Temple of The Grail (40 page)

I did not hear my master come up
behind me, I only felt his hand as he slapped me on the back of the neck almost
too sharply.

‘The world would be sweet if there
was no such thing as woman!’ he said calmly.

‘But, master, we would not have been
born!’ I answered a little annoyed, rubbing my stinging neck.

‘Ah . . . but, Christian, we would
not need to be born! We would all be in paradise. In any case, if not for the
recent terrible incident with the mountain she would not have been given
permission to stay. As it is she offers distraction for stupid squires and the
sooner she leaves the better!’

‘So what you are saying, master,’ I
retorted, feeling that Andre was sounding too much like Setubar, ‘is that the
beautiful should be shunned, but that is not what Plato teaches us.’

‘No, you are quite right,’ he agreed
as we entered the hot oily room used by the blacksmith. ‘He tells us that when
one falls in love with the beauty in one individual (for how can one help but
fall in love with such a diabolical deception), one then sees that this beauty
is similar to that in all human beings, and that by loving the beauty of the
body he comes to know the love of the mind that he soon realises is far
superior to the other kind, and in this way he recognises the beauty of all
forms of knowledge,
ergo
, attaining a love for beautiful words and
thoughts that hopefully leads to apprehension of that one supreme form of all
knowledge, God himself,’ he ended.

‘Yes that is it exactly!’ I said
triumphantly.

‘Ahh, but, Christian, there is
something you have not thought of.’

‘Master?’

‘Plato was not a monk and he liked to
look at beautiful boys.’

‘So,’ I said presently, because I had
been outwitted and because I did not want to know such things about Plato, ‘what
we heard . . . was that the sound of some animal being shoed or branded?’

‘No . . . it was the cook,’ he answered,
and we climbed the stairs.

The cook was being kept in a small
room that occupied a section of the building used by the blacksmiths. I sneezed
immediately we entered the large space outside it, for there was heavy smoke
coming from the furnaces and the smell of burning animal hair, tanning oil, and
other irritating substances. We walked directly to a doorway guarded by two
archers whose inscrutable expressions gave little insight into their persons,
but rather made them look like those stone sculptures outside the church. My
master ordered the two men to step aside in the name of the king. This caused a
cloud of uncertainty to darken their brows, for my master’s demeanour was such
that it required a strict adherence to his command, and so reluctantly they obeyed
his order, and let us pass.

Inside we found the cook, sitting on
the floor of the large room that smelled very bad. His hands were tied behind
his back at an awkward angle, and there was a rope on a kind of device hanging
from the ceiling. Before us stood the inquisitor flanked by two more archers,
his face red with anger.

‘What say you, brother Templar, to
this interruption!? We have grave matters to attend to here. If you will leave
us . . .’

‘I do not mean to interrupt you in
your
holy
work, Rainiero, only that it has been brought to my attention
that Brother Setubar remains missing since before the service. I need not
mention what this may signal . . .’

The man frowned, a look of alarm
crossed his face and then his eyes narrowed. ‘Have you searched the abbey?’

‘We have, but to no avail.’

‘This will have to wait.’ He ordered
his two archers out of the room. ‘We may have to add one more carcass to the
rest!’ he remarked, in order that all might hear his predictions and so
pronounce him wise when they proved to be true. He paused before my master,
measuring him with his eyes. ‘I must go and order the captain of the guard to
look for the old man, but the
inquisitio
will continue today even if all
the monks of the monastery are found dead.’

With this he left the room, and we
were alone with the cook.

The poor man’s face was so disfigured
that I found it difficult to recognise his former person. His left eye could
not be seen, and his mouth I cannot describe. It will suffice to say that
whatever teeth he had had were now gone and that his bruised and battered lips
contorted into a hideous smile as he saw us.

My master untied his hands and helped
him to stand. Later I was to learn that he had been hung by a rope from his
wrists, tied as we saw, behind him. Then he would have been lowered abruptly a
little at a time. The aim of such torture was to inflict the most terrible pain
in the shortest time, because it did not take much to break both arms and
occasion a terrible dislocation of the shoulders.

‘
Por favor señor!
’ he cried,
tears running down the broken bones of his cheeks. ‘
Madre mía! Díos mío!
I
have done nothing . . . nothing! Escape I must! No one is safe! Ohh,
miseria
,
miseria
, I have done nothing, you must believe me!’

Was it possible that this was the
giant of a man that I had met that first day in the kitchen?

‘If I am to believe you, you must
tell me everything!’ my master said.

The man looked up innocently, like a
little child. ‘It is my sin that in the kitchen of the popes’ enemy I worked .
. . that is true, but I have always been
un
good
católico . . .! Mi
único
error
, señor
...’

‘Indeed, your only error is that you
have been a heretic in league with heretics,’ my master said sharply.

‘What is heresy,
señor
? Is it
heresy to do honest work? To think with your
cabeza –
your head?
No . . . no!’ he cried defiantly, shaking his head, and then broke into a sob,
the great span of his chest moving rhythmically with his wide and now
disfigured shoulders.

‘Perhaps not,’ my master conceded, ‘but
that still leaves us with the fact that you have not convinced me sufficiently
of your innocence in the terrible matters of these last days.’

‘
Por favor
. . .’ He came
closer and the stench of onion filled my nostrils. ‘You must forgive me . . . I
have not been totally
sincero
. . . is very difficult for me,
señor
.
. .’ he coughed, spitting.

‘Tell me the truth, for Brother
Setubar has told me of your secret.’

The man looked aghast. ‘He told you?’

‘He told me you were among those who
murdered Piero da Verona.’

There was a terrible silence.

‘You are then not only a murderer,’
my master continued harshly, ‘but also a heretic and an enemy of the church, a
man quite capable of killing again to stop his secret from being known.’

He straightened what he could of his
back and answered defiantly, ‘Is true, I murdered one filthy inquisitor . . .
but never have I killed again. Penance I have done . . . but the others, they are
free, Giacopo he is free . . . we were fighting a war, you must understand? You
fight wars . . .’

‘I have never brandished a sword
against a Christian,’ my master answered calmly, and so I knew him to be
agitated.

‘And you think you are better than
me!’ the cook said bitterly, ‘I hear what they say about you, you are
un
infidel,
you kill your own kind!’

‘I am a Christian.’

‘You think this makes you a saint
because you wear a cross? How does it feel to kill your own blood? You are like
me, you kill when it suits you!’ For one moment he raised his chest, like a
cock in those seconds before a crow, then he became disheartened, his shoulders
drooped, perhaps he realised there was nothing to be gained by arguing with the
one man who could help him. ‘I have done penance, I have been absolved, I have
come back to the bosom of the mother!’

‘You lie too easily, cook, it will do
no good to evade the truth. Come now, confess to me and I will see that you are
judged fairly.’

The cook became hysterical, laughing
and spitting and coughing, and for a moment I saw a hint of his former self in
his eyes. ‘Fairly! Too late, preceptor, for fairness, I am like
un cerdo
–
a pig the day of the feast of St John. There is no hope for me. Now
I am the one who is cooked, no?’

‘Tell me, so that I might relieve
your distress. If you are honest with me I can save your life, for I have a
letter sealed with the king’s seal. I am to return with all those accused! Did
you poison the old brothers?’

‘I did not kill anyone!’ he cried.

‘Then how did you come by the
substance?’

‘What?’ The man’s face was suddenly
inscrutable.

‘The substance that induces your
visions!’

‘I saw
la Virgen! La Virgen!
’

‘Tell me for I know you have abused
some forbidden thing. Tell me or we shall soon see what the inquisitor thinks
of it.’

The man blanched. ‘
Porel amor de
díos!
I did not kill anyone . . . I only . . . the honey !

‘Honey?’

The man looked about him, and lowered
his voice to a loud boom, ‘What Rodrigo is told, Rodrigo does, as penance . . .’

‘What did you do? I lose my patience,
come now!’

The great man trembled. ‘
Sí
...
sí
. . . before you came here, preceptor, I was told to take some
miel
,
some honey, and put it in a pot, in this I put dry herbs given to me and I was
to leave it aside for the old monks. Sometimes I dip raisins in it, sometimes
it is poured into wine in the rooms of the old ones, to make it sweet. One day,
María Santísima
, I had a drink of it . . .
vos sabeís, yo también soy
muy curioso . . .
I am curious like you, I wanted to know what makes it so
special
. . .
’

‘Go on.’

‘She came . . . so dry was my mouth
and I feel the heart, beating, and I fly to her . . . Ahh! But
he
found
out, he was very angry
muy nervioso
– very nervous
.
Never
do it, he told me . . . but I want to see
la Virgen,
no? I went to
Brother Asa I told him I need some
hierbas
from the herbarium for the
food. He let me in. I remember what the herbs look like and took a bunch to dry
over the fire . . .’

I was suddenly struck, for now I knew
two things. Firstly, I remembered seeing the cook doing exactly as he said when
I waited outside the blacksmith’s workroom, the day my master was hit on the
head. Secondly, I was beginning to see why I had been having the strange
sensations! The dreams! It was the wine!

‘Who asked you to prepare the honey,
and who told you never to taste it?’

The man hesitated.

‘Who told you, cook?’

‘The old man, he told me it was for
the old monks. He said if I ever opened my mouth he would tell the abbot my
secret.’

‘Setubar . . .’ said my master
pensively, ‘The poison . . . on the raisins . . . and also in the wine . . .
but Brother Samuel died quickly, only moments after entering the tunnels. The
raisins, the wine, were poisoning the brothers slowly over a period of time in
order to evade suspicion. Tell me about the tunnels!’

‘Tunnels?’

‘Answer me for I know that you are
responsible for taking food to them!’

‘How? Who?’

‘I have seen you with my own eyes.’

‘
Madre mía!
’ The man was
aghast, and so, too, was I.

‘Tell me everything.’

‘The secret! I have been sworn . . .’

‘Tell me! You must tell me!’ my
master said a little roughly.

‘The hidden manna!’ the man
exclaimed, falling to his knees. ‘I was told one cannot know the secret and
live.’

‘But you are alive,’ my master pointed
out.

‘I could not speak and the old man
knew it . . . He said if ever I opened my mouth he would tell the abbot my
secret. Do not ask me of the ghosts that are not ghosts, for ghosts do not eat!
I did this as penance for sins, but if I tell you what I know, you will help
me?’

‘That depends on what you know.’

He thought for a moment, weighing
things up. ‘There are twelve,’ he whispered finally, for he was in the grip of
far too many fears to worry about one more. ‘They are called the ‘silent ones’,
I know there are twelve because I am told to take them twelve bowls of broth,
and twelve measures of bread . . .’

‘Should there not be thirteen?’ I
asked, ‘including the boy?’

‘You know of the boy?’ The man
trembled, visibly afraid. ‘I . . . I . . . his name is not known, I have never
seen him, others have, but only a few, only the old ones who bring him here . .
. he was
solito
, alone, away from everyone, living in his own room only,
close to the abbot since he came, years ago. They say that all those years the
‘silent ones’ have been ‘teaching him’, and so he visits the tunnels, the
catacombs . . . this is well known, all know of it, but few speak.’