Requiem: The Fall of the Templars (72 page)

Some time ago, when the torture ceased for several months, he learned, listening to scraps of conversation from his guards, that the pope had intervened. His hopes lifted for a brief period, then faded when it became clear Clement had simply maneuvered himself into a position of power within the proceedings, establishing a papal commission to oversee the interrogations, rather than halting them. The torture began again, albeit less aggressively whenever a cardinal was present, and Will’s despair became complete when Nogaret told him the pope had sent letters to all the kings of the West, ordering the Templars in their territories be arrested, their property seized. He tried to convince himself the minister was lying; he had never told Nogaret where the Paris treasury had been taken and knew the lawyer was maddened by the fact he couldn’t break him, but inside he had known the truth: Clement had abandoned them.

Until now.

428 robyn

young

Will tried to force his sluggish mind to think through what the proposed trial might mean. If the knights defended themselves publicly, the king and his men wouldn’t be able to hide the fact that their confessions had been extracted with appalling force. Their plight had provoked the shock and sympathy of the cardinals. Might it do the same for others?

His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of footsteps approaching. He tensed, his heart pounding as torchlight flared around the edges of the door.

The bolt clacked back. Between the cover of his fingers, Will picked out the faces of three or four guards, then someone was ducking inside his cell, torch thrust before him. It was Nogaret.

There was something greedy in the minister’s thin face as he looked down at Will. “I am glad to hear you are willing to defend the order, Campbell. It means I can take one last thing from you.” Nogaret’s expression shifted at Will’s incomprehension, his eyes filling with rancor. “Did you really believe I would give you the chance to defend yourself? You or the others?”

“Then it was a lie?” Will slumped back against the wall. “Those men? What they said? Just lies?”

“On the contrary, it was true. Clement, fool that he is, is attempting to offer you the opportunity of a fair trial. He wants to be seen to be doing this properly, wants to be seen as the one in control, when he is just a puppet! He always has been.”

Will turned his head away, closing his eye to block out the sight of the minister’s vengeful face. “Why do you hate us?”

Nogaret appeared surprised by the question. “I do not hate you, Campbell.

You aren’t important enough for me to waste such emotion on.”

“Clement then? Boniface? Benedict? What drove you to commit your crimes against them?”

Nogaret quickly pushed the cell door shut, blocking out the sight of the guards lingering in the passage. “You should stop your tongue from fl apping, unless you want it removed.”

“It is no secret, what you did.”

“And yet no one has ever convicted me.”

“Perhaps they won’t in this life. But in the next—”

“Next?” Nogaret gave a bark of laughter. “You have to believe in the next life to fear it.” His eyes narrowed and he crouched in front of Will, the torch flaring between them. “You still believe though, don’t you? Even now, you imagine God is up there looking down on you, loving or judging?” His voice dropped. “My father and mother believed. Only they were Cathars, not Chris-the fall of the templars

429

tians. By the time I was born, the Church’s Crusade against their sect had ended. The Cathar stronghold of Montségur had fallen, almost twenty years earlier, and their last resistance faltered soon after. My parents escaped the burnings and settled, like many others of their kind, in an anonymous town in the south of France. They pretended to be Christian, celebrated the festivals, went to Mass each week. But at night they would perform their heresies in secret. For years, I watched them lead these lives of deceit, terrified of being discovered, yet unwilling to give up their beliefs. I played the dutiful son and followed my father’s example, but I never believed. I found their fearful rituals embarrassing.” Nogaret’s mouth curled in contempt. “All of us cramped together in a store-hold, my sister cupping her hand around a candle, my father whispering and sweating.

“I left when I could and went to university in Montpellier. I studied law, Roman and canon, and in doing so the secrets of faith were laid bare for me, rendered transparent. I could see how the Church manipulated and controlled, how its leaders benefited from the gullibility of its flock. My eyes were opened and I understood how I too, a man not of the cloth, but of the world, could use the law to get what I wanted, how state could become more powerful than Church. I was passionate, fi lled with knowledge. I made the mistake of trying to make my father understand; of trying to convince him he no longer needed these inane rituals. We argued and he cut me out of the family. Despite his past, he was respected in his community and he made his displeasure known by having me removed from an important teaching post I had been installed in at Montpellier.

“I did the only thing I could to discredit him and informed the Dominican college of his continuing adherence to the Cathar faith.” Nogaret paused, his expression distant. “I wanted him to see that I was right, that the law was more powerful than any God. I imagined he would refute his beliefs, he and my mother, thought they would confess and beg to be pardoned. I wanted them humbled and humiliated, their absurd faith stripped from them.” His gaze focused on Will. “Both of them refused to denounce themselves despite the tortures the inquisitors wrought upon them. They went to the pyres set for them along with my sister almost proudly. When the soldiers were lighting the faggots under them they began reciting the very prayers they forced me to say in that dark little store-hold, for all the crowd to hear.”

“So you wanted revenge against the Church?”

“Proof,” said Nogaret sharply. “I wanted proof. Only man can condemn man. The Church proved that when they murdered my family. I proved it 430 robyn

young

when I killed Boniface and Benedict.” He rose abruptly. “And I’ll prove it again when I bring down the warriors of Christ.” Turning, he thrust open the door. “Bring him,” he commanded the guards.

As Nogaret strode ahead, the guards led Will behind him through the fortress, until they came to the main yard outside. There was a wagon and more than two dozen mounted soldiers in royal livery. It was night, the purple sky peppered with stars. Urged into the wagon by the guards, Will saw fi ve pale faces turn to him in the gloom. Knights, he guessed, as the company began to move out.

It quickly became clear that they weren’t heading into the city when the wagon turned north along a rough road that wound for several miles through starlit fields. Will and the other prisoners didn’t speak or look at one another.

He supposed they, like him, feared this was a final journey. In the silence, each man prepared himself, head bowed in prayer or thought. Will centered on his father. He wondered what James had felt walking to his place of execution outside the Templar fortress of Safed, the parched ground dusty and hot beneath his feet. Will liked to think he was calm and walked with his head high, the Mamluk swords at his back not needing to force him on.

The wagon jolted off the track and into a field, where it rolled to a stop.

The royal guards ordered the knights out and they jumped down awkwardly, one by one, into the long grass. In the distance, Will made out the walls of Paris, a paler shade against the backdrop of night. Closer, a line of oaks rustled in the breeze, boughs creaking. Around fifteen of the soldiers had remained mounted and were pressing out in a circle, their horses jostling and snorting.

All had swords drawn and shields raised. What struck Will as strange was that they weren’t facing their captives, but outward into the darkness. Before he could guess why, he heard a fearful murmur and saw one of the knights staring at something obscured behind the wagon. Will took a few steps and realized what had captivated the man’s attention. On the crest of a small hill, a short distance away, three shapes rose against the night sky, barbed and menacing.

They were pyres, each with a stout central pole thrusting like a fi nger out of a bristling mass of twigs, branches and straw. Another of the knights, seeing them, crossed himself and began to pray.

“Secure the prisoners!” ordered Nogaret. “Quickly. Two per stake.”

The silent calm the knights had displayed inside the wagon vanished. They began to struggle, but after a year in prison they were little match for the guards, who dragged them mercilessly up the hill toward the pyres.

the fall of the templars

431

“Why go to all this trouble?” demanded Will, when Nogaret moved in to help the soldier who had seized him. “Why not just kill us in our cells?”

“Fool!” panted Nogaret, as Will fought him. “Clement would never give us what we want if we murdered you in cold blood.” The minister staggered back, leaving the soldier to punch Will viciously in the side until he dropped to the ground. “But Guillaume de Paris has, under Philippe’s insistence, proclaimed all those who are willing to defend themselves as relapsed heretics. The law states that those who have recanted their confessions, who are deemed to be unrepentant heretics for whom there can be no salvation, can be transferred to secular authority for execution by fi re.”

Will hung weakly on his knees, hands digging in the damp soil. Around him, the shouts of the knights were punctuated by the neighing of horses.

Above him, Nogaret’s voice continued, harsh and cruel.

“The king wants the Temple dissolved quickly. He doesn’t want a public trial. This way, we get rid of those knights who are willing to testify, but we do it all within the confines of the law. Clement can do nothing!”

Will’s fingers brushed against something hard, embedded in the soil.

“When your brothers learn what happens to those who retract their confessions, their feeble defense will crumble and my lord will have his prize.” Nogaret loomed over him. “By the way, Campbell, one of the knights gave in to my questioning last week. A man named Laurent. He told me the Temple’s treasury is in Scotland.”

Will felt over the object: a long, thin shaft that ended in a steel point. It was an arrow. For a moment he was astonished, wondering how it had got there. But his questions soon dissolved, overwhelmed by the feeling that the world and God were moving in perfect unison. That the arrow was meant to be here and he was meant to fi nd it.

“Twenty knights took it, Laurent told me, along with a pregnant woman.

That was Rose, wasn’t it? When I find the treasury, I’ll fi nd her.”

Gathering the last of his strength, Will wrapped his fingers around the shaft. He had no illusion that he could make it from this field alive, but at least he could take Nogaret with him. This was how it would end. This was how it was supposed to end. Pushing himself to his feet, he lunged at the minister. Before he could strike, the night was filled with the screams of horses and men.

At once, everything was thrown into confusion. Will whipped round, hearing someone utter a rallying cry. A group of royal guards was riding toward the 432 robyn

young

line of oaks. He saw motion in the undergrowth, black shapes rising, then two of the soldiers’ mounts reared up and crashed to the ground, crushing their riders beneath them. There were more cries and flashes of steel. Will turned to where Nogaret had been standing a second before and saw the minister fl eeing for the cover of the wagon.

“Guards!” he was shouting. “I want them captured!”

The few soldiers who had dismounted were running to their horses. One man dug his foot in the stirrup and grabbed the saddle, but before he could haul himself up, something punched into his back and he arched backward, his foot catching in the stirrup. His horse bolted, dragging him away across the field, scattering the soldiers in its path. Another man went down, dropping a torch, which blew flames across the ground.

“Just kill the prisoners, damn you!” Nogaret was yelling to the remaining soldiers who weren’t yet in the fight. “Kill them!”

Will saw one knight go down, stabbed by the soldier who had been hauling him toward the pyres. Then another. The other knights began to fi ght with renewed vigor. Hearing a rasp of steel behind him, Will jerked round to see a royal guard swinging back his sword to strike. An arrow came hurtling out of the night and plunged into the man’s throat. He let his sword drop and fell back. Feeling light-headed with the exertion, Will snatched up the fallen blade, but before he could go after Nogaret, a figure came racing out of the darkness toward him.

It was a tall man with a flop of sandy-blond hair and a strong-boned face.

He held a bow. Will stared at him, shock making his hand fall to his side, the sword tip striking the ground. Ten years had passed since he had seen that face. “David?”

“Retreat!” one of the soldiers was crying out. “Retreat!”

Nogaret was yelling hoarsely, ordering the guards back into the fray, commanding them to seize the attackers, but the night was filled with arrows and all the soldiers could do was raise their shields, wheel their horses around and ride back out of range. Another man went down, his horse tumbling over, caught in the rump by two arrows. Within moments, the rest were thundering from the field, abandoning the wagon and their prisoners.

Will, still staring at his nephew in amazement, hardly saw them go. As the young man embraced him fiercely, he felt himself flooded with relief.

“Are you hurt?” questioned David, stepping back and studying him in the agitated light of the torch still flaming on the ground. His brow creased as he saw the bloody rag covering Will’s right eye. “What did they do to you?”

the fall of the templars

433

Will checked his hand as he went to finger the bandage. He didn’t like to touch it. Gazing around him, he saw other figures appearing out of the shadows of the tree line. They fanned out, examining the soldiers and helping the three surviving knights. One crossed swiftly to him and David.