TEMPLE OF THE GRAIL - a Novel Read online

  ADRIANA KOULIAS was born in Brazil and migrated to Australia with her family when she was nine years old. She has studied Philosophy, History and Esoteric Science for fifteen years and lectures on these topics. Adriana is married with two children and lives in Sydney.

  TEMPLE

  OF THE

  GRAIL

  ADRIANA

  KOULIAS

  Zuriel Press

  This edition published 2013 by Zuriel Press Pty Ltd

  First published 2004 in Picador by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd

  Copyright © Adriana Koulias 2004

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

  Koulias, Adriana. Temple of the Grail

  ISBN 978-0-9874620-3-9

  Contents

  About The Author

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Contents

  Prologue

  The_Manuscript

  1. Capitulum

  2. Capitulum

  3. Capitulum

  4. Capitulum

  IGNIS THE FIRST TRIAL

  5. Capitulum

  6. Capitulum

  7. Capitulum

  8. Capitulum

  9. Capitulum

  AQUA THE SECOND TRIAL

  10. Capitulum

  11. Capitulum

  12. Capitulum

  13. Capitulum

  14. Capitulum

  15. Capitulum

  16. Capitulum

  AER THE THIRD TRIAL

  17. Capitulum

  18. Capitulum

  TERRA THE FOURTH TRIAL

  19. Capitulum

  20. Capitulum

  21. Capitulum

  22. Capitulum

  23. Capitulum

  24. Capitulum

  25. Capitulum

  TEMPLE OF HIGHER WISDOM

  26. Capitulum

  27. Capitulum

  28. Capitulum

  Epilogue

  Glossary

  Prologue

  Jean de Joinville closed the manuscript. Outside the sky fell over the grounds of the palace in a torrent and the wind made the torches flicker, threatening to deliver him into darkness. An attendant entered the apartment and prepared to set down a tray of scented tea and honeyed cakes. Joinville shook his head and waved the servant away, searching for the cross beneath his garments.

  He was afraid. He had not been afraid in a long time.

  It took him some moments to lower himself to the floor. The stone was cold and his knees old and thin of skin. He knelt to pray for his soul and for God’s guidance in the matter of the manuscript. For what must he do with it? How must he hide it and its secret from the Pope and King Philip, whose hospitality he enjoyed?

  At the hour of Matins he called for a trusted servant and made arrangements for him to travel to Spain, telling him only where he must take the item wrapped in linen and nothing more regarding it.

  He made his way to his pallet then and, overcome with fatigue, called for his confessor.

  The Manuscript

  Eternal, unchangeable and infinite God, whose goodness knows no bounds and no limits, eternal virtue and perfection, embracing all qualities, from whom all things spring and without whom there is nothing, who art good without bounds, great without limit, eternal without time, omnipresent without space, grant this poor sinner, in thy infinite goodness, the soundness to impart a clear and concise account of this sacred and most holy wisdom which thou hast favoured to leave in my care.

  Now in exile, this servant living on the threshold of death longs for the eternal and blissful rest that has been promised; to be lost in the silence of nothingness in which the spirit seeks the womb of the universe; where there is no time and space, or anything else, save the quiet perpetual union with the all-embracing divine light, in whose shadow the devout soul stands. But for now, I sit in silence, in contemplation of my eternal ascent towards that naught of naughts. My back torments me, my hands ache, and as I prepare to write on a parchment that is hairy, I tremble as though I were drenched with water, for I am never warm these days. Perhaps Brother Setubar had been right those many years ago at the monastery, that is, fear manifests itself as a paleness, a chill? As I prepare to recall the events of those times I feel my body weakened by the demons of deception that compel me to a dumb silence . . . and yet, obedience begs that I must tell this tale . . . even as mountains coil and fold in a world that has grown old and hardened in spirit, as you have perhaps already seen; even as humility becomes unknown, and man hides his face from the truth because, once it is revealed, its faithful signals cannot be denied.

  Only a few days have passed since I received word of my old master’s death, and since that moment I have been filled with a consummate grief. There were so many things left unspoken between us, for the nature of our parting was confused and hasty. Perhaps I should have told him that I loved him with a spiritual sweetness, that I admired him deeply? But words drift from this sinner’s lips as an autumn breeze passes silently over a wheatfield, for what does the wheat care if the breeze is filled with sadness?

  Now, as his form turns to dust, can his eyes see the rosy dawn, or the pale snowflake as it falls? What would be the point of saying that I still see him so clearly? Should I tell you, dear reader, that I remember his countenance as broad and frank, accentuated by an aquiline nose whose character was perhaps a little Roman? And that above his eyes – the colour of the north sea – hovered the thickest of brows that, in moments of concentration, became a mirror to his thinking? It may not interest you to know that I loved him, not because I thought him the wisest or perhaps the bravest man – though I now see that indeed he came closer to these attributes than anyone I have since known – but because he had a good sense of humour and an air of adventure about him, a liberal nature that was much the opposite of mine. Consequently, I confess to having many times mistaken his imperfections for virtues, and his virtues for so many imperfections. Now that I am older and wiser, I know that a good man has a measure of each.

  All I have left of him is a letter sealed with his seal, a testament that will accompany this chronicle to its owner when I too have left this mortal carcass behind me.

  Finally, I look out from my cell to the endless blue waters of Famagusta knowing that I will soon be reunited with the moon, and the sun, and the stars . . . and there, shimmering with the brightest of lights, will be my dearest friend and mentor, casting his ray of goodness over the path that I must tread to divinity, in the same way that he shone the light of knowledge over a young mind those many years ago.

  And so if every instant of time is like a pinprick of eternity, as Marcus Aurelius tells us, let us then make haste . . . slowly.

  In the year of our Lord 1254, the year that Frederick II, the excommunicate emperor died, ending 116 years of Hohenstaufen rule, I was a youth of no more than sixteen springs – though at the time I would have said that I was already a man. It was also the year in which my master’s dearest friend, Jean de Joinville, was released from his incarceration in an infidel prison at the side of King Louis, and the year in which my life became inexorably changed by the events that will become, in the course of this tale, apparent.

  I was six years old when I was placed in the care of a Templar knight of good repute (whose name I will only reveal as Andre), after the untimely death of my fath
er during the battle of La Forbie. In the context of this manuscript, my master was nigh forty years of age, of robust body and strong complexion, an early riser, though he slept very little, and a lover of all things pertaining to nature.

  He was a ‘poulain’, that is to say, he was a colonist and therefore born of mixed blood. He rarely spoke about his family, but youthful ears being what they are, I learnt much by overhearing a little here and a little there. I came to know that his father had fought beside Richard Coeur de Lion in the third Crusade, and that his mother had been the daughter of a Christian from Alexandria. This made comprehensible the darkness of his skin, his singular ways and his peculiar vital spirit. A spirit that in my opinion seemed always a little impious. However, the infidel in his blood made him an excellent physician, as we are told Alexandrians are exceedingly astute in the medicinal arts. From him, I not only learnt which herbs were best for treating wounds, and how to mend a broken limb, but also, and perhaps more importantly, to cherish knowledge, always remembering that a man is only truly honourable when he honours another. He also taught me the practicalities of holding a sword, and how to saddle a horse, and the best way to ride in battle, for he was accomplished in all knightly duties, though I suspect he did not wish that I should ever have use for such things.

  It was thus, travelling in my master’s train under the banner of the Red Cross, that I came to know the wonders of the Islamic world even if, at the same time, I was witness to the endless cruelty and brutality of battle.

  My master encouraged me to read, for he was a fine scholar, having spent some time in Paris and in the esteemed school of Salerno before taking his vows. It was his belief that I should learn of other things besides war and so, with his guidance, I became adequate in Greek, and was therefore able to absorb the ideas of the Greek philosophers from folios he found in his travels. These revealed a world of thought previously unknown to me. But I am prideful, as my master often told me, for I linger too long on insignificant details, when instead I should tell how, not yet of fighting age, I was to become my master’s squire, as was the custom in those days, not only in charge of his horses and armour but also his scribe and confidant, taking an oath of loyalty that I, to this day, solemnly uphold.

  As fate would have it, we remained only a few short years in Outremer because, during the battle of Mansourah under the orders of William of Sonnac, Grand Master of the Temple, my master Andre was to become grievously wounded. His body never fully recovered and the battle seemed to plague him. I believed him to have been torn by loyalties. Perhaps his faith was not where it should have been? In any event, after a long convalescence we left the holy land for a Templar house in France, in the fateful area of Languedoc where my master would take up his position as preceptor. I must pause here for one moment to acquaint you with this area’s peculiarities and the turbulent, political miasma in which we found ourselves.

  Languedoc is a province in the south of France, separated from Aragon by a rugged and mostly impenetrable chain of mountains known as the Pyrenees. In those dark days it was a very rich province, held in cohesion by a succession of counts allied with the king of Aragon. It was a province of harsh contrasts of climate and of temper, and it enjoyed a close proximity to the East, to which it was tied by the umbilical cord of the Templar Order. Many have attributed the infiltration of unorthodox doctrine into this area to this peculiarity, however, for our purposes, suffice it to say that with the passing of years it became home to a number of heresies, the most infamous sects being those of Cathar and Waldensian origin.

  For many years these sects flowered, relying on the liberal attitude of the secular ecclesiastics, the noble classes, and the Count of Toulouse. That is, until that horrible day when thousands of northern knights led by Simon de Montfort with the sanctity of the pope and king, descended like locusts on Languedoc in a war of persecution that lasted more than forty years. Cities and towns were razed and brought to the sword. Women, children and the elderly were killed indiscriminately. At Beziers alone twenty thousand were slaughtered while seeking sanctuary in the churches, as they knelt praying at the altars. My master condemned the Crusade against the Cathars, saying that it was nothing more than a political exercise, whose aim was the annexation of the region into the hands of the French king. Young man that I was, I did not fully understand the extent of this terrible crime, believing in the integrity of the mother church and its intentions with the full-hearted religious zeal of one who holds an uncompromising view of the world, though I had lived little in it.

  The heretics argued; Christ had no place to rest his head, while the pope had a palace, Christ was property-less and penniless, the Christian prelates were rich and powerful, living off the fattened calf while others starved. In truth the church had been in a state of appalling corruption, and it was easy to see why it enjoyed no high esteem. Stories were told of churches in which no mass had been said for many years because priests busied themselves running their large estates. It was even rumoured that the Archbishop of Narbonne never once visited his diocese! These worldly priests and fat bishops were seen as the Pharisees reborn, the Holy Church was the whore of Babylon; the clergy the synagogue of Satan, the pope the antichrist. With no religious guidance and with hunger in their bellies the people took matters into their own hands, preaching without licence, giving the sacraments without having first been ordained into the priesthood. It was impossible to stem the tide of reform; Languedoc was like a tree with poisoned fruit. Even our blessed St Bernard, on his visit to the area half a century before, had been more appalled by the corruption of the clergy than by the heretics themselves. Later a young Dominic Guzman managed to convert some, though for every conversion, there were many more who fell by the wayside. Count Raymond of Toulouse, who had at first condoned the heresy, opposed the Crusade, but recanted when faced with overwhelming papal pressure, and led his own army of knights to slaughter those whom he had previously supported. Many noble families that had been his benefactors, some of them Cathar believers, were forced to take refuge in various Templar preceptories or face their fate on the pyre. In the end, however, the count had been deceived, for his lands and titles were passed to Alphonse, the brother of Louis IV, and therefore became the property of the French king. This Crusade not only destroyed the cohesion of the heretical groups, sending those who remained loyal to their beliefs underground, but also meant the ruination of a once-lucrative area of rich commerce.

  This was the situation, then, when we arrived in Languedoc, almost ten years after the stronghold of Catharism, Montsegur, was taken. At a time when the ravaged province attempted to rebuild itself anew. So, dear reader, one cannot judge my master too harshly if he seemed less than pleased at the prospect of his forthcoming designation. But as I look back – with the clearer sight of one detached from the impatience of youth – I know it was a fortuitous one, for not only did his injuries make it impossible for him to serve his order with the required physical strength, but had we not been sent to Languedoc I would not now have occasion to narrate this remarkable story.

  My master’s appointment seemed to fill him with a terrible dissatisfaction. I suspect that he missed the hot country of his birth and the doctoring that he loved so well, and so he was seized (so it seemed to me) by a restless demon, filled with a desire for new experiences from which he would draw some vague comfort. At times I did not understand him, at least I did not try to. I followed him obediently though he seemed to be a man tormented by many ideas in need of resolution.

  A year after our arrival in France he was called to Paris for an audience with the king who had, only months before, returned from the holy land. Present at this meeting my master was surprised to find Reginald Vichiers, Grand Master of the Temple, and the Paris Preceptor and his treasurer. What grave and serious Templar business had wrenched the grand master from his duties in Outremer? Grave matters indeed, for he had left the commander of the order, Guy of Basainville in his stead, to face an attack on our strongh
olds by the Mamluks.

  After the customary formalities, we were informed that our preceptory held the titles to a tract of land in the mountains south of Carcassonne, the perpetual use of which had been granted to the Cistercian order by Gerard of Ridefort in 1186. The grand master told us that a monastery had since been erected on this site and that it housed monks from the Cistercian rule. The abbot of Citeaux expressed concerns that the abbey had not been brought to his attention, and that for many years it had existed incognitus without the spiritual guidance of a mother house – without its abbot ever having attended a meeting of the general chapter! No matter how important these concerns may have been, they did not justify the presence of the grand master and the preceptor at the meeting. No, there were graver matters to be addressed, as we shall see.

  There was to be a papal review of all the monasteries in the area of Languedoc. The monastery of St Lazarus had been singled out because it had conducted healings to which no physical cure could be ascribed. The significant aspect of this inquiry, the king informed us, was that it would be headed by one Rainiero Sacconi da Piacenza; a man who I later learnt was an Italian inquisitor of some renown. It became clearer now that both our order and the order of Cistercians were greatly concerned lest anything be found in the abbey’s conduct which could be used by the Dominican inquisitor for his own purposes, namely, the advancement of his career. The king, on the other hand, was concerned that the inquiry provided the pontiff with an excuse to recoup monies directly from any monastery found guilty of heresy, in lieu of papal taxes, which Louis had promised, but had not delivered. He told us two pious orders would suffer the pope’s wrath with the Dominicans of Italy being the victors and the Italian Bishop of Toulouse – a Benedictine with formidable family connections in Rome – taking possession of all the abbey’s holdings with the ratum facio of the pope.