The Templar's Penance: (Knights Templar 15) Page 2

  He charged, taking his little force of fifty-five knights with him. They were wiped out. Revealingly, a chronicler said that these were ‘most’ of the Brethren, which gives an insight into how few knights there were in some Orders. For this reason, King Afonso forced the Knights of Santiago to merge with the small Brotherhood, Santa Maria de España, which he himself had created a few years before.

  There were knightly Orders of Calatrava, of Santiago, of Alcántara and Avis, amongst others. The Portuguese and Castilians were often at daggers drawn, trying to carve up the massive territory. One result was the dissolution of some Orders for political reasons. For instance, Santiago lost the Portuguese parts of its territories after pressure from King Dinis; the breakaway group became the Knights of São Thiago. Similarly the Portuguese elements of Calatrava became independent, at one memorable point demanding money before they would go to the support of their Brothers over the borders.

  When the Templars were disbanded, their destruction led to two new Orders. On the ruins of the Temple there rose the new Aragonese Order of Montesa, an Order which kept the white tunic and red cross like the Templars. At the same time, King Dinis in Portugal decided that he didn’t agree with the Pope that the Templars’ property should all go straight to the Knights of St John. They were already powerful enough. Instead he created a new Order, the Knights of Christ. This Order was to grow in importance and dominance for the next few centuries, becoming the leading missionary and imperial Order in the Portuguese empire. For those who are interested in historical buildings, their monasteries and churches in the Romanesque, Manueline and Renaissance style are quite breathtaking.

  And the best, for my money, is the old Convento de Cristo and Templar castle at Tomar. It stands up on top of a great hill, an impregnable fortress whose scale has to be seen to be believed. The church itself is one of the few remaining Templar sites, unspoiled because when the Templars were destroyed, the Knights of Christ weren’t foolish enough to wreck their buildings. They reused them.

  If you have a hankering to visit an old church and complex to see what the Templars left, you would be hard pressed to find a more evocative place than Tomar.

  There is just one geographical point I should make. I have shown Baldwin taking a boat all the way to Óbidos in Portugal. This is not a slip of the keyboard. Although now, if you are lucky enough to visit the beautiful walled city, you will find yourself driving up the coast on the road overlooking the smallish lagoon and then along the broad, flat plain, now that the sea has retreated. Until the fifteenth century, visitors would be as likely to arrive by boat. At the same time Peniche, now a town on the coast, was an island.

  In reality it is hard to check most details about rivers and the coast, because with the ‘Great Earthquake’ of 1755, so much of Portugal was destroyed or changed. Lisbon was effectively shivered to pieces, and the Tagus (the Rio Tejo) moved so much that the Tower of Belém, which had been constructed in the middle of its flow so as to protect the way to Lisbon’s harbour, now lies almost on the shore!

  In this book I have speculated on what might have happened to the Templars. Few, unfortunately, came to what I should have thought a good end. Some, we know, were executed by the authorities, especially in France. Added to the deaths during torture, this must account for some hundreds. Others were given the chance of joining another Order, although not usually a military one. Some scholars believe that none would have been allowed to remain in a renamed Templar site (see Desmond Seward’s The Monks of War, Penguin, 1995). Others believe that many remained or simply travelled to find other Orders which they could join and where they could wield a sword (see Dungeon, Fire and Sword by John J Robinson, Michael O’Mara Books, 1994, or Supremely Abominable Crimes, by Edward Burman, Allison & Busby, 1994). It is generally agreed that most of the men living in Tomar after the destruction of the Templars had themselves been Templars. They merely changed their name.

  Possibly, some Templars were saved and installed in another Order, but it’s equally probable that many ended their lives in misery and squalor, starving and perhaps more than a little mad. We know that is the case for the poor devils who had been caught in Paris.

  Whatever the truth, I like to believe that at least some of these men were saved and escaped from the violent retribution of the French King Philip le Bel, fleeing in desperation southwards, where some, maybe only a very few, managed to create a new life for themselves in the warm climate of Spain and Portugal, among some of the friendliest people in the world.

  Michael Jecks

  Northern Dartmoor

  September 2002

  Prologue

  It was an unnaturally cool morning in this part of northern Spain, when the youth who had got there first gave a whoop of triumph from the top of the rise which men called Montjoie, the Mountain of Joy. At least in those last moments before he died, the youngster knew absolute pleasure of a kind which he could never have known while slaving in the fields. He was only a damned peasant, after all, Gregory thought, watching him.

  He was an unprepossessing specimen, this boy, with a face all scarred from the pox; he had the shoulders of an ox and flesh burned black by the sun and the wind. Gregory had an urge to snap at him for presuming to run on ahead of the group, but he swallowed his irritation. He would try to take the lad aside later and give him a bit of a talking-to.

  It had been a longstanding ambition of Gregory’s to be awarded that glorious title of ‘King’ just for having been the first to reach the summit and see their destination. Many pilgrims would pay it no mind, but Gregory did. He had wanted to rise early in the morning and come here to this hill and see the sacred city of Santiago Matamoros, Saint James the Moorslayer, shimmering in the distance, to stand on this knoll in splendid solitude, listening to the birds and drinking in the view while he offered his thanks to God. It was a dream which he had enjoyed periodically during the long journey here, and now it was gone. He had hoped that he could commune with God alone up here and find some comfort; merely catching a glimpse of Santiago was supposed to make a man more acceptable to God, after all, and Gregory needed all the help he could get.

  It wasn’t the boy’s fault. Gregory could hardly blame him for taking the lead. It was just his luck! If only the group hadn’t collapsed last night when they had stopped for shelter. They were all exhausted after stamping through torrential rain for hours; the weather here was worse than Gregory’s worst memories. The refuge of a small barn had called to them, and then a cheerful woman had brought them a steaming dish of pottage. No, there was no possibility of their carrying on after that, which was why they didn’t arrive at the stream until this morning.

  The sun was feeble today, but compared with the terrible rains of yesterday it felt wonderful. At least they could walk in the dry. The dust had been settled by the dampness, so they didn’t suffer the irritation of inhaling the stuff as their boots stirred it. Not like the South of France, where Gregory had coughed almost all the way, choking in the thickly laden air. Warmed and rested, the group had woken refreshed and ready for the last part of their pilgrimage. Some had only travelled a few tens of miles, but many had covered hundreds. Some, like Gregory, had walked perhaps more than a thousand to get here. God, but he’d needed to wash his feet!

  This river, the Lavamentula, was enclosed in a small wood, and the warm, green-tinged light had a curious effect on them all. It was as though they all realised that they were entering a holy site. Light was sprinkled on the ground in pools of gold; the thin scattering of weedy plants beneath the trees looked somehow blessed as they were touched by it. In the clear morning’s sunshine even the dark, barren-looking soil was given a glowing aspect, as though new life was about to burst from it.

  One of the first there, Gregory had eagerly stripped and washed with the rest of them. After the journey, all were gritty and rank. Even with the weather so cool, they had built up sweat from many days of travelling, and the pilgrims all needed to scrape themselves clean. Gregory
himself felt the bathing to be almost a spiritual experience, a preliminary ritual so that he might arrive at the Saint’s altar cleansed. There was a curious silence as he rubbed vigorously at his armpits and groin, an expectant stillness broken only by the sound of trickling water – and gasps as cold water shocked cringing flesh.

  While he wiped himself dry, he watched the others. He was struck more by the differences between them than by the superficial similarity given to them by their broad hats and capes. Yes, they all wore the same basic clothes, many with the cockleshell symbol of Santiago, but their attitudes were clearly at odds with each other.

  Some splashed enthusiastically like children, bawling loudly at the cold, spraying each other and laughing, while others stood silently contemplative, preparing themselves for the day, readying themselves for actually seeing the church, perhaps sad that the end of their journey was at hand, reluctant to consider that soon they must turn about and return to the mundanity of normal life, to bickering or scolding wives and squalling children. Some would no doubt be feeling the same emptiness as Gregory, realising that they would never know such a sense of purpose again. Perhaps there were some who were happier. Maybe there were some fortunate enough to be experiencing the inner peace that only a pilgrim who has dedicated and risked his or her life willingly can know, the calmness of one who has achieved a great ambition.

  Not Don Ruy, though. Gregory reckoned that few groups of pilgrims would have had a knight like Don Ruy joining them on their travels. None of the knights he had ever known in his past had been aware of their failings. Yet this one, Gregory thought, sometimes seemed to radiate sadness, as though he was the victim of a great injustice. At those times he would break down, turning away from the other pilgrims as though he feared to pollute them with his mere presence. At least one knight was aware of the shameful state to which his arrogance had brought him. That must explain it – simple shame. Perhaps Don Ruy could recognise his soul’s needs. Not many knights could.

  At this moment, Don Ruy’s attention was fixed upon the frolicking travellers like a man surveying a procession of dogs before they were set upon a bear. Or perhaps, Gregory thought, he was like the bear itself, waiting while his tormentors paraded before him. There was something in Don Ruy’s eyes that reminded Gregory of a convicted felon awaiting his death – like so many of his own friends, the men with whom he had served in the Templars.

  Others there were easier in their minds than Don Ruy, Gregory felt sure; all must be easier than Gregory himself. His own guilt was so overwhelming, he could never feel peace. He had made his oath, sworn it before witnesses, and then tried to renege. And then there was the second source of guilt: his act towards his wife. The act that had cost him his marriage.

  It was why he had so desperately wanted to be the first to catch sight of the city, as though merely seeing it before anyone else could give his personal pilgrimage a particular sanctity and potency. He would never know now. The peasant boy was King, not him.

  Gregory had thought that since he was first in the water, he’d be the first out and off up the hill; he’d be King. But no! The peasant lad scarcely washed himself; just a quick dip, in and out in a minute, and back into his clothing. Hardly clean; hardly pious.

  He did not bother to dry himself. Gregory saw the boy throw on his shirt and tunic, snatch up his cloak, scrip and staff, and hare on ahead of them all through the trees. Others were moving off too, and Gregory realised, with a leaden sinking in his belly, that he was too late. He had missed his opportunity.

  At the top of the hill now, he stared hungrily along the plain towards the great city of Compostela, but it didn’t arouse even a frisson of religious pleasure. Nothing. He felt a keen desolation, a dreadful sense of loss. His life for the last weeks had held meaning solely because of his focus, his ambition, to reach the city. Now that the end of his journey was literally in sight, it revealed the utter paucity of any other aspect of his life. He had lost his wife, his fortune, and now, he felt sure, his immortal soul.

  While he stood there leaning on his staff, a hand over his face, his back bowed, the others were already streaming down the incline towards the city, a mass of joyous humanity. Only two remained at his side. One was Don Ruy, the knight who wore his pride like armour protecting him from the lesser folk about him. The other was Parceval Annesen, a weaselly-looking Fleming with a sallow complexion, thinning hair and bent shoulders. There was a great weight on that Fleming’s shoulders, Gregory thought. He looked like a man who’d been buffeted heavily by the gales of misfortune and had all but gone under. It took one to know one, Gregory thought bitterly. Parceval had been luckier than most, though. At least he didn’t suffer from loneliness. Apparently, one night he’d chatted up a woman pilgrim on the way here, and Don Ruy, so it was rumoured, had walked in on him while he was bulling her. Gregory hadn’t even seen her. Just his luck! He’d been asleep and minding his own business, like a real pilgrim should.

  So far as he had seen, the knight and the scruffy Fleming had exchanged scarcely a word, but that was no surprise. A weedy type like Parceval would be scared stiff of someone like this knight, who could sweep your head off as soon as look at you. No, a scruffy little churl like Parceval would never dare engage a man like Don Ruy in conversation, and a great hulking knight like Don Ruy would not demean himself by addressing someone like Parceval – especially if he’d walked in on the tatty little man while he was stuffing a whore.

  Gregory fixed his eyes on the stream of excited people rushing ahead, listening to their shouts and laughter, wishing he could be a part of their joyous throng. He was so tied up in his jealousy and self-pity that at first he didn’t realise there was anything wrong; didn’t hear the subtle change as first one, then another man screamed with fear.

  ‘Sweet Mother of Christ!’ Parceval hissed suddenly.

  The foul exclamation made Gregory recoil with shock. That a man should speak thus within view of holy Compostela! He was about to command Parceval to drop to his knees and beg forgiveness, when he caught sight of the man’s expression. That made him turn back and scrutinise the plain ahead.

  There was nothing obvious at first. Not that he could see, anyway. It was just a crowd running down the hill delighted to be in sight of their destination. Nothing. Maybe someone had tripped, that was all. Then he saw a flash of something glinting in the sunlight between some trees. There was a creaking of leather and shriek of exultation, and there, cantering towards the left flank of the pilgrims, was a force of men-at-arms, a motley band, armed with swords and axes, one or two wearing a pair of greaves or a breastplate, some with simple helmets. There was no uniform to them, no single colour of tabard or tunic, only a general scruffiness that was in itself a proof of their nature. At their front rode an older man with a hunched aspect, kicking his horse onwards, his heels drumming against the flanks. He had a mad, grinning face, Gregory thought, and an odd way of holding his head, as though one side were too heavy.

  ‘Malfechores!’ Gregory heard Don Ruy hiss, and the knight unsheathed his sword.

  The small bands of robbers and thieves had grown fearfully since the famine, especially here, because of the turbulent politics over the last few years. They did not fear God’s wrath and would happily attack even pilgrims. Gregory wanted to flee, but when he turned to glance over his shoulder, there was another band behind them, three strong-looking men on great rounseys. ‘Lost! We’re lost!’ he groaned.

  Even as Gregory fell to his knees, overwhelmed with defeat, he saw the knight’s teeth gleam. Don Ruy planted his feet firmly apart and gripped his sword-hilt with both hands, the point aiming at the three men. Parceval was at his side, his staff gripped tightly in his fists, his face showing his anxiety, but yet fixed and intent. It was the sight of the miserable little churl sturdily challenging their foe that made Gregory realise how weak and pathetic he had become. The reflection stiffened his spirit. He stood, taking up his own staff and holding it as he had once been taught. It was a polearm,
a weapon, and a man who could use it offensively was safe from most attackers. That was what he had been taught, anyway, and right now, just the feel of the thing in his hand was enough to give him some confidence. He saw Don Ruy flick a glance at him in which surprise vied with amusement, but he didn’t care; he had been a knight himself once.

  However, the three horsemen took little notice of the group. The first was a heavyset man with a badly pocked, square face. As if to conceal his scars, he wore a thin dark stubble, which only served to make him look more intimidating. His brow was low and simian, and his eyes gleamed with what Gregory recognised as fanatical rage as he stared at the carnage on the plain. Pockface was clad in clothes that looked as though they had been expensive, but that was some years ago. His tunic was faded, his cloak threadbare, and his hose were holed in both knees; his mount looked strong and well-cared for, but the harness and fittings were dull and marked from sweat and scratches, showing that they too were old and well-used.

  Behind him was another man, slighter of build and calmer in appearance. He had the long, regular face, fair hair and blue eyes of a northerner, and he peered ahead with less rage, more calculation. His clothing was newer than his companion’s, and the horse he rode looked to be of better quality.

  The third man was plainly not a knight. Short and plump, this fellow snorted and spat a thick gob of phlegm onto the ground at his horse’s hoof. His hair was black with white feathers at his temples, and he had the quizzical look of one who has seen enough fighting and death in his time. Behind him he led two packhorses, both heavily laden. He shifted in his seat, squinting ahead and resting a hand on the blade that sat in the rough, undecorated scabbard at his thigh. He glanced in Gregory’s direction and the latter saw his eyes narrow as he took in Don Ruy, but then his fierce, dark eyes met Gregory’s as he addressed his two companions in a light Scots accent.