“What do you mean mad?” asked the boy. “Were they eating dogs or something?”
* * * * *
Grayson took a rural brother to find the Bulgar horses without mentioning that insane villagers might still be roaming the forest. The carts were brought to the chapel, and Edmund stayed outside while Xenakis and the attendants retrieved the opulence that displayed the wealth of traveling pilgrims. Their scarce supplies allowed one cart to be used only for gold, which was then covered with blankets.
Edmund was fishing through the treasure with wide eyes as Erelim let his memories fade in the presence of the innocent. “This could feed a lot of people,” said the boy. “Why didn’t the priests sell it?”
“People keep relics to remind themselves of how close they came to happiness. For those without souls, the only thing left to hoard is money.”
“But they were priests,” Edmund remarked.
“They were men,” Xenakis corrected. “And apparently they were willing to eat the moldy body of our transubstantiated savior before sacrificing their gold.”
Tetricus and the attendant returned to the church riding healthy steeds with more in tow. The Sergeant seemed impressed by the warhorse stock. “These Bulgarians took better care of their horses than themselves. This is a Scythian breed, unless I’m mistaken.”
“Probably stolen,” said Erelim. “We should continue on to Sofia and meet with Duncan as planned. And we still need food.”
Edmund laughed. “I don’t think that’ll be a problem now.”
* * * * *
They rode until nightfall and sold the extra horses to a farmer who tilled a small patch of land. They exchanged their tired work animals for a meal and permission to set up camp on his property. Though the weather was doing its best to ruin him, the aging man shook his bony digits and said in Greek that it would be his pleasure to have Templars as guests. After a meager dinner, the attendants went to sleep with the sacks of gaudy riches as their pillows. The others sat around drinking beer and staring into the campfire.
“We can donate some gold to a nearby church, to get back into the graces of the Lord,” Tetricus offered. “Then we should bury the rest.”
“You think we’re in God’s contempt?” asked Erelim.
“After today, I can’t assume divine protection.”
“Be careful to keep your trust in the divine. Doubt will break the armor of faith.”
“If we’re being hunted politically, this gold makes us even bigger targets,” said Grayson. “We should bury it until we know if we’re surrounded by powerful enemies.”
“God put us in that church, you know.”
Tetricus was moved by the alcohol on his empty stomach. “And God tempted me to join the Bulgars, yet no complaint from the Heavens could do worse for this place than nature. We fill hostile lands with rampant overbreeding and blame the Earth for not feeding us. Our trade routes bring amenities along with disease, and we do everything in our strength to amplify the destruction already wrought upon us. The little miracles do nothing to assuage this.”
Edmund sat with a bundled cloth under his head. “Where’s your family? You said that some Templars were monks of the caste but that Sergeants could marry.”
“My family isn’t in pain anymore,” said Erelim.
“How did it happen?”
“My daughter wandered into the woods near our home. When my wife followed, they were attacked by wolves. My son later caught the sickness of the pox.”
“Is that why you speak to me as an apprentice?” asked the orphan. “Are you going to leave me with the Hospitallers?”
“You can do what you like,” Xenakis replied. “You should have the choice that I never did.”
“Why do you fight for God if He abandoned your family?”
“This world took them from me because that’s the design, but all spirits have access to the light.”
“I thought religion was the effort of faith,” said the boy, repeating something he heard.
“Religion is the effort to connect with eternity, because existence is the opposite of God. Everything here is loss and disconnection, suffering and desire. I know that my family rests in the joyous infinite, my faith is that I can purify myself enough to join them.”
Edmund looked into the fire. “I hope my family is in Heaven too, but God would have to be lenient because my sister was a brat.”
Erelim smiled as the flames cracked. When the clouds passed and provided easy visibility beyond the trees, they saw sparkling constellations crossing the void.
* * * * *
The following day, the soldiers were up with the Sun and left with enough gold to trade in Sofia. They took the supply cart to stock up on necessities, including repairs for wheels that were battered during their travels. They picked up enough alcohol to substitute for water along with salted meat before stopping at the local chapel. Without declaring themselves to be from the Order of the Temple of Solomon, they said their prayers and left after donating some gold to an astonished priest.
That night they stayed on the farmer’s property again, relaxing with plenty of food, and another day came and went with the knights worrying about Duncan. While the young attendants practiced archery and coaxed Edmund in the skill, the Sergeants concluded that they would go back into town the following morning to see if the Diocesan priest was amenable to bribery.
* * * * *
The Templars rode their newfound steeds into the heavily trafficked marketplace and met with the clergyman, who thanked them again for their generosity. He was smart and inquisitive, asking them questions about where they were staying and if they needed lodging. They told him to remain vigilant for another knight similar to them, and hoped that the gold they donated would actually go to those who needed it. After they picked up more food and returned to the peaceful farm, they built a fire and settled in.
The young were content with singing as the knights spoke about the attack by the Asasiyuns. Gold was freedom in many ways, but it weighed heavily on their worries, not only from the danger of human greed but because their Order was mendicant by design. They were only given the right to handle money because they were seen to be above its material influence. This dichotomy left them empowered as a military order that developed a bureaucracy of interconnected financial routes across the western world. Money spread through the veins of their business, offering encoded proof for travelers going from port to port, who showed evidence to rural brothers in charge of tracking credit sheets.
They created a perfect way of using something as good as money without carrying valuables on distant excursions, yet the resulting profit for strict Templars tested their code of ethics. Title was given to them originally through a Papal endorsement that stretched the intent of aristocratic donations, but in the end they had no cause without Jerusalem and all the wealth they accrued meant nothing.
“Your loyalty is declining,” Edmund observed.
“Why do you say that?” Grayson asked him.
“Because now you have to travel without the ability to declare that you are Templars.”
“We have no spiritual ground,” Tetricus agreed. “Our purpose was to defend the holy land and allow pilgrims the worship of their prophet. Without that cause, this money makes us kings of this world and not the next.”
“We’re all connected to the feuds of landowners,” said Erelim. “If we falter, it will only be for what we are as men.”
“But what you were no longer exists,” Edmund continued. “You said that everything lives and dies by the same virtue.”
“It’s true,” said Xenakis. “The Athenians worshipped an eternal virgin as their goddess and martial protector of a pure society. Then the great Macedonian conqueror traveled beyond the libraries of Ionia before visiting the achievements of the Egyptians and the empire of the Persians. Though he built cities named Alexandria after himself, when he died his
generals could not steady the lands and they eventually drifted back to local cultures. The Greeks saw their ability to take property as evidence of prowess, but they kept that notion insular and not for the foreigners under their rule. As a result, after they were gone there was no lasting impression on those left behind. Alexander’s greatness died with him, and Hellenism only spread west through ancient Greek colonies in southern Italy. Magna Graecia was influential on the burgeoning Latins, who took Greek ideas and molded them with the culturally evolved Etruscans, which they proceeded to spread through military strength across the Mediterranean trade routes of Carthage. The Romans were true empire builders, making free men in any occupied land citizens and allowing foreign religions to survive as long as they included the Greco-Roman Pantheon. They spread Hellenistic tradition through Latin domination, creating a culture that absorbed and changed everything it touched, effectively organizing northern tribes into the dominant nations that struggle today. Most of those barbarians were never conquered by the Romans, but the structure of the institution in its formality and law united chaotic clans even after imperial descent. The Romans however were originally tribes of oppressed people living in swamplands that bordered two great cultures. The rational and imaginative Greeks had been declining for centuries, the same as the Etruscans, who were arrogant and lascivious and abused the Latins until they were capable of revolt. Once Rome absorbed the wealth of Earth and mind from their neighbors, they prospered and founded themselves on folklore and a story of fratricide when the sons of the god of war, and supposedly the mythological descendents of mighty Spartans, fought over succession. During the age of the Republic, Gaius Marius helped to establish the connection of the army to whatever leader they were loyal to. After that, the soldiers were paid by the exploits of their political benefactors. Generals sought to expand the Empire to gain power in the Roman Senate, and this is when their mythology played itself out. With influential men controlling vast legions fed on newly conquered territories and pillaged foreign lands, the soldiers were no longer beholden to the state or its ideals. These civil wars culminated in Julius Caesar and the end of the Roman Republic. Their mistake played out for the rest of the dynastic cycle, pushing the boundaries held by barbarians to gain support for political influence. It took four hundred years for the Empire to stagnate and crumble, but all educated historians agree that a part of this took place as a result of internal disintegration.” Erelim saw that Edmund was attentive. “As I always say, societies and individuals fall by what makes them great.”
“Yes, but is the source of those failures in the people or their minds?” Tetricus wondered. “Because the mythologies which poisoned them existed before the problems ever manifested.”
“The source is the idea,” said Xenakis. “No rational conclusion ever came from an irrational supposition. When the foundation is weak, the structure built upon it will eventually crumble. If the idea is pure, then people must remain loyal to it. That’s the only barrier between justice and the institution. One is created by God, the other by man.”
“Is that the weakness of the Pope?” Edmund asked.
“That all men have preconceived ideologies and strive first for self-preservation rather than the truth? That was the Templar solution in the beginning, that we held no allegiance to anything but defense. A military order can be conquered, though, as it has been in Jerusalem. People try not to think of their own destruction, just as societies let problems fester beyond repair. If every end is a new beginning then even failure is contained in victory, so perhaps the cycle of rebirth is as inescapable as death itself.”
“That’s the problem with philosophy,” Grayson interjected, with eyelids drooping from exhaustion. “It always begins and ends with a question.”
“Then don’t think of philosophy in a linear way,” said Erelim. “When Rome died, the Empire was used to spread Christianity through the same framework that once condemned it.”
“But if you’re loyal to an idea,” said Edmund. “And that is your strength, can’t an idea be forgotten?”
“Individuals find constant reasons in this world to have faith in God, an answer to the great suffering here, but societies must hope for Messianic balance. Cultures need to be reminded of their virtue and it is the prophets who achieve this. God is light in this realm of darkness and we must break it out.”
Edmund nodded that the lesson made logical sense to him. “You should get your stories straight. The Old and New Testaments seem to worship different deities.”
“Yahweh was a volcano god of Mount Horeb in Sinai,” said Tetricus. “It was out of primal necessity that ancient religion connected with elementals like sky gods since they had so much power directly over them. What defines the Old Testament however is the attempt to define the highest of all deities, obviously because any prayers would best be served if they were offered to the most powerful entity of all. The Demiurge that we mentioned is an emissary of Osiris. It represents the law and rigid punishment and devotion to power, a result of the cold judgment that stands between this world and the next. To find the true God, there must be within it a similar structure of its own creation. This is marked by simple duality, what gives life can also take it, and what brings the light can also leave us in darkness. Therefore an equal Goddess represented by cultures with enough honor to respect women provides the source of all compassion, love, and forgiveness. A man is a protector and destroyer by different extremes for different causes, but a woman is a creator and if unrestrained, Kali the wrath of Mother Nature and existential purification. God begins as one and keeps dividing with precision.”
“What changed?” asked the boy.
“It is by sacrifice that we reach divinity,” said Erelim. “Because when you lose everything and still believe, there is no longer a test of doubt weighing on your fears.”
“And if you lose everything and doubt God?”
“Then be glad that you are human, because angels know nothing of the warmth you experienced. We are here to earn our happiness in a way that the spirits in Paradise will never understand without coming to this realm to try it for themselves. Better not to lament the sacrifice required, not if all is temporary and sadness is as fleeting as joy.”
“Then I won’t forget what I have seen,” said the boy.
“You can only choose to face the darkness,” said Erelim. “There you will find your purpose as a being of light.”
“And if I am evil?”
“You’ll run from God into oblivion and be consumed by your own inequity.”
Edmund thought about it. “Are demons reborn to destroy the world if prophets are meant to save it?”
Xenakis looked into the fire. “We took oaths to combat tyranny and the illusion of decadence, to promote virtue, yet there are plenty of spirits who are still asleep, basking in false comfort as they harbor demons of resentment and condemnation. If they awaken to themselves and the knowledge that no mortal has the right to judge the imperfections of another, the stain is burned away to balance a painful life with Heaven, the joyous infinite where loss and sorrow do not exist as no shadows persist on the Sun. We have to judge ourselves, anything else is cowardice.”
“That was probably an intermediate lesson for the boy.” Grayson looked to the illiterate attendants, since much of what they didn’t understand gave others power just by saying it.
That was the failure of the Church, they told Edmund, to take the truth spoken by one man and use the population to breed devotion to their institution. After selling plenary indulgences to support stone fortresses on Earth and not palaces of true divinity, the flock had been guided where the aristocrats wanted, further into hell. Without revolution, what little joy would be limited to the kings capable of stealing it from the masses.
“The design of destiny is far more complicated than our selfish desires,” Xenakis noted.
“But it’s difficult to carry faith in ideas. It’s
easier to worship gold,” said Edmund, and they chuckled at the child’s notion of treasure.
Erelim nodded. “Easiest to have faith in those who pass through the fire without being burned.”
* * * * *
Xenakis opened his eyes to the breaking daylight without realizing that he’d fallen asleep. The night was drifting like a dream and his back tightened with sharp needles as he moved his stiff neck. Thick clouds were blocking the sky and early dawn came as a dense glow. What was left of the campfire moved with a strong wind and a shadow was visible in the distance before the farmer could be seen with a lone knight beside him. Duncan Ariovistes finished his long journey and appeared as if he had been chewed on by a monster.
“I saw him in town,” said the kind farmer. “He was headed for the church when I recognized him as a Crusader. Let me know if you need anything.”
Erelim waited until the landlord was gone, then the pages were stirred from sleep as Duncan looked ready to share his report. He breathed heavily, trying to put words to what he needed to say.
Grayson rubbed his groggy eyes and said, “Where are the others?”
“Dead. The ship collecting dispatched Templars has been confiscated, along with the rest of our fleet. Eighteen ships have been –”
“By who? What happened to the other knights when we first landed in Constantinople? Did you see them at the port?”
“They were attacked by hired killers and went to the port to inform the rest of us,” said Ario. “I met with Templars who delivered a Papal decree. We’re being hunted by Hungarian knights under orders to bring our heads to Budapest.”
“Ordered, by who?”
“The Arpad Dynasty, under decree of Pope Clement V.”
“What did we do wrong?” asked Tetricus. “Are we being accused of something?”
“You don’t understand, the Templar Order has been disbanded, dissolved. We were outlawed by the King of France.” Duncan jolted the attendants with his news. “Philip IV has started an inquisition against us.”
“What’s that?” asked Edmund.