by James Becker
“And your orders if we find the English couple?” one of the men asked.
“Subdue them if possible. If not, kill the man but keep the woman alive, just in case she knows anything useful to us. All of you, use your torches sparingly,” Vitale ordered, “and try to keep the noise down. I don’t want them to know we are in here with them until the last possible moment.”
The two groups split, torches sporadically illuminating the walls and floor of the tunnel as they separated.
• • •
“What the hell is that?” Mallory muttered. “It’s bloody creepy.”
More or less in the center of the tunnel and perhaps sixty yards in front of them was a faint white object defaced by a dark marking, apparently suspended in midair.
“I have no idea,” Robin said, “and we aren’t going to find out if we just stand here. But I agree it does look pretty weird.”
“That’s weird, too,” Mallory added, as the light from his torch illuminated the roof of the tunnel in front of them, “though actually that does make sense of something I spotted a few seconds ago.”
“What?” Robin demanded.
“I’ll tell you later. Let’s find out what this is first.”
They stepped forward, moving cautiously, Mallory keeping the beam of his torch pointed straight at the mysterious object. The shape became clearer with every yard that they advanced.
And then, at almost the same moment, they both recognized the object for what it was.
“It’s a man,” Robin said incredulously. “But that’s impossible.”
Sitting squarely in their path, almost blocking it, was unmistakably a human figure, but not just any human figure.
“It might be impossible,” Mallory agreed, “but that is the figure of a man, without a doubt. A man from the distant past, by the looks of him.”
In the light from the torch they could now identify the white object they’d seen as a surcoat, emblazoned with the red croix pattée of the Templars. Around it was the glint of chain mail and armor, and above it the horizontal eye slits of a battle helmet. What they seemed to be facing was a fully armored knight of the Templar order.
“This can’t be,” Robin said, her step faltering as they got closer.
“Whoever it is,” Mallory said with a confidence that he wasn’t entirely sure he felt, “he’s been dead a long time. He can’t be any danger to us now.”
The closer they approached, the more they could see, and in moments it was obvious that their initial conclusion was correct.
Sitting in the center of the tunnel on a heavy wooden chair was the dead body, just skin and bone, of a Templar knight in full battle order, his war sword resting across his lap, his shield leaning against the side of his body, his left hand—now little more than a cluster of bones with a few patches of mummified tissue clinging to them—gripping it. The corpse was held in place on the chair with a leather strap around his torso to keep him upright, and another, much thinner strap supporting his helmet. From a distance—as they could both confirm—he had looked alive. Alive and alert. A knight very obviously on guard.
“A fell guardian indeed,” Mallory whispered. “A knight left here to guard the Templar wealth for all eternity.”
He handed Robin his torch, then picked up the battle sword and eased the blade out of the scabbard. The ancient steel of the weapon glittered in the torchlight.
“This looks almost like new,” he said. “Even the leather of the scabbard feels as if it was oiled recently, and there’s no rust that I can see on the shield or the helmet. The constant temperature and lack of humidity down here must have acted to preserve everything really well.”
“Do you think they tied him here when he was still alive?” Jessop asked, her eyes fixed on the eye slits of the helmet, almost as if she was expecting to see some sign of life there.
“I doubt it. It’s difficult to tell, but he looks to me like he was an old man, and I guess that after he died his body was then dressed in his battle armor and secured to the chair.”
They studied the ancient body in the torchlight for a few moments; then Mallory shook his head.
“I can well imagine that he would probably have spooked any local treasure hunters who found their way into the tunnel. Imagine coming across him when the only light you have is a flickering wooden torch. Let’s face it: he stopped us in our tracks.”
“My heart’s still pounding,” Robin said. “But at least we now know two things. First, this tunnel was obviously built by the Knights Templar, because otherwise the guardian would not be here. And the other thing is that I think the treasure is still here.” She pointed behind the silent watcher in his wooden chair and shone the beam of her torch in that direction.
Mallory looked where the beam had come to rest, and against one side of the tunnel he saw a large lumpy shape, some kind of a tattered black cloth concealing whatever was underneath it. To one side of the shape, mounted horizontally on a couple of stone pegs in the wall, was another Templar battle sword.
“That really could be what we’ve been looking for,” he said, and quickly strode over to it.
He bent down, took hold of the corner of the cloth, and slowly, with infinite care, peeled it back to reveal a collection of ancient wooden boxes bound with ornamented metal bands.
For a few moments, neither of them spoke. They both just stared at what, if they had followed the clues correctly, was the lost treasure of the Knights Templar. A hoard of precious metals and jewels and other assets that in the medieval period had a value greater than the national treasury of most European countries. In the twenty-first century, its value, based on its intrinsic worth as bullion and precious stones, would be virtually incalculable, and perhaps significantly higher still for its historic importance.
“This has to be it,” Mallory said quietly, “but there’s definitely something missing. And why is there a second sword?”
“Forget the sword. What do you think is missing?”
Mallory gestured at the pile of chests in front of them.
“Look at these boxes. I’m a long way from being an expert on anything, and especially things to do with the sea. But I do know that according to the best available information we have, the Templar fleet that sailed from Honfleur in the autumn of 1307, allegedly carrying the bulk of the treasure of the order, numbered about eighteen ships. They weren’t big vessels, but they certainly had seagoing capability and were big enough to weather Mediterranean storms and to sail the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. We also know that they were obviously carrying passengers as well as cargo, but this”—he pointed again at the boxes in front of them—“just isn’t enough.”
“I see what you mean,” Robin said. “Even though these boxes and chests are bound to be heavy because of what’s in them, what we’re looking at here could probably have been carried by two ships, maybe by three at the most. So, where’s the rest of it?”
“Maybe there was a second hiding place somewhere else,” Mallory suggested, “and maybe there’s a clue somewhere in this lot that could lead us to it.”
“Or maybe there isn’t,” Robin said, staring at the wall behind the chests, and then pointing at it. “Just take that sword and touch the stone with the end of it.”
Mallory had no idea what she meant, but he obediently lifted the Templar battle sword off the stone pegs, pulled the blade from the scabbard, and extended the point toward the black wall that rose up behind the pile of chests.
Then something totally unexpected happened. Instead of the metallic sound of the blade touching stone, the point seemed almost to sink into it, and the whole wall seemed to ripple slightly. And then Mallory realized what Robin had seen and that he had missed.
“That’s not a stone wall,” he said. “That’s another black cloth, and it’s concealing an opening in the wall. Maybe these chests wouldn’t fit inside that
chamber, and the rest of the Templar treasure is stored in there.”
Mallory started to resheathe the battle sword, then stopped, his attention drawn to the shape of the blade near the point.
“That’s odd,” he said, showing it to Robin. “The blade of this sword is an unusual shape. The blades of most medieval swords followed exactly the same pattern. The edges of the blade were parallel almost to the tip of the weapon and the blade often had a central groove running down the center of each side, as this one does. That was known as a fuller, and was intended to lighten the blade and make it easier to handle in battle. Near the tip of the blade that changed to a central ridge that provided added strength where the metal was at its thinnest. But on this blade the central ridge is present on only one side, and on the other the fuller extends all the way to the point, so in cross section it looks a bit like a flattened letter V. I’ve never seen that before. I wonder if that was a unique Templar design.”
Mallory walked back to the body of the seated knight, lifted the sword off his lap, and drew the blade out of the scabbard.
“No,” he said. “This is the traditional pattern, with the central ridge extending down each side of the blade to the tip.”
“Does it matter?” Robin asked.
“Probably not,” Mallory admitted. He replaced that sword in its original position, across the thighs of the long-dead knight, and walked back to where she was standing. “It’s just unusual, and that could well mean that the sword is special. It’s probably not important. But the other thing that puzzles me is the way the sword was hanging. Usually a sword was hung vertically, point downward, from a pair of pegs that fitted either side of the scabbard so that the weight of the sword rested on the cross guard, the steel bar between the handle and the blade. That way, it was ready for immediate use and because most of the weight was in the blade it was a very safe way of storing it. I can’t help thinking that because the sword was positioned horizontally, with the blade pointing toward the far end of the tunnel, near Rosslyn Chapel, it must be significant in some way.”
He picked up the second sword, slid the blade back into the scabbard, and leaned it against one of the ironbound chests. Then he stretched out his hand toward the chest directly in front of him and ran his fingertips over the ancient wood and polished metal.
But then he stopped abruptly and drew back.
“You’ve remembered the Templar booby traps,” Robin suggested.
“No, it’s not that,” Mallory said. “Listen.”
“I can hear footsteps,” she said after a moment, her face pale in the darkness. “Faint footsteps.”
“And not just one pair. We need to get out of here if we can. Or hide if we can’t.”
“Is it the bloody Dominicans, or just somebody who saw the hole you made and decided to explore?”
“I’ll give you three guesses. Sound travels well in tunnel systems. I can also hear faint voices, and I think they’re speaking Italian.”
Mallory picked up the Templar battle sword again, and the black cloth that had concealed the chests.
Robin covered the glass of the torch with her fingers to reduce the amount of light it was emitting, and they moved as quickly and quietly as they could beyond the pile of chests and deeper into the tunnel. But only about fifty yards farther on they came to a dead stop because the tunnel in front of them was completely blocked by a rockfall, either accidental and caused by the geography of the area or, perhaps more likely, brought down deliberately to seal off that end of the tunnel.
“We have to go back,” Robin whispered. “I saw a crevice in the rock. It might lead to a side passage, or at least be somewhere we can hide.”
In fact, it was rather more than a crevice. She led the way into a short side tunnel that appeared to be a natural feature of the cave system. It was reasonably wide to begin with, and the opening meandered some distance deeper into the bedrock, becoming more narrow and restricted as it did so. It didn’t appear to have ever been used in the past, as the floor was heavily ridged and uneven, and if it had been a storage area or employed for some other purpose, then logically the Templars or whoever had occupied the site would have tried to flatten it out.
There were a number of fissures in the rock on both sides of the cave, most of them only a couple of feet or so deep, but one of them was more like a side passage and extended for at least twenty feet. Inside, there were numerous cracks and crevices, and the narrow opening at the very end of the passage was just wide enough for both of them to slide into it and get out of sight.
“The cloth,” Robin whispered. “Now I know why you picked it up.”
“Black stone, black cloth,” Mallory replied. “I thought we could maybe hide under it somewhere. But this will work better, I hope.”
He positioned the cloth across the opening of the fissure behind them, wedging it into place with the Templar sword and making sure that neither of them was touching it. If it was going to function as a hiding place, the cloth had to remain completely motionless to anyone looking into the side passage.
“That should look like the back wall of the opening if anyone comes in there,” he said. “I just wish I’d brought the Browning,” he added quietly. “I’d feel a whole lot better with a gun in my hand.”
And as the sound of footsteps grew appreciably louder, they both shrank as far back into the crevice as they could.
Then all they could do was wait. And hope.
53
Midlothian, Scotland
The group of Dominicans, Toscanelli leading the way, his pistol in his hand, and with Vitale a few paces behind, stopped abruptly as they rounded the final bend and, just like Mallory and Jessop, were confronted by the sight of something that made no sense. But they paused only momentarily, then strode on, each man apart from Vitale himself carrying a pistol, and confident that they could take care of anything they found in front of them.
A few seconds later, they stood in a loose circle around the long-dead Templar knight.
“The last of the heretics,” Vitale said dismissively. “A pathetic attempt to scare people away.”
“But at least it means we’re in the right place,” Toscanelli pointed out. “The Templar treasure that we seek must be somewhere nearby.”
“And what about the English couple?” Carlo said. “We know they have at least two pistols, because of what happened at Templecombe. They could be waiting for us in ambush anywhere down here.”
His remark prompted an immediate reaction: all the Dominicans were carrying torches, and all of them, including Vitale, switched them on, the beams stabbing into the darkness as they looked around them for any sign of danger.
“We have no idea where they are,” Vitale reminded the men. “They could be anywhere in this tunnel system. Spread out and check this end of the tunnel. When you’ve done that, we’ll try and find the treasure.”
Searching for one person armed with a pistol in a dark and unfamiliar space is invariably unpleasant, always dangerous, and potentially fatal. Looking for two armed people more than doubles the danger and greatly increases the chance of stumbling into an ambush or a cross fire. So although the enforcers were dedicated to their cause and each was holding a weapon, the search proceeded noticeably slowly. Apart from anything else, each of the men knew perfectly well that the torch he was holding in his left hand made him an immediate target for anyone waiting in the darkness ahead. The only piece of good news was that with the exception of the long-dead Templar knight sitting for eternity in his wooden chair and the pile of boxes positioned behind and to one side of him, the tunnel itself appeared to be largely empty.
While Vitale remained safely out of danger—he hoped—near the corpse and the chair, the other men spread out and made their way steadily down the tunnel. As they advanced, they shone their torches into the various crevices and fissures in the rock, but saw nothing to alert them. In
a few minutes, they reached the rockfall that sealed off the tunnel and turned back the way they’d come.
“They obviously can’t have gone beyond that,” Toscanelli said. “So if they’re here at all, they must have hidden somewhere behind us. Check out all the openings we’ve passed so far.”
That was potentially a much more dangerous operation. In the comparatively open space of the tunnel there would at least have been a chance that they could see their quarry before he or she opened fire, but in the close confines of the rocky crevices this would not be true.
“Take it slowly. One man to enter each space while two others cover him from the tunnel,” Toscanelli ordered. “Be quite certain of your target before you open fire, and remember that we are surrounded by rock, so there will be ricochets. Now get on with it.”
• • •
Behind the heavy black cloth that Mallory had draped over the narrow cavity in which they were standing, all he and Robin could do was listen and keep as silent and motionless as possible.
They had heard the sounds of footsteps approaching their hiding place, then seen a brief flash of illumination as one of the Dominicans shone his torch into the crevice, but then the footsteps receded.
“They’re searching the tunnel,” Mallory whispered, his mouth right beside Robin’s ear, as the sound of heavy treads diminished.
“They’ll get as far as the rockfall, and then they’ll come back,” she replied, equally quietly.
“You can depend on that.”
They heard a male voice obviously speaking Italian, and equally obviously issuing instructions, and then the noise of the footsteps of several people began to increase once again.
Mallory put his arm around Robin’s shoulders and squeezed.
“We’ll get through this,” he said, his voice barely audible, “and I think I love you.”
“I know you do,” she whispered in reply. “And you do pick your moments, don’t you?”
