The Templar Concordat (2 page)

The Marshall had slumped into his chair. “So, you’re just going to stay here in Paris with the guys too old to travel and wait for the king to come in here and burn your skinny butt at the stake?”

“Don’t be an ass. Of course not. We’ve paid off the captain of the king’s royal guard. He comes and arrests me and a few others, throws me in the dungeon, and declares a great victory over the forces of evil. Then the captain lets me escape a few nights later and I show up in Zurich for Christmas goose. Everyone gets what they want.”

“That is just about the most stupid-arsed thing I have ever heard in my life.” The Marshall stood up and began to tick off items on his fingers. “We can get the fleet to Britain and set up there with our British Templars, and we can get our people from all over Europe to Zurich and set up there, and we can establish communication between the two. We can do all that.” He pointed at the Master. “But you? You are doomed. Doomed.” He threw up his hands.  “I know what you’re doing. You’re sacrificing yourself so the rest of us can get away. Pay the captain, my arse. But I’m not going to fight you on this anymore. If you want to smell your own sizzling carcass cooking at the stake, then bon appetit, you old fool. But I have my orders, and by God, I’m going to carry them out. Zurich and Roselyn. Consider it done.”

The ships had cleared the harbor, all sails were set, and it wouldn’t be long before they disappeared over the horizon.

He turned and looked at the knights and sergeants behind him. “Line abreast! On me!” he thundered. A line formed on both sides of the Marshall. “Sword Salute!” They all drew their broadswords, pointed them to the sky, brought the hilts to the level of their faces, paused a few seconds, and angled them down off their right sides.

Then they removed their Templar tunics and dropped them in a fire a squire had been tending. The red Templar Cross would never again be seen in battle. The visible face of the Templars had vanished.

“Let’s get out of here!” shouted the Marshall. “Column of battle march! Keep it tight, weapons ready, and I want four outriders looking for the Pope’s holy soldiers. He knows what we did to the king’s guard by now.”

He rode off to the side of the column and faced the men. “We’re dressed up like a free company of mercenaries, and I know we’re not wearing the Templar Cross. But, never forget, we’re Templars, first, last, and forever. That doesn’t change. That doesn’t ever change.”

He rode to the front of the small column, shouted, “Death in Battle,” and spurred his horse toward Zurich.

Later that morning, Friday, October 13, 1307, Jacques de Molay, Grand Master of the Knights Templar, was arrested with half a dozen older knights at the Templar headquarters in Paris. On March 18, 1314, he was burned at the stake as a heretic. That same night, the captain of the king’s royal guard who betrayed de Molay was found hanged by his own intestines from the gate of the king’s palace.

Nocera, Italy - Thursday, February 18, 1385

The haggard man in the tower window waved bell, book, and candle at the laughing and jeering soldiers below. “Anathema! Heretics! Excommunication! Damnation! Interdict! Yes! Damnation on all of you and all of your children! All of you! For ever and ever you will burn in the cauldrons of the damned! I speak for God! For God! Bend the knee to me or lose your immortal souls! I have the power! I have the power!” He stood up on the ledge of the window, raised both hands and whipped them down toward the soldiers like he was throwing handfuls of pebbles. “I damn you for all eternity! I damn you by the power of the Church! I damn you by the power of the Risen Christ! I damn you by the power of almighty God!”

The Master of the Knights Templar looked up at the castle window and turned to his Marshall. “Think he means us? We’re really not part of the army here.”

“Humph, I’ve never seen a Pope before. The man’s a lunatic. We came all the way from Zurich to make a deal with a madman?”

“We did, indeed. The Pope’s the Pope.” He pointed up to the castle window. “And that’s why they call him the Mad Pope. Doesn’t matter if he’s lost his mind. That’s not a requirement for Popes or kings. What he can do is bind the Church and every Pope who comes after him if he says this is what God wants.” He grinned at the Marshall. “Think I’m going to argue the fine points like sanity?”

The soldiers had rigged a small catapult, and a great cheer rose when it sent a load of manure arcing toward the Pope’s window. But it didn’t have the range and the clumps fell short. So, they switched to real arrows, and sent a volley at Christ’s Vicar on Earth. Every arrow missed, some possibly aimed off a bit by an archer hedging his salvation.

“Arrows! Puny weapons of man! I am protected by God! By God himself! I wield the weapons of the Risen Lord!”

The twenty Templars wore the ensign of a German free company, mercenaries who fought for the highest bidder. They had pitched their camp behind the small army besieging the Pope at Nocera, just south of Naples, where he had taken refuge from his enemies.

Just after midnight, a Templar spy in the castle dropped a rope and the Master and Marshall scrambled up to an arrow port. The two Templars had covered themselves with mottled brown cloaks, slipped through the attackers’ lines, and crawled on their bellies across the wet ground to the castle for the last hundred yards.

The Marshall held a dagger up each sleeve as they followed the spy’s dim oil lamp through the damp hallways and up a narrow stone stairway until they reached a door guarded by two men. One of the guards nodded and held the door for them.

Only two small lamps lit the room, both on a rough writing desk near the far wall. A shadow moved behind the lamps and the Marshall spun to cover their backs while the Master crouched, drew a short sword, and took the front.

“Don’t you gentlemen know it is a capital offense under Canon Law to draw a weapon in the presence of the Pope?” A gray-haired man wrapped in a simple wool cloak stood behind the desk, put a candle in the lamp flame, then held it to his chest.  “Come in, gentlemen. Please come in. Allow me to light a few more lamps and candles.” He stopped and sighed. “But, perhaps I should let you inspect the room first? It’s difficult to communicate while worrying about daggers in the dark.”

The Pope waited for the Marshall to check the room, then closed the large book in front of him. “Let me throw another log on those embers. It’s not so much the cold as the dripping dampness here. I think all these places were built wet and never dried out.” He rose and went to the woodpile and grabbed a log. “Sit, please. I assure you I am capable of putting a log on the fire.”

Pope Urban VI went back to his seat at the desk. “Welcome to Nocera.” He looked around the room. “I can’t offer you much in my present situation, but we do what we can. I may be guest, prisoner, or hostage here. I’m not sure. It’s difficult to tell, and I probably shouldn’t push the question.”

It was difficult for the Master to believe this was the same man they saw screaming in the window that afternoon.

The Pope threw back his head and laughed. “I suppose you expected a madman? That’s to be expected. I try hard enough to act like one, but that’s all part of the struggle. Two Popes have Western Christianity split between them. England and France support Clement, and Germany and Italy support me. Now it’s all plots, murders, and betrayal. It has taken on a life of its own, and makes one yearn for the simple life.”

“Yes, Holiness.”

“Now, to business,” said the Pope. “That Concordat you proposed? I’ve taken the liberty of making a few changes.”

The Master frowned as the Pope reached behind him, grabbed two parchments, and handed one across to the Master.

“What you proposed, Sir,” said the Pope, “is essentially an alliance between the papacy and the Templars. Now, the world thinks the Templars were destroyed seventy-five years ago in 1307. But when the Master and Marshall of the Templars are sitting right in front of me, that’s obviously wrong.”

The Master tried to scan the Latin on the parchment while listening to the Pope. What had he changed?

“You’re looking for what I changed. Let me elaborate.” He motioned the Master over to the table, moved some oil lamps, leaned close to the table, and pointed at the parchment.  “You suggested an alliance. I amended that to an alliance at the discretion of each Pope. If a particular Pope wants an alliance with the Templars, he enters into it at the beginning of his papacy.

“If the Pope doesn’t want an alliance, then both Church and Templars agree to leave each other alone, and not meddle in the affairs of the other for the reign of that particular Pope. When the next Pope is elected, he makes the decision for his own papacy. So, we may help each other if a Pope chooses, but will not harm each other even if he does not choose an alliance. It’s either alliance or nonaggression.”

The Master squinted and carefully read the lines the Pope indicated. “Holiness, when you asked for our help in dealing with your enemies and your current situation, I believe you suggested an alliance between the papacy and the Templars, an alliance that would bind both groups forever, not an alliance only if the reigning Pope likes it.”

“True. True. But upon reflection, I can’t commit the Church to an alliance with any organization forever, since I can’t predict what that group will do in the future. That would betray my duty to the universal Church. Even with my own perplexing situation here,” he waved toward the besieging army outside, “I still can’t trade the Church’s future for my own.”

Crafty old fox, the Master thought. He wants the Church to turn the alliance on and off with each Pope. “I understand what you say, Holiness, and I have to say it prompts me to wonder the same thing. Do the Templars want to be beholden to an alliance with some Pope who may be less honorable than yourself? You do have a point, and I guess it works both ways. Perhaps we should add that both the Pope and the Templar Master must agree to an irrevocable alliance for any particular papacy?”

To be expected, thought the Pope. He slowly nodded several times. “Yes, I think we can do that. Yes, I think we can.” He made some notes on another page.

The fire consumed several more logs as both men quibbled over small, meaningless changes to the wording of the agreement. When dawn crept around the edges of the window sack cloth, they sat back, each satisfied he had bested the other.

“I think we have a Concordat,” said the Pope, “a Concordat that will bind both Church and the Templars forever. I do not take this step lightly, but the dangers faced by the Church justify it.”

“I think we do have a Concordat, Holiness. I think we do. And I assure you, it will bind all my successors as Templar Masters.”

The Pope squinted at the Master and gave a lopsided smile. “Now, if you will forgive me, gentlemen, before I say my morning prayers and get some sleep, the Mad Pope has some curses to hurl.” The Pope walked over to the window, pulled aside the sack cloth, stepped up on the ledge, and poured damnation down on the army below.

Three days later, with identical signed, sealed, and witnessed Concordats, the Templars smuggled the Pope out of the castle and onto one of their waiting galleys that took him up the coast to Genoa.

Nicoya, Costa Rica - Tuesday March 17

The thin, olive-skinned man focused on the filleting knife in the bartender’s hand. It slipped through the limes, each piece falling against the other, all lined up by the time the knife worked its way to the end of the lime. He looked up at the woman on the other side of the bar, bit his lower lip, then glanced back at the flashing knife. The juice ran down the cutting board when the bartender swept the slices off the board with the blade, wiped it on a towel, and guided it to open another lime. His eyes locked on the blond woman in the wet, white bikini top circling her tongue around the rim of her glass, pretending not to look, and leaning her breasts on the bar. Then he looked back to the knife opening the lime. The bartender moved off to another customer, and Rashid grabbed a slice of lime from the cutting board, then slipped the wet knife up his sleeve.

When the American dropped the second gin and tonic into the pool, the woman next to him hitched up her white bikini top, crushed her pack of cigarettes in her fist, bent close to him, and very quietly hissed, “You’ve embarrassed me for the last time today. If all you wanted to do was drink, you could have stayed in Toledo. I’m so goddamned sick of you.” She looped a small wallet around her neck, composed her face, slid off the bar stool, and waded through the waist deep water to the steps leading out of the pool.

Rashid peered over the tops of his aviator shades and carefully appraised her retreating figure as he had for several days. Her initial excitement at this beautiful, tropical paradise slowly changed into a bitter resentment and rage. Each day she and her husband emerged from their room like any normal couple on a holiday ready to enjoy the sunshine and surf. Then the day wore on, the drinks kept coming, the abuse began, and she finally left with whatever tattered dignity remained. But Rashid would treat her better, much, much better. He knew she wanted him. They all did.

 “Toledo! Ohio! Buckeyes! Go, Buckeyes! Yeah! One more for the road for me, yeah.  And give her one for the ditch. The ditch for the bitch, yeah!” shouted the American. He turned sideways, watching her leave, leaned an elbow on the wet bar, and crooked a finger at the bartender. “A double gin and tonic for me, and a flagon of your finest hemlock for the lady!” She didn’t look back. He fished a wet US hundred dollar bill from the pocket of his flowered shirt and slapped it down.