The Prophecy and the Templar Scroll

Chapter 1 - 1280

Chapter 1 - 1280

An eight-year old boy tethered his mount to the trunk of a sturdy pine tree and ascended the steep cliff cautiously, oblivious to the drizzle and the cold. The muddy path curved and sloped upward abruptly, and he was mindful of each step he took on the slippery stones.

He came to a secluded cave and stared at it with trepidation. Its entrance was partly covered by the falling water of the cascade and partly by the large branches of an old willow. With reluctant steps, he reached the cave opening and took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dim light.

“Come in, king’s son,” a rough female voice startled him.

He shivered, as if cold steel had brushed the back of his neck. How did she know who he was? For a moment, he was tempted to turn around and run away, but his desire to find out the answer to the question that niggled at him like a sore tooth was too strong to ignore.

He pressed a piece of silver in the woman’s hand. “Tell me what you see,” he said, assuming the air of authority kings are meant to have.

The woman looked him up and down, put the silver aside, and took his hand in hers. The boy felt the calloused hand studying his palm and the nails tracing his palm lines but told himself he had nothing to fear. The sheath with his knife was secured safely in his boot.

His father would probably punish him if he ever found out that he had sought counsel outside the palace and the Church. He forbade the old ways, but when young Amaury heard the servants in the kitchen talk about the seer in the wilderness, he could not help wondering what his future held. And God must have approved, for his father had decided to take him hunting with him in the vicinity of where the soothsayer dwelled the very next morning.

The woman with the ageless face fixed him with her gaze but remained taciturn.

“Well?” the boy asked eagerly. “Will I be king?”

It was unlikely. He was the fourth of King Hugh’s sons. The four boys, John, Bohemond, Henry, and Amaury had been born within a difference of thirteen summers. But disasters happen, he thought. Warriors perish on battlefields. Even accidents and diseases occur.

The woman quivered and not entirely from the cold. The sun had vanished from the sky when the boy entered the cave. It was a sign of wroth gods. His hand foretold abhorrent deeds. She shut her eyes and chanted an incantation. Amaury stared at the unearthly creature in awe.

When the woman spoke at length, she chose her words carefully. “You will rule over the people of this island, but there will be blood on your hands. Ask me no more. Now, leave!”

The boy looked at her stunned. She seemed exhausted. He wanted to ask what she meant about the blood on his hands but did not dare. Not because she forbade him, but because he was afraid to find out. He was too stricken to attempt to ask, though he would wonder many a time in the years to come why she did not say the actual words: that he would be king.

Still dazed by the revelation, he scrambled to his feet. His heart beating like rumbling, distant thunder, Amaury sprinted back to his mount, balancing safety and speed, shielding his face with his arms from the branches. With trembling fingers he untethered his horse, jumped into the saddle, and dug his spurs into his flanks. He galloped back to the hunting party lest he be missed.