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of some fortress, when he heard heavy footsteps and the noise of arms upon the staircase that led down to his cell.
    Once more he was seized with a feeling of pain, but this time it was precise and definite.
    The heavy door creaked open and, behind the gaoler, Molay saw four archers dressed in leather tunics and carrying pikes. Their breath spread out in a thin cloud before their faces.
    Their chief said, ‘We have come to fetch you, Messire.’
    Molay rose silently to his feet.
    The gaoler came forward and with cold chisel and heavy blows of a hammer broke the rivet that fastened the chain to the heavy iron anklets. Each weighed four pounds.
    He clasped his great, illustrious mantle, now no more than a grey rag, its black cross in tatters at the breast, about his emaciated shoulders.
    They left the dungeon. And in that reeling exhausted old man, his feet weighed down with fetters as he mounted the tower’s steps, there could still be seen something of the commander who had recaptured Jerusalem from the Saracens for the last time.
    ‘Oh, Lord my God,’ he murmured to himself, ‘give me strength, give me a little strength.’ And to help himself find it, he repeated the names of his three enemies: Clement, Guillaume, Philip.
    Fog lay thick upon the huge court of the Temple, cloaked the turrets of the enclosing wall, flowed through the crenellations, and obscured the spire of the great church on the right of the tower.
    A hundred soldiers were standing at ease, talking quietly among themselves, as they stood round a big, square, uncovered wagon.
    From beyond the walls he could hear the murmur of Paris and the occasional neigh of a horse, sounds that moved him with an ineffable sadness.
    Messire Alain de Pareilles, Captain of the King’s Archers, the man who attended every execution, who accompanied the condemned to sentence and torture, was walking up and down the centre of the yard, his face impassive, his expression bored. He was forty years old and his steel-coloured hair fell in a short fringe across his square forehead. He wore a coat of mail, had a sword at his side, and carried his helmet in the crook of his arm.
    He turned as he heard the Grand Master’s approach, and the latter, seeing him, turned pale, if it were possible for his pallor to increase.
    Merely for interrogations there was not, as a rule, so much display; there were neither wagon nor men-at-arms. A few royal agents came to escort the accused, generally at nightfall, by boat across the Seine.
    The presence of Alain de Pareilles was alone significant enough.
    ‘Has judgment been pronounced?’ Molay asked the Captain of the Archers.
    ‘It has, Messire,’ he replied.
    ‘And do you know, my son,’ Molay asked after a moment’s hesitation, ‘what that judgment contains.’
    ‘I do not, Messire. My orders are to conduct you to Notre-Dame to hear it read.’
    There was a silence, then Jacques de Molay asked, ‘What day is it?’
    ‘The Monday after the feast of Saint Gregory.’
    This corresponded to the 18th March, the 18th March 1314. 5
    ‘Am I being taken out to die?’ Molay wondered.
    The door of the tower opened again, and three other dignitaries appeared in their turn, escorted by guards, the Visitor General, the Preceptor of Normandy and the Commander of Aquitaine.
    They had white hair, and white unkempt beards, their deep-sunken eyes blinked in the light, their bodies seemed to float in their ragged mantles; for a moment they stood still, like great night-birds unable to see in the light. Moreover, the Commander of Aquitaine had a white film over his left eye which gave him something of the appearance of an owl. He seemed completely stupefied. The semi-bald Visitor General had horribly swollen hands and feet.
    It was Geoffroy de Charnay, the Preceptor of Normandy, who first, though hampered by his irons, rushed up to the Grand Master and embraced him. There was a long friendship between the two men. Indeed, it was Jacques de Molay who