Requiem: The Fall of the Templars (3 page)

“I am Bertrand de Got, bishop of Comminges.” The bishop looked back at Pierre, who had stopped struggling and was staring at him in hope.

“You are a long way from your diocese.”

“I have been visiting one of my nephews, a priest here in Bordeaux. I was at his church when I learned that royal troops had been sent to arrest Lord de Bourg.”

“What business is it of yours?”

Bertrand took a breath, which steadied his voice. “Pierre is a generous benefactor of my nephew’s church and a well-respected member of this parish.

I cannot imagine what he has done to warrant such treatment. A message has been sent to the archbishop, informing him of the disturbance,” he added meaningfully.

Nogaret looked unconcerned. “This well-respected man is a traitor. He and others in the region have been reporting the movements of our royal troops to the English, who we know are planning more attacks on our positions in an attempt to recapture the duchy.”

“I cannot believe that.”

“It is known he has had close relations with Edward of England. It is not so great a leap to suppose that he might wish to continue to support his former master.”

“But most dignitaries in the area have had dealings with the Lord Edward,”

protested Bertrand. “I myself met the English king on several occasions during his sojourn in Gascony.”

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“I have no need to explain myself further to you,
Bishop
.” Nogaret emphasized that last word, his voice revealing something like real emotion for the first time. He spoke to the soldier behind Bertrand. “Escort him outside. See he is removed from the grounds.”

“This is outrageous.” Bertrand fixed Nogaret with a challenging look. “The archbishop will not stand for this, not in his province.”

“This house has been seized and is in the possession of the king of France.

Leave or I will see you punished for trespassing on royal property.”

“This is not the end of this matter.” Bertrand de Got looked at the lord and shook his head. “I am sorry, Pierre. I did what I could.”

Pierre strained against the soldiers holding him, his eyes wide. “Dear God, Bertrand, help me!”

Nogaret went to Pierre, his mouth twisting. “God isn’t the power in these lands any more.”

“
Bertrand!
” shouted Pierre. But the bishop was heading away, compelled by the royal guard, who yanked the door shut, blocking out the sight of the soldier raising his hand and muting Pierre’s scream as the knife plunged downward.

After the torture was done, Nogaret returned to the hall, leaving the half-conscious Pierre with one of the soldiers. The other followed him out, wiping his hands on a kitchen rag. In the hall, more people had been gathered: three men and four girls, servants by their dress, and a slim, pale-faced woman clad in an elegant gown, clutching two boys to her side. One of the boys had his hands balled against his face and was crying.

As Nogaret entered, several of the guards looked up, their faces fi lled with impotent anger. The woman stared in dumb shock at the bloodstained soldier.

One of the servants, an elderly man, started forward, then slumped against the wall as a sword was pointed at him. Nogaret noticed that another guard had been laid out beside the two killed in the initial fight and a royal soldier appeared to have been injured. He crossed to one of the men, whose surcoat was edged with yellow brocade. “Captain, what happened?”

The captain led him toward the doors, out of earshot of the prisoners.

“When they heard the lord screaming, they tried to attack us. One managed to wrest a sword from one of my men. I hope the traitorous bastard confessed,” he added gruffl y.

“Not yet.”

The captain frowned. “The interrogation sounded very thorough.”

“You did what I asked?” questioned Nogaret, ignoring the comment.

“The wagon is being loaded as we speak.” The captain paused. “But if he 10 robyn

young

has not confessed should we not wait for confirmation before we proceed? It is possible he was telling the truth. Perhaps our information was wrong?”

“It wasn’t,” said Nogaret flatly. “These people need to be put down before they can compromise us. At present, we are holding well against the English, but we must not allow anything to jeopardize that. They took Blaye and Bayonne from us at the start of the war. With better information they could capture more territory.”

The captain nodded.

“See that the lord and his family are conveyed to the garrison jail. Their fate will be decided in due course.” Leaving the captain to snap orders at his men, Nogaret headed into the bright November afternoon.

In front of the house there was a great deal of activity around a large wagon.

Squires were keeping an eye on the horses, while soldiers tramped back and forth from a side door, carrying an abundance of objects: ornate candelabras, a bundle of trailing silk dresses—the red-faced soldier holding them being jeered by his comrades—stacks of silver plates, armfuls of books, two swords in decorated scabbards, a rosewood spice box.

Nogaret went to the wagon, the soldiers moving around him. He looked inside at the assortment of furniture and clothing. Seeing something glittering on the floor of the wagon, he reached in and pulled out a necklace of glass beads. He tossed the trinket back inside with a scowl. He dearly hoped that this plunder, when added to what was taken from other families, would be enough to justify the time he had spent here, especially since the seizures had been his idea.

“Minister.”

A soldier was pointing to the main gates. Squinting into the sunlight, Nogaret saw a rider approaching, the horse’s hooves pounding up clouds of dust.

He wondered for a moment whether the bishop had decided to return, but as the rider came closer Nogaret saw he was clad in a familiar scarlet and black cloak. It was a royal messenger. He recognized the man from Paris.

“Minister de Nogaret,” the rider said breathlessly in greeting as he drew up.

Dismounting, he reached into a dust-streaked leather bag and pulled out a scroll. “The city garrison told me where to fi nd you.”

Nogaret broke the wax seal and opened it. He scanned the message.

“Minister?” The captain, hearing the hoofbeats, had come out.

There was an anguished cry from the house. The young woman was being dragged through the ruined doorway by two of the guards. She was screaming the fall of the templars

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for her children. “Finish up here.” Nogaret raised his voice above the din.

“Deliver the wagon directly to Prince Charles. He will see the treasure is conveyed to Lord Philippe.”

“Of course.” The captain glanced questioningly at the messenger. “Are you leaving us, Minister?”

“I am to return to Paris.” Nogaret snapped his fingers at the squire who held his horse. “The king has summoned me.”

2

The Banks of the Seine, Paris

december 19, 1295 ad

The galley slid haltingly alongside the jetty, grating against the stone.

Men grabbed the ropes that were thrown to them and looped them through iron rings, pulling off the slack to steady the vessel. The gangplanks were set down with a clatter and a host of men began to disembark, their faces brown and rough with sun and wind. The white mantles they wore were sodden from the fog that clung to the river and flowed sluggishly around the mast of their ship, where a piebald banner hung limp.

Will Campbell went to the galley’s side as the men in front of him made their way down. He scanned the area, the damp, freezing air filling his lungs.

The buildings of the Ville stretched away in a confusion of rooftops and spires.

The rows of plaster and timber houses, several storeys high, were vague and insubstantial in the misty air, punctuated by the hulking outlines of churches and abbeys. Almost immediately ahead, the Hôtel de Ville: the administrative seat of the provost of the merchants, loomed over the place de la Grëve. The imposing structure stood at the center of a web of workshops, markets and houses that radiated across the city’s right bank: the municipal center of Paris.

Will picked out other structures he recognized, but any true sense of the city was disoriented by the fog and by time. It was years since he had stood on these banks. He glanced behind him at the humped shape of the Ile de la Cité that rose out of the Seine, wreathed in white. The heart of France. He caught 12 robyn

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a glimpse of the palace towers at the western end of the island and his jaw tightened.

“Still looks the same, doesn’t it?”

Simon came up and rested his thick arms on the side. His beard had grown bushier during the voyage, but his mop of brown hair was starting to thin on top. Will, who was almost a foot taller than the brawny groom, noticed a bald patch on his crown.

“Robert and I were trying to remember how long it’s been. By my reckon-ing it’s over thirty years.”

“Twenty-nine.”

Simon smiled ruefully, revealing his broken front tooth. “Robert’s beaten me then.”

“Did I hear my name?”

They turned. A tall knight with gray eyes and a face that was still boyishly handsome, despite the lines that creased it, headed over.

“You won the wager,” Simon told him.

“I had no doubt.” Robert grinned. “You couldn’t count the fingers on a one-armed man.” He clapped Simon on the back then looked at Will, who had fallen silent and was staring out over the city. “It is strange to be back, isn’t it?” His smile faded. “So much has happened.”

“You should check on the horses, Simon,” said Will abruptly. He headed for the planks where the last of the knights were disembarking, leaving the sergeants and crew.

Exchanging a look with Simon, Robert went after Will. “The grand master wants us to walk with him at the van. I think he might have actually forgotten how to get to the Temple.”

They descended, the gangplank dipping and flexing. Will stepped onto the stone jetty with a jolt that felt somehow irrevocable. He wanted to turn around and go back, keep on sailing.

Together, they trudged up the jetty, over stinking mud banks littered with detritus: broken eel pots, a wooden shoe, a dead bird, wings splayed. The banks became harder as they approached the end of the jetty, brown sand and bristly grass, then muddy street. The area was busy with men and women heading to work after morning Mass. A horse-drawn bronette juddered past, conveying two women dressed in fine-looking gowns, the wheels of the car-riage skidding in the mud. A group of dirty children ran after it, calling hopefully to the women, who looked the other way with practiced indifference. As the fall of the templars

13

the children passed, a herd of pigs funneled out of an alley, followed by a swineherd who guided them with
thwacks
of a stick down to the waterside, near to a wharf where carts were being loaded with timber.

Up ahead, the knights had gathered in a group, at the head of which stood the grand master. Jacques de Molay was a bull of a man in his early fi fties, with coarse gray hair that fell in thick waves around his shoulders. Like all Templar Knights, he wore a beard, but rather than keeping his clipped and neat, as Will and Robert did, he wore it long, almost to his chest. Will had once heard a knight say that before going into battle the grand master would plait it and push it down the front of his shirt. Jacques was addressing a Templar offi cial, his French gruff and guttural. “Speak to the provost and find out where we should berth our vessel, then have the sergeants follow with our gear. Let us hope my message reached the preceptory and they are expecting us.”

“Yes, my lord.” The official waited for a wagon to trundle past then made his way over to the Hôtel de Ville.

Jacques saw Will and Robert approaching with the last of the knights and motioned to them. “Commander Campbell, lead the way.”

Pausing to get his bearings, Will led the group of sixty knights toward the Church of St. Gervais, whose lofty steeple was lost in fog. Some people stared as the knights marched in a column across the busy street, but many simply hurried past, engrossed in their own business. In Paris, the site of the order’s principal base in the West, Templars were a common sight, as much a part of the community of the city as the professors and scholars of the Sorbonne on the left bank and the royal officials on the Ile de la Cité. Just before the church, Will turned into a narrow side street that wound through a warren of alleys and shallow stairways, where timber-framed buildings crowded in on either side, bowing toward one another. The top storeys of some of the structures were so close the inhabitants could reach out and shake their neighbors’ hands.

Washing, strung from crisscrossing lines, dripped a steady rain on to the knights’ heads as they made their way out on to the rue du Temple. For Will, these gloomy streets were painfully familiar. Around every corner, echoes of the past came back to him, faint in faded signs and peeling shutters, clearer with the appearance of a church spire clustered with gargoyles in a gap between buildings. With familiarity came memories. They hung in the air like ghosts, visible in shop doorways and crumbling facades, in the faces of people who hurried by. Things he had kept at bay on the endless journey from Cyprus, the monotony of travel numbing his mind, now overwhelmed him.

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Two butchers lounged in a doorway, aprons brown with blood. A baker chatted animatedly with a woman as he handed her two loaves. Will stared at them, wondering if he would recognize anyone after all this time. Ahead, a young woman hurrying across the street slipped in the mud, dropping the basket she was carrying. As she bent to retrieve it, she flipped back the trailing material of her head veil, revealing copper-gold curls. Will halted. His eyes remained transfixed by her, even as she rose and he saw her face, even as he saw he didn’t know her. He started as he felt Robert’s hand on his elbow.

“What’s wrong?”

Will realized he had stopped. “Nothing. I forgot which way.”

Robert glanced at the girl as she hastened on, then back at Will, but he said nothing and they continued in silence.