ne night, I reckon it must have been
early October 1307, as I was walking home from the tavern along the Quai
d'Orsay, I was feeling quite light-headed. You know how it goes with Mathieu,
one bottle of wine is too much and all the wine in the world is not enough.
The mist was really thick, so my drinking was not the only reason for my
tipsy walk, mind you. Anyway, as I was standing right at the bank, wondering
whether I should go home at all and let my dear missus yak me into oblivion,
or should I go back and open another one with Mathieu, I saw a lightless
galley drift down the river. This was odd. I have been in the boating trade
myself - I would never enter the river at night, not without some light,
but this galley just floated down, out of the mist, passed me without a sound,
and then disappeared in the thick fog. Then there was another one, and another,
and yet another, eighteen in all. When I tried to squint my eyes, I think
I saw the red patté cross on the ships' sails, but at that time I
could not say why the Templars would venture out in the thick of the night
with the whole fleet. So I returned to the tavern and had a few more, but
no one would believe me when I tried to tell people of what I saw. It was
only after the arrests and the rumours of the missing Templar treasure that
Mathieu finally agreed that I might have seen something on that night. After
all, it was only a few days before the arrests began, and people started
to wonder about the fleet. And let me tell you, the fleet left Paris that
night, and returned never."
uch a story might well have been told
by the people of Paris in 1307. Apparently, despite Philip the Fair's extensive
red tape campaign, the Templars had heard of the impending arrests and moved
their funds and threasures out of Paris. In the Temple and the Lodge,
Baigent and Leigh suggest that the fleet escaped down the Seine, out into
the Atlantic, around the far side of Ireland, and entered Scotland unscathed.
Surely the finance officer and his closest companions escaped the arrests,
as there is no record of them in the otherwise very thorough lists of arrested
Templars, and escape from Paris by land was well nigh impossible. Also, the
booty Philip expected to find at the Paris preceptory, which should have
been huge by all standards, was for a large part not found, and to transfer
it by land was also impossible. Hence the assumption that the treasure left
Paris by the Seine.
he Templar fleet was a concept in
its own class in the Medieval world. Soon after the founding of the Order
it found that by far the most expedient route to and from the Holy Land went
by sea, and they began assembling a fleet. Soon thereafter the fleet was
large enough to merit complaints from ports (to whom the Templars paid no
taxes, being ecclesiastically exempt) that the Templar fleet was trafficking
too much and harassing other users of the ports. At the peak of the Order
they were transferring 6,000 pilgrims yearly to Palestine, not to mention
the arms, fighters, cloth, weaponry, and other items of trade. The Templar
fleet was safer than other carriers, because they were escorted by armed
galleys, and the Order could be trusted not to sell its passengers off to
the Muslims.
urely it is evident that Philip the
Fair wanted a piece of the action, too. The fleet must have been quite a
lure in his eyes. However, he did not capture it as it slipped through his
fingers. It is possible the fleet headed south to seek asylum among the Muslims,
with whom the Order was in friendly terms, but to cross into the Mediterranean
from Gibraltar would have been hard, if not impossible. Also the route north
was perilous, because the Irish Sea was patrolled by forces loyal to the
King of England. The only truly safe route was to run round Ireland and then
to pass just south of the Mull of Kintyre and enter the sound behind it.
There is some evidence to corroborate Baigent and Leigh's claim of the fleet
reaching Scotland. In a place called Kilmartin there is a lonely graveyard
in the small village in which there are over 80 graves
of Templars. Scotland also figures prominently in Freemason mythology,
which may or may not be evidence of Templar survival in Scotland into the
14th and 15th centuries.
