Brian Sadler Archaeology 04 - The Bones in the Pit

by Bill Thompson

  Saint John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, was charged by our Saviour from the cross to care for the Lord’s mother as his own. And he did so. John took the Virgin Mary with him to Ephesus. At the appointed time Saint John hid the Most Holy Relics there for eternity. And there they would have stayed if it were not for this unrest in the land.

  Our mission comes from God our Father. The mission is not ours, but His. We will not fail.

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  The men who rode to Ephesus, who now transport the Most Holy Relics, dispatched an advance man, a rider on the fastest horse, to give us news of their progress. The relics are in Italy now, more than halfway to our stronghold here in Bruges. We believe they will arrive here in two months’ time. We have arranged a safe hiding place to put the Most Holy Relics until we can determine a final place for them to rest in peace for the remainder of time, until our Lord comes again.

  We have engaged the Rook, a small but swift boat, and twenty of our Templars are presently sailing across the waters to join the Voyager in Bristol. They will accompany him as he searches for the route to China. Their mission is to find an area sufficiently remote and uninhabited, to build a suitable vault for God’s sacred items, and to await the transport of the Most Holy Relics themselves.

  With reliance on God’s guidance our engineers have crafted a complex plan, a means to construct a hiding place that will withstand not only the ravages of nature and time, but the schemes of man as well. The men who travel with the Voyager will build this vault. With God’s grace it will hide the Most Holy Relics forever more.

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  We received word from Bristol that our ship the Rook sailed on the eighth day of May in the year of our Lord Fourteen Hundred Ninety Seven. The Rook accompanied the Voyager’s small ship Matthew and a crew of eighteen. It is fitting that the lead ship is named for one of our Lord’s most trusted and devoted Apostles. We the Knights Templars likewise have been entrusted with the Most Holy Relics. We expect the arrival of our men from Ephesus any day now and are ready to accept the burden of caring for the relics until they can be moved to their final resting place.

  We wish the Voyager, his crew of eighteen brave souls and our own twenty strong Templars God speed and safe travels to China, if that be where God leads them, or to another place God reveals to our men. We all offer much prayer that they will easily recognize the place God has chosen for His relics. We further pray that the construction of the hiding place will be accomplished with speed and accuracy.

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  A day of great celebration here in Bruges! The entourage arrived from Ephesus after five long months of journey across southern Europe and northwards to us. We welcomed them with open arms but no fanfare otherwise. The load they carry contains the Most Holy Relics. Our primary motive now is to move them to the safe place that we have arranged for their temporary safekeeping.

  The Bishop is aware only that some items of importance to the Church are being secreted in the crypts below the nave of the cathedral. He has no knowledge what they are and we have deliberately misled him about the exact whereabouts they will be laid. It is for his own good, as well as the safety of the items themselves, and we ask God’s forgiveness for the lies we have told this man of the church.

  There have been rumors in this city that our Order is bringing important items of the Church here for safekeeping. Despite our efforts we have been unable to stop word from being spread. It is unfortunate that we cannot tell the populace what the relics really are. We fear that the people believe we are bringing things of great monetary value – gold and silver, precious stones and ancient cups, perhaps even the Holy Grail. These are things people will steal and even kill for. But this is not what we protect.

  If they could only know the Most Holy Relics are far, far more valuable than mere silver or gold. They are the most precious things on Earth and we, the Knights Templars who are entrusted with their perpetual care, will not shirk in our duty to defend and protect them to the death.

  Those of our Order will guard the relics at all times while they rest here in Bruges. We pray to God for their safety and thank Him for their successful journey from Ephesus.

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  For these past four months we have ensured the safety of the Most Holy Relics. As far as the populace knows they lie safely beneath the nave of the cathedral, protected at every moment by one or another of our Templars.

  The truth about their whereabouts is the most closely guarded secret in our history. People in Ephesus think the relics are still there; our Templar brethren removed them and whisked them out of the city gates under cover of darkness. The citizenry here in Bruges believe we put something valuable in the cathedral crypt, now closely guarded by our own soldiers. How surprised the people, even the Bishop himself, would be to know the Most Holy Relics lie hidden in plain sight. At times the best hiding place is no hiding place at all.

  There has of course been no word from our hearty travelers on the Rook for these four months. We pray they found a suitable place to build the final resting place and today are hard at work constructing it according to the plans of the Templar engineers.

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  By God’s grace we received news today of our brethren and the Rook. One of our own was assigned to wait in Bristol until the Voyager’s ship Matthew returned from its trip to China. At last the Voyager has returned to Bristol. Our brother received news from the Voyager along with a letter embossed with a Templars seal. Our brother rode day and night to the coast of England. He boarded a ship and today arrived in Bruges carrying the letter from our brothers on the Rook.

  The two ships bearing the Voyager’s crew and our twenty brave men reached land after almost fifty days at sea. It did not appear to be China, the Voyager said. Perhaps it was a previously unknown land. While the Voyager explored the apparently uninhabited shoreline, several of our men took our small boat a few miles north and found a perfect place for the relics. It was as though God led them directly to an island not far from the mainland, with a small, protected bay. The location is remote but tranquil. It will meet our needs completely. Thanks be to God.

  Our brothers advised the Voyager they would create a Knights Templars settlement in this land and sailed the Rook north to the island. They commenced building rude shelters to house themselves during construction of the hiding place. Within a week they had begun to excavate a shaft, felling mighty oak trees as they needed the wood to shore up the sides of the pit they were creating.

  It was unfortunate that the Voyager chose to involve himself in things best left to our brothers. He and his men sailed the Matthew north to see where our brethren had gone. They saw our settlement, the construction of the pit and its location. Going there was an unfortunate decision by this seafaring man. He has been of immense help to us. Now what he has seen is a liability. When the time is right we must deal with him.

  The secrets we protect are the most important things on Earth and we are charged by God to use any means to ensure their safety. For now the Voyager knows only that we are building a settlement. If he ever returns to this place we have settled, he must be dealt with in the harshest way. The secrets will be maintained and the hiding place secured forever.

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  I am Marco Cabreto, elected by my brothers to lead the Templars. Today, God willing, I along with six others of our Order shall sail with the Voyager back to the land where our men are constructing the secret place.

  A day ago we took the Most Holy Relics from their hiding place, the bookcase of my villa on the coast. They were on the shelf in plain sight and not a person gave them so much as a glance while they rested there.

  It is the twelfth of May in the year of our Lord Fourteen Hundred Ninety Eight. We have the box containing the relics and will transport them on the Voyager’s lead ship. For this trip he has a fleet of five sturdy ships and a crew of three hundred.

  On this voyage we have no need of our own ship, the Rook being already in the unknown land to which we sail,
along with twenty of our brethren.

  We pray the grace and favor of God for smooth sailing and favorable winds as we transverse the great ocean. Protect our precious cargo and our brave men.

  -----

  We have safely returned from our journey. For fourteen months we have aided our brothers as they finished the hiding place, created elaborate safeguards as our engineers instructed, and carefully laid the Most Holy Relics in their new home. Once they were in place it took us several weeks to test the traps. Everything worked as it was intended and we departed for Bruges, confident the relics are now safe for eternity.

  Because of his decision to learn where our Templar brethren were building their settlement, the Voyager was dealt with. One of his five ships had taken on water early into the voyage and returned to Ireland. The other four carried on to the new land with a crew of around two hundred.

  Almost all of the two hundred crew perished from pestilence or an outbreak of food poisoning that was created by our own efforts. The rest of them, including the Voyager himself, were so ill as to be rendered helpless. The twenty-six of us swiftly and easily dispatched them to their eternal fates.

  The taking of human life is an unfortunate but necessary burden we guardians face during our journey. The safety and secrecy of our mission is paramount, entrusted to us by God Himself.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  French Riviera/Dallas

  After the laborious job of decoding the symbol-covered pages Dominic Cardinal Conti read the finished product. It was the last day of his glorious vacation in France and he sat outdoors where he’d spent most of his time. Tomorrow he would fly from Nice to Rome and back to the grind of life inside the Vatican. Today he was engrossed in the translation he had written over many days. He could almost feel the adventure in the words of the Knights Templars as they prepared to move the mysterious “Most Holy Relics” from Ephesus to Bristol, then to unknown points westward across the Atlantic Ocean.

  As Dominic sat reading on the expansive patio overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, Brian Sadler was in Dallas reading the same set of decoded pages. He had printed the computer-generated translation from Jeffrey Montfort’s friend at Cambridge. This time he skipped the diary entries and read only the pages that had been covered with symbols. Those coded entries had to be the most important ones. As he read he was fascinated by what these men had done and unsure what the Most Holy Relics might be.

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  One thing kept popping up in Brian’s mind: North America. Specifically, Oak Island, Nova Scotia. Whoever the Voyager was, he was seeking a passage to China and a monarch had financed him. Brian’s first thought was Christopher Columbus, who believed he’d discovered a shortcut to India but instead arrived in the Americas. Was the Voyager Columbus himself? He stopped to google the phrase “where was Christopher Columbus in 1498?” The answer wasn’t surprising but it removed Columbus from contention as the Voyager.

  First problem: wrong monarch. Although an Italian, Columbus was sailing under the Spanish flag. He would have had no reason to be in Bristol; his departures were from various ports in Spain. Second problem: wrong place. On May 30, 1498, Columbus sailed from Sanlucar, Spain to the New World, specifically the Caribbean islands he had previously visited. He didn’t return until 1500. He couldn’t have sailed from Bristol, England with five ships and three hundred men on May 12 of the same year.

  Setting aside further speculation, Brian continued his scrutiny of the Templars pages. He’d do research later. There were plenty of clues and enough dates in the decoded pages to likely learn the identity of the Voyager. For now he wanted to read the entire story.

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  Cardinal Conti had his bullet point notes from the earlier diary entry close at hand. Finding the identity of the Voyager was a snap – it had taken ten seconds to enter the keywords “Matthew,” “ship” and “1497”. He knew the name of the Voyager and that the ship sailed from Bristol to North America,

  “presumably Newfoundland,” according to the article, in 1497. The Voyager was Giovanni Caboto. When he moved to England and became a sailor for Henry VII he changed his name to John Cabot, a man whom most historians believe claimed the lands of Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Labrador and perhaps Maine for the King of England.

  The information on Cabot fit perfectly. He made his first voyage in May, 1497, just as the manuscript said. His second trip was in May 1498, sailing from Bristol with five ships and a crew of three hundred. The historical facts fit the Templars’ account precisely. The only omission from history was that a small ship called the Rook manned by Knights Templars sailed with Cabot on his first voyage, and that six more of the Order joined Cabot’s second voyage.

  And what of Cabot’s demise? Could the Templars in a faraway land actually have killed him and his men as the coded symbols alleged? Cardinal Conti read the rest of the article. Every fact fit perfectly so far. Did this fit too?

  Historically there is an element of mystery about the fate of John Cabot. An Internet article told the story of Cabot’s five ships, one of which turned back to Ireland after becoming disabled, just as the Templars described. Nothing was ever heard from the rest. Some historians believe the other ships may have been lost at sea. Others think Cabot and his men made it to North America and subsequently disappeared, perhaps killed by natives. A few believe Cabot turned up in Bristol years later after claiming North America for England.

  So, Conti thought, the story told by the Templars could be correct. No one knows for sure what happened to Cabot and his men. There is no proof of the sailor’s whereabouts after his departure from Bristol in May of 1498. A wave of sadness come over the cleric as he came to grips with what he now knew.

  The Cardinal sat back in his chair. So it’s true. Everything fits. Oak Island, Nova Scotia. We Templars have heard for years that our brothers in the fifteenth century buried something valuable there. Relics they termed “most holy.” But those stories were distorted as the centuries progressed, fact blending with fiction until the truth was lost. Apparently there had no longer been a need to have men there to guard the relics. They were hidden well and “forever more” according to the men who buried them. Over the years people forgot exactly what, and where and who. Until now. The coded pages revealed the secret.

  He was deeply disturbed as he pondered the implication of the Templars manuscript. “Most holy relics,” he said out loud. “Bones. There are bones in the pit.” What a sobering, shattering realization. Given the coded Bible verses, that was the only reasonable conclusion. This was horrifying. Everything would change for the Church if this information became public.

  Dominic Conti had no idea Brian Sadler was reading the same translation at the same time, thousands of miles away. The Cardinal believed he was the only man on earth privy to a mysterious, obscure secret that should remain veiled forever. Otherwise it would change the entire world.

  Dominic Conti considered himself a religious man, of course. But he had human frailties – even though he was a leader in the Church he prayed less often than he should. But now he fell to his knees, asking God to help him decide what to do with the secret he had discovered. He never expected an exciting search for hidden treasure to have this outcome. This situation couldn’t be worse. He felt the burden of an entire religion on his shoulders. He felt genuine contrition for his sins, especially the one he now faced. He had opened Pandora’s box. He had unleashed a monster. Tears flowed as he sobbed, praying for guidance for himself but more importantly for the Church.

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  Brian finished the translated pages of symbols. Within minutes he had retrieved the same online information about John Cabot that the Cardinal had seen. It was becoming obvious that Oak Island could be the place the Knights Templars took the relics for burial.

  One other thing piqued Brian’s interest. Maybe it was coincidence, maybe not. John Cabot was an Italian whose birth name was Giovanni Caboto. The man who gave the Templars manuscripts to the Vatican in 1875 was n
amed Marco Caboto. It took less than twenty minutes to review the extensive online biography of John Cabot, and the less expansive but also sufficient profile of the wealthy Marco Caboto. Giovanni Caboto, who became John Cabot, was Marco’s grandfather many generations back. Marco Caboto had somehow obtained the Templars manuscripts because his ancestor ferried the guardians and the Most Holy Relics to Nova Scotia. Incredible.

  Unlike Cardinal Conti who knelt in tearful prayer, Brian was excited, invigorated – feelings he hadn’t known since Nicole’s accident. She came first, of course. But she was improving steadily, thank God. Now Brian had a mission. Now an adventure awaited him!

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Vatican City

  As he sat in an expansive waiting area Brian glanced into his satchel where he had put the copy of the manuscript. Since the Cardinal had had the original book for a couple of weeks Brian presumed he had spent time looking at it. Brian had questions and looked forward to discussing the ancient book with the cleric. Hopefully he would find more information about the other volumes in the set as well.

  Brian was brought to the beautiful office of the Cardinal and offered tea. Dominic Cardinal Conti introduced himself and welcomed Brian to the Vatican.

  “Are you Catholic, Mr. Sadler?” The Cardinal’s English was cultured, tinged by only a slight Italian accent.