“Watching it cook?”
“Microwaves have glass doors in the front so you can watch your food. You must have heard of them. Technology at its best.”
“Sounds delicious,” said Sparke, who hadn’t thought about what to eat yet.
“Can I ask you a question?” said Tilly.
“You can always ask me a question, but the fact that you have started it by saying ‘can I ask you a question?’ means that I am now automatically nervous. I mean, you never say that then say, ‘do you want a biscuit?’ do you? It means that you want to ask me a question and I’m likely not to enjoy it.”
“No, nothing like that,” said Tilly. “Just something I was chatting about today with someone at work. It’s about your ex-wife.”
“My ex-wife? What on earth could make you have a conversation at work about my ex-wife?” said Sparke.
“Well, you’ve never told me the story, I mean, how you met, what was she like, that sort of thing.”
Sparke looked at the bare wall opposite him, trying to think of how to respond.
“I don’t know how to respond,” he said. “It wasn’t any big love story or anything. We worked together, then we sort of saw each other socially, as it were, then, you know. I suppose we just drifted into it.”
“Drifted?” said Tilly. “Quite a big thing to drift in to. I mean, are you saying that you accidentally got married?”
Sparke was not used to being unable to answer questions, but this was one that was genuinely beyond his grasp.
“Can we talk about something else?” said Sparke. “I’ll tell you all about it when we get together if you like, but it’s not much of a story.”
“Hmmm, sure,” said Tilly. “I’d best pop off, my dinner has drifted into being cooked.”
Sparke was listening, but his attention was drawn to the image being project onto his living room wall. From a small, casual conversation he was suddenly drawn into a story of hope and horror, two thousand years old.
Storm rising
The Mason looked out from the ramparts, north and west to where the hills ringed the city. A blanket of black cloud was slipping down towards them. There was a rumble of thunder in the distance.
“I have seen the storms in Tuscany,” said the Mason, as though he was talking to himself. “I mean those short, fast summer storms. Do you remember them?”
Salvatore followed the Mason’s gaze. His friend and leader rarely spoke about his inner thoughts, and knew better than to question his thinking.
“I know the Tuscan storms,” said Salvatore. “There is always a good cool wind as they approach.”
The Mason looked at Salvatore. “Enjoy this cool wind. The storm that is heading our way will be one to remember.”
“At least the city is ready. The Pope has called for all Christians to send support,” said Salvatore. “Everyone, even the Venetians, are sending men and weapons.”
“If the Venetians wanted to hold Acre against Qalawun they would hire mercenary companies, instead they are recruiting the dregs of the Italian coast. They’re emptying the prisons.”
“I don’t understand,” said Salvatore.
The Mason looked around the high battlement of the castle, making sure that he could not be overheard. “The Venetians want to make a show of their willingness to fight,” he said, “but they don’t throw their money around unless they have to. They believe that Qalawun will make some noise, then settle for a cash payment of recompense. They’re convinced there will be no war. Pisa and Genoa are of the same mind.”
“But you are not?” said Salvatore.
The Mason shook his head. “Not when I listen to the voices of the Saracens. Men like Yusuf, men who have lived here much of their lives, look at me and ask why we are here and why they should allow foreigners to dispense the law.”
“How will Qalawun come?” said Salvatore.
“They don’t have many options,” said the Mason. “They would like to blockade the harbor then go for the weaker towers, but I know they still lack the ships. They cannot maintain a siege over winter so they’ll need to force a breach rather than try to starve us out.”
Salvatore noticed how the Mason visibly relaxed when he started talking about the options for the Saracen attack. Siege weapons, supply lines, points of defense, these were part of the language that was as natural to him as talk about rain and harvesting was to a farmer.
From the day he was sent by his family to become a Templar, Salvatore had looked on the Mason as being a man who drove events, who knew what would happen in any situation, or at least understood the options.
Salvatore had been far from a model Templar. Several times he had come close to being thrown out of the Order only to have the Mason intervene to save him.
This had not been driven by charity on the Mason’s part. Increasingly, it was Salvatore whom the Mason turned to when the Order had tasks to be performed that were beyond the skills of most of his fellow knights.
He found himself dispatched to the farthest corners of the Templar world and beyond, often having to dress as a civilian, and even shave his beard, things unheard of for Templars.
Now he had been told to prepare for the moment when the city had fallen, and he was to escape at the final moment carrying something, but he had no idea what or why it could only happen then. There would be time to discuss this mission later, but now he listened to the Mason paint a picture of the advancing Saracen army as he explained how it would spill out from the desert and take hold of the city, how it would need to be replenished and how long it could be maintained in the field.
“Qalawun is buying iron for arrow heads,” said the Mason, “but not camels for supply. My friends in Cairo and Damascus tell me that he needs a fast campaign, he plans to unleash a storm against us, and what we have to fight him with is a fleet-load of the scum of Italy and every bankrupt knight in Christendom who wants to escape his creditors and buy a fast path out of purgatory in the next life.”
“And what do you want?” asked Salvatore.
“Want? I want to do my duty and have every shred of preparation complete before he arrives. The city will fill with fighting men, but they need organizing. We need these walls made sound and the ditches clear. The next month will be busy in Acre.”
“And what can I do here?”
“You? You have other things to think about,” said the Mason.
Logic and horror
“The person who was the source of this document was disabled, either through illness or injury and unable to write. The person taking the dictation was literate, but not educated to a level where they could transcribe the words into the normal written form of the time. The person who engraved the scroll was technically competent but lacked supervision. Given the high value of the materials referred to in the document, and the probability of violent intervention, it is likely that other individuals who would normally have been part of such a process were either killed or forcibly detained.”
Sparke looked at the text displayed on the wall of his apartment. It had been uploaded from the Trondheim program and was the system’s most likely scenario based on the facts available.
Outside his apartment, on the broad lakeside pathway, couples strolled, children played and dogs barked. There was the faint murmur of diners from the Mont Blanc restaurant a few yards along the road. The gulf between his peaceful surroundings and the snapshot of violence and fear was too great for Sparke to span. The words remained just that as he was unable to picture the reality as anything more than an abstract scenario.
According to the logic system built into the Trondheim program, a man, a keeper of secrets, had only a junior scribe to take down what was possibly his dying words. The scribe, unable to find anyone of greater authority, had a junior engraver turn the testament into a document that would last, a document made of copper. Ultimately this found its way into the horde known as the Dead Sea Scrolls. These lay hidden for almost two thousand years until its accidently discovery
.
The only reason a keeper of great secrets would trust a junior scribe was that everyone else was dead, but the scribe had access to beaten copper and an engraver who could cut text into it.
“The dying testament of a powerful man whose organization has been wiped out,” said Sparke. “Screen, verify.”
“The system accepts that as a reasonable summary,” said the screen.
“Screen, scan resources and evaluate probability that a second scroll existed.”
“Very high to extremely high.”
“Probability that one or several of these were hidden on the site of the Temple of Jerusalem?”
The system paused as the screen scanned through the hundreds of research databases it had access to, evaluating the source, the evidence and the logic behind each.
“The probability is high.”
“Probability that Templars unearthed hidden documentation during their occupation of the Temple site?”
“High to very high,” said the screen. “Extensive evidence exists that the area was subject to excavation during this period. Several references exist in Templar archives to items removed from the site, but no details are given.”
Sparke walked over to the window and stared across the lake to the Alps beyond.
He had already made a number of discoveries by working out the least improbable chain of events that fitted the facts as he knew them. He was not looking for an answer, but a testable scenario.
The site of the Temple of Jerusalem lay derelict for a thousand years after its destruction by the Roman legions. The first people to occupy it who had the means and the motivation to start digging around the site were the Templars. If there was a second scroll, a Silver Scroll as Tilly had called it, there was a strong probability that it would have lain undiscovered until the Templars took possession of the area.
“Screen, compile a list of all known high value artifacts which are recorded as coming into the possession of the Templars in the Holy Land, and compare that to a list of all possessions recorded as being removed by them to other locations.”
“The source data are not well verified,” said the screen. “It will take up to one hour to compile.”
Sparke looked at his watch and realized that he was hungry.
One of the best things about living in a quiet town by Lake Geneva was the large number of cafés in walking distance.
He sat by a small metal table outside the Harlequin café in the main street and ordered the menu du jour. Sparke had been striving to act in a more spontaneous way since becoming involved with Tilly, and eating whatever the café decided to put on as a special was a way of trying new things without having to waste time making decisions about something as unimportant as food. He finished his meal and walked back to his apartment the long way in order to get at least a little exercise.
“What do you have for me, Screen?” said Sparke before he removed his coat.
“The data are not consistent enough to provide any worthwhile output,” said the screen.
“What do you mean?”
“Many items appear multiple times and are contradictory.”
“Examples?” said Sparke.
“The Knights Templar archives show that they took possession of three heads of the prophet John the Baptist, four spears that pierced the side of Jesus Christ during his crucifixion, eight crowns of thorns, and three robes of the Roman centurion who attended the execution–”
“Screen, stop,” said Sparke. “Show complete list of artifacts from Templar archives from locations in the Holy Land.” A list began to scroll quickly down the screen. “Now remove all items describing body parts of dead saints or individuals.”
“Number of items one thousand, eight hundred and seventy-three.”
“Show list of which of those have a record of being transferred out of the Holy Land.”
“Peter, the list uses varying descriptions for items which makes effective identification invalid.”
“Screen, all I want to do is to find out a list of valuable items which the Templars possessed in the Holy Land but have no record of being transferred to Templar locations outside the Holy Land. That is not a difficult question.”
“That is not a difficult question, but it is not the one you asked,” said the screen.
“Screen,” said Sparke, “you are a computer, so stop being pompous and provide an answer to the question.”
“Yes, Peter. There are four major archive lists from the largest Templar locations, those were Jerusalem, Krak de Chevalier, Tripoli and Acre. The contents of the treasuries of the first three were largely transferred to other locations within the Holy Land prior to their recapture by hostile forces. The archive for the city of Acre is the only one where all of the contents are known to have been transferred out of the Holy Land as there were no other Templar positions available.”
Sparke looked at the small beam of light that projected the screen onto the wall of his apartment.
The screen was not in fact a single computer, it was an interface that sat above several cloud-based systems allowing him to access programs and databases around the world that no single computer held. He had created the interface program himself, trying to give it a more human voice, but right at this moment it was a human voice that was distinctly irritating.
He realized with a shock that since he had configured the system, he must have used his own behavior as the standard. Did he sound like the screen when he spoke to people?
“Screen, can you access a linguistics program to make your comments more user-friendly?”
“Yes, Peter, there are customer service programs available for that which I can access.”
Sparke thought for a moment.
“What is the main difference between your current configuration and a more user-friendly version?” he said.
“Customer service systems use thirty percent more words for the same content and contain the phrases, ‘I understand’ and ‘we really want to help’ in most communications,” said the screen.
“Screen, find the most advanced one you can and buy it. I want you to impersonate a nice person.”
The screen paused for a moment, then said, “I understand, Peter, that makes sense. We really want to help on this.”
“What was that?”
“I downloaded a sample.”
“Tell me about the Templar treasury and archive of Acre,” said Peter, sighing.
Challenge
“I can’t run into the hills, I can’t hide, the harbor will be under attack from Saracen ships and there will almost certainly be chaos,” said Salvatore. “I need to wait until all defenses are broken then escape with something that you can’t tell me about.”
“Good summary,” said the Mason. “How are you progressing?”
“I have an idea, but I need to find someone, an expert in a certain field.”
“An expert?” said the Mason.
“Someone with particular skills,” said Salvatore. “There was a man who worked for me in Tripoli. I have a feeling he may have made his way here before the city fell. He had the nature of a survivor.”
“What can this expert do for you?”
Salvatore paused, he was far from having a final plan and his mind worked best when it worked alone. “The only way I can see to accomplish this,” he said, “is to be invisible.”
“If you’re thinking of dressing as a Saracen and hiding amongst the enemy, I would caution against it,” said the Mason. “It has been tried in the past but never with success.”
“No, I plan to carry out my duty dressed as I am, as a knight,” said Salvatore. “If I am captured I do not want to look like a spy or a coward.”
The Mason nodded, then said, “Good. We need to plan for failure as well as success. I wait with interest to hear how you plan to make yourself invisible in the midst of a battle.”
The two men were walking along the battlements that lined the landward boundary of the city. It took an hour to wal
k from the northern edge, south and east, down to the towers that anchored the walls to the coast.
Everywhere they looked they saw activity. The lean-to shacks and slums that sprung up outside any city were flattened to give the defenders clear fields of fire, distance markers were placed for the catapult artillery, the internal roads that linked the key defensive points were cleared of the jumble of merchants’ stalls and wine booths that cluttered them in peacetime, and ships bearing men at arms arrived daily.
The dead silence from the outside of the city stood in sharp contrast to the babble of noise from within. Close by the walls near the Accursed Tower stood a large inn known as The Pilgrim’s Hope. Its central courtyard was normally used to keep pack animals for pilgrim caravans, but now it had been filled with tables and benches. The Mason and Salvatore crossed the wall to look down to see servants carrying jugs of wine and ale, pushing their way through the crowd of drinkers. The sound of singing, shouting and drunken laughter echoed off the high walls.
“Our brave defenders,” said the Mason. “The men sent by Venice to fight against Qalawun.” The two men watched as a scuffle broke out and a knot of men in the courtyard began throwing punches and furniture at each other. Since their arrival in the city, there had been almost constant trouble. Most mornings found a few dead bodies in the gutters, women rarely left their homes unless they had to, and lone Muslims foolish enough to venture out were often beaten.
“The price of straw is going up, but oxen and camels are cheaper now than they were,” said the Mason. “What does that tell you?”
“Always the teacher,” smiled Salvatore. “More men are arriving and they need straw for bedding and for feeding their mounts. Oxen and camels are used for trade and for farming. People don’t see a good future in peaceful commerce.”
“Those are usually good signs that war in on the way. Most people are no more intelligent than a goat, but when you see how they act collectively, you see some signals worth paying attention to. In a few days I will ride to the east to talk to some friends we have out there. We need to know what they see and hear. You might find it instructive to join me. Can your preparations spare you?”
The Templar Scroll: Book six in the series Page 6
