by Tuvia Fogel
“From the book of Missad’techà,” answered Don Sancio.
“Lord of the Universe!” cried Yehezkel, waking up the armigers and Gudrun, who peeked sleepily from behind the curtain. “Did you just say Missad’techà? How was it spelled?”
“Mmhh . . . let me see. Mem, yod, samech . . . daled, tav . . . caf !”
“It is as I hoped . . . we’re in luck, Don Sancio! Several codes were in use in the time of the Talmud sages, and I don’t know many, but I know the one called At’Bash! All you do is take the twenty-two letters and reverse their order. Instead of the first you write the last, instead of the second the one-before-last and so on, until the last one is actually the first. An aleph is a tav and a bet is a shin, so the code is called ATBASH. Simple! As a boy, I tried to encode my own name with it. Can you guess what came out?”
“Missad’techà?” ventured Don Sancio.
“Exactly! So according to Acher, the prophecy came from the book of Ezekiel! Come on, don Sancio, let’s apply the Atbash code to Satmetaz and that other weird name!”
They started counting letters, Don Sancio on his fingers, Yehezkel swinging back and forth, eyes closed. Galatea watched him wrap and unwrap the blue twine around his finger. The solution of the mystery, almost certainly the name of some other rabbi from a thousand years before, didn’t excite her as it did the two men. To her they looked rather like two hunters discussing the habits of their prey, two overgrown boys playing their favorite game. She felt a fleeting motherly tenderness for the big, bearded unbeliever with the delicate fingers, always chasing a word, a number, a correspondence.
“Satmetaz is Rav Hanina!” cried Yehezkel, beating Don Sancio to it, but not by much. “So according to Elisha, Hanina hid one of Ezekiel’s prophecies. As you would say, Don Sancio, extraordinary! But which Hanina is he talking about? There was a Hanina ben Dosa, a Hanina bar Hezekiah . . .”
He slapped his thigh. “But of course, donkey that I am! Hanina bar Hezekiah was the man who saved the book of Ezekiel from being excluded from the canon!”
Don Sancio smiled as he removed some tallow from the edge of the candle. “I didn’t know Ezekiel risked being left out, but it doesn’t surprise me. . . . How did Hanina save it?”
“The Talmud says he locked himself in an upstairs room with I don’t know how many barrels of oil for light and didn’t come out until he’d reconciled all the contradictions between Ezekiel’s pronouncements and the Torah. And it seems there were quite a few . . .”
“If that’s so, Hanina may have had good reason to hide a prophecy he’d found no way of reconciling. That’s it! That’s what Elisha means by ‘he hid it so it would not be hidden.’ It was a prophecy that would have made the entire book apocryphal!”
Yehezkel was ecstatic. “What could the sublime, reckless seer whose name I bear have prophesied?”
“Come on, Rav Yehezkel!” said Don Sancio. “Let’s decipher the name of the man in whose life the prophecy was fulfilled. Let’s see who this Mevipaz Zithagam was . . .”
It took a little longer than before, and again the rabbi was quicker than the scribe. Galatea saw him grow pale and then abruptly get up and wander off down the deck, mumbling to himself.
A few moments later, Don Sancio’s mouth fell open. She heard his incredulous words just as Yehezkel reappeared next to her. “Yeshu ha-Nozri! I can’t believe it . . . Acher says the prophecy was fulfilled in the life of . . . Jesus the Nazarene!”
All three fell silent. The boatswain chose the moment to shout,
“Midnight, and all is calm!”
CHAPTER 7
HAMAYIM ASHER MI-TAHAT
The Waters Below
ON THE SAME 28TH APRIL 1219, OUTSIDE AUBAIS, NEAR MONTPELLIER
The same day, a rider climbed a dusty white road as the Provence countryside dozed in the afternoon sun. The winding path led to Aubais, a wealthy little feud of the lords of nearby Lunel, built on top of a spur of rock that rose from the vineyards as abruptly as an island from the sea.
Arnald Arifat trotted lazily, swinging in the saddle like someone who knows how to gallop with no reins. Handsome enough to make the saintliest of women recoil from her own thoughts, Aillil’s father had long curly hair and a short, curly beard, both as blond as summer. His gray eyes were speckled with golden shards like the plumage of certain buzzards, and a diagonal scar crossed his brow, as if pointing at the gold ring that hung from his left ear.
A distant relative of the count of Foix, Arnald was a free spirit, the kind who is outraged by stupidity and can wrench a laugh from the somberest of men. A man of action—in fact, as his friend Yehezkel ben Yoseph put it, a man incapable of sitting still—he’d been a champion of the Cathar church for as long as he could remember, from brawling with Catholic children to defending Cathar bishops in trials by combat as a teenage knight. On inheriting his father’s tiny château in a round clearing at the center of a forest, Arnald had hosted and become friends with many troubadours, the traveling minstrels who spread the teachings of the Cathar church by dressing them up in the language of “courtly love.”
Later, he had become a messenger and spy of the Cathar church and sailed to Outremer several times on missions for the bishops of Albi and Carcassonne. Ten years earlier, with war looming, he’d been sent to carry the Parchment of Circles to safety in the Holy Land. Aillil had been just three, and stricken in his senses, but he’d not been able to refuse. Then, from some pilgrims in the autumn that year, he’d heard of Esmeralda’s death in the siege and of his own excommunication. The news convinced him to stay in Syria, and he’d allayed his misgivings about the fate of little Aillil by telling himself that Yehezkel, unable to save Esmeralda’s life, had surely brought his only son safely out of the besieged city.
He spent the following ten years in Outremer, fighting under various lords. But despite many battles against Saracens—which had twice left him hanging between the living and the dead—he came to appreciate his enemy’s noble spirit, disenchanted wisdom, and sensible customs. After ten years among infidels, he believed that self-righteous clerics and the drunken fervor of English and German knights had destroyed what could have been an enlightened and fruitful coexistence. As he climbed to Aubais, he mused that he’d been away from Outremer for two months and was already homesick. He couldn’t wait to get back to that land of sand and sky.
In Acre, he sipped Cyprus wine with nobles from all Christendom and with knights of all fighting orders, seldom hiding his heretical beliefs or his excommunicated status in the discussions on the loss of Jerusalem and the kingdom’s prospects. He’d met heretics of all three faiths. Once or twice, he had been tempted to ask a bearded old Jerusalem sage about the Greek words on the Parchment of Circles, but something always held him back.
Then a year earlier the Cathar bishops in Albi heard rumors of a group hidden inside the Order of the Temple who recognized the satanic nature of the Roman church. It was whispered in Acre that this cabal pulled the strings of the Hashasheen, an elusive sect of Shiite fanatics who assassinated clerics and nobility without ever being caught alive.
In those years the loss of Jerusalem made it so difficult for the order to recruit new knights that even excommunicated heretics—mostly Cathars—had been allowed, after confessing their sins to a bishop or an abbot, to become Templars. There were by now tens of seigneurs faidits who wore the mantle with the red cross. Aware of this development, the Cathar bishops decided that their trusted agent, Arnald Arifat, would become a warrior monk and try to contact the secret cabal.
The small Templar house in Aubais had the exotic name of Commanderie de Tipheret. Tipheret is the Hebrew name of the sixth of the ten divine emanations in the tree of life of the kabbalists. It can be rendered with “beauty,” in the way Plato meant it. The unusual name was the result of liaisons between certain Templar knights and certain kabbalists in Lunel, a town where most Christians were heretics and most Jews were kabbalists. Their ties concerned alchemical questions, but recently
Templars, kabbalists, and Cathar perfecti were meeting secretly in the chapel under the fort’s tower to discuss opposition to Rome, in just the sort of meetings that kept Friar Domingo of Guzman awake at night.
Through the Templar Master of Provence, it was arranged for Arnald to take his vows there, but before that he galloped home to Montréal to find out what had become of Aillil. When the Hots told him that his son, after vowing to find his father if it cost him his life, had left with the rabbi to find a passage from Venice to Syria, Arnald had first stared incredulously and then burst out laughing.
“My boy has balls, after all! But he missed his last chance to speak with his father before he becomes a monk!” he spluttered, laughing some more.
Then, three days earlier in Narbonne’s Church of the Magdalene, he confessed his sins to Abbot Boson, a courageous Cathar bishop under high-placed Catholic disguise, who knew all about Arnald’s piratesque missions against the church of Peter—a few of which he had conceived himself.
As it passed under the stone arch, revived by the sound of its own hooves on the cobbles, the horse picked up its pace without asking its rider.
“Me, a Cathar heretic, become a monk?” Arnald was still asking himself. No more sweet old age in the countryside with a loving woman looking after him. No more Jerusalem sunsets talking about God before some wine. Instead, after three days of prayers and fasting, he was about to become a Poor Fellow-Soldier of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, destined to lose his head, sooner or later, under a short, curved Saracen scimitar. What’s more, it was a vow from which one could only be released by the pope himself. Pure folly, that’s what it was!
The small Templar fort consisted of a single round tower a hundred paces across and the buildings around the courtyard behind it, protected by a wall that encompassed an austere little church. The tower’s barely inclined conical roof was covered with tiles of the color that only the sun of Provence is able to produce. In the square in front of the fortress, the village elders sat on a bench built around a huge lime tree. From inside the flowering lime came the angry buzz of battling bees.
Arnald entered the courtyard, rode to the stables on the far side, and dismounted. After tying up his horse he hesitated, unsure if he should enter the commanderie carrying his sword. Then with a shrug he strode toward the entrance of the tower. As he walked, the horizon swayed to the rhythm of his horse’s haunches, as it did after long rides. He reached the base of the stairs and was told to wait while his arrival was announced to the commander of the house.
The knight commanding the Aubais fort was napping in his room on the tower’s top floor. Ansiau de Linniéres, a corpulent Burgundian, was a “Western” Templar, one of those for whom it was still Syria, not France, that was “Outremer.” He had only been to the Holy Land twice and didn’t care much for it. He muttered a few words of circumstance, not even trying to hide that his siesta had been disturbed.
“Ah, so you’re the gallant noble who asks to enter the order. . . .”
This was the hundredth anniversary of the order’s foundation, so Ansiau knew there were by now several versions of the Templar Rule. Arnald wasn’t the first knight to come to Aubais from Syria, take his vows in the chapel, and sail right back to Acre. Ansiau guessed they must be excommunicated knights. For him, it was nothing if not one more example of Christendom’s decline after the loss of Jerusalem.
Arnald introduced the zealous persona he had agreed with Boson to present to Templar officials. “Yes, Monsieur, I’ve been in Syria for ten years and have seen the infidels pile manure on the altars of the Holy Sepulchre. I’ve had enough and decided to get away from the feckless nobles and join the only knights still fighting the infidels for our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Ansiau listened like someone following a beloved melody, then chimed in. “Everyone knows the kingdom is debauched! They dress like infidels, speak their tongue, walk around with little black boys fanning them and rubbing smelly ointments on their feet. They even smoke that evil stuff. I tell you, those ‘Christians’ in Syria—God is my witness!—get on better with the heathens than with pilgrims from their own lands! How can military defeats surprise us when decadence is everywhere?”
A young page knocked, came in, and announced the praeceptor had arrived. The news wiped any residual sleep from Ansiau’s eyes. Every Templar province had “visitors,” fearsome inspectors nominated by the master of the province. One of them had just arrived at the fort.
Ansiau feigned nonchalance, but Arnald felt the burly Frenchman grow tense. “I would gladly have spoken some more with you, Arifat, but I’ve official business to attend to. Have someone show you your cell, and when you’ve settled in, go and see the chaplain. He’ll explain everything about the initiation rite.”
Arnald quickly deposed his few belongings in the cell he was shown and hurried back to the tower to catch a glimpse of the praeceptor. The door to the commander’s room was ajar. He’d been right! No wonder the commander was worried: this time the visitor was no less than Guillem de Montrodon in person, the master of Aragon and Provence! Arnald had only met him once, in Acre, but was aware of his reputation. While the masters of the orders spent their time fighting in Outremer (all three were outside Damietta), Guillem was the temple’s mediator between the pope and young Emperor Fredrick, much like an abbot between two quarrelsome monks. What on earth was such an important man doing in this godforsaken tower, halfway between a fortress and a farm?
“If I’m going to be a Templar with a secret mission,” thought Arnald, “knowing this man will be an asset.” He decided to inadvertently bump into Montrodon as he emerged from Ansiau’s room. The master of Provence strode toward him instead, catching him completely by surprise, and grabbed his forearm in the shake that knights in Outremer had learned from Saracens.
“Arnald Arifat! Happy to see you, and overjoyed that you’ve chosen to become a brother,” boomed Guillem. “When I saw your name in the list of novices, I decided to initiate you myself!”
“I . . . I am humbled that you even remember who I am, Master, and will be honored to take my vows before you,” replied Arnald, nonplussed.
“I also have some questions for you about your time in Syria, mon brave seigneur, but that can wait until after the ceremony,” added de Montrodon.
“No, no, tell me what you want to know, and I’ll answer you right away,” said Arnald.
The master smiled. “Come now, man, don’t be naive. I’ll question you after your vows because then, hiding something from your superior will be a mortal sin.”
The master of Aragon and Provence turned on his heel and left Arnald standing on the top landing.
Arnald found the next three days a greater torment than the first week after a wound in battle. Like all fighting men around thirty, he’d looked forward to the opportunity to meditate, perhaps even try to pray, but by the first night, he recalled why he preferred action to contemplation: because the latter invariably drove his thoughts to dark, melancholy considerations. From that moment, he became restless.
At long last, before sunset on the third day, a handful of brothers met for the ceremony in the chapel below the tower. The crypt was known as the Chamber of the Bronze Serpent since the time, thirty years earlier, when Salah ad-Din had gifted to Master Roncelin the famous biblical relic that cured the Israelites in the desert, and it had spent a night there on its way to the Paris temple.
The round little hall, lit by dozens of candles, was brighter than the dying Provence day outside. The neophyte was welcomed by a small crowd of knights in white and the chaplain, the only black habit. The buzz quieted as Arnald knelt before the commander, his hands joined on his chest.
“I, Arnald Arifat de Montréal, humbly implore you in the name of God and our Holy Lady to accept me into your company, and let me partake of the benefits of the house!”
“Beloved brother, perhaps you ask because you only see the outer trappings of the order: beautiful horses, armor, cloaks, so you think y
ou will be happy with us. But you don’t know that harsh rules prevail on the inside. Those of noble birth, like you, have no idea how hard servitude can be . . .”
The commander coughed and then droned on. “You will never again do as you please: if you wish to be on one side of the sea, you’ll be dispatched to the other. If you go to sleep you’ll be woken up, and if by chance you would like to be on watch, you’ll be told to go rest.”
It was clear from Ansiau’s tone that it was years since he’d felt those sacrifices would suffice to reconquer Christ’s sepulchre, but he wouldn’t have dreamed of changing even an “atque” in the ritual.
“And you’ll have to accept the harshest reprimands with humility. Consider well, sweet brother, if you’ll be able to bear all these hardships. . . .”
“Yes, my lord,” answered Arnald. “I will bear them all, God willing.”
There were more ritual questions, but thanks to his confession to the abbot he was not asked if he was excommunicated, and he answered them all truthfully. The commander made him swear to God and to the Virgin Mary that he would never leave the order, neither for a softer one nor for a stricter one, and that for the remaining days of his life he would strive to reconquer the Holy City of Jerusalem.
Then Arnald waited outside the chapel door as prescribed by the ritual. His life was about to change. “How will I care for a thirteen-year-old unable to fend for himself?” he thought. Then, anguished, “And how will I survive without women?”
He felt like a teenager again, his thoughts strangely jumbled and his breath a bit short. A hand on his shoulder told him the time had come. Arnald walked to the altar and knelt down again, but this time it was de Montrodon who solemnly threw a Templar mantle on his shoulders, gestured for him to stand, and kissed him the kiss of vassalage on the mouth. He was a knight of the temple!
