The Templar Key, By Number One Author (Peter Sparke Book 3)

by Scott Chapman

  “Why is that, I wonder?” said the Duke.

  “It is quite possible that the Court learned of some actual events, then distorted them for its own political purposes,” said Tilly, bluntly.

  The Duke was, amongst other things, the Chairman of a large and successful company and was not rattled in the slightest.

  “Templar politics, of course?” he said.

  “Of course,” said Tilly. “Given the timeframe and the geography, there are not too many other options.”

  “Medieval Mafia, in my own opinion,” said the Duke. “A gang of psychopaths, armed moneylenders, religious fanatics, and appalling snobs. Still, I am no expert and have no opinion on the matter. Let me show you the archive. Perhaps there will be something of value for you.”

  Tilly had been expecting some dusty library in a tower and was amazed to find herself walking through an air-sealed door into a modern document storage vault. To make the best use of space, the documents were stored on rolling shelving systems that could be moved back and forth to allow access as required. The Duke’s pretense at being nothing more than a pig farmer disappeared as he moved the heavy shelving units without any use of the index system. It was obvious that he had found the time to explore these archives as well as the money to safeguard them.

  “You will find a pair of gloves and reading rods on the desk over there,” he said to Tilly. “Please take as long as you need. When you are finished, pick up that phone and dial 99. They will find me and we can talk about what you have read.”

  Tilly had expected a lengthy speech about care of the manuscripts and an equally lengthy list of rules and restrictions. Then she realized that the Duke had made sure that he knew who he was letting loose in his family archive.

  It took Tilly three hours of careful searching to find what she was looking for. She was peering at a yellowed document filled with tightly written text, so clearly written that it looked almost printed, rather than hand-scribed. The document was written on vellum, stretched sheep’s skin, and relatively plain - no illustrations, no colorful lettering.

  Next to the written document was another sheet, much less carefully created and clearly not by the same person. Tilly had recognized it immediately as an early rough version of the map that formed the background of the illustration she had shown Sparke on the big screen in his office. Tilly checked the documents again from beginning to end, then called the Duke.

  “The writer of this was not an eye witness, and may never have met one, but they show all the signs of being much closer than whoever wrote the document in the State Archive,” said Tilly, not taking her eyes off the pages in front of them.

  The Duke and Tilly peered closely at the two vellum documents and, lying next to them, Tilly’s tablet computer which showed the Court document describing the Battle of Jacob’s Column.

  “A second version or a source document?” said the Duke, with controlled but growing excitement. He was fully aware that having two documents on the same topic from that period was rare enough; finding an earlier document that was used as a source for a much grander, official Court record was much more important. “You have found some interesting points?” he said.

  “I think so,” said Tilly. “There are so many close matches I would say that this is almost certainly a source document for the formal Court manuscript.”

  “But you see differences?” said the Duke.

  “Hmm,” said Tilly, “I would say the really interesting question is whether the people who made the official version for your ancestors were devious or just incompetent.”

  Glamorgan

  The fortifications which had guarded the harbor had been shelled to rubble by Royal Navy in the first months of the war, but much of the violence of war had passed the city by. The bombardment was treated as a spectacle by the local population who were amazed to find out that the British gunners would cease fire at five o’clock every day in order to drink tea.

  Apart from the docks, Bastian was also to look after the welfare of the citizens of allied nations who had remained in the city. In effect, this quickly became a round of social calls on French, British, and American families he had known before he had left. The war had been surprisingly easy on most. Apart from having their pleasure boats and most of their cars seized by the Turkish authorities, there had been little real hardship. Few ships had arrived from the outside world, but the fertile hinterland of the city and the land routes had kept the people well supplied. In other parts of the country there had been savage deportations of masses of Greek residents by the Turkish authorities and massacres of many Armenian communities, but the Turkish Governor of Smyrna had made the city into what amounted to a neutral statelet.

  Bastian had been in a minority amongst this population of expatriates when he volunteered to fight. Most of the merchant community had chosen to stay with their businesses, happy to be beyond the reach of conscription by their mother countries. In his tours of the foreign residents, there were a few encounters with old school friends, some of them awkward, as they remained in their civilian clothes and Bastian was in uniform, still armed and obviously in authority. Partly because of these encounters with his old life, Bastian could feel himself gradually transforming into a civilian. One of the greatest influences behind this change, however, was Clarise.

  Although she occasionally stayed with her aunt, Clarise appeared to live most of the time with Bastian’s family. She had no other family, and she and Bastian quickly settled into a routine of sharing breakfast on the terrace every morning and long cocktails in the evening.

  “Your father seems to be improving a lot,” said Clarise one evening.

  “Yes, yes indeed.”

  Bastian was engrossed in a telegram.

  “Big news?” said Clarise.

  “Yes, pretty big. We have our first civilian cargo ship, the S.S. Glamorgan arriving next week,” he said. “We had better give it a reception, I suppose.”

  The Royal Navy Band was sent ashore and the buildings facing onto the waterside were invited to tidy up their appearance. Since paint was in short supply, the Navy made a gift of a few drums from their stores, which led to a rash of doors and windows being colored battleship-grey. The Hotel Angleterre arranged a reception for the officers of the cargo ship and the event quickly developed into a minor ball as both local civilians and officers from the Royal Navy, and now French ships in the harbor, clamored for tickets, all desperate for some peaceful distraction.

  The offloading of the Glamorgan was the single most exciting thing the city had seen in four years. Goods were cleared by customs officials at the quayside and carted directly to their destinations, which, in most cases, were the long-dormant department stores, which had been starved by the British wartime blockade. Queues formed immediately and the store staff struggled to keep up the pace, trying to fill shelves, work out prices and still create some semblance of the customer service levels which their pre-war clientele had been accustomed to.

  Satisfied that the ship unloading was well in hand, Bastian strolled up the increasingly busy roads to see what was happening. He walked into the palatial hall of the great Lettins Department store, a place of wonder to Bastian in his childhood. Staff were selling straight out of the packing cases with customers buying almost at random. Lack of money was not one of the problems the rich of Smyrna faced.

  One particular department of Lettins Store was virtually under siege: the Lady’s Fashion Department had received no supplies from overseas for four years and it seemed to be waking up after a long spell. Good manners and even tempers were being stretched in the competition to have something new after all this time.

  Being the only man in sight, and one wearing a uniform, Bastian caused a ripple in the crowd, which brought Mrs. Danders, the Head of Lady’s Fashion, gliding towards him.

  “Commander Drysdale-Behier, it is a pleasure to have you with us today.”

  Bastian tried to hide his surprise that Mrs. Danders knew his name.
/>   “Can we be of some assistance?” she added.

  The image of the faded and tattered cuff of the dress Clarise had been wearing when they first met came to his mind.

  “I need a dress for a young lady, something pleasant and bright if you have anything like that,” he said.

  “And the young lady’s size, sir?”

  Bastian scanned the ranks of the shop staff, and then leaned towards Mrs. Danders.

  “The young lady over there, putting the hats on the stand. I would say she is of a similar size.”

  Mrs. Danders smiled and turned on her heel.

  “Miss Mundy, a moment please.”

  For the next thirty minutes he was treated to his first experience of choosing a dress, as Miss Mundy took turns at trying on various options, all of which looked perfect on her trim frame.

  “I wonder,” Bastian said to her eventually, “if you were to pick two of those, which would they be?”

  A few minutes later, Bastian was walking back towards the docks, followed by one of the porters from Lettins pushing a handcart piled with brightly colored boxes. It turned out that buying a dress was only part of the story and he now had gloves, a hat and several other essential items for Clarise. He had no idea what to buy his mother, but Mrs. Danders had informed him that his mother had her clothes made for her, and that perhaps it might make sense to select some fabric for her to have her own draper make the dress.

  It would have been hard to imagine a clearer or more powerful image of the world returning to normality after war than the sight of a Navy officer triumphantly heading home laden with ladies’ fashions. Strangers in the street smiled at Bastian as he passed and he was stopped by a number of old friends of the family who recognized him.

  As he reached the quayside, a group of French naval officers was coming ashore and they greeted the sight of Bastian and his load of feminine gifts with noisy delight. They began asking him questions about where to go in the city and complimenting him on his shopping triumph and asking about the lucky woman who was the object of such generous attention.

  A loud, violent voice broke through the happy noise made by the young men. Angry shouts and curses came from the gangplank which the French officers had walked up a moment before. There was another angry shout and the sound of something heavy and metallic clattering against the stone.

  Bastian strode quickly towards the source of the shouting. A young man was crouched on the gangway, blood pouring from his head. On the quayside, a dock-worker was being restrained, shouting obscenities at the injured man and his colleagues.

  The shouts from the worker were in Turkish. The injured man was wearing the uniform of the Greek Navy.

  The Mason

  “Probably devious,” said the Duke, examining the document. “I understand the people who ran the Court documentation at that time were very competent.”

  “My feelings, too,” agreed Tilly. “Can’t discount simple error too quickly, though, but it seems unlikely.”

  The Duke looked closely at the rough map spread out on the reading table, but ignored the written Latin text.

  “What is the difference between the two written versions?”

  “That’s the interesting bit,” said Tilly. “It rests on the translation of one word, but it turns the whole story on its head.”

  “Now you have my attention,” said the Duke.

  Tilly beamed, at her happiest when she was just about to share some piece of learning or wisdom.

  “The established story of the Battle of Jacob’s Column is that a fight took place between Muslims and Christians, including a force of Knights Templar. The Templars failed to provide leadership and the Christian forces were led to victory by a group of common builders, civilians. It was a frequent taunt thrown at the Templars during their overthrow. People accused them of failing in their primary task of protecting pilgrims, leaving the tough work to some vigilante building workers. The standard reference document for this story is the one which is in the State Archives. This one,” she said, pointing at the image of the illustrated manuscript on her computer screen. “It was created here in the Bavarian Court and sent out to various Lords, Kings, and Bishops by the Duke, probably to support his own actions in suppressing the Order.”

  At this, the Duke nodded his head.

  “Yes,” he said, “the family recovered a lot of property from the Templars when they were overthrown. But where is this particular word, Frau Professor?”

  Tilly turned back to the reading desk and pointed to a word on the computer screen, then pointed to another word on the vellum document.

  “Caementari, Caementarius, what is that?” said the Duke. “Latin for ‘builder’, no?”

  “It’s the origin of our word for cement, “said Tilly. “It means builder or, more frequently at this time in history, mason, since any building worth talking about was made of stone. In the official Court document it says that the Templars allowed themselves to be commanded by common builders, a terrible disgrace, but in this original letter from the Ambassador to the Bavarian Court it uses quite another form. It is in the singular and not a description, but in the form of a name, not ‘some masons’, but ‘The Mason’. The term was quite broad. If you were an aristocrat, or a leading member of the church who built a lot of new things, you might be called ‘Peter the Mason’ or something like that, but this treats the word as though it was a name in its own right. This refers to someone called ‘The Mason’ and…” Tilly paused for a flourish. “It’s the possessive form of the word. It says, ‘The Mason commanded his brothers’, not ‘some masons commanded the brothers’, so therefore, according to the original document, the Knights were led by a Templar called ‘The Mason’”.

  The Duke clapped his hands together with pleasure.

  “Excellent,” he said. “Your logic is first class. You will doubtless make dozens of people furious when you publish this.”

  “They will be even angrier when it goes out on television,” smiled Tilly.

  At this, the Duke laughed out loud.

  “Really, television? Please promise me that you will do some filming here,” he said. “Nothing makes me happier than annoying those donkeys in the State Archive.”

  “I’ll certainly speak to the producer,” said Tilly.

  “But the building you found at the site of the battle. You said that it that was not any ordinary building. It was built for a specific purpose.”

  Tilly calmed down and regained her professional composure with surprising suddenness.

  “It is certainly something that needs further research, absolutely,” she said.

  “It was built by an expert in engineering construction?”

  “Yes,” said Tilly.

  “Built for a military purpose?”

  “Very probably.”

  “Around the time of the battle?”

  “Around that time, I would think.”

  “I wonder how many military engineering specialists would have been on the pilgrim’s road during that time with the resources to design and construct such a strange little building.”

  “Not too many, that’s for sure,” said Tilly.

  Their conversation was interrupted by a call on Tilly’s mobile. Sparke had arrived to pick her up.

  They said their goodbyes to the Duke, with Tilly arranging to return the next day to carry on researching in some areas which the Duke thought might be of relevance.

  As they drove into town, they started to get ready to deal with the inevitable conversation with Maryam. She had, after all, commissioned the project to begin with and it was time to give her an update. The last time they had spoken, it had been frosty, to say the least. Now, they both shared the same concern: how to keep Tilly’s discoveries about the truth behind the Battle of Jacob’s Column in perspective. Neither of them wanted a reasonably interesting academic discovery to become a media bubble. Also, there was no sign of any connection between the medieval events and Maryam’s family.

&n
bsp; “None of this gets us any nearer to the Templar key her family attached such importance to,” said Sparke. “Do you think it’s connected?”

  Tilly thought for a while before answering.

  “Strictly between us, and not to be repeated, yes, I do think it probably is connected. The Templars had little known activity in the area before the battle and they were suppressed within a few decades of it taking place, so a Templar artefact in the area has a strong possibility of being related.”

  “Let me make sure I understand,” said Sparke, preferring to dwell on problems of history than the more immediate concern of the party he was trapped into. “We know some pretty clever things about the truth behind the Battle of Jacob’s Column which might make nice television. We suspect that the key may well be related to that period, although we need to look more closely at the key itself, perhaps. But all this leaves one monster thing outstanding: why on earth would Maryam’s great-grandfather hand the key to his son in the middle of a war zone then walk off to his own death without an explanation? Are all these things related?”

  Tilly smiled and jabbed him lightly on the arm.

  “That’s what you’re here for,” she said. “My area of expertise runs out around the late fifteenth century. The twentieth century is all yours. So, anyway, do I need to change for this party? I don’t have any glam clothes with me.”

  “Change?” said Sparke, who had given no thought to what he might be expected to wear. “No, not at all. You look great and here in Germany people don’t tend to dress up. They’ll be wearing their office clothes, I expect.”

  By the time they had fought their way through the Munich rush hour traffic, they were running late. Sparke parked near the main railway station and hustled Tilly through the near empty streets towards the restaurant where the party was being held. He had hoped to arrive at the same time as everyone else and blend in. Being fashionably late was not fashionable in Germany and the last thing he wanted was to draw attention to himself.