Michael JECKS - The Templar's Penance

Baldwin saw the lad sit up, his mouth a blood-filled hole where he had fallen and dragged the inner surface of his bottom lip along the gravel-strewn ground. Baldwin felt his courage quail within him, but Afonso had no hesitation. He picked up the boy, and with a piece of his tunic, began to hook out the stones and grit which had been caught in the little fellow’s mouth, not stopping until he had most of them out. Then he walked to a hut and demanded some watered wine for the boy. Only when he had seen the boy drink a little, still crying pitifully, and had found another to look after him, did he turn back to Baldwin.

‘Why did you want to talk to me?’ he demanded.

‘Because I wanted to kill you,’ Baldwin said seriously. ‘And now I am not sure.’

‘Yes, I wanted to kill him. I hated him – I still do,’ Afonso said passionately.

Baldwin felt his hackles rise. ‘An old man like that? What had he ever done to you?’

Afonso gave him a ferocious stare and his mouth opened, but then he shook his head and stared out over the town below them.

They had walked out from the castle and were sitting on a low wall a short distance away. Afonso had been quiet all the way, as though helping the boy had exhausted all his energies, but Baldwin was seething with a curious emotion. He wanted to strike the man, but something restrained him … probably João’s words. ‘ Leave your sword sheathed .’ Why had he said that? João must have known that Afonso was going to be here. How had he guessed?

‘Were you told to go there to the graveyard?’ he asked.

‘No. I went there to find some peace and to pray. The claveiro said I might meet someone there and he suggested it could be good for me to tell my story,’ Afonso said. ‘If you wish to hear it, I can tell you now.’

There was a strange listlessness to him still as he began his story, as though he had been on a long journey, but had at last finished it. He was home.

‘I am called Afonso de Gradil. I was the second son of Dom Alvaro, but my older brother died when I was young. My grandfather helped fight the Moors and won back our lands, and my father felt the debt to God deeply. When I was young, he renounced the world and took on the white robes. He became a Knight Templar, living here in Tomar.

‘Like my mother, I was proud of him. I honoured him for taking up the sword in God’s name. When she died, I thought that I might wish to come and join him here in the castle, but before I could do so, the Templars were arrested.’

He looked at Baldwin. ‘The accusations against those men were false. I know this. And then they began the foul process of destroying the Order – all on the words of a few lying men.’

‘I know,’ Baldwin said impatiently. ‘So why did you choose to punish another innocent Templar?’

‘Innocent? Brother Matthew was an agent of the French King sent to destroy the Templars!’ Afonso spat. ‘He was here for a while, but he invented stories about worshipping a devil’s head, about urinating on the cross … all kinds of nonsense! Then he took those stories back with him to France and gave evidence against the Templars, helping to have them destroyed. And one of the men who died was my father.’

Baldwin fell back in his seat, and he felt a hideous crawling sensation over his flesh, as though tiny demons were enjoying his discomfiture. Suddenly the remoteness of Matthew, the ‘otherness’ of his behaviour, made sense. It was why he had never been tortured; he had no need of torture. He had willingly given evidence against his own brethren. ‘No!’

‘My father heard of the courts being held in France and travelled with others to give evidence in support of the Templars. Many were listened to, but because of Matthew, my father was captured. In 1310, he was burned to death with fifty others outside Paris, in a meadow near the Convent of Saint Antoine.’

Baldwin knew that place. Saint Antoine des Champs, on the road to Meaux, was a huge fortified precinct, entirely walled and moated. The Templars had been taken there to break the spirits of those who still denied guilt, and had been led there on wagons, shouting their innocence still. Chained and manacled, they could not escape when the King’s men slipped the horses from their harnesses and set fire to the wagons, not even giving the men the dignity of a stake.

‘I knew Matthew … are you sure he was guilty?’

‘My uncle saw the records.’

‘Your uncle?’

‘The claveiro here. He came here willingly to restore the castle and convent to its previous glory,’ Afonso said. ‘After the shame brought upon the convent and my father by Matthew, he felt the need to do all he could to put matters right again. As did I in my own way.’

‘So you killed Matthew.’

Afonso looked at him again, and there was a sadness in his eyes. It was enough to stay Baldwin’s hand. He remembered this fellow picking up the child in the courtyard and helping him so carefully and kindly. Then he remembered Matthew. Conflicting emotions rose in his breast, but if Afonso was right, and Matthew had indeed survived the ordeals of the Templars by confessing to crimes and accusing his own brethren, then Afonso was justified in his revenge. And Baldwin would be merely perpetuating an injustice by killing him.

‘I think you know I am speaking the truth,’ Afonso said.

‘I believe so.’

‘Aha, that is good news!’ a strange voice broke in. ‘I would hate to have to harm an Englishman so far from home.’

Baldwin felt the muscles at the back of his neck tense. Slowly he turned and faced Sir Charles, who stood there smiling happily. ‘So you aren’t going to kill my friend, then, Sir Baldwin? That, I think, is an astonishingly good idea. Why don’t we have a chat over some wine instead?’

‘I should be glad of it at some point,’ Baldwin said. ‘But first I should like to finish this conversation.’

‘Please do so. My friend here is leaving my companionship now, which I feel is very sad, but no matter. I shall be in our tavern, Afonso, if you change your mind.’

He turned and walked away, whistling, down the lane towards the town, and Baldwin raised a questioning eyebrow at Afonso.

‘My task is done. I have decided to come here and join the Order. Many men from the Templars are still here. King Dinis did not believe the allegations, and he has merely changed the name, but the Order remains. My uncle will see that it remains pious and Christian. I shall join the Order, and then go to Castro-Marim. There I shall be able to kill Moors, and fulfil my father’s aim.’

‘If you thought Matthew was responsible for your father’s death, then your killing him was understandable.’

‘It would have been.’

Baldwin felt his breath catch in his throat. ‘What do you mean: would have been ?’

‘I didn’t kill him.’ Afonso shrugged. ‘Someone else got to him first. I merely reached him as he fell to the ground. And the thing that surprised me was that he looked glad. He was grateful for his life to be ended. I found that hard to imagine.’

Baldwin stared at him for a short while, then turned away and gazed out over the low lands beyond the river again. It was speculation, but Baldwin knew enough about how the Inquisition had gathered their evidence against Templars to be able to piece together the story.

‘He had lived with his shame for such a long time,’ he said slowly. ‘All his life had been spent as a Templar, and he was as committed and honourable a Templar knight as any – until the arrests. I expect he was captured with others in France. He lost his courage while in the gaol. The Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, and the leading members of the Order were held murus strictus , with small walls, which meant that they were held alone and manacled for years, but the others were held murus largus , in large cells with many men together. That is where Matthew would have been held. And when the torturers did their work, they did it in the same large cells, so that all the other Templars could see what would soon be done to them. One at a time, they were taken and scorched, whipped, broken … Is it any surprise that a man like Matthew, proud, haughty and handsome, should find his will breaking as he saw all his comrades being tortured? He agreed to give evidence against them, and he was released. Except now he had no one to call friend. All his friends were dead, or they despised him. He had no profession, no livelihood. His past career was closed to him for he had betrayed his companions. Ah! Poor Matthew! So he sank and became the lowest creature whom he himself would have disdained. A beggar.’