospitallers of Saint John, while in Portugal, the Order was cleared by public enquiry and merely changed its name to the Knights of Christ. But in Scotland, at war with the English at the time, the Papal Bulls dissolving the Order had never been proclaimed and it was there that Templars from other lands found refuge, a powerful contingent fighting on the side of Robert the Bruce at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314.
But there had been another aspect, another undercurrent, in all this. The secret society whose military arm the Templars had at one time been, the elusive Order of Sion who, after 1188, went its own way, becoming the Priory of Sion and leaving the Templars autonomous until their grisly end, had thrown their full power behind their fellow brotherhood when it was under threat. Behind the scenes, shadowy figures had worked to save both individuals and property, and, by the time the drama was played out, what remained of the Knights Templar had owed the Priory of Sion an immense debt of honour.
And it was because of this debt that on an early autumn night in 1425, a novitiate knelt in the Chapter House of the Preceptory of the Templars hidden in the wilderness of Argyllshire, a clandestine group the existence of which was known to only very few, and waited to be received.
The candidate, when it first arrived, had come direct with a letter from the Grand Master of the Priory of Sion himself, yet the Templars’ Great Prior had shuddered at what was being asked of him. A female visionary, a peasant girl who heard voices, who believed she had been chosen to lead the armies of France to victory and drive the English out, had been wished upon him, and he could think of nothing worse.
And yet the creature standing travel-stained in the Prior’s Lodging had seemed humble enough, anxious to please, and so obviously sincere that it had been hard, especially in view of the signature on her letter of introduction, to turn her away immediately as he had originally planned.
“It is highly unsuitable that you be sent here,” the Prior had said by way of compromise. “This is a man’s establishment and we are an Order of fighting monks. For a woman to be amongst us is unthinkable.”
“But surely you have all taken the vow of chastity, as will I,” she countered. “Therefore I can cause no trouble on that account. Please let me stay. Where else can I be secretly trained to fight?”
“But why should you want to be?” he had asked wearily.
“Because my voices have told me to save France.”
“That may be so but you still cannot remain here,” the Great Prior had answered forcefully.
It had been early spring when she had arrived, cold and miserably wet, and the Prior had fully intended to send her back as soon as the weather got a little warmer. But somehow in the intervening months, and none of the brotherhood could say quite how it had been done, the girl had made herself useful to him.
Dressed even more like a boy than when she had first appeared, her hair cut short all the way round and acting just as a young male would, she saw to the horses, whistled about the place, cheerful, smiling, and utterly flat-chested. Then one day the girl had mounted one of the great destriers, direct descendants of the French cavalry steeds, and fallen straight off again with a certain amount of cursing.
“Come on, lass,” one of the more sympathetic Knights had said, and bleeding though she was, Jehanne — or Johnnie as the Scotsmen had nicknamed her — had remounted.
She had not looked back after that. Whether her saints ge
nuinely inspired her or whether they existed solely in her adolescent mind, as most of the Templars believed, the girl had shown herself an adept and natural horsewoman.
Johnnie’s struggle to handle a knight’s weapons had at first been hilarious, uproarious almost, in an Order supposed to maintain a certain amount of silence and decorum. It took her four weeks even to pull the two-handed sword used by the Templars out of its scabbard, each time falling flat on her back, legs in the air. Equally, the great lance had proven too much for her.
“You must build your muscles up,” Prior Hugh had bellowed at her. “Eat, run and swim. The weather’s getting fine. Outdoors with you.”
Even without conceding the fact to himself he knew that she had wormed her way in, that there was something about the girl that made men, monks included, eat out of her hand. Yet sexual power she most certainly did not have; more a friendliness, an openness, an ingenuousness that was utterly irresistible.
“I like her,” the Prior had caught himself thinking, and with it had come the hope that the brothers of the Order would not reject her when the time came.
And now that ceremony was at hand. French Jehanne, Johnnie to everyone present, knelt upon the floor of the Chapter House while the Great Prior boomed out his ringing question.
“Brother Knights, do you have objection to this novitiate entering our Order?”
It couldn’t have happened had the Knights Templar been as once they were, the most powerful organisation alive. But now a group of outcast warrior-monks admitted a young woman, whom most of them suspected of being utterly deluded yet a fascinating character for all that, into their prestigious ranks.
“I swear that I have no marriage partner nor children of my body,” said Jehanne, taking the oath. “I swear that I have neither debts nor disease. I vow obedience, poverty and chastity. I vow to protect the secrecy of this Preceptory and its whereabouts with my life, even if I be threatened by torture and death. I ask to become a servant and slave of the Temple. I swear obedience to Almighty God and the Virgin Mary. I pledge my life to France.”
It was done. Great Prior Hugh himself draped the famous white mantle round her shoulders. She had entered the exalted ranks of the Knights Templar and now her training proper could begin.
She had known with the unerring instinct of a mistress whose lover has long ago tired of her that only a desperate measure could bring him back to her side, and now Bonne de Giac took the only remedy possible. Instead of shying away from what she had always considered too dangerous a course of action, namely to become pregnant when no longer being ravaged by her husband, she took the chance. Deliberately going to Charles when the time of the month was perfect for conception, Bonne had seduced him into being careless and two moon months later she knew her plan had succeeded. After all their years together as lovers, she at last carried the King’s baby.
Standing naked before the mirror, seeing herself as slim as ever, Bonne turned to face him, her black hair whirling out as she moved her head.
“God be praised I am finally with child. Oh, mon chéri, isn’t it wonderful?” and she had flung herself into his arms, giving little cries of joy.
It was very difficult for Charles to feel quite as enthusiastic. Since his marriage four years earlier to Marie, who adored being pregnant and surrounded by babies and small noisy children, he had become something of an old hand at fatherhood. In the time since the Queen had become his bride, three infants had been born altogether and now she expected another.
“Why, that’s wonderful news,” said Charles, with as much feeling as he could muster at the thought of yet another of his seed bearing fruit. “When is the child due?”
“I know little of these things,” answered Bonne, fluttering. “But I believe it will be born in March.”
“Splendid,” answered the young father, thinking to himself that Marie was hoping to produce in February and the times were too close together for comfort. “Quite splendid.”
As he said this, Charles caught sight of himself in the mirror and thought that these days he really was looking a regular jackanapes, the sort who spends most of his time in pleasurable pursuits or lying in bed with women begetting babies. As beautifully dressed as ever, his colours of vermilion, blue and gold all about him, he now appeared too worldly for his age, his lifestyle of scheming against his courtiers beginning to show in a certain cunning expression, his overfull love-life giving him a lecherous air.
“I wish they would let me go into battle again,” he sighed to himself.
Bonne, thinking he was addressing her, answered. “They all say it’s too dangerous. That if you were killed and a child became King that would truly be the end of everything.”
“But it’s so boring sitting at home, idling my days away, while Richemont rides out with the army.”
“Are you bored with me?” she asked petulantly.
“No, of course not. You’re beautiful. And I’m pleased about the baby. It is bound to take after you and look quite ravishing.”
“What shall I tell Pierre?” Bonne was suddenly serious as she started to dress herself.
“I don’t know. Perhaps you should go to bed with him.” She pulled a face. “I couldn’t possibly. Anyway he doesn’t want me. He’s sleeping with that nasty young man Gilles, and has his eye on a fat rich widow into the bargain.”
“I’d better promote him again,” answered Charles languidly. “That should keep him quiet for a while. Then tell him the child is mine and I will advance him even higher if he acts like a gentleman. He should feel honoured the King of France has sired his wife’s bastard and there’s an end to it.”
“Precisely.”
But in actuality, Bonne was not as confident as she pretended and said nothing to her husband about the babe she carried, fearing some awful explosion of fury, for all the fact his time was now fully taken up with Gilles de Rais and Catherine de l’lsle-Bouchard, Countess de Tonnerre.
August came and went and eventually the long, slow autumn so famous in the Loire Valley began to show its first fiery fingers. The cultivated fields, where the war had not penetrated, were thickly gold with unharvested corn, from the orchards came the smell of ripening plums and apples. At night, the river shimmered and danced with lights, by noon it hazed over with lingering heat. There were poppy skies in the evening and wild rose at mom, by day die heavens a rich deep blue slowly darkening to wine. A laziness, an air of fin desièclee hung over the slumberous countryside, and inside Bonne the child continued to grow.
She knew the precise moment when he guessed. They had been dining together at home, a thankful rarity these days, and his wife saw de Giac’s eyes, their usual frantic shade of burning blue, suddenly alight on her rounding abdomen. An hour later, after consuming great quantities of wine, he confirmed her worst suspicions.
“So here’s an interesting situation. Are you putting on weight, ma chérie, or is that a little love child I spy?”
She stood up and tilted her chin defiantly, “I carry die King’s child, Monsieur. He has asked me to say that he has amply rewarded you by making you First Chamberlain…”
“So that was why,” de Giac breathed to himself.
“…and that that was only the beginning. If you are good to me and my baby he will promote you higher and higher.”
“I see.”
De Giac buried his face in his wine cup then, having drained it completely, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. When he looked at her again, Bonne saw to her horror that his features had completely changed. The demon which lurked just below the surface of his every expression had utterly consumed him. She saw the glint of savagery, the stark white bones of murderous intent.
“Oh, Christ have mercy,” she screamed. “Pierre, don’t hurt me.”
“Hurt you?” he answered, and threw his head back to laugh a laugh that froze her blood. “I’m going to kill you, you faithless whore.”
She started to run, but too late. De Giac had already pounced on her
and woven the strands of her beautiful hair around his hands.
“A little drink for you and your bastard,” he murmured close to her ear, and without looking she knew that he had drawn out one of the many phials he always carried upon him and was emptying something into the cup before he filled it once more with wine.
“Drink!” he said in a terrifying whisper, and forcibly jerking her head back began to pour the fluid into her mouth.
Bonne, trapped as she was, did her best to fight, kicking and punching at him with as much strength as she could summon up. And though she tried to stop herself swallowing, tried to spit out the deadly potion he had mixed for her, at that angle with her head tipped back and held fast, every hair of her head wrenched to the roots, it was impossible to avoid ingesting some of its bitterness.
And all the time he held her in that deadly grip, de Giac repeated the words, “Harlot, whore, slut,” as if they were some kind of terrible invocation.
At last the cup was empty and he let her go, watching her as she stood swaying, an expression so evil on his face that Bonne had to close her eyes in order to avoid seeing it.
“So, you’re stronger than you look,” he said. “What a wonderful breeder you would make, giving birth to bastard after bastard. But what would they say of me, eh? That I wore the cuckold’s horns while you sported with your ugly boy. No, never, never!”
He was screaming now and so dangerous his skin had bleached with fury.
“No, that day will never come. You filthy slut, you whore. You’ll disgrace me no further.”
He yanked once more at her vulnerable hair so that it came out in handfuls as he crashed Bonne to the ground, then dragged her across the stone floor through the scented rushes, out of the dining chamber and across the great hall.
She felt the cold air of night as one of the doors at the back of the chateau was opened and then the warmth of hay, the comforting smell of horseflesh. So he was throwing her out to sleep with the animals. Bonne could think of far worse fates.
