Requiem: The Fall of the Templars Read Online Free PDF Page B

approached the gatehouse, the sergeants on guard stood to attention. Their eyes transfi xed with respectful wonder by the immense figure of Jacques de Molay, they pushed against the gates which creaked open onto a courtyard shadowed by the guardhouse tower. As a sergeant sprinted across the yard to announce the grand master’s arrival, Will entered, engulfed by memories.
    He knew this place so well; every building, every outhouse. He knew the pungent smell of the stables and the overwhelming heat of the kitchens, fre-netic with servants. He knew the comforting, yeasty warmth of the bakehouse, the cloying perfume of apples fermenting in the storehouses and the chill of the chapel at dawn, filled with the prayers of five hundred men. He knew the bright pain of drinking water straight from the well, how the ponds near the servants’ quarters boiled with fish at feeding time, knew the deafening hammering in the armory and the bone-jarring hardness of the frost-bitten training field during a frozen November drill. He had come here a rudderless, stubborn sergeant of thirteen, having witnessed the murder of his knight master. It was here that he had buried Owein, here that he had met Everard, here where so many things had begun. He wanted to race back through time, back through the halls and passages echoing with the sound of boys’ laughter and running feet. He wanted to find that troubled boy and tell him not to leave, not to follow Everard’s orders. Not to go to the East. Because then he wouldn’t be standing here, a man bereft, ghost-walking through his own life, a trail of death and deception behind him.
    The company spilled into the courtyard, overlooked by the grandest buildings in the enclosure: the donjon and treasury, the quarters of the offi cials, the Great Hall and the Chapter House. Servants stopped to stare as Jacques strode in among the men. Somewhere a bell began to clang. Some moments later, the doors of the officials’ building swung open and a host of men appeared. At their head was a short, thickset man with oily hair swept austerely back from his face, accentuating a snoutlike nose that jutted over thin lips framed by a wiry mustache and beard. Will was drawn out of his thoughts by the transfor-mation in his old comrade. He had last seen Hugues de Pairaud in Acre over the fall of the templars
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    ten years ago when they were both in their late thirties. Age had since crept up on the visitor of the order, tracing lines of gray through his black hair, loosen-ing the skin of his face, softening the muscles of his heavy frame into a paunch that strained against his surcoat.
    Hugues caught Will’s eye and gave a reserved nod, then turned his attention to the grand master. “My lord,” he said, bowing. “It is an honor.”
    Jacques nodded impatiently. “You received my message?”
    “Two months ago. We have been awaiting your presence with anticipation.
    I sent word of your coming to our preceptories throughout the kingdom and to England.”
    “It is good to know someone is pleased to see us at least.” When Hugues frowned, Jacques told him of the Franciscan.
    “We know of this troublemaker. We have tried to move him on before.”
    “Tried? He should have been arrested if he disobeyed your order. There was a time when it was a public offense to insult us. Have things changed so much that a man can stand on a street corner and defame us for all to hear?”
    One of the Templar officials beside Hugues answered. “We did not want to give his sermonizing credence by making a fuss. We believed, were we to arrest him, that it might make others think his words held some truth.”
    “I can assure you, my lord,” said Hugues, as the grand master’s eyes narrowed at the official, “this preacher will be dealt with, if that is your command.”
    “My concern is not the man himself, but the attention he seemed to be enjoying. Do the people truly blame us for the loss of the Holy Land?”
    “Only a