The Devil's Moon (20 page)

‘He said this heresy started with Roncelin de Fosse when he was Grand Master of Provence.' Perkins nodded though Watts hadn't made a comment. ‘The man who was the signatory to the lease of the Shoreham property to William Bishop and his wife.'

‘More than that,' Slattery said. ‘John of Stoke said he'd been admitted in 1293 at Saddlescombe. Guess who had told him to deny Christ? Jacques de Molay, Grand Master of the European Order, on his brief visit to England in that year.'

Watts scratched his head. ‘But why wasn't this used as proof of the guilt of the other Templars in England?'

Perkins shrugged. ‘Maybe because Edward was still protecting the Templars – or protecting Saddlescombe – and knew the confessions were fake. All these men were vulnerable and had been free long enough to hear reports of what the French Templars had confessed to.

‘Stephen Stapelbrigg had been in hiding for four years. He'd been arrested just a couple of weeks before his trial. He would have been hearing about the French confessions whilst he was lying low. Thomas Totti had been summoned to hand himself in but hadn't done so. John of Stoke had been treasurer at the New Temple in London, which merchants and barons used as a bank vault for their wealth. There were rumours of embezzlement.'

‘What happened to them?' Watts said. ‘Burned at the stake?'

‘You'd think so, wouldn't you? If only to shut them up if there were any kind of conspiracy. But no. Like everybody else they were absolved and assigned to religious houses around England.'

‘Not Saddlescombe?'

Perkins shook his head.

Watts paced over to one of the glass cabinets. ‘My head is buzzing.'

Perkins chuckled. ‘You wanted to know about Saddlescombe? I'm telling you about Saddlescombe.'

‘There's more, isn't there?' Watts said. ‘You mentioned there was another Templar who refused to abjure heresy because he hadn't committed it,' Watts said. ‘Is he linked to Saddlescombe?'

Slattery nodded but it was Perkins who answered.

‘When Grand Master William de la More was arrested the second time he was at the Templar preceptory in Ewell near Dover with Imbert Blanc, the Grand Commander of the Auvergne. They were waiting for one of the Order's boats to take them to Flanders, where they'd be safe from Philip of France. We know both had been to Saddlescombe. We know they went to Shoreham, possibly expecting to sail from there. We don't know why they didn't.'

‘Why was Imbert in this country at all?'

‘The Templar Order had been torn apart. Maybe the few Grand Masters and Commanders who were still free were trying to salvage what they could. And that included what was held at Saddlescombe.

‘Blanc, by the way, was released from the Tower into the custody of the Archbishop of Canterbury but the record doesn't show what happened to him after that. Jaques de Molay in France – who had been regularly corresponding with Edward Longshanks, you'll remember – had confessed under torture to heresy but recanted when he was supposed to confirm his guilt. In consequence he was roasted, very slowly, on the stake.'

‘And what made Saddlescombe and/or Shoreham so important?'

Perkins looked up at the ceiling for a moment. ‘That's the question, isn't it?' He tugged on his beard again. ‘The man from Steyning who first took over the Shoreham place. Do you remember his name was Bishop?'

‘Suitably ecclesiastical.'

‘His wife had a very interesting first name.'

Watts waited.

‘Dionysia.'

‘As in Dionysus,' Slattery said. ‘Pagan god of ritual madness and frenzy, a dying and reborn god, an outsider god.'

‘The centre of a cult,' Perkins added. ‘We know them as the Dionysian mysteries. The initiates used drugs and booze to reach a higher level of consciousness. Dionysus was Bacchus in Roman mythology. Real party boy.'

‘Witches and wizards used exactly the same kind of techniques down the centuries to reach exalted states and achieve communion with the Devil and his minions,' Slattery said. ‘Bacchus is usually presented as a kind of satyr with cloven hooves and horns.'

‘Like the Goat of Mendes,' Perkins said. ‘But Dionysus is usually represented as an androgynous youth – the literature describes him as “man-womanish”. Some statues present him naked with breasts and penis.'

Watts looked from one to the other. ‘And the other Shoreham tenants you mentioned forty years later?'

‘You know a person's last name in those days was often the name of the place they were most associated with?' Perkins said.

Watts nodded.

‘The people who took over the Shoreham place forty years down the line were called Lot.'

‘I remember,' Watts said.

Perkins smirked.

‘Where's Lot, then?' Watts said.

‘The Lot Valley is in the Midi-Pyrenees bordering on the Languedoc.'

‘Cathar country,' Watts murmured. ‘Where the heresy started.'

‘Under the influence of the Cathars,' Perkins said.

‘What's known about Grand Master Roncelin?' Watts said.

‘Dates. Grand Master in Provence for three years before he became Grand Master in England in 1251 for two years. He's on record as being Grand Master of Provence again from 1260 to 1278.'

‘The Cathars were Gnostics, right?' Watts said.

Perkins gestured to Slattery.

‘They were,' Slattery said. ‘But Gnosticism takes many forms. The Cathars believed in two competing gods. One, Rex Mundi, ruled the world, the other the heavens. Rex Mundi was evil – embodied chaos. The other god, the one the Cathars worshipped, was disincarnate – a genderless pure spirit, untainted by anything material. This god stood for love, order and peace. One consequence of their belief is that Gnostics deny Jesus was a god because he had a physical presence. He was incarnate, not disincarnate.'

‘That kind of fits with one of the accusations against the Templars then,' Watts said. ‘But how did the Cathars draw de Fosse in?'

‘The surmise is that in his youth de Fosse witnessed the Albigensian Crusade massacring Cathars in southern France for forty years.'

‘Massacres all that time?'

‘Pretty much. First big one in the town of Béziers in 1209. Twenty thousand people slaughtered, whether they were Cathar or not. The credo was: kill them all, let God sort out the ones that belong to him. When Carcassonne, stuffed with refugees, was taken, the people were spared but had to leave naked and empty-handed.'

‘That's a big castle,' Watts said.

‘You've visited it?'

‘Saw it from the road on the way to Homps.'

‘You've been in the middle of Cathar country, then.'

‘So I understand. I had other things on my mind.'

Perkins waited for more then said: ‘By 1229, after much brutality, the Languedoc was under the control of the king of France. The most steadfast Cathars were burned at the stake. The Inquisition even exhumed bodies to burn them too.'

‘Bloody religion,' Watts muttered.

‘There was cruelty. The leader of the crusade was known for it. Prior to the sack of the village of Lastours he brought prisoners from a village nearby, had their eyes gouged out and their ears, noses and lips cut off. He left just one of them with a single eye so he could lead the others into the village as a warning.'

‘Jesus.'

‘In his name, yes. But at the siege of Toulouse, the crusade leader got his comeuppance when a big stone launched from a catapult crushed his head.'

‘I'm pleased to hear that, but what does this have to do with Saddlescombe and Provence?'

Perkins shrugged. ‘I don't have answers, just a lot of strange coincidences. Here's one. The man who led the Albigensian crusade – the man who had his head crushed at Toulouse?'

‘What about him?' Watts said.

Perkins caressed his bushy beard. ‘His name was Simon de Montfort.'

S
arah Gilchrist stood in the foyer of St Michael's Church as the Reverend Rutherford hurried towards her.

‘I have to ask you some questions,' she said.

‘Of course. And I have one for you. Why did you come to the church that day?'

Gilchrist smiled, though she didn't feel it. ‘Later. Do you believe in evil, Vicar?'

He gave her a long look. ‘That comes with the job, Detective Inspector.' He waved his arm at the spacious church. ‘If I believe in one I have to believe in the other.'

‘No God without the Devil?'

‘And no Good without Evil – otherwise, how would we know the difference?'

He was still looking at her.

Gilchrist looked down. ‘In my job I unfortunately see more evil than good.'

‘But you represent the good,' Rutherford said.

Gilchrist glanced at him. ‘I may represent it . . .'

Rutherford had a lovely smile. ‘I'm sure you're better than you think you are. Most people are in my experience.'

‘You go looking for the good in people, Vicar, so you're going to find it,' Gilchrist said softly. ‘I'm looking for the bad – and I find it wearyingly often. Especially in myself.'

She felt self-conscious as he examined her face for a long moment.

‘If we've anything about us, it's in our nature to be harsh on ourselves,' he said. ‘My view – hard won, I assure you – is that there are enough other people wanting to be harsh on us. We should give ourselves a break.'

Gilchrist looked at the crucifix mounted high on the wall above the pulpit. She'd always found the idea of a religion based on an act of extreme sadism difficult.

‘If only it were that easy,' she murmured.

Watts frowned at Perkins and Slattery. ‘Simon de Montfort? The man who won the Battle of Lewes in 1264? That's not right. Those dates don't fit.'

‘They do if we're talking about his father,' Perkins said. ‘Also called Simon de Montfort. He led the Albigensian crusade. And, actually, Simon the Younger – the de Montfort who won the Battle of Lewes in 1264 – did accompany his father on his crusade campaigns when he was a child. He was at the siege of Toulouse, though not on the day his father got clobbered by that stone.'

‘So what you're giving me are lots of links between the south of France and this area. You are suggesting the Templars at Saddlescombe were guarding some secret but you've no idea what it is.'

‘Corrrect.'

Watts was exasperated. ‘Was any of this confession stuff true?'

‘Probably not. You know about confessions, ex-Chief Constable. People confess to crimes that haven't even been committed, especially if there is torture or the threat of torture. Intimidation. You know how it works.'

Watts looked again at the display cases but didn't say anything.

‘Templars were often from grand families and stayed in touch with them,' Perkins went on. ‘If de Fosse did start these weird inner circle things you'd think that somebody who wasn't happy about it would have told somebody in the fifty years before Philip the Fair struck.

‘Also, people left the Templars. Sometimes they were kicked out because they weren't suitable, sometimes because they'd done something wrong. In extreme cases they apostasized. Now that was a serious thing to do – you were automatically excommunicated and you became a fugitive, pursued by church and state. You'd think to justify desertion some apostate would claim this stuff was going on. But nobody did. Not a whisper.

‘And Saddlescombe? There was something going on but I don't know what it was. Sorry. One thing I do know. Saddlescombe was transferred to another fighting order, the Hospitallers, but the Templars joined the Hospitallers so they continued to run it. When the Hospitallers eventually got it, that is – the king hung on to it as long as he could and claimed all the movable stuff, as he did all over the country.'

‘And the place in Shoreham?'

‘Matilda Lot died in 1336. The Shoreham place went to Carmelite Friars with the permission of the Hospitallers.'

Watts looked from Perkins to Slattery. ‘I don't know where this leaves us.'

Perkins shrugged. Watts thought for a moment.

‘Nothing remains from the Templars?'

Slattery spread his hands. ‘There was a chapel at Saddlescombe. It's supposedly long gone but other parts of the old structure were incorporated in the construction of the current farm some four hundred years ago – so some bit of it might still be there.'

‘Incorporated in the farm,' Watts said.

‘Who knows? Or something else the Templars valued might still be there.'

‘Or people think it is there.' Watts rubbed his chin. ‘And that valuable thing is why Crowley was at the farm?'

Perkins and Slattery said together: ‘Maybe.'

Watts nodded thoughtfully, wondering whether that was why Colin Pearson chose to live there. He walked over to the display cabinet behind Perkins and pointed at a small lump of polished rock he'd been absently looking at throughout their discussion. ‘What's that?'

Perkins joined him. ‘Doctor Dee's crystal. He could foretell the future by looking into the depths.'

Watts looked up at the ceiling.

‘So it's believed.' Perkins laughed. ‘And, of course, it's what people believe that matters. If someone believes Druids worshipped stones or did sacrifices on them, if someone believes that the Templars held black masses on the Devil's Dyke and John Dee conjured up the Devil at Saddlescombe Manor no amount of rational argument or presentation of what facts we know will make any difference. We live in an irrational world.'

‘Do they believe John Dee conjured up the Devil there? Did he even visit Saddlescombe?'

‘John Dee lived a long life for his time – from 1527 to approximately 1608. There's no evidence Dee was ever at Saddlescombe Manor but he was definitely in Sussex for a period doing conjurations. We assume the farm was in continuous use from the Templar time – we certainly know it was being used in the early 1600s.'