The Seal

by Adriana Koulias

  ‘Listen to me,’ came Roger de Flor’s mild voice. ‘We are lucky to live, you and I and these men, we have no choice except to leave it drown. It lies in those depths beyond the reef. It is deep there and no man, not even the divers of Greece, would wish to go down into that unknown blackness to find it. God has laid it to rest. What we must do now is find a village and horses –’

  ‘My orders,’ Marcus said slowly, patiently, ‘were to take the gold to Scotland, not to the bottom of the sea!’

  The commander stood upon that sand with the birthing sun making a shadow in the hollows and ditches of his face, waiting.

  For his part Roger waited also, looking into that Templar gaze laid bare upon him. He was hoping that below the tone of insanity lay some intelligence. ‘Then the sea of Scotland shall be close enough.’

  ‘Close enough?’ The man peered down at him with wide eyes. ‘Close enough?’ He twitched and his entire body moved as if commanded by something other than his soul. This lasted but a moment and then something in his face changed, like a light going out in a room to leave only greyness where colour had once been. From his mouth came these words, ‘I go,’ and he walked away.

  The afternoon was old and the wind freshening when Marcus sat atop the cliff overlooking the beach and the sea and the island some way off. He grieved for the gold, the titles and the archives, and as his mind fell upon the creatures of the sea, the grasses and the pounding waves, he prayed that they would do well by the Lord’s treasure.

  He gazed down upon the blue expanse with his mind crowded with thoughts as still and curdled as old milk. He told himself that green wood could bend, but that he was old and dry and parched. Only fire could straighten him now and his fire was died down.

  Finally his faith was spent.

  Why had he not died with a sword in the hand at Acre or at Sidon? Why had he been forced to wait for this end of ends? With no zeal left in the hollows of his heart?

  ‘Ahh Jacques, my friend! You cannot send a man on such a journey, long and miserable, to dispose of the reason for his being, without it leaving him feeling betrayed!’ he said out loud and it sounded to his ear like a dying animal. ‘God has betrayed me! I shall not bear it!’

  It was almost nightfall when he came down from the rocky point.

  With no eye to the men and no word to Roger de Flor, he mounted the last pitiful surviving animal and took himself from the beach at a gallop.

  At that moment it began to snow.

  28

  DEVILS AND ANGELS

  Get thee behind me, Satan.

  St Matthew 16:23

  Etienne was once more taken up into a dream. Inside the cold tomb his body ached and fell numb. Then, as before, the light was extinguished and he was alone.

  I rise like the sun, like the moon above the date palms. Into the light, I enter, complete. Where there is darkness, there is none of me. I am one among the stars. I am sworn to life and bound to death. I am the sun, a splendid eye set ablaze in the forehead of its father. I will drink the waters of Lethe.

  I have come before you, Osiris, to purify evil.

  The sphinx on the right that supported his tomb mocked him. ‘You are forsaken by Osiris! Your heart has been weighed and has been found wanting. Do you believe He shall find a dwelling place in you? Your soul is full of doubt . . . Jump, and the wind shall keep you from the ground and prove to your faithless soul that you are saved from the abyss!’

  Ye shall not hold captive my soul. Ye shall not keep my shadow. I will lift up my mind and advance to the uppermost limits of heaven; I know the Light-god, his winds are in my body.

  The sphinx on the left told him, ‘What moves among your quelled secrets is only a seeming of goodness that deepens not to piety but to the illusion. You defile the cross of life and your heart is full of hate for the Sun. Adore my darkness instead, it shall illuminate for you all things of the world’

  You who set a seal upon the dead, and who would do evil to me, shall do no evil to me. Hasten, oh my Lord, on the way to me. Thy heart is with thee. My Heart-soul and my Spirit-soul are equipped; I look upon those who dwell in the uppermost limits of the horizon to whence I have directed the Powers of the ways, the wardens of the wide spaces, and of the Hemat House of heaven.

  The chamber resounded with a voice from the deeps. ‘You are afraid, for your bread has turned to stone in your mouth and it shall be heavy in your belly.’

  Etienne’s mind melted into the blackness of the earth, into the crags and clefts, and he felt himself firm, waiting for what would come.

  There was day and night behind his lids, which fluttered open and closed again. He was pulled and dragged and suspended above the ground. There were bars all around and the sounds of birds, but when he tried to open his eyes he could not, and when he made to move his body a shot of pain came through his shoulders to his back and down to his heels and he lost his strength so that his head was drawn into nothing and away from the qualms of the world.

  But a voice spoke then . . .

  ‘The cock crows twice, Etienne, once when you are descended to mortal flesh, and a second time when you have ascended.’

  Etienne felt warmth enter into a deserted and forbidden place within him, and in this warmth a pulsing of sunlight caused a wakefulness more awake than the vision of life. This was, he knew, a moment bequeathed by grace, a conjunction of stars in the mighty fabric of the sky, or an eclipse of the moon or sun. He sensed a regard held fast upon him, a warrior-spirit in human form, frown-full with a look of concentrated piety.

  He recognised it and he felt relief and hope, since it was the countenance of the Archangel St Michael, with whom he felt at ease and whose custom had been to visit him now and again, at such moments of trouble.

  ‘You sleep long.’ The regard upon him was sad and somewhat close. ‘Were they happy dreams?’

  ‘I am stabbed,’ Etienne said to the Archangel.

  ‘You are stabbed, but you live.’

  ‘No . . .’ Etienne said, and it seemed to him strange to correct a being so mighty and all-knowing. ‘There is rust in my armour and it no longer shines! The burden begins to outweigh my heart, and I shall not bear its lightness. I am weighed down and I am weak to the Devil and to Satan who have distinguished my dead parts and who both seek to pick at the bones of my soul!’

  ‘Satan is not among us, but on earth, where his illusion dwells. The Devil is where I have sent him, to nurse you in your earthly sleep. Your doings have me full of attention, Etienne. I have been observing your progress and I have been in contemplation with the being of Christ on your regard . . . He wishes to confide in you.’

  Etienne felt warmth and love and love again. ‘In me?’

  ‘He wishes you to know that life will enter those lifeless parts which the adversary and his brother seek to take for themselves. Before that there is always a death. There is always darkness and the abyss before the eye is opened to the light of Christ.’

  ‘I am dead then?’

  ‘You have died many times. Now you are alive. It is the privilege of men that when they live, they do not know that they are dead.’

  Then all was silent.

  From the night sounds surfaced, then reached his ears and spoke of wine and women and impious merrymaking. But it was hours before he could open his eyes and make steady his head: hours of long listening in the crow cage hung high above the ground, swinging in the breeze, thinking of his conversations with devils and angels. Now all was quiet again and he looked out from the bars of wood to the compound a moment and drew back from pain.

  It was cold. The night hung low and starless and there was snow in the breeze. With his knees to his chin, a cramp in his thigh and the hurt in his side, he dozed again and dreamt that they drew blood and left him for the crows to peck at his eyes.

  He was awakened by the sound of the chain and the cage being lowered. What now? he thought. Through the haze of pain and exhaustion he saw the aperture open and a face in the gloom.
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  ‘You are not dead then, lord?’ said Gideon in a rough whisper. ‘But you have more pieces to put together!’

  The hurt in his side made a sigh come from him as he stretched forth a shaking leg. Released from the confines of the cage, Etienne stood a moment, unsure of his eyes and his ears. ‘The others?’

  ‘Jourdain is gone to fetch horses, Delgado went to find weapons.’

  ‘And you have come to fetch me?’ He stooped forward since the world was turning and he was of the mind to follow it. Gideon caught hold of him with one sinewy arm.

  Stiff and awkward, with the Norman holding onto him under that low sky, Etienne heard the sound of a muffled struggle coming from the stables, then more silence.

  ‘I will go and help with the killing,’ said Gideon and Etienne watched his form fade into the blackness.

  There he stood, returned to the night with his head clouded over and his dry tongue rasping at the roof of his mouth. A sudden sensation, an instinct was felt then. A noise made itself known in his head and his heart, and he saw a sword or rather felt its wind whistle past his right ear. The response was not swift but adequate: he swung out of range.

  ‘Who are you?’ he said, as if it meant something.

  There was no answer.

  Etienne looked from side to side; a shape, once again an outline, came at him and he moved away so that his hurts were poured out over his side and he had to stoop to get his breath back. Looking up he saw the dark shape coming again, then the glint of steel. He did not so much move as jerk out of the way but this time his balance was lost and he fell. He sensed a movement; he kicked out at it and a pain struck him with such a force as to push the air from his lungs. A sword was flung to the ground, he heard the metal sound of it.

  Over Etienne’s face then came the man and a knife blade near his cheek.

  There was the blink of an eye near his. ‘Dead man, old man!’ The shape told him, ‘You will not flee from me!’

  The face was all a-pant, staring and staring; a moment later it changed expression, the eyes rolled upward to white and it disappeared into the dark sky without stars. A sudden wind picked up and from the night a hand helped him to his feet.

  It was Gideon.

  Etienne’s head was light and he felt his cheek and the cut wet with blood. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘A man.’

  ‘I thought it was the Devil.’ Etienne shook his head and looked at the face in the dark.

  Then he heard Jourdain’s voice. ‘Etienne?’

  ‘It is I. You are alive!’

  ‘I am a little abused,’ Jourdain said. ‘You are worse. Come . . .’ He swung a deer-hide cloak over Etienne’s shoulders, steadying him. The horses, harnessed with provisions, stood with ears twitching in the freshening breeze. All was silent except for Delgado, who returned with weapons: an axe and Etienne’s sword without its scabbard. It felt good to Etienne to have it back. He took it and heavy now it seemed to him.

  ‘All of them are dead, lord,’ Delgado told Etienne, rubbing his hands. ‘The women, shall we put them down the well?’ There was a laugh. ‘They may not fit and we shall have to heap one over the other . . . eh, Norman? These women are like those of your country!’ He said this and then his voice turned grave: ‘But they are not as ugly as my sisters.’

  The Norman shrugged, unamused. ‘That is why a man must get drunk,’ he said and walked away towards the horses.

  Etienne felt perspiration on his brow. ‘What women?’

  Jourdain helped him to his horse. ‘We have been here more than a week, Etienne,’ he said, ‘and you have been sorely wounded, but they have tended your wound for they wanted you to live long enough to torture you into telling them something. Tonight they brought women from the village, Gideon made a friend among them, a Norman. He made them believe he would join them in their business, that he had no loyalty to us, and they let him join in their debauchery. He waited for the occasion and took the knife to the Norman’s throat and the keys from his hands and opened our cells and your cage. He has done well. Eh, Gideon! You have done well.’

  The mercenary beamed his white teeth at them in the oncoming morning. It was a strange gesture placed over a melancholic landscape.

  Etienne gave a sigh and turned to Delgado. ‘Let the women go, they shall not harm us.’

  The Catalan nodded once and stepped lightly away.

  Etienne then made a gesture of the head towards the donjon. ‘Who are they?’

  Jourdain said, ‘Our hunters, Germans, on hire. It seems, Etienne, that . . . well, that our Grand Master lies in the French King’s prison and the Order is arrested . . . They accuse us of heresy!’

  ‘It has begun then,’ Etienne said with a sigh. ‘And the bodies?’

  ‘The brothers of this small house.’

  Etienne closed his eyes; Michael and the dream lurked behind his lids. He hung his sword on a leather thong and Jourdain helped him mount. His legs were weak and the wound in his side was crawling towards his chest. He held tight to the reins and leant on the neck of the animal. He looked out for a moon but his head not yet cleared went giddy and he looked down until it passed lest he fall off the horse.

  ‘Has the world turned mad, Etienne? What does it mean?’

  Etienne looked across to Jourdain as it began to snow and the wind turned and made the trees sway and slap beyond the walls of the house. In his half-awareness, Etienne heard it as a language he did not understand. Perhaps it told of his death, that wind? Perhaps he and the Order were one in the veins and the heart, and the death of one meant the death of the other? He felt for his wounded side, bending before the pain of it and holding tight to the reins. ‘This can only mean one thing, my Jourdain, it means it is the end of us.’

  At that moment Delgado returned with a group of seven or more women tied at the wrists. He told them, ‘Go!’ and shooed them like chickens. They scampered in silence out of the gate and into the dawn.

  ‘We too had better hurry a little,’ Etienne said, ‘soon it is light.’

  They galloped knee to knee out of the empty house of the Order and headed for the bodies that lay beneath a shroud of snow.

  They buried the carcasses of their dead brothers in the hard ground as the sun rose over the trees. Etienne said a meagre prayer over their graves. He prayed for himself also, that St Michael might keep him from dying as long as it took to find the resting place of his Order’s mystery, and if it should please his Lord, he should then like to close his eyes and offer his soul to the soul of the world and be done with it once and for all.

  29

  FALSE FRIENDS

  Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.

  Matthew 7:15

  Marcus placed one foot beyond the other, clad in wet and wind, a mind half waning, half waxing, showing a face that was storm-eyed and peering through the driving snow. It was night. He had set free the horse to find itself another master but the creature would not leave him. It stood some way off, watching him. He told it that soon he must die with his cheek to the snow among the disordered world of elements that whirled and sprang to life about him. But still it did not move.

  He showed it the dagger. With it he would make himself a red cross, he told it, and there in the warmth of it he would lie, in the blood that had been poured into him and would now be given back. This mantle of the Order, he told the animal, would cover the entire world! He smiled at that – a last gesture to this lie he had lived and to the God that had deceived him. One part of him welcomed it while another was afraid.

  When he saw the apparition, he was leaning back on the gale preparing to thrust the knife. In the dark the vision, surely

  peculiar and mystical, came to him without his bidding and carried no light of its own, no warmth, just an outstretched hand. Marcus with his broken faith let go the dagger and knelt in the snow before it.

  ‘Who are you?’ he said, but a gust sent him from his feet. ‘I s
tumble!’ And he fell backward in the snow.

  Some time later he sensed wetness on his face and opened his eyes. Above him hovered the yellow orbs of a black dog. In them he saw intelligence and cunning

  ‘What is this?’ he asked it.

  The dog sat up in the blizzard and waited. In the very gesture of the head and the limbs it spoke to him, then it stood on its four legs and moved away, waiting for him to follow.

  He got up, shook his head of snow, and looked for his horse. ‘We go,’ he said with a shiver and stumbled through the snow after the beast.

  30

  CLEMENT V

  I will shew unto thee the judgement of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters.

  Revelation 17:1

  Poitiers, May 1308

  On one side of the large opulent hall at the royal palace at Poitiers sat the Pope upon his pontifical throne. A purple shield of cardinals and a large crowd of ecclesiastics surrounded him on both sides, suggesting to all present his spiritual power. On the other hand, directly across the hall from him, as in a game of chess, the fair king graced his own dais, flanked by a resplendent retinue of counsellors and laymen, whose size and number was a blatant show of Philip’s temporal power.

  Even from this distance the Pope could see clearly the dis-tinctions between them. He was old, huddled together, blinking bloodshot eyes under inflamed lids, while his opponent was youthful, tanned and handsome and in full charge of his body.