P. Doherty - The Templar Magician

Edmund de Payens, Philip Mayele, Thierry Parmenio and their six serjeants left the Temple precincts the following day. They’d all visited the shriving pew before the Pity displayed in the Lady Chapel. Each had knelt on the prie-dieu and stared at the carved dead face of their tortured Saviour, his corpse taken down from the cross and laid across the lap of his sorrowful mother. De Payens had whispered his litany of petty offences, including thoughts about Isabella Berrington. He received absolution and went to stand in the church porch, where he lit tapers before a painting of St Christopher, a powerful protector against sudden, violent death. The others joined him, and they were met there by Tremelai, who carried a sealed chancery pouch containing letters to the Assassin leader in his mountain eyrie of Hedad, which lay to the east of the Templar castle of Chastel Blanc. Maps and charts were handed over to Parmenio, who’d act as their guide as well as their interpreter. Mass was then celebrated, the singing bread distributed, the Pax Tecum shared and the Eucharist taken. Once the Ite Missa was sung, they gathered on the Great Pavement. The afternoon sun was still strong, glistening off the Temple buildings in a sheen of light. Tremelai, his marshals and his seneschals bestowed their blessings. De Payens and his companions mounted, a black and white Templar gonfalon handed over as their official standard. Above them a horn blared, followed by blood-tingling trumpet blasts along the walls of the inner courtyard. De Payens lowered the gonfalon, a stiffened pennant, three times in honour of the Trinity, and they left the Temple enclosure through the Beautiful Gate, which led down into the city.

De Payens, the memories of that savage attack at Tripoli still fresh, was very wary. He was always struck by the contrasts of Jerusalem. The city was supposed to be a house of prayer, yet it was hard to imagine this as he and his companions, lost in their own thoughts, moved from blazing sunshine into the near darkness of narrow, filthy streets and vaulted bazaars lit only by flickering oil lamps and the dull glow of acrid-smelling candles. Sunshine pierced the rents in the clothes stretched out between the adjoining flat rooftops. Occasionally they’d approach a crossroads bathed in sunlight, then plunge back into the blackness, reeking of excrement, cooking smells, musty clothes, sweaty bodies and the hideous stench of cheap oil being burned and burned again. The walls on either side glittered as if the rough rock exuded its own sweat. Voices shouted, screamed and prayed. A variety of tongues babbled above the clattering chaos from the tawdry markets. The crowd thinned and thronged as they moved deeper into the city along the Streets of Chains to the main thoroughfare leading down to Herod’s Gate in the west of the city.

De Payens recalled Trussell’s dark thoughts about what had happened in Jerusalem, a city that certainly attracted all and sundry, a fact de Payens reminded himself of as he guided his horse through the crowds of Armenians, fat and well pursed; fierce-looking warriors from the dry lands across the Jordan; crafty-eyed ragged tribesmen from the arid stretches around the Dead Sea; Bedouins, Arabs and Christians, hostile and wary, their scarred, hardened faces betraying many a battle wound. De Payens’ attention was also caught by the beauty of the women: fair-haired, rosy-cheeked Christians; swarthy-faced Greeks, their skins brightly tattooed; Bedouins garbed in black, except for the fringed opening around the eyes. Men and women of every nation and tongue swarmed into Jerusalem, seeking salvation or profit, usually both. Whores wheedled through opened windows. Pimps and flesh purveyors offered all kinds of secret delights deep in the shadows behind them. Relic-sellers, faces flushed with false excitement, announced yet another find. Cooks and their apprentices darted from behind their stalls with skewers of roasted meat, mixed with vegetables and coated with a heavy spice to disguise the putrid taste. Water-sellers touted pewter cups of cool, miraculous water from the pool of Siloam.

No one dared approach the Templars. De Payens, carrying the gonfalon, had little need to clear his path. The very sight of their insignia, the knights garbed in the robes of their order, was inducement enough. Traders, pedlars, pimps, prostitutes, wandering scholars, even the scrawny pi dogs scattered into the darkening gaps between the houses or the mouths of ribbon-thin alleyways. De Payens heard a strange humming and glanced up. A woman was standing on the roof of a house with the light behind her so that she appeared as a stark dark shape. He glimpsed thick wild hair, the sombre rags she wore puffed up like the feathers of a crow. De Payens narrowed his eyes, shifting in the saddle. He glimpsed a white-daubed face, a necklace of bones, and gauntleted hands. She raised these as if about to intone some demonic prayer, and he fumbled for the ave beads wrapped around his sword hilt, but when he glanced up again, the hideous apparition had disappeared. The witch Erictho? he wondered. Surely not. He gripped his reins and stared around. It was best not to think of that, not now!

They left the dingy markets and bazaars, moving into the more opulent quarter of the city, where lovely mansions stood behind ornate gates. They crossed small squares with bubbling fountains, shady sycamores, and terebinth and palm trees. Songbirds trilled from gilded cages fastened to gateposts, and the air grew subtly sweet with the fragrance of flowery cactus and other plants. Eventually they reached Herod’s Gate, and were waved on through by dust-covered sentries, out on to the long road stretching north to Ramallah and Nablus. The late-January heat was not as oppressive here as in the city; even the sandy breezes felt fresh after the acrid odours of the streets. For a while de Payens rode in silence, staring at the distant hillsides covered with deep-blue flowering mandrake, whilst closer to the trackway, pale violet and yellow irises flourished.

The road was busy with travellers, pack ponies and camel lines. Pedlars and traders pushed their barrows and handcarts or urged on oxen fastened to cumbersome wagons. Soldiers, their livery covered in dust, slouched on shaggy garrans. Pilgrims moved in throngs under makeshift banners and rough-hewn wooden crosses. Beggars importuned for alms. Enterprising villagers came out of a line of pine trees to offer platters of bread and beakers of water or crushed juice. Above them all circled the ever-vigilant buzzards and vultures, thick wings feathering the air, whilst rock pigeons, aware of the danger above, darted from cover to cover across the road.

De Payens knew the route. They’d follow the Jordan valley, thick with olive groves, where the crickets sang their constant hymn, not even interrupted by the great tawny foxes slipping through in their hunt for vermin or the occasional unwary bird. As they journeyed on, they broke free of the crowds, following a route laid out by Parmenio, who seemed to know every twist and corner of the land. At first, conversation was desultory, until they spent their first night camped out in a wadi. In the far distance, thunder rumbled and jagged lightning flashed across the sky, but the rain never reached them. The Provençals set up camp, collecting dried dung and whatever bracken they could find. Soon a merry fire crackled. Meats were cooked, bread warmed, wine-skins circulated. De Payens sang the Benedicite, and they ate, even as they began to talk about the desert and all its haunting, ghostly legends. Naturally, on that and successive evenings, the conversation then turned to gossip about recent events in Jerusalem. One of the Provençals alluded to a tale about witches concocting potions from the froth of mad dogs, the hump of a man-eating hyena and the eyes of an eagle, but de Payens discovered precious little more about the corpses of the young women found around the city. Tremelai seemed to have succeeded in suppressing the whispers, although the Provençals, who seemed to know about the rumours, fiercely rejected any allegation against the Temple. No mention was ever made of Walkyn and Berrington.