The Templar Thief: Peter Sparke book 4

by Scott Chapman

  "There was a man, a stranger in Tripoli, who was making war machines for the Commune. I believe that man may have come from the same town as myself." He turned to look directly at the Mason. "I believe that man was my own brother."

  "This man was a Templar?"

  "He wore common clothes and was clean shaven."

  "Then how could he have been one of our number?" said the Mason.

  “You have your famous rules, but what is to stop you breaking them when it suits you? There are secrets, far too many secrets, within the Templars."

  "These are pledges we make, not the rules of some game."

  Massimo reached up to his own neck and pulled a small medallion from beneath his habit. “Have you seen this image before?”

  The Mason bent and peered at the silver medal. “Your brother wears the same emblem. It a local patron, I think.”

  “This is Fra Muratore. He is on the path towards beatification, but at the moment he is unknown beyond the region of Radda.”

  “It is good to show such dedication to the place of your birth,” said the Mason.

  "Was my brother in Tripoli on the instructions of your Order?"

  "The strength of our Order is our unity and discipline. We act together and never discuss the duties of any individual brother."

  "Perhaps I should discuss this with your Grand Master?"

  The Mason nodded as if to agree that this was a very reasonable course of action. "He is occupied currently with his plans to save the remnants of the Holy Land from Saracen invasion. He is responsible for dozens of fortified positions and the lives of hundreds of Templars and the safety of thousands of pilgrims, but I am sure he will make time to discuss the activities of one of our Order with you, if you insist.”

  Massimo tapped the top of the table he stood next to. “Why does your Order delight in obstructing the will of the Church and relish your links with our enemies?”

  “Enemies?”

  “The upstart republics that infest my homeland. God despises all republics," said Massimo. "With a republic, there is no king and kings are anointed by God and his Church. With no anointed leader, men live in an ungodly state."

  The Mason watched Massimo as he began pacing again. Following the route that Massimo chose to take in a conversation was demanding at the best of times. It was like trying to guess which way a grasshopper might jump next.

  "Your Order has close dealings with many city republics," said Massimo. "Whenever I see the greedy fingers of the men of Milan, Venice, Genoa or Pisa interfering with things they have no business in, I see the Order of the Templars in the shadows. Why are you so friendly with men like these, men who see the world as nothing more than a larder for them to pillage?"

  "The church also works with these republics," said the Mason.

  "We hold our breath and deal with them when we must. But you are their friends, their allies. You seek them out as they seek you."

  The Mason had met Massimo many times, and every time they spoke he had left the meeting with heightened respect for the man's intellect, but deeper caution as to his motivation.

  "How can our Order be of assistance?" said the Mason, failing to hide his exasperation, hoping to change the subject and bring this meeting to some sort of conclusion.

  "Assistance? The Church should not need to ask for assistance. We all owe obedience to God's representatives on earth. It is not for the Church to ask for help. It is for all Christians to seek our guidance and instruction."

  The Mason sighed. "Is there any point of guidance you wish to share with us, Father? I'm sure you have many other things to attend to."

  Massimo stopped pacing and turned towards the Mason.

  "I was in Tripoli," he said. "I believe my brother was there before me, and I believe he was there, not in the good, plain habit of a Templar, but dressed in the garb of a layman. I do not believe he could have been there without the blessing of the Order, specifically without your knowledge and support."

  The Mason returned Massimo's accusing gaze. He was relaxed now. The object of this meeting was clear.

  "Your brother, my brother Templar, has never done a single act that could harm the Church," said the Mason. "He is not always the most obedient member of our Order, but any transgressions he might make are in the interest of the cause we all share."

  "The cause we share? Did you know that the King of Sicily is building a new part of his hateful university? Do you not stop to wonder why a man like that is building a place of learning? Do you imagine he rejoices in the thought that men spend their lives discussing heathen philosophers? He is not alone. Even in the far north, even amongst the Poles and Hungarians, they are building colleges and universities. Are there not enough men of learning in the Church to help them?"

  From any other man, this would have been a direct question worthy of a thoughtful answer and a measured debate. With Massimo, every question was a trap, every possible response had been thought out and contained another layer of traps beyond it.

  "I give no thought to universities, or to republics," said the Mason. "I am lucky that I have the life of a simple Templar and leave the great questions to those who have been placed in positions of authority."

  "If a king needs a man of letters to do his bidding he can lean on the Church. If a king builds a college that produces godless men, then it is because he seeks to usurp the Church from its rightful place at his right hand. At every hand there are enemies of true religion, people who need guidance and authority from its natural place."

  Massimo suddenly swung around and strode towards the Mason until they were inches apart. Small flecks of spittle sat on Massimo's lip and his eyes bored into the Mason's face.

  “I will find out what you are doing. I will find out what these errands and tasks you give my brother are. I smell discord and disunity. Make sure you know that you are a friend to the Church. It is my duty to carry out the will of our leaders and confound the plans of our enemies. Your duty is to decide where you stand.”

  Saints

  “Don’t fall.”

  “Sorry?”

  “I said, be careful, don’t fall.”

  “Right. I’m perched on the tailgate of a Range Rover scanning this arch and your advice is not to fall?”

  “We should go get a ladder.”

  “We don’t need a ladder. I have advice from an international crisis management expert that I shouldn’t fall. What could possibly go wrong?”

  “Just be careful.”

  “I am being careful and I am nearly done.” Tilly looked at the small screen on the gauge, then hopped down from the tailgate.” I can reach the rest from down here. Dangerous bit over,” she said, then began scanning the lower sections of the arch.

  “You look like you know what you’re doing,” said Sparke.

  “I read the instruction manual,” said Tilly, smiling. “There’s no doubt that this is a medieval archway, broad enough to have been part of a fortified wall. Very likely to have been part of the building on the hill. If we get the owner’s permission we can do a substrate match to see if it is the same stone.”

  Five minutes later they were driving back towards the villa, Tilly scrunched into the corner of the passenger seat facing Sparke.

  “Even if we get nothing else, I’m pretty sure we have a good story here,” she said. “We have the archive evidence that a Templar post existed in this area, old Doreen’s guide book description is a decent match and the carvings look good.”

  “So, tell me about these archives,” said Sparke. “Is there a master database of Templar sites or something?”

  “No single database. That would be a life’s work for some poor researcher. Their records cover a period of nearly two hundred years across dozens of countries. They had maybe twenty thousand members and they were spread all over the place, all busy keeping records, why?”

  “Why? Data is the first place to look I suppose. Listen, do you have access to all the databases or archives that do exist
?”

  Tilly thought for a moment. “Yes, more or less, but it would take forever to read them all. People spend their whole careers just reading the records of one country.”

  “You can access all that from any computer, right?”

  “Uh huh. I am sensing a plan.”

  “Not a plan, but an idea. Ever heard of semantic analysis?”

  “I know the phrase. Why?”

  “I know a guy, he works in Boston, very big on this type thing. He has a system that crawls through millions of pages of text looking for groups of words, phrases, you can add logic rules, tell it what to look for.”

  “Isn’t that what the CIA uses to listen to everyone’s phone calls and read their emails?”

  “This guy uses it for customer service market research. All the phone calls and emails that people make complaining about things, you know?”

  “Not sure that I do. How would that work with academic databases?”

  “I need to check, but I am pretty sure that if you log in with your details, we can use his system to crunch through the contents automatically.”

  "Should I be nervous about this?"

  "Can't see why you should be. It's just the same as speed reading, only by machine."

  Tilly thought for a moment. "Worth a go, I suppose."

  As soon as they arrived back at the villa, they both claimed parts of the large kitchen table and set up their piles of electronic equipment. Tilly began to work through the output from the scans of the arch and Sparke, armed with Tilly's login details, accessed the semantics analysis software service in Boston.

  They worked in a comfortable silence, occasionally looking over and asking each other how things were going. After two hours, Sparke lifted his head from his screen. "From what I can see, it’s going to take this system at least twenty-four hours to run through these archives. What do you have on the arch?"

  Tilly looked up from her computer and rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. "Quite a bit, but I'm not sure what I am seeing. Fancy a bit of fresh air?"

  They walked out of the kitchen, surprised to see that it was already well on the way to evening. The heat from the day's sun seemed to rise up from the earth and the few clouds in the sky were edged with a deep pink glow.

  "Looks like a bad watercolor," said Sparke.

  "What does?"

  "The sky. It's like the backdrop to a romantic movie."

  "Couldn't be that. If it was a romantic movie then I wouldn’t be in it," said Tilly.

  "No?"

  "Definitely no. Romance and I parted company some time ago. Fair to say that I am a one-woman train-wreck when it comes to the romantic side."

  "Things might change," said Sparke, looking at her.

  "Change? I bloody hope not. Next man that comes anywhere near with amorous intent will be in trouble. I've had it with blokes."

  Sparke looked away from Tilly and gazed over the picture-perfect Tuscan landscape bathed in early evening sun. Five minutes ago it had been the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

  "The countryside gets a bit boring to look at after a few days, don't you think?" he said.

  "Boring? Are you daft? I could spend my whole life looking out at that and never get bored."

  Sparke kept his eyes on the clouds, and then eventually said, "What is the gauge telling you from the arch carvings?"

  "That gauge is a great piece of kit. Seriously, the best gift anyone ever gave me." Tilly was smiling at Sparke. "Anything wrong?" she said.

  "No, nothing. Tell me about the archway."

  "OK, there are thirteen stones in the arch and whenever you find thirteen of anything in medieval Europe, a penny gets you a pound that you will find an image of Christ and the twelve disciples. Not here though. The top stone, the most important one, is a local holy man, so no massive surprise there, but the stone to its right, the next most important position, is an equally obscure figure, a man called Saint Prothius."

  "What about the other carvings?"

  "I can make out six of them, three are almost totally eroded, and I have sent the images I have to Edinburgh to see if they can identify them. Of the ones I can identify, there is not a major figure amongst them."

  Sparke knew little about the beliefs of medieval Europe. He was not even sure he knew what a saint actually was. "Does this have some significance?"

  "It does, but I'm buggered if I know what it is. Medieval Europe was overwhelmingly illiterate, so carvings and decorations were there to tell stories to people who could not read. There was no such thing as random decoration."

  "Could it be a code?"

  "Code? No, there is no evidence that the Templars used ciphers more than anyone else. For all the mystic nonsense about them, they really were a pretty prosaic bunch."

  "I think we are looking at this too closely," said Sparke. "These carvings were not made just any old place. They were placed here, in a building occupied by the Templars in the middle of the Italian countryside."

  "Meaning?"

  "Meaning, why on earth would a multinational warrior organization set up shop in the back of beyond in a place where they did not even have the ability to feed themselves?"

  Travel

  People rarely travelled. Across Europe. It was common for people to live their whole lives within a dozen miles of where they had been born and never see over the horizon. Peasants were often legally tied to the village where they lived and were, in effect, the property of the local lord. A handful of merchants crisscrossed the continent in pursuit of their affairs, cattlemen and drovers walked their livestock into the cities, pilgrims, those with time and money, sought to buy salvation by walking to distant shrines, but for most people, the only time they travelled was when the young men went to war.

  There were still sections of paved roads and bridges left by the Romans a thousand years before; otherworldly relics, far beyond the capabilities of the people who used them now. All roads were slow and dangerous, often nothing more than dirt tracks, so people and goods travelled by water when possible. It was the rivers and the coasts that connected the continent.

  The men who ran the water traffic were a breed divorced from the normal world, disconnected from the land, frequently rootless, set apart from the rigid feudal structure of land people. Salvatore felt at home amongst these drifters.

  The Mason had hustled him out of Acre and onto one of the Templars’ own ships sailing for Cyprus, as soon as he had heard that Massimo was returning from Tripoli. As well as Salvatore, and a troop of escorting Templars, the ship was carrying the mysterious box for which Salvatore had risked so much. The other knights on the ship were told that the Order had pledged that the dead pilgrims, who were supposedly interred within the box, would never be left unguarded in death until they were returned to the Scottish homeland.

  On his first night at sea, Salvatore made up a cot next to the lead coffin, now encased in a timber crate, and slept in the hold among the rats. He was woken throughout the night by rats who took exception to his presence and who tried to tear flesh from his toes and fingers. On the second night he slept in chain mail gloves and leggings despite the Mediterranean heat, but he never considered abandoning the box he was pledged to protect.

  Life for a Templar at sea was as rigorous as life in any Templar fortress or Commandery, but Salvatore was excused any duty except prayers. He never went ashore, and only left the side of the box when he had arranged a guard detail from his escorting brothers.

  From Cyprus the ship travelled north, then west, hopping between islands and ports on the business of the Order. The possessions of the Knights Templar were so scattered and so numerous, that they maintained their own navy, and their activities were so secretive that none thought it unusual for their ship to plough its way along the coast of the Mediterranean on its lonely journey.

  At Genoa they changed ships, Salvatore and his casket being transferred to another Templar vessel at sea, then again at Marseille where he prepared for the danger
ous journey beyond the Mediterranean, round the coast of Muslim Spain.

  Near the islands of Mallorca, the ship waited in the harbor with several others until a convoy, strong enough to deter Moorish attacks, was assembled. The core of the convoy was a group of ships from a Venetian merchant house carrying cloth and iron to northern Europe. They would return laden with wool and Germanic slaves for Arab markets.

  As the line of slow cargo ships neared Cartegena, they were shadowed all day by three fast, low Arab vessels that came within a hundred yards, but could not attack such a strong force. On the morning of the next day they were gone, as was one of the slower ships from their convoy.

  Breaking through the Straits of Gibraltar was accomplished under full sail and with the aid of oars for some of the ships. Salvatore stood on the deck watching Europe slide past on his right and the low mass of Arab North Africa on his left. Once into the Atlantic, the ships began to buck and heave in the strong seas. It became harder for the convoy to stay together and, after one storm, the Templar ship found itself alone in the wide grey sea for two days until it happened across four other ships from their convoy.

  They stayed at sea until they reached Bordeaux, then, resupplied and refitted, they hopped up the coast of France before making the short, but dangerous, crossing to England.

  It took three weeks to travel from the first landfall in England up to the Templar outpost on the east coast of the Scottish mainland.

  If England had been a shock, the Templar post at Balantrodach on the south bank of the River Forth was utterly alien. The rain never seemed to slacken, but the people seemed inured to it, walking through the constant wind that blew the rain in horizontal sheets as though it was not there.

  The buildings were painted in garish colors in an attempt to lighten the gloom and, if the English had been boisterous and rude, the Scots seemed to be in a state of near continual dispute with everyone who crossed their paths.

  From Balantrodach, Salvatore would leave the Order behind. Not even his brother monks could know the final stage of his journey.