The Templar Knight

by Jan Guillou

  “I didn’t say that, Sire. As the Scripture says, Goliath was the greatest warrior and David merely an inexperienced boy. Without God’s intervention Goliath would win in a thousand out of a thousand battles against David. If God supports Guy de Lusignan as much as He supported David, then Guy de Lusignan would of course be invincible.”

  “But if God turns His back, what then?” asked the king with a little coughing laugh.

  “Then the battle would be over quicker than you could blink, Sire,” said Arnoldo de Torroja with a friendly bow.

  “Grand Master and Jerusalem’s Master,” said the king, coughing again and giving a signal that made his Nubian slave hurry over to his side. “With men such as yourselves I would wish to speak longer. However, my health prevents me, so I bid you both God’s peace and good night.”

  They got up from their soft leather stools, bowed, and exchanged uneasy glances as the wheezing and gurgling sounds continued behind the muslin curtain that concealed the king. They turned and retreated tactfully from the room.

  To his considerable surprise Father Louis was awakened in good time before lauds by Arn de Gothia, who had come in person to fetch him and Brother Pietro for the morning song in the Temple of Solomon. The two Cistercians were led by their knight companion through a labyrinthine system of corridors and halls and up a dark staircase until they suddenly emerged in the midst of the huge church with the silver cupola. It was already filled with Templar knights and sergeants who were silently assembling around the walls of the round sanctuary. No one arrived late. When it was time almost a hundred Templar knights and more than twice as many black-clad sergeants stood along the walls.

  Father Louis took great pleasure in the morning song; impressed by the gravity with which these men of war sang, and by the fact that they sang so well. This was another thing he had not anticipated.

  After lauds in the Temple of Solomon, Arn de Gothia took his guests with him on the usual tour that all new visitors to Jerusalem expected. He explained in passing that it was best to take the tour early in the morning before the crowds of pilgrims grew too great.

  They went back across the entire Templar area and past the Temple of the Lord with the gold cupola, which Arn thought they could leave until last since no pilgrims were allowed inside on this day, which was set aside for cleaning and repairs. They went out through the Golden Port and up on Golgotha, which was still free of both tradesmen and visitors. At the site where the Lord suffered and died on His cross for their sins, the three prayed long and fervently.

  Then Arn took his visitors in through the Stefan Gate so that they emerged up on the Via Dolorosa. Reverently they followed the Lord’s last path of suffering through the gradually awakening city all the way to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, which was still closed and guarded by four sergeants of the Templar order. The sergeants opened the church at once to make way for Jerusalem’s Master and his visiting clergymen.

  The church was beautiful to see from the outside with its simple vault of the type that Father Louis and even Arn and Brother Pietro were familiar with from the cloisters where they grew up. But inside the church was littered and in disarray because so many different religious factions had to share it.

  There was a corner glaring with gold and a multitude of colors and brash paintings that Father Louis recognized as the style of the heretical Byzantine church; there were other styles that he did not recognize. Arn explained, as if in passing, that it was the rule in Jerusalem that Christians of every sort should have access to the Holy Grave. For him this fact did not seem odd in the least.

  When they walked down the stone steps in the dark, damp crypt of Saint Helena, however, they were all filled with such a great solemnity that they began to shiver; even Arn seemed affected as much as his visitors. They knelt down before the stone slab and prayed in silence; none of them wanted to be the first to stop. Here was the heart of Christianity, here was the very place that had cost so much blood over so many years, God’s Grave.

  Father Louis was so overwhelmed by this first visit to God’s Grave that afterward he could not remember how long they were down there, what he had actually experienced, or what visions he had seen. But they seemed to have been there for a long time, because when they exited through the main door of the church into the blinding sunlight, they were met by a muttering, ill-humored crowd that had been kept at a distance by the four sergeants and not allowed inside. The muttering subsided quickly when they saw that it was Jerusalem’s Master himself coming out of the church with his ecclesiastical guests.

  On their return through the city Arn chose another and more worldly route which went from the Jaffa Gate straight through the bazaars to the Knights Templar quarter. Strong foreign odors from spices, raw meat, poultry of various kinds, burnt leather, fabrics, and metal prickled the noses of the visitors. Father Louis thought at first that all these foreign people speaking incomprehensible languages were unbelievers, but Arn explained that they were almost all Christians, although from societies that had been in Outremer long before the Crusaders had arrived. They were Syrians, Copts, Armenians, Maronites, and many others that Father Louis had hardly heard of. Arn told him that there was a cruel history associated with all these Christians. For when the first Crusaders came they had not understood, like Father Louis and Brother Pietro, that these people were kinsmen of the faith. Since their appearance did not distinguish them from Turks and Saracens, they had been killed by Christian zealots in almost the same numbers as the unbelievers. But that evil time was long past.

  When they finally visited the empty Temple of the Lord inside the Templars’ quarter, they prayed at the rock where Abraham was said to have offered to sacrifice Isaac, and where Jesus Christ as a child had been consecrated to God.

  After they prayed, Arn took his guests around the very beautiful sanctuary, and Father Louis had to admit that it was beautiful, despite all the foreign decoration. Arn read without difficulty the texts of the unbelievers which were inlaid in silver and gold along the walls. To Father Louis’s question of why these ungodly texts had not been destroyed, Arn replied apparently unconcerned that most people did not consider them texts, since Christians usually could not read the language of the Koran and hence viewed them as meaningless decorations. And to those who could read them, he added, the content of most of the texts was such that it agreed very well with the true religion, since the unbelievers praised God in many respects in the same way as Christians did.

  Father Louis was upset at first when he heard Arn so wantonly speaking heresy, but he held his tongue, thinking that there was probably a great difference between Christians who had lived a long time in the Holy Land and those who like himself were making their first visit.

  It was already time to sing ters, and they had to hurry a little so as not to arrive late to the Temple of Solomon. Afterward they went back up to the rooms which were delegated to Jerusalem’s Master. A big crowd of visitors was already waiting; judging by the diverse clothing they wore, they could be anything from knights in the Holy Land to unbeliever craftsmen and merchants. Arn de Gothia excused himself, saying that he had a good deal of work to do that could not wait any longer, but that he would see his Cistercian guests again after they had sung sext.

  So they met again a few hours later, and Arn then took his visitors out into the pillared arcade which resembled that in a Cistercian cloister. There he had them served with cold drinks made from something called lemons. Arn still drank only water.

  Now Father Louis had a reason to ask Arn whether he was doing penance, and he received a cautiously affirmative reply. But realizing that he might be expected to explain the matter in more detail, Arn told him that it involved something that he would prefer to confess only to his dearest father confessor in life. His name was Henri and he was the abbé in the faraway West Gothic cloister of Varnhem. Then Father Louis lit up and told him that he knew this abbé quite well, since they had met several times in Cîteaux at chapter meetings. Father
Henri had told him many interesting things about Christianizing the wild Gothic people. Imagine that the world could be so small! So they had a mutual friend, which was completely unexpected.

  For Arn it was like hearing a greeting from home, and for a moment he turned thoughtful as he sank into reminiscences from both Varnhem and Vitae Schola in Denmark and the sins for which he’d had to do penance; the worst of them, no matter how hard it was to believe, was that he had loved Cecilia, his betrothed.

  Father Louis had no difficulty in persuading Arn to recount what had happened to him in life from the time he met his father confessor Henri until now, so many years later, he was here in Jerusalem as a Templar knight. Nor did Father Louis, who was a practiced tender of souls, have any trouble hearing the underlying tone of sorrow in Arn’s account. He then offered to take his old confessor’s place, since he was the closest person to Father Henri that Arn could expect to find in the Holy Land. Arn agreed after a brief hesitation, and Brother Pietro went to fetch his abbé’s confession stole and then left them alone in the vaulted arcade.

  “Well, my son?” asked Father Louis after he had blessed Arn before confession.

  “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” Arn began with a deep sigh as if to take a running start at his affliction. “I have sinned gravely against our Rule; that is the same thing as if you, Father, had sinned against the cloister rules. I have also kept my sin secret and thereby aggravated it, and the worst thing is that I have found a way to defend my actions.”

  “Then you will have to tell me more concretely what it involves if I am to understand and be able to advise you or absolve you,” replied Father Louis.

  “I killed a Christian, and it was done in malice; that is one sin,” Arn began hesitantly. “The second is that I then rightly should have been stripped of my mantle, and in the best case be set to tend to the latrines for two years; in the worst case to leave our order. But because I kept my sin secret, I rose in the ranks within our order and now hold one of our highest positions, for which I am unfit.”

  “Is it a striving for power that drove you to commit this sin?” asked Father Louis with concern. He saw a very troublesome case before him in terms of deciding on a penance.

  “No, Father, I can honestly say that it is not,” Arn replied without hesitation. “As you have understood, men like me, to some degree, and especially men like Arnoldo de Torroja, hold great power in our order. That’s why it’s important which men assume these positions, because the presence of all Christendom in the Holy Land may depend on it. Arnoldo de Torroja is a better Grand Master and I’m a better Jerusalem’s Master than many other men. But not because we are purer in our faith than others, not because we are greater spiritual leaders or better at leading many knights in battle than others might be. We are better in these positions because we belong to those Templar knights who seek peace rather than war. Yet those who seek war are leading us to our downfall.”

  “So you’re defending your sin by saying that it protects the Holy Land?” asked Father Louis with scarcely noticeable sarcasm which in any case went right over Arn’s head.

  “Yes, Father, that is what I see if I try to look deep into my conscience,” he said.

  “Tell me, my son,” Father Louis went on after a moment, “how many men have you killed during your time as a knight?”

  “That’s impossible to say, Father. No fewer than five hundred, no more than fifteen hundred, I should think. I never know what happens when a lance or an arrow hits its mark; I have been struck eight times by arrows so badly that eight Saracens may think they have killed me.”

  “Among these men you killed, were more than one Christian?”

  “Yes, undoubtedly. Just as there are Saracens who fight on our side, there are Christians on the other side. But that is not the same thing. The Rule does not forbid us to shoot at our enemies with arrows or strike them with swords or ride against them with lances, and we can’t stop and ask about our enemy’s faith every time we raise a weapon.”

  “So what was it about the Christian you killed that made his death more sinful than that of other Christians you may have killed?” asked Father Louis, clearly baffled.

  “One of our most important rules of honor goes like this,” replied Arn with a hint of sadness in his voice: “When you draw your sword—do not think about who you must kill. Think about who you should spare. I have tried to live according to that rule, and it was in my thoughts when I confronted the three foolish new arrivals who for the sake of their own pleasure intended to attack and kill defenseless women, children, and old men who were under the protection of the city of Gaza. I was the master of Gaza then.”

  “Surely you must have had the right to defend your wards even from Christians. Didn’t you?” asked Father Louis, relieved.

  “Yes, most certainly. And I did try to spare two of the knights. The fact that they died anyway is not my sin; that is something that can easily occur when riding with drawn weapons against one another. But with the third knight it was worse. First I spared him as I wished and should have done. He rewarded me by killing my horse right before my eyes. Then I killed him at once and in anger.”

  “That was bad, of course,” sighed Father Louis, who saw the hope for a simple solution vanish. “You killed a Christian man for the sake of a horse?”

  “Yes, Father, that is my sin.”

  “That was bad, truly bad,” Father Louis nodded sadly. “But tell me one thing that I perhaps do not understand. Aren’t horses particularly important for you knights?”

  “A horse can be a closer friend to a knight than his friends among other knights,” said Arn sadly. “To your ears, Father, this may sound strange or even blasphemous, but I can only tell you the honest truth. My life depends on my horse and our camaraderie. With a lesser horse than the one that was killed before my eyes, I would certainly have fallen in battle long ago. That horse saved my life more times than I can count, and we had been friends ever since I was young and he was young. We lived a long warrior life together.”

  Father Louis felt strangely moved by this childish declaration of love for an animal. But from his brief sojourn in the center of the world, he had already understood that many things were different here; some things that were sins back home might not be found sinful here, and vice versa. So he did not want to be hasty, and he asked Arn for time to think over what he had heard until the next day. In the meantime Arn should again seek God in his heart and pray for forgiveness for his sin. With that they parted. Arn, moving as if carrying a heavy burden, had to go and take care of matters that could no longer wait.

  Father Louis remained out in the arcade, pondering with a certain satisfaction the interesting problem that had now been handed to him. Father Louis enjoyed cracking hard nuts.

  The men who were indeed Christians had been about to murder women and children—Father Louis was not aware that the women and children were Bedouins, since Arn had not mentioned it, because he did not find that fact significant in the same way a newcomer would.

  But God would hardly want to protect such criminals, Father Louis went on. The fact that God put a Templar knight in the way of the criminals was no cause for surprise. Two of them had undoubtedly received the punishment they deserved. So far, no problem.

  But to kill a Christian man for the sake of a soulless horse, and in a fit of anger at that? Perhaps Father Louis might better understand the problem if he tried like the philosopher to weigh the usefulness of such action that God might have placed in the balance trays.

  If he accepted Arn de Gothia’s account about the horse, and clearly he had to do so, then the horse would have been pleasing to God because it had helped its master kill hundreds of God’s enemies. So wouldn’t the horse be worth just as much as a mediocre worldly man who had taken the cross and journeyed to the Holy Land for both noble and less noble purposes?

  Theologically the answer would obviously be no. However, by killing that particular horse the criminal had a
ctually damaged God’s cause in the Holy Land just as much as if he had killed a knight. This sin had to be weighed in the balance trays. Add to that the fact that the criminal intended to murder innocent women and children solely for the sake of his own enjoyment. It was easy to understand that God had sent His punishment in the form of a Templar knight against such a sinner.

  That was the objective side of the matter. But greater difficulties arose when one approached the subjective side. Arn de Gothia knew the Rule and he had broken it. He was no ignorant sinner; he was educated and he spoke perfect Latin with an amusing Burgundian accent that reminded Father Louis of his friend Father Henri, which was no surprise. It was impossible to escape the fact that Arn de Gothia’s sin was great, and it could not be diminished by pointing to a lack of understanding.

  But this time there was a third side to the issue. Father Louis had been secretly dispatched as the Holy Father’s informant in Jerusalem. The Holy Father had a big problem on his hands because all the men of the church in the Holy Land were constantly reporting complaints against one another. They demanded that the others be excommunicated, or they requested that certain orders of excommunication be lifted; they accused each other of all sorts of sins, and unquestionably often lied in doing so. It was a particularly vexing problem because the Holy Land had more bishops and archbishops than other countries. And it had become almost impossible to sit there in Rome and try to dissect what was true and what was not in all these counter-accusations. So Father Louis had been given the assignment by the Holy Father to serve as the Holy See’s eyes and ears in Jerusalem, but preferably without revealing his role to anyone.

  In this case he had to ask himself what would be best in terms of this task he had been assigned: to retain Arn de Gothia as Jerusalem’s Master in the Holy Father’s own blessed army, or to replace him with some boorish and ignorant man?

  This question seemed easy to answer. It would serve the holy mission best if Arn de Gothia received forgiveness for his sins and continued as host for Father Louis. In view of the much greater task ordered by the Holy Father, even the sin of having killed a Christian villain paled in comparison. Arn de Gothia would receive forgiveness for his sins the very next day, but Father Louis would also describe this interesting dilemma in his first letter to the Holy Father himself, so that he could give the absolution his papal blessing. With that the problem could be dismissed for good.