The Templar

Prologue

Melrose Abbey, Scotland:

The Feast of St James, 25 July 1314

Regis Regum rectissimi prope est dies domini.

(The day of the Lord, of the most righteous King, is close at hand.)

The Dies Irae of St Columba

The monk lifted his cowled head and peered through the lancet window overlooking the wild heathland of Melrose. Harvest time was close, but his task was only just beginning here in the stair tower of this ancient fortified manor house. He stared round the chamber at the neatly stacked ledgers, indentures, chronicles, letters and memoranda: these had all been collected from the libraries of the Order of the Temple and brought here in the summer of Our Lord 1314.

‘Everything we could steal or buy,’ the old woman murmured as she rested on her cane, staring through the small oriel window. She didn’t even bother to turn round.

‘Consummatum est — it is finished. Brother Anselm, you’ve heard the news?’

The young Cistercian monk coughed and nodded. He realised why he was here. He had been sworn to secrecy on the great leather-bound, gold-embossed Book of the Gospels chained to its lectern in the centre of the room.

‘Nineteenth March past,’ the old woman whispered. ‘Jacques de Molay, Grand Master of the Temple, and Geoffrey de Charny, Preceptor of Normandy, burnt at night fastened to a stake on the Île-de-France. Innocent they were…’ She hobbled over to Brother Anselm and smiled down at him.

‘Father Abbot,’ she leaned over and girlishly stroked the monk’s smooth cheek, ‘has released you from all duties.’ She waved round. ‘To form this into one seamless cloak. A chronicle of the Order of the Temple from its origins to the end.’ She grasped Anselm’s wrist; the grip was surprisingly strong, despite her apparent frailty. Her light grey eyes held his.

‘You are my kinsman Benedict; you have the sacred blood of the de Payens, the founders of that order.’

‘Domina, how shall I write it?’

‘As a chronicle,’ the old woman replied. She turned and walked over to the neatly stacked manuscripts. ‘As if you were there, Brother. Be like the prophet Ezekiel in the Valley of the Dead: breathe life, blood and flesh into these dry bones.’