The Last Templar

Chapter 20

Paris, France—March 1314

Slowly, Jacques de Molay's consciousness returned. How long had it been this time ? An hour ?

Two? The grand master knew it couldn't possibly have been any longer than that. A few hours of unconsciousness would be a luxury that they would never allow.

As the mists receded from his mind, he felt the usual stirrings of pain, and, as usual, he banished them. The mind was a strange and powerful thing, and, after all these years of imprisonment and torture, he had learned to use it like a weapon. A defensive weapon, but a weapon nevertheless, one with which he could counter at least some of what his enemies tried to accomplish.

They could break his body, and they had, but his spirit and his mind, though damaged, were still his own.

As were his beliefs.

Opening his eyes, he saw that nothing had changed, although there was a curious difference he didn't recognize at first. The walls of the cellar were still covered with a green slime that leaked onto the roughly cobbled floor, a floor that was almost level from the accumulation of dust, dried blood, and excrement on it. How much of the filth had come from his own body? A lot of it, he feared. After all, he had been here for . . .

he concentrated his mind. Six years? Seven? Ample time in which to wreck his body.

Bones had been broken, allowed to reset crudely, then broken again. Joints had been wrenched apart, tendons severed. He knew that he couldn't do anything meaningful with his hands and arms, nor could he walk. But they couldn't stop the movement of his mind. That was free to roam, to leave these dark, miserable dungeons beneath the streets of Paris and travel . . . anywhere.

So, where would he go today? To the rolling farmlands of central France? To the foothills of the Alps? To the seashore, or beyond, back to his beloved Outremer?

I wonder, he thought, and not for the first time, if I'm insane? Probably, he decided. To suffer everything the torturers who ruled this underground hellhole had inflicted on him, there was no way he could have retained his sanity.

He concentrated a little harder on the time he had spent here. Now he had it. It was six and a half years since the night that the king's men had overrun the Paris Temple.

His Paris Temple.

It was on a Friday, he remembered. October 13, 1307. He'd been asleep, as had most of his fellow knights, when dozens of seneschals had stormed the preceptory at first light. The Knights Templar should have been better prepared. For months, he'd known that the venal king and his lackeys were trying to find a way to overturn the power of the Templars. That morning, they had finally summoned up the courage and the excuse. They had also found the stomach for a fight, and, although the knights didn't surrender easily, the king's men had surprise and numbers on their side and it wasn't long before the knights were overpowered.

They had stood back helplessly and watched as the Temple was ransacked. All the grand master could do was hope that the king and his henchmen would fail to grasp the significance of the loot that they carried away, or be so consumed by greed for the gold and jewels they couldn't find that they would fail to notice those seemingly worthless objects that were, in fact, of immeasurable value. Then silence had fallen until slowly and with surprising courtesy, de Molay and his fellow knights were herded into wagons to be carried to their fate.

Now, as de Molay remembered that silence, he realized that this was what was different about today.

It was quiet.

Usually, the dungeon was a noisy place: chains clattering, racks and wheels creaking, braziers hissing, along with the endless screams of the torturers' victims.

Not today, though.

Then the grand master heard a sound. Footsteps, approaching. At first, he thought it was Gaspard 47

Chaix, the chief of the torturers, but that ogre's footsteps were unlike these; his were heavy and menacing. It wasn't anyone of his crew of shambling animals either. No, there were many men coming, moving quickly along the tunnel and then they were in the chamber where de Molay hung in chains. Through swollen, bloodshot eyes, he saw half a dozen brightly dressed men standing before him. And at their center, of all people, was the king himself.

Slender and imposing, King Philip IV stood a full head taller than the group of fawning sycophants clustered around him. In spite of his parlous state, de Molay was as always struck by the outward appearance of the ruler of France. How could a man of such physical grace be so thoroughly evil?

With youthful features belying his forty-six years, Philip the Fair was light skinned and had long blond hair. He looked the very picture of a nobleman, yet for almost a decade, driven by an insatiable greed for wealth and power matched only by his vulgar profligacy, he had wreaked calculated death and destruction, inflicting torment upon all those who stood in his way or even merely displeased him.

The Knights Templar had done more than merely displease him.

De Molay heard more footsteps coming along the tunnel. Hesitant, nervous steps heralded the arrival in the chamber of a slight figure dressed in a cowled gray robe. The man's foot slipped and he stumbled awkwardly on the uneven floor. The cowl fell away and de Molay recognized the pope.

It was a long time since he had seen Clement, and, in the intervening period, the man's face had altered. Deeply etched lines turned down the corners of his mouth as if he suffered some continual internal discomfort, while his eyes had sunk deep into dark hollows.

The king and the pope. Together.

This couldn't be good.

The king's gaze was fixed on de Molay, but the broken man wasn't interested in him right now. His eyes were locked on the diminutive man in the cape who stood there fidgeting nervously, avoiding his look. De Molay wondered at the pope's reticence. Was it because the man's deception and his subtle manipulation of the king had precipitated the fall of the Knights Templar? Or was it that he simply couldn't bear to see the grievously misshapen limbs, the rank open sores, or the unhealed flesh of putrefying wounds?

The king stepped closer. "Nothing?" he snarled at a man hovering beyond the edge of the group.

The man stepped forward, and de Molay saw that it was indeed Gaspard Chaix, the torturer, his eyes downcast, his head shaking from side to side.

"Nothing," the stubbly man replied.

"Damn him to hell," the king burst out with a voice that was filled with the undercurrent of fury that consumed him.

You've already done that, de Molay thought. He saw Gaspard look his way, the eyes, beneath thick brows, dead as the stones that made up the floor. The king moved forward, peering closely at de Molay, a handkerchief held against his nose to protect him from a stench that the grand master knew to be there but had long ago ceased to notice.

The king's whispery voice sliced the stale air. "Talk, damn you. Where is the treasure?"

"There is no treasure," de Molay simply replied, his voice barely audible even to himself.

"Why must you be stubborn?" the king rasped. "What end does it serve? Your brothers have revealed all; your sordid initiation ceremonies, your humble Knights of the Cross denying the divinity of Christ, spitting on the Cross, even urinating on it. They've admitted . . . everything."

Slowly, de Molay licked at his cracked lips with a swollen tongue. "Under torture such as this," he managed, "they would confess to killing God Himself."

Philip inched closer to him. "The Holy Inquisition will prevail," he said indignantly. "That much should be obvious to a man of your intellect. Just give me what I want and I'll spare your life."

"There is no treasure," de Molay repeated with the tone of a man resigned to never convincing those who heard him. For a long time, de Molay had sensed that Gaspard Chaix believed him, even though he had never faltered in his brutal assaults upon his victim's flesh. He also knew that the pope believed him, but the head of the Church wasn't about to let the king in on his little secret. The king, on the other hand, needed the riches he knew the Knights Templar had amassed over the past two hundred years, and his needs overwhelmed the conclusion any sane man would have reached at seeing the broken man hanging from the wall before him.

"It's useless." The king turned away, still angry but now apparendy as resigned as his victim. "The treasure must have been spirited away that first night."

De Molay watched the pope, whose face was still turned away. The man's moves were brilliantly executed, he thought. The grand master felt a perverse satisfaction in knowing it. And it stoked his determination even more, for the wily man's actions only confirmed the nobility of the Templars' goal.

The king looked coldly at the heavyset torturer. "How many of them still live within these walls?"

De Molay's entire body went rigid. For the first time, he was going to learn of the fate of his brothers from the Paris Temple. Gaspard Chaix told the king that, apart from the grand master himself, only his deputy, Geoffroi de Charnay, survived.

The old Templar shut his eyes, his consciousness flooded in a tangle of horrific images. All gone, he thought. And yet we came so close. If only. . . If only word had come, all those years ago, from the Falcon Temple, from Aimard and his men.

But nothing had.

The Falcon Temple—and its precious cargo—had simply vanished.

The king turned and took one final look at the broken man. "End it," he ordered.

The torturer shuffled closer. "When, Your Majesty?"

"Tomorrow morning," the king said, the prospect perversely brightening his spirits.

Hearing the words, de Molay felt something spread over him that he didn't recognize at first. It was a feeling he hadn't experienced in many years.

Relief.

Through hooded eyes, he glanced toward the pope and saw his stifled delight.

"What about their possessions?" the pope asked, his voice quavering. By now, de Molay knew, all that would remain was anything that couldn't be sold to help pay off the king's debts. "The books, papers, artifacts. They belong to the Church."

"Then take them." The king waved a dismissive hand before casting one last seething glance at de Molay and storming out of the chamber, his entourage trailing hurriedly after him.

For the briefest of instants, the eyes of the pope and de Molay met before Clement could turn and rush from the chamber. In that brief space of time, de Molay had read the pope's mind, confirming the small man for what he was: a scheming opportunist who had manipulated the greedy king for his own ends. For the Church's ends.

A scheming manipulator who had bested him.

But de Molay couldn't give him the satisfaction of believing it. He seized the opportunity and rallied himself, summoning all of his strength and channeling it into a glare of confident defiance that he beamed at his nemesis. For a fleeting second, a look of fear crossed the pope's weathered features before he composed his face into a stern gaze and lifted up his cowl.

The grand master's cracked lips curled into what would have once been a smile. He knew he'd succeeded in sowing doubt in the small man's mind.

A victory of sorts.

The pope wouldn't sleep well tonight.

You may have won this battle, de Molay thought. But our war is far from over. And with that thought, he closed his eyes and awaited his approaching death.