The Templar Magician

Prologue

Melrose Abbey, Scotland

Autumn 1314

The monk lifted his head and listened to the peal of bells roll through the abbey buildings. A funeral was being prepared. The dirige psalms were being sung, the plainchant drifting on the evening breeze. Soon the solemn peal of bells would begin again. If it was a woman being buried, two peals; for a man, three; for a cleric, as many as the minor orders he had received.

‘Have you even been shown the Gates of Death? Or met the Janitors of the Shadowlands?’

Brother Benedict turned swiftly. He stared at the old woman. She was dressed in the blackest widow’s weeds and sat on the high-backed chair close to his cot bed with its plaid-patterned drape.

‘Mistress.’ The young Benedictine monk smiled apologetically. ‘I was distracted. I really did not expect you until tomorrow, Lammas Eve …’

‘But I came today.’ The old woman gripped her walking cane by its carved handle. ‘I have studied the manuscripts.’ She sighed, and rose to her feet, eyes no longer on the Benedictine but on the arrow-loop window behind him. The day was darkening, the weak sunlight fading. Next to the window hung a Little Mary, a wooden carving of the Virgin Mother and her Divine Child.

‘The Gates of Death?’ Brother Benedict whispered. ‘The Janitors of the Shadowlands?’

‘Magic, Brother!’ the woman whispered.

‘Brother Guibert, our precentor, claims he met a warlock who talked of a monastery that sank into the ground then rose like Christ on Easter Day.’

‘No, no.’ The old woman shook her head. She tapped the chancery coffer beside her, then walked over to where the monk sat on his scribe chair. ‘Brother Benedict.’ She grasped an arm of the chair and stared hard at the young monk. ‘You write, at my request and that of His Grace Robert de Bruce, King of Scotland, the history of our order, the Templars. Yes?’ She gazed fiercely at him, her light-blue eyes betraying the passion that burned like a firebrand within her. ‘Our order,’ she repeated, ‘the Templars, founded by our great and saintly ancestor Hugh de Payens, now destroyed by Philip, the Stone King of France. He burned Jacques de Molay on a small island in the Seine. Our Grand Master was lashed to a beam with cords and chains, beside him Geoffrey de Charnay. Both men, Brother Benedict, protested to the very end against the allegations of black magic, sorcery and witchcraft levelled by the Stone King’s lawyers. They testified to the piety, saintliness and innocence of the Templars. Ah well.’ She paused. ‘Later, secret adherents of our order, those who’d survived brutish, black betrayal, torture and gruesome imprisonment, swam the Seine and collected in their teeth the holy but charred remains of these valiant warriors. Yet,’ the old woman, who rejoiced in the family name of de Payens, grasped the ivory handle of her walking stick, ‘such innocence wasn’t always so. Here, in these islands …’ Her voice faltered.

The young monk glanced up in expectation.

‘Madam, such hellish accusations, levelled often against the Templars, have always been lies.’

‘Is that so?’ the old woman whispered. ‘Listen now. Our order was founded by the great Hugh de Payens in Outremer. It was blessed by Bernard de Clairvaux, hallowed by popes, favoured by the princes of this world. Little wonder the Templars waxed fat and powerful, but in the end, monk, dreams die, visions fade. Ab initio, from the very beginning, there were those who immersed themselves in the hunt for sacred relics and the power these might bring. Worse,’ she hissed, ‘some even turned to dark imaginings, calling on the shadow host, conjuring up demons garbed in the livery of hell’s flames. They hired witches who collected the poison herbs of Thessaly. They set up a nursery of sorcery, tainted our order like the poisonous yew tree with its roots deep in the graveyard, digging down into dead men’s tombs and draining from them malignant vapours to poison the air. Oh yes.’ The old woman tapped the manuscripts stacked on top of the flat lid of an iron-bound coffer. ‘Brother, study these here. Do so carefully. Write as you did last time; base yourself on the manuscripts, weave your web and tell your tale.’ She moved across to the lancet window, staring out at the evening mist moving like a gauze veil over the Melrose countryside. ‘Conjure up the past.’ Her voice became strident. ‘Robins and nightingales do not live long in cages, nor does the truth when it’s kept captive. Read all these manuscripts, Brother, and you’ll meet the Lord Satan, as you would in a crystal or a burning sapphire, bright with the glow of hell’s fire.’