P. Doherty - The Templar Magician

The encounter had changed de Payens. He’d been plagued by phantasms, succubi of the night, with soft perfumed flesh and alluring eyes, the prospect of a sinuous body twisting beneath him, of silky tendrils of hair wafting his face. In contrition he had prostrated himself in chapter, confessed his thoughts and been condemned to black bread and brackish water. He’d crept to the cross in the Templar chapel and done penance out on some sea of rock in the blinding heat of the desert. More importantly, he lost his appetite for blood: not the fury of battle, sword against sword, but for those who could offer no defence. He’d conjured up the fabulous stories about the paladins of old, whose deeds he had learned from the indomitable Eleanor. Hadn’t she whispered how the great Hugh had established the order to defend the weak and the defenceless, be it Christian or Turk? She had lectured him on the futility of killing with all the cold finality of death brooding over the haunting landscape of the battlefield. She had taught him his horn book and his prayer wheel by quoting poetry about the aftermath of slaughter. How did those lines go?

‘Many a spear, dawn cold to the touch, we wave them high but the poet’s harp won’t raise the fallen warriors, whilst the buzzards, winging sombrely over the plain, will bear tidings to the vulture, how he plucked and ate, how he and the jackal made short work of the dead …’

‘Domine, Domine!’

De Payens felt a hand on his thigh. He glanced down at the wide-eyed woman, her stricken face, her iron-grey hair charred and singed.

‘Domine.’ Her lips hardly moved. She pointed to the church door. ‘We own a wine shop with a small vineyard behind it. The soldiers came. They took my husband and put him beneath the wine press and turned it until his head cracked like a nut, blood and brains seeping out to mingle with our wine. Domine, why did they do that?’

‘Demons!’ De Payens stroked her brow gently. ‘Demons incarnate. The world is thronged with them.’ He ushered the woman away, aware of how the noise in the church was settling, then returned to his guard and wondered what to do. A scorched, tattered figure came stumbling across the bailey, screaming:

‘Christ and His Holy Sepulchre!’

De Payens waved him forward. The man staggered up the steps and crouched just within the doorway, gulping like a thirsty dog from a pannier of water a woman brought. When he had slaked his thirst, he peered up at de Payens.

‘God curse you all,’ he muttered. ‘Parts of the city are burning. They claim that assassins sent by the Old Man of the Mountain are responsible.’

‘Why?’ de Payens asked.

‘God knows!’ The man rose and stumbled towards him. He grasped the horse’s bridle, frenetic eyes glaring up at the Templar.

‘The city is knee deep in dismembered corpses, the ground is sticky and jellied with blood. Men like you-’

De Payens moved quickly, turning his horse even as his sword blocked the swift lunge by the knife hidden in the man’s right hand. The weapon went clattering along the floor. Women screamed in terror; men sprang to their feet, shouting warnings. De Payens hooked the tip of his sword under the man’s chin, forcing him back into the light. His assailant didn’t beg; the close-set eyes in that nut-brown face never wavered.

‘How did you know?’ he whispered.

‘You are right-handed, but you used your left for the bridle.’ De Payens searched the man’s face: intelligent, purposeful, with a snub nose, full mouth and firm chin. ‘Why?’ he asked.

‘Killers!’ the man replied. ‘Killers bound for hell for this day’s work. You must all confront the Gates of Death and meet the Janitors of the Shadowlands.’

‘A quotation from the Book of Job,’ de Payens retorted. ‘You are a scholar, a clerk?’

‘A physician who has seen enough of killing to glut himself for many a lifetime.’

De Payens lowered his sword.

‘Then pick up your dagger and get behind me. I am no demon, not yet at least.’

The man slid past him into the darkness of the church. De Payens tensed, straining his ear for any sound of a fresh attack. Instead the man came to stand beside him, sheathing his dagger as he whispered:

‘A terror of the twilight, blinded and bloated with blood, stalks the city in his livery of lion skins. Behind him trail the shackles of death. Whole legions he takes …’

De Payens stared down at him.

‘You sound more like a priest than a physician.’

Screams carried across the great bailey. Three figures rounded the corner, running towards the church, hastening like shadows under the sun, tripping over corpses, glancing fearfully over their shoulders. They had almost reached the steps of the church when their pursuer appeared, garbed in white, head shrouded in a hood. Mayele! He trotted his horse across the bailey, then paused. He glimpsed Edmund, but made no sign of recognition. Instead, he coolly raised his Saracen horn bow, notched, loosed, then notched again. Each arrow sped like a curse, swift and fatal. Two of the men twisted as the shafts took them deep in the back; the third, a clutch of jewellery in his fist, was halfway up the steps, but Mayele was a deadly archer. The shaft sliced the fleeing man in the back of the neck, its barb breaking and shattering his soft sweaty throat. He collapsed in a gargle of blood as Mayele serenely guided his horse across the square, then reined in, grinning up at de Payens.

‘They were infidels, corpse-plunderers.’

‘What proof?’

Mayele pointed to the third man.

‘He had stolen a pyx.’

‘It’s not a pyx.’ De Payens gestured with his sword. ‘It’s jewellery. He was fleeing for sanctuary, innocent, Philip, as are so many who have died today.’

‘Innocent, guilty?’ Mayele hooked the bow over the horn of his saddle. ‘Who can judge but God? Let him decide …’

Edmund de Payens, clad only in his loincloth, squatted near the door of the great refectory in the Templar house built on the corner of the Great Pavement at the heart of the old Temple enclosure in Jerusalem. He scratched the sweat coursing down his chest, wafting away the flies, trying to ignore the great wolfhounds eager to snatch his bread. He clutched his goblet, brimming with wine, and glared furiously at Mayele, who was similarly attired. Both were undergoing punishment for the chaos in Tripoli. The massacre there had ended when the standard-bearer of Baldwin III, King of Jerusalem, had processed solemnly through the city with trumpeters and heralds, demanding a cessation to the killing or immediate forfeiture of life and limb. The gallows were soon festooned with the corpses of those who had disobeyed. Decapitations, amputations and castrations had enforced the decree, and a royal standard had been placed outside the church. De Payens and Mayele had departed for the castle, only to be immediately arrested on the specific command of the Grand Master, Bertrand Tremelai, who ordered both Templars to be stripped, chained and brought back in disgrace. They’d spent two weeks in the Temple dungeons, only to be released for further punishment and humiliation.

Edmund greedily drank the watered wine. He tried to catch Mayele’s eye, but his comrade was too busy finishing his food before the wolfhounds did. Edmund glanced up the hall at the dais beneath the great Templar banner, a black cross on a sheet of sheer samite. Bertrand Tremelai sat there with his seneschals, clerks and other officers of the order. In truth, Edmund reflected, he did not like Tremelai, a cockerel of a man, proud and arrogant, with the spirit of wrath in his nostrils; a soul who neither feared God nor revered man. Red-haired, hot-tempered and choleric, Tremelai had lashed de Payens and Mayele with his contemptuous words, accusing them of failing to protect Count Raymond, of not capturing or destroying the assassins. In the presence of the full chapter, the Grand Master had condemned them to this. Now he sat feasting on the dais, drinking from a pure glass goblet, the best protection against poison, whilst de Payens and Mayele squatted on the floor amongst the dogs. Edmund wondered if he should bark, then grinned quietly to himself. He squinted at Mayele, who sat with his back against the wall, chewing on a piece of gristle, a half-smile on his face. Mayele caught his glance and spat out the piece of meat for the waiting hound.