The Iron King Read Online Free PDF Page B

had helped Charnay in his career. Ten years younger than himself, he had looked upon Charnay as his successor.
    Charnay’s forehead was furrowed by a deep scar, the legacy of an old battle in which a sword-cut had also given him a crooked nose. This rugged man, his face marked by war, leant his forehead against the Grand Master’s shoulder to hide his tears.
    ‘Have courage, Brother, have courage,’ said the Grand Master, clasping him in his arms. ‘And you, too, my Brothers, have courage,’ he went on, embracing the other dignitaries in turn.
    Seeing each other, they were able to judge of their own appearance.
    A gaoler came up.
    ‘You have the right to have your irons removed, Messires,’ he said.
    The Grand Master spread wide his arms in a bitter, hopeless gesture.
    ‘I have not the money,’ he replied.
    For each time they left their prison, in order to have their irons removed and replaced, the Templars had to pay a denier out of the dozen they were allowed for their wretched food, the straw in their dungeons and the laundering of their single shirt. Another of Nogaret’s subtle cruelties! They were accused, but not condemned. They had the right to a maintenance allowance. What was the use of twelve deniers, when a small joint of meat cost forty? It meant starving four days in eight, sleeping on the hard stone, rotting in squalor.
    The Preceptor of Normandy took the last two deniers from the old leather purse attached to his belt and threw them on the ground, one for his own irons and one for those of the Grand Master.
    ‘My Brother!’ said Jacques de Molay with a gesture of refusal.
    ‘For all the use they are likely to be to me now,’ replied Charnay. ‘Accept them, Brother; there is not even merit in the giving.’
    As the iron pins were removed, they felt the hammer-blows resounding in their bones. But they felt the blood pounding in their chests more strongly still.
    ‘This time, we’ve come to the end,’ Molay murmured.
    They wondered what kind of death had been reserved for them, whether they would be subjected to ultimate tortures.
    ‘It is perhaps a good sign that our irons are being removed,’ said the Visitor General, shaking his swollen hands. ‘Perhaps the Pope has decided upon clemency.’
    There were still a few broken teeth in the front of his mouth and these made him lisp, while the dungeon had turned his mind childish.
    The Grand Master shrugged his shoulders and pointed to the phalanx of a hundred archers.
    ‘We must prepare to die, Brother,’ he said.
    ‘Look, look what they have done to me,’ cried the Visitor, pulling up his sleeve to show his swollen arm.
    ‘We have all been tortured,’ said the Grand Master.
    He looked away, as he always did when someone spoke of torture. He had yielded, he had signed false confessions and could not forgive himself.
    He looked round upon the huge group of buildings which had been the seat and symbol of their power.
    ‘For the last time,’ he thought.
    For the last time he gazed upon the vast assembly of tower and church, palace and houses, courts and gardens, a fortified town within Paris itself. 6
    Here it was that for two centuries the Templars had lived, prayed, slept, given judgment, transacted business, and decided upon their expeditions to distant lands. In this very tower the treasure of the Kingdom of France had been deposited, confided to their care and guardianship.
    It was here, after the disastrous expeditions of Saint Louis, in which Palestine and Cyprus had been lost, that they had come, bringing with them in their train their esquires, their mules laden with gold, their stud of Arabian horses and their negro slaves.
    Jacques de Molay saw in his mind’s eye this return of the vanquished. Even so, it had something of an epic quality.
    ‘We had become useless, and we did not know it,’ thought the Grand Master. ‘We were always talking of reconquest and new crusades. Perhaps we showed too much arrogance, and enjoyed too