A bastard’s bastard, he would never know that he carried the blood of the Templars in his veins. That was only speculated after his death, being proved, later, by the researcher who followed his short life.

He did it because he was a runner…

Hardship was the key; hardship and the words his cruel companions at the parish school carved on his leg with a blunt knife, the day he won the local race, aged seven. As he sat, crying in the shadows, he lamented the departure, that year, of his father, who might between drunken bouts, have defended him. His mother had surrendered to the bitter cold the previous winter.

The wound in the thigh, though infected, had healed, but its shadow had never entirely faded. The yellow and pink scar of three words would remain, and the pain of the memory with it.

He bettered himself, using scripture to win favours, feeling the stories in the Bible, rather than understanding them with his mind. It brought him comfort and an inner knowing that he was touching the truth. Sometimes that truth contradicted the words, like the walls of an old house falling down and revealing that it had always concealed an intact and pristine structure, behind; a structure that never faded.

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