Jack Whyte - Order in Chaos

No one did, and Will spoke up. “Proceed, sir. We are eager to hear what you have to say.”

The Baron’s face remained solemn. “Your eagerness might not outlive the first thing I must tell you,” he said somberly, then took a scroll of tight-wound parchment sheets from the scrip at his waist. He loosened the single leather binding and scanned the first page before looking up again.

“Let me begin with the wording of the King’s order for the arrest of the Templars in his own domain. He began to read. “‘To effect the detention of all members of the Temple for crimes horrible to contemplate, terrible to hear of … an abominable work, a detestable disgrace, a thing almost inhuman, indeed set apart from all humanity.’” He looked up again. “No mention, you will note, of what this so-called abomination was … But on the one day in October, close to five thousand members of the Temple were taken into the King’s custody within his realm of France. Among them were knights, of course, but also sergeants, chaplains, laborers, and servants of the Order. Five thousand souls in one short day.”

“Did anyone of note escape the purge?” This was Reynald de Pairaud.

Baron Dutoit shook his head. “From the information I have managed to gather, it appears that, apart from yourselves, about whom nothing has been released, less than a score of knights escaped. Two preceptors managed to avoid the net, but no one knows where they are now.”

“Who were they?”

“The Preceptor of France, de Villiers, and Imbert Blanke, Preceptor of the Auvergne.”

“Who else?”

Dutoit shook his head again. “Only one other that I know of by name, and he failed. A knight called Peter of Boucle. He shaved off his beard and dressed in common clothes, but someone recognized him and betrayed him. He, too, ended up in prison.”

“But on what charges?” Edward de Bergeron was coldly angry. “You yourself pointed out the lack of substance in Capet’s orders. This fellow, king or no, has dared to lay hands on an exempt Order—exempt from allegiance to him and answerable only to the Pope. That is sacrilege.”

The Baron pursed his lips beneath his mustache, and then he nodded slowly. “You are correct, Sir Edward. But he went even further. He claimed to have proceeded on this path after consulting with, and gaining the permission of, the Pope himself. And that was a lie. A lie that came quickly to the Pope’s attention.”

Will spoke up. “And what did he do? The Pope, I mean.”

“He wrote the King a letter … Here, I have a transcript of it, provided at grave personal risk by a dear friend. Let me see …” The Baron shuffled through the sheets in his hand, then held one out at arm’s length, peering down his nose as he read aloud: “ ‘You, our dear son, have, in our absence, violated every rule and laid hands on the persons and properties of the Templars. You have also imprisoned them and, what pains us even more, you have not treated them with due leniency … and have added to the discomfort of imprisonment yet another affliction. You have laid hands on persons and property that are under the direct protection of the Roman Church. Your hasty act is seen by all, and rightly so, as an act of contempt towards ourselves and the Roman Church.’ ”

“Pardon me, Baron,” the Bishop said. “Would you read that again?”

Dutoit read the letter again, and every man there sat frowning as he listened. When he had finished, the Bishop turned to him. “It is as I thought on first hearing it. The Pope deplores the King’s actions, but he is more concerned about the flouting of his own authority than he is with the outrage perpetrated upon our Order. But what is this ‘other affliction’ to which he refers?”

“Torture.”

The word dropped into the silence like a stone falling on a wooden floor. “William of Paris,” Baron Dutoit continued, “the Chief Inquisitor of France, is King Philip’s confessor, and there can be little doubt that he was privy to the King’s plans for the Temple long before any action occurred, for his Dominican Inquisitors stood shoulder to shoulder with the King’s officers and explained what had occurred at a public meeting in the King’s own gardens two days after the arrests.”

“What …” Richard de Montrichard’s voice failed him at first and he cleared his throat before trying again. “What kind of … tortures are we speaking of? What do they do, these priest Inquisitors?”

Bishop Formadieu was the first to answer him. “Nothing too severe. Torture was authorized in defense of Church doctrine fifty years ago, by Pope Innocent IV. The Inquisitors are constrained to stop short of breaking limbs or spilling blood.” He stopped, perhaps to continue, but before he could say anything more, Baron Dutoit intervened.

“That is the theory, Bishop, but the reality is far more harsh. The term is torture, not sympathy or compassion. The use of explanations such as yours entails an inclination to believe in the humane and tender mercies of the Inquisitors. But they have none. They use the rack and the strappado to obey the rules. The rack stretches a man’s limbs, painfully and slowly, to the point where the joints separate and may be torn asunder. Not broken, but ripped apart. The strappado is even more effective. You tie a man’s wrists behind his back, then hoist him into the air by a pulley fastened to the bindings on his wrists. He will talk very quickly after that, provided he is sane enough, and that you have sufficient capacity to decipher his babbling. And then of course there is a third method of loosening unwilling tongues. It has no name, but it is a simple procedure, involving neither broken bones nor bloodshed. You rub fat on a man’s feet, then hold his feet to the fire …” Every man there stared at him. He shrugged and spread his hands. “Bernard de Vado.”

“I know Bernard de Vado,” de Formadieu said. “He is a priest, one of our own. I ordained him. What know you of him?”

“He came from Albi. Is that the same man?”

“Yes, that is Bernard.”

“Well, they roasted him. Forgive me, Bishop, but they did it so badly that they cooked his feet until the bones fell out. It was witnessed by a man who reported the incident to a friend of mine in the Justiciary. In all, my friends and I have gathered reports of a number of deaths, varying from twenty-five to forty-four, resulting from torture administered by the Inquisitors, often assisted by the King’s own officers.”

“That is … inhuman. Unacceptable to God or man.” The Bishop’s voice was slack with shock and Sir Simon de Montferrat spoke out for the first time.

“It is, indeed as you say, Bishop, inhuman. But it is being done, and it is being done by churchmen in the name of an all-merciful God. And no less inhuman is the truth that all these prisoners are kept awake at all times, denied sleep, and that they are kept in irons, fed only on bread and water. And it is in that weakened state that they are then submitted to these fiendish tortures.”

“Damnation take all clerics and their hypocritical posturings!” De Montrichard’s voice was barely audible, but his anger was caustic, and Etienne Dutoit turned to look at him directly. “Why is any of this blasphemous infamy permitted to proceed, at any level, considering the Pope’s revulsion to the fact that these things have been done at all?”

The Baron’s eyes moved to meet Will’s. “Finally,” he said quietly. “The correct question.”

Will cocked his head. “What do you mean?”

The Baron thought for a moment, his eyes seemingly unfocused, and then said, “Hear me. This much we know of those early accusations of what were called ‘crimes set apart from all humanity.’ Your Order and its members stand accused of being servants of the Devil, dedicated to the worship and the service of Satan himself.” He ignored the sudden hiss of indrawn breath and forged ahead, speaking into the stunned silence that followed. “They say that each of your recruits is taught, and must acknowledge at the moment of his Initiation, that Jesus the Christus was a false prophet. He is then required to proceed through that denial to spit, trample, or urinate upon an image of Christ on the Cross, and then to kiss the Templar who received him into the Order, upon the mouth, the navel, the buttocks, the base of the spine, and sometimes on the penis. And in the aftermath, in the closing ceremonies, the new Initiate is told, in toto , that he may freely have carnal relations with his brethren and that it is, in effect, his duty so to do … that he ought to do and submit to this, for it is not sinful for the brotherhood to do this.”