The Templar’s Bowl
by
Peter “Lou” D’Alessio
Copyright © 2011
Chapter 8: A Task of No Small Import
“It is a common mistake that we view Time as a horizontal linear thing,” Dr. Thompson said. “I give you my word it is vertical as well. It is beyond our comprehension most of the time to see our existence moving in any other direction than from a rear to front flow. Further, it is beyond most people’s comprehension that we consider ‘God,’ ‘The Great I Am,’ ‘Allah’ or whom or whatever they consider The Lord of Heaven and Earth to be as a tangible, ‘hold-in-your-hand’ idea. Through the powers and capabilities of my guardians I, through their eyes, came to see that this is so! I came to understand and believe in my heart that through their ten centuries of observing the human condition, even with such diminished capacities as I had been given—a nearly clean slate for them to write upon, so to speak, with no opinions or desires of my own—it was necessary for me to see the universe through their eyes before I could sense those tangible concepts on my own.
“Can you imagine my extreme spiritual and emotional confusion when I awoke from those first invited dreams and found myself on round, motorized legs again? To say that it had all felt so real would be to do them an injustice, for as far as I could tell, it was real. In a matter of the wink of an eye, I had been raised from my seemingly bottomless incapacity to the startling height of a Templar Knight. At the height of their greatness, Templars could have boasted an army of twenty thousand men at any one time. Of those, perhaps four hundred were knights—the estate to which I had ascended—the rest being Sergeants and pledged secular knights and footmen, clergy and servants.
“I had risen. Now I was crashing back down to the depths of the abyss. For several moments I struggled in my seat to rise and walk. Only McCorvy and Theobor’s gentle persuasions brought me back to my own reality.”
Thompson’s pause was the first chance the reporter had to light the cigarette that had dangled from his lips for almost an hour now. Through the smoke he looked pensively at his host, who seemed to be growing stronger by the minute. There was a solemn resolve upon his face, which had lost most of the pain it’d had.
“This is, I suppose, the ‘greater purpose’ Beaumond had spoken of?” the scribe mused.
“Beaumond? Well, I suppose in part,” Thompson answered. “Geofray’s tangible link to his God was the Poor Knights. More so than either of the others, Geofray was an outward expression of their true beliefs, with all the bells and whistles.” Thompson extended his arm across the candle-lit table, motioning to the nearest Jesuit to refill his mug with the freshly brewed coffee, then re-initiated attention to his listener. “You, as a modern man, cannot imagine what a Templar Knight was. We, in our world today, might want to look upon them as pro ball players, or Marines, or movie stars, or God-knows-what else. We live in a world that requires very little deep commitment to anything or anybody. Templars, Teutonic Knights, or any of the para-military, para-religious orders of the Middle Ages were so far beyond what we understand as commitment that they cannot be reconciled with our world—yet time and again, instead of accepting, we try.”
“That was what you were talking about this afternoon, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, exactly. It was a much greater sacrifice in McCorvy, Beaumond, and Theobor’s times to give up everything... especially when you were one of the very few who had everything! Land was owned by the church and the nobles, food was not widely available... your Lord’s horses were feed ‘horse bread,’ a concoction of peas and various grains, oft times better food than you, the groom, received! As far as most nobles were concerned, it was the order of life, mandated by God. They had the right, the obligation, to maintain the order in any way they chose as the right way. Templars, despite their ferocity and rigid order, were the prototypes of the modern moral man. The Order tried to lift Knighthood from pagan savagery to an actual exponent of chivalrous Knighthood, a thinking man above the superstitions and ignorance of the Dark Ages. The reason Bernard of Clairvaux pushed Payens, Bison, Montdidier, and the rest so hard, got them ecclesiastical favors such as freedom from excommunication and so forth, was because of their desires to obtain and be of a pure heart. They offered to God their freedom from desires and possessions. A Templar’s failure not to fully vacate the secular life would carry great dishonor, and bring sanctions or expulsion from the Order. They trusted the guidance of those above them and were bound to oaths of obedience. Templars in battle could not retreat unless outnumbered three to one, were forbidden to surrender in their God’s Holy Cause, and so death was an expected thing and their souls were readied.”
“But...” The reporter swirled the coffee in his cup. “Wasn’t that kind of... sheepish?”
“It depends on how great your faith is. Christians often verbally express an image of Christ as a Shepard to His flock. Perhaps you might want to think of the Order of the Poor Fellow Knights as the black sheep of that flock. Actually, that image might better be applied to the German Teutonic Knights, all clad in black. The Templars were a great contradiction even in their own day. On the one hand, they were sheep indeed, performing simple daily tasks that the most gentle and passive sheep would do. On the other hand, which was holding the sword, in the blink of an eye they could become one of the most vicious fighting machines the world has ever seen. It centered on the state of obedience. Beaumond, Theobor, and the good Friar had been given an awesome and in many ways unfair task, and they complied with God’s will without hesitation or question, even though it meant limbo for eternity.
It was of no small wonder to me, these amazing events that had come to pass, but it was merely the beginning. In the course of the year that followed, on the appointed anniversary day of my cohorts (a name they themselves referred to when speaking in the collective), I would again be carried through the flow of God’s time. My experience would begin with the man whose specific day of celebration it was, but I would be tossed back and forth from one mentor to another—and sometime without any guide, left to my own devices.
I rampaged through history behind the Cross Pattée, watching nation after nation rise and fall, conquering and being conquered. I was there when Jerusalem was taken, and saw the carnage caused by an army gone mad. As McCorvy had told, every man, woman and child, Christian, Muslim or Jew, was put to the sword. Then I saw Jerusalem fall again to Salah el Din. I had fought, back to back, with Hugh de Payens in the first crusade. I saw the fall of the great Templar Castle Pilgrim and watched the walls of Acre crumble, as Templar defenders were incapable of driving the attackers back. I stood by the Zeno Brothers as they handed Henry Sinclair maps to the new world that would be unclaimed until Columbus, married into the Templar family, was handed Templar charts and maps, and watched the great white sails of his ships, adorned with the Cross Pattée, fill with wind and sail off to the west. As my twelfth birthday approached, I had experienced nearly the whole of Templar history—not by hearing, but by doing!
They were the shortest and longest years of my life. My mind had expanded beyond any expectation of any mortal mind, but my body continually weakened. Yet hardly a day went by when at least one of my friends did not appear and impart more knowledge upon my hungry consciousness. The hours of solitude were no longer unbearable, but played as a closed door waiting for someone to come and open it. My parents, still chasing my sister’s demons, did not notice the changes that were occurring in me, but on a warn May morning I commanded their full attention.
Perhaps it was a spring cold or a slight virus that had gotten into my system, but without warning I erupted, gagging and choking violently. Old Lewis, halfway across the house, heard my desperate gagging for air, ripped my father from the desk where he sat charting his next fishing excursion, and ran to my aid. The old man was much stronger than I had imagined, and he seized my chair with me still in it and took the porch door down as he charged into the house.
They threw me on my bed and slapped the mask over my face. I was now slipping in and out of consciousness, and through blurred vision I was seeing the faces of my mother and father and a half dozen other folk I did not know pushing themselves before me. A man dressed in black with the slightest white collar piece entered the room and said something in Latin. I could not catch all the Latin words, but he seemed to be asking God to forgive all my sins. I remember thinking to myself, “This! This is a Priest!” and through all the choking and gasping I was almost laughing. I was amazed at how they’d changed over the last thousand years. The damned fool was giving me Last Rites! I was being reconciled with a God I still wasn’t certain I believed in!
I fought very hard to remain conscious. It was becoming almost exciting—no, I had grown used to death’s hot breath! More like exhilarating, I think, watching the reactions of those around me. They seemed to swarm in a dizzying helter-skeltering swirl, like bees in a hive that had been overturned suddenly.
I was feeling very heavy, very sleepy. As the priest kept praying I began to drift away from these mortal bonds, not really caring that I was doing so. “Not so fast, boy!” a familiar voice cut through the chaotic din of the swarm of bees. “You kina leave us now! Your time as well as ours is at hand. We have a task of no small import to perform!” I could see McCorvy walking unseen through the crowd about him, and in his hand the familiar clay bowl.
“One more task, boy. There is a great plague on mankind. Come with us and help us bring light into this dark, dark world.”
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