The Sacred Scroll

by Anton Gill

  After the slightest of pauses, Odo nodded. The interpreters withdrew, to join the rest of Dandolo’s party outside.

  Once the four men were alone, Odo gestured to Dandolo and Leporo to sit on the simple wooden chairs in the room. There was no other furniture, except for a stout cabinet which stood against a wall. No refreshment was offered, not even water.

  Odo relaxed slightly. ‘It is, I am sure you will agree, better that we keep our discussion open to as few ears as possible.’

  Dandolo watched him. How much did the Grand Master already know about the true nature of his mission?

  ‘I am gratified that you grace us with your presence here.’

  ‘Why not the Hospitallers?’ interjected the other Templar, his tone edgy.

  ‘Because the Knights Hospitaller do not quite share … all … your interests,’ replied Dandolo, with an equal measure of veiled aggression in his voice. What was this man driving at?

  ‘You mean they are not as interested in money?’ continued the brown-garbed man. He might have gone on, but Odo stilled him.

  ‘What have you come for?’ he asked the Venetian.

  ‘To express my admiration for your work – I fully intend to do the same for the Hospitallers, by the way, since by your prowess both Orders have helped secure and maintain our Christian Faith in the birthplace of Our Lord. And to extend the hand of friendship from Venice, on behalf of my master, Doge Vitale.’

  ‘What makes you think we need your friendship?’ the other Templar asked coldly.

  Odo said, ‘Be quiet, Thomas.’ Turning to Dandolo, he said: ‘You must forgive him. He is here, if you like, to make sure I do nothing rash.’

  ‘Come to the point,’ put in Thomas, adding reluctantly, ‘If you please.’

  ‘Certainly,’ said Dandolo. Glancing at Leporo, he continued. ‘We think you may have … something for sale. If so, we might be interested in acquiring it.’ To himself, he thought, they already know.

  17

  ‘And what is it that you are interested in acquiring?’ asked Thomas.

  ‘A relic.’ Leporo spoke for the first time. ‘You are a fellow Cistercian, Brother Thomas. You will understand our eagerness. A Holy Relic, which we should like to acquire for the protection and the greater glory of our basilica of St Mark, and our city.’ He hesitated. ‘We find ourselves in troubled waters, and we have need of the Lord’s protecting arm.’

  ‘You mean your confrontation with the Greeks of Byzantium,’ replied Thomas brusquely.

  Was there nothing these people didn’t know, thought Dandolo. He must handle them with subtlety. But in order to gain what, exactly? He only had Leporo’s word for it that they had some thing of great value. True, he trusted his aide, and Leporo’s judgement in such matters was seldom false. Well, he had come this far, and he wasn’t going to pass up any opportunity which presented itself for his own aggrandisement. And he had more than enough money at his disposal to satisfy even these money-conscious warrior-monks.

  He guessed, too, that the presence of the Grand Master and the aggressive nature of Friar Thomas were good indications of what they were prepared to put on the table.

  ‘We seek to do God’s will,’ he replied simply. ‘But to do so justly, we poor humans need all the help we can get.’

  There was silence in the room then. You could hear the breeze rustling the leaves of the palms outside, and the muted talk of Dandolo’s men as they waited in the shade outside.

  The two Templars exchanged a look. Odo, Dandolo guessed, was for taking the negotiations further; Thomas against.

  Then Odo walked over to the cabinet, unlocked it, and from it produced a leather bag, which he placed on the table between them.

  It was a small bag; the leather was rough and well-worn. Odo’s lean fingers undid the strings which held it closed.

  He drew out a small iron box and a key, attached by a leather thong. He placed the box on the table, fitted the key into the lock and turned it in a complex series of clockwise and anti-clockwise movements which Dandolo found hard to follow. No doubt Odo would tell him the secret of the manipulation if a deal was struck. At last the lock clicked open. Odo raised the lid with great care.

  The box was lined with grey wool. Lying within was a clay tablet, about the size that would fit comfortably into your palm. One side was covered in a crowded series of symbols, but they bore no relation to any alphabet or numeric system that Dandolo had ever seen. The other side was blank, though Dandolo could make out a thumbprint, no doubt pressed into the clay when it was still moist by whoever had written on it.

  Just behind him, Leporo could not suppress a sigh of disappointment. Dandolo kept his face expressionless, however, as Odo laid the tablet down next to the box. He looked at the casket again and saw that there was an inscription of some sort on it, and another on the shank of the key, but he couldn’t make them out.

  Friar Thomas grew tense as the tablet emerged, and Dandolo noticed that the monk’s eyes grew keen with – what? – something like craving? Desire?

  He had noted the reluctance of the Templars to part with this unimpressive-looking piece of baked mud. As he glanced at Odo’s eyes, fixed on the tablet, he saw something there too. Regret? Indecision? Second thoughts? But then the eyes lifted to meet his own.

  Dandolo didn’t want to meet those eyes – yet. He looked at the writing – for that was all he could think of it as – on the rough piece of terracotta. As he did so, he flinched. He couldn’t be sure that he wasn’t imagining it, but it seemed to him, fleetingly, that the letters, which looked as much as anything like the footprints of tiny birds – seemed momentarily to glow dark red, like blood.

  He glanced at Leporo to see if he had noticed anything, but Leporo’s face was impassive. Dandolo pulled himself together. Odo, he realized, had been watching him.

  ‘An interesting piece,’ he said.

  ‘Isn’t it?’ replied Odo.

  ‘Not much to look at,’ remarked Leporo.

  Odo ignored the comment, while Thomas shot thunderbolts at Leporo with his eyes. But the monk collected himself, and said: ‘I agree with Brother Leporo. It is, indeed, a small thing. Perhaps not worth your attention. We can only apologize.’

  Dandolo raised a hand to silence him. He kept his eyes on Odo. ‘Tell me about this … thing. I have to say, it is not quite what we expected.’

  Odo gave him another thin smile. ‘I know. You are disappointed in its size. Or you thought at least the box might contain the head of the spear which pierced Our Lord’s side at Golgotha, or the jewelled fingerbones of the apostle who touched the wound made by that spear – Doubting Thomas.’

  ‘Those would be great and Holy Relics indeed.’

  ‘This thing is older than either of them.’

  Dandolo looked again at the tablet. He could see, without being an expert, that it was old, very old indeed. It seemed as old as Time itself.

  ‘May I touch it?’

  Odo spread his hands. ‘Of course. But be careful. There are things about this tablet of which we are not entirely sure.’

  Dandolo stretched out a tentative hand.

  The clay felt as cold as death, so cold it burned; and hard, hard as adamant. He did not dare pick it up, but withdrew his hand instead. He wanted it, that much he knew. But at what price? He thought of his bodyguard outside, and the heavy casket of Venetian florins borne by one of the packhorses in their charge. He would pay anything … but then it was better not to show himself too avid for it. He would start the bargaining at half the amount he had with him – already a far higher sum than he’d intended.

  He remained silent.

  ‘It was made a time long before the arrival of Our Lord Christ on this sorry earth,’ Odo continued. ‘No one knows exactly when. Nor where.’

  ‘How did it come to be in your care?’

  Odo stole a look at Thomas. It was strange, but it seemed as if he were asking permission to answer. ‘It has been in the possession of our Order for many yea
rs. It was bequeathed to us by the heirs of Bishop Adhemar of le Puy. They say he discovered and acquired it in Alexandria shortly before his death, after the success of the very first crusade against the Fatimids and the Seljuks, when we drove them back out of the Holy Places. The tablet is referred to in Adhemar’s letters. He calls it the Sacred Scroll. Perhaps he thought it was a printing-block, and tried to use it to print its meaning out on parchment. But we do not know.’

  Dandolo knew of Adhemar. The bishop had been one of the main instigators of the crusade which had ended so successfully at the close of the previous century. A man of extraordinary power and influence. It was said that, had he come earlier into prominence, the Holy Places would have been won and held for ever. The story of how he rallied one hundred scared and disoriented men against five thousand Saracens on the plains below Masyaf, and routed the enemy completely, had passed into legend. Some told that the Saviour Himself had descended from heaven to come to his aid. Others – in quiet voices – spoke of demons.

  ‘Why did he bequeath it to you?’ The question was out almost before he had articulated it in his mind, but Dandolo corrected himself immediately; he had been too direct. ‘I mean, did he intend to redeem it?’

  Odo hesitated before replying. ‘What you say is true. He believed a powerful force for good lay in this modest piece of clay. But it was his descendants who gave it to us for … safekeeping. Our correspondence with them, decades after the bishop’s descent into madness, indicated that they felt it needed to be kept … secure.’

  Odo’s hand went out to the tablet, took it and placed it back in its box, closing the lid and reaching for the key. ‘Perhaps we are, after all, being hasty,’ he said. ‘We cannot say that it is a Christian relic. It will not redound to the glory of Venice. A poor thing, in fact. We may have other –’

  ‘But it plays a role, a key role, in our Christian heritage,’ said Thomas suddenly.

  ‘Adhemar mentioned something in his letters,’ Odo said. ‘We cannot fathom it. He refers to the Book of Revelation. “When the Lamb opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour.” You know the piece. It covers the eighth to the tenth chapters of the book.’

  Dandolo knew it. He looked again at the tablet, and thought of the seven angels and what the blasts from their trumpets summoned forth. A hellish hail of fire and blood; destruction of the seas and the life in them; a blazing star poisoning all fresh water; the wreckage of the heavens; and the further horror which the last three trumpets invoked. Woe, woe, woe, to those who dwell on earth, at the blasts of the other trumpets …

  It was as if a voice from the centre of earth were reciting the words to Dandolo: … he was given the key of the shaft of the bottomless pit … and from the shaft smoke rose like the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened with the smoke from the shaft. Then from the smoke came locusts on the earth, and they were given power like the power of scorpions of the earth; they were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any green growth or any tree, but only those of mankind who have not the seal of God upon their foreheads; they were allowed to torture them for five months, but not to kill them, and their torture was like the torture of a scorpion, when it stings a man. And in those days men will seek death and will not find it; they will long to die, and death will fly from them …

  Dandolo thought of the locusts, the demons with human faces and long, flowing women’s hair but with teeth like a lion’s and their bodies scaled like armour, and he thought of the Four Horsemen released next by the blast of the sixth angel’s trumpet; and of the terrible silence of the seventh angel, whose trumpet’s sound he still awaited, but would hear at the very last.

  18

  Dandolo stared at Odo. ‘What does it mean?’ he asked.

  ‘We cannot fathom it,’ replied Odo. ‘But we know that the bishop believed that this thing has the power to give man a force which man himself should not have. A force which man cannot control.’

  Dandolo’s rational mind dismissed it, but despite himself he was fascinated and – was it the right word? – awed.

  He pulled himself together. Were they trying to pull more wool over his eyes? But the faces of both Odo and Thomas were deeply serious.

  ‘That is why we have kept this thing a closely guarded secret for so long,’ continued Odo. ‘But – and I make no secret of this – we need cash now if we are going to keep the Holy Places secure. And if we ever lost control here, we would not wish this thing to fall into the hands of the Saracens. In Egypt, the power of Saladin grows by the day.’

  ‘There is another story’ – Brother Thomas spoke slowly – ‘which you should know of.’ He looked across at his master, who, after a moment, nodded his assent.

  ‘It is said,’ began Thomas, ‘and Bishop Adhemar believed it, that it was with this tablet that the Dark One tempted Our Lord in the wilderness.’

  The Templar paused while the Italians listened attentively. At length he continued: ‘Matthew, Mark and Luke describe the temptations of Christ; Matthew and Luke in detail. That He should make bread out of stones to feed Himself; that He should hurl Himself from the pinnacle of a temple, trusting to the angels to bear Him up and save Him, and that He should have dominion over all the nations of the earth in return for His allegiance to the Dark One himself. Matthew makes this the last temptation of Christ.’ Thomas paused again. ‘And Christ refused: It is written, You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only shall you serve. He would not touch the tablet Satan offered him, the tablet which would give him ultimate power. Because He knew that if He could not convince people of His doctrines by His own power and persuasion, they would be worth nothing. There is no short-cut to Grace.’

  ‘By using this tablet? The Devil himself made it?’

  ‘That is his thumbprint on the reverse,’ said Thomas simply. ‘We believe that if the symbols written on this piece of clay could be properly deciphered and interpreted, the man who had that knowledge would hold the key to the ability to move nations.’

  ‘Then it could be used for great good.’

  Thomas looked at Dandolo severely. ‘Never would that come to pass, if an ordinary mortal controlled it.’

  And Adhemar ended mad, thought Dandolo, looking at the tablet, and seeing the characters written on it glow red once more.

  Then the vision passed. He realized that the Grand Master and the monk were watching him expectantly.

  He measured his words. ‘I humbly acknowledge the wisdom of your decision that such a thing should be kept as safe and as secret as is humanly possible, and that it should be kept out of the hands of the Saracens at all costs,’ he said. ‘If the mantle of such a responsibility should fall on the shoulders of Venice, then I am the last man to turn away from it. If, at the same time, I may be of some material service to the brave and noble Order of the Knights Templar, the greatest bastion of our Faith in the East, then the privilege and the honour is doubled.’

  ‘And what price do you put on this privilege?’ asked Odo, after leaving a polite pause to mark the gravity of what all present knew to be a purely political speech.

  Dandolo didn’t look at Leporo when he replied, without hesitation, ‘Fifteen thousand Venetian florins.’ The calculation seemed to have taken place without him. It was three-quarters of what he had with him. And he already knew that if they pushed the price above 20,000, he’d give them letters of credit to match the amount. An expensive punt, but the money he’d brought with him came from his private coffers. He had to have the scroll, as Adhemar had called it. Whatever it cost. He’d deal with the doge and the Venetian Council later, and get the money back from them. He knew damned well that Doge Vitale’s expedition against Constantinople would founder, and the doge would then need every friend he could get. All Dandolo needed was patience, and time. In time he would achieve his ends, he knew that now.

  19

  An hour later, the Templars had settled for 25,000. A fantastic amount, which c
aused Leporo to look at Dandolo askance when the four men stood up and shook hands.

  The tablet was returned to its box, the casket locked, its key retied to it, and handed over to Leporo, who stowed it in his satchel with extreme care. Now, at last, Odo rang a bell on his desk and offered the Italians food and drink. It was eleven in the morning, and the sun was reaching its zenith. The Venetian party turned down an invitation to stay the night and set off on the return journey to Acre. Dandolo, quietly triumphant, as something deep within him, something he could not identify, was stirred, was eager to return to Chios now, and as there was a full moon, he elected to travel through the night. They would leave Jerusalem late in the afternoon.

  Before they ate, Dandolo told Leporo to ensure that their men drank no wine before travelling, a necessary precaution, since the Templars, surprisingly, had tried to ply them with the stuff. The Venetians stayed with light beer – water was not to be trusted: it contained disease.

  In the event, they were wise to do so.

  The attack came at three in the morning, when the Venetian caravan was already some kilometres into the desert north of Jerusalem. The attackers came from the eastern hills, the moon behind them, riding horses and wearing black robes. Their headdresses covered their faces, leaving only their eyes visible.

  Dandolo was glad they did not find him unprepared. His men, on a signal arranged in advance, quickly drew their pack animals into a circle which formed a living wall. All their valuables and provisions for the journey to the port were placed within it, and the bodyguard, twenty men only, but armed to the teeth with lances, javelins, swords, axes and bows, took up their positions behind the nervous mules. The horsemen numbered about forty, and first circled the corralled Venetians, taken aback that their attack had been anticipated.

  But they were not put off. Ten of them rode in hard, wielding longswords and flails, hacking at the bucking and kicking mules where they could, but failing to reach the group sheltered behind them. Then they withdrew and let their bowmen take over.