LE TEMPLE, NORTH OF PARIS—MARCH 1208
In the hours before dawn, a thick fog rolled from the Seine through the Jewish quarter, settling on the plain just north of the city walls. The early morning chill permeated the citadel of the Knights Templar, save for a chamber deep in its interior.
The spacious room exuded comfort and elegance, betraying neither time of day nor season of the year. A fire blazed in the hearth, and a haze of smoke floated against the stone ceiling. Thick carpets from the Orient covered a floor inlaid with planks of polished elm.
Four men sat in a semicircle facing a hearth that was deep enough to hold them all within its brick hollow. Arnaud Amalric, the spider-limbed Abbot of Cîteaux, sat in his customary place on the far left and nearest the fire. Despite his years in the south, his skin was as white as a nun’s kirtle. Vanity kept a cap of red velvet edged with embroidery and pearls on his skull so no one would see the bony knobs of his bald pate. Tiny blue veins streamed along his temples and the hollows of his eyes and just beneath the thin skin of his twitching hands. His fingernails were filed to perfect ovals and tipped in white.
Amalric’s milky blue eyes roamed over Manel de Perella’s long legs where they spilled from his finely woven wool robe, and the young man fought back a shudder of disgust. It was not the first time he’d drawn the wrong sort of attention from a powerful member of the clergy. Manel, the newest in this group of political intimates, had been named nuncio—papal emissary—after Pierre de Castelnau’s murder eight weeks before.
Manel avoided Amalric’s gaze and turned to the two men on his right. One filled his carved oak chair with dense, muscular limbs. Wearing a cloak lined and trimmed with fur, his face covered in a thick beard shot with silver, he resembled the gilded bear that was his insignia—the symbol emblazoned on his crest and embroidered on the front of his tunic. The bear was Philippe du Plessis, warden of this fortress outside Paris. As thirteenth Grand Master of the Knights Templar—warriors for the crown of France and the Soldiers of Christ—Plessis was one of the most powerful men in France.
The other man was introduced as Lucas Mauléon, the newly appointed sénéchal of the Aude and Hérault Valleys of Languedoc. Mauléon sat with his outstretched legs crossed at the ankles. His regal profile showed the sweep of a Roman nose that ended in a tapered point above his full lips and cheekbones that curved to an unlined brow above dark, almond-shaped eyes.
“My thanks to you, Lord du Plessis, and to you, Sénéchal, for meeting with so little notice.” Amalric’s thin voice pierced the room’s hush. “The papal courier arrived with this letter as soon as the city gates opened. After reading its contents, our new papal emissary and I felt it could not wait. Father de Perella, the letter, please.” Amalric motioned to Plessis.
Manel placed a parchment scroll tied with a leather string in the upturned palm of the regal man cloaked in furs. Plessis picked open the knot and unrolled the document. Amalric had broken the wax seal of the Vatican, but Pope Innocent’s personal seal, a silver pendant, dangled from a small leather-reinforced hole at the bottom of the scroll. As he scanned the pope’s words, Plessis’s jaw tightened, and a thick vein on his temple expanded and pulsed.
“It is war,” he said. “The pope has responded to Castelnau’s murder just as we anticipated.” Philippe du Plessis shifted his great bulk to address his coconspirators. “Our secret campaign is now publicly sanctioned by the Church. France is charged with eradicating the Cathars.”
Though he’d read the letter, Plessis’s authoritative affirmation of war was a hammer blow to Manel’s soul. To hide his dismay, Manel swallowed deeply from a goblet of spiced wine and shifted in his seat. Amalric looked at him curiously but offered a wry smile to the Templar commander. “Your hatred of the infidels serves us well, Lord du Plessis.”
“Hatred? Hardly, Amalric,” Plessis said. “I hold them in contempt. I lost too many men in the battlefields of the Levant protecting the true faith to lose a single hectare to a ragged band of heretics. France would be united but for the south’s determination at independence. We must respond immediately to His Holiness,” he declared.
“I’ll travel back to the Vatican,” Manel offered. “I can leave today.”
“There is no need for that, Father de Perella.” Amalric’s dismissal piped on a reedy voice. “We can send the courier who brought this letter. He’s lodged nearby.”
“Then he and I will return together. As papal emissary, I insist. I’ve been away a month already, and His Holiness expects my account of all that’s been set in motion since Castelnau’s death.” Manel was desperate to get away, not just from Amalric’s clutches, but to find his cousin.
“I agree,” said Plessis. “It would be best if the pope spoke directly with one of us, to look upon one of our faces and know our words are true. Father de Perella, Mauléon will escort you as far as Lyon, and from there, he will make arrangements for the remainder of your journey east and to Rome.”
Ignoring Manel’s protests against an escort, the commander of the Knights Templar unfolded his powerful limbs, rose, and seated himself at an escritoire set near the door. His bulk dwarfed the delicate desk that sat balanced on spindly, curved legs. His back erect, Plessis wrote in determined strokes. With obvious irritation, Amalric swept up from his chair and began pacing the room.
Manel planted both hands squarely on the chair’s arms, preparing to rise. He glanced at Lucas Mauléon, and the sénéchal’s dark expression chilled him. Mauléon was just a few years older, but the weight of battle experience was etched into his hard-set jaw and opaque eyes. As if reading Manel’s mind, Mauléon tilted his head.
“Manel de Perella,” he said in a voice low enough not to be overheard. “You came from the seminary at Sant Benet, did you not?”
“Yes, though I entered the priesthood in Rome.”
“But still, you are a son of Catalunya, if I heard correctly?”
“My family is in the Val d’Aran,” Manel confirmed.
“Precisely the name I was thinking of,” Mauléon said. “You would be acquainted, perhaps, with one Raoul d’Aran, formerly of the region you called home, who now resides near Lagrasse?”
Manel felt as if he were a mouse under a raptor’s scrutiny. The room had grown close and warm. He was acutely aware of how near he was to the fire, and not just the one that snapped with orange flame a few feet from his boots. If this council discovered his deception, they could flay the skin from his bones or set fire to him in a public square to force a confession of conspiracy. Yet these men would never admit that their circle of power had been infiltrated. Retribution would be swift but secret. It would be final.
“Yes.” There was no point in lying. “He is a cousin.”
Mauléon nodded and propped his chin on the tips of his steepled fingers. “I’m curious about the priest who discovered the archdeacon’s body.” Manel tipped his head in confusion. “It appears he came from the same seminary as you. Jordí Baltasar Bonafé is his name.”
“Jordí Bonafé?” Manel echoed with a gasp. No one had seemed interested in the fate of the young priest-in-training after his testimony had been recorded. And Manel, in his rush to prepare for his journey from the Vatican to Paris, had not thought to ask or even to wonder about the man’s identity. “Yes, we were at Sant Benet together. I knew he’d been called to train as a priest, but I never imagined he’d leave Catalunya. Where is he now?” Manel’s hand gripped the arm of the chair with an unspoken question: Is he safe?
The soldier raised one shoulder in a half shrug. “I heard he’s been sent northwest. Poitou, perhaps, or Berry?”
How horrific it must have been for the good-natured young monk to discover the murdered archdeacon. At the seminary, Jordí had earned the nickname Ósbru—Brown Bear—for his round, dark body and his affable, lumbering countenance. Manel vowed to track down his friend, who was now so far from home and so close to danger. He burned to slip away from the greedy eyes of Amalric and the watchful gaze of the sénéchal.
The abbot provided his release. He rustled about the room, examining tapestries and handling the precious books and manuscripts Plessis had collected during his travels. The commander paused in his writing, irritated by the restless whispers of Amalric’s shifting robes and turning of pages.
“Abbot Amalric, there is no need for you to remain.” His deep voice rumbled. “If our young nuncio is to depart immediately, perhaps you should make haste for home and alert your household to prepare his horse and belongings for the long journey.”
The abbot’s face was a moon of contempt that shone white in the dim shadows of the vaulted chamber. Manel could almost hear Amalric’s blood seething in his blue veins.
“Very well,” he said through a smile that gripped his teeth. “You are quite right, Plessis.” He then spoke to the young men still seated before the fire. “Sénéchal Mauléon, I bid you farewell and Godspeed on your mission. Father de Perella, I will see you momentarily.” The heavy door closed with a thud behind him.
A smile flickered across Manel’s face, but he was quick to straighten his features when he caught the sénéchal watching him. Plessis sighed and continued with his letter. The only sound was the scratching of a quill against vellum.
When he finished writing, Plessis dripped bloodred wax across the fold of the closed letter and pressed his seal—a bear in profile standing on his hind legs, claws extended and forked tongue lashing out—into the small pool. The correspondence to Pope Innocent III was ready; Manel was at last free to leave.
• • •
Manel picked his way through the melting mud pathways of the Marais. Though the sun had risen only an hour before, the neighborhood vibrated with activity. He flattened himself against a building to avoid being crushed by a cart full of winter vegetables drawn by a squat, disgruntled horse. The pitiful beast dropped piles of shit that steamed in the chill of the March morning. Beggars with shriveled limbs and rotting teeth pulled at Manel’s cloak. He dispensed coins and touched the paupers briefly, blessing their doomed bodies and broken souls.
Manel loved the energy of Paris, even its stink and mud and decay; the city was so alive after the marble and stone confines of the Vatican that offered gossip but little life. He felt most at home here in the Marais, where the learned gathered and open debate was encouraged by the rabbis who governed this Jewish quarter.
Lost in contemplation, Manel failed to notice a trailing shadow as he followed rue aux Ours to rue Quincampoix. When he paused to give alms, the shadow blended behind the Jews in their black cloaks or melted into the gray walls. Manel turned into an alley, stopped in front of a wooden door, and rapped three times. He looked to his left, where the alley opened onto the larger road. Angry shouts of a hapless man relieved of his money belt by a pickpocket filled his ears. Passersby swept on, and no one took notice of a solitary priest standing before a closed door.
A small panel in the door slid open. Eyes the color of freshly turned earth peered out, their pupils shrinking to pinpoints at the flash of light. The panel snapped shut, the door opened, and Manel slipped inside.