Year of Our Lord 1305. The Order had been betrayed.
Under the waning moon that cast angular shadows on the stone of the roads, the Templars rode in silence. France, once their refuge and stronghold, had turned its back on them. The possible betrayal by Philip IV and the complicity of Pope Clement V had sealed their fate. But these men were no ordinary knights. They were mathematicians who had drawn complex diagrams to construct cathedrals that defied gravity, cartographers who understood maps with precision no other navigator could match, architects who mastered sacred geometry, alchemists who distilled hidden secrets from the texts of the Wise of Alexandria, scholarly friars who memorized forbidden scriptures in the monasteries of the East.
At the forefront, Master Alaric raised his hand, signaling the group to stop. His silhouette was outlined by the spectral light of the moon, and his gaze was lost on the horizon. Beside him, an old monk held a parchment. The writing was a mix of Latin and mathematical calculations.
"The calculations do not lie, Master," murmured the friar. "The astrolabe and the maps indicate that beyond the Great Ocean there is land; the trade winds could guide us."
"And if it's a mistake, Brother Aimery?" inquired a young knight, with a shield upon which the cross paté still gleamed.
The monk smiled faintly and turned to the gathered men.
"Our mistake has been trusting the kings of Europe. This science, young one, is more faithful than any monarch. Aristotle and Ptolemy taught us that the world is greater than what we see. Our own studies in Alexandria, in the ancient treatises, reveal to us that there are lands beyond what they call the Mare Tenebrosum. We cannot stay here waiting for the pyre."
The master nodded. He knew that geodesy and maps did not lie. They had learned to read the sky like Venetian and Genoese sailors, and their knowledge went beyond the dogmas of the Church.
"Then we will set sail. We are not just warriors. We are builders, sages, and navigators. If Christendom has abandoned us, we will find a New Jerusalem beyond the Mare Tenebrosum."
A murmur of approval spread among the men. In their hearts burned a flame that neither the Pope nor the King could extinguish. The Templar Order had not died. It had merely changed course.
That night, the waning moon witnessed the beginning of a new crusade, not for the Holy Land, but for a virgin and unknown land, where the betrayal of Europe would never reach them.
. . .
The secret shipyards of the Order, hidden along the coasts of La Rochelle, housed the fleet that would take them to their promised destination.
The ships, designed with the mastery of centuries of naval engineering, assembled and developed by the Templar builders. Each knot of wood, every peg, was placed to ensure their resistance to the onslaught of the Atlantic. The joints, impregnated with fir resin and sealed with pitch, prevented the infiltration of water and ensured buoyancy even in the most merciless storms.
Grand Master Alaric of Beaujeu gazed at the night sky from the deck of the Santa Helena, one of the most imposing ships in the fleet. His bronze astrolabe reflected the glow of the stars as his mind calculated the latitude with the precision learned from the texts of Al-Farghani and the navigation treatises compiled by the Andalusian sages.
"The will of the Almighty guides us, but we must not forget that God helps those who help themselves. That is why we have charted this journey with science, not just with faith."
The eastern wind blew with renewed intensity, filling the sails with a creak that resonated in the wood of the masts. The torches on the shore glowed like fireflies in the distance as the fleet began its departure at dawn, when the fog mixed with the foam of the waves.
The sailors, weathered by years at sea, uttered prayers as they tightened the ropes and checked the pulleys of the rigging. The navigation charts, drawn with the meticulousness of ancient Muslim geographers and corrected according to the treatises of the cartographer monks, marked an uncertain course. But the conviction of the Temple was not based on certainties, but on faith and strategy.
In the hold of the Santa Helena, the Templar brothers sharpened their swords and checked their crossbows, aware that the dangers of the journey did not only come from the sea, but also from possible enemies waiting on unknown shores.
"I have seen storms devour entire fleets," said the old navigator Raoul de Saint-Denis to one of the young knights tying the barrels of fresh water. "But what troubles me is not the sea... it is what awaits us on the other side."
The young Templar looked up, determination shining in his eyes.
"If Providence has brought us here, it will not abandon us on the horizon. We will fight if necessary."
Raoul smiled with resignation as the ship pulled away from the French coast, venturing into the vastness of the unknown.
. . .
The Old Continent burned with rumors and betrayals. Behind them, Europe swirled with the blind fury of the Inquisition and the insatiable ambition of Philip IV, the King of France, who pulled his strings with the cold precision of a calculating chess player. It was not enough to expel them from Christendom; their very memory had to be erased from the annals of time.
The Templars, once the bankers of kings and custodians of the Holy Land, were now hunted as Heretics. Pope Clement V, a puppet in Philip's hands, had sealed their fate with an edict that would echo like a death sentence.
The vessels carrying them were not war galleys or merchant ships; they were new ships that had been created to serve both roles, hastily adapted for the journey. The wood of their hulls, treated with a mixture of tar and pine resin, creaked with each wave's impact, and the salt air corroded the hemp rope that secured the sails. In the holds, barrels of fresh water and salted meat shared space with chests sealed under Templar seals, containing not only riches in gold and silver but perhaps even more valuable secrets: documents, relics, and knowledge hidden from the eyes of the world.
The wind, both enemy and ally, whistled between the masts, filling the sails with a force that could decide the life or death of those men.
On deck, the Templar Knights, stripped of their once-glorious order but still firm in their faith and code, watched the horizon with the tension of soldiers who have known war and now face an even crueler battle: uncertainty. Men forged in the sands of Palestine, trained in the discipline of hand-to-hand combat and siege warfare strategy, now had to trust in the Will of God and the science of the navigators.
One of them, with his gaze fixed on the west, murmured in a deep voice:
"Beyond this line, there is no return."
Another, a veteran with sun-weathered skin from Outremer, responded without taking his eyes off the horizon:
"Nor is there behind us".
And so, with treacherous Europe at their backs and the unknown before them, they plunged into the blue abyss, seeking a new destiny where the Sword and the Cross could still write History.