‘Credo in Deum, Patrem, Omnipotem ...’
Nogaret was at the peak of irritation. He stretched his back and said, ‘Yes . . . yes . . . you believe in God . . . Once again.’
The man turned the device tighter as Nogaret moved toward the fire to warm himself. Jacques de Molay had suffered many privations in the east, war had made him strong, and though he was now past sixty years, Nogaret knew he could easily stand torture that would bring a lesser man to confession.
A feeling close to admiration caught itself in his throat and it made a change to envy, and to disdain.
He gestured with his hand and heard a further movement of the mechanical device. Something snapped and there was a cry. Nogaret turned to look and found the sight a little disgusting. The shoulders had dislocated in unison and the rib cage looked grotesque. He knew that despite his sensitive nature and his natural repulsion, he must approach the rack. When his mouth was nearly upon the other man’s ear, he said, ‘Tell me!’
‘Credo in unum Dominum Iesum Christum.’
Nogaret yawned. ‘But Monsieur de Molay, how can you believe in Christ when I know that you have spat and urinated upon His cross?’
‘Credo in Spiritu Sanctum ...’
The lawyer frowned and wiped his brow. ‘Well, monsieur, your belief in the Holy Spirit is not helping you. Only I can help you, yes? If you tell me what I want to hear . . . Now, did you fornicate with your brothers?’
He was answered by silence.
‘Tormentor, again . . .’
The man turned the wheel and it was followed by a howl.
‘You commanded your oblates to kiss you and thereafter you fornicated in the most vile manner before the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ . . . Tell us everything, God will forgive you.’
‘Please . . .’ the Grand Master said.
‘More.’
The tormentor was uncertain.
‘Will he die?’ Nogaret asked, sniffing into his lace-edged cloth.
The tormentor peered into the face with professional detachment and sweat dripped from his chin and mingled with the blood on the features of Jacques de Molay. ‘Some are the stronger for it,’ he answered, ‘and some are the weaker for it.’
‘Well . . .’ the royal lawyer said, ‘death we must view as a heavenly release, and must not come before confession is full and voluntary. Shall we wait, or shall we proceed?’
The tormentor hesitated, scratched the pockmarks on his chin, spat a wad of phlegm at a puddle on the ground and nodded.
Nogaret narrowed his eyes and pointed them at the Templar Grand Master. ‘Answer me, Monsieur de Molay, did you kiss new entrants on the mouth, the navel, the buttocks?’
The Grand Master’s voice was weak but it could still be heard.
‘Sanctorum, communionem, remissionem, peccatorum carnis ...’
‘Your sins shall not be forgiven unless you confess! Tighter . . .’ Nogaret rubbed the small of his back. ‘It aches,’ he commented. ‘Did you deny Christ your Lord, did you spit on the cross, did you fornicate with your fellows, did you kiss one another on the navel, the anus and the mouth?’
‘Resurrectionem vitam aeternam . . . Amen.’
‘Again . . .’
There was the sound of meat scraping bone. The Grand Master bit his lip but a yell tore through it that made Nogaret give a little jump.
He grabbed at his back.
‘Why resist,’ he shouted, kicking at the rack’s solid leg, ‘when you know that soon you will tell me everything? Come, water awaits you, your bed is dry and there is food. Tell me that you denied Christ. Tell me that you spat on the cross, that you committed despicable acts. All this is known! Indeed, you need only tell me these things are true to find yourself back in your cell, then you shall confess to a priest and be reconciled to the faith. God will welcome His black sheep into the abyss of his mercy.’
At that moment Nogaret was seized by something foreign to him, a feeling of ecstasy as he stared at the man’s stretched abdomen, where his ribs pushed unnaturally upwards. This was an unexpected excitement, almost sexual in nature, and it took him by surprise, for he was not a man easily aroused. It seemed to him too tempting, the vulnerability of that abdomen fully stretched and unguarded, and this quickened a sense of power in his limbs that made his heart beat faster. He wondered once again about the demons, and what they would reveal to him alone. The satisfaction that this thought provoked caused him to raise a closed fist over the man’s middle. There he stood, paused upon that moment, letting the feeling move to his fingertips. An instinctive welling-up of soul confirmed that there were indeed secrets to be had and that he was high and exalted, a priest among men. He was taken by the darkness of it and brought his fist down so hard above the Grand Master’s navel that he thought he could feel the spine at the back of it.
This brutal blow brought forth a spray of bile and a melancholic wail.
Nogaret shivered with disgust as he wiped a smear of yellow from his face. The excitement was gone, his back ached and he was once again a lawyer standing in a dreary dungeon with nothing but his miserable occupation to comfort him.
He gave a sigh and bent his mouth over the Grand Master’s ear and whispered into it, ‘Did you piss on the cross? Did you commit sodomy with your fellows, did you deny Christ? Speak, devils! Speak! I am listening.’
He waited.
The tormentor took himself to a corner and urinated against the wall; the hot liquid made steam rise in the fetid air. Nogaret observed this with annoyance and paused with his head bent, his ear to that wretched bloody mouth.
But there was only silence and the sound of the tormentor’s phlegm-full cough.
THE THIRD CARD
MOON, DOG AND WOLF
20
THE NOTARY
What thou seest write in a book . . .
Revelation 1:11
The notary walked with haste, his coat behind him like a black sail in a full breeze. Gusts, like wicked devils, sought to steal his skullcap from his head, the parchments, inks, quills and the pumice stones from his hands. Ahead of him the impatient monk led the way through the dark streets, looking behind now and then to see if he was following.
‘Come!’ the monk cried out to him, full of annoyance. ‘Young scholars! Lazy idlers!’
The young man hurried his step, longing for his warm bed and a cup of heated ale. Of all the notaries numbering in the hundreds gathered together in the city of Paris, why had the Inquisition sought to fetch him from his pallet at this ungodly hour? A gust swept his cap from his head and sent it swirling into the night. He did not dare follow it since the black shadow of the monk had already disappeared behind a building. He hurried his step, rounding the corner, and walked into a monkish shout.
‘You! In that carriage and hurry up!’
The carriage bounced along the streets and headed out of the city gates towards the meadows. The monk, silent and dismal, sat opposite him, but the notary could not see his face, hidden as it was by the darkness and the hooded cowl.
‘The wind,’ Julian said by way of conversation, ‘it picks up early this year.’
The vehicle thrashed and jostled from side to side, the driver hurrying his animals along at a cracking pace.
‘The wind laments the agony of devils brought to judgement,’ the monk answered, ‘whose souls are this night thrust into the abyss. Lucky are they who have a part to play in it, this side of hell.’
Against this Julian buried his chin in his cloak and looked out at the steep darkness. Such words spoken between full night and morning and caught in the close chill of the carriage made Julian shiver. A deep feeling of dread descended over him and he wondered where he was being taken and for what extreme purpose.
Presently the carriage began to slow and it came to a halt at a great gate. Julian recognised it. It was that which stood before the enclos of the Temple fortress.
The driver opened the door to the carriage, and the notary and his guide made their way through the wind-turned
-gale. Night pressed and slammed at the stone buildings of the Temple, winding and twisting and following the two men as they passed royal guards through the doors of the great donjon.
He wanted to ask why there were royal guards at the gates and why a Dominican monk was entering the donjon as if it were owned by his Order. But the wind circled the turrets, the crenellations and spires and allowed no conversation. Instead Julian hugged himself against it and followed as he was led through the main door and into the vaulted spaces. Here upon the threshold a deathlike silence startled at the sound of their footsteps.
This place was familiar to Julian, he had lived and played within these walls for seven springs after arriving in France as a foundling from Acre. It was here among the snorting and neighing of the warhorses that he had grown a boy’s hope of becoming squire to a grand and gallant knight, of following the Beauseant wherever it would lead him. Now he remembered the day the bishop’s monks came to take him from the knights in their armour and the ordered metre of life at the Temple, to live a different existence among the luxuries and caprices of the bishop’s house – that night had been windy like this, and he had not thought on it for a long time, until this evening.
The long-legged monk moved rapidly on through a maze of corridors and Julian found himself lagging behind. In his haste he managed to glimpse a suggestion of stonework, the wide gaping mouths of vast vaulted rooms lurking with secrets behind arched shadows. Everywhere a faint smell of incense and, to his profound concern, peril. He shuddered; why should peril lie shallow beneath the quiet?
There was a sound, a woeful desperate sound.
‘What is that?’ he said, startled.
‘Devils,’ answered the monk.
‘Devils?’
‘Quiet!’ the monk said. ‘I should keep that mouth shut, for it is through the mouth that devils enter into the souls of lustful, useless boys, and this place is full of them! You will see soon enough . . .’
Julian thought he could smell blood, and forced himself to calmness. Surely he was imagining it?
‘Will you not tell me why I have been sent for?’
The monk halted abruptly before double oak doors and turned around. From behind his cowl came the mocking voice, ‘To record the corruption and heresy of these sorcerers!’ He pushed the doors open. ‘Look for yourself!’
21
JUDAS OR PETER?
Then began he to curse and to swear, saying, I know not the man.
And immediately the cock crew.
St Matthew 26:27
William of Paris, Inquisitor General of France, entered the circular room, the secret chapel of the Order of Knights Templar in Paris, and looked about him. The first thing he saw was Nogaret, the King’s henchman, gazing about the inner Temple, made known by the spies Noffo Dei and de Floyran. A moment later his eyes moved upward and around. The sight took his breath away.
William had spent the night at the monastery of St Jacques, where many years ago he had entered the Order of the Dominicans. This morning before dawn he had been shrived and received communion and it had left him exhilarated. Free from sin, his soul cleansed, he had never in his life felt as well. Even his indigestion had improved, but it was doomed to be short-lived. All things had returned to normal after his meeting with the Bishop of Paris.
The bishop had refused to sanction the list of questions given to inquisitors. He did not, he said, believe the accusations and would not condone the arrests. Moreover, he had accused the King of avarice and William of collusion and had gone so far as to suggest that the questions were only necessary because, in his words, ‘How else shall they confess to crimes they have not committed?’
Now he wondered what the bishop would say if he saw the spectacle before him. ‘Spawn of Satanus!’ he muttered under his breath, with a sense that his former exhilaration was returning so that it made him fall at once to one knee in a state of con¬centrated piety. ‘Protect me, oh Lord, from this depravity!’ He took the cross from around his neck and held it to his forehead, gazing over the windowless chapel.
The secret chamber was lit only by candles on high pedestals; its walls were painted with strange symbols and designs over a high vaulted space to a star-studded ceiling. On one end there was a throne, elevated on seven steps, supported by the figures of four lions and four eagles. The effigy of the moon and likeness of a sun was painted over the two pillars flanking it. On the floor he recognised the Hebrew six-pointed star and the pentacle placed within a circle around which appeared necromantic symbols.
Nogaret, languid of eye and yawning, looked at the inquisitor with passive boredom. ‘The Grand Master has proved stubborn,’ he said, wiping his brow with his sweat-soiled cloth. ‘He is outside.’
The friar looked up. His ritual interrupted, he stood and moved to the altar where he called out in a voice full of restraint, ‘Bring him in!’
Jacques de Molay was dragged into the room and thrown at the feet of the inquisitor.
The sight of the man, half-alive and half-dead, stirred an emotion that, by way of communication, spoke to him with the voice of an angel. ‘Babylon the great is fallen,’ it said, ‘and is become the habitation of devils and the hold of every foul spirit and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird . . .’
The inquisitor made the sign of the cross over the man and walked around him, then leaning low said, ‘Keep me, O Lord, from the hands of the wicked.’ Then close to the man’s ear, as if blowing kisses, ‘For they have hid a snare for me!’ He bent lower to stare into the face. ‘Oh . . .’ he moaned, ‘Son of Satan . . . thou shalt not escape the wrath of God!’ He looked upwards to the heretical symbols carved onto the walls and his mind clouded over and tears flowed over his cheeks. ‘They have sharpened their tongues like a serpent; adders’ poison is under their lips!’
Jacques de Molay opened his bloodied eyes. From above, the inquisitor noticed this and he smiled.
‘Ahh . . . he is awake!’ He went down on one knee. ‘Your poor misguided soul has been taken by the evil one in a dreadful union . . . You must listen to me now,’ he whispered in a tone reserved for errant children. ‘You have mocked our Lord, you have worshipped Satan, you have desecrated the cross! All these things are true, and in this chamber of darkness . . .’ He raised a hand in order to take in the room. ‘. . . In this pit of Mammon have you induced others to commit such foulness, heinous beyond comprehension . . . and now, this night, Grand Master, I shall be forced to wreak havoc upon the carcass that holds you to this miserable life . . . Do you understand? For I must be commanded by the power of the Holy Spirit to root out and destroy the evil that has taken up abode in your heart, and in order for this fine work to be accomplished, you must first confess.’
William of Paris, Inquisitor General, waited.
Jacques de Molay looked up to that face and his mouth, broken and raw, found these words: ‘These are they which came out of great tribulation . . . and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.’
The inquisitor’s face hardened and inside him he was cold. He shook his head and made a resolve. With his hand he made a sign for the tormentor to lift Jacques de Molay from the floor and to drag him to the great oaken doors leading out of the room. Another guard joined him and together they lifted the Grand Master and stretched both his arms outwards, forcing them upon the wood. This triggered a cry of agony.
Nogaret became agitated. ‘What will you do, William? Remember, he must not die before he confesses!’
The inquisitor turned to the lawyer with a look of disdain. He felt it offensive in the extreme that his ritual should be interrupted by one who was not aware of its significance, so he said these words with a certain emphasis that was meant to cause a chill in the lawyer from head to foot: ‘The Lord hath accomplished his fury, he hath poured out his fierce anger and hath kindled a fire in Zion, and it hath devoured the foundations thereof. The Kings of the earth, and all the inhabitants of the world, would not have believed that t
he adversary and the enemy should have entered into the gates of Jerusalem! He shall suffer the wounds of our Lord!’
On this command the tormentor drove a nail first into one wrist and then into the other. There was blood on the floor and a sudden wave of shock and nausea seemed to run through the hanging man. When the sense of it reached him he howled, and the sound of it echoed through the chamber.
The assistant held the man’s torso while the tormentor took hold of both feet and, having fettered them, one over the other, took a nail and tried to drive it into the flesh. This proved difficult and there were gasps and wails from the Grand Master as the man held him steady while the other attempted to keep the nail straight. With a final and thunderous blow of the mallet, the bones of the feet parted and the nail pierced the oak on the other side. The body was let go and it hung two spans from the ground. When the Grand Master’s wide eyes took a look at his impaled limbs he let a gasp escape from his mouth and he fell out of his head.
Time lay unswept in the chapel. The inquisitor sat upon the throne like a hen upon an egg. He was learned in the science of physiology, having made it his business to know the human body intimately, its weaknesses and its strengths, and he knew, therefore, that as the man’s weight sagged downward and the body slumped, the rib cage was drawn upwards and the lungs became narrowed, preventing breath. The Grand Master would have to push down on his impaled feet to raise his body to take a breath and this would incur unbearable pain. Soon a paralysis of the will would ensue, from lack of air, and this was always the most fortuitous time for confession.
But confession did not come.
When the blood from Jacques de Molay’s wounds had congealed and nigh three hours had passed, the Templar was seized by terrible spasms and woke briefly only to sink once again into oblivion.
The inquisitor waited. In one corner the tormentor snored, drooling. Nogaret had left, making some excuse about a conference in the morning. Alone now, with only the notary for company, he paced the room and watched his own shadow.
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