The Templar’s Bowl

 

by
Peter “Lou” D’Alessio
Copyright © 2011

 

Chapter 7: Deus lo Volt

 

“Attend me, boy!”

“Geofray!  The boy is a weakling!  He collapsed under the weight of the spear!  For the love of God, send him home!  He will never enter...”

“Get up, boy, and stand my night with me.”

“Why do you favor this weakling?”  The elder Beaumond was not given to defiance, especially from his second son!  He was turning beet red.  The Page’s knees had buckled for no reason and he had dropped like a stone.  “He speaks with a bent tongue, can barely carry your weapons.  WHY!”

The older man placed his closed fists on his hips and stood there glowering.  The young man entering his uncle’s chapel to stand vigil on the eve of his Knighthood smiled gently at his sire.  “Deus lo volt, mon pere.  Deus lo volt.”

The old man dropped his hands in despair and looked at his youngest son.  He hated it when Geofray dragged God into the conversation as if he was a personal friend.  He suspected his son had actually read the Holy Book.  He was now certain that his brother-in-law, De Gaigone, had been correct.  It was a mistake to teach a male child to read.  All those confounded ideas!

“Deus lo volt, is it?”  The senior Beaumond reached down and grabbed the Page by his collar and lifted the slightly-built boy up off the floor.  Raising the lad to eye level, he said, “My son believes God Himself wants you to join him as he enters Knighthood.  Try not to fall asleep, you might miss Him!”

We were led inside the chapel, a small cold stone room and, ceremoniously deserted, left to our night of watch and prayer.  The night was a long one.  Geofray said nothing but stood motionless in front of a small altar.  I stood at his side, exploring my legs.  Standing was a new experience for me.  About the second hour, the heavy oak door yawned slowly open and a Sergeant-at-Arms entered the room and wordlessly inspected us.  He stayed not more than a moment or two.  Then he departed with a firm pat on Beaumond’s back, leaving the great door opened wide.  A few moments later, Beaumond moved for the first time since we had entered the room.

He walked softly to the door and looked in all directions.  Satisfied with our solitude, he came towards me and motioned me to sit down.  I was standing!  I had even walked.  The ache in my knees from the long hours of standing at vigil was an entirely new experience, but I did not mind.  I stood there just looking at my mentor.

“Yes, my friend, I suppose you would prefer to stand.  God will forgive me for sitting, most men stand it once, and I have stood here a hundred times or more through the many centuries.  Pray, you may stand for me.  God will be pleased.”

“Brother Geofray!  Where are we?  What are we doing here?” I asked, stretching to look out over the edge of the small window cut into the wall.  As I leaned forward, Beaumond grabbed me by the belt and pulled me backward.

“Perhaps it would be wiser not to put a face in that window.  This is the vigil of my Knighthood.  And you are my page.  You are not supposed to be here!”

“I’m not?”

“NO!  But ever since you were seven years old, my young count, and I was a squire, I have taken you under my wing and begun your training for the Knighthood.”

“You have?”

“I have, boy!  In this, the home of my uncle Paul De Gaigone, Master of this castle and Knight of France, you have begun the training of a page.  And so you know, you haven’t done well.  You can barely ride, you have no gift for hawking, and you have nearly driven my poor aunt to distraction with your remarkable inability to play the lute.  You are truly not a great candidate for Knighthood.  Keep your faith, lad, you will be.  God, in his own time, wills it.  Deus lo volt.”

As Beaumond talked, I became aware of how much younger he looked.  I listened hard to his words and tried to understand, but I could discern no real meaning.  He wore no surcoat with Patee, but a light blue one.  He rose and stood in front of me, reaching at me with the same great hand he had used to lift me off the ground on the night we had met.  I turned and leaned forward to allow my shoulder to accept the gentle hand.

 

 

“AAAAVE AT YOU!”

The blow crushed into my chest and, lifting me off the ground, throwing me backwards, and I crashed to the floor with a noise that filled the great wooden hall I was now in like thunder in a cave.  A huge man dressed in chain mail, but with an armored chest plate, stood atop me smacking the palm of his hand with the blunted mace that had delivered the frightful blow.

“When I told you to block the blow,” he said playfully, “I had something else in mind altogether!”  He tossed the mace away and it hit the floor with a thud that reaffirmed that I had really been struck and made me wonder; if this punch was pulled, what was full contact like? My assailant lifted his visor to reveal the warm friendly grin of Brother Theobor.  He reached down and caught me at the arm joints of my breastplate.  Blocking my feet with one of his, he hoisted me up like I was a fallen statue.  “Ah!  Richard, I do believe you’ve grown more than I thought!” he moaned, straining to right me.  “There’s a good lad.  I told you the armor would take time to get used to!  Walk about a bit more, Richard, and we’ll try it again.  What say you?”

I nodded and tried to move.  I was top-heavy.  The mail was its own problem, but the weight of the helmet and breastplate kept pitching me forward.  I teetered back and forward unsteadily when Theo released his hands.  I continued to pitch for about a minute, much to the amusement of my mentor who finally reached out and steadied me and helped remove my headdress.  It was like being released from a small room.  “You’re not so quick in your new suit, are you little brother?” Theo laughed, as I wobbled about.  “Come!  Lay your weapon aside; you’ve earned a rest.  Lisle!  LISLE!”

At the far end of the hall a door opened and a roundish girl appeared.  Theo seemed pleased.  “Ah!  You’re here!  Good.  Now go!  Quickly!  Don’t you see there are two great warriors in need of meat and beer?  Be gone, Woman... NOW!  And bring us some of those dried apples and pickled cucumbers your mother makes... and some honey!  What do you wait for?  Get, get, get!”  The girl curtsied awkwardly and giggled her way out on the double.

“Well, squire, a good start, I think.  Now, tell me, what have you learned from our little encounter?”

“Keep... keep the shield up and close the distance before your foe does.”

“Umm!  Good!  You need but get comfortable in the metal ware and you’ll be quick as a cat again.  Beaumond said you’d make a good squire.  Where is that damned girl with the food?  Here, put your helmet back on and have at me, there is little time to waste.”  Theobor slammed my helmet on my head and handed me my axe and, shoving me backward, retrieved his mace while I tilted into position.  I knew he’d be upon me, balanced or not.

 

 

The blade slipped only inches past the seam where my neck rested on my shoulder, and as it past I followed the blade’s motion with my own blade.  The short sword cut through the shirted arm and severed it at the shoulder.  It seems to fly off over the crush of humanity swirling about me like a perverse bird in flight.  I saw him look back over his shoulder and try to scream in agony.  I do not know if it was the roar of battle that drowned out the sound or his own inability to get the sound of despair from his throat, but I heard nothing utter from his lips.  The spring of blood that shot in all directions from his wound was frightful, spraying to the four winds as he twisted and was twisted, until all the blood in his body left him.  Despite my own mad endeavors, I watched him until his head bobbed and eyes rolled back into his skull.

The battle was still moving towards an undefined center and it left no space for the dead to fall.  We danced Death’s dance, my vanquished warrior and myself, nearly cheek to cheek, pushed along as the combat rampaged across the burning hot sand.  I pushed my shoulder hard into my shield and forced enough space to lift and swing my weapon again.

I had never experienced, even in my wildest imaginations, fury like this.  As best I could manage, I was wildly swinging in all directions.  I felt oddly light as a feather and I could hear Theobor’s words in my mind.  I surely had grown use to the armor.

“NOT LIKE FIGHTING IN ARMOR, IS IT BOY!” a familiar voice shouted in my ear as a graying head flew past me.  It twirled a claymore above itself and several turbaned heads went the way of the severed arm.  It was only then I realized the voice I heard was Hamet’s and I had nothing but a short sword and an old shield between the foe and myself!  Realizing this, I was inspired to even greater fury.  “LEFT, BOY, LEFT!” Hamet cried as he shoved his shoulder to mine.  Mine crushed to another shoulder and his to still another.  “LEFT!” became the battle cry as we cut our way from the center.  In front of us another line had formed crying left also.  Behind me I heard cries of left—and right and forward, as a block of humanity seemed to form about me pulling an odd sort of order out of a bloody chaotic madness.  Blades chopped in all directions and the screams of the dying magnified about us.

And then it was done!  Finished.  Whomever we had been fighting seemed to turn and flee.  I pushed hard to break the block I was hemmed in by and pursue, as the German warriors seemed to be doing, but a hand grabbed me and held on.  I swung crazily, trying to strike behind me.  “Easy boy, they’re gone!”  Another hand clasped my wrist and Hamet’s face appeared before me.  I felt my body relax and as I was released I crumpled to the ground, shuttering.  I had never killed before.

“You did well, Richard,” Hamet grunted as he attended a wicked looking gash that had appeared on my shield arm.

“McCorvy.  Your little Saxon fights like a lion!  He can stand to my back any day!”

I looked up to see a battered looking man preparing to wipe a bloodied sword on his pant leg.  He was of no great or noble countenance and there was a wild looking grin on his face.  His nostrils flared as he strained to pull hot air into his heaving chest as he fought the fires that burned there.  Carefully he pressed the blade against the tattered cloth of his pants and drew it carefully backwards.  As he did so, a small crowd of men gathered around him, and I could tell he was counting heads.

“I’ll give those Germans their due, they fight well.  Brother Rossal, pay them our gratitude.”  A stout, balding man turned at the command and dashed towards a cluster of black-clad knights off to our right.  “Eh!  All heads still on all shoulders?  Archambaud and Payen, good!  Andre de Montbard, Godamer, Godfrey and.... Where is Bison?”  A rather short man from the back of the pack raised his fist.  “Please stop doing that to me, Geoffrey.  Please move forward so God can see you, and I will see you too!  Now!  Thanks be to God, we survive!  Come, gather our charges together and move them up.  We are still a day’s walk from the Shrine of Saint Anne.”  He turned and walked briskly away, but suddenly stopped.  “Saxon!” he called without looking behind him.  “You did well today!  I meant what I said, boy.  And mind you, I value my backside greatly.  Friar, see to his wound quickly and catch up to us.”  The man moved suddenly and willfully towards his tired troops.

“Now there’s a pat on the head for you, young Richard!  The Norse say, “Bare is the back without a brother behind it!”  Your own mother could not have given you a better brother than he to back!”

I shrugged in an unknowing way.  “Who is he, sir?”

“Him?”  Hamet straightened at the back and looked off into the wasteland at the rapidly disappearing warrior.  He fished about in his kit and produced a curved needle about three inches long and a ball of black tread, which he began feeding through the needle’s eye.  “Him!  That’s de Payens, the founder of our Order.  I hear he returns to France soon to beg for our Order’s welfare.  I have heard also, he may marry Catherine Saint Claire.  Now bite down hard on your shirt collar, this will hurt like hell fire!”

 

 

“FIRE!  QUICKLY BRING FIRE!  LIGHT THE TORCHES!  MARTEEN, RICHARD!  BROTHER ANDRE, THE TORCHES!”

“My God, Geofray!  What are they?”

We peered through the small opening and mortal glooms that Beaumond had cracked through the false stonewall.  In the dimness sat four large golden boxes of an unearthly glory and radiance.  On each of the massive chests of precious metals and finely shaped acacia wood, two golden angels faced each other, kneeling with arms extended towards heaven as if in adoration.

Beaumond twisted away from the crack.  In the dimness, his face seemed to illuminate from within and through it all, the noise of the frantic digging of the other Templars and shouts in the darkness, I knew something special might be at hand.  Templars had dug through these ancient tunnels below the Rock of Solomon to no avail for years, chasing a myth that as the fires of the Babylonians consumed the Temple of Solomon, priests had carried the Arc of the Covenant through these concealed labyrinths to a hidden place.  Now a great hope loomed up in front of us as if confirmation of God’s hand upon the darkness, and the returning light to the world through the hands of the Poor Fellow Knights.

In the gloom, I could see Beaumond press himself against the rock wall.  “They are of what we seek, but not what we seek.”  He said in that firm tone I had heard for the first time so many centuries in the future.  “These are Arcs of the Hebrews, but not of God’s true covenant.  They are the power of faith, the voice of God, but they are not what we search for.”  Beaumond was covered in sweat and dirt.  The tunnels were having their way with him.  His fair complexion was turning a pasty, chalky white as he stayed below, endlessly picking and shoveling.

Andres had cracked the wall open and cleared away enough of a space to enter into the chamber.  He was calling for Beaumond now.  He had found something, a thing of great import.  I put my arm out and grabbed him by the shoulder and pushed him away from the wall.

 

 

As he pushed from the wall, the chains holding him fast clanked as gravity pulled them to the earth.  He was all but shredded.  I steadied Theobor as his knees buckled beneath him.  His bearded cheeks swelled and fell as he tried to form words.  The chained creature fell backward to rest its broken form against the stone.  The tormented spirit moved his mouth in response, putting forth but a gasped whisper of a sound.

“Did... did you get it away, my son?”

“Master,” my mentor could only moan.  “Good God, Master, is that you?”

“Is it safe, have you gathered it up and hidden it!” the voice weakly demanded.

“No, Master, but the fleet has sailed for Scotland and those of us who are left...”

“Brother, go!  Go now!  Do not... not... you, you must find it and...”  The creature’s eyes glazed and its body stiffened as it sucked hard for air.  Theo leaned forward and pressed his lips to the being’s forehead.  The creature fell limp.  In that infernal damp darkness lit only by the smallest of flame that our lamp could afford us without extinguishing itself, it held on to mortal life of by the meagerest spark.  My heart ached inside my chest.

“Brother, of what does Molay ask?”

 

 

“A beggar’s bowl... to receive the meagerest alms for the poor, Richard.  Nothing more, nothing less.”  The old friar stopped and patted his balding pate with his sleeve.  The Saracen sun was cruel to him these days.  “My God,” the old man looked cautiously at the blistering sun, “can this be?  Richard, how many miles would you say we’ve traveled this day?”  Again he seemed to be struggling under the invisible pain that seemed to be so much of his life, as it would be in his future spirit existence.  “I cannot take the heat as well as in my former days.  Perhaps we might rest here a bit.”

I had been several feet ahead of McCorvy.  I turned about.  He was looking to the west, drawing ever so slowly his clay bowl from beneath the folds of his torn robe.  It was a scene I had become well acquainted with.  First the pain, then the bowl.  The two seemed to go hand in hand.  With a gentle stroke and a contemplative look, he seemed to anchor himself with the ancient bowl until the storm inside him past.

“Lad, I do believe that you will find the port of our Sultan friend quite agreeable.  Halamin is a splendid chap, I mean, as far as Patrons and Muslims go.  I suspect he is, at times, part Templar himself.”

“And I suspect, Hamet, you are part Saracen!”

The old man stretched himself out in the sand.  He slid his robe up over his head to offer himself some slight shelter from the scorching sun.  “Richard, come sit.  There is but small distance to travel and these tired old bones need a bit of rest.”

I was in great haste to see the fabled palace of a legendary Potentate.  But while I could not recall them, something inside me let me know that somewhere in the past, Hamet and I had shared many adventures revolving around it.  I could feel no displeasure with the old man; in fact, I had a greater regard for him than anyone I could recall.  I know not how, but I was clearly more than thirty years.  My legs were straight and, while I could feel the burning air about me, my lungs worked quite well.  And in the middle of this haze of missed years sat McCorvy.  He was no longer quick and youthful, but well along in life.  More of Friar than Fighter, he staunchly kept pace with the many younger Templar faces that were appearing throughout the Holy Land.  I felt immense and true warmth for this unlikely holy man.

“Lad,” the aging priest gently said, “it is time, I think, for us to begin our journey home.  You have come a long way and well, and I mean to continue on our journey.  God wills it.  For now these old bones need rest, I think.  My head feels as a boat on a rolling sea!”

 

 

“White caps, sir, and the winds are hard against us!”  I was awake, rubbing the sleep from my eyes.  I looked at the huge white sail with the enormous red Patee.  It shook on the mast as if leaving it might be an option.  “Sir, should we lighten?” I chuckled.  Better dead than having to face Theobor and explain why his treasure ship...

I felt a jolt as if we had struck a rock.  But something was very, very wrong.  This was neither a Templar vessel, nor a Viking dragonship.  It was a ship of my Father’s fleet.  I had seen it, known the crew.  I heard the screams of dying men and the ship being blown asunder.  I saw my father shouting orders to his crew.  I could not observe the ocean clearly.  Were we past our attacker?  Was he in front of us?

 

 

It was well past midnight.  Liebenstein sat quietly.  He drew hard on the last cigarette in the pack and fished through the pocket of his jacket for the spare pack he always carried.  He considered it a part of the newsman’s equipment, as much or more than a camera or recorder.

Overhead the stars were out, most brightly.  It lent quiet illumination to the candlelit patio.  One of the Jesuits arose from his seat and offered another pot of coffee.  “That would be nice.”  Liebenstein looked to his benefactor.  Thompson had fully recovered from his earlier weakness.  He was alert, but there was a foreign look in his eyes.

“Doc, it’s getting late.  Would you like to stop?"

The fragile man smiled peacefully.  “There’ll be plenty of time to sleep later.  Yes Father, coffee sounds like a good idea.”

 

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