Chapter 33

Chiltern Hills, Gloucester 1327

Remnants of the outlawed order of the Knights Templar found a delirious Richard of Sussex and carried him to their secluded monastery where they diligently tended to his stomach wound and nursed him back to health.

Once recovered, Richard willingly participated in the monks' daily work. He found even such menial tasks as shoveling manure surprisingly enjoyable. 'Twas comforting to know that the fate of an entire country did not rest on his expertise at baking bread or cleaning the Templars' dormitory.

Richard often thought of Michael Hallam, but though he missed his dead squire, he sometimes wondered whether Michael did not have the better end of it. No more worrying over political events and disasters, no more scheming or heartache or tragedy. Surely now Michael, at least, had found peace.

Alone in his cell Richard often studied from the available religious works until vespers and the even meal. Though such a bland routine would once have left him yearning for a stag hunt or hawking expedition, he relished those quiet hours far away from the cares and troubles of a world swiftly receding into a dreamy, little-missed past. Still, Richard sought outside news, which the Templars reluctantly provided via Boltolph the Hermit, who sometimes begged along the main road to Gloucester, and returned with the latest gossip.

In January, Boltolph said, Edward II had been officially deposed by a Parliament that declared him "an insufficient ruler, a destroyer of the church and the peers of the realm, a violator of his Coronation Oath, and a follower of evil counsel." In February of the year, his oldest son, Edward of Windsor, had been crowned Edward III.

Concerning Maria, the hermit had heard only that she'd returned to Fordwich.

'Tis enough to know she's safe, Richard told himself. I need nothing more.

But with the blossoming sweet violets, the soft scents from the orchard's budding apple, pear and plum trees, passions that had lain winter dormant now sprang forth with disturbing vigor. The golden sun spread its warmth; bees droned in the apiaries while gentle breezes caressed his skin as lovingly as Maria once had.

Do you remain at Fordwich, or are you at Deerhurst with Phillip? Have you reconciled?

Richard told himself 'twas safer not to know too much, and when past demons hovered he sought to keep them at bay with the hard physical labor of planting and hoeing in the monastery's garden.

I will not think of the past; I will not think of her.

His heart, however, remained unconvinced. This placid valley, disturbed only by the occasional call of a cuckoo or a monk's singing, should be an oasis from the world's cares.

If here I cannot find peace, what will I do?

Daily confessions to Father Francis provided only temporary solace. Maria followed him everywhere. At night she came warm and willing in his dreams. Such times Richard would fling open his window shutters, gaze at the powdered heaven, the elusive moon, and torment himself with unanswerable questions.

When he discussed his unhappiness with Father Francis, the priest nodded sympathetically. "We all have ghosts we must someday confront. Simply pray for the right time to face those ghosts. And believe it or no, sire, we have all fallen short of God's grace. And that includes weaknesses of the flesh."

Gazing into the priest's furrowed face, Richard could not believe so. "You are Knights Templar, Father, and closer to God than ordinary men."

"We are flesh and blood like any other."

"Nay, you've always been something more, since the first crusades. When I was a page in my father's house I used to sneak from Westminster to Fleet Street to watch you there. I thought then there was nothing so fine as your long beards and crosses of red and white, and wanted to be like you—a knight devoted to God and the protection of man. I knew Templars were the most worthy of all."

"Your brother felt otherwise," said Father Francis. "He packed many of us off to the Tower."

Richard dropped his gaze. "He never believed those absurd stories of demon worship and human sacrifice."

"Nor does it matter—for it was all God's will."

"God's will," Richard repeated. "If only I knew what that was. Certain enough I have followed no will but my own. No wonder I cannot find the peace I read on your faces."

Father Francis looked down at his calloused hands. When he raised his gaze to Richard, his expression was oddly guarded.

"We are old men, sire, with old men's dimming passions. 'Tis far easier at our age not to hear the world's siren song."

* * *

The Feast of the Holy Face occurred on July 1. For the preceding week a palpable excitement had charged the monastery's usually placid atmosphere. While 'twas not a usual fast day, none of the knights came to table, but rather all went to confession and spent the rest of the day in prayerful contemplation. Even Father Francis appeared distracted, offering Richard little more than perfunctory advice during confession, and later, when he returned to the chapel, the door was barred. Feeling vaguely apprehensive, Richard spent the rest of the day in the garden and roaming about the woods.

What is happening?

* * *

The night was hot and humid. Hungry from fasting, disturbed by visions of Maria, Richard could not sleep. Naked, he lay on his cot watching the moonlight stream through a crack in the shutters, thinking about other such nights...

Finally, he stood, stepped to the window and opened the shutters. From the position of the moon he judged it to be past midnight. Not a breath of air stirred; not a sound came from the adjoining room where the brothers slept. He felt sticky and unclean—and unnerved by the silence.

Surveying the shadowed courtyard Richard noticed light filtering from the chapel windows. Odd. It should be dark at this hour.

At that moment he heard a faint chanting. The hair on the back of his neck prickled for 'twas no ordinary thing to celebrate a feast day in the dead of night.

Recalling the peculiar activities of the day, the taut, expectant faces, listening to the eerie voices, Richard's mind suddenly ran to childhood stories about the Templars. What had people said? That during their time in the Holy Land they had turned away from Christian worship to Satanism. That they knelt before an idol in the form of a black cat, Baphomet. That human sacrifice numbered among their practices.

Quickly, Richard crossed himself. "Such a thing cannot be," he whispered. "These men are not capable of such abominations!"

The chanting intensified and from its body a distinct word emerged—one that caused his stomach to constrict in fear.

"Yallah!" cried the Templars.

The Saracen war cry! Were those long ago tales then true? Did the Templars indeed conduct secret midnight ceremonies during which they prostrated themselves before a fearsome bearded head? Did they toss newborns in a circle? Did they then murder them and burn their bodies in order to smear the rendered fat upon their idols?

After slipping on his chausses, Richard left the small cell. Shadows hung from the rafters in the unlit cloisters and lurked in invisible corners. A breeze sprang up, rustling the nearby arbor leaves. Restless horses neighed from the stables.

And, overall, like a heartbeat, sounded the Templar's chant, "Yallah! Yallah!"

Light leaked beneath the chapel door. Walking on tiptoe, Richard reached it. Tentatively, he eased his shoulder against the wood.

He expected the door to be locked.

Instead it opened.

* * *

The chapel was brightly lit with rows of candelabra illuminating a stained glass window above the altar depicting Christ at the resurrection. Vivid in their crosses of red and white, the Templars grouped near the front.

At the altar Father Francis celebrated mass. Richard judged it was near the consecration, but a consecration unlike any he had witnessed. The host was not elevated; the usual responses had been replaced.

The Templars instead chanted a biblical psalm.

"...Selah.

God be merciful to us

And bless us.

And cause his face

To shine upon us. Selah!"

"Selah!" He whispered. Not Yallah but Selah. They weren't praying to a heathen deity at all.

Richard peered beyond Father Francis. To the side of the rood he spotted a long ivory cloth of some sort, hanging suspended from a rod attached by two chains to the ceiling. The cloth appeared to be either stained or dirty, but perhaps it was just the flickering play of light.

At communion time the brothers came forward, but they did not receive the customary host. Instead, each approached the shimmering cloth, prostrated himself and raised its hem to his lips.

Watching the hesitant, even fearful movements, Richard felt a chill that had naught to do with the breeze.

What is this relic? Why does it inspire such reverence?

Too quickly, the service ended. When the knights rose to depart, Richard slipped inside a hidden alcove. With folded hands and downcast eyes, the brothers passed. After the last one had disappeared, Richard again approached the door and inched it open.

All candles, save for those on the altar, had been extinguished.

Cautiously, he moved forward. The mysterious cloth danced in the uncertain light. As he neared, the straw colored stains assumed a blurred, indistinct shape. Once Richard thought he glimpsed the full length figure of a long-haired, bearded man, hands crossed over naked loins in an attitude of death. When he blinked the image disappeared.

Father Francis appeared from the vestiary. "My lord Sussex!"

"What is it?" Richard whispered, nodding to the cloth.

"I am not sure you should have come. I am not sure 'tis the proper time."

"Tell me, Father, what it is."

Father Francis studied Richard intently. Then he decided.

Gesturing to the altar steps beneath the cloth, he said, "Sit."

Richard obeyed.

The Templar eased down beside him. "There is a story, my lord Sussex, that I would tell."

It began after the fall of Constantinople. Long known as the Queen of Cities because of its art and cultures and fine palaces, the city had been ransacked by Christian knights, knights who hacked and plundered and destroyed all they came across.

"In Blachernae, there was a certain church, the Church of the Virgin Mary, which was known to contain the world's most sacred relic. After the crusaders went mad, several of my Order entered the church and spirited the relic away to Castle Pilgrim near Acre. There it stayed for near a hundred years."

Castle Pilgrim had been a grand place, Father Francis said, with gardens and orchards, a cool running stream, and fields of grain tucked behind its walls.

"Who would have thought such a fortress would ever fall?" The old priest closed his eyes. "The rest of the story you well know. Soon afterward France's Phillip the Unfair, craving the Templars' riches for himself, rounded up our knights, tortured them, and burned many at the stake."

To keep the relic from falling into greedy hands, several Templars had smuggled it to England. While Edward II also jailed members of the sect, he declined to indulge in the rest of the barbarities. And after the hysteria passed, granted them their freedom.

"We searched and searched until we found the most secluded spot to guard our relic. And here we settled."

Father Francis eased to his feet and turned to face the cloth. "Before you is the secret of the Templars, the truth to all the rumors, the ultimate cause of many deaths—for what man would not gladly give his life for even one glimpse of this most sacred miracle?"

Richard felt suddenly lightheaded. "But what exactly is it?"

"Do you not yet know, my lord?"

He shook his head, unable to speak.

"You asked once why we have such peace. Before you hangs the answer. Behold, sire, the burial shroud of Jesus Christ!"

The words exploded in Richard's brain. His mind, his very body went numb.

Father Francis approached the shroud. "Come here, my lord. Come and touch it."

Richard recoiled. "I cannot! I am a bastard and an adulterer. I have killed men and betrayed friends. I am unworthy."

The priest's lined face softened with compassion. "Our Savior would not have come had we already achieved perfection. You are no less worthy than any man."

Father Francis took Richard's hand and led him forward. Like a criminal condemned to his inevitable fate, he acquiesced.

"Touch it."

Richard reached out. His fingertips strained toward the shroud; his breath rasped in the silence. The figure suddenly sprang into focus; the indistinct facial features leapt out at him. Clearly now Richard saw the staring eyes, strong nose, forked beard framing a sensitive mouth, the center-parted hair that appeared to be topped by an indistinct caplet.

Unbidden, Richard reached up to touch the eyes, mouth, face of Jesus Christ—and the next moment, fainted into Father Francis's arms.

* * *

Richard found himself in the middle of a huge circular praetorian. A dark-haired man clothed in purple and holding a reed in his hand stood before him. A caplet of thorns rested atop his bowed head. The thorns were inches long and obviously needle sharp for blood trickled from where the points pierced the man's scalp.

A group of Roman soldiers swarmed around the prisoner—laughing, genuflecting, taunting him. One said, "Praise to you, O mighty King" and struck him across the bridge of his nose.

Richard asked a burly centurion, "Who is he?"

"The Christus. The fool calls himself King of the Jews."

"King of the Jews, is he?" The title enraged Richard. "He looks little enough like king to me." Stepping forward, he jerked the reed from Jesus' hand and whipped it across his eyes. "Hail, Almighty King!"

The Christ's face was bruised and bleeding. His nose was swollen; his right eyelid torn; the left side of his cheek and chin twice the size of his right. Blood from the spiked crown slid down his face and into his sweat-drenched hair. The sight of that broken visage aroused in Richard an unreasoning rage.

Stepping forward, the burly Roman ripped off the prisoner's purple cloak.

Naked, Jesus stood before them. Judging from his powerful build, this king had not lounged in lavish palaces surrounded by servants who did his every bidding. Here was a man of the earth, a common man—how dare he presume himself to be king of anything?

A second centurion came forward, bearing a flagrum that he wielded with sadistic relish, manipulating it so that with a simple twisting motion the metal-tipped thongs curled around both Jesus' front and back. Like magic, large flecks of blood appeared. Jesus gasped.

The ritual was repeated until his backside was peppered in a hundred different places. Jesus' lone outward reaction was an involuntarily hunch of the shoulders or a spasmodic jerk away from the source of pain.

Such meek acceptance maddened Richard.

"Give me the flagrum! I'll show this king what royal blood looks like!"

Iron balls caressed Jesus' flesh, licked across his chest, tearing the skin, danced about his muscular biceps, along his buttocks and thighs and hissed about his ankles like a snake. A black anger surged through Richard. He wanted to beat Christ until his flesh hung in ribbons and he begged for mercy.

Only the interference of the burly centurion stayed Richard's hand. "We're not to finish him yet. Save some fun for the people."

* * *

Richard stood in the forefront of a large crowd, all of whom were gazing expectantly down a narrow winding street. A circle of centurions moved toward them, pushing, shoving, calling, "Make way!"

Richard glimpsed an exhausted Jesus staggering neath the weight of a thick wooden crossbeam to which his arms had been tied. People yelled and cursed and shook their fists. Some spit in Jesus' face; others struck him with stones.

"Bastard!" they screamed. "Liar!"

"Blasphemer!"

Richard's voice numbered among the loudest.

The centurions used their shields and the flats of their swords to keep back the press. Slipping past, a merchant ran up to Jesus and thumped a wooden cane down upon his head, driving the thorns more deeply into his skull. A hacking sob escaped Jesus' lips. He shuddered and appeared to swoon. As he half lay, half knelt on the filthy paving stones, the crowd stilled.

His raw back, his head wounds swarmed with fat black flies.

"Is he dead?" the merchant asked. Others shifted position, suddenly uneasy. A low growl of thunder echoed in the distance. Across the sky ugly clouds began to block the eerie, orange-colored sun. Streaks of red smeared the horizon. For the first time Richard noticed that his under shirt was drenched with sweat.

"Look, he's moving!"

Slowly, Jesus raised his head to face the crowd. Among the blood and sweat and dirt that smeared his grotesquely disfigured face, Richard saw tears.

Thunder rumbled and rolled, closer now. A sudden flash of lightning illuminated the scene, seeming to freeze them all together in this moment of time. Then the rabble erupted, screaming, clawing and clutching, trying to rip Jesus to pieces. The Romans beat them back and urged the prisoner on with a frantic cursing.

"Crucify him!" the people screamed.

They approached Golgotha's summit. Jesus stumbled again. Drawing his sword Richard ran forward and using its flat, beat the soles of his feet.

"Cry, Bastard!" he screamed in Christ's ear. "Who will save you now?"

A centurion grabbed his arm. "That's enough. If you kill him off now, you'll spoil the crowd's pleasure."

Jesus looked as if he might not even reach the summit. His breath came in shallow gasps; his entire body shook with fatigue.

"He needs help," said the burly Roman who'd been involved in the earlier flogging. "Help him, Richard. Help him carry his cross."

"I'd sooner carry the devil's own pitchfork." With a parting kick to Jesus' ribcage, Richard returned to the crowd.

* * *

"Come along, O Mighty King. Your throne awaits."

Two soldiers jerked Jesus to the ground and stretched him taut across the wooden beam. Grabbing a hammer, Richard pounded a thick pointed spike into the soft spot in Christ's left wrist. And then into the right. Blood spurted everywhere, even onto his face.

"No man can lose so much blood," he taunted Jesus. "Maybe you are God. Maybe you can manufacture your own blood!"

With rude, irregular jerks, the Romans drew Christ up the waiting pole. Slapping Jesus' left foot over his right, Richard plunged a long spike into the flesh, which easily gave way for no bones marred the way.

A great shudder ran through Christ. He was crucified now, his cross brutally silhouetted against the stormy sky. Where the sun had previously been lingered a sinister glow. Lightning jumped and skidded toward earth. The crowd swarmed like angry bees around Jesus, who seemed oblivious to all save his private torment.

A cold wind sprang up. Lightning cracked and flashed; deep rolls of thunder erupted from the bowels of the earth, causing it to shake.

"My God, my God," Jesus suddenly cried out. "Why have you forsaken me?" He collapsed. His head drooped forward. No breath stirred his lungs.

A centurion shouted, "He's dead."

The words infuriated Richard. Grabbing a spear from a nearby soldier he ran to the cross. As he raised the weapon to Christ's side, Jesus opened his eyes and looked him full in the face.

Richard froze. He felt his heart race from his body, felt something cold and dead within spring to life. Never had he seen such eyes—eyes that held, not pain now but love and compassion beyond all human comprehension. Jesus looked down and seemed to smile. Through cracked and swollen lips he whispered Richard's name.

Richard stepped closer. "What is it, Lord? What would you tell me?"

Spasms shook Christ's body. Blood ran from his nose, the corner of his mouth.

"I die for you, Richard." Jesus whispered. "I die for you."