Jack Whyte - Order in Chaos

The appalled silence stretched until the Baron added, “De Molay confessed.”

It took a moment for his words to register, but then the Bishop said, “Confessed? Confessed to what?”

“To everything I have mentioned. Except the matter of the homosexual kisses. Those he denied.”

Will finally found his tongue. “That is … That is not possible. Master de Molay would never—”

“In the face of unremitting tortures and torment such as we have been discussing, any man will confess to anything, merely to stop the pain and find some relief. Jacques de Molay is admirable beyond most men, but he is, in the end, a man. He was arrested on the first day of the purge, and within ten days he had confessed to most of the charges against him. He admitted having denied Jesus Christ and confessed that he had spat upon his image at the time of his Initiation—”

“Great God in Heaven! This is infamy!”

“Aye, and it is also blasphemy. But the infamy is not the Master’s, though the admission of blasphemy is. They put de Molay to the torture first, bringing all their power to bear on him alone from the moment of his imprisonment, and it is to his credit that he withstood their torments for as long as he did.”

“I cannot believe that he confessed to such things.” This was de Pairaud, his voice hushed.

“Believe it,” Dutoit said. “They broke him. They can break any man. Your Grand Master was the first to confess, but far from the last. I have reliable information that of one hundred and thirty-eight Templars arrested in Paris in October, one hundred and thirty-four had, by January of this year, admitted to at least some of the charges brought against them.” He hesitated, then turned his eyes to where de Pairaud sat glowering disbelief at him, his outrage rendering him speechless. “Your brother Hugh, Sir Reynald, Visitor of France, confessed on November ninth, admitting, in addition to many other sins, that he had encouraged brethren troubled by the heat of nature to cool their passions by indulging their lusts with other brothers.” He ignored de Pairaud’s efforts to rise to his feet in protest and kept speaking in the same expressionless voice. “Sir Geoffrey de Charney, Preceptor of Normandy, was another. John de la Tour, Treasurer of the Temple in Paris, who had been a financial adviser to King Philip, also went down into despair, condemned by his own voice … And with those distinguished names went many others too numerous to mention.” He paused again. “That was in January of this year. We are now in August and much has happened in the interim, not all of it bad, but unfortunately none of it is yet resolved.”

No one dared ask him what he meant by that, so deep was the disbelief that filled his listeners, but eventually Will coughed to clear his throat. “We have heard tell, through trusted friends who know such things, that the Pope sent out a letter to all the kings and princes of Christendom, requesting them to seize all the Templars in their lands and to sequester their holdings. Can you tell us aught of that?”

“Aye. The Pastoralis Praeeminentiae . That was a recent move, designed to assert Clement’s control of a situation that has long since passed beyond his grasp. But it was sent, and widely acted upon, and the Temple’s assets, beyond France at least, now lie within the jurisdiction of the Church … Which is not, in this instance, necessarily a bad thing.”

“How so? If they have been sequestered, they are lost to us.”

“Not necessarily. They are within the jurisdiction of the Church—not within its coffers. Not yet within its coffers, I should say. There is yet hope.” The Baron looked from man to man around the arc. “Look at yourselves and take note, and try to imagine for a moment that you are plain French knights, not Templars. Think you that you are the only group to feel this outrage, this disbelief that such things can happen in a time of peace? The Pope himself cannot—does not—believe it. And more important than he, nor can his cardinals. Clement is far from being an effective pontiff at this time, and his failure to challenge and stop Philip’s depredations are causing him great difficulties, most particularly with his cardinals.

“By January, as I said, de Nogaret had gathered a sufficiency of confessions that Philip could claim a moral victory, emerging as a defender of the faith and a champion of fervid Christianity. Clement could hardly disagree, faced with the existence of the admissions. But in an attempt to wrest control of the investigation from Philip, he dispatched three cardinals to review the findings of the Inquisitors, and when these three prelates, two of whom were French, had de Molay brought before them, he revoked his confession, stripped off his clothes, and showed them the wounds—the scars not yet healed—that had been inflicted upon him during his ‘questioning’ and had led to his ‘confession.’

“It seems that he was very eloquent. The cardinals believed him. And they believed others who followed him with similar retractions—among those your brother Hugh, Sir Reynald. This was still early in January. The three cardinals recommended clemency and refused to confirm the condemnations of the Order. And they convinced their peers. No fewer than ten cardinals of the Curia threatened to resign that spring, in protest against Pope Clement’s cowardice in refusing to refute the actions and the arguments of the French King, who, in their opinion, did not have a single justifiable reason for his outrageous and abusive behavior, and certainly none for his sneering disdain of the Church and its institutions, of which the Temple was one.”

De Montferrat sat straighter and cleared his throat, and Will’s eyes went to him immediately, for he knew that de Montferrat was the more outspoken of his two mentors, the one who could always be trusted to cut to the heart of a contentious issue and say what was truly on his mind, without mincing words. “You wished to add something, Sir Simon?”

The elderly aristocrat harrumphed, but rose to his feet and began to pace the floor with his hands clasped behind his back. “Not add,” he began. “Not add … clarify, if anything.” He threw a glance to indicate his traveling companion and friend of many years, who was returning to his seat, content to leave the floor to him. “Etienne here has a tendency to dwell on detail. He was about to tell you next that Pope Clement decided in favor of your Order the following month, in February. After conferring with his cardinals, he professed himself convinced that the charges were untenable and that he would rather die than condemn innocent men. So he ordered the Inquisition to suspend its proceedings against the Templars.”

“My God! So it is over?” Bishop Formadieu’s voice was filled with awe and joy, a mixture that Will himself felt stirring inside him. But before any of his listeners could say another word, the blunt-spoken de Montferrat dashed all their short-lived hopes.

“No, it is not. Believe me when I tell you it is barely begun. But the stakes have now been raised so many times that the original case against the Order has been overshadowed.”

“How, in God’s holy name? By what?”

“By the realities of politics, Bishop. This is become a war between Philip and the Pope, for dominance, and Clement is afraid of being ousted, if not from the papacy, most certainly from his supremacy in men’s minds. Nominally, morally, there should be no question of conflicting jurisdiction—Philip’s is temporal; Clement’s is spiritual. The division should be clear, and it would have been with any other ruler than Philip Capet. But this is a king unlike any other before. He is ambitious, greedy, and contemptuous of all opinions that are not his own. His malevolence and his greed know no bounds and never have. Ten years ago, he sent his hellhound, de Nogaret, riding nine hundred miles to lay hands upon another pope, at Anagni in Italy—Pope Boniface VIII—and no one doubts he brought about that old man’s death by doing so. But he has never betrayed a flicker of contrition. De Nogaret remains excommunicate for that outrage, but as France’s chief lawyer he sees no shame—and no hindrance to his arrogance—in that. Nor does his master.