Could they be guilty of such crimes? Surely it was not possible? How could the most holy of all the Orders have become so amoral, so wicked? The people could hardly believe it. But disbelief transformed itself to horror when the confessions began to filter through. After the unimaginable tortures inflicted on them by the Inquisition, after hundreds had suffered the agonies of weeks of unremitting pain and many had even died, the admissions began to seep out to the ears of the populace like ordure leaching from a moat to pollute a clean well, and like all such filth, the rumours contaminated all who were touched by them. Their guilt was confirmed.
But who could doubt that after seeing comrades lose feet and hands in the continual anguish of the torture chambers that they would confess to anything to stop the pain and horror?
The torture lasted for days and weeks on end, the pain ceaseless, in cells created inside their own buildings because there were not enough prisons to hold so many.
They confessed to whatever the Dominicans put to them. They admitted renouncing Christ. They admitted worshipping the Devil. They admitted spitting on the cross, homosexuality, anything that could save them from the pain. But it was not enough, it only meant that the monks went on to the next series of questions. They had so many accusations to confirm that the torture continued for weeks on end. Many individuals confessed to the unbelievable sins they had committed, but still it was not enough. It would only permit the king to punish individuals, and he wanted the whole Order to die. The torture continued.
Gradually, slowly, under the continual, patient questioning of the Dominican monks, the admissions began to change and the statements started to implicate the Order itself. The Knights were given satanic initiation rites, had been told to worship idols, had been forced to renounce Christ. Now, at last, Philip had his evidence: the entire Order was guilty and must be dissolved.
In the square, the man’s eyes were hot and prickly now as he remembered them, his friends, the men he had trained and fought with – strong, brave men whose only crime, he knew, was to have been too loyal to the cause. So many had died, so many had been destroyed by the pain that was so much worse than anything their Saracen enemies had ever inflicted on them.
They had all joined taking the three vows: poverty, chastity and obedience, like any other order of monks. For they were monks; they were the warrior monks, dedicated to the protection of pilgrims in the Holy Land. But since the loss of Acre and the fall of the kingdom of Outremer in Palestine over twenty years before, people had forgotten that. They had forgotten the selfless dedication and sacrifice, the huge losses and the dangers that the knights had suffered in their struggles against the Saracen hordes. Now they only remembered the stories of the guilt of the greatest Order of them all, the stories spread by an avaricious king who wanted their wealth for his own. So now this crowd was here to witness the filial humiliation, the last indignity. They were here to see the last Grand Master of the Order admit his guilt and confess his, and his Order’s, crimes.
A tear, like the first drop that warns of the storm to come, slowly ran down the man’s cheek, and he brushed it away with a quick, angry gesture. This was no time for tears. He was not here to bewail the loss of the Order, that could come later. He was here to see for himself and his friends, to witness the Grand Master’s confession and find out whether they had all been betrayed.
They had discussed it at length when they had met three days before, when they had all heard for themselves that this public show was to be made. All seven of them, the men from the different countries, the few that remained, the few who had not gone into the monasteries or joined one of the other orders, had been confused, sunk in despair at this Hell on earth. Had there truly been such crimes, such obscenities? If the Grand Master did confess, did it mean that all that they stood for was wrong? Could the Order have been corrupted without their knowing? It seemed impossible, but it would be equally incredible that it was not true, because that would imply that the king and the pope were conniving at the destruction of the Order. Was it possible that the Order could be betrayed so badly by its two leading patrons? Their only hope was that there could be a retraction, an admission of error, and that the Order could be found innocent and fully reinstated to its position of honourable service to the pope.
The seven had discussed their options and they had all agreed with the tall German from Metz that they should send one of their number to witness the event and report back. They could not rely on reports from others, they must have somebody there, someone who could listen to the statements and tell them what had been said, so that they could decide for themselves whether the accusations were true. The man by the cathedral wall had drawn the short straw.
But he was still mystified, unable to comprehend what was happening, and was not certain that he could give the affair the concentration it needed. He was distraught; it seemed so unbelievable, so impossible, that the Order he had served could have been so badly perverted. How could the dedicated group of knights that he had known, and remembered still, have been so warped, so debased? All of them had joined the Order because they could better serve God as soldiers than as monks. Even if a Templar decided to leave the Order, it could only be to go to a stricter one, to the Benedictines, the Franciscans or another group of monks living in the same enforced poverty and hidden from the world. How could the Order have been so badly betrayed?
He brushed aside another tear and walked listlessly through the crowds, his face set and glowering in his fear and worry. He peered at the stalls of the market for some minutes without really taking in the wares, until he found that his aimless strolling had brought him back to the platform, and he turned to stand more squarely in front of it, standing as if challenging it to allow the charade to go ahead, challenging it to permit the Order to be destroyed.
It loomed like a gallows in front of him, a great wooden construction with fresh timbers that shone as the sun caught it. At one side a series of steps led up to the flooring above. As he gazed at it he suddenly shivered. He could feel the evil almost as a force – not the evil of his Order, it was the evil of this ugly stage upon which he and his friends would be denounced. Somehow he could feel now that it would be pointless even to hope. There could be no reconciliation, no resumption of past glories. The sensation washed over him, as if before he had not truly been aware of the depths to which the Order had fallen, as if he had kept a small glimmer of hope alive through the last hard years that the Order could be saved but now, here, at last even this tiny flickering flame had died, and he could feel the despair like the pain of a sword wound in his belly.
The platform held his horrified attention. It seemed to symbolise the absolute failure of the Temple as it stood stolid and unwavering in front of him, as if it mocked the transient nature of the Order’s honour when compared with its own strength to destroy it. This was no place of confession, it was a place of execution; it was the place where his Order would die. All that he and the thousands of other knights had stood for would die at last – here, today. As the realisation sank in, it seemed physically to hit him, making him suddenly shudder as if from a blow. There was no protection, no defence against the implacable tide of accusations that would destroy them all. It was inevitable; the Temple’s absolute destruction could be the only result.