Free The Pegasus Secret by Gregg Loomis Page A

behind the abbot’s table to give thanks.
    Once seated, our guest gave his bowl of porridge a look of disgust. “No meat?” he asked, interrupting the reading from the lectern. 9
    The entire room went silent, so shocked were we that anyone less than a nobleman would expect to find meat, even more so in a weekday supper.
    The abbot was an elderly brother, his voice little more than a wheeze across toothless gums. He coughed, making an effort to be heard from the dais where he shared a table with the elder and governing brothers.
    “Good brother,” he said, “Christ’s last meal was only bread and wine. How much more nourishing is this? Be thankful, for there are many who have not even this simple repast.”
    Once again Guillaume gave that laugh as he raised his claycup of watered wine. “You are right, good abbot. I am thankful for this meal and for the hospitality you afford a poor knight returning from the service of Christ.”
    Satisfied, the old abbot continued to gum the mush of cereals that was our lot more often than not.
    Without lifting his eyes from his bowl and spoon, Guillaume muttered to me, “I did not expect the killing of the fatted calf but even the laziest of men can snare a hare and I have seen countless roe in the forest hereabouts.”
    Fascinated by words that would have earned me a beating for impertinence if not sacrilege, I asked, “And you Templars have hare or roe with weekday suppers?”
    “And with the noon meal also. Or beef or pork. Mush like this does not sustain a man’s body.”
    “It does keep his soul, however,” a brother on the other side whispered.
    Guillaume shoved his bowl away hardly touched. It is a rich man who passes up food. Or a foolish one. “Souls do not fight the Saracen, bodies do.”
    After the meal, the order’s rules required a retreat to the chapel for confession and then to individual cells for private prayer before Compline. 10 I had been given a dispensation to work in the order’s small counting room. The olives were near harvest and it was necessary I calculate how many
boissel
11 the order would have to press into oil for sale. I was completing my initial figures on a slate and preparing to transfer them to the permanence of sheep parchment when I became aware of Guillaume.
    He gave me a smile filled with perfect teeth and entered to look over my shoulder. “These figures of the infidel, you understand them?”
    I nodded. “You do not?”
    He looked at them from one angle, then another, frowning. “A knight does not trouble with figures or letters. They are for priests and monks.”
    “But you are a member of a monastic order.”
    Again the laugh. “This is true, but a special order. You note I do not wear sackcloth that stinks and crawls with vermin, and that, dusty from travel, I bathe. The Knights of the Temple do not live like other monks.”
    “You certainly are not reputed to accept Our Lord’s command to turn the other cheek, either,” I said with unaccustomed boldness.
    “Nor do I believe the meek shall inherit the earth. I do not believe our Lord ever said such a thing. It is cant, false dogma to keep serfs and vassals subservient.”
    Such talk made me uneasy, for it bordered on heresy. Yet he was a knight whose neck bore physical witness of his willingness to die for Church and pope.
    “Obedience,” I said, “is one of the basic vows of our order.”
    “And without it, chaos would result,” he said. “An army marching to more than one set of orders cannot survive the enemy. It is meekness I deplore, not obedience.”
    This made me feel more comfortable.
    “Besides figures, you also can understand written language?”
    “If it is in Latin or Frankish and written boldly,” I said modestly.
    He seemed to withdraw within himself for a moment before he spoke again. “You have not taken your final vows here?”
    I had no idea why he asked but I answered truthfully, “I have not.”
    “My order needs men such as yourself.”
    I