Requiem: The Fall of the Templars (11 page)

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Templi. Edward tried to use this position to fund his war against Wales, but by then Everard and I had become suspicious of him and we endeavored to cut ourselves away from his influence.” Will’s words were coming in a rush.

“Edward sent Garin to force us to yield and while he was in the Holy Land, trying to worm his way into my life, Garin discovered Grand Master de Beaujeu’s plan to steal the Black Stone of Mecca.” He watched the emotions changing on Hugues’s face: surprise, shock, incredulity. “On Edward’s behalf, he worked against me, trying to get the Stone. In holding the Muslims’ holy relic to ransom, he believed Edward would get what he wanted: money for a future assault on Scotland and his own Crusade.”

Hugues moved away. “Garin told you this?” he asked fi nally.

“Yes.”

“Where is he now? What happened to him?”

“He died at Acre.”

“You are sure?”

When Will nodded, Hugues sighed roughly. “Then none of this can be proven. Garin may have been lying to you. Is there other proof?”

Will went to speak, then shook his head. “No,” he admitted, frustrated,

“but—”

“Do you know what I think this is about?” Hugues went to his desk and leaned against it, arms folded. “I think this is about your own dislike of Edward. It was you, not Everard, who came to the conclusion that Edward was working against us. Everard said as much in his writings. He was careful about what he did reveal, but reading between the lines that much at least was evident. He spoke of Garin as a wayward arrow and believed he was working for himself in the Holy Land. If you confronted Garin, no doubt he would have implicated someone else, so as not to take the blame, which, from everything everyone has told me about him, seems very likely.”

“No, that isn’t—”

“I think,” Hugues cut across him, “that there was some part of you that was jealous when the priest, your mentor, appointed Edward as guardian. Until then, you had been his closest confidant. With the arrival of Edward, that changed. And of course there are your ties with Scotland. I know you still have family there and I know this decision to go to war in your homeland must be hard for you to accept, but you cannot let personal feelings cloud your judgment of the wider implications here. Edward could very well be the Temple’s only chance for survival. I cannot allow anything to jeopardize that. I’m sorry, 56 robyn

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Will. I have to trust my instincts and my instincts tell me it was Garin, and Garin alone, who betrayed us.”

Will felt the weight of doom pushing down on him. “You cannot do this!”

“My decision is fi nal.”

“I am head here!” shouted Will, reaching for his sword.

Hugues’s eyes narrowed. “Head of a secret brotherhood no one knows exists.” He took a step toward Will, his hand falling to his own sword. “I am visitor of the Temple, second only to the grand master. Tell me, whose power is the greater? You will accept this, or I will have you removed from this order.” His tone softened. “Once Edward puts down these few rebels in Scotland, the realm will be the better for it and we will have what we need to safeguard the Temple.”

“Edward is carving himself a nation out of flesh and blood.”

“What was Everard’s expression? Did he not say peace sometimes has to be bought with blood? We have to acknowledge that in the pursuit of freedom some things have to be sacrifi ced.” Hugues took his hand from his sword hilt. “Come, Will. Support me in this. Do not make me exercise my authority over you.”

Will turned and made for the door. Not heeding Hugues’s calls, he raced down the passageway. Bursting out of the officials’ building, he sprinted across the yard. Horses were being led out of the stables. Edward was still there, talking with Jacques. Entering the knights’ quarters, Will took the stairs to his dormitory two at a time. He threw open the door, went to his pallet and pulled out his sack. His mind was filled with the face of his father, a proud Scot and a Templar, but above all a man of peace. Will tipped the contents of the bag onto his bed. A pair of hose tumbled out, along with a pendant on a tarnished chain, the creased letter from his sister, a couple of quills and his undershirt.

Will grabbed the shirt and shook it out. Even as he did so it felt wrong, too light.

“Is this what you’re after?”

Will jerked around to see Robert in the doorway, holding the knife. He stood. “You don’t know what is happening, Robert.”

“No? So you’re not planning to murder a king? I saw you,” Robert said sharply in response to Will’s silence. “Saw you kick that sack under there with a face full of guilt yesterday. You’ve been planning it since Hugues told you we were coming here, haven’t you?”

Will hesitated. Was that true? He didn’t know his own thoughts anymore.

This numbness, shot through with unexpected jolts of pain and memory, was unbearable.

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“I know you blame Edward for Garin’s actions, Will, but no matter what wrong he has done, no matter his ambitions for a Crusade and his attempts to use the Anima Templi, it was Garin, not him, who was responsible for what happened to Elwen. Garin, not Edward, who started that fi re.”

“Don’t say her name, God damn you!”

“You didn’t want to speak of it, but Simon and Rose talked to me a little on the voyage to Cyprus. I don’t understand all of what happened, but I know this has to stop. We’ve been walking around you as if on thin ice since we left Acre, me, Simon, all of us. But this has gone too far.” Robert shook his head. “It is my fault in part. I should have spoken to you about it, but I was scared of your reaction. Jesus, Will, can you not see what you have become?” He took a step forward. “What you’re planning is regicide. You’ll go to hell.”

“I’m already halfway there.”

“The Brethren were formed to keep the peace through diplomacy, not violence. If you go down into that courtyard with this knife all of that ends. You will destroy yourself and the Anima Templi. What Robert de Sablé and the others after him—your father, Hasan, Everard—created is greater than you or me, greater than hatred or revenge.”

Will was pacing, his hands pushing through his hair.

Robert watched him. “You’ll draw that knife and one of two things will happen. You will kill Edward and be killed yourself, or else be cut down before you get to him. Either way, it will mean your death and maybe some part of you wants that, but you’ll be damning us all. Who will lead us? Who will continue the work?”

Will stopped pacing. “The Anima Templi is already damned. It was Hugues, not Jacques, who pledged to support Edward.”

Robert frowned, but he pressed on. “We’ll talk to him.”

“Hugues doesn’t know Edward like I do and neither do you.” Will sat heavily on his pallet, his head in his hands. He told Robert about Garin’s confession. “I should have told you before,” he said in response to the knight’s stunned expression. “But I couldn’t bring myself to speak of it.”

Robert went to him and crouched down. “Let me talk to Hugues.”

“It is too late. Jacques and le Jay are in this now. The time for diplomacy is past. I will not let what my father died trying to protect and what Everard spent his life building become used for Edward’s ambition. Peace is not worth that price. I would rather see the Anima Templi ended than become a pawn for him. He has ruined my life. I will give him nothing more.” Will looked at 58 robyn

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the knife in Robert’s hand. “If I do not do this, he will destroy Scotland and we will help him.”

Robert stood. “You’re not a killer, Will.”

Will looked away. He was on that mole again, his sword stabbing out. He felt that pure shock of elated triumph as the blade punched into Garin’s back.

Elias had told him not to forget what he was capable of, but he was all too aware of that. Deception, selfishness, weakness, murder: they were the things he was capable of. He drew his falchion. Maybe this blade was more fi tting; maybe it was good that Edward would see him coming.

“Don’t,” said Robert. “The king has surrounded himself with men who share his ambitions for expansion. His son is too young to rule without their counsel. Scotland will still fall under the steel of an English Army and you’ll have done nothing to stop it. The only thing you can do is try to persuade Hugues to end this alliance.”

Will stared at the sword in his hands. It was a Scottish blade. It had belonged to his father and his grandfather. He looked down at his things, strewn across his bed. Was this all he was left with after a lifetime of struggle?

“Edward won’t stop his war if we refuse to give him the men. He’ll just fi nd his soldiers somewhere else. He’ll still lead his army north. He’ll still . . .” Will trailed off.

Robert was speaking again, but Will wasn’t listening. It wasn’t true: he did have something. He had information. He knew Edward’s plans, or at least enough of them to give the Scottish forces a chance.

Robert stared at him as he sheathed his sword and unhooked the clasp of his mantle. “What are you doing?”

Will pulled the white garment, emblazoned with its red cross, from his shoulders and let it fall to the floor. He felt lighter than he had in years. He tugged off his surcoat and tossed it aside. Bending down, he stuffed his belongings back into his sack and grabbed from the head of the pallet the plain woolen cloak that he’d been using as a pillow. He shrugged it on over his hauberk. “I’m going home.”

Robert’s confusion turned to disbelief. “No, Will, for God’s sake!”

“If the only option I have is to hinder his war, make it harder for him to get what he wants, that is what I’ll do.”

“Do this and you’ll be betraying your own men! You won’t fi nd justice where you’re going,” Robert shouted, as Will slung his pack over his shoulder.

“You’ll only fi nd war.”

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“Peace sometimes has to be bought with blood, Everard was right. And it’ll be with Edward’s blood that I’ll buy it.”

“What about Rose?”

Will halted in the doorway. His daughter’s words rang in his mind.
I lost
my parents. Both of them
. She didn’t even believe he was her father. “She will have a better life without me,” he murmured. “You will watch out for her? You and Simon?”

“Your father ran from his family, from you. It haunts you still. Do not do the same to her.”

“My father left to do something good and right in this world. I failed to continue his dream. Perhaps we should have done more in the Holy Land.

Maybe we should have stood firmer in the face of our enemies, used our swords more and our tongues less.”

“We use our swords only when all hope of diplomacy is passed.”

“And that is now.”

Robert went to him and took his arm. “You cannot come back from this, Will. You’ll be imprisoned as a deserter. Do you understand? You cannot come back.”

“I do not want to.” As he said it, Will felt his newfound sense of purpose solidify. Pulling away from Robert, he stepped through the door.

6

The Royal Palace, Paris

january 14, 1296 ad

Philippe raised his head as the door to his bedchamber opened. His wife entered, followed by two handmaidens carrying her embroidery materials. Philippe returned to his study of the parchment he was holding then looked up again, his eyes fixing on one of the handmaidens, who placed several spools of silk on a table near the ornate bed that dominated the chamber. He stared after her as she headed out, the door clicking shut behind her.

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“What is it?” asked Jeanne, following Philippe’s intent gaze. Her voice was soft and low.

“Who was that girl?” he demanded, setting the parchment on his desk and rising.

“Marguerite?”

“Not her. The other one. Who is she?”

The queen frowned at his tone. “Her name is Rose. She has been a servant here for some time. I have just promoted her to my staff.”

“I saw her last month. She was meeting a man outside the palace. The steward was supposed to have expelled her.” Philippe strode to the door.

“Wait.” Jeanne crossed to him, placing a gentle hand on his arm. “It was a misunderstanding. The man you saw wasn’t her lover, as you told the steward.

It was her father.”

“Why would she be meeting him in secret on the riverbank like some bawd?”

“He is a Templar.”

Philippe arched an eyebrow. “A Knight Templar with a daughter?”

“Her mother was a handmaiden to your grandmother, here in the palace.

Andreas di Paolo, the Venetian mercer who supplies my tailor, wrote to me asking if I could find her work. He always struck me as a man of good judgment on the occasions he had an audience with me.” Jeanne went to the table where Rose had deposited the silks. She picked up a vibrant blue spool. “She rarely speaks of her family. I think her mother died at Acre. The other girls say she sometimes cries in the night.” Sighing, the queen set down the silk. “I suppose I felt sorry for her.”

Philippe’s brow furrowed. Going to her, he put his hands on her shoulders and looked down into her brown eyes, always so expressive, so filled with emotion. He traced a finger across her face, which was as soft and round as the rest of her. There was nothing hard about Jeanne. She was a woman of curves and contours with dark, slightly heavy features and thick black hair, inherited from her native Navarre. She had grown even fuller after the birth of their sixth child, a girl called Isabella, but to Philippe she was as lovely as she had been since he had first known her. They were betrothed twelve years ago, when she was eleven and he was sixteen, but before that they had grown up together in the royal house at Vincennes. Jeanne, who inherited the throne of Navarre as a baby, had been placed in the royal household by her widowed mother and the two children had grown close, Philippe taking on the protective role of older brother.

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Drawing her to him, he stroked her hair. “I hate to see you sad.” He felt her arms come up, her hands sliding across his back, and he winced when her fingers brushed a fresh laceration.

Jeanne lifted her cheek from his chest as he tensed. “I wish you wouldn’t mortify yourself,” she murmured, the concern in her eyes now all for him.