The Last Crusade

By S. J. A. Turney

The unforgettable finale to S.J.A. Turney’s epic Knights Templar series.

As Arnau and his battle-weary Templars head home from battle, they face a new, insidious challenge: one seemingly from within the Order of the Temple itself.

Word reaches them that the stronghold of Rourell is under the command of a new preceptor, but why?

Surrounded by old friends, Arnau must now face enemies of his past, and present. This time the rot goes deep – and high. From gilded palace libraries to blood-soaked sieges, this is a fight that will test him like never before…

A thrilling story of revenge, this is the blistering conclusion to Turney’s masterful Knights Templar series, perfect for readers of Bernard Cornwell and Ben Kane.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Canelo Adventure
• Release date: Jan 11, 2021
• ISBN: 9781788639033

S. J. A. Turney

S.J.A. Turney is an author of Roman and medieval historical fiction, gritty historical fantasy and rollicking Roman children's books. He lives with his family and extended menagerie of pets in rural North Yorkshire.

Book preview

Prologue

Moissac, Occitania, 8th September 1212

Henri d’Orbessan sat with a small group of the baron’s knights awaiting the command to move, the late summer sun hanging low over the hills and promising another scorching day. The siege had been a slog, even if a short one, but still it would be over today, and then finally they could move on. He had to remind himself once again, as he felt that weariness, that some men here had had it worse than he, had been here from the start in mid-August, while he had then still been returning from Iberia and the conclusion of that bloody battle against the Moor.

Pennants snapped in a momentary breeze before settling limply once more, and the sound of trebuchets being loaded and primed filled the air on the hillside. The silence of the Frankish army was palpable with tension.

D’Orbessan reflected momentarily that a sizeable part of a lord’s duty seemed to be finding a war into which to throw his knights and men at arms with wild abandon. He knew the baron to be a careful man and a good one, perhaps too much so for his own good, yet they had limped back to their own lands in Occitania across the Pyrenees and hardly had he time to hang his cloak by his hearth before the baron had announced that their swords were needed once more.

Another crusade, and not against the Moor or the Saracen this time. Of course, d’Orbessan had known of the ongoing war here, even while he’d spent much of the past few years away. No one who’d lived in this rich and wild region for the past three years could have been ignorant of the war sweeping back and forth across the land and carrying death and terror with it, but for d’Orbessan, fighting the enemies of God in the Holy Land and Iberia, it had been largely someone else’s problem.

The so called Cathars, or Albigeois, had been a thorn in the side of the Church for untold years, living with a heretical twist on the true faith, denying certain tenets that made the Roman Church what it was, but for a century or more that sector of Occitanian society had remained untouched, for their manpower had lent steel to the quest against the Saracen.

All that had changed after the disastrously failed crusade which had led to the fall of Byzantium. No one seemed willing to push the might of Christendom that way now, for the whole grand enterprise had been soured by Venetian greed. Even the Pope had turned his gaze from the recapture of the Holy City and had settled it instead upon other enemies of the Church. He had aided the troublesome Iberian kings by agreeing to call a crusade against the Moor in the south of their land, and he had finally, three years ago, decided that the time had come for another crusade against the heretical Cathars of this ancient land.

It had come as a shock to many, for the crusade that had turned upon the Christians of Constantinople had been unpopular when real enemies of the Church had waited in the wings, and yet now Catholic fought Cathar under the sign of the cross here on the northern slopes of the Pyrenees and the valleys and hills of Occitania, and Christendom was fine with that.

Part of it was the leadership, of course. The Pope had been unable to find a Frankish lord or an Iberian one willing to lead such a crusade, for the former had been allied neighbours of these Cathars for decades, while the latter had their own troubles in their own land, and were closely tied to the Cathars by blood anyway. And so the Pope had cast his net wider and snagged a truly big fish. The brutal lord Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, had answered the call with relish, for he was known to be a man who held nothing above the strength of the Church of Rome. With the sheer power of de Montfort leading the way many lords had swiftly fallen into line, creating a truly dangerous crusading force, backed by important clergymen.

The days of the Cathars were numbered.

D’Orbessan had never really cared one way or the other about the heretics living in his region; some of his own people undoubtedly fell into this category, but the baron had called him and all the knights of the household to join de Montfort, and he had done so. Over the past few weeks, though, his opinions had changed, and he had begun to see the Cathars for what they were: enemies of all things good.

They had arrived at Moissac with a large force in support of de Montfort’s small army, who had been conducting the siege for two weeks already, and had appeared just in time to help secure the critical hill to the north-west that overlooked the town and promised to change their fortunes.

The crusaders had fought and taken numerous towns over the past year, many much larger and better defended than Moissac, and nobody had expected this small and largely unimportant town to hold for more than a few days. Yet here they were a month down the line struggling to secure it, and with a wake of blood and corpses a mile wide.

The Cathars of Moissac had shown their true colours during those weeks. The Count of Toulouse, that Cathar icon, had sent a garrison of routier mercenaries to hold the place, and they had proved to be wolves, not sheep, breathing courage and defiance into the hearts of the Cathar population. The crusaders had taken the hill, but the defenders had fought back with bared teeth, crossbow bolts dipped in slurry a favoured weapon, carrying disease into the crusader camp. And then there were the bells… always the damn bells. Every time a crusader of any importance fell, his banner tumbling to the ground, the bells of the great monastery of Moissac would ring out with jubilation. That, in particular, had aggravated the abbot of that same monastery, who had fled to the arms of the crusaders before the siege began, welcoming these sons of the true Church rather than remaining in his monastery at the heart of a heretic stronghold.

The bells were ringing out even now, for an English lord had been struck by artillery from the city walls and had died horribly within sight of all: chest broken beyond all hope, blood gouting from his mouth as he twitched and shook, the priests administering the viaticum even as he shrieked his last. And all to the sound of those pestilential bells.

Still, that stricken lord had not been the worst. The actions of the Cathars had sealed their fate and labelled them enemies of Christ. They had launched brutal sallies from the city gates during the church services held by the crusading army, and they had taken with them the bodies of the crusaders they had managed to kill while on their knees before the cross. Those bodies had come back in small pieces, launched from catapults on the wall, a rain of meat and gore and body parts.

De Montfort himself had been the victim of one such assault, finding himself surrounded by Cathars and mercenaries. He had fought like the lion he was until help arrived to save him, but he’d taken an arrow wound to the foot and had his horse killed under him in the process. In that same engagement, the nephew of the archbishop of Reims had been captured by the routiers and dragged back into the gates of Moissac screaming, even as his uncle led a rescue party, crozier in one hand, sword in the other. He’d been too late, and the young knight had been the subject of a spectacle that evening. To the endless tolling of that damned bell, the young man had been brought up onto the walls before the crusaders and tied to a rack. There he had been very slowly dismembered alive, screaming and wailing, each part cast down into the besieging army as it was removed. He had taken more than an hour to die.

No, d’Orbessan was no longer in two minds. The Cathars were animals and they had to be converted or destroyed. The bastards were even attacking the clergy. Brother Pierre Vaux-de-Cernay had been riding to deliver last rights to a lord when he’d been attacked by routiers with crossbows, escaping with his life, but barely, as evidenced by the holes in his habit made by the bolts in their passage.

The city had almost fallen yesterday. De Montfort, his foot bound and limping from his recent wound, had led a fresh assault with a covered siege mantle. Beneath the hides and timber of the mobile cover, the commander and his brother had led a strong force of knights against a part of the walls where the mangonels had broken a hole large enough to turn into a full breach. They had made it across the first defensive ditch, but the wily Cathars had managed to bring a palisade forward to block the way while they hacked out a second ditch. By the time the mantle had overcome the palisade and moved forward, it became lodged in the second ditch, within range of the defenders’ mangonels. Under a rain of stones, the crusaders had faltered, unable to press their advance any further, and the lords had been forced to abandon the mantle and their attack entirely as the Cathars managed to set the thing alight.

This morning, de Montfort was determined, would be the last morning. There would be no more pushes. Every man in the army was committed today. Now, the bells that were ringing in the city were fading from earshot, for a new sound was arising to drown them out. The clergy accompanying the crusading army had gathered on a hill to the northwest. Hundreds of monks and priests, led by some of the most important churchmen in the land, were singing songs of praise and hope. The archbishop of Reims, still bitter after the butchery of his nephew, the bishops of Toul and Albi, the abbot of Moissac, the archdeacon of Paris, even de Montfort’s favoured man of God, Father Dominic of Osma, led the chant.

The army bristled with anticipation as the clear voices rang out across the wide valley.

The order was given. Somewhere back among the leaders, horns rang out and barons called to their men. Not d’Orbessan’s master, for the Baron de Roquefeuil had been too badly wounded at Las Navas to take part personally. D’Orbessan commanded as his deputy here and, in response to the orders from the rear, he bellowed to his men.

‘Onward. For God and the Earl of Leicester!’

The knights of the baron’s household put spurs to flanks and the horsemen raced down the slope, parallel with the River Tarn, towards one of the points in the city walls that had been weakened over days by trebuchets. To left and right the infantry flooded forward, roaring. This was it. No one was held back, and every potential breach in the walls was being exploited at once in the desperate hope that one would give and the city would fall.

The conroi of armoured horsemen raced towards those stout defences. At least here the ditch was just a single one, followed by a flat berm of grassland, rather than the double line that now surrounded almost half the walls’ circuit. The bottom of the ditch was hip deep with water, flooded from the river, which would form a solid obstacle for the infantry, though not for the knights of the various conroi now descending upon it, for the horses could jump that ditch with little difficulty.

To left and right, d’Orbessan could see other groups of knights from various households keeping pace with his, and behind them the infantry surged forth with a roar, close on their heels. In such a charge, infantry could maintain almost half the pace of the horse, and they would gradually fall behind, yet over the short distance they had to traverse, d’Orbessan and his knights would not have to hold for long before the footmen arrived in support.

He turned to face his goal now, cutting out all observation of the men around and behind him, his eyes gleaming out through the slits in his visor, breath clouding up inside the helmet, warm and fetid. He counted down as he saw the ditch approaching, measuring off his horse’s strides as he rose and fell with each bunching of muscles. His shield was braced, strapped to his weak left arm, his lance couched in his right. His sword hilt bobbed around with the movement, occasionally knocking uncomfortably against his right elbow. That would not be an issue for long.

Three.

Figures filled the ten-foot hole in the wall, the lower half of it loosely repaired with a rampart of rubble after yesterday’s fresh barrage had succeeded in smashing a hole in the stones. He could see crossbowmen atop the parapet taking aim even as the men below readied themselves, swords and spears bristling and gleaming in the morning sun.

Two.

In front of that breach, men had put together a rough fence during the night, formed of timbers and turf, enough to provide a temporary obstacle, slowing any advance and putting the men there at risk from crossbows, archers and artillery. That fence too seethed with men, both avid Cathar locals and dirty, wicked mercenaries.

One.

And between that fence and the ditch lay peasant rabble with spears, waiting with terror for the coming attack. D’Orbessan prepared himself, leaning forward over the horse’s neck and adjusting the sit of his lance, changing his centre of balance even as he snapped the command at his mount, accompanied by a sharp jab of spur to flank.

‘Sauter!’

All along the line he could hear his men doing the same, the conrois of knights leaping across the ditch as though it were no obstacle and landing easily on the far side, continuing the charge. Once more out of danger of being pitched from the saddle, d’Orbessan straightened and braced with lance and shield. The rabble of peasants broke and scattered. He’d largely expected that, for few men could face a charge of knights and not panic. He did not waste the lance. They would be ridden down if they were not out of the way fast enough; they didn’t really matter and time was now of the essence. He set his slit-framed gaze upon a routier with a pike standing atop the low fence of timbers. His lance point shifted slightly towards his target as he adjusted, careful to keep his horse angled so that it would not fall to that pole-arm. Then the bowels of hell opened up all around them.

With a chorus of thuds and clatters that temporarily drowned out the endless chiming of the bells and the songs of war from the hillside, and even threatened to overcome the laboured drumming of his own blood in his ears, missile weapons were released all along the walls and clouds of bolts, arrows and rocks hurtled at them.

D’Orbessan was among the first victims as a black-fletched crossbow bolt thudded into his horse’s neck so hard that it became buried deep, only the flights showing to prove that it had struck. The horse did not even have time to panic or buck, simply slewing to a halt, legs breaking, ploughing down to the turf. Only instinct born of time served in such battles saved the rider. D’Orbessan registered his horse’s demise even as it happened and he let go of the reins, shield and his lance together, slipping his feet back out of the stirrups to avoid becoming entangled with the dying beast.

As the horse crashed to a stop, he was thrown forwards over its head, yet he was ready. Knowing how easy it was to break one’s neck in such a situation, he tucked his head down to his chest and brought his arms in, rolling in a ball and taking the dangerous momentum from his fall. He rolled and slid to a halt taking only a few bruises and pulling the odd muscle and, ignoring such temporary injuries, sprang to his feet as fast as a man in a chain hauberk could be expected to, ripping his sword from its scabbard.

Along the line perhaps half the knights had made it to the barricade mounted and had managed to plough into the defenders, spearing men with their lances and then discarding them to draw their swords and go to the brutal work that awaited them.

D’Orbessan ran now, sword ready, and clambered up the slope of the barricade towards the pike-wielding foe. His shield lost back with his horse, he instead threw himself to one side and instantly regretted it as he felt his leg give and he staggered, almost falling. He’d recovered well in the month since the battle at Las Navas de Tolosa, and was almost back to his old self, but there were still weaknesses there, and occasionally they made themselves known. His arm had miraculously not been broken, but there was little strength in it still. It was fine for holding a shield or reins, but little use for anything more than that, and his leg seemed fine now until he twisted on it the wrong way, when all the pain and tenderness he’d experienced on that battlefield in Iberia came flooding back.

He righted himself with some difficulty, but that gave the routier the chance to similarly recover, and the man tilted his pike and gripped it in the manner of a quarterstaff. D’Orbessan swung his blade with all his strength, and the mercenary caught the blow on the ash haft between his hands, knocking it aside and then swinging hard, bringing the butt-end of the weapon round to the Frank’s gut. D’Orbessan prayed his leg would hold up and lurched out of the path of the wooden staff, turning a full circle in the process, allowing the sword that had been knocked aside to continue to build up its momentum as it now came round for a second blow.

His sword bit into the side of the man’s padded gambeson, tearing into the fabric, spilling out the contents and slamming into his ribs hard enough to break them. The routier bellowed his pain and fury as he fell away, and d’Orbessan ignored him further, turning his attention to the next man. A local in a leather jerkin with a padded cap threw himself forward bellowing his own war cry as he swung a hastily assembled mace formed from a heavy rock bolted to a club.

‘Moissac, droit, et Dieu!’

D’Orbessan managed to duck to the side enough to take the blow only as a glancing one to the shoulder, painful but far from debilitating. His own counterstrike, an overhand chop, smashed the man’s weapon arm at the elbow, a blow that would leave him crippled for the rest of his life even if he lived through this day.

Bellowing in agony, the man grabbed his flopping limb and staggered back. He would not have to worry about his future for Sir Giraud de Croi to the right landed a blow a moment later on the man’s temple, crushing his skull. With Giraud at his side, d’Orbessan began to bellow obscenities and wade into the mass of defenders. His conroi were with him, or three of them, anyway. The other was still on his horse, swinging his sword with glee a few paces away. Snarling, the four men hacked and hewed their way through the rabble, their armour protecting them while that of their opponents was largely poorly padded clothing. The well-armoured men of Moissac’s defence would shortly be on the walls and within the town.

By the time the defenders at the barricade broke and ran, leaving their last few desperate men to die at the hands of the savage crusaders, the infantry was with the knights. Having crossed the ditch, many were dirty and soaked, some limping and all cursing in their own idiom.

The wall breach lay ahead and, bellowing, the knights and their men at arms ran for it. A fresh volley of missiles from the walls thudded out now that the defenders could be sure of not hitting their own. D’Orbessan registered the death of Giraud de Croi with little time to mourn as a crossbow bolt smashed into the man’s visor, tearing through the metal and embedding itself in the knight’s face. The man to his left vanished too in a puff of pulverised matter as a stone fully a foot across smashed into him, driving him into the ground. D’Orbessan ran on, knowing that it was unseemly to wish ill on others and yet wickedly, selfishly grateful that his companions had taken the death blows rather than himself.

As the knights and men at arms converged on the potential breach, he became aware of new voices and turned to see a fresh party of horsemen bearing down on the fight, coming to help exploit this breach. His eyes widened to see the banner of de Montfort himself among the riders. The commander of the army was coming to take heads himself for the glory of God.

With a burst of renewed strength, determined to beat the great crusader earl to the wall, d’Orbessan ran, feet pounding, breath coming in laboured puffs within the metallic, echoing world of his helmet. With a prayer and a leap, he reached the wall and began to swing his blade above the hastily assembled redoubt. He felt it biting into flesh and bouncing from shields, swords and armour, but could not identify any specific target, for the world had become that narrow eye-slit and all he could see were shapes moving this way and that above the freshly-mortared stones. Something thudded into his shoulder and something else bounced off his helmet. He could just hear, above the din of what was happening around him, the distant peal of the bells, the faint harmony of the priests and, more importantly, the thud and thwack of crossbows atop the wall. He was relatively safe from them, being too close to make much of a target.

He was completely unaware that the fight was over until suddenly he swung and there was nothing there to stop his blow. He jerked his head this way and that, trying to get a good view, but failed. Reaching up with his weak left arm, he unfastened the strap beneath his chin and pulled off the heavy steel helmet, tossing it away as he turned his blond-maned head this way and that, scattering sweat as he did so.

The fighting had stopped. The enemy had pulled back into the breached wall and were still standing poised, ready to renew the action, but his own side had stepped back as well, and the missiles had ceased to fly freely. As the din receded, those two strange sounds once more filled the valley, the ring of bells and the chanting of monks.

His eyes fell upon de Montfort, seated in the saddle within easy shot of the enemy crossbows, fearless, defying them to the last, surrounded by his nobles. His herald was waving a white flag of truce, and the enemy had responded with a temporary cessation.

‘Hear me, people of Moissac,’ the Earl of Leicester bellowed. ‘The Cathar heresy will not stand, but it is the objective of Father Dominic and his missionaries to bring these lost souls back to the bosom of mother Church, not to drown Occitania in their blood. The saving of souls is our business, not the murdering of men.’

A tense, suspicious silence hung over Moissac. No one replied, and so de Montfort swept out his arm, indicating the city. ‘Moissac will fall this day, even if we must pay the price with every drop of blood in our bodies. This is the word of the Pope and the command of God, neither of which is to be gainsaid by us mere mortals. But in the interest of furthering our goal this is the time, and the only time, in which I shall offer terms.’

The atmosphere became noticeably more intrigued, if the suspicion had not yet faded, but still no one spoke for the defenders.

‘These are my terms. You will accept them now, or we will press on and take Moissac amid a lake of blood and the rubble of your city, a landscape of death and destruction as not seen since God himself set his sights upon Sodom and Gomorrah. You will surrender Moissac to me. The garrison of routiers will be delivered to my army, along with any fighting men sent here from Toulouse. Their fates are not your concern. You will then agree to seek absolution from the Church for your heresy and will agree to seek a return to God’s love and to never again raise a hand to a Christian. In return for this, the people of Moissac will be spared in their entirety. Those who repent will be allowed to live on as before, and only those who are persistent in their heretical ways will pay a price. Moreover, my army will be kept outside the city and there will be no rapine or looting. These are the best terms for which you could hope, and they will be issued only this once. Speak your will, people of Moissac.’

---

The victorious crusader earl rode at the head of the column of knights. The majority of the army remained encamped in the valley as promised, while a score of the most important knights and clergy in the army moved into the city to take control. Behind de Montfort came the abbot of Moissac, ready to reclaim his seat, and d’Orbessan owed his presence to the absence of his master the baron, yet he rode proud in that group. De Montfort had offered terms more readily than usual, his piety driving him to preserve its famous abbey from harm, and his prosaic nature leading him to minimise the number of casualties he might risk, given that his force was still outnumbered in this land. Moissac had fallen and the Earl of Leicester himself had thanked d’Orbessan for his part in it. Such honours were not to be taken lightly.

As they entered the wide square before the abbey church, a local in the drab clothes of a commoner hurried forward, bowing deeply. De Montfort stopped before him and motioned him to rise.

‘Yes?’

‘Your lordship, we have gathered the routiers and the Toulouse men and housed them in the hôtel across the square. They have been disarmed and are yours to command, my lord.’

De Montfort nodded, frowning. ‘And where are your noblemen in this moment of crisis that a common man should be sent to address an earl?’

The speaker, face draining of colour, faltered. ‘My lord, the duc has retreated to the abbey church and would have no part in this. As such I speak for the citizens of Moissac in his absence.’

De Montfort nodded again. ‘You do a commendable service, sir. I predict that a man of such character will go far in the new Occitania.’ Ignoring him further, he turned to the man on the horse just behind and to the left, his brother Guy. ‘Have the routiers and the Toulouse men roped together and taken to the field by the river. There they will have their heads struck from their shoulders.’

A stunned silence fell across those watching in the square.

‘Lord?’ called a man in a priest’s robes. ‘These men are your prisoners. Are they to be treated as criminals?’

De Montfort rounded on the man. ‘These men are either enemies of the Church from the Count of Toulouse’s own house, or they are low and mean mercenaries who have chosen to fight beneath the banner of heresy purely for financial gain. They are not to be pardoned or released. They must pay the price. Are you so forgiving of heresy and evil, Churchman?’ There was no reply from the priest, and so the column moved on towards the church.

As they dismounted before the doorway, De Montfort looked up at the great decorative tympanum above the door with appreciation and great interest. ‘A representation of the Last Judgment, is it not?’

The abbot, also dismounted now and standing close by, smiled. ‘That it is, my lord. It is a celebrated work.’

‘And wholly in keeping with our business here.’

With that, de Montfort strode into the shade of the church, his knights and priests following closely. D’Orbessan blinked as he adjusted to the relatively dim interior after the bright morning sunlight. A man dressed in rich clothing, his cote displaying the heretical yellow cross of the Cathars, stood in the centre of the nave, between the knights and the altar. De Montfort approached him and stopped at arm’s length.

‘You are the master of this town?’

‘I have had the honour of holding it against would-be conquerors who seek gold and land under the guise of piety, yes.’

De Montfort’s gaze hardened. ‘You persist in your heresy?’

‘If you are asking whether I continue to hold true to my faith and not cower and bow to yours simply because you can master a rampart, then yes. I do.’

‘And you will not recant?’

The man, face serene, shook his head.

De Montfort turned and gestured to four of the locals who had followed them in through the door and stood at a distance. ‘Take him.’

The nobleman remained proud and immobile as four nobodies grabbed at his arms, and De Montfort’s expression hardened ever further. ‘Four of your peasants murdered the nephew of the archbishop over there. What do the scriptures tell us again? The book of Exodus? Soothly if the death of her followeth, he shall yield life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, sore for sore. The Last Judgement indeed.’

At a motion from, the earl, the four peasants drove the nobleman to the ground and held him there in the centre of the nave, kneeling on his wrists and ankles, pinning him down. De Montfort turned to the abbot, who d’Orbessan half expected to object to such a thing happening in his church, but the abbot’s eyes were gleaming with malice. This was, after all, the man who had held his own abbey against him in the name of a heresy.

‘My dear abbot, this is your call.’

The churchman looked down at the stricken noble. ‘He who is unrepentant and an enemy of the lord cannot be saved.’ He turned and motioned to two monks who had followed in the train. D’Orbessan realised that this had been orchestrated beforehand. It was a show for the crowd, for de Montfort and the abbot had already known they would find this man here. The monks came forward carrying a stone cross that was clearly of immense weight from the struggling of the bearers. They heaved the thing over to the nobleman and then lowered it onto his chest. D’Orbessan winced at the sound of cracking bones under the