The abbot knew that Brother Jacobus was clerk to Geoffrey D’Ablis, the Inquisitor in Carcassonne, and would return there in the spring. He also knew the man’s real name was Jean de Beaune, because he had reverted to it on the treatises he had begun to write detailing the proper way to carry out inquisitions; it seemed this sin of pride had been ignored in general admiration for this rising star.
‘Brother Jacobus thinks differently,’ the abbot replied smoothly, without looking at the Hound of God. ‘We have scoured the Poor Knights of the Order in… what is it called? Balan… something.’
‘Balantrodoch,’ growled the dancing bear. The abbot smiled.
‘Yes. Outlandish name.’
‘You found no heresies, you say,’ Bruce offered, steering the conversation back to the path.
‘Indeed. A few writings of no account…’
‘Heathen heresy,’ Brother Jacobus interrupted and Bruce saw the abbot close his eyes briefly, as if that triggered some damping of his temper. The abbot, opening them again, saw Bruce’s benign curiosity and shrugged.
‘Brother Jacobus believes that a treatise concerning how the earth revolves around the sun is a dangerous wickedness, so that all who own such should be burned. But there — I have voiced it aloud and now put all our souls in mortal peril. Brother Jacobus’ pyre will need to be large.’
His scathing clamped the Hound of God’s lips in a tight line. Bruce knew this Jacobus well enough, for he had been hag-haunting the Kingdom for a decade at least, flitting between York, Berwick and Edinburgh in pursuit of God knew what.
Before that, he had been told, the Hound of God had been in the entourage of Cressingham at Stirling Brig and had come there fresh from scourging Carcassone’s Cathars. Bruce had learned all this from Kirkpatrick and his missing physicker — he wondered where the latter now was and what he was revealing. And to whom…
‘I thought the earth was the centre of things,’ said Edward Bruce, frowning and the abbot indulged him with another smile, his withered cheeks knobbed as winter apples.
‘Just so. This… heresy, as the good brother would have it… is a heathen affair, as he says. Moorish, though it was Saracen before that and, in fact, Persian before that. They were all Godless worshippers of fire then and the Sun, being the largest of fires, was a deity to them; thus they placed it at the centre of things.’
He laced his fingers.
‘In fact, it is no heresy. If I state that a galloping horse does not move forward, but rather the ground goes backwards — is that heresy? Or simple stupidity?’
‘If enough believe it…’ Brother Jacobus muttered and the abbot ignored him.
‘So the Poor Knights of the Order are innocent of the charges against them?’ Bruce asked.
‘What charges are these?’ countered the abbot. ‘No charges have been made. The Order is guilty of arrogance, idleness, outlandish secrets and excessive wealth. What I have are copious sworn statements by come- lately initiates who allege that they refused to spit on the Cross, or kiss an idol of Baphomet. So far, I have seen no evidence of either.’
‘Yet heresy exists,’ Bruce declared grimly and waved a hand. ‘Ask any of these nobiles and they will tell you of the sin of the Order.’
The abbot frowned, not understanding.
‘Most of them had kin, or were themselves with Wallace at Callendar Woods,’ Bruce explained stonily. ‘Where the Order rode in the retinue of King Edward and slaughtered our people. Christians, Abbot Alberto, descending like wolves on Christians. Is that not a heresy worthy of the Holy Father’s sanction?’
Now the abbot understood and nodded slowly, like a man falling asleep.
‘Not heresy. More of that arrogance I mentioned and certainly a sin — that and the other sins they have fallen into are reason enough for them to merge with the Order of St John. Perhaps then these warriors can turn their sights back to God and the relief of his Holy Places.’
‘The Order of St John wishes nothing to do with them,’ Bruce replied. ‘Wisely.’
The abbot tutted.
‘We should be wary of casting the first stone,’ he said gently. ‘The sin of envy is in great part responsible for the problems of the Order — too wealthy by far, as I have said, even to the whispered rumour of usury. Brother Jacobus would have them scorching for that alone, but he and others of his calling have forgotten the teachings of Saint Bernard — “Persecution shows who is a hireling and who a true pastor”.’
He paused, his sentiment genuine if only because of the vision of the Templar, strapped to his horse and burning…
‘Amen,’ Bruce answered and a muttered chorus followed it. Jacobus stirred a little, his hands shoved into his sleeves, but remained silent, a cowled mastiff leashed for the moment.
‘But you are less interested in this and more in what the English commander in Perth has to say,’ the abbot went on. ‘He agrees to meet you on the field — but not on the morrow. It is the Sabbath and the Feast of St Gervase, the Martyr.’
‘Of Margaret, saintly queen of Scotland and the translation of her relics,’ Bruce corrected, that strange lopsided twist of a smile on his face. To avoid stretching the scar on the other, the abbot realized suddenly, which meant it was not healed, even after all this time…
‘So — we have a truce until the morn’s morn?’ Edward Bruce persisted.
The abbot hesitated, a heartbeat only that he would not have got away with in the cowled politicking of Rome. What caused it was — yet again — the vision of the burning Templar. That, coupled with the uncaring stone face of de Valence as he excused it, sure in his writ from pope and king, sanctioned by the fluttering of as pagan a symbol as anyone might find — a dragon banner which permitted men to risk any sin.
Yet the heartbeat went unnoticed here and the abbot nodded, for a truce was what he had been told and chivalry dictated the truth of it, even from the thinned, dubious lips of the lordly Aymer de Valence.
There was nothing else to be said; Bruce watched them ghost their way out again and waited for the clamour that would swamp him when they were out of earshot. It was not held back for long and the charge was led, as ever, by Edward.
They throw ‘chivalry’ at me like an accusation of heresy, Bruce thought, turning into their concern and outrage. There would now be an argument which would, in the end, come to eat itself because there was no way out of the circle.
They all knew it, too, even if they jerked and strained — de Valence was locked securely in Perth with an army roughly the size of the one Bruce had scraped together. The English lords, Percy and Clifford, were scouring the west with another and, somewhere to the south, like a distant stain of thundercloud, the Covetous King himself gathered yet another force with his son.
‘If we do not force a fight here and win, my lords,’ Bruce declared to their scowls and frowns, ‘then we will gain no further support and will be too weak to face Longshanks when he comes. We must defeat de Valence here and to do that, we must persuade him to come out of his fastness and fight.’
If they did not, then my kingship is ended, he thought. Fleetingly, he saw the purse-lipped moue of his wife, preparing the ‘I-told-you-so’. King and queen of summer only, she had once said. Unspoken had been the other part of that old pagan custom, where the King of Summer was ritually sacrificed, his blood making the Kingdom and all in it fecund.
Well, that would not be. Winning here, at Methven, would bring some solidity to his throne and, to do that, he needed someone to beat in an honest tourney. He needed to force apokalupsis.
He said as much, but only the scholarly Alexander understood that it did not mean the catastrophe it implied, simply a revelation, a new light. A new world.
Chivalry would bring de Valence out for a fair fight, he thought. The joust a l’outrance, writ large, would do it.
Because God is always watching at the edge of extremity.
Hal watched the train of priests and their escort coil between the fires, heading out of the camp and the road back to Perth. He heard one mutter ‘ Te deum ’ but they passed in a wraith of silence for the most part, sinister as darkness. He did not care for these Dominie Canes much and remembered the ones who had brought Cressingham’s ultimatum to Wallace and Moray at Stirling… God’s Wounds, almost ten years to the day.
Ten years. It weighed on him, sudden and heavy as an anvil and he sighed under it, so that Sim Craw glanced up from under his own shaggy brows — then surprised Hal with his own thoughts.
