Simon found his own feelings stirring in sympathy and he had to struggle to control his own composure. Now, at last, he could understand the dreadful scars of pain and loss he had noticed when he had first met this man.
“The king wanted our money because he owed the Order for several debts, and he wanted to be able to forget them. We had loaned him money for his daughter’s dowry when he had arranged her marriage to Edward of England. We had loaned him money for his wars. We had helped him in many ways, and he wanted to be able to take all that we had and not repay the debts. He decided to destroy the Temple so that he could take everything, everything we had. The pope was in his power, because he lived in Avignon, not in Rome, and he wanted to have our money too. Not for the Church, but for himself.” He gave another short, sharp laugh. “And it worked! We never considered that the pope could betray us so badly, and we believed, in our innocence, that the French king was grateful for the help we had always given him. We never realised that because we helped him he would decide to destroy us!” He subsided and glared into the fire again, his eyes full of the hurt of the betrayal.
“When Peter saw that, he swore never again to serve king or pope. From then he chose to serve God in his own way, and he did, fighting the Moors in Spain until his death a year ago. But before he died, he told me what he knew.
“The French king had a helper called Guillaume de Nogaret. He was the devil himself, an evil man. He was bright and intelligent; he had been brought up by the Church after the death of his parents, and yet he seemed to hate it. It was he who decided that the way to destroy the Templars was to accuse us of heresy, and he went about it with vigour. He organised false confessions for money. Wherever there was a Templar who had been ejected from the Order, de Nogaret would search him out and bribe him to give false witness against the Order.
“One man helped him more than any other. He arranged for false confessions of murder, of heresy and of idolatry, and then made sure that they were published. He spread tales of the evil-doings of the Order.
“The same man arranged for confessions from among the Templars’ servants, admissions of idol worship and of new members being forced to spit on the cross-”
Simon interjected with heat. “But how can you say this? Are you telling me that all these accusations were false, all these crimes were invented? There were many, even I know that. Surely you cannot expect me to believe that they were ail untrue?”
The knight looked at him with a small, sad smile. “But, my friend,” he said, “can the reverse be true? Think! All men who joined the Order were knights in their own right. All joined because they were holy, because they were committed, because they wanted to become members of an Order that demanded of them that they take the vows of a monk, that demanded them to be honourable and godly, demanded their obedience and demanded their poverty. If you were to go to join an Order like that, would you then spit on the Holy Cross on your first day? Of course not! If you had decided to dedicate your life to Christ, if you had decided to give everything you had, if you had decided to fight whenever you were told in the Holy Land, would you as a first step defile the very symbol of God’s power? Could you believe that a monk would do that? Why should you expect a Templar to? It is not possible.” His sad eyes stared at Simon for a minute or two, until Simon was forced to nod. Put like that, it did seem improbable.
“So, this man invented these things. He was not motivated by honour, he wanted money and power. And he won them. Oh yes, he won them!
“We did not know his name or anything about him, he was too well guarded. All we knew was that he had been a Templar, a knight who had been recruited but who was evil. A twisted, vicious, greedy man who should never have been able to join our ranks. But how could we find his name? How could we discover his identity? Peter never did, but I managed to.
“In thirteen hundred and fourteen, we who remained found out that there was to be a show of penitence for our Order. You must realise that even now, even knowing about this man who had betrayed us all, it seemed that something must have been wrong with the Order, for the very reason you gave just now – how could so many crimes have been invented? And why?
“In that year, only two years ago, the Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, and three others were to confess their sins in front of the whole of Paris, before Notre Dame cathedral. When I and some friends heard of this, we drew straws to choose a witness. I was chosen.”
He fell silent again, his head dropping almost on to his chest in his sadness at the remembered pain, and when he continued his voice was low, as if he was recollecting the deep injustices done to him and his companions from far in his past, not events from only two years before. He had withdrawn again, seeming to sink in upon himself, as if he was not in the same room as the others and was talking to himself, like an old man recalling ancient memories and forgetting the existence of his audience.
“I went to Paris. I stood in front of the platform until they all arrived, draped in chains like common thieves. They all denied the accusations, and a little later Jacques de Molay and the others were all burned at the stake in front of the cathedral. A huge crowd went to see them die, but I did not. I could not! Jacques – dear, strong, honest Jacques! How could I go and see him destroyed by the flames? How could I?” He turned to Simon, his face full of grief, his eyes searching his face as if hunting desperately for his support. “When the soldiers went back the next morning to clear up the ashes, they could find no bones. The people of Paris had collected them all and taken them. After all that had happened they knew that the accusations were false. They believed the bones were holy relics. Even small finger bones.” His eyes stayed fixed on Simon as his hand went to his throat and pulled at a string. A small leather pouch was attached to the cord, and Baldwin looked at it for a moment, then nodded at the bailiff before dropping it back down the front of his tunic.
“I had to tell my friends what had happened, and then we went our own ways, to tell of the end of the Order and to keep die memory alive of Jacques de Molay and his final martyrdom. But I had to find out who had betrayed us.” His mouth twitched in a sardonic grin. “And it was the pope himself who told me who it was!”
Simon started, his eyes wide in astonishment. “ The pope told you? How…”
Laughing quietly, as if to himself, Baldwin took the jug and refilled his mug. Still smiling, he gazed at Simon. “No, he didn’t mean to! It happened this way. After the farce of the Notre Dame confessions, I decided to find out who was responsible, as I said. At first it seemed impossible, but Edgar and I travelled widely and talked to many who had been members of the Order, and gradually some threads seemed to come together to point to a few men. But each that I saw seemed to have suffered for his admissions. Each seemed to have benefited from the fall of the Temple. None was wealthy, in fact most were monks – and not senior, just unknown men who were dedicated to God and their new lives. Many, in fact, were as bitter as I about the way that the Order’s high ideals had been perverted. But with many of them, one name kept appearing. One man seemed to have spoken to many while they suffered in their dungeons. He was another prisoner, but he seemed to have been moved to any number of gaols and, wherever he went, men admitted to crimes that they denied to me.