by James Becker
“I’m sure it was,” Robin said, “and that isn’t good news, but it was what we expected. Anyway, thanks for keeping us in the picture, and thanks for making that call.”
“No problem. Good luck with whatever you’re doing and wherever you’re going. Keep your eyes open and stay safe.”
“So, where are we going?” Mallory asked, as Robin ended the call. He was fully relaxed now that the ferry was moving and they were—at least for the moment—out of immediate danger. “Not Tomar, I hope. There might be a blight of Dominicans there already.”
“No,” Robin assured him. “As far as I can see, Portugal doesn’t actually get a mention in that piece of text.”
“Good. You didn’t get around to telling me anything about your translation. So, what did it tell you?”
“Rather less than I was hoping, actually. Unless I’ve missed something, most of it is another explanation of what happened when the order’s spies discovered what Philip the Fair was planning. When Jacques de Molay received word of the king’s intentions, he apparently thought long and hard about what to do. Right from the start he knew that resisting the king would be impossible. The Templars were powerful, as we both know, but their numbers were small and they would have been unable to combat the massed military forces of the French ruler, simply because all of their French properties were by definition surrounded by the rest of France. De Molay knew that if they refused to allow Philip’s men inside when they knocked on the gates, that would only delay the inevitable. The king could order the strongholds to be besieged, and simply starve them out.
“The Templars also couldn’t flee the country, because there wasn’t enough time for all the knights to leave France before the intended arrests, and de Molay knew that as the leader he would certainly have to stay, along with many of the most senior members. He was sure the king’s spies would be watching him and his officers closely and would move against them the moment they tried to leave Paris.”
“A hell of a situation to be in,” Mallory commented. “They were damned if they stayed, and damned if they tried to leave.”
“Exactly. According to the text on the vellum, de Molay held a kind of council of war with his senior officers in the Paris preceptory in about the third week of August, but they all knew only too well that they were in a situation from which virtually none of them was going to be able to escape. They knew that the execution fires of the Dominicans would be where they were likely to end their lives, and they also realized that after what they were probably going to suffer for hours or days in the torture chambers, dying by fire, which would be absolutely indescribable agony but would at least be fairly quick, might even come as a relief.
“But de Molay did what he could. He ordered most of the rank-and-file knights, the younger members of the order, to leave Paris, sending them on apparently legitimate business across France to the other scattered Templar strongholds, carrying specific instructions that would ensure that only a skeleton staff would remain at each location when Philip the Fair’s men arrived. It’s the next bit of the text that’s definitely the most interesting, at least from our point of view.”
“What did he do with the Templar treasure?”
“Exactly,” Robin agreed. “According to this, de Molay was so appalled at Philip’s duplicity—you remember that the two men were supposed to be friends, and de Molay actually took part in a funeral for one of Philip’s relatives, an honor that proved their close relationship—that he was absolutely determined to keep the treasure out of the hands of the king. But removing the wealth of the order from the various strongholds in the country was only a part of the problem. He had the men and resources to do it, but what concerned him wasn’t the transportation of the treasure, or even hiding it. His big worry was what would happen to it afterward. Again, according to the text we’ve deciphered, the information de Molay had been given suggested that Philip was determined to exterminate the Knights Templar order in its entirety, and that meant there would be no members left to pick up the pieces once the purge was over. So de Molay was worried about what would happen to the wealth, to the treasure, and to the order’s most sacred relic.”
“Relic?” Mallory asked. “What relic?”
The Floating Bridge ferry was just about to arrive on the Kingswear side of the river, and Robin clicked her seat belt into place and started the engine of the Porsche before she replied.
“Frankly, I don’t know. The text is clear but not specific, if you see what I mean. There are distinctly separate references to the treasure and to this sacred object, which appears to have been almost more important to the Templars than the wealth they possessed. Certainly, Jacques de Molay wanted to transport this relic somewhere safe, as well as hiding the treasure. The text on the vellum makes that very clear, but nowhere does it say what the object actually was.”
Robin steered the Cayman off the ferry and accelerated gently around the bend and up Bridge Road, the A379, which would take them north to Paignton, and on to the faster roads leading toward Exeter.
“Maybe this relic is what they found in the hidden chambers of the Temple Mount,” Mallory suggested. “The historical record says that the original nine knights spent almost ten years excavating underneath the Al-Aqsa Mosque, apparently looking for something. And most people believe that they did recover some object, simply because of what happened to them next. Once they stopped their digging and stepped back into the pages of the history books, the order was immediately recognized and approved by the Catholic Church, and only a decade later Pope Innocent II issued the Omne Datum Optimum papal bull that exempted the Templar order from obedience to all local laws.
“That was an astonishing document, because it meant that the Templars could cross any border without let or hindrance, were not required to pay taxes to anyone or obey any national laws of any sort, and they were to owe allegiance to only one person, the pope himself. No other order or group of men, before or after the Knights Templar, was ever granted such sweeping powers or given such an exemption, and there appears to be no obvious reason why the pope should have issued the document, unless he was effectively forced into it. One of the popular theories is that the Templars stopped their excavations on the Temple Mount because they found what they were looking for, and whatever it was so impressed, or perhaps so terrified, the pope that he was prepared to grant them whatever they wanted as long as the existence of this object remained a secret. That is at least a possible and logical explanation for what happened nearly nine hundred years ago.”
Robin nodded thoughtfully as she steered the car along the twisting section of road near the Noss on Dart Marina and then accelerated along the straighter stretch that led to Hillhead.
“There must be theories about what they found, if that idea is correct,” she said. “Are we back to the Ark of the Covenant or something like that?”
“Maybe we are. I really don’t know. But don’t forget that carving we saw at Chartres Cathedral. That building was constructed when the Templars were at the height of their power, and there’s a strong chance that they were largely responsible for financing it. The carving very clearly showed the Ark, and one of the interpretations of the inscription is that it was actually hidden somewhere in the cathedral. If that’s correct, then the Ark of the Covenant must still have been in existence in the thirteenth century, and was then most likely in the possession of the Knights Templar order. And to go back a step or two, if the Templars had pitched up in Rome and convinced the pope that they were in possession of the Ark, he would almost certainly have done precisely what they told him to do. That was, and arguably still is, the most important lost relic in religious history. It’s been described as a machine for talking to God, and if you believe the stuff in the Old Testament, it was also an impressive battlefield weapon. The knowledge that it had been found would have terrified the pope because it would effectively have proved that the Jews were God’s chos
en people, and that the occupant of the Throne of Saint Peter in Rome was not God’s representative on earth but just a usurper and of no consequence whatsoever. The Ark of the Covenant had, and I suppose it still has, depending on who owns it, the potential to destroy the Roman Catholic Church completely.”
“But could it have lasted that long? I thought it was only a wooden box—made of acacia wood, I think—covered in gold leaf. An important wooden box, granted, and one that would have been hidden and protected at all cost because of its significance, but just something made out of wood thousands of years ago.”
“I really have no idea,” Mallory replied. “I know about codes and ciphers, and a fair amount about the Templars, but I don’t know very much about religious artifacts of any sort. Okay, so the Templars had both their treasure—their assets, if you like—and this sacred relic. Do we know what they did with them? With either of them?”
“The text wasn’t entirely clear, at least the way I translated the Latin into English, but it appears that at the end of this meeting de Molay spent some time alone trying to decide what he should do next. Then he had another meeting, but this time he only summoned four people to his chamber. Three of them were important and trusted knights of the order, men that de Molay knew he could rely on, but not of such senior rank that Philip’s men would be likely to stop and arrest them if they were seen leaving the Paris preceptory.”
“So, who was the fourth person?” Mallory asked.
“That isn’t very clear. The word used to describe him in Latin was puer, and that translates as a servant or a young man, so my best guess is that he was some kind of a trusted retainer, perhaps a lay member of the order.”
“That’s possible. It’s worth remembering that only about one in ten of the members of the Knights Templar were actual knights,” Mallory pointed out. “Below the knights were the sergeants, who didn’t come from noble families and were usually skilled craftsmen. They were the order’s blacksmiths, armorers, builders, and other essential tradesmen, but they were also able to hold important ranks, and many of them rose high enough to become some of the most senior members of the Knights Templar. For example, we know that the order had a substantial fleet of ships, mainly based in the Mediterranean, and the man in charge of this fleet, the admiral, if you like, was actually a sergeant. His official title was Commander of the Vault of Acre. The order also had chaplains, who were ordained priests, obviously, and who were tasked with providing spiritual help and guidance to the Templars.
“At the other end of the scale were the visitors general. These were knights of the order who had been personally selected by the Grand Master to act as a kind of roving police force. They were responsible for visiting Templar establishments in the various provinces and countries to inspect the way the affairs of the order were being conducted, to introduce new rules or laws, resolve disputes, and generally act as the eyes and ears of the Grand Master himself. They had substantial powers. They could remove a knight from the order if he had seriously transgressed, and even suspend a local Master if there were problems or malpractices in the way he was conducting himself.”
“You told me some time ago there were also squires in the Templar order.”
“That’s right, though the squires weren’t actually in the order, or not always, anyway. Usually they were recruited to serve a particular knight for a specific period of time, after which they would leave and revert to their normal civilian status. Each Templar knight would have at least two, and sometimes three or four, warhorses assigned to him, and the squires would be responsible for the care and preparation of the animals as well as assisting the knight with his own preparations for battle. Just a thought, but if this anonymous fourth person summoned by de Molay had been a sergeant or a chaplain, I would have expected the author of the text to say that. So perhaps the man was actually one of the Grand Master’s personal squires, someone not a part of the Templar order, but a person that de Molay obviously trusted implicitly.”
“That makes sense,” Robin agreed. “Anyway, whoever this person was, he was given instructions, along with the three unnamed knights, about the removal of the contents of the vaults of the Paris preceptory. And the text on the vellum states that it wasn’t just the assets held in Paris that were being transported elsewhere. Again, the translation is not entirely specific, but it says something along the lines of “together with those containers gathered severally,” which certainly implies to me that it’s referring to the assets held by other Templar strongholds in France, and perhaps in other countries as well.”
“So, what happened to the treasure?”
“I’ll get to that in a moment. The slightly odd thing is that, according to the translation, the fourth man was not personally involved in the transport of the Templar assets, but was just being told what was going to happen to them, almost as if he was overseeing the removal, which doesn’t entirely make sense if he was only a squire, even a trusted squire, because the men doing the work were noblemen, knights. He was also given a specific document by de Molay, and charged with keeping it safe. The Latin phrase used was conservare et salvare in perpetuum, which translates as something like ‘protect and save for all eternity,’ but there is no indication as to what this document might be. Clearly, it must have been something to do with the assets being removed, but exactly what it was, I have no idea. The text does then say where the Templar treasure was taken.”
“At last,” Mallory muttered.
Robin grinned at him.
“It does, but it’s not very much help.”
“Now, why am I not surprised about that? Ever since we started this, we’ve found misdirection, confusion, and all the rest of it. So, go on, tell me what vague hint the text provides.”
Robin shook her head.
“It’s not vague at all, actually,” she said. “As I said, it tells us exactly where all the boxes of treasure were taken from the Paris preceptory, and by implication at least where all the other assets from the Templar strongholds in France ended up.” She paused for a moment, savoring the expression of almost terminal irritation on Mallory’s face. “They were all taken,” she said, “to Honfleur.”
“Honfleur? Honfleur in France?”
“Unless you know of another Honfleur somewhere, yes.”
“Whereabouts in Honfleur?”
“That’s what I meant when I said it was specific, but not helpful. All the wagonloads of goods were taken to the port at Honfleur, where they were loaded onto the ships of the Templar fleet that were waiting, ships that sailed with the tide on the following day. And as I’m sure you’ve probably guessed by now, the text does not say specifically what the destination of all these vessels was.”
“Not even a hint?”
“There is a hint, yes, but like almost everything else, it’s nonspecific. The text states that the ships sailed to a location described as pro salute, which means a place of safety, in the insulae ad aquilonem, the islands of the north, and that could mean almost anywhere, but obviously Scandinavia is a strong possibility. I mean, it would make sense for the Templars to choose to hide their assets in a country where they didn’t already have a strong presence, somewhere that Philip the Fair would find it difficult to mount a campaign against them, and as far as I know they had never set up shop that far north.”
“They didn’t,” Mallory agreed. “Most of their important strongholds were in the Mediterranean or in the countries that surrounded it, because that’s where the action was, though they were also quite well established in England, and I suppose they could possibly describe the British Isles as ‘the islands of the north,’ so maybe we’re closer to the treasure than we realize.”
“Or maybe we’re not,” Robin replied. “Anyway, let’s find somewhere to stay for the night. Then we can go through the translation again, just in case there’s something we’ve missed.”
26
Dartmouth,
Devon
Toscanelli instructed the driver to keep the speed well down as the car entered the built-up area. He had already seen far more police officers and police vehicles than he thought was normal for the quiet coastal town, and he could not afford to draw any attention to his men or to their mission. Part of the road near the area named on the satnav as Coronation Park had been closed, with three marked police cars, their roof lights flashing, stationed there to block off the traffic. A number of other vehicles, including a white Transit van, were parked in the area, uniformed policemen apparently interviewing their drivers and passengers.
The Italian muttered a curse as they drove past the scene.
“Pietro will suffer for this,” he vowed. “He was never told to open fire on them in a public place. That was the last thing we wanted to happen. When we kill them, it will be somewhere quiet and private, because they will both take a long time to die, the woman especially.”
He directed the driver into the road that ran at the rear of Robin Jessop’s shop, but before the car reached her apartment building, a black-clad figure stepped off the pavement just as the Audi approached him. The man was carrying an ancient ironbound chest in both hands.
The car stopped a few feet farther on, and in a matter of moments the chest was concealed in the trunk of the vehicle, and the man himself was sitting in the rear seat.
“I know you told me to stay in the apartment, Marco,” the man said, “but I was worried that the woman might have called the police and told them a burglary was in progress. So I collected what we needed and waited out here on the street for your arrival.”
“That was good thinking,” Toscanelli conceded. “Have you seen any sign of the police?”
“Not yet, though I did hear the sirens from several police cars in the area, which was really why I left the apartment.”
“I’m not surprised nobody has appeared yet. Thanks to that idiot Pietro, they are fully occupied elsewhere in the town. So, what did you take out of the apartment?”
