THE BORGIA FRAUD

By Robin Edwards

PROLOGUE - CONTINUED

PARIS, 1314

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‘Tell me where we will find the head.’ He took a slow breath and waited for the reply he knew in his heart would not be forthcoming. ‘Tell me where we will find the Baphomet, and on the orders of King Philip, I will see to it that your throats are slit before the fire takes hold and that your death is quick.’
   The doomed men showed no sign of having heard.
   ‘Where is the Baphomet?’ Though insistent, the Bishop did not raise his voice since there was nothing to be gained from threatening condemned men.
   Only a distant cough and the shuffling of feet from the hushed crowd marked the passing of the Templars’ final moments on earth.
   ‘A last chance. Where is the Baphomet?’
   Geoffrey de Charnay turned his head, the slightest of smiles touching his lips. His words, though spoken softly, reached out to the crowd.
   ‘Conquis par feu⁵.’
   The onlookers breathed a collective sigh at the knights’ bravery.
   It frightened the Bishop. He understood what he had heard and, at the same time, did not. In his work for the Holy Inquisition, he had ordered hundreds of men and women burned and tortured to death, and they always had something to say, usually prayers or pleading, often ranting, sometimes even fighting to escape. He had long since ceased caring one way or the other. Mostly, just before the end, they confessed their sins and, although they screamed for mercy, it never saved them. The Templars were something apart. They were not like ordinary men and this pair in particular. Under the red-hot iron, having their bones systematically smashed, their joints pulled apart on the rack, many of their fellows had confessed to seeing the Baphomet, to touching it, kissing it, worshipping it; yet none had gone so far as to reveal the whereabouts of the relic, no matter how terrible the torture wrought upon them.
   Experience told the Bishop there was no point in going any further. If de Molay and de Charnay knew the secret of the Baphomet, as he believed they did, then it was about to be consumed in the flames along with their bodies. And so be it. Who cared anyway? In his heart, he recognised that the campaign against the Templars was nothing more than a plot cooked up between the King and his puppet, Pope Clement, to grab their fabulous wealth before they became too strong and wrested France from him.
   It was time to get it over with, to get inside by a warm fire and a meal of venison in wine prepared by his mistress. He had earned it.
   ‘Executioner!’
   Without a struggle, the brave knights of the Temple of Solomon were bound back to back on the iron spit, upended and carried aloft to their funeral pyre. As they hung above the piles of faggots, only their lips moved in whispered prayer.
   ‘Turn!’ the hooded executioner commanded his assistants, who threw their weight against the iron wheels of the spit, slowly rotating de Molay and de Charnay as they would a festive ox.
   The executioner lit a torch from a burning brazier and held it aloft, showing it to each side of the square in turn, a reminder that this was what heretics could expect in a Christian land under a Christian king.
   Approaching the pyre, he crossed himself three times, kissing the wooden crucifix around his neck before thrusting the torch into the tar-doused faggots. He had prepared well. Flames leapt skywards in an instant, crackling and sparking into the night engulfing and consuming the men on the spit in a rush of fiery tongues. The crowd stepped back a pace, and those bending their backs to the wheel, turned their faces away for fear of being singed.
   For a moment, above the sound of the bonfire, the crowd heard Jacque de Molay curse the Pope and Philip le Bel to eternity.
   ‘Pope Clement! King Philip! Within one year I summon you to a tribunal before the Judgement Seat of God, where you will receive the retribution you deserve. Damned! Damned! Until the thirteenth generation of your races!’
   The Bishop shuddered as the words sliced his soul for he, like his superiors, was part of the conspiracy. If these men were innocent, the flames leaping about them would be mere sparks compared with the eternal fire that would devour him.

***

   One month later to the day, Pope Clement IV was dead of suffocation. King Philip died of a stroke nine months later and, over the next few years, all three of his sons died without leaving a male heir. Thus ended the Carpetian dynasty of France.