The Devil's Moon

by Peter Guttridge

  ‘So far, so Dan Brown,’ Watts said.

  ‘So far, so historical fact,’ Perkins said. ‘On one famous Friday the thirteenth in 1307, King Philip the Fair ordered all the Templars in France to be arrested on the grounds of heresy. This heresy was supposed to have begun in Agen, in Provence. The main charges against the Templars were that during their admission ceremonies they denied that Jesus was divine, spat on the cross, demanded sinful kisses from the initiates – kissing people’s arses, basically – and that they committed sodomy.’

  ‘And they worshipped a head called Baphomet,’ Slattery said. ‘That was either a bearded or a three-faced man. Crowley used that as one of many names for himself.’

  ‘But these charges were all trumped-up, weren’t they?’ Watts said.

  ‘Probably. Philip had used similar accusations against a hostile pope earlier. It was a smear campaign.’ Perkins tilted his head. ‘But these accusations against the Templars led to all sorts of wild imaginings. Most of them rubbish.’

  ‘Most of them?’

  Perkins grinned. ‘There are no absolutes.’

  ‘How did this affect the Templars in Saddlescombe?’ Watts said.

  ‘The Templars were granted Saddlescombe sometime in the mid-twelfth century. They made it a receptory – a main headquarters – and from it they ran a pretty big estate stretching from Hurstpierpoint and Hassocks to Newtimber and the sea at Shoreham, where they had a farmhouse, chapel and saltpan.’

  Watts pictured Shoreham, with its big muddy river estuary exposed at low tide.

  ‘A saltpan?’

  ‘Collecting salt from the sea was crucial for preserving fish and meat. The Shoreham property was intriguing.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘It keeps popping back up in the Templars-in-Sussex story.’

  Watts caught the gleam in Perkins’ eye.

  ‘What is the Templars-in-Sussex story?’

  Perkins looked at Slattery and both men burst out laughing.

  EIGHTEEN

  ‘You find the Templars amusing?’ Watts said to Slattery and Perkins.

  Perkins raised his hand in apology. ‘There are opportunities for much speculation about what went on with them in England and specifically in Saddlescombe,’ he said. ‘From the scant records we have, Saddlescombe had some unusually important visitors during the one hundred or so years the Templars owned it: Grand Masters of the Temple in England, kings and princes. We need to ask why they came.’

  ‘Is it so surprising Grand Masters visited?’ Watts said.

  ‘No, except that it seems they came to deal with what at first sight appears to be quite a trivial matter: the transfer of the tenancy of that farm and saltpan in Shoreham.

  ‘At Easter in 1253 Grand Master Roncelin de Fosse assigned them to a William Bishop and his wife from nearby Steyning, for the duration of their lives. Almost forty years later, in 1292, Grand Master Guido de Foresta came to Saddlescombe to grant that same property to a John and Matilda Lot. A year later Jacques de Molay, Grand Master of the entire European Templar Order, came from France to England in a Templar ship. He docked at Shoreham and came up to Saddlescombe from there.’

  ‘So you’re saying the farm in Shoreham is important, not Saddlescombe itself,’ Watts said.

  ‘I’m saying it’s possible. But, again, there’s no archaeology. There’s nothing of the Shoreham property left – we don’t even know precisely where it was. But there was clearly something important about the place for it to attract the attention of such powerful men.’

  Watts nodded, looking absently at a display cabinet behind Perkins’ head. ‘You mentioned kings and princes coming to Saddlescombe as well.’

  ‘Henry III, you probably know, had to deal with a baron’s revolt, led by Simon de Montfort, his former friend and godfather of his son, Prince Edward. In 1264 they fought a battle outside Lewes.’

  ‘I’ve seen the plaque up by the bowling green here about the battle,’ Watts said. ‘Simon de Montfort won.’

  ‘He did. For a few months he ruled England. But Prince Edward defeated him at the battle of Evesham and ordered de Montfort’s body to be hacked to pieces.’

  Perkins tugged on his beard again. ‘What the plaque doesn’t say is that the night before the battle of Lewes the king and his son stayed at Saddlescombe.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘How can we know?’ Perkins said. ‘Prince Edward became King Edward I, also known as Edward Longshanks. He fought beside the Templars on two brief crusades in the Holy Land. One of the Templars he went into battle with was Jacques de Molay. They corresponded through the English Grand Master William de la More as late as 1304. Longshanks came again to Saddlescombe in 1305, two years before his death.’

  ‘He’s the king in Braveheart who threw his gay son’s lover out of the window?’ Watts said. ‘I thought he was busy hammering Mel Gibson and the Scots. Why did he come to Sussex?’

  Perkins shrugged. ‘We don’t know. That gay son in the movie was actually bisexual in reality. He became King Edward II in July 1307 on the death of his father.’

  ‘The year the Templars in France were accused of heresy,’ Slattery reminded Watts.

  ‘And here’s the strangest thing,’ Perkins said, tugging on his beard. ‘Edward II did everything he could to protect the English Templars even though it made no political or financial sense. He was expected to follow the French example, if not for religious reasons then for political. He was in negotiations to marry Isabelle, the daughter of the king of France, so wasn’t supposed to piss the king of France off. Plus, like his father, he was campaigning against the Scots so could have used the Templar’s dosh to finance that.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Edward said he didn’t believe the charges against the Templars. He demanded proof. A month later the Pope ordered him to arrest the Templars and confiscate their properties in the name of the Church. Edward again asked for proof. Why would he stick his neck out like that? A Christian king doesn’t lightly disobey a Pope.

  ‘When the Pope insisted, Edward went through the motions. He arrested some Templars, including the Grand Master William de la More, but they suffered no real hardship. He left others on their properties or receiving allowances.’

  ‘And the Saddlescombe Templars?’

  ‘Were left untouched. In January 1308, Edward II married Isabelle. In France, the Templars, including Jacques de Molay, were being brutally tortured. They all confessed to the heresy charges but it’s assumed that was more to do with the torture than the truth of the charges.

  ‘In August the Pope let this be known and by November 1308 Edward had been pressured by him into arresting or re-arresting all the Templars in the country. And still he resisted. Records show that he arrested less than half of them: one hundred and eight out of two hundred and fifty. Before you ask, the Saddlescombe Templars were not among those imprisoned.’

  ‘What happened then?’ Watts said.

  ‘Over the next couple of years Edward had domestic political problems to deal with because of his relationship with his favourite, Piers Gaveston, who was his adviser and possibly his lover. His barons forced him to send Gaveston into exile and Edward needed the help of the Pope and King Philip to get him back. He bribed the Pope with jewellery and bequests of towns and castles to the Pope’s nephews and he reluctantly did as he’d been commanded with the Templars.’

  ‘Piers Gaveston – the man in the Christopher Marlowe play?’

  Watts recalled Edward had come to a painful end in the play – a red-hot poker had been involved.

  ‘Even so,’ Perkins continued, ‘King Edward continued to do his best to protect the Templars. He assessed the holdings of the Templars in England, as ordered, but didn’t hurry to put any of them on trial.’

  ‘But the ones he did arrest – did they confess when they were tortured?’

  ‘They weren’t tortured. Despite what people think about medieval barbarity, there was no torture in the judicial process in England
. The Pope wanted to set the church’s inquisitors on them but the king resisted. But in France, by 1310, King Philip was impatient with those Templars who still wouldn’t confess. He burned fifty-four of them to encourage the others. It worked.

  ‘In England and Scotland, though, after three years in custody, not a single Templar had been tortured and not a single one had admitted heresy. Then, extraordinarily, in July 1311, they were allowed to do a kind of plea bargain. As best we can gather, without admitting guilt, they abjured all heresy and threw themselves on the mercy of the church. They were forgiven and sent to monasteries to do penance. The Grand Master was one of only two who didn’t feel able to do that so he remained in the Tower. He died the following year.’

  ‘And Saddlescombe?’ Watts said.

  Perkins and Slattery exchanged glances again. Perkins continued, ‘At the end of that same July, Edward finally gave in to pressure from the Pope to allow the church’s inquisitors to do things their way. Either under torture or just the threat of it three Templars in England confessed to heresy.’

  ‘Were any of them from Saddlescombe?’ Watts said.

  Slattery gave a little smile. ‘All three were from Saddlescombe.’

  David Rutherford, the vicar of St Michael’s, answered his phone on the first ring.

  ‘DI Gilchrist. Lovely to hear from you. Are you building your boat?’

  ‘Excuse me?’ she said.

  ‘Noah? There was probably this same amount of rain in his day, but Noah – well, there was a man who took precautions. The first risk assessment man.’

  ‘Two of everything,’ Gilchrist said. ‘But where are you going to get two unicorns in this day and age?’

  ‘In Brighton? Just walk down Church Street.’

  Gilchrist laughed. ‘Your roof holding out under the deluge, is it?’

  ‘Until the next lot of chancers get the rest of the lead,’ Rutherford said. ‘How can I help you, Detective Inspector?’

  ‘It’s about your colleague, Andrew Callaghan.’

  ‘I fear I’ve been flippant at the wrong moment. A fault of mine.’

  ‘Not at all. I went round to his flat yesterday and there were disturbing signs.’

  She only just heard his response. ‘As I feared.’

  ‘Who were the three men who confessed their guilt?’ Watts said.

  Perkins gestured to Slattery.

  ‘Stephen of Stapelbrigg, Thomas Totti and John of Stoke all said much the same thing: that there was an Inner Temple within the Templars in England,’ Slattery said. ‘And that’s where the heresy came in. Stapelbrigg said admission to that was through a ceremony “contrary to the Faith”, in which you had to deny Mary, deny Jesus was God and spit on the cross.’

  ‘He said this heresy started with Roncelin de Fosse when he was Grand Master of Provence.’ Perkins nodded though Watts hadn’t made a comment. ‘The man who was the signatory to the lease of the Shoreham property to William Bishop and his wife.’

  ‘More than that,’ Slattery said. ‘John of Stoke said he’d been admitted in 1293 at Saddlescombe. Guess who had told him to deny Christ? Jacques de Molay, Grand Master of the European Order, on his brief visit to England in that year.’

  Watts scratched his head. ‘But why wasn’t this used as proof of the guilt of the other Templars in England?’

  Perkins shrugged. ‘Maybe because Edward was still protecting the Templars – or protecting Saddlescombe – and knew the confessions were fake. All these men were vulnerable and had been free long enough to hear reports of what the French Templars had confessed to.

  ‘Stephen Stapelbrigg had been in hiding for four years. He’d been arrested just a couple of weeks before his trial. He would have been hearing about the French confessions whilst he was lying low. Thomas Totti had been summoned to hand himself in but hadn’t done so. John of Stoke had been treasurer at the New Temple in London, which merchants and barons used as a bank vault for their wealth. There were rumours of embezzlement.’

  ‘What happened to them?’ Watts said. ‘Burned at the stake?’

  ‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you? If only to shut them up if there were any kind of conspiracy. But no. Like everybody else they were absolved and assigned to religious houses around England.’

  ‘Not Saddlescombe?’

  Perkins shook his head.

  Watts paced over to one of the glass cabinets. ‘My head is buzzing.’

  Perkins chuckled. ‘You wanted to know about Saddlescombe? I’m telling you about Saddlescombe.’

  ‘There’s more, isn’t there?’ Watts said. ‘You mentioned there was another Templar who refused to abjure heresy because he hadn’t committed it,’ Watts said. ‘Is he linked to Saddlescombe?’

  Slattery nodded but it was Perkins who answered.

  ‘When Grand Master William de la More was arrested the second time he was at the Templar preceptory in Ewell near Dover with Imbert Blanc, the Grand Commander of the Auvergne. They were waiting for one of the Order’s boats to take them to Flanders, where they’d be safe from Philip of France. We know both had been to Saddlescombe. We know they went to Shoreham, possibly expecting to sail from there. We don’t know why they didn’t.’

  ‘Why was Imbert in this country at all?’

  ‘The Templar Order had been torn apart. Maybe the few Grand Masters and Commanders who were still free were trying to salvage what they could. And that included what was held at Saddlescombe.

  ‘Blanc, by the way, was released from the Tower into the custody of the Archbishop of Canterbury but the record doesn’t show what happened to him after that. Jaques de Molay in France – who had been regularly corresponding with Edward Longshanks, you’ll remember – had confessed under torture to heresy but recanted when he was supposed to confirm his guilt. In consequence he was roasted, very slowly, on the stake.’

  ‘And what made Saddlescombe and/or Shoreham so important?’

  Perkins looked up at the ceiling for a moment. ‘That’s the question, isn’t it?’ He tugged on his beard again. ‘The man from Steyning who first took over the Shoreham place. Do you remember his name was Bishop?’

  ‘Suitably ecclesiastical.’

  ‘His wife had a very interesting first name.’

  Watts waited.

  ‘Dionysia.’

  ‘As in Dionysus,’ Slattery said. ‘Pagan god of ritual madness and frenzy, a dying and reborn god, an outsider god.’

  ‘The centre of a cult,’ Perkins added. ‘We know them as the Dionysian mysteries. The initiates used drugs and booze to reach a higher level of consciousness. Dionysus was Bacchus in Roman mythology. Real party boy.’

  ‘Witches and wizards used exactly the same kind of techniques down the centuries to reach exalted states and achieve communion with the Devil and his minions,’ Slattery said. ‘Bacchus is usually presented as a kind of satyr with cloven hooves and horns.’

  ‘Like the Goat of Mendes,’ Perkins said. ‘But Dionysus is usually represented as an androgynous youth – the literature describes him as “man-womanish”. Some statues present him naked with breasts and penis.’

  Watts looked from one to the other. ‘And the other Shoreham tenants you mentioned forty years later?’

  ‘You know a person’s last name in those days was often the name of the place they were most associated with?’ Perkins said.

  Watts nodded.

  ‘The people who took over the Shoreham place forty years down the line were called Lot.’

  ‘I remember,’ Watts said.

  Perkins smirked.

  ‘Where’s Lot, then?’ Watts said.

  ‘The Lot Valley is in the Midi-Pyrenees bordering on the Languedoc.’

  ‘Cathar country,’ Watts murmured. ‘Where the heresy started.’

  ‘Under the influence of the Cathars,’ Perkins said.

  ‘What’s known about Grand Master Roncelin?’ Watts said.

  ‘Dates. Grand Master in Provence for three years before he became Grand Master in Engl
and in 1251 for two years. He’s on record as being Grand Master of Provence again from 1260 to 1278.’

  ‘The Cathars were Gnostics, right?’ Watts said.

  Perkins gestured to Slattery.

  ‘They were,’ Slattery said. ‘But Gnosticism takes many forms. The Cathars believed in two competing gods. One, Rex Mundi, ruled the world, the other the heavens. Rex Mundi was evil – embodied chaos. The other god, the one the Cathars worshipped, was disincarnate – a genderless pure spirit, untainted by anything material. This god stood for love, order and peace. One consequence of their belief is that Gnostics deny Jesus was a god because he had a physical presence. He was incarnate, not disincarnate.’

  ‘That kind of fits with one of the accusations against the Templars then,’ Watts said. ‘But how did the Cathars draw de Fosse in?’

  ‘The surmise is that in his youth de Fosse witnessed the Albigensian Crusade massacring Cathars in southern France for forty years.’

  ‘Massacres all that time?’

  ‘Pretty much. First big one in the town of Béziers in 1209. Twenty thousand people slaughtered, whether they were Cathar or not. The credo was: kill them all, let God sort out the ones that belong to him. When Carcassonne, stuffed with refugees, was taken, the people were spared but had to leave naked and empty-handed.’

  ‘That’s a big castle,’ Watts said.

  ‘You’ve visited it?’

  ‘Saw it from the road on the way to Homps.’

  ‘You’ve been in the middle of Cathar country, then.’

  ‘So I understand. I had other things on my mind.’

  Perkins waited for more then said: ‘By 1229, after much brutality, the Languedoc was under the control of the king of France. The most steadfast Cathars were burned at the stake. The Inquisition even exhumed bodies to burn them too.’

  ‘Bloody religion,’ Watts muttered.

  ‘There was cruelty. The leader of the crusade was known for it. Prior to the sack of the village of Lastours he brought prisoners from a village nearby, had their eyes gouged out and their ears, noses and lips cut off. He left just one of them with a single eye so he could lead the others into the village as a warning.’