P. Doherty: The Templar Magician

Melrose Abbey, Scotland

Autumn 1314

The monk lifted his head and listened to the peal of bells roll through the abbey buildings. A funeral was being prepared. The dirige psalms were being sung, the plainchant drifting on the evening breeze. Soon the solemn peal of bells would begin again. If it was a woman being buried, two peals; for a man, three; for a cleric, as many as the minor orders he had received.

‘Have you even been shown the Gates of Death? Or met the Janitors of the Shadowlands?’

Brother Benedict turned swiftly. He stared at the old woman. She was dressed in the blackest widow’s weeds and sat on the high-backed chair close to his cot bed with its plaid-patterned drape.

‘Mistress.’ The young Benedictine monk smiled apologetically. ‘I was distracted. I really did not expect you until tomorrow, Lammas Eve …’

‘But I came today.’ The old woman gripped her walking cane by its carved handle. ‘I have studied the manuscripts.’ She sighed, and rose to her feet, eyes no longer on the Benedictine but on the arrow-loop window behind him. The day was darkening, the weak sunlight fading. Next to the window hung a Little Mary, a wooden carving of the Virgin Mother and her Divine Child.

‘The Gates of Death?’ Brother Benedict whispered. ‘The Janitors of the Shadowlands?’

‘Magic, Brother!’ the woman whispered.

‘Brother Guibert, our precentor, claims he met a warlock who talked of a monastery that sank into the ground then rose like Christ on Easter Day.’

‘No, no.’ The old woman shook her head. She tapped the chancery coffer beside her, then walked over to where the monk sat on his scribe chair. ‘Brother Benedict.’ She grasped an arm of the chair and stared hard at the young monk. ‘You write, at my request and that of His Grace Robert de Bruce, King of Scotland, the history of our order, the Templars. Yes?’ She gazed fiercely at him, her light-blue eyes betraying the passion that burned like a firebrand within her. ‘Our order,’ she repeated, ‘the Templars, founded by our great and saintly ancestor Hugh de Payens, now destroyed by Philip, the Stone King of France. He burned Jacques de Molay on a small island in the Seine. Our Grand Master was lashed to a beam with cords and chains, beside him Geoffrey de Charnay. Both men, Brother Benedict, protested to the very end against the allegations of black magic, sorcery and witchcraft levelled by the Stone King’s lawyers. They testified to the piety, saintliness and innocence of the Templars. Ah well.’ She paused. ‘Later, secret adherents of our order, those who’d survived brutish, black betrayal, torture and gruesome imprisonment, swam the Seine and collected in their teeth the holy but charred remains of these valiant warriors. Yet,’ the old woman, who rejoiced in the family name of de Payens, grasped the ivory handle of her walking stick, ‘such innocence wasn’t always so. Here, in these islands …’ Her voice faltered.

The young monk glanced up in expectation.

‘Madam, such hellish accusations, levelled often against the Templars, have always been lies.’

‘Is that so?’ the old woman whispered. ‘Listen now. Our order was founded by the great Hugh de Payens in Outremer. It was blessed by Bernard de Clairvaux, hallowed by popes, favoured by the princes of this world. Little wonder the Templars waxed fat and powerful, but in the end, monk, dreams die, visions fade. Ab initio , from the very beginning, there were those who immersed themselves in the hunt for sacred relics and the power these might bring. Worse,’ she hissed, ‘some even turned to dark imaginings, calling on the shadow host, conjuring up demons garbed in the livery of hell’s flames. They hired witches who collected the poison herbs of Thessaly. They set up a nursery of sorcery, tainted our order like the poisonous yew tree with its roots deep in the graveyard, digging down into dead men’s tombs and draining from them malignant vapours to poison the air. Oh yes.’ The old woman tapped the manuscripts stacked on top of the flat lid of an iron-bound coffer. ‘Brother, study these here. Do so carefully. Write as you did last time; base yourself on the manuscripts, weave your web and tell your tale.’ She moved across to the lancet window, staring out at the evening mist moving like a gauze veil over the Melrose countryside. ‘Conjure up the past.’ Her voice became strident. ‘Robins and nightingales do not live long in cages, nor does the truth when it’s kept captive. Read all these manuscripts, Brother, and you’ll meet the Lord Satan, as you would in a crystal or a burning sapphire, bright with the glow of hell’s fire.’

TRIPOLI: OUTREMER AUTUMN 1152

‘A time of turbulence, of visions, portents and warnings! Heaven glowers at us because we have lost our way! Our souls, with their open ulcers, will go to hell on crutches. Around us, nothing but hollow graves, rotten and rotting corpses. Water may soak the earth. Blood soaks the heavens and calls on God’s justice to flash out like lightning. The sins committed in close and secret chambers will be paraded along the spacious pavements and squares of hell, where the rack, the gallows and the torture wheels stand black against the eternal flames of God’s wrath. I urge you to repent! We have taken Jerusalem, but we have lost our way.’

The preacher, garbed in filthy animal skins, lifted his staff and pointed up at the sheer blue sky, which curved above the gleaming white city of Tripoli, overlooking the Middle Sea.

‘Repent!’ he yelled in one last attempt to provoke his listeners. ‘Repent, before the doom gates open and disgorge the power of hell.’

Edmund de Payens, knight of the Templar order, leaned across in a creak of leather and touched his English comrade Philip Mayele on the wrist.

‘Are you frightened, Philip? Fearful of what is to come?’

The Englishman’s long, swarthy, lined face broke into a grin. He clawed at the greying hair that straggled down to the white cloak around his shoulders. He scratched his beard and moustache, his brown eyes gleaming with cynicism.

‘Edmund, you are a soft soul, to be driven by many a black storm before you harden. Look around you. Life is as it was, as it will be and ever shall be.’ He laughed abruptly at Edmund’s frown over such mockery of the ‘Glory Be’.

De Payens quickly remembered his resolution, after he’d last been shriven, not to be so pompous and quick to take offence. He forced a grin and nodded, curling the reins of his horse around his mittened fingers. He and Mayele were moving slowly along the Street of Aleppo down to the city gates of Tripoli. They were escorting Count Raymond, the Frankish lord of the city, who was about to leave to be reconciled with his estranged wife, Melisande, in Jerusalem. De Payens closed his eyes against the bustle of the crowds. In truth, he wanted to be back with his brethren, his fellow warrior-monks. Yet, he opened his eyes and glanced quickly at Mayele, not all the brothers were dream-followers or visionaries. Hadn’t Mayele been excommunicated with bell, book and candle for killing a priest in Coggeshalle, a town in that mist-hung island of England on the edge of the world?

‘Cruciferi, à bas, à bas!’ The cry of derision was hurled in Provençal, a guttural shout by a Turk. It shook Edmund from his reverie, and he became aware of the crowd pressing around him. Ahead of them, Raymond of Tripoli’s lightly armed Turcopole mercenaries were pushing their way through the throng, their lamellar cuirasses gleaming in the strengthening sun. Edmund searched the faces on either side, but no one dared catch his eye. Anyone could have hurled such an insult. Most of the men had their heads hidden by white turbans, their faces half veiled by the end of the cloth pulled across nose and mouth against the dust-bearing wind and the swirling black horde of flies. De Payens remained uneasy. A dust haze billowed. The stench of camel and horse dung thickened the air. All around rose the cries of the various traders. Here in Tripoli, Jew and Muslim, Catholic and Orthodox, Frank and Turk rubbed shoulders uneasily in the tunnelled darkness of the alleyways, in the noisy bazaars and the sun-scorched squares. Tripoli was the meeting place of different faiths and cultures, kept calm by the mailed fist of the old count riding behind them with his escort of clerks and men-at-arms. Above their heads, Raymond’s gorgeous blue and yellow banners, displaying the silver cedars of Lebanon, floated in the late-morning breeze.