The Fall of Shadows

There were much swifter ways of extracting a confession, Brother Michael thought, the joyful sounds from the hall below drawing a glance to the branding irons sizzling in the hearth.

They had reached another impass, another long meaningless silence. Before him lay the sheet of vellum he’d been leaning over all day; pristine as before, revealing more about their failed efforts than it did about the prisoner sitting before them. It was going to be a long night.

Gervais de Beauvoir looked gaunt and thin, his skin sallow, hair a straggled mane of silver-grey joining to a short thick beard. Only his cobalt-blue eyes, dark ringed and set in high cheek bones, showed any trace of life. An indomitable pride that would not be broken. He was not about to yield to them, not by an inch. They would have to break him first and, after just a day in his company, Michael was more than ready to oblige, even if it meant beating them out of him with his bare hands. All the man had to do was confess and his suffering would be over. Why was it so hard for him to understand? What could possibly hope to gain from it? Did he wish to be tortured? What kind of a fool would do that?

Stood at the open window, watching the cold sun sinking into the forests with detached fascination, his aged mentor appeared less daunted.

Father Dominic was said to be able to pry a snail from its shell with his deductive reasoning and his razor-sharp logic. Where cruder men would have resorted to the branding irons long ago and been content to have their confessions screamed to them, the quietly spoken man from Grenoble was content to leave them warming in the fire. Like some salt-crusted old fisherman he made no attempt to wrestle his biggest catch in to the shallows at once, just let it run; allowing exhaustion to take up his strenuous labours. Sometimes it took days, Michael was warned on their long journey from Paris, but they always broke in the end. Always.

‘You’d spare yourself much pain, monsieur,’ Michael said quietly, diplomatically. ‘Confession is the only hope for your wretched soul.’

‘My soul is not wretched, you impertinent whelp,’ said Gervais. ‘Nor have I anything to confess.’

‘On the contrary, monsieur, there is much to confess. It is widely known that yours is an order of deviants and heretics.’ Michael answered. ‘Corruptors of the pure faith is what you are being called, defilers of the sacred places. Why should they say that of you if it were untrue?’

‘Perhaps you should ask your employer, brother,’ Gervais answered contemptuously. ‘And worry yourself over his poor and wretched soul instead of mine.’

‘Damn your stubbornness!’ The scribe’s words echoed around the walls as he leapt up, wooden stool dragging on the stone floor, hands slamming down on the table. ‘Father, he wastes our time! We should…’

‘Sit down, brother.’

Rebuked and reminded of his lowly role in the room, the scribe sat. And the silence went on.

The room above the main hall of the chateau of Phillipe de Cretian was surprisingly large, barely lit by a scattering of rush-lights and a dwindling fire, left dark and savagely cold as night fell. At the open window Michael watched his venerable master, wondering what thoughts might have lain behind his inscrutible silence. The two men seemed very much alike. Both were over fifty and carried an air of composure. The Templar looked hard and lean, showing no signs of permanent harm from the beating the soldiers had given him. Every so often, the beginnings of a smile was caught and quickly smothered by the steel-hard countenance that was expected of a Knight of the Temple. A fighting man of Christ. Dominic, by contrast, seemed quite sanguine to his scribe. He was calm and composed, never once raising his voice and, even after hours of pointless argument, showed no sign of flagging. Back at his post, still waiting for something to write, Brother Michael envied him for that.

Again the cheery sounds emanated from the hall. From all over the region knights and their squires had come to joust in the bailey, then to toast Philipe de Cretian’s newly knighted eldest son. Wine flowed, haunches of boar and venison were stripped to the bare bones that the huntsman’s dogs squabbled over among the floor rushes. Minstrels played, an overdressed troubador sang the praises of de Cretian and his sons. And, high above them, in a silence broken only by the snap of logs and the whispers of frigid autumn wind, the battle of wits that began at dawn went on.

The battle began in the early hours of the previous morning; a gloomy Friday when the two Dominicans were riding slowly toward the chateau on the outskirts of Laon, and King Philip was breaking down the doors of a thousand preceptories across his kingdom. The instruction his bleary-eyed agents were given was staggering, left even the battle-hardened sergeants who accompanied them speechless. The Knights of the Temple, the personal army of the Pope himself and one of the wealthiest institutions in Christendom, were accused of heresy and deviance of the worst kind. Most had heard the rumours from idle courtiers looking to make trouble, or from bishops jealous of their papal privileges. But this testimony was more serious. It came from one of their own members, and demanded firm and immediate action. By the time Sext rang from the church bells of Picardy, Father Dominic and Brother Michael were already ensconced with their first prisoner in the room above de Cretian’s hall; attempting to make sense of those astonishing claims by delving into the sordid murky world that went on behind the mantle of respectability. They were told to seek confession and, again, Michael thought about the irons in the hearth.

A gentle knock on the door startled him. Answering his master’s glance, he opened the door and a servant girl entered with two large wine-jugs. ‘There must be some mistake, ma’amoiselle, we did not…’

‘Bring it in, child,’ said a quiet voice behind him. Father Dominic was still watching the view from the window, mulling over the new additions to his growing picture of the ageing Templar. ‘We are seeking truth here, that does not mean we must be without clemency.’

The girl walked in, looked around her. She was young and plain-looking, with long brown hair and a freckled and pock-marked complexion. Her left eye was bruised, probably from the reprimand of her master’s boisterous son, while her scrawny shoulder held up a crumpled lavender-coloured dress. As she set the jug down on the table she looked around her, eyes meeting those of Gervais and then Michael before quietly, almost miserably, skulking back down to the kitchens below. Dominic did not see her. All he saw was his prisoner, watching for any expressions the girl might have brought to his face then, finding none, set the jug down in front of him.

‘Maybe you’d feel better if have something to…’ he began, knowing the wine would go untouched. The proud Templar would choose abstinance. All day he had refused everything, making his sudden lunge for the wine all the more satisfying for the fisherman. His prize was beginning to tire, his resolve was starting to break. It would all be over soon.

‘Why do you say our employer, brother?’

‘You are men of God, yet do the work of the king and his cohorts. De Nogaret, that slippery weasel of a lawyer on whose advice he clings,’ Gervais replied, hard gaze wavering a little, speaking more fluidly than he had all day. ‘He who would dare to claim that he speaks for God in denouncing Pope Boniface…’

‘Much as the current holy father does, non?’

Watching his response, Dominic could see Gervais had an answer, but stopped just in time.He was careful with his words and his responses now, not about to be provoked into making some rash revelation. The wine may have been affecting him, but the inquisitor was going to have to look elsewhere for heretics. Of that he was quite certain.

‘The Holy father does speak for God,’ the Templar answered quietly. ‘He alone is our master, as he is yours. And we shall answer only to him.’

‘Answer for what?’ The question came like the prospective slash of a dagger in a sword-duel; half-meant, half-doubted, catching the knight off guard. ‘You said you are innocent, so what is there to answer? Unless there is something.’

Gervais shook his head and sucked in a breath to stop his teeth chattering, flexing some life into the fingers of his frozen hands. The sudden rush of wine left him swaying a little. But still he did not answer.

‘You answer only to His Holiness,’ Dominic asked. ‘That’s what your Grand Master would say. You know Jacques de Molay, don’t you?’

‘I do.’

‘How well do you know him? You would die for him? Give your life?’ Dominic offered again, speaking slowly so his words could take effect. ‘But what am I saying? Of course you would. You are a Templar, it is expected of you. Do you suppose he would do the same?’

Not sure where the question was going, Gervais just listened.

‘Would you also lie for him, brother? Forswear yourself before God to save him?’

‘You are asking if I would betray his confidence?’

‘No, only to honour your Christian duty. That, after all, is what all Templars were created for, non? Was that not what Hugh de Payens sought all those years ago? To do only what was right?’

‘Poverty, chastity,’ Gervais paused. ‘And obedience.’

Dominic grimaced and turned back to the window, drawn by the bright pools of golden light cast by tallow lamps around the bailey and the moonlight glaring along the rutted approaches to the chateau. There it was again. That half-smile when he answered; so trite, so irritating. The man was as clever as he was stubborn. He was not about to be backed into a corner of logic, no matter how cold or tired he was. He would freeze before he would ever willingly betray his order and, true to his calling, welcomed it if death meant forever keeping his precious secret, the one that lay at the very heart of his inscrutible order. And the one its members kept at all costs.

Only the wine, the deceptively gentle stimulant, gave him hope. Slowly it was working its magic; undermining those apparently solid walls.

The inquisitor had waited a long time to meet a real Templar. The nearby estate belonged to them and was all but useless in finding evidence of heresy. An orchard, two small fisheries and a mill was all he found, each one occupied by peasants no different from any other. They were simple people in the pay of a master and had only simple people’s worthless confessions. Gervais, however, was a different proposition. He was a challenge. A fighting man, a Templar knight seized by the king’s men on his way back to their headquarters in Cyprus. Word among the peasants on his lands said he had been at Acre when the last Christian stronghold there fell to the invading Mameluks. In Paris he was said to have been an administrator, an organiser, one of the senior staff of the Paris Temple and one of the few Templars senior enough to shed any light on his mysterious order. Had he the chance, Dominic would have loved nothing more than to have been in Paris and gleaning every last bit of information from the Grand Master himself. But that was the preserve of the more senior among his brethren, he noted cynically as another jug of wine was brought up. Those in his order with reputations in the royal court, the kind who lacked his meticulous patience and who wanted him out of the way in their moment of glory. Gervais was the most senior Templar he would come across but, like his masters, he knew their secrets. And eventually, the Dominican had already decided, the stubborn fool was going to give up those secrets.

‘You are charged, brother, with the most gross acts of deviancy. Quite lewd and despicable acts committed by you and your knight-brothers,’ he sighed, emotionless as he looked down the list of charges he was given in Paris. ‘Defiling the cross, spitting on it. Denouncing Christ.’

Gervais stared impassively.

‘Damning testimony, non?’

‘Though hardly new. The king’s courtiers...’

‘This does not come from the royal court, brother.’ Dominic said and pressed the sheet across the table. ‘It comes from one of your own knights.’

Gervais peered down at the words in the dim light. ‘De Flexian.’

‘You know him?’

‘As well as every Templar.’

As he spoke, Dominic noticed something new. A change. A hardness in his voice that had not been there before.

‘The man is a damned liar. He was removed from his office as preceptor for stealing money then, in a drunken rage, murdered his successor.’

‘So what does he hope to gain from these allegations?’

‘The man is as greedy as he is cowardly. He sought payment from every wealthy nobleman he could find in return for his shocking ‘revelations’ about the order he had supposedly ‘escaped’ from with his life. We knew he would have taken refuge somewhere. He is a hateful little man, how I should have liked to have met him…’ Gervais was rambling, words slurred as the wine took hold. He was swaying a little.

‘Then what is the truth?’

‘Love of God, how many times must I tell you? If I told you about them they would…’ The knight's face went white. Drink had always been Gervais’ undoing, he was famed for it and, blinded by anger and light-headed by the rush of wine, it had gotten the better of him yet again. He saw his mistake coming. But could not stop in time. ‘It is true. All of it.’

Dominic handed the jug over and Gervais drank again, trying to find some solace in the sweet strength of the wine as the scribe began to write.

An hour later, it was over. Between half-remembered songs and fits of both laughter and sadness, he had answered every question. With just a few prompts he talked about his sacred and noble brethren; the men of the shadows and the light, the defenders of God and the agents of His will. The cold in the room was now almost debilitating but he was no longer shivering as he laughed, sang and talked his way through his next wine jug.

Sitting before him, Brother Michael struggled to keep up, his cold hands hands soon wracked with pain. At his side, or sometimes at the window, Father Dominic listened in stony silence. There were no barriers between them now, just free and flowing conversations about the Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon; their hard training in the arts of war and prayer, how they never left the field of battle unless outnumbered by more than three to one or on the strict instruction of the Grand Master, never paid ransoms for their knights. And how they always fought to the bitter end. Even against the most impossible odds. Then, almost with alacrity, he revealed the other truths about them. The sacrilege, the defamations, the crimes and the affronts to Christ. Forbidden from consorting with women he explained the kisses the brethren exchanged, the intimacy they had shared.

The silence returned. The stream of words was a drying trickle and Michael set his quill down beside his last page of scripture. ‘I knew they were guilty,’ he whispered as he shook life back into his aching hands. ‘It was said you could always find their weakness, father. How did you know that wine would be his undoing?’

‘Why did he give in so easily?’ Dominic asked, barely whispering.

Michael looked at his work, glad when it was finally over. Some words were missed, others misspelled as he tried to keep up with the old man’s words. The content left him sick to the bottom of his stomach, unable to face reading it again; fearing his own soul might somehow be tarnished by the wanton depravity he had written. ‘How could they do such things? Where was their conscience when they were doing such things? Not fit to live among good Christian people, their kind. They should be cast out to live with the rest of the savage beasts.’

‘And is the will of beasts not ordained by God?’ his master asked in a distant voice. ‘These are acts done willfully by learned men brought up in the true faith. That makes them crimes.’

‘For which they will be punished. Defiling of sacred places, blasphemies. They spit in the very face of every virtue we cherish,’ the scribe said. ‘At dawn we shall return to Paris, reveal all we have learned about these devils and have their wretched order put down once and for all.’

‘What did you say?’

Michael frowned, looked up. ‘I said we can now destroy their order.’

Dominic didn’t move, staring at the boy. Something was amiss, something they had overlooked. ‘He felt nothing,’ he murmured to himself, ‘did not even wince.’ Lunging across he snatched up the last of the wine and drank. Then let the empty jug fall to the floor.

‘Father, what is it?’

The inquistor’s face darkened. ‘You can stop this act now, brother,’ he snarled, hurling the jug across the room. ‘Was it de Cretian who put the water in it? Was it the girl?’

Stood behind him, the scribe grew worried.

‘I want you to take a good look at this man, Brother Michael. He is the kind I warned you about,’ the inquisitor hissed like a riled adder. ‘All you have just written, brother. Every last word of it. It is all useless.’

‘But—but he has just confessed,’ Michael stammered. ‘We have what we need.’

‘He was lying to you, can’t you see? The wine, the drunkenness, all of it was just an act,’ Dominic snarled, cheeks flushed red. ‘He wants to see the order destroyed, so he will not need to answer any more questions about it.’

‘Questions about what? He has told us everything…’

‘He has told us nothing,’ Dominic spat. ‘The first words on that page were created by Guillaume de Nogaret, the king’s advisor. They are the same accusations he made against the late Pope Boniface; accusing him of worshipping demons, of blasphemy and sodomy. The last were ones I added just before we left Paris. And he has just confessed to them all.’

Michael watched as Dominic stormed across and pulled one of the irons from the fire. Clumps of white ash clung to the smouldering metal as he drew it about, his eyes blazing like the embers in which it was buried. ‘You are a most skilled and capable story-teller, Brother Gervais, I commend you for it. But now, so help me, you will tell me the truth.’

The knight sat up. He was not shivering anymore, nor swaying from the effects of the wine. He was staring, straight into the face of the inquisitor. With the same serene and knowing smile.