“Sir William, I have something I desperately need to tell you.”

“Pierre, there’s never been anything you’ve brought to me I ‘desperately’ needed to be told. Will this be a repeat? Something which could’ve waited for next week?”

“No, sir. I promise. It’s far more important.”

William drew a hand to his forehead and after rubbing his temples a few times finally conceded. “Go ahead, Pierre. Tell me what’s so important.”

“It’s the knights templer, sir.”

“You’re telling me about my own order? You have to be joking.” 

“No, sir. Not the Knights Templ-AR, the Knights Templ-ER. It ends e-r. They’re impersonating our order. They’ve gone all over the place demanding money and obeisance. They’ve collected payments for some of our largest loans. In England, they even participated in the Baron’s War and helped to force King John to sign Magna Carta against the wishes of His Holiness.”

“Why am I just hearing about this now? The Baron’s War ended two years ago.”

“Well it turns out that no one liked King John very much so they let it go. But once these Templers began demanding money, people started taking the issue seriously. I received three letters this morning and they all corroborate each other. King Phillip’s court sent one. Another came from William Marshal. The final came from Margrave Herman in Baden-Baden. They want accounts for our actions and to be paid back.”

“That’s nonsense. They can’t expect us to pay for their mistake.” 

“They have letters which bear your seal, my lord.”

“I—How?—Odo!”

“Sir?”

“I have that seal to Odo and the dolt lost it. He said he lost it in the Mediterranean, so I didn’t worry about it, but he was either wrong or he lied. This is a nightmare.”

“Sirs?” said a page who ran up to them with a piece of parchment. 

“Yes?”

He handed the parchment to Pierre who hurriedly read it. “Sir? This is from His Holiness. He demands an explanation. The Templers took four thousand silver pieces from the treasury.”

“This is too much. I need to participate on the assault on Damietta. I’ll deal with this when I return. We’ll stop these Templers.”

—

William of Chartres was wounded during an assault on Damietta and never recovered. He died of typhus related to his wounds. He never had the opportunity to stop the Templers. By chance—or subterfuge—Pierre passed the same night. None were left who knew of these fraudulent Templars. 

The Templers would continue to defraud, interfere, and scam their way throughout Europe, using the similarity of their name to enrich themselves. It was in this way their dishonesty went undiscovered and all of their sins were placed on the legitimate Templars. 

Nearly one hundred years after the events I recorded here, the Templars were destroyed by Phillip IV of France, and many of the Templers sins were used as justification. You see, the evils of the Templars you’ve seen in movies were all true, but they were conducted by the Templers.   

The truth was discovered too late to save the Templars from dissolution and infamy. Fortunately, the modern idea of trademarks was created to prevent this from happening again once the truth was discovered in nineteenth-century France.