strode off purposefully into the night.
5
1 December 1307
Bertrand St Clar had by default and one of the most horrific days in history become the grandmaster of the Knights Templar. Founded by Hughes De Payan 187 years previously the order had become the most powerful group of individuals in the world, yet with all of that it had always been plagued with a darkness, and infiltrated by the most bleak of souls. Those from a particular group of families who wished to control the known world sometimes hid within the order like a Trojan horse and gave allegiance to the Knights Templar for twenty or more years before taking their shot. It was tiresome, yet it was part of being who they were.
St Clar found himself ankle deep in water, standing on a huge stone that was visible at low tide only at theentrance to what is Pojac Point, modern-day Rhode Island, New York State. A lot had changed in the world of the Templars over the past two months. In fact St Clar had found himself better prepared than most. It had always been the way.
Since the founding of the Knights Templar in 1119 AD by De Payan, a great task had always befallen them. Whilst they had been blessed with the discoveries of De Payan beneath the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the Temple of David and below that the original Solomon’s Temple, they had also been plagued with a great burden that had been with them since that time.
St Clar knew it all. He was one of the inner circle. His father and grandfather had been part of the order. He was trusted. He knew of the discoveries of the secrets of Egypt, of the building of the pyramids and how to move enormous stones using sound, leverage and electromagnetics. He had touched the Ark of the Covenant before it started its journey to their hideaway deep in Abyssinia. He had been given the secrets of geometry, music, mathematics, rhetoric, grammar and the powers of alchemy that De Payan had found in that ancient place and he had been given the secret code, which provided the hidden protection of the lineage of the man known as Jesus Christ.
St Clar knew of the real reason of De Payan’s death… by poison. De Payan’s most trusted aide, with him for seven years since being recruited from Syria as a teenager, had committed the deed. He had the antidote with him, yet De Payan refused to give up the whereabouts of Alphonse of Toulouse, the chosen one of the bloodline of Christ, and he would not give up the code. He died in agony, a slow death whilst his aide chided him for the information. In the end De Payan’s screams drew his long-time friend and knight Robert De Craon who upon realising what had happened killed the aide and tried to administer the antidote. However he was too late. The council decided to make De Craon the new Grand Master and build a fabrication that De Payan died in Jerusalem naturally and that they had found a traitor in their ranks in Syria where the crime had taken place. From that day forth, they knew there was only to be thetrusted ones, yet no order could be built without recruitment and this had its consequences.
St Clar watched a crab crawl across the rock and an idea spread to him. Just six weeks ago he had met with the Grand Master Jacques De Molay. At 63 De Molay had been their leader for over ten years. He had taken Bertrand St Clar and his brother William into his confidence.
De Molay told them that the King, Phillip the Fair, had coaxed Pope Clementine V to agreeing to have the Templars arrested for heresy, put to the inquisition and disposed of. De Molay had said that at all costs the bloodline and its current incumbent, Baron Dion Chancery, must be taken away and hidden. De Molay sent the two brothers on two very different voyages; William to Scotland to seek refuge and the ear of Robert the Bruce, a trusted friend and the rightful ruler of that Celtic nation who did not agree or abide by the Catholic Church, and himself Bertrand St Clar to follow the ancient writings found by De Payan