P. Doherty - The Templar Magician

Edmund heard a hideous cry carry across the bailey before the gateway. Two Syrian girls were struggling in the greedy grasp of Swabian mercenaries, their great two-headed axes lying on the ground beside them. The Swabians were stripping the sobbing girls and pushing them from one to another. The girls screamed; one of them pointed at the blood-encrusted corpse of a man lying beside them. Edmund roared in anger. He fought to settle his fretting horse, but it was too late. The mercenaries had either tired of their game or recognised the danger. They stood aside as one of their company swiftly plucked up his axe and cleanly severed the heads of both girls. The rest turned to face de Payens. He abruptly reined in and stared horror-struck as the two corpses, blood pouring from their severed necks, collapsed; their heads, shrouded by clouds of hair, bounced and rolled across the cobbles.

De Payens turned away in disgust. Sword drawn, he urged his horse towards the steps of a crumbling church, its doors flung open to allow in the flight of citizens, and rode up the steps, forcing aside the fugitives. The flickering darkness was heavy with the scent of myrrh, aloes and incense, the blackness broken by flaring torches and the glow of candles burning before icons and statues. At the far end stood the sanctuary altar, hidden by a heavy dark cloth with a silver pyx embroidered in the centre. The nave of the church was swiftly filling with refugees of every faith and none. Families clung to each other in terror, children whimpering. A Greek priest carrying a gold cross, accompanied by acolytes and a thurifer, processed out through the sacristy door. The priest bellowed that all who were not cruciferi , cross-bearers, should leave at once. Behind him shuffled mercenaries garbed in mailed hauberks, dirty boots scuffing the floor, kite-shaped shields slung on their backs, swords and daggers drawn in fierce expectation.

‘Leave!’ bellowed the priest as his escort clattered their arms. ‘Infidels, heretics, schismatics! There is no sanctuary for you here!’

His proclamations were greeted with fresh moans. De Payens urged his horse forward into a pool of light thrown by one of the clerestory windows high in the wall. The sun’s rays caught his white cloak, emphasising the red cross stitched on its right shoulder.

‘No one need leave here, Domine,’ he declared in the lingua franca. The priest spluttered, fingering the cross around his neck. His escort, greedy for blood, plunder and rape, grumbled menacingly, but a Templar knight, sword drawn, his horse’s withers wet with blood, was objection enough. The priest bowed and, snapping at his dog soldiers, swept back into the sacristy.

De Payens took up guard at the open doors of the church. All were admitted, flooding into the nave, fear-crazed and shocked. Any pursuers were turned away by the grim sentry, his cloak wrapped about him, the blade of his bloodied sword resting against his shoulder. He sat as if hewn out of granite, staring across the great bailey carpeted with corpses, blood gleaming and twinkling in the sunlight. Flies swarmed in black hordes. Vultures and buzzards, wings flapping, floated down to their banquet. Yellow pi dogs, ribs sticking out, moved from corpse to corpse, nosing at the clothes, eager to tear at the flesh. These scattered only at the appearance of looters and corpse-plunderers, sneaking across, greedy-eyed, for any precious item. A merchant, grateful for his escape, offered the grim Templar some sesame seed cake and a pitcher of water. De Payens ate and drank as he stared out, his mind pitching like a galley on a stormy sea. He felt cold, dead. Was it for this that he had entered the great order, vowed to serve God, Christ and St Mary and obey the master of the Temple?

To calm himself, de Payens remembered his dawn mass of ordination and investiture. How he had received the mantle of the order, the woollen waist cord that signified chastity, the soft cap symbolising obedience, all sealed by the master’s kiss of peace. No more than two years ago, though it now seemed like an age! He’d arrived in the Temple forecourt in Jerusalem dressed in his best clothes. There he’d been met by Templar serjeants and escorted across the Great Pavement, where the Knights Templar had their lodgings. They had gone along porticoes, colonnades and vaulted passageways lit by dim lamps, the stone slab floor echoing every footfall. After he’d been blessed and incensed in an antechamber, he had been led into the great chapter house, where the Templars waited; their white mantles displaying the red cross, soft silk caps on their heads, gauntleted hands resting on the hilts of drawn swords. Under terrible oaths in that cavernous chamber, cold and dark, the pricks of light from the juddering oil lamps shifting the shadows, de Payens had sworn that he was of knightly cast, of legitimate birth and in good health. That he was a faithful adherent of the Catholic faith according to the Latin rite of Rome, that he was not married and was free of all such commitments. There, in the brooding gloom, close to the stables where Solomon once stabled his horses, a mere walk from where the Saviour had preached and driven out the money-sellers, the great oaths of the White Knights rolled out. Bertrand Tremelai, the Grand Master, proclaimed the challenge in a powerful voice:

‘You must totally renounce your own will. You must admit to that of another. You must fast when you are hungry. Thirst when you wish to drink. Keep strict vigil even when tired.’

To all of these de Payens had replied:

‘Yes, Domine, if God so pleases.’

It seemed like a whisper in contrast. After he had sworn the oath, the investiture had taken place as the massed ranks of the Templars chanted the psalm: ‘Behold how good it is for brothers to live in union and harmony.’

Once invested, he’d been escorted into the refectory to receive the congratulations of his grandparents, Theodore the Greek, with his lazy smile and soft ways, and his redoubtable grandmother Eleanor, sister of the great Hugh de Payens, founder of the order. Then they had returned to Lebanon, while he had remained in Jerusalem to undergo the grim discipline and training to be a Poor Knight of Christ.

De Payens had been relegated to the meanest lodgings within the courtyard of the Temple. Obedience was a harsh fact, not a choice, rigorous hardship the theme for every day and night. He slept in his clothes on a bed that was no more than a carpet strewn across the floor, on one side a lighted candle, on the other his weapons ready for use, his sleep constantly broken by calls to sing Divine Office. Meagre meals taken in silence were his only sustenance. Harsh sword and lance practice in the glaring heat of the noonday devil was a daily requirement. Hunting, hawking and women were strictly denied, severe punishments imposed for any infringement of the rule: forty days of fasting for striking a comrade. Those in disgrace had to squat on the floor with the dogs to eat their food, and must not attempt to drive the dogs off.

Once training was finished, he had been sent on patrol along dusty roads that wound through eerie gorges or across sandy scorched wastes dotted with oases, their precious water bubbling up under the bending trunks of sycamore, terebinth and date palm. He had served as an escort for pilgrims who landed on the coast eager to journey inland to kneel in the shadow of the Holy Sepulchre. He had guarded merchants with their baggage of hemp sacks, leather cases, wicker baskets and chests, all heaped on the bare backs of sweaty porters; as well as important couriers, dignitaries and officials. During such missions he had clashed with the bearded, harsh-faced men of the desert who came swirling out of the dust with their green banners and ululating battle cries. Along with other Templars, he hunted for these same men out in the arid desert, where the sun beat down as merciless as a battle mace, searching for the encampments of the desert-crawlers, as they called them, with their orange pavilions, attacking and killing, seeking out their chieftains in their turbans, velvet robes and silver girdles. Women and children had fallen, tumbling beneath the hooves of his charging destrier. During one such attack he had captured a young woman who had escaped and fled deep into the wasteland. She had begged for her life, pressing her body up against his, breasts ripe and full pushed into his hands, slim waist soft against his mail shirt, eyes and lips promising everything. He had turned away, stumbling in fear from such temptation, and when he looked back, she was gone.