The Isaac Question: Templars and the Secret of the Old Testament (Templars in America Series Book 5)

by David S. Brody

  “We call them glowworms in England,” Amanda said.

  “But they don’t crawl like worms, they fly,” Astarte responded.

  Cam emerged with a full black trash bag from the chamber. “We called them lightning bugs when I was a kid. They make light to attract mates in the spring; it’s actually a bit early for them, probably because it’s been so warm.”

  “My teacher says it’s global warming,” Astarte said.

  “Might be,” Cam responded. “But it might also be just a natural cycle of temperature changes. The earth has had lots of mini Ice Ages.” Cam had been investigating the effects of a cold period during the late 1300s in Europe that wiped out the Greenland settlements—most scholars believed the cold discouraged ships from traveling the north Atlantic, but Cam believed instead that the reduction in crop yield had pushed European explorers to brave the icy Atlantic in search of more fertile land. “Amanda, do you know what the climate was like in the middle of the 6th century?” He tossed the trash bag to the side and turned to Astarte. “That’s when historians think the Irish monks might have come to America and built this chamber.”

  Amanda answered his question with one of her own. “Why do you think Irish? These chambers are all over the British Isles.”

  Cam squatted next to her and watched the fire. “I was reading a bit about Brendan the Navigator, the Irish explorer. The legends say he left Ireland around the year 515 and explored the western sea. He sailed in a boat made of ox skins called a curragh—an Irishman named Tim Severin in the 1970s built the same kind of boat and sailed across the Atlantic in it.”

  She nodded. “I’ve heard the stories. But Brendan was a Christian monk, and the chambers in Europe are believed to be built by Druids.”

  “Actually, the legends say that Brendan had fourteen monks with him plus three pagans. Maybe the three pagans were Druids. Even if not, Christianity in Ireland in the early 6th century was just taking hold—it was a long way from Rome and many of the old pagan ways were still followed.” He tapped at his smart phone and found an image he had bookmarked. “Here’s a mosaic showing medieval Irish monks worshiping the sun. They were really just Christianized pagans.” He turned the screen toward Amanda and Astarte as he took a seat on the cooler.

  Early Medieval Irish Monks Worshiping Sun

  She nodded. “Christianized pagans, like you said.”

  “And these are the guys who would have traveled with Brendan.”

  “The legends of the Brendan voyage always resonated with me,” Amanda said. “Ireland is at the far west of the British Isles, a good kicking-off spot for crossing the Atlantic.” She blew lightly on the fire. “But to answer your question, the first half of the 6th century was one of the coldest in history.”

  “How do they know?” Astarte asked. She had found three sticks and was pulling the s’mores supplies from the pack.

  “By looking at tree rings,” Amanda replied. “Scientists believe there may have been a massive asteroid hit or volcanic eruption that polluted the atmosphere around that time, blocking the sun’s rays.”

  Cam nodded. Amanda and he had been so focused on the mystery of the land conveyance that they hadn’t spent much time theorizing about the origins of the chamber. They both loved this kind of mystery, as did Astarte, so the evening promised to be an interesting one. “So, again, a good time to go exploring, looking for food and good land and maybe warmer temperatures,” Cam said.

  “Okay,” Amanda replied, “so let’s run a bit with your Saint Brendan theory. I wrote a report about the Brendan journey back in secondary school—as I recall, he encountered a mountain spouting fire, floating crystal palaces, a smoking hill, a sea monster with horns growing from its mouth, little furry men … I may have missed something. But would a sailor heading west from Ireland encounter these things?”

  Cam shifted forward on the cooler. “I bet Astarte can figure all these places out. Let’s start with a mountain spouting fire—what does that sound like to you?”

  She replied, “A volcano.”

  He nodded. “And we have active volcanoes in Iceland even today, due west of Ireland. What about a floating crystal palace?”

  Astarte bit her lip, then brightened. “I know, an iceberg!”

  “Excellent,” Amanda said. “Next thing was a smoking hill. We showed you pictures of this once, Astarte, from when we went to Iceland.”

  She smiled and nodded. “The steam comes up from underground like fog,” she said, describing the geothermal springs beneath Iceland’s surface.

  “What about the sea monster with horns growing from its mouth?” Cam asked.

  “A walrus?” Astarte replied.

  “Probably,” Amanda answered. “And little furry men?”

  “Were Eskimos little?” the girl asked. “I know they wore animal furs so they probably looked furry.”

  “Generally, they were smaller than Europeans,” Amanda replied.

  “So, based on this,” Cam said as he scratched Venus under the chin, “Brendan and his crew would have come across the northern part of the Atlantic—all these encounters occur in cold-weather locations.”

  “Just like the Vikings did later,” Amanda said. “And don’t forget, the last stop on Brendan’s voyage was a land of plenty, a veritable paradise.”

  Astarte raised her hand. “I know—America!”

  Astarte handed out the sticks and they each impaled a marshmallow.

  “So let’s get back to specifics,” Amanda said. “Brendan sails over, trades with the Native Americans, maybe tries to convert a few of them, builds a chamber to mark the summer solstice as they did in Ireland, and then moves on. Is that it?”

  Cam blew the flames down on a marshmallow. “It’s never that simple,” he smiled. “The legend says he was away for seven years. I think they stayed for a while here in America and built a whole complex down in Connecticut. Parts of it are still standing. It’s called Gungywamp.”

  Astarte giggled. “That’s a funny name.”

  “It’s a Gaelic name—that’s the language they speak in Ireland,” Cam said. “Gungywamp means ‘Church of the People.’ Some historians believe that Gungywamp was Brendan’s headquarters; from there he sent his monks out to try to convert the Native Americans. There are chambers all over New England just like this one—Vermont, out near Worcester, on the Connecticut-New York border—probably built by Brendan’s monks.”

  Amanda pulled a marshmallow off her stick and squished it along with a wedge of chocolate between a couple of graham crackers. “Let me guess: Road trip in our future.”

  Cam grinned. “Of course.” He licked the dessert from his fingers and stood. “But for now I want to compare the construction of this chamber to the techniques in this book.”

  Amanda and Astarte looked at each other and crinkled their noses. “We’ll stay here and guard the s’mores,” Amanda said.

  “Yeah,” Astarte added as Venus licked the marshmallow from her fingers. “Chocolate’s not good for dogs.” She slid another wedge onto a graham cracker. “So we better finish it all to be safe.”

  Dressed in black, Bartol slipped through the unlocked gate, hid his bicycle in the brush and moved silently toward the sound of laughter and the smell of campfire. Careful to stay downwind lest the dog catch his scent, he moved stealth-like, keeping to the shadows with a soft foot and sharp eye. He didn’t need his night-vision goggles—the light of the fire illuminated Cameron Thorne and his family like actors on a stage.

  For tonight at least, Bartol planned to be an audience of one.

  But going forward, Bartol had a plan, a vision. The world needed more thinkers like Cameron Thorne, advocates willing to pull aside the curtain and not censure the truth. Better yet, it needed people like Thorne to evolve into leaders—revolutionaries like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, Vaclav Havel and even Julius Caesar had been prolific authors before becoming statesmen. Thorne had taken a few small steps, appearing on television documentaries and radio talk sho
ws, but did he have what it took to become a true leader?

  Up until this week, Bartol would have shrugged his shoulders at the question. Not now.

  Bartol had learned in his Army Ranger training that a true leader exhibited five essential characteristics: intelligence, commitment, integrity, courage, and resourcefulness. Nobody graduated law school or authored a breakthrough research book without both intelligence and commitment. It was the other three qualities Bartol was unsure of.

  Which was what this past Monday’s ordeal had been all about.

  Integrity: Would Thorne pocket the scratch ticket? Nothing had been stopping him; as far as Thorne knew, the guy who handed him the ticket didn’t know Thorne’s name and didn’t have any way to track him. Bartol had planned it all out—learning when Thorne had reserved a closing room at the Registry of Deeds, buying a fake scratch ticket online, and finally shoving the ticket into Thorne’s hand—but of course Thorne had no way of knowing that. Many people would have taken the half million bucks and bolted.

  Courage: Thorne went back into a smoke-filled apartment—Bartol’s North End studio still reeked of smoke—to rescue a baby. Thorne had no way of knowing, again, that Bartol staged the whole thing and that there never was any baby or real danger.

  Resourcefulness: This had been tougher to orchestrate, but in the end Thorne had earned high grades. Cutting his way through the dumpster and then rolling the dumpster onto its side before it sank was an impressive escape for someone not trained in survival skills.

  “Good job, Thorne,” Bartol whispered, still crouching behind a tree. “I appreciated not having to jump in and drag your ass out of the harbor.”

  When the idea had first hit Bartol one day at work, so quickly and violently that it almost knocked him off his ladder, he dismissed it as a fantasy. But the muse had been an inspired one, perhaps even divinely so. The more Bartol considered it, the more it made sense. Perfect sense. People like Thorne needed soldiers to help him fight against the liberal elite and the politically correct and the other enemies of true Americans. And Bartol was a soldier without a battlefield, a believer in the true greatness of America but with no banner to march behind.

  It was the cause he had been looking for, a way to give some meaning to his otherwise empty existence.

  Fishes swim. Birds fly. Lions hunt. And soldiers fight. Bartol scampered up a slight ridge that offered clear sightlines and unshouldered his pack. He removed a portable steel stick ladder, fit the pieces together, and leaned it against a thick oak tree. He then unclipped a hunter’s treestand—it looked like a folding beach chair—from his pack. Scurrying to the top of the twenty-foot ladder, he tied the treestand to the trunk, tugged on it to make sure it was secure, descended the ladder to retrieve his pack, and finally nestled into his perch.

  His plan was simple: Watch the author, get to know his routines and his habits. In that way he would be able to detect any interruptions in his routine that might put Thorne in danger. The key was to anticipate danger before it arrived. In Thorne’s case, his vulnerabilities were obvious: First, his fiancée. And second, the girl. Anyone who wanted to get to Thorne could easily target either of them.

  Bartol leaned back, considering the possibilities, as the girl’s laughter wafted through the trees. Thorne’s work was important, perhaps crucial. He was the one, it seemed, destined to rewrite the history books and help reestablish the supremacy of the Northern European bloodlines. It was Thorne’s gift, but also his burden.

  The girl and the fiancée might be luxuries Thorne could not afford.

  After an hour Cam reemerged from the stone chamber. He waved his reference book in the air. “I think we have ourselves a very old chamber.”

  Amanda smiled up at him; his enthusiasm for life was one of his most endearing qualities. That and his boy-next-door wholesomeness. “How old?”

  He grinned. “I just told you: Very old.”

  “Very is not a number, Campadre” Astarte announced, using her new pet name for him. She called Amanda ‘Mum.’ Both names hinted at the parental relationship which had not been formalized yet.

  Cam lifted Astarte, plopped onto the ground in her spot next to Amanda and dropped the girl onto his lap. “Ah, the wisdom of a ten-year-old. Before I get to the age of the chamber, I want to tell you about the Druids. Do you remember Merlin in the King Arthur stories?”

  Astarte nodded.

  “Well, he was a Druid.”

  “I thought he was a wizard.”

  Cam smiled. “In many ways they’re the same thing. Druids knew a lot about science and nature, and they used that knowledge to convince the common folk that they had magical powers. So, for example, they often built their shrines in areas where strange lights appeared at night. Sometimes these lights came from swamps, from the methane gas; sometimes they appeared along geological fault lines where tectonic plates containing quartz deposits rubbed together and caused strange blue lights to shoot from the ground.”

  Amanda nodded. “I’ve heard of that; the lights are called earthquake lights.”

  Astarte said, “So the people thought the Druids were doing magic. But it was really just nature.”

  “Exactly.” He handed Astarte his cell phone. “So, remembering all that, I want to do a little experiment. Which way is north?”

  Astarte looked into the sky, found the North Star and pointed toward it.

  “Correct,” Cam said. “Now, open the compass on my phone and go stand in the entrance to the chamber.”

  Astarte did as instructed, Amanda wondering what Cam was up to. “Hey,” she said, “the compass is pointing the wrong way, toward the street.”

  Cam nodded. “It’s an old trick, a hint that the Druids built this chamber. They often buried magnetic stones at the entrance to their chambers. It was another way to convince people that they had magical powers.”

  “I don’t get it,” the girl replied.

  “Well, those people didn’t know about magnets. So if the Druid priest floated a piece of metal in a bowl of oil, he could make the metal spin around like magic because of the magnet buried beneath the bowl. Anyone seeing a metal bar spinning around for no reason would think the Druid had strange, special powers.”

  “Well played,” Amanda chuckled, amazed at the random collection of knowledge Cam had somehow acquired over his life. “What else did you find inside the chamber?”

  “The big thing is there’s no evidence of any modern quarrying work in any of the stones. That means the chamber definitely dates back before 1800.”

  Amanda smiled. “Does that qualify as very old?”

  “No. It still could have been built by Colonial farmers as a root cellar.”

  Amanda made a face. “This chamber feels too … elaborate … to be a root cellar. It’s too carefully constructed. It feels ceremonial to me.” Plus it looked like the Druid-built chambers all over Europe.

  “I agree,” Cam said. “From what my reference book says, the corbelling construction technique—the way they used the stones to support the dome—is the same as they used in the British Isles to build chambers a thousand years ago, and even before that.”

  She nodded.

  “Plus,” he continued, “look at the land around our chamber here. We’re on a pretty steep slope, so this was not exactly prime farming land. And from what I saw from the land records, the nearest farm was almost a quarter-mile away. So why build a root cellar here?”

  “You wouldn’t. And if you did, you’d make the entrance wide enough for a wheelbarrow,” she said, repeating her earlier argument. “Plus the floor in there is damp—you’d want something drier to keep your vegetables from rotting.”

  Astarte jumped in. “What about the Native Americans?” She was half Native American herself. “Could they have built it?”

  “Good question,” Cam said. “The Native Americans did build sweat lodges, sometimes with stone.” They used these for purification ceremonies. “But why would they have buried magnetic rocks? And I
don’t think they built with this corbelling technique.”

  “And what about ventilation?” Amanda asked. “There’s a small vent hole in the chamber, but wouldn’t you need a full chimney in a sweat lodge?” She was trying to be objective about this, but she had seen so many similar chambers in the British Isles that she couldn’t believe this chamber was built by either Colonists or Native Americans. It was not that she thought the Native Americans were incapable of building such a structure, merely that in the case of this chamber they had not.

  They sat for a few moments in silence, staring at the flames. Cam winked at Amanda and shifted. “I think I’m going to have a snack.” He was up to something, probably sensing Astarte was getting bored. Amanda just didn’t know what.

  He pulled a small jar of mayonnaise from a freezer bag in the backpack and opened the lid. “Amanda, can you hand me a spoon?”

  Astarte watched, her head angled to the side. Keeping a straight face, Cam dipped the spoon deep into the jar and extracted a large white glob. Amanda snickered; the vanilla pudding box she had spotted in the garbage bag at home suddenly made sense. Eyeing Astarte, Cam slowly slid the spoon into his mouth and sucked it clean.

  “Gross!” she shouted, her face contorting. “Yuck. Disgusting.”

  Cam dipped the spoon in again, sucked it clean and licked his lips. “What? It’s just egg yolks, oil and vinegar.” He held out the spoon. “Here, try some.”

  “No way.”

  He pushed the spoon closer. “Just one bite. Come on.”

  Astarte rolled away and leapt to her feet, Cam scrambling after her and waving the spoon as Astarte shrieked and scurried toward the woods. Venus, tail wagging, followed.

  As their laughing voices faded, Amanda sighed. How strange life was, how odd its twists and turns. A few years ago she had moved from London to Westford hoping for a fresh start. Initially, she had been miserable here—alone and friendless. Then Cam appeared, then Venus, and then Astarte, and now she couldn’t imagine a life without them. It was almost too good to be true.