by Sam Clarke
This was the best homework I’d ever had. I sharpened a pencil that didn’t need sharpening because I was too excited and I desperately needed to fiddle with something. Fifty minutes later my pencil was lethally sharp. The same couldn’t be said of my mind, I hadn’t found any obvious clues. Isabelle’s brain hadn’t delivered either – she was too subdued. Ariel had gone back to twenty-five across, Viggo was drawing flowers on the coasters and my father’s letter had turned into a plane. A sensation of utter failure swamped the room. The watch beeped. ‘Any epiphanies?’ asked my father expectantly.
Our silence spoke a thousand words.
Viggo took the lead. ‘The first paragraph is useless. After years in Outremer, Godefroi learns to appreciate the ways of the Infidels. He fights them, but he respects them. It’s all very interesting, but I cannot see how his personal impressions could be linked to the ring.’
My father flattened his plane to its original shape, grabbed a black marker and deleted the first part. ‘I like this approach. Any comments on the second paragraph?’
‘The Templars were still in existence,’ trilled Isabelle, as if she was the only one who had figured it out.
‘That’s irrelevant,’ said my father curtly. She wanted to reply, but he cut her short. ‘Let’s move on. Godefroi gets taken to the monastery in Agrigento and realises that his wound is infected.’
‘Poor dude, all he needed was some amoxicillin,’ said Viggo, popping one of his antibiotics. He swallowed the pill without water. It got stuck in his throat.
‘How about the monastery?’ I asked, while Viggo produced some rasping sounds in the background. ‘Should we check it out?’
My father smacked Viggo’s back and dislodged the pill. ‘It could be worth a visit, but the ring’s not there, Godefroi said so.’
‘The last part is quite convoluted,’ said Viggo. ‘He was probably feverish. He rambles on about the olive trees outside the monastery, prays to the Virgin Mary to keep him safe, waffles about the owls, hopes that the ring will be returned to the Templars, reveals that his new horse is called Pegasus…’
‘Who gives a fig about the name of his horse?’ Isabelle’s input didn’t generate any reactions, other than Viggo suddenly yearning for figs.
‘It could be a hidden clue,’ I said, for the sake of contradicting her.
My father unconvincingly scribbled down the horse’s name. ‘Anything else?’ he asked.
A hopeless silence descended on the room. I involuntarily cleared my throat.
‘Yes?’ said my father. His voice was charged with anticipation, I felt I had to come up with something.
‘He… um… he had a change of heart half way through the letter.’
My father skim-read the various paragraphs. ‘I don’t see it.’
‘At the beginning Godefroi prays to the Lord, but in the end he seems a lot keener on the Virgin Mary.’
‘The Templars built many churches in her honour and held her in the highest regard,’ said my father, jotting down my thoughts.
‘He may be onto something,’ mumbled Viggo, without looking up from figheaven.com. We waited for him to continue, but he added two jars of homemade jam to his cart instead.
‘For God’s sake, shut that website down and elaborate!’ roared my father.
A startled Viggo quickly complied. ‘One of the paragraphs bugs me,’ he said, running his finger down the page until he found what he was looking for. ‘The sentence I trust that the light of Mary, Mother of God and custodian of my knowledge, will guide me, shield me and deliver me safely to my destination leaves me a bit disoriented.’
‘Nothing new there,’ said Isabelle, as stony-faced as Queen Elizabeth during her Christmas speech.
Viggo exploded. ‘If you don’t have anything nice to say, shut the hell up!’
She threw an eraser at his face, and missed. ‘That’s not how the quote goes!’
‘I know! I was being intentionally rude! And you throw like a girl.’
‘I am a girl!’
‘Stop it, right now,’ thundered my father. ‘We don’t have time for this. We must work together, as a team, or we’ll never find the ring. Viggo, focus, what bugs you about the sentence?’
He sighed and rubbed the stubble on his chin. ‘Godefroi says that the Virgin Mary is the custodian of his knowledge. What on earth is he on about? I mean, praying for guidance and protection makes sense, but this knowledge thing seems, I don’t know, out of place.’
We re-examined the sentence, but nobody spoke or volunteered further theories. Silence was followed by more silence.
‘Is that it?’ My father’s voice was soaked with disappointment. No-one met his gaze. ‘All the five of us could come up with is that Godefroi’s horse was strangely named Pegasus and that, in his final hours, he favoured the Virgin Mary over God?’
He shook his head dejectedly. Unless we were hit in the head by a heavy stroke of genius, Miguel and the ring were slowly slipping away.
‘We could adopt a scientific approach,’ said Isabelle, for once speaking instead of scoffing. ‘Godefroi only had a few days left. If we get a map of the Agrigento area, calculate the average speed of a horse and allow for forage stops, we can create a chart with concentric circles. Then we could see which suitable hiding places were within galloping reach.’
‘Is this a real-life mathematical expression?’ I asked dumbfounded. I had always considered maths as an abstract form of torture. I never thought it could be applied to our dimension.
My father considered Isabelle’s theory. ‘Give it a go, we have nothing to lose. We’ll keep trying to break the letter.’ He turned to face Viggo and I. ‘Let your minds flow, pursue any leads, no matter how far-fetched. We’re running out of time.’
Out of desperation, I checked the website of the monastery where Godefroi had spent his last days. ‘Dad?’
‘Uhu?’
‘The Holy Spirit monastery was founded in 1299.’
‘So?’
‘How could Godefroi see centuries old olive trees outside its windows barely eighteen years later?’
My father pulled a clueless face. ‘People built next to accessible resources back then, maybe the trees were there from before. An olive tree was pretty much a guaranteed income.’
I scrolled through the pictures. ‘I’m looking at the Holy Spirit gardens and I can’t see any olive trees.’
‘Why don’t you phone and ask? Monasteries never throw anything away. If they produced oil in medieval times, they’ll have a record of it.’
I picked up the phone and spoke to a very helpful monk. He agreed to check the monastery archives and confirmed that they had never had any olive trees. My father made a note of the information. ‘Interesting. My list now reads: Pegasus, Virgin Mary/God change of heart and olive trees. Isabelle, how are you getting on?’
Considering that her equestrian knowledge went as far as Black Beauty, she had surpassed herself. She had calculated the average canter speed of a horse at approximately twenty kilometres per hour. The figure allowed for terrain changes, environmental factors, forage stops and resting time. She estimated that Godefroi’s injuries would have prevented him from galloping fast and that he could have handled one to two days’ travel at the most. She began drawing concentric circles around the Holy Spirit monastery. ‘Each circle represents one hour. Or twenty kilometres,’ she began condescendingly, as if she was addressing a convention of imbeciles.
Viggo wasn’t convinced about the speed. ‘He must have gone slower,’ he said. ‘He only had one horse, I’m sure he didn’t want to wear it out and risk being stranded in the middle of nowhere.’
Isabelle set her pencil down. And huffed. ‘Are you an expert on horses now?’
‘As a matter of fact, I am. I’ve been riding since I was five. I really miss my horse,’ he added nostalgically.
‘What’s his name?’ I asked.
‘Dude, I’d rather not say.’
‘For you to be embarrassed, it’s
got to be pretty lame.’
He grimaced. ‘It is.’
‘You’ve kindled my curiosity, shoot.’
He exhaled. ‘Pegasus.’
I slapped my thigh and began to laugh. ‘Like Godefroi’s?’
‘Yep.’
I flapped my arms in the air. ‘Was he white and winged?’
He laughed along. ‘Yeah, I flew him to uni every day.’
‘Seriously, what possessed you to call him Pegasus?’
‘I got him on my thirteenth birthday, at the time, I had a major crush on Athena, the Greek goddess.’
I laughed some more. ‘It keeps getting better…’
He feigned offence. ‘Stop teasing, I’m baring my soul here!’
‘She was pretty average,’ said Isabelle acidly, scrolling through images of Athena.
‘C’mon, she’s the goddess of war and wisdom,’ he replied. ‘It doesn’t get much cooler than that! I wanted to honour her by having a giant owl tattooed across my back, but by the time I was old enough for a tattoo, my love for Athena had somewhat dwindled.’
I frowned. ‘Why an owl?’
‘Athena is often represented as an owl, or accompanied by one.’
‘I thought her symbol was an olive branch,’ I said, confused.
‘That too, but it’s hardly tattoo material.’
I couldn’t disagree.
‘How could I miss it!’ said my father, in a mixture of shock and triumph. ‘The owl, the olive tree, the shield, the knowledge: Athena!’
He dragged a chair next to Isabelle and began studying her circles. ‘How far is the city of Syracuse from Agrigento?’ he asked.
She fed the question into the computer. ‘Two hundred and fifteen kilometres.’
‘Based on your calculations, could Godefroi have made it there?’ pressed my father.
‘If he rode for eleven hours, yes.’
‘Riding that long would be harsh on the buttocks of a fit man,’ said Viggo. ‘Godefroi was injured.’
‘But he was pressed for time,’ countered my father. ‘Ariel, in your army days, have you ever been on a horse for eleven hours?’
‘I was in the Israeli Special Forces, not chasing buffalos in the Great Plains.’
‘Believe me,’ said Viggo, ‘riding for eleven hours requires buttocks of steel.’
While they bickered about posteriors, I studied the route between Agrigento and Syracuse. ‘Two hundred and fifteen kilometres is the driving distance,’ I said. ‘Godefroi was on a horse, he didn’t have to stick to paved roads. And if he lived long enough, he may have split the ride over two days.’
Google Maps offered a variety of ways to calculate a distance between two places. I selected the walking option. By cutting out all the major roads, the itinerary instantly shortened. ‘One hundred and eighty-eight kilometres,’ mumbled my father, doing some calculations in his head. ‘Sore buttocks or not, he could have made it. Pack your stuff, we’re off to Syracuse.’
CHAPTER 34
Syracuse lay in the South-East corner of Sicily and enjoyed a very particular layout. It was made up of two parts, separated by a narrow stretch of sea and connected by three bridges. The oldest part was located on a natural island called Ortigia, the other on mainland Sicily. All the Greek temples and the historical buildings, including our hotel, were on Ortigia.
The Discovery was by far the comfiest car we had travelled in and Isabelle had fallen asleep after our latest refuelling stop. Her head rested on my left shoulder and I tried to keep as still as possible not to wake her up. Why did I have to be so nice? Having her so close generated a strange feeling, not at all unpleasant, and I tried to imagine how cool this moment would be if she was Cressida instead. The navigator yapped some more instructions. We crossed the Umbertino Bridge and entered the historical heart of Syracuse. My father struggled to squeeze the Discovery through Ortigia’s narrow streets. ‘We lost a mirror,’ droned Ariel.
‘We’re nearly there,’ replied my father, ignoring the variety of rasping sounds coming from the outside. He turned into a panoramic road, overlooking the Ionian Sea.
‘That’s it, Grand Hotel Ortigia,’ said Viggo, pointing at a two-storey structure with a series of flags hanging over the entrance. ‘The only hotel on the island with a private car park.’
My father killed the engine and handed the car keys to the hotel valet. Our interconnecting suites were on the ground floor. One had been set up as sleeping quarters, the other as a work hub. One of its walls was dominated by a smart board. ‘This is the Cathedral of Syracuse,’ said my father, uploading images of an impressive church to the smart board. Its façade was so intricate that it was impossible to absorb everything in one go. ‘In the past, converting temples into churches was common practice and the Cathedral of Syracuse used to be the Temple of Athena.’ He paused. ‘I believe this is where Godefroi hid the ring.’
He reaped a few gasps.
‘Battle of Himera,’ he continued, ‘does it ring a bell?’
It didn’t ring a thing, I hoped it was a rhetorical question.
‘Yes,’ said Viggo, while peeking under his bandages. ‘Gelon, the King of Syracuse, and Theron, the Tyrant of Agrigento, defeated the Carthaginian army.’
‘That’s right,’ said my father. ‘And to commemorate the victory, Gelon built Athena a fitting temple. Over time, the pagan gods were abandoned and the temple was turned into a Christian church which, in 878, fell into the hands of the Arab invaders. It was used as a mosque until 1093, when the Norman king in charge reinstated it as a Christian church dedicated to the cult of the Virgin Mary.’
‘What makes you think Godefroi hid the ring there?’ I asked.
‘His choice of words. The owl and the olive trees aren’t the only references to Athena. As Viggo pointed out, referring to the Virgin Mary as a custodian of knowledge sounded strange, but the definition fits Athena like a glove. Godefroi also mentions that the light of Mary will guide him and shield him.’
His hopeful grin told me I should have made a connection, but I had that foggy algebra feeling seeping through my brain. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ I confessed.
Isabelle welcomed my public display of ignorance, so she wouldn’t have to parade hers.
‘OK,’ said my father, ‘let’s start from the beginning. The temple’s original structure included a very tall, square-based tower. Affixed to it was Athena’s fabled shield.’ He let the word sink in. ‘In the right conditions, the sun reflected off the copper shield and made the temple visible from a considerable distance. The shield acted as a beacon, as a guiding light. Are you with me?’
I nodded. ‘Do you think Godefroi hid the ring in the tower?’
‘I hope not! It was destroyed in a major earthquake in 1542. But the clues he gave us definitely point towards the Temple of Athena.’
‘So where is this ring, exactly?’ asked Isabelle.
‘Not sure,’ replied my father. ‘Let’s go to the cathedral and figure it out.’
CHAPTER 35
We left the Discovery in the hotel car park and walked the short distance to the town’s main square. The stone-coloured piazza was dominated by the imposing cathedral. It was hard to believe that the indisputably Christian façade, dotted with statues of saints and angels, housed a pagan temple on the inside. A figure of the Virgin Mary presided over a massive arched entrance, flanked by two smaller doors. I climbed six marble steps and stepped inside – the church was huge. To be fair, given its front, it had to be expected, but the optimist in me was hoping for some type of shrinking effect that would have made our search a lot more manageable. The cathedral was split into three naves and the original temple columns were still visible along the left-hand side. ‘We’ll be here forever,’ moaned Isabelle, dipping her fingers in the holy water and smoothing her hair. An annoyed worshipper emerged from her prayer book and urged her to be quiet.
‘My father said to concentrate on the areas which belonged to the original temple a
nd disregard the more modern additions,’ I whispered. ‘That should narrow the search a bit.’
‘Umph.’
‘What?’ I had actually understood her grunt perfectly, why did she have to be so unpleasant?
‘Umph,’ repeated Isabelle.
‘Stop being so negative.’
‘Easy for you to say, your father’s prancing around limestone columns without a care in the world; mine has been kidnapped!’
‘That’s not fair. He’s very worried about Miguel.’
She was grumpier than a camel. ‘But he’s more worried about the ring. Today he hasn’t mentioned my father once.’
Viggo crept up behind us. ‘Don’t be like that. Magnus isn’t used to kids. If he knew you were so upset—’
‘I am not a kid,’ she screeched. ‘I am a woman! Why can’t you see that?’
‘Because you dress like a man,’ replied the worshipper, snapping her book closed. Isabelle turned into a verbal volcano, abuse flowing like lava. Viggo grabbed her by the elbow and dragged her into the left nave. She attempted to dig her heels in, but her trainers inexorably slid across the floor. He squeezed her between the statue of Saint Catherine and an original Doric column. He wasn’t happy, I couldn’t speak for Saint Catherine. ‘Princess, I know you’re going through a tough time, but acting like you’re possessed is not going to do us, or Miguel, any favours. You can call yourself whatever you like, I really don’t care, just don’t let your foul mood put the whole operation in jeopardy, OK?’
She stared at him with a mixture of blind rage and pure infatuation. ‘It’s just… I’m worried about my father.’
The way he leaned a muscular arm against the Doric column, made it look as if he was supporting the whole building single-handedly. ‘I understand that, so I’ll make you a very special deal. If you behave, I’ll let you and Noah wander around the church on your own. How’s that? But no holding hands and no smooching, we’re in a place of worship.’
