The Fall of the Templars Page 6

  “Rose.”

  She stopped short, but he went the rest of the way and drew her to him. Her hair was soft and smelled of woodsmoke. It was two years since he’d held her, but it felt much longer.

  “I was starting to wonder if you were coming.”

  “I have duties,” she replied, pulling away with a glance at the palace.

  Will drew in a slow breath. He shouldn’t have expected her to come rushing to meet him; their parting had not been easy and in the time he’d spent on the road since he’d had no chance to contact her. “How are you?” He tried to sound bright, but regretted the question immediately. It was so formal, so insipid.

  Rose gave a tight shrug.

  “Because Andreas assured me you would be given a good position here. In his letter he said he had written to the queen, asking if something suitable could be found for you.” Will stared at the muddy ground, unable to look at her rigid face. “He promised me you would be taken care of, that he had the influence to make certain of this.”

  “Then I suppose it must be fine,” she retorted.

  The wind lifted her hair and she pushed it back again. As she did so, Will saw the scars on her hand, where she had been burned. Her skin was raw-looking and shriveled. She caught him looking at it and folded her arms. “I want to know that you’re happy,” Will said, aware of how helpless he sounded.

  She made a sharp, scornful noise. “So you don’t have to think about me anymore.” Her dark blue eyes were cloudy with anger. “So you don’t have to feel guilty for sending me away.”

  Her words stung him, filled with venom and truth. He put his hands on her shoulders. She had grown tall. How old was she now? Seventeen? No, she would have turned eighteen last month. “I know these past few years must have been difficult for you, but . . .”

  “Difficult? You have no idea! As soon as we landed on Cyprus you left me. I hardly saw you for months.”

  “What else could I do?” said Will quietly. “On the ship from Acre people just assumed you were another orphan rescued from the city, but when we reached Cyprus I had no choice but to leave you.” He stared out across the green Seine flowing silently beside them. “I would have been expelled if the others had found out about you, if they knew I had a daughter. You know that.” He looked back at her. “But I made sure you would be cared for.”

  She scoffed again.

  Will’s expression hardened. “I did the best I could. You had a good life with Elias.”

  “Yes! And then you forced me to come to Paris!”

  “Elias had told me he was planning to come here and Grand Master de Molay began preparing his progress through Christendom as soon as he was elected. I couldn’t abandon you in Limassol knowing we would all be leaving. Paris offered you the best chance. I knew Andreas would be able to use his contacts with the royal family to help you find decent work.” Will shook his head. “Other children who survived Acre weren’t so fortunate, Rose. They lost both their parents and were forced to beg on the streets. Or worse.”

  “I know how they feel. I lost my parents too.”

  Will felt as though she’d just slapped him. He was silent, staring as she half turned away, unable to meet his gaze, her cheeks flushing pink. He tried not to say it, but couldn’t help himself. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing,” murmured Rose.

  “I want to know what you meant by that.” He didn’t. Yet, still, he asked the question again.

  Rose turned on him. “It means my parents died at Acre. Both of them!”

  For a moment, Will saw someone else looking back at him out of those stormy sea eyes, mocking him, and right then he wanted to strike her. The wall inside him cracked apart and his hand squeezed into a fist, all his rage and pain and impotence flooding into it. He wanted to push it into her, into the woman in front of him who shouldn’t even be a woman, who had grown up without him into this perfect picture of her mother; his hurt made manifest, standing here before him, reminding him of that great betrayal, those dark blue eyes not his, not her mother’s, but someone else’s. A name he couldn’t even say.

  As Rose began to walk away, Will took a step forward, reaching out as if to grasp her. Then he faltered, his hand falling, as the distance between them grew too great. He waited, but she didn’t look back. Entering the servants’ passage, she disappeared. Will lifted his head and stared into the sky, until the sunlight blinded him.

  By the time he crossed the Grand Pont and made his way back up the rue du Temple, the sun spots in his vision had cleared and the familiar numbness was enclosing him once more. Having returned to the preceptory, he was making his way through the knights’ quarters, when Hugues and Robert found him.

  “We need to talk,” said the visitor.

  Robert noted the cloak bundled under Will’s arm with a quizzical frown.

  “Come,” said Hugues, not seeing Robert’s look. He led the way to the officials’ building and up to his room. “We do not have long. It will soon be Nones and Jacques has arranged a special service to address the men.” He closed the door as they entered. “This morning I received word from our brother in London. As soon as the summons for the grand master arrived, I had Thomas try to find out the purpose of it.” Hugues’s mouth flattened in a line. “It would appear the pope is proposing to merge together the Temple and the Hospital. The plan is to send both orders back to the Holy Land as one united force on a Crusade we will fund together.”

  Will’s brow furrowed, but he shook his head. “That will never happen.”

  “You don’t know that,” said Robert, a little sharply.

  Will looked at him, then back at Hugues. “Does Jacques know?”

  “I told him this morning. I said I found out from the master of England, which is partly true. Thomas intercepted a message from King Edward to the master which spoke of the pope’s intentions. Edward, it seems, was requested to attend, as a man of influence who has close relations with the Temple. Presumably the pope wants him to support this plan.”

  “What was Jacques’s reaction?”

  “Jacques wants a Crusade, certainly, and is prepared to pay for it. I fear he would quite willingly bankrupt the order for one. But he wants any move eastwards conducted under his own terms. He will not work with the Knights of St. John and I do not blame him. From a military point of view it would be a disaster. Any possibility of harmony between our orders ended years ago.”

  Will knew Hugues was referring to the Temple’s assault on the Knights of St. John in Acre. The assault, which followed a dispute between opposing royal factions, had happened decades ago, but the Hospitallers had never forgiven them for it. In every disagreement between Western forces in the Holy Land since, they and the Templars had stood on opposite sides. The only time there was any unification was at the fall of Acre, when the two grand masters rode out together to face the Mamluk hordes. But Will doubted, in this convoluted arena of Western politics, where battle lines weren’t clear and alliances seemed built on sand, that any such event could unite them again. Too many in the Knights of St. John remembered the stories of brothers begging to allow the sick and dying through the Temple’s barricades in Acre and the Templars’ jeers at their pleas. Conversely, the Templars maintained they had been in the right and the Hospitallers’ quarrel with them was born less out of vengeance and more out of an ongoing attempt to undermine them in the hope of gaining control of Templar territories and assets. It was hardly, as Hugues said, grounds for a merging of the orders.

  “But if Pope Boniface commands it?” Robert asked the visitor.

  “Then we may have a struggle on our hands, though the fact he is sending a mere bishop as his representative tells me this isn’t a particularly pressing matter for him at this juncture. Perhaps he simply wishes to gauge our response to such a proposition? From what you have told me, the pontiff didn’t mention anything of this during your time in Rome.”

  “No,” acceded Will, “but that isn’t surprising. Pope Bonifa
ce’s election wasn’t popular with everyone in the Sacred College and while we were there he was kept busy placating his rivals. Jacques was away for months, visiting the king in Naples and our preceptories in Venice and Genoa, so other than a few meetings in the spring, we hardly saw His Holiness at all.”

  “You said the summons came from Edward,” said Robert. “So it can only be assumed he does support the pope? This is what we’ve been afraid of, ever since he started demanding money from Everard. The old man feared it would only be a matter of time before the king acted on his ambitions for the Holy Land, and now, with the grand master bent on returning . . .” Robert hefted his shoulders. “Though I cannot say I blame him. There are times I wish we could avenge what was done to us at Acre, times I feel so consumed by fury I cannot imagine how I ever saw any Muslim as a brother.” He looked at them. “But the Crusades are over and despite what was lost that is a good thing. King Edward pledged himself to the cause of the Brethren. He should be with the Brethren in seeing the cessation of hostilities as an opportunity for continued peace between East and West, not planning to deliver us all back into war, even at the bidding of the pope.”

  Will was quiet. His comrade had no idea of the lengths Edward would go to in securing what he wanted. Edward only cared for peace when it suited him. He made alliances and broke them with utter disregard for any who might be ruined by his actions and he did it all with a shrewdness and a ruthlessness that were staggering.

  “You spoke of your concerns over Edward when you inducted me into the Brethren,” Hugues was saying. “But Edward has made no move east in all the years since he signed a truce with the Muslims. How can you be so certain he is working against us? If there had been any doubt in Everard’s mind over the king’s intentions he never would have elected him as our guardian. True, I never really knew the priest, but one thing was clear during the time I spent with our brothers in Acre: Everard believed in the Anima Templi above all else and would not have done anything to endanger it.”

  “Everard made a mistake,” said Will in a low voice. “We were almost destroyed with the theft of the Book of the Grail. He was eager to replenish our strength and he chose the wrong man. He regretted it until the day he died.”

  “We don’t know why Edward will be at the meeting,” continued Hugues. “He had dealings with Bertrand de Got in Gascony. Perhaps he plans to be our advocate? If anyone could dissuade the pope and the bishop from this course of action it is him.”

  Will’s tone was steel. “Edward is not our ally. He has betrayed us again and again.”

  “How?” pressed Hugues. “Other than some requests for funds that may well have been innocent appeals, what has he done? I have read Everard’s writings that you sent to me before the fall of Acre. There was no reference to any betrayals, just Everard’s fear, formed mostly through your own suspicions I might add, that the king wasn’t seeking peace when he agreed to be our guardian, but a source of revenue to fund a war in Wales. But even if that is true, the subjugation of Wales was a necessary venture. Just because a man believes in peace, does not mean he can maintain it in the face of rebels and warmongers.”

  “And his aggressions on Scotland?” demanded Will. “He has been seeking control of the kingdom for years, and now he’s crushed Wales, there is nothing standing in his way.”

  “Scotland was in chaos after the death of King Alexander, with the magnates all vying for the throne. Edward offered to help them.”

  “Yes, by attempting to marry his five-year-old son to Alexander’s heir so that England could take control of the crown!”

  “And if the Maid of Norway had survived then our two kingdoms would now be united in peace through that union.” Hugues shook his head at Will’s belligerent expression. “If the Scots hadn’t trusted Edward they wouldn’t have promoted him as their overlord upon the infant queen’s death. He has been endeavoring to restore order in their realm ever since, fortifying castles, setting garrisons in towns where tension between rival families was greatest. How do the Scots repay him? They could have entered into talks, negotiated their differences. Instead, they signed a treaty with his enemy.”

  “Just when did you become English, Hugues?” asked Robert, eyeing his friend with resentment.

  “I’m merely trying to see it from Edward’s point of view,” replied Hugues calmly. “And to understand where this suspicion of him comes from. We are brothers are we not?” He spread his hands to the two angry men in front of him. “We are on the same side. I just want to make sure, whatever happens, that the Temple is safeguarded. These are unsettled times. Our grand master wants to launch a Crusade and the pope wants to join us with our rivals. Either of these possibilities could have a devastating impact on us. Jacques plans to leave for London after the Christ Mass. The three of us will be in his company. I’ve made sure of it.”

  “We are going?” said Will.

  “Yes, and I believe we should look upon Edward as our friend in this matter.”

  “Then this discussion is over,” said Will, crossing to the door.

  Hugues stared after him. Fury flooded his face in a red rush. “You will halt, Commander! How dare you turn your back on me!”

  Will rounded on him, the violence in his eyes making Hugues pause. “We were discussing Anima Templi business. In case you had forgotten, I am its head. If I say our meeting is ended, it is ended.”

  “God damn him,” murmured Hugues, as Will left the room. Robert went to speak, but the visitor silenced him. “No, Robert, do not excuse him. If he speaks to me like that again I’ll have him expelled from this order.”

  4

  New Temple, London

  JANUARY 7, 1296 AD

  The city was on fire. Pillars of black smoke billowed into the dawn sky, obscuring the sun. Boulders tossed up by the siege engines smashed through the walls, pulverizing rock into rubble, crushing men. Women and children, faces dust-streaked, crowded on the harbor wall, desperate for the few boats to take their swelling numbers to the last galleys out in the harbor. Will spurred his horse through them, his attention fixed on a distant figure stumbling along the broken eastern mole.

  It was always Edward pulling the strings. And I dangled limply in his grip, while all my dreams faded and died around me, and all yours came true.

  Will sat up as the sound of Garin’s bitter words filled his mind. There was a pressure in his chest, making it hard to breathe.

  I had been Edward’s puppet for so long that I danced to his tune even when he wasn’t controlling me.

  He rose and crossed the empty dormitory to the window. Planting his hands on the ledge, Will looked out over a square of grass, bordered by cloisters. On the air, he smelled the marshy Thames. This place was crowded with memories, but fainter, less substantial than those that surrounded him in Paris. He had spent only two summers at New Temple, although the fact that this was the last place he had seen his father held a certain nostalgic pain. It felt as though he were retracing his steps: Paris to London. Thoughts of Scotland, his birth-place, were stronger here. He still had the letter from his sister, Ysenda, folded in his sack. Both she and his elder sister Ede were, as far as he knew, still alive.

  Three Templar sergeants headed across the lawn, black tunics loose on their lean frames, young muscles not yet toughened from labor or combat. He had been like them once, green with youth, in awe of the knights who towered above him like fierce angels in their sinless mantles. He recalled days spent helping Simon in the stables, winter mornings loping around the training field, Garin running at his side. It seemed like another life.

  As the preceptory bell began to clang, the sergeants picked up their pace and disappeared under the arches. Will went back to the pallet. Crouching, he pulled his sack from under the bed. He paused, his hand hovering above it.

  It’s over, Will. Don’t you see? It’s over for both of us. We’ve lost everything. All we can do is die!

  As Garin’s voice echoed back to him, he reached into the sack, his
fingers closing over the folds of his spare undershirt that was wrapped around something hard. He withdrew it, peeling back the shirt until the knife lay naked on his palm. He had taken it from the preceptory kitchen yesterday evening when most of the men were at Vespers. No one commented on his tardiness when he slipped into the chapel to join them. The master of England and his officials were preoccupied with welcoming the grand master and if any of the knights had noticed they hadn’t questioned him. After all, he was a commander. The blade was long and thin, embedded in a stout wooden handle. It was easy to conceal. No one would see him draw it.

  Garin had been a pawn, a fatal one at that, but still, just a pawn. Edward was the player, the one pushing the pieces across the board, winning with every move, from Owein’s murder at Honfleur and his own degradation in a Paris brothel, a death in its own way, to the ambush outside Mecca and the fire in Andreas’s house. He may not have dirtied his hands in the process, but Edward had been the driving force behind all Garin’s actions. That was as clear to Will as if the king had ground his own seal into each and every cruel moment that had been spun around his intentions. He had killed, connived and lied his way to gaining the things he wanted, throughout it all wearing a veneer of honor that had fooled even Everard. It was because of Edward that Will had lost almost everything that was precious to him in life. He couldn’t live with that injustice any longer.

  He had sworn revenge on the deck of the Phoenix as they had sailed out, leaving Acre in ruins behind them. His fury then had been pure, a raging fire, but in the years since it had turned to ashes inside him, gray and stagnant, polluting his thoughts. With his return to the West that fire had been rekindled and now, so near to the king’s seat of power, so close to the man himself, it blazed hotter than ever, that arrogant face a beacon in his mind.