The Season of the Beast. Andrea Japp

      Yes, he had been worrying about the mine for some time now. He decided to go there and check the progress of the iron-ore extraction.

       Baron de Larnay’s mining works, Perche, May 1304

      ‘BRING him to me! Drag him here on his backside if you have to! He won’t be needing it much longer,’ bellowed Eudes de Larnay as he glowered at the tiny pile of iron ore at his feet, the meagre result of a whole week’s mining.

      The two serfs, heads bowed, had stepped back a few yards. The Baron’s angry outbursts were well known, and could end in vicious blows, or worse.

      They did not wait to be asked twice, and were only too glad to have such an excellent excuse to put the greatest possible distance between them and their master’s fists. And in any case, that half-wit Jules, who was no better than they were, had done his fair share of swaggering since being promoted to overseer. He had become too big for his boots and now the boot was on the other foot.

      The two men, exhausted by overwork and lack of sleep and nourishment, hurled themselves across the tiny arid plain towards the oak grove that stretched for leagues – almost as far as Authon-du-Perche.

      Once they had reached the relative safety of the trees, they slowed down, stopping for a moment to catch their breath.

      ‘Why have we come to the forest, Anguille? This isn’t where Jules ran off when the master arrived,’ said the older of the two men.

      ‘I don’t know, damn it. What does it matter? We had to run somewhere or we’d be the ones taking the beating.’

      ‘Do you know where Jules went?’

      ‘No, and I don’t care,’ snapped Anguille, ‘but it makes no odds, he won’t get far. The master’s mad as a drunken lord, and a nasty piece of work to boot.’

      ‘What is it with that cursed mine? It’s not for lack of digging. My legs and arms are well nigh dropping off.’

      Anguille shrugged his shoulders before replying:

      ‘His cursed mine’s dried up, hasn’t it? Jules told him, but it’s no good, he won’t listen. It’s about as useless as a dead rat and not worth all the fuss. He can cry all he likes, he’ll get nothing but dust from it now.’

      ‘And to think it gave them bags of lovely gold for nigh on three generations. What a deadly blow for the master. He must be taking it hard!’

      ‘Oh yes? Well, he’ll be over it before it ever bothers me. Because, you see, that cursed mine might have given him bags of gold, but what has it ever given me, or us, except aching limbs, floggings and an empty belly? Come on, let’s go deeper into the forest and have a little snooze. We’ll tell him we couldn’t find Jules.’

      ‘But that’s a lie.’

      Anguille looked at him, flabbergasted by his naivety, and said reassuringly:

      ‘Yes, but if you don’t tell him, he won’t know.’

       Cyprus, May 1304

      THE confused nightmare. Francesco de Leone sat up with a start on his straw mattress, his shirt drenched in sweat. He concentrated on breathing slowly to try to calm his wildly beating heart. Above all he wanted to avoid going back to sleep for fear the dream would continue.

      And yet the Knight Hospitaller of Justice and Grace11 had lived so long with this fear that he often wondered if he would ever be rid of it. The nightmare was more like a bad dream that had no end and always began with the echo of footsteps – his footsteps – on a stone floor. He was walking along the ambulatory of a church, brushing the rood screen shielding the chancel, trying by the weak light filtering through the dome to study the shadows massed behind the columns. What church was this? The rotunda suggested the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem or even the bravura architecture of the dome of the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. Or could it be the Santa Costanza in Rome, the church which he believed opened onto the Light? What did it matter? In his dream, he knew exactly what he was looking for within those colossal walls of pinkish stone. He tried to catch up with the silently moving figure, betrayed only by the slight rustle of fabric. It was the figure of a woman, a woman hiding. It was at this point in the dream that he realised he was chasing her and that the design of the church, centred on the chancel, was hindering him. The figure circled as he circled, always a few steps ahead of him as though anticipating his movements, staying on the outside of the ambulatory while he moved along on the inside.

      Francesco de Leone’s hand reached slowly for the pommel of his sword, even as an overwhelming love made his eyes fill with tears. Why was he chasing this woman? Who was she? Was she real?

      He gave a loud sigh, exhausted but tense at the same time. Only old women believed dreams were premonitions. And yet he had dreamt of the deaths of his sister and his mother only to discover their corpses soon afterwards.

      He looked up at the tiny arrow slit opening onto the sky. The fragrant Cypriot night had no calming effect on him. He had been to so many places, known so many people that he could barely remember the town where he was born. He was from nowhere and felt like a stranger in this vast citadel, reconquered, following the siege of Acre in 1291, after a fierce battle led by the Knights Templar* and the Hospitallers. Guillaume de Beaujeu, the Grand-Master of the Knights Templar, had lost his life and Jean de Villiers, Grand-Master of the Knights Hospitallers, had been a hair’s breadth from succumbing to his wounds. Only seven Hospitallers and ten Templars had survived the siege and the ensuing battle that signalled the end of Christendom in the Orient.

      Most of the Knights Templar had returned to the West. As for the Knights Hospitaller, their hurried retreat to Cyprus had taken place with the mild opposition of the ruler of the island, King Henri II of Lusignan, who had reluctantly allowed them to settle in the town of Limassol on the southern coast. The monarch was worried about what might soon become a state within a state – both orders being exempt from all authority save that of the Pope. Lusignan had imposed on them boundless restrictions. Thus, to a man, their number on the island must never exceed seventy knights plus their entourages. It was a clever way of curbing their expansion and above all their influence. The Holy Knights were forced to submit while they waited for more auspicious times. It mattered little. Cyprus was a mere step, a brief respite that would allow them to recover their strength and regroup before reconquering the Holy Land. For the birthplace of Our Lord must not remain in the hands of the infidels. Guillaume de Villaret, who in 1296 succeeded his brother as Grand-Master, had had a premonition, and his attention was now turned to Rhodes, a fresh refuge for his order.

      Francesco de Leone experienced a frisson of elation and joy when he imagined advancing towards the Holy Sepulchre, raised on the site where Joseph of Arimathea’s garden had once stood. It was in the crypt beneath the church that Constantine’s mother had discovered the cross.

      He would fall to his knees on the flagstones, warm from the fierce desert sun outside. He envisaged the tip of his out-stretched hand brushing the strap of the sandal. He was ready to lay down his life with devotion and infinite humility for this deed; it was the Knight’s supreme sacrifice.

      The time had not yet arrived. Hours, days, months, even years, lay ahead. So many things must come to pass before then. Had he lost his way? Was his faith no longer entirely pure? Was he not beginning to enjoy the scheming of the powerful, which he was supposed to thwart?

      He stood up. Despite his relative youth he felt as if he were a thousand years old. The human heart held few mysteries for him; it had afforded him some rare but dazzling moments of wonder and a great many more of despair, even disgust. To love man in Christ’s image seemed to him at times an impossible ideal. And yet he would do well to conceal this chink in his faith. All the more so as man was not his mission; his mission, his many missions were Him. It was the indescribable joy of sacrifice that sustained