The Seal (21 page)

He stretched
forth his arms and glanced toward that area lit by torches. Would the wretched
man upon the rack never yield?

His
contemplation was disturbed by a cry and he left his stool by the fire, arching
his back as he walked. His eyes reflected the charcoals and his lips moved in a
friendly way around a voice that threw the stillness back into its corners.
‘Monsieur de Molay . . . You are a little thirsty perhaps? Do your arms ache?
Tormentor, loosen . . .’ He waved a casual hand and the tormentor moved to
release the device. ‘Let the man speak.’

There was the
sound of iron against iron and a gasp and the world was still. The sound of dripping
could be heard in the corners of the dank, rectangular room.

‘You may speak,
monsieur, if you can,’ he said, ‘we will listen . . .’

‘I ... thirst
... I ... cannot ...
breathe ...
’ Jacques de Molay’s
voice was thin and his breath smelt of copper.

Nogaret brought
a cloth to his nose to dull the smell. ‘I am most grieved for you, monsieur,
most grieved, and I promise you, this will continue indefinitely until you
confess the truth. Others have already done so, making this, at most, a formality.
These things you must confess: that you have denied Christ, that you have not
consecrated the host, that you worship the Devil and that you kiss new entrants
on the anus on their being received into the Order. This, your own man, Esquin
de Floyran, has told us. If you confess you shall have water, you may go back to
the peace of your cell . . .’

The Grand Master
seemed to be summoning up what breath was left in his lungs but what came out
was little more than a whisper. ‘Traitor . . .’

‘He tells us that
you spat on our Lord’s cross! Others besides de Floyran have confessed that you
urinated upon it, that you then committed sodomy together in heinous rituals.’
He rubbed his hands together. It was cold. He hated the cold. The Templar’s
breath was forming visible phantoms in the air and Nogaret wondered if the King
had been right about the demons. This thought made a spasm crawl over his
spine. ‘Tell me,’ he said, disconcerted, ‘how you drank the urine of black cats
and you shall have a measure of water.’

Jacques de Molay
was naked and covered in sweat, tears meandered into the dirty creases of his
face, but he stretched his tongue over his jagged, broken teeth and said
nothing.

The lawyer
sighed and moved his hands in a circular motion to indicate to the tormentor
one more twist of the device. He realised that good intentions were wasted on
this man.

The Grand Master
answered with a groan.

‘You have denied
Christ, monsieur . . . Come, come, must we remain in this place for a saeculum?
It is cold and there is mould upon the walls . . . it makes me wheeze,’ he said
and immediately sneezed.

The Templar
whispered something, and the Keeper of the Seals gestured to his notary to come
forward from out of the shadows.

‘Say again?’ The
two had to bend an ear close to the mouth and its sharp smell to hear him.

‘
Credo in Deum, Patrem,
Omnipotem
...’

Nogaret was at
the peak of irritation. He stretched his back and said, ‘Yes . . . yes . . .
you believe in God . . . Once again.’

The man turned
the device tighter as Nogaret moved toward the fire to warm himself. Jacques de
Molay had suffered many privations in the east, war had made him strong, and
though he was now past sixty years, Nogaret knew he could easily stand torture
that would bring a lesser man to confession.

A feeling close
to admiration caught itself in his throat and it made a change to envy, and to
disdain.

He gestured with
his hand and heard a further movement of the mechanical device. Something
snapped and there was a cry. Nogaret turned to look and found the sight a
little disgusting. The shoulders had dislocated in unison and the rib cage
looked grotesque. He knew that despite his sensitive nature and his natural
repulsion, he must approach the rack. When his mouth was nearly upon the other
man’s ear, he said, ‘Tell me!’

‘
Credo in unum Dominum Iesum Christum.
’

Nogaret yawned.
‘But Monsieur de Molay, how can you believe in Christ when I know that you have
spat and urinated upon His cross?’

‘
Credo in Spiritu
Sanctum
...’

The lawyer
frowned and wiped his brow. ‘Well, monsieur, your belief in the Holy Spirit is
not helping you. Only I can help you, yes? If you tell me what I want to hear .
. . Now, did you fornicate with your brothers?’

He was answered
by silence.

‘Tormentor,
again . . .’

The man turned
the wheel and it was followed by a howl.

‘You commanded
your oblates to kiss you and thereafter you fornicated in the most vile manner
before the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ . . . Tell us everything, God will
forgive you.’

‘Please . . .’
the Grand Master said.

‘More.’

The tormentor
was uncertain.

‘Will he die?’
Nogaret asked, sniffing into his lace-edged cloth.

The tormentor
peered into the face with professional detachment and sweat dripped from his
chin and mingled with the blood on the features of Jacques de Molay. ‘Some are
the stronger for it,’ he answered, ‘and some are the weaker for it.’

‘Well . . .’ the
royal lawyer said, ‘death we must view as a heavenly release, and must not come
before confession is full and voluntary. Shall we wait, or shall we proceed?’

The tormentor
hesitated, scratched the pockmarks on his chin, spat a wad of phlegm at a puddle
on the ground and nodded.

Nogaret narrowed
his eyes and pointed them at the Templar Grand Master. ‘Answer me, Monsieur de
Molay, did you kiss new entrants on the mouth, the navel, the buttocks?’

The Grand
Master’s voice was weak but it could still be heard.

‘
Sanctorum, communionem, remissionem,
peccatorum
carnis
...’

‘Your sins shall
not be forgiven unless you confess! Tighter . . .’ Nogaret rubbed the small of
his back. ‘It aches,’ he commented. ‘Did you deny Christ your Lord, did you
spit on the cross, did you fornicate with your fellows, did you kiss one
another on the navel, the anus and the mouth?’

‘
Resurrectionem vitam aeternam . . . Amen.
’

‘Again . . .’

There was the
sound of meat scraping bone. The Grand Master bit his lip but a yell tore
through it that made Nogaret give a little jump.

He grabbed at
his back.

‘Why resist,’ he
shouted, kicking at the rack’s solid leg, ‘when you know that soon you will tell
me everything? Come, water awaits you, your bed is dry and there is food. Tell
me that you denied Christ. Tell me that you spat on the cross, that you
committed despicable acts. All this is known! Indeed, you need only tell me
these things are true to find yourself back in your cell, then you shall
confess to a priest and be reconciled to the faith. God will welcome His black
sheep into the abyss of his mercy.’

At that moment
Nogaret was seized by something foreign to him, a feeling of ecstasy as he stared
at the man’s stretched abdomen, where his ribs pushed unnaturally upwards. This
was an unexpected excitement, almost sexual in nature, and it took him by
surprise, for he was not a man easily aroused. It seemed to him too tempting,
the vulnerability of that abdomen fully stretched and unguarded, and this
quickened a sense of power in his limbs that made his heart beat faster. He
wondered once again about the demons, and what they would reveal to him alone.
The satisfaction that this thought provoked caused him to raise a closed fist
over the man’s middle. There he stood, paused upon that moment, letting the
feeling move to his fingertips. An instinctive welling-up of soul confirmed
that there were indeed secrets to be had and that he was high and exalted, a
priest among men. He was taken by the darkness of it and brought his fist down
so hard above the Grand Master’s navel that he thought he could feel the spine
at the back of it.

This brutal blow
brought forth a spray of bile and a melancholic wail.

Nogaret shivered
with disgust as he wiped a smear of yellow from his face. The excitement was
gone, his back ached and he was once again a lawyer standing in a dreary
dungeon with nothing but his miserable occupation to comfort him.

He gave a sigh
and bent his mouth over the Grand Master’s ear and whispered into it, ‘
Did
you piss on the cross?
Did you commit
sodomy with your fellows
,
did you deny Christ
?
Speak, devils! Speak! I am listening.’

He waited.

The tormentor
took himself to a corner and urinated against the wall; the hot liquid made
steam rise in the fetid air. Nogaret observed this with annoyance and paused
with his head bent, his ear to that wretched bloody mouth.

But there was
only silence and the sound of the tormentor’s phlegm-full cough.

THE THIRD
CARD

20

T
he
notary walked with haste, his coat behind him like a black sail in a full
breeze. Gusts, like wicked devils, sought to steal his skullcap from his head,
the parchments, inks, quills and the pumice stones from his hands. Ahead of him
the impatient monk led the way through the dark streets, looking behind now and
then to see if he was following.

‘Come!’ the monk
cried out to him, full of annoyance. ‘Young scholars! Lazy idlers!’

The young man
hurried his step, longing for his warm bed and a cup of heated ale. Of all the
notaries numbering in the hundreds gathered together in the city of Paris, why
had the Inquisition sought to fetch him from his pallet at this ungodly hour? A
gust swept his cap from his head and sent it swirling into the night. He did
not dare follow it since the black shadow of the monk had already disappeared
behind a building. He hurried his step, rounding the corner, and walked into a
monkish shout.

‘You! In that
carriage and hurry up!’

The carriage
bounced along the streets and headed out of the city gates towards the meadows.
The monk, silent and dismal, sat opposite him, but the notary could not see his
face, hidden as it was by the darkness and the hooded cowl.

‘The wind,’
Julian said by way of conversation, ‘it picks up early this year.’

The vehicle
thrashed and jostled from side to side, the driver hurrying his animals along at
a cracking pace.

‘The wind
laments the agony of devils brought to judgement,’ the monk answered, ‘whose
souls are this night thrust into the abyss. Lucky are they who have a part to play
in it, this side of hell.’

Against this
Julian buried his chin in his cloak and looked out at the steep darkness. Such
words spoken between full night and morning and caught in the close chill of
the carriage made Julian shiver. A deep feeling of dread descended over him and
he wondered where he was being taken and for what extreme purpose.

Presently the
carriage began to slow and it came to a halt at a great gate. Julian recognised
it. It was that which stood before the enclos of the Temple fortress.

The driver
opened the door to the carriage, and the notary and his guide made their way
through the wind-turned-gale. Night pressed and slammed at the stone buildings
of the Temple, winding and twisting and following the two men as they passed
royal guards through the doors of the great donjon.

He wanted to ask
why there were royal guards at the gates and why a Dominican monk was entering
the donjon as if it were owned by his Order. But the wind circled the turrets,
the crenellations and spires and allowed no conversation. Instead Julian hugged
himself against it and followed as he was led through the main door and into
the vaulted spaces. Here upon the threshold a deathlike silence startled at the
sound of their footsteps.