Iacobus

by Matilde Asensi

  “You may be right, boy. In any case, we are going to have to find out.”

  “And you already know something, don’t you? All those lies and sins which go against the first of the Commandments were not in vain, were they?”

  “The only thing we know for a fact is that two Arab doctors examined Clement V before he died. Nothing else.”

  “And what can you tell me about the remedy, the emeralds?”

  “It is very common for well-off people to consume precious stones to fight illnesses.”

  “And is it true? Does it work?”

  “I must admit that no, it doesn’t. But in time you will learn that it is not just real preparations that cure ailments. Didn’t you hear how the Pope improved as soon as he took the potion?”

  “But what was wrong with him? I noticed that you were asking many questions to that effect.”

  “From what I can work out, I believe that His Holiness did not have a very clear conscious. Imagine, Jonas, that you are Clement V. On the nineteenth day of March of the year of Our Lord 1314 you witness the horrible sight of seeing two men die on the fire, men who you have known for many years, important, powerful men, whose guilt has not been proven and furthermore, as monks, they are your subjects, exclusively yours and not of the French monarchy. As Pope, you weakly tried to protect them from the wrath and ambitions of the King, the ruler who gave you the papacy and who keeps you there but Philip has threatened to appoint you an antipope if you don’t agree to his claims. So there you are, knowing that the eyes of God are watching you and judging you and, at that time, when the flames begin to lick their bodies, the Grand Master of the Templar Order curses you and summons you to the Tribunal of God within a year. Naturally, you are afraid. You try not to think about it but you can’t help it. You have nightmares, you are obsessed. You want to carry on with your normal life as a Pastor of the Church but you know that there is a sword hanging over your head. So your nerves get the better of you. Not everyone has the same nature, Jonas. There are people who can handle great physical pain but crumble when they are faced with a problem of the soul. Others, however, manage problems with great integrity but roar like animals at the slightest of pain. I’m sure that our Pope was a weak and gullible man and began to feel hellishly tortured while he was still alive. Fever is a symptom that you can see in both ill and healthy patients. Nerves can also lead to fever and very frequently, vomiting or ‘closed stomach’. Do you remember how the Pope didn’t want to eat anything at the inn? Laborious breathing is also a sign of different ailments but ruling out a heart problem, given that his lips had a good color to them and he didn’t have any pain in his body, the only other cause would be his lungs, or again, his nerves. In the case of Clement I think that everything came down to a bad case of excitement.”

  “Is that why he got better when he drank the emeralds?”

  “He felt better because he thought that he was getting better.”

  “And was that true?”

  “Evidence shows us otherwise,” I said, laughing.

  “But the black blood … the bleeding from every orifice ….”

  “Well, there are two explanations to chose from: One, which seems the most probable seeing as how he died, is that the Pope suffered internal cuts to his stomach and intestines from shards of badly-ground emeralds that led to bleeding, and the other, purely speculative, is that those two Arab doctors were in actual fact two Templars in disguise who gave him some sort of poison in the potion.”

  “And which one do you think it is?”

  “Come on, Jonas, think a bit. I have simplified your work as much as I can. Now show me your deductive abilities.”

  “But I don’t know!” he said, irritated.

  “O.K., but I’ll only help you because we are just getting started. Later you will have to help me.”

  “I’ll do what I can.”

  “Let’s see …. Someone like the Pope, accustomed to a comfortable life, who doesn’t know what it is to be cold, nor hungry, who has dozens of people waiting on his every demand, chefs who cook only for him, council fathers who serve as lackeys, and many similar people, someone like that, do you think they would drink a potion in which emeralds, capable of shredding his intestines, first pass through his mouth and throat?”

  “Of course not,” he confirmed, biting his bottom lip and looking carefully at the flames of the fire. “Somebody like that would have protested as soon as a tiny shard had touched his tongue.”

  “Exactly. So, we go back to the Templar’s poison. You must know that there are thousands of poisons and thousands of ingredients which, without being poisonous, become so when they are mixed with other equally innocent substances. Many of the preparations we use to cure illnesses contain poison in quantities that herbalists and doctors must control very carefully so as not to produce a negative effect. Which is why, if those two doctors were Templars, and given the great knowledge of their Order in these subjects thanks to their many years of contact with the Orient ….”

  “You could also say that about the Hospitallers.”

  “Thanks to their many years of contact with the Orient,” I repeated, “it is almost impossible to know what substance they added to the innkeeper’s mortar while they ground the emeralds. What we can deduce is that it was very powerful and very fast-working. The innkeeper told us that his blood was black, dark … If the blood had come from cuts inflicted by the emeralds, it would have been red.”

  “Why?”

  “The body has many mysteries, and blood is one of them. We just don’t know. What we can say is that depending on what part of the body it comes from, blood seems to have a different color. That’s why I know that the emeralds didn’t cut his insides, because if they had, his blood, just like the blood that would flow from your arm if I cut it right now with my knife, would have been red, red and shiny. However, black blood doesn’t come from cuts which confirms that it contained a substance that dulled its color, that made it dirty. But we will never know what substance it was.”

  “And the Templars? How could they pass themselves off as Moors?”

  “I just said that the Templars have a profound knowledge of the Muslim world and of its sects (that of the Sufis, for example, and that of the Ismailis). Impersonating Saracen doctors was easy for them. So, we will accept that they were two Templars. First of all, they fulfill the cabalistic precept of the two members.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You will learn bit by bit, Jonas. You can’t try and acquire the most profound knowledge, secrets and scriptures of man and Mother Earth in just one day. It is enough to know that the Templars always go in pairs. Even their sigillum displays two Templars riding together on the same horse, an allegorical reading of knowledge that leads to the adeptus via the path of Initiation.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re talking about,” he sighed.

  “And that’s the way it must be for now, boy.” But I continued with my argument. “There were two of them, and they were pretending to be Arabs with such conviction that they even convinced the innocent son of the innkeeper, who came across them by coincidence while they were praying to Mecca. All irreproachable. But the Templars are vain. They were so convinced of their superiority, of their efficiency and courage, that they were used to leaving small traces, tiny signs that lay dormant for years waiting for someone to uncover them.”

  “And what traces did they leave this time, frere?” asked Jonas, excited.

  “Their fake names, do you remember?”

  “Yes. They were Adab Al-Acsa and Fat Al-Yedom.”

  “Remind me that one of the first things I must teach you are the Arabic and Hebrew languages. Nowadays, you cannot travel the world without them.”

  “Surely, these names hide something that I am not able to understand.”

  “Exactly. You see, the first thing you have to do is listen to the sound. However, we only have the transcription of an ignorant man, whose ears are not accustomed t
o the rhythm of the Arabic language. So, the first thing we have to do is listen.”

  “Adab Al-Acsa and Fat Al-Yedom.”

  “Very good. Now, let’s take it word by word: Adab; Adab is, without a doubt, Ádâb, which means ‘punishment’, so you can see that we are on the right track. As far as Al-Acsa, there’s no problem there. It is obviously referring to the Al-Aqsa mosque, which means ‘The Only One’, located within the compound of the Temple of Solomon and which the Templars used as their residence, as a presbytery house or mother house, from the time of King Baldwin II until the fall of Jerusalem. So although it seems a bit complex, the translation of Adab Al Acsa would be ‘Punishment of The Only One’, or more or less, ‘Punishment of the Templars’.”

  “Amazing!”

  But we still have the second name: Fat Al-Yedom. Fat, like Adab, isn’t too difficult. It refers to Fath which means ‘victory’ but victory of whom? The truth is that I don’t know, nor remember having read anything about a man or a place called Al-Yedom but it’s a very big world, and, as proved by Al-Juarizmi, whose real name was Muhammad ibn Musá, the Earth is a huge round sphere that can be traveled eternally without a beginning or an end. Maybe there is some place on it with that name.”

  “The Earth is round?” said Jonas, shocked, opening his eyes very wide. “What nonsense! Everyone knows that the Earth is flat and is held up by two columns in the east and in the west, and that if we wanted to go further than the edges, we would fall into an infinite abyss.”

  “For the time being, and until you have studied sufficient mathematics and astronomy, I will let you continue to believe that nonsense.”

  “It’s the truth, as told by the Church!”

  “Magnificent! I already told you that I’m not going to argue about it right now. I’m much more interested in resolving the enigma hidden in the words Al-Yedom. If our pair of Templars want their tracks to be followed with such ease, as is the case of the first name, the solution to the second must also be within our reach and we just have to retrace the path they took to choose their Arab names. The first one means something like ‘Punishment of the Templars’, and the second begins ‘Victory of’ … of whom? Of a person, of another place, of a symbol? Al-Yedom, Al-Yedom,” I repeated tirelessly, looking for a clue in the sound. “It can’t be that difficult, they wanted someone to discover it. Let’s begin by assuming that it is ‘Victory of’ somebody, in this case the somebody would be Al-Yedom ….” I stopped in my tracks, dazzled by the brilliance. “Of course! Good God, it was right under our noses! It was so easy that even they must have been laughing when they thought it up!”

  “Well I don’t get it.”

  “Think, Jonas. What is the first rule when it comes to hiding a message?”

  “I don’t know, although I would love to find out.”

  “Play with the order of the letters, Jonas! Simply play with the order of the letters and the words! Years ago, for reasons that are now irrelevant, I had to read some treatises on the use of secret alphabets and encrypted languages, and they all recommended to use the simplest system: play on words, puns, assonances, anagrams and hieroglyphics. As a rule the intruder will always be on the lookout for a complex and impossible code and will overlook the most simple and evident things.”

  “Do you mean to say that the letters of Al-Yedom are also the letters of another word?” inquired Jonas, yawning and falling back slowly onto his cloak. Despite his appearance, he was just an overly-tired boy.

  “Think, Jonas, think! It’s so easy!”

  “I can’t think, sire, I’m falling asleep.”

  “Molay, Jacques de Molay, the Grand Master! It was the ‘Y’ in Yedom that caught my eye, do you understand? Changing around the letters they made Al-Yedom from De Molay. ‘Victory of Molay’. What do think, huh? Ingenious. ‘Punishment of Al-Aqsa’, i.e., ‘Punishment of the Templars’ and ‘Victory of Molay’. Dear boy, I think we are going to ….”

  But Jonas was fast asleep next to the heat of the fire, with his face leaning on his arm.

  We rested for the night in Vienne and from there went onto Lyon, going up through La Chaise Dieu, Nevers, Orleans and finally Paris. It was a long journey lasting ten days, during which I taught Jonas my meager knowledge of the French language, which I tried to expand on every occasion I came across, speaking to different people until I felt reasonably sure of my expressions. I have never understood those people who say that they are incapable of learning a language. Words are tools, such as those of a blacksmith or mason, and don’t hold any more secrets than any other art. The lessons, which improved on a daily basis for both the teacher and the student, also allowed me to address for Jonas the first and rudimentary knowledge of subjects like philosophy, logic, mathematics, astronomy, astrology, alchemy and cabala. Jonas soaked up each and every one of my words and was able to repeat what I had told him point for point. He had a prodigious memory but not just prodigious for his ability to retain but also for his amazing ability to forget everything that didn’t interest him.

  At night, especially those nights we spent in the open air in the middle of a field, I watched him sleeping by the light of the hot coals, looking for the distant traits of his mother in his face. And, to my distress, I found them. He had the same thin eyebrows and the same hairline, and the ovalness of his face drew the same perfect angles and the same shadows. Someday I would have to tell him the truth. But not yet. It was still not the right time. I wasn’t prepared and I wondered, full of terror, if I ever would be.

  We entered Paris on a hot and sunny summer’s morning, just a few days after Jonas’ fourteenth birthday, crossing the wall of Philip Augustus through the door of the tower of Nesle and coming out on the other side. As we couldn’t stay in the provincial captaincy of my Order, we sought shelter in a guest house in the suburbium of Marais, outside of the walls, in a hostel named Au Lion d’Or. The choice was not accidental: A few houses further down began what was once the populous Jewish quarters of Paris, now almost deserted following the expulsion ordered by Philip, and next to it, towering and majestic, the pointed towers of the monastery residency of the Knights Templar rose high in the sky. You only had to admire those walled constructions in the middle of the swampy ground for a moment and break it down into sectors to understand just how far the power and wealth of the Templars reached. More than four thousand people, including milites, refugees of royal justice, artisans, peasants and Jews had lived inside it. The truly amazing thing was not that Philip IV had the audacity to order the mass detention of its occupants in the middle of the night, no; the thing that was impossible to conceive is that he had gotten away with it. That fortress on the outskirts of Paris seemed really impregnable. Now it was in the hands of my Order and although it pained me to say it, there was nothing left of its prior splendor.

  Our room at the Hostel Au Lion d’Or was large and sunny and had a wide scrinium for working, a small table with a sink and superb views over the fields of the Marais forisburgus (3). Furthermore, and most importantly, the meals cooked by the owner weren’t all that bad. My wooden bed was in the middle of the room and Jonas’ straw cot was under the window. At first I thought it would be best to swap places to avoid him getting pneumonia but then I changed my mind. Lying there he could look at the constellations and the celestial phenomena. A couple of blankets would be enough to ward off the cold of night.

  If you don’t mind my saying, I would say that the only bad thing about Paris is that it’s full of people. Everywhere you look there are groups of students, actors performing their art, merchants discussing prices, nobles hunting for adventure, peasants, workers, chaplains on their way to their residences or the numerous convents in the city, Jews, vagabonds, paupers, painters, goldsmiths, prostitutes, gamblers, royal guards, knights, nuns … They say that two hundred thousand people live there, and it even got to a point where the authorities had to put heavy chains at the ends of the streets to be able to block them off and moderate the circulation of people, coach
es and riders. I had never seen in any other city — and I’ve been to a lot throughout my life —, traffic as terrible as that of Paris. Not a day goes by that somebody isn’t killed from being run over by the carriage of a speed lover. Naturally, with such commotion, robberies are as common as the Pater Noster, and you have to be very careful that your bag of gold isn’t stolen without you even realizing. And to finish off the list of bad things about Paris, I would say that if there is one thing that is more abundant than the people, it’s the rats, rats as big as pigs. Any day in this city can be exhausting.

  In the middle of that craziness I had to find a woman called Beatrice of Hirson, lady-in-waiting to Matilda of Artois, mother-in-law of Philip V the Long, King of France. The passes in my name from the Valencian Order of Montesa were of little help to be admitted in the presence of a woman like Beatrice of Hirson, who, although it seemed was lacking a noble title, must have descended from a very long-established French nobility to hold office as the lady-in-waiting of the powerful Matilda. I was thinking about it for quite a while and finally reached the conclusion that it would be best to write a letter of presentation which would hint, with exquisite subtlety, that my interest in seeing her was related to a matter regarding her former lover, William of Nogaret. This, if my suspicions were correct, would provoke an immediate reception.

  I took great care in writing the letter and sent Jonas to the Cité Palace to hand it to her in person, if that was possible; I didn’t want those words falling into the wrong hands. Meanwhile, I spent the morning going over my notes and planning my next moves. A quick visit to the Pont-Sainte-Maxence forest, a few miles north of Paris, was compulsory to study in person the place where Philip IV the Fair, father of the current King, had fallen from his horse, as was told, and had been attacked by a huge deer. According to the reports that His Holiness had given me, on the morning of the 26th of November 1314, the King had gone out hunting in the forest of Pont-Sainte-Maxence, accompanied by his servant, Hugo of Bouville, his personal secretary, Maillard and some relatives. When they reached the area, which the King knew well as he often hunted there, the peasants told him that a rare deer with twelve antlers and a beautiful gray coat had been seen on the outskirts of the forest on two recent occasions. The King, eager to conquer that impressive specimen, went after the deer so fast that he ended up leaving his companions behind and getting lost in the forest. When they found him a while later, he was lying on the ground saying over and over: ‘The cross, the cross …’. He was immediately taken to Paris although (even though he could barely speak) he asked to be taken to his dear palace in Fontainebleau, where he had been born. The only sign of violence that the doctors could find on his body was a blow to the back of his head which surely must have happened when he fell from his horse and was attacked by the deer. He died following twelve days of dementia during which his only and constant wish was to drink water, and when he died, to the horror of those present and the court in general, his eyes could not be shut. According to my copy of Reinaldo’s report, the Grand Inquisitor of France — who accompanied the King during his last days —, the eyelids of the deceased monarch opened again and again, and they had to be covered with a blindfold before he was buried.