Next, After Lucifer

by Daniel Rhodes

  So now, my friend, thought McTell, it’s time for you to earn your keep. He noted the interest in Boudrie’s eyes as they followed the cognac’s progress across the room. “Monsieur le cure,” he said formally, “if it would please you to tell us a little of this region and its history, we’d be honored.”

  Boudrie accepted the Remy with a rumble of contentment. “Monsieur McTell,” he replied with equal gravity, “I spend a great part of each day listening to my own voice, speaking to what I believe you call in English an ‘audience captive.’ I say Mass, I preach sermons, I console the sick, I give penance and absolution. And yet, I rarely tire of listening to myself. Strange, is it not?”

  Linden smiled, a quick flash of teeth, and McTell saw that she was beginning to relax. She had seemed withdrawn during the day, tense at dinner, and he wondered if his own unrest could be communicating itself. She settled back, crossing her legs, peach-colored gown fanning out against the deep burgundy of the couch, and Boudrie seemed to ease his own stiffness a little. “I take it from our conversation of yesterday that you have a particular interest in Montsevrain.”

  The game was beginning, and McTell moved carefully. “The Templars have always fascinated me.”

  “To be sure, a most interesting group of men—and a most grim episode in history. Yes, they did once inhabit Montsevrain; I myself have seen documents to that effect. Of course, the fortress has changed hands many times since those days, and was finally abandoned in the nineteenth century. I believe that land reverted to a family from Anjou, or perhaps Champagne, but it hardly matters. They never come here.”

  “So it’s just sat there untouched for a hundred years or more,” Linden said. “Hard to imagine.”

  Boudrie looked puzzled. “You have no such unused land in America? Have I not heard of the ‘wide open spaces’?”

  “Not this close to a place like the Cote d’Azur. Somebody would string signs along the highways for five hundred miles, set up concession stands, and charge admission.”

  Boudrie nodded judiciously. “But what one must understand is that thirty kilometres back from the Cote, one may as well be in another country—and, almost, another century. The wealth you see in Cannes never reaches these little places like Saint-Bertrand. Much of the land has been farmed too long; it is easier to go to a city, Marseille or Lyon, and find a better living in an office or factory. The young especially have no love for a life of struggle and poverty. They want automobiles, television, glamour. And who can blame them?” Boudrie’s gaze, moving back and forth between their faces, came to rest on Linden. “So you see, madame, these people have no use for a desolate mountaintop and a pile of rocks. As for tourists, there are many ruins in France better preserved and far more accessible. A few times a summer someone takes the trouble to climb up there. But it is hardly an attraction.”

  Since seeing the girl in the flesh, McTell had abandoned his apparition theory. Still, it was possible that something about the place was known to cause psychic phenomena.

  “There’s no history of unusual occurrences there?” he said casually.

  The priest’s gaze moved to him and held steady. “What makes you ask, monsieur?”

  Wrong move, McTell thought. Anger at his mistake brought a creep of blood to his face. He raised his glass and half-turned away, shrugging. “With all these mysterious rumors, it just seemed like the sort of place that might be haunted.”

  “You have climbed up there yourself?”

  “Yes.”

  “And did anything unusual happen to you?”

  McTell hesitated. Then he said, “I started daydreaming and got home an hour late for dinner.’

  “Nothing unusual about that,” Linden said under her breath.

  Boudrie joined in their laughter, chuckling in a deep growl, and McTell glanced gratefully at his wife.

  “A great many unusual things are said to have happened there, Monsieur McTell, but not for some centuries.”

  As if on cue, Linden declared, “I’m dying to hear this story. A wizard with a magic book, commanding demons and raising the dead?” One shoe dangled, tapping against her foot.

  Boudrie looked reproachfully at McTell, who smiled and said, “Just repeating what I heard.”

  “Mon petit Rene,” Boudrie said, shaking his head. “Half a bottle of vin rouge, and he would have thrown in the Second Coming of Christ.”

  “Then perhaps you’d better set the record straight.” Boudrie took a sip of coffee, a longer one of the Remy, sighed appreciatively, and rearranged his big body on the couch. McTell settled back in anticipation.

  “You are right, it is better you should have facts than fancies,” the priest began, “although you may find that the fancies are more entertaining. But you, Monsieur McTell, undoubtedly know a great deal more about les Templiers than I.”

  “I’m familiar with most of the standard accounts, and a few not-so-standard ones.”

  “Well, I’m not,” Linden said. “Just because we’re married doesn’t mean John talks to me.”

  Boudrie coughed into his hand. “Of course I know little of marriage,” he murmured. “Perhaps, monsieur, you could take a moment to speak to your charming wife of these knights?”

  They laughed again, and McTell thought, Good: easy, casual, not too interested. “What I mainly know,” he said, “is that most of the information we have about them is highly questionable. But you’re the one onstage.”

  “Very well. Please correct me if I am mistaken.

  “The ‘Poor Knights of the Order of the Temple of Solomon’—a name that turns out to be tragically ironic, as you will see, madame—were a holy order of men who were a combination of soldiers and monks. This order was created after the First Crusade, sometime in the early years of the twelfth century. These knights took vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, just like other clerics; but their avowed mission was to protect the Holy Land and its pilgrims, by force. For many years they were the idols of Christendom—the bravest of warriors, the most fervent of the religious, almost more gods than men—and their ranks swelled with the greatest nobles in Europe.

  “Their riches and holdings swelled too, and perhaps it was inevitable that, over time, they achieved a new and less desirable fame—for their wealth and arrogance. Perhaps if they had stayed as poor as their title boasted, they would yet exist. But instead they were destroyed by the king of France, Philippe le Bel, who had them seized by the thousands in a single night—a Friday the thirteenth, interestingly enough, in the year 1307—and handed over to the Inquisition.”

  McTell’s fingers tightened around his glass. He had not made the connection until now: 1307 was the date carved into the stone of the cathedral’s wall.

  “It is generally agreed that the charges brought against them were for the most part fraudulent,” the priest went on. “How do you say? Trumped up. Philippe le Bel was a king with much luxury and many wars to support. He hated and feared this powerful order, who by their charter owed no allegiance to any secular authority. But he was able to install a pope in Avignon who was his creature—a sad chapter in the history of the Roman Church—and then he dared to bring down the Temple. In doing so he accomplished the double aim of ending their threat and seizing their wealth.

  “To justify his actions, Philippe seized upon rumors that were already in circulation. The Holy Land had fallen again into the hands of the infidel some years before; it was widely thought that the Templars had allied themselves with Saracen princes and fought against their brother Christians, that they had become little better than an army of mercenaries, and even that at the last they had sold the Holy Land outright into Muslim hands. There is good evidence of at least some truth to these accusations—n’est-ce pas, monsieur? Do I speak satisfactorily?”

  McTell bowed, impressed. The priest’s account was accurate and succinct.

  “Whether or not these charges were valid, no secular power alone, even one as mighty as the throne of France, could destroy that great order.
It was necessary for Philippe le Bel to enlist the aid of the Church and its terrible hammer, the Inquisition. Thus the accusations made against these knights had to be transferred to the realm of religion; and thus when they came to trial, it was not for treason or other crimes against their fellow man, but for crimes against God: in the main, heresy and blasphemy. In those times they were easy labels to apply to an enemy one wanted to destroy, and with the aid of torture, the Inquisition rarely failed to find sufficient evidence for convictions. Many of the Templars were burned or left to rot in prison, including a number of their important leaders.

  “That these knights used strange rituals which were unorthodox, if not deliberately heretical, there can be no doubt, although it seems that these were harmless enough. What is finally certain is that many innocent and even pious men came to cruel ends because of a rapacious king and a weakling pope. Though some few escaped in France, and remnants of the Order survived in other countries, the Temple was broken, and never rose again.”

  From the dining room came the brisk clattering sounds of Mile. Perrin, the cook, clearing the table. They jarred oddly with Boudrie’s words. He picked up his brandy glass distractedly, but it was empty, and he hastily put it down again, looking embarrassed. McTell was already on his feet. He filled the glass over the priest’s weak protests, and unobtrusively left the bottle by his side.

  “For heaven’s sake, don’t stop now,” he said. “What about our neighbors up the hill?”

  Linden nodded, eyes exaggeratedly round. “This is better than summer camp.”

  “And true up to this point, madame. But now, I fear, is when the story enters the realm of the fantastic. As you are surely aware, monsieur, the line between heresy and sorcery was, to the Inquisition, very thin. We read in accounts of the Templars’ trials that they were said to have variously worshipped a black cat, a talking head, an idol named Baphomet—even the demon-god Belial, a practice thought to have originated in very ancient Eastern worship. But of these charges of sorcery and diabolical worship, no real evidence was ever found. There was evil done, to be sure, but mainly by the Inquisition.

  “At least, this is as much as we can glean from official accounts. But according to the legend of this region, at least one man among the Templars was an avowed sorcerer and worshipper of Satan. This man was the Master of Montsevrain”—McTell nodded; the giant Suloy of whom the sacristan had spoken—“and absurd though such rumors might sound, he was with reason greatly feared by the peasants. Leaving aside any question of magical powers, he was undeniably a savage and evil man.

  “When the king’s agents arrived to seize the Templars of Montsevrain, they of course moved with all secrecy. The Templars were, after all, great warriors, and the fortress was a stronghold; the king’s men wanted to avoid either a battle or a siege. So they took certain of the villagers into their confidence. How exactly it was brought about is not clear after so many centuries, but the peasants contrived to open the fortress gates to the king’s men at a time when they knew the knights within were weak and unprepared—perhaps in the aftermath of one of the blood orgies they were said to have conducted. The peasants were necessarily familiar with the Templars’ habits, since they provided them with supplies and menial services—and, it would seem, victims.

  “In any case, the unsuspecting knights were seized and hurried off to trial at Nimes—all except for the Master. It is a measure of the terror in which he was held that trying to transport him so far—a journey that would have required several days and, more to the point, nights—was considered too great a risk. The king’s agents were hardened soldiers, but they were swayed enough by the peasants’ fear to agree to put that man to the stake immediately, before the fortress gates. According to the legend, he never uttered a sound, even to cry out in pain, from the moment he was taken. An exaggeration, no doubt.”

  McTell rose and stalked to the sliding doors. Just enough evening light remained to silhouette the brooding outline of the fortress. There, before the entrance, where he himself had stood, a man had once been burned alive. He remembered his uneasiness in passing through the archway.

  “Oui, monsieur,” Boudrie said. “On that very spot.” McTell turned back to find the priest’s gaze resting on him, steady, unreadable.

  “As for the rest of that group,” Boudrie continued, “they were tried, tortured, and burned in due time. It is from these trial records that I have a little evidence to bolster this story. Besides the accusations of unholy worship, there were others that have a more credible ring, including the disappearance of a number of people. But who knows? When the Templars fell, they became a great scapegoat, and everyone will leap upon a scapegoat in a time of trouble.”

  Abruptly, Mile. Perrin thrust her sharp face into the room. Her springy gray curls were tightly bound by a kerchief; an ancient pair of glasses pinched her thin nose. She rode a bicycle to and from the village, and McTell realized with amusement that the image of her as the Wicked Witch of Oz had become firmly fixed in his mind. “A demain,” she said brusquely. Boudrie hastily swiveled around in the couch and delivered a series of compliments about the meal; although McTell could not follow all of the rapid patois, it was so heartfelt that it brought color to the old lady’s cheeks. For the first time, he saw her smile. He supposed it would sour any woman to spend decades being stigmatized as a spinster—with “Mademoiselle”—every time someone addressed her, especially in an old-world place like this.

  “Well,” Linden said. “This Master must have made quite a reputation for himself.”

  “To be sure, madame. You must understand first that those were times not only of great superstition but of barbarity as well. No doubt the two are companions. It is perhaps impossible for us to imagine the day-to-day cruelty. Not uncommonly, those on their way to market would pass heads impaled upon stakes, men hanging in chains, dogs tearing at quartered bodies in the streets. Floggings and brandings were meted out like parking violations. Men were blinded and mutilated for the slightest of crimes, or for no crime at all. The nobility thought of the peasants quite literally as animals; and for all the faults for which the Church of Rome must rightly be charged, we must remember that it was the Church that first spread wide the concept of mercy. Still, the record of abominations is endless and chilling, and for one man to stand out as a monster is no small thing. But if even a little of what is said about this Master of Montsevrain is true, his wickedness would be hard to equal.

  “He joined the Templars as a youth, it is told; one would like to believe that he hoped to curb a nature whose ferocity he recognized already, but more probably he sought an outlet for his violence. His place of birth was near the Norman coast, wild and desolate even today, and for centuries the favorite route of invading Norsemen and British. The people of that region knew well the meaning of savagery and terror.

  “He grew to great size and strength, and in the Holy Land won acclaim as a fearless and merciless warrior. At some point he seems to have been taken prisoner by the Saracens and held for several years, although he may have joined them voluntarily. But there is no doubt that when he came back to Christendom, he made no more pretense of hiding his evil nature. He is reputed to have given caravans of pilgrims into the hands of the infidel for no reward other than the pleasure of seeing those unfit for slavery put to the stake. He hated women especially, and—could be most cruel in his treatment of them. Your pardon, madame.

  “At last his reputation was such that the Templars themselves were forced to take action. Whether for fear of scandal or fear of the man himself, they did not seek to try or imprison him. But by that time their influence in the Holy Land was nearly at an end anyway; and they sent him, with a small group of his followers, to Montsevrain, a holding which had come into their hands during the Crusade against les Albigeois—the Cathars. Here, they told him, he would not be interfered with as long as he remained. In short, they threw the people of the region, like sheep, to this wolf.

  “This was in 1299, n
ot long after the completion of the cathedral of Saint-Bertrand. Soon the ugly stories began. It was said that the castle was lit by strange fires on certain nights, that chanting was heard that had no part in Christian ritual. Groups of unwary pilgrims were occasionally taken to the fortress, supposedly to be sheltered until their further passage to the Holy Land could be arranged. None of them were ever seen again. Perhaps worst of all, a number of children disappeared.”

  “Children,” Linden murmured.

  For a moment none of them spoke; then, as if by signal, each turned aside to some evasive activity, Linden taking out a cigarette, McTell moving to light it, Boudrie finishing his cognac once again. Firmly, McTell refilled the glass. Boudrie watched him almost with reproach.

  “Whether these things actually happened or not, we will never know. Almost certainly, there is some truth to them. There were wilder accusations yet: that the worship of the demon Belial was open, that the Master had entered into a pact that gave him magical powers, and that to sustain these powers, he celebrated rituals that included human sacrifices. It is said he held a belief I think was not uncommon among primitives, that drinking blood would increase his strength.”

  “Do you realize,” McTell said slowly, “that you still haven’t used his name?”

  Boudrie smiled, a mirthless tightening of the lips. “Perhaps I share an unconscious superstition of peasant blood. His given name, Monsieur McTell, was Guilhem de Courdeval, but he was called by his brother knights Guilhem Suloy.”

  It was the same word the sacristan had used, but it seemed not to be a proper name after all—a nickname, or label of some sort. McTell wondered if it could be Arabic, or perhaps related to the French soleil, sun—although there seemed to be nothing about the man suggestive of light. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I didn’t catch that word.”

  Boudrie gazed blankly at him, torn from thoughts of his own. “Monsieur?”