Paris: The Novel

that our king owns the pope.” The fellow seemed rather proud that France now controlled the Holy Father.
    “Upon what charge?”
    “All kinds of crimes. They read the proclamation not an hour ago. Loose living, heresy, sacrificing to idols, magic arts, sodomy … You name it. They’ve done it all.”
    “Heresy? Sodomy?” The Templars, sitting on their stupendous fortune, were often said to eat too well and drink too much nowadays. Jacob suspected people said this because they were jealous. And what if it were true? So did half the monks in Christendom. But sacrificing to idols? Magic arts? These other charges were clearly absurd. Jacob had no particular love of the Templars, but his sense of justice was outraged. “Is there evidence?” he asked.
    “There will be.” The fellow laughed. “The Inquisition will see to that. After they’ve been tortured. You know the way of it.” They were going to torture the Templars, like common criminals. Like heretics. “Once they’ve burned a few at the stake,” the man continued cheerfully, “they’ll talk.”
    “But what about all their forts, and their money?” Jacob asked. “What’s to become of them?”
    “Forfeit. The whole lot. They’re bust, from dawn today.” This thought seemed to give the fellow particular satisfaction. “These Templars andtheir damned Crusades. They cost us a fortune and achieve nothing.” He shrugged. “Look at Saint Louis.”
    So impressed had the papacy been by the piety of King Louis IX of France that ten years ago the builder of the Sainte-Chapelle, and supporter of the Inquisition, had been canonized as a saint.
    “He went on crusade,” the man went on. “Got himself captured. And we, the people of France, had to pay his ransom. And all for what? He had nothing to show for his stupid war, and most of his troops died of disease. Damn the crusaders and damn the Templars who support them—that’s what I say.”
    Jacob knew that most Parisians nowadays would agree. But behind this attack on the Templars, he realized, was a simpler and more brutal truth. By disbanding the order, the king had just canceled all his debts to them.
    The heresy, the immorality and the arrests were all a screen. With the pope and the Inquisition in his pocket, King Philip the Fair was going to torture and burn God knows how many unfortunate men to get their bogus confessions. Every instrument of Holy Church was to be used. And all for what? To plunder the bullion of the Templars, and to renege upon his debts.
    The expulsion of the Jews had been bad enough, but for the king to turn upon his own Christian soldiers, it seemed to Jacob, showed a cynicism that, in its way, filled him with an even deeper disgust.
    There was no loyalty, no mercy, no interest in truth, nor thought of justice. There was no respect for God. There was nothing.

    When he got home, Jacob told Sarah what he had seen. Then he went into his counting house and closed the door. He did not emerge all day.
    In the evening his wife came in.
    “Will you not eat something, Jacob?”
    “I’m not hungry.” He stared at the table.
    Sarah sat on the small wooden chair he used for visitors. She didn’t say anything, but she rested her hand on his. After a while, Jacob spoke again.
    “Naomi said she didn’t want to live in a land with such a king. She blamed me for converting.”
    “She is young.”
    “She was right. I shouldn’t have converted.” He was still staring at the table.
    “You did what you thought was for the best.”
    “You know”—he looked up at her now—“I have no problem with the Christian doctrine of love. It is wonderful. I embrace it.” He shook his head. “The trouble with the Christians is that they say one thing, and do something completely different.”
    “The king is corrupt. The Church is corrupt. We know this.”
    “Yes, I know this.” He was silent for a long moment. “But if they are corrupt, then I am corrupt also.”
    “What would you do? Stand before the king and curse him like one of the prophets of old?”
    “Yes,” he cried, with sudden passion. “Yes, that is what I should do, just as the prophets of my forefathers did in ancient times.” He threw up his hands. “This, no doubt, is what I should do,” he added sadly.
    “And what are you going to do?” Sarah gently asked her husband.
    Jacob paused for a while.
    “I have an idea,” he said at last.

    Within a week all Paris knew. The lovely daughter of Jacob the