The Seal

by Adriana Koulias

  Christian crinkled his eyes. ‘If I had leprosy I would have died long before now . . . It has been a good secret that we have kept between us, my friend . . . In any case, I am almost an empty vessel. But you? You have much to do yet, Jacques de Molay, much . . . and that is why you have come. Will you not tell me why you are so full of heaviness, why so disquieted?’

  There was a pause. Jacques de Molay seemed to be measuring his answer. ‘This seems likely to be a leave-taking, since I depart for France, and I fear I shall not return.’

  Christian de St Armand nodded. ‘So you shall not.’

  Jacques frowned and nodded, and smiled. ‘Your eyes and ears are attentive.’

  ‘I see and I hear . . . I know that since our short rule of this place we have lived like unwelcome visitors.’

  Jacques sighed. ‘The people of this island have no liking for us . . . we have acquired our share of enemies.’ He made a rueful smile. ‘The King of Cyprus is young and petulant, he supports us more than his brother Henry, though it is far less than I should like . . . but my reasons for leaving are . . . more pressing.’

  ‘I know,’ the old man said.

  ‘You know . . . about Thibaud, that he was murdered – poisoned in this place?’

  ‘At Limassol,’ Christian said.

  Jacques was thoughtful and a note of unguarded anxiety crept into his voice. ‘It is something to say it – I suspect our Order was behind it.’ He had the look of a man at a loss at the sound of his own words. ‘I have known it long, too many years, but I thought I could retake the Holy Land and that this would bring an end to such squabbles . . . I have not been successful . . . The Temple in France does not want a Crusade and rallies against me. The King of France has his scent upon the gold of the Order . . . All is coming to an end . . . the Lord has shown it to me in a dream.’

  Christian was silent.

  Jacques raised brows and searched his eyes.

  ‘And you will make a step from the light to the darkness?’

  ‘If I could but live once again in the lightness of the moment, in such simplicity!’ Jacques answered him. ‘Ahh, it would be a respite from the complex darkness of these future concerns. But the world moves in complicated rounds, not simple ones, brother, as you know.’

  ‘To be but a leaf falling from a tree,’ Christian added. ‘To be a tree. The grass and the sky and the dirt in which lives the creative power behind it!’

  Now a look passed over Jacques’ face that creased his scars and raised his brows. ‘You seem like those Persian mystics, who spin words into mysteries.’

  ‘I shall let you in on a secret . . . these words are a mystery to me as well!’ He smiled and chuckled and gestured for the water, which Jacques gave him little by little from an earthenware cup.

  ‘Come,’ he said, when he was finished. ‘Move closer, I am weary and you are right, I prepare to join my friend Eisik in that great sea of souls who bask in the eternal, in the arms of the great wise mother of God . . . but this dawn we sit as friends, one last time, so let us talk now, you and I. What keeps you in your faith as all things fall to pieces?’

  Jacques de Molay answered readily, his eyes far away. ‘My love for Christ.’

  Christian looked at the man, at the hooked nose and bones of the face too thin of skin scarred silver over the cheeks. The greying hair, the straight-cut shoulders. There were many Templars and many Grand Masters but only a man such as Jacques de Molay could be the last Grand Master of the Order. He wondered where a man such as sat beside him might find comfort.

  ‘What is this love of Christ, Jacques, if not a murmur? Something fleeting that is felt in the heart and as soon as it is felt it vanishes? It is a thought as fragile as a rose that blooms only in the mind, an ideal that fires up the will and dies down again, Jacques, and can easily become only a dream that slips from the memory into darkness like a rock thrown down a well. You have lived this love of Christ for all the world! Forging ahead upon the backs of the gods! And in this swift life there is no room for those who cannot follow. Some must fall behind. Too much too soon . . .’

  Jacques de Molay nodded. ‘This is so, but what shall remain of our struggles when all is lost?’

  ‘A shape formed from the sacrifices of so many into which Christ can drop his heart . . . it is as yet no more than a seed ...’

  ‘This is a pleasant dream.’

  ‘What a man dreams today is carried on into eternity. It creates the world for those who come after him. So tell me, what is your resolve?’

  Jacques de Molay looked up at this. ‘To follow my duty to its end,’ he said. ‘I shall not resist what the Lord has waiting for me . . . We shall sacrifice ourselves rather than be sacrificed.’ The Grand Master looked into Christian’s eyes and it seemed then to the old monk as if a rush of surprise and wonder and grief entered into them. He was struggling, Christian knew, to rein in a passion that was like a wild horse headed for doom.

  ‘You are a patient man, Jacques, you have never asked me why I have spent my long and sinful life in this place, surrounded by walls, scribbling on parchment . . . why you have sequestered me and kept me safe. I shall now tell you that I have been setting down with my unworthy faculties what shall remain hidden and unknown – the secrets of the Order.’

  Jacques looked upon the old man with surprised intensity.

  ‘Yes,’ Christian nodded. ‘The secrets . . . these things too shall remain for tomorrow, though hidden. I have written how one day men will accept into their souls the essence of Christ, in the way that a seal makes an imprint in wax . . . This day shall come, but there is something I shall impart to you now that I have left unwritten in my history, something you should know – sacramentum regis – the kingly sacrament. Come . . . come closer still . . .’

  Jacques let out a breath like a man full of dying thoughts and stretched his neck forward to lean in to him, every muscle taut.

  ‘The seal which you carry upon your finger,’ he said, taking Jacques de Molay’s hand in his, ‘it is a symbol of the wisdom of the Order handed to our first Grand Master, Hugues, bless his soul . . . It was something known only to those who were initiated into the secret Gospel of the two Johns, into the mystery of the sons of the widow . . . vouchsafed by Ormus, disciple of St Mark who was the disciple of Paul. You see . . . there on the surface, the seal tells of the Holy Sepulchre, as does the second seal, the replica that is worn by your seneschal . . . However, as you know there is something that lies hidden, something peculiar and unknown, a mystery behind the mystery of its miracle . . . Bring me the quill,’ he gestured to the rough-worn wooden table by the window.

  Jacques did as he was asked.

  ‘Open it.’

  The Grand Master raised his brows. ‘But I cannot! No man has looked upon it since Solomon!’

  ‘Open it once and then never look upon it again.’

  The Grand Master pressed the pointed end of the quill on a particular spot along its edge. The topmost portion of the ring snapped open, revealing something beneath.

  ‘You know of its existence . . . all Grand Masters do.’

  Jacques de Molay looked perplexed. ‘How do you know it?’

  ‘It is a bane to know it and it shall now be your bane. Thankfully the knowledge of it has been lost except that it belonged to Solomon and to David before him . . . all Grand Masters are admonished never to look upon it. But I shall tell you what it means . . . because it is the end . . . and it now presents a danger.’ He lowered his voice. ‘The Temple has had many tasks, some of them secret, some of them open-faced. Some come to us from the past but one, however, lies in wait for the future . . . the seal points to this. This is the thing, Jacques, the Kingly secret. The secret of the King belongs not in our time but is of the future. David knew of it and he passed it on to his son, Solomon, who knew how the Temple had to be built though he could not build it. This task fell to those of Hiram’s line since they knew how to transform and redeem the world. You have heard tell of the le
gend of Cain and Abel? David and Solomon were of Abel’s line, from him have spawned the priests, the thinkers, those who know. Hiram was of the line of Cain, from him came the sons of the widow, those who have fire in their will, those who do. We brothers of the Order are children of the widow. Below her veil she conceals the secret of the divine marriage. There is good reason why much of this has been forgotten. It is a dangerous secret, since it does not discriminate between good men and bad . . . it shall have any master that claims it . . .’

  Christian motioned with his gnarled hands and the Grand Master looked below the lid to the hidden seal.

  Outside a cloud swept across the sky and covered the sun.

  Afterwards, the Grand Master closed the hinged lid and sat paused for a long time, looking down to his hands, to the ring. His face was drained of blood.

  He moved his head with a jerk and stood awkward and out of breath. He did not speak, his eyes formed a question.

  Christian closed his own to dispel the images that those eyes made upon his mind. ‘The wisdom of God is inscrutable,’ he said.

  After a long moment the Grand Master said, ‘I will go now and prepare the men.’

  Christian nodded and tears filled his eyes. ‘St Michael protect you.’

  He watched the Grand Master’s thin, square-shouldered form leave the room. Those shoulders were bent a little now, for they had grown a further burden.

  4

  DEPARTURE

  The end of all things is at hand.

  1 Peter 4:7

  They came out onto the dry sand, casting no shadow and seeing little. The bay of figs was empty of bigger ships, except for the galley that lay down in the water some way off. Nearer to shore, boats and barges lit by stars mingled polite and circumspect in the pleasant night, with only the sound of a gentle ocean lapping at the edges of the sand.

  The three knights gathered together under the sickle moon that, resting over a cloud, cast ghostly wisps of light over their dark apparel and the wooden barrels at their feet.

  To Etienne its light reflected the sun’s body force and gave it the look of a monstrance wherein dwelled the dark image of the sun’s spirit. He let his gaze linger on it a moment, allowing the strength of such a thought to fill him, and then, squinting, moved his eyes firstly towards the line of short waves polishing the west face of a rock wall and secondly to a distant light that flickered and was gone. Etienne cupped his hand and made the sound, and another flicker of light appeared in answer.

  Beneath his unyielding countenance he felt good and bad at once – loose and stretched. Happy to be beyond the gates of Famagusta, which had seemed to him more and more like a prison, and at the same time anxious that all go smoothly and without incident.

  ‘It is the Eagle, I see her beak,’ said the old Scot Andrew behind him. A veteran of two Crusades, he cast his two small eyes like beads over the indistinct line of the galley. ‘Aye, the slaves are shackled, by what I can see of it . . .’

  ‘You have good eyes, Andrew!’ said Marcus. ‘On a clear night might you not see Syria then?’

  ‘My eyes are all that works aright in this carcass of mine. I should throw myself against a spike if they were gone.’

  A warm breeze moved over the water and the tide making small boats bump together. The men tuned their ears to sounds and their eyes to shadows.

  Etienne turned to a whisper that came between pants from the darkness.

  ‘It is I . . . Jourdain.’ A shadow moved towards them.

  When it neared, what was visible of the young captain was his blond hair, lit up strangely in the meagre moonlight.

  ‘The horses are hid?’ Etienne asked him.

  Jourdain got his breath back. ‘Behind that hill, there is a small deserted house, not far . . .’ He seemed to be smiling, since his voice had a note of lightness about it. ‘This is all a guarded business, then.’

  ‘Did you see anyone?’ Marcus pressed.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well then,’ Etienne said, ‘we shall sit and wait for the galley.’

  The night sounded with insects and Etienne felt a restlessness for Marcus to be off so that he could think upon the happenings of these last hours. He took up a handful of the coarse sand and let it fall between his fingers.

  ‘Where does the galley go then?’ Jourdain asked.

  ‘To Portugal,’ Marcus told him.

  ‘That is a small thing. What shall be found on the way there, that is what troubles me.’

  ‘Perhaps it shall find calm weather on the deep, respite from winds in trouble, rest and sleep,’ Jourdain put in.

  ‘Shall I turn to stone with numbness?’ Etienne told him. ‘You sound like the troubadours of my country, Jourdain!’

  ‘I have heard tell that all men from your land of the south are poets,’ he said. ‘Do you not remember one song?’

  Etienne gave a half-smile to the darkness. This being out of doors and in the open air with brothers and a deed to perform gave his soul a semblance of youth, and he deigned to tell one. ‘Behold, the pleasant and longed for spring, brings back joyfulness, violet flowers fill the meadows, the sun brightens everything, sadness is now at an end – déjà les chagrins se dissipent!’

  ‘Well . . .’ Andrew slapped a knee. ‘That is a fine one!’

  Etienne now regretted it. ‘It is only a memory.’ Then because he wanted to move on from such foolishness he said, ‘The wind picks up, if they do not hurry our deception will be discovered.’

  ‘Roger de Flor captains that vessel.’ Andrew had forgotten his merriment and became melancholy. ‘The deserter took the Falcon to the sea at Acre after he made his fortune from the old and weak, and never returned . . . full of fleeing merchants and weighed down with the town’s gold!’

  Marcus grunted in return. ‘I found out his history – in the east he worked for Frederick of Sicily and then for Andronicus using mercenaries and Catalans to keep out Turks. He was made Admiral of Romania – they tried to assassinate him for his cruelty.’

  Etienne rubbed his hands of sand. It seemed always to fall on him to ease Marcus’s spirit. ‘Here in Cyprus the Temple is thought cruel, and in the Holy Land also . . . It is the way of people that they despise those who are their saviours and soon forget the cruelty of the oppressors from whom they were freed – those men who raped their women and cut off the noses of their priests. At any rate, Roger de Flor saved your life at Acre, and he saves the Order now.’

  Marcus shifted, kicking at the sand. ‘Saving my life is no more than any brother would have done, saving the Order is no more than any man paid well might do. At any rate it leaves a bad taste in the mouth.’

  ‘Well,’ Andrew remarked, ‘much more of this and we shall not know brother from foe.’

  ‘Roger de Flor,’ Marcus corrected him, ‘is not a brother since he has forsaken our Lord’s Sepulchre. That is not likely to meet easy punishment, not here and not in heaven!’

  ‘We have all forsaken it,’ Etienne reminded him.

  ‘It was not my choice, it was not your choice, Etienne!’

  ‘Perhaps it is our task to lose the Holy Land and to regain it again,’ Jourdain put in. ‘Since Aristotle tells that courage is born of pain.’

  Andrew sniggered at the boy. ‘What oddities are visiting us this night! Poems and songs and philosophies! How long do you think you’ll live then, lad?’ He spat a wad at his feet. ‘The Holy Land is forsaken and the Order that has guarded it until now is disordered . . . our world is disordered and soon to be dismantled. There is no courage to be purchased from living a common life that knows no lofty task!’

  ‘Keep silent!’ Marcus was irritated. ‘Such words speak disquiet to our very hearts!’ ‘Our hearts, Commander, are disquieted more by the lack of words,’ Andrew gave back.

  There was a sound then. The men made tense their muscles.

  The black lapped against the beach and the breeze played at the edge of it.

  ‘Look there, something comes,’ Andrew point
ed, ‘oars in the water.’

  Marcus stood. ‘He does not signal.’

  ‘No,’ Etienne followed him.

  ‘Well, what then?’ Andrew pulled up his old bones to see.

  ‘What then?’ Etienne let the question escape from his lips. ‘We wait, ready for anything.’

  At the same moment there was another sound, this came from the landed edges of the beach.

  Without a word they unsheathed their blades. It came towards them, faster now. Two feet . . .

  ‘Hist!’ the voice said in a whisper some way off. ‘Seneschal!’

  ‘Iterius! How come you here?’ Marcus’s harsh voice made a sting in the night.

  The steps halted, hesitant in the narrow light.

  ‘I am sent to the seneschal,’ Iterius said, breathless, ‘as escort.’

  Etienne stared hard and firm at the space where the man stood but the thin moon showed up nothing of that face. ‘Who sends you?’

  ‘The captain of the guard and before him the marshal. He had orders from the Grand Master.’

  ‘The Grand Master, you say?’ Marcus moved towards the shape.

  There was a moment of hesitation. ‘Yes, lord.’

  ‘I have not heard of such orders,’ Etienne said to him.

  ‘It was thought that you might be light on men for your return.’

  ‘Go to the track from which you came and keep watch. Turn no eye in our direction – we shall not need you on the beach.’ Etienne turned from him and further argument, but the man was insistent.

  ‘I can help when the boat arrives . . .’

  But Marcus was upon the man then. ‘The seneschal has said nothing about a boat, Egyptian! Now . . . go!’

  The dark shadow of the sergeant nodded, and turned towards the hill and the road.

  Marcus took Etienne aside, before giving a rough whisper into his ear: ‘Listen Etienne, such a man as Ayme together with that Egyptian . . . there is something in that sergeant’s eye . . . I sense some form of devilry afoot. I would watch my back on your return to Famagusta!’