The Templar Prophecy

by Mario Reading

  ‘Your action has freed him, my Lord. You stand here as representative of your father. This knight’s oaths were taken, first to your father, then to the Templar confraternity. Such an oath may only be negated by the perception of a greater duty than that owed to the brotherhood. You have pointed to such a duty. The way is clear.’

  ‘Good. He is exonerated, then. Now we need to find him a wife.’ Frederick turned to the noble ladies behind him. As he did so, he winked at Prince Géza. Both men had long ago chosen mistresses from amongst their number, for, needless to say, the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience taken by most of their followers could hardly be deemed to apply to princes of the blood. ‘Can any of you ladies suture a wound?’

  One of the young women had been looking fixedly at Hartelius from the moment he dismounted from his horse. It had become clear to her from the outset that it was her own abandoned bliaut that the knight was wearing. Thanks to this fact she had been one of the first to laugh in delight at the ridiculous picture he made. This alone was her connection to him. But it was enough. She knew this as if a weight were pressing from outside her chest and hard upon her solar plexus. ‘I can suture a wound, Lord.’

  ‘What is your name, my Lady?’

  ‘Adelaïde von Kronach.’

  ‘So you are also Bavarian?’

  ‘Yes, Lord. From Upper Franconia.’

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Fifteen, Lord.’

  ‘Perfect. If I were to suggest to you that you tend to the Baron’s wounds, and if the two of you were to come to an understanding during this process – in terms of dowry, transfers of property, and suchlike – that you were then to marry him in a binding Muntehe ceremony, might you be amenable to this? I would, of course, underwrite such an agreement in your father’s absence. I am sure he sent papers of lodgement with you?’

  Adelaïde could feel all her companions staring at her. Her face turned ashen white. ‘I am your ward, Lord. As are we all until we reach the court of the Queen of Jerusalem. My father has placed me in your hands. And yes. I have my papers of lodgement. It was always expected that I would marry whilst at the Queen’s court, and with the Queen’s permission. But I am not as yet under her tutelage. I will do as you wish.’

  ‘Excellent. Hartelius?’

  Hartelius was struck dumb. In less than two minutes he had moved from being an inconsequential younger son, dedicated for the span of his mortal life to chastity, poverty and obedience as a Templar, to being a soon-to-be-married Baron and hereditary Guardian of the Holy Lance. He wondered for a moment whether his wound had become infected and he was imagining all this. Was he still lying inside the belly of the king’s Turcoman and fever dreaming? But no. The icy waters of the Saleph had cleansed and anaesthetized his wound. There was no fever. And now this elegant young woman – his future wife – would soon be leaning over him and suturing his wound with hemp. Never – beyond his mother and his nurse – had any woman been allowed to touch his body. His battle wounds, his jousting knocks, even the care of his hair and beard and teeth, had all been vouchsafed to men. The prospect facing him was therefore quite extraordinary.

  ‘Hartelius? What do you say? Will you agree to a verba de praesenti without the presence of clergy?’

  Hartelius opened his eyes as wide as he was able. He feared that he might be about to plunge forward and measure his length on the ground. ‘If my Lady will agree to tend to my wounds. And if she is not put off by this proximity to my person, who am unused to women. And if she respond positively to my request for her hand at the despontatio. Then will I agree to the verba de praesenti.’

  ‘Good. That is settled, then. In one week from now you and your wife will return to my brother’s court. I will provide you with a suitable escort. You will take my father’s sword and the Holy Lance with you, Hartelius, and you will personally place them in my brother’s hands, together with a full account of what has befallen our father. One of our Turkish notaries will transcribe a record of all that has occurred to be given to my father’s advisors. We remaining crusaders, meanwhile, will fulfil our holy vows. We will first take Acre, and then Jerusalem.’

  The assembled knights cheered the Duke of Swabia. The feeling around the camp had changed, in an instant, from desolation to hope. Frederick felt more than satisfied with his morning’s work.

  Johannes von Hartelius, on the other hand, beset by wounds, blood loss and dehydration, drifted slowly to his knees. He appeared to hover for a moment between the earth and the air, almost as if he were estimating the potential value of each.

  Then he yielded to nature and to the forces of gravity and pitched headlong onto the ground.

  SIX

  Syrian Air Flight 106 from Damascus

  17 JULY 2012

  ‘What in God’s name made you do it?’

  ‘Do what, Amira?’

  ‘You know what I’m talking about.’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘Yes, you do.’

  John Hart and Amira Eisenberger were standing in the rear galley of the early morning Syrian Air flight from Damascus, via Aleppo, to London. It was the first time they had been alone together since their sequestration. They had been escorted onto the plane in handcuffs by the Syrian police. They had not been allowed to pack their own cases. But they had been made to pay for their flights in hard currency and encouraged to add a hefty tip on top of the ticket price to make up for the inconvenience they had caused their captors and to recompense them for the fuel used in ferrying them around town. It was made clear to them at the time that it was either that or spend another few days in one of Assad’s jails, this time communally. Amira, who was on a significantly more advantageous expense account than Hart, had, under protest, divvied up for them both.

  Hart filled two plastic cups with ice. He took out two of the whisky miniatures he kept hidden beneath the false floor of his holdall and cracked their caps. He poured the whisky over the ice. When Amira shook her head, he transferred her whisky into his own cup and threw the unused cup into the trash bin. He loved the crackle the whisky made when it kissed the ice and the scent of the Bailie Nicol Jarvie in his nostrils. One needed to be alive to enjoy such things. And free. And – against all the odds – he was both.

  ‘By “do it”, do you mean clatter in on my white destrier to your aid when I might have turned round and run away?’

  ‘No. You were right to do that – I am a fellow journalist. I mean throw yourself across me when that man was threatening to shoot. What do you think that would have achieved? Apart from sending me to my grave covered in bruises?’

  Hart took a sip of his whisky. He held onto it for a moment, letting the fumes filter through the roof of his mouth, then swallowed. ‘I wasn’t thinking. I just did it.’

  ‘The story of your life, then.’

  Hart took a second sip of his drink. This one he held for even longer. Amira was an Aquarius, he told himself. An idealist. She viewed humanity as a mass that needed to be saved. Not as a collection of individuals, each with their own eccentricities and modes of behaviour. Hart, a Robin Hood Aries of the old school, thought he understood this. But it blindsided him every time.

  His phone buzzed, saving him from having to respond. He retrieved it from his shirt pocket and squinted at the display. ‘I need to take this. It’s my mother.’

  ‘We’re on a plane, John. Using mobile phones is forbidden.’

  ‘My mother doesn’t know that.’

  Hart moved away from Amira and went to stand by the porthole. He stared at the passing clouds as if they might hold the answer to some question he had not as yet managed to formulate.

  ‘Yes, Mum. I’m all right, Mum. The Syrians just decided to throw us out, that’s all. Nothing heavier than that. No, Mum. They didn’t imprison us. They didn’t torture us. They didn’t hold us to ransom.’

  There were pauses in between each answer whilst Hart attempted to digest the question. His mother was crowding the line in her panic. She
was in the early stages of dementia, and still frighteningly aware. He could feel Amira staring at the back of his head, but he refused to turn round.

  ‘I’m sorry? What did you just say? You’re handing me over to Clive? Why would you do that, for Pete’s sake?’

  Hart sighed. He signalled to Amira for a pen and paper. He stood with the phone trapped between his ear and his shoulder and began to write.

  ‘Yup. Okay, Clive. Yup. I got that.’ There was a long pause whilst he scribbled something down in longhand. ‘Thank you for passing on the message. Yes. Thanks. I’m glad my mother’s all right. Seriously. Yes. I know you’re doing everything you can in the circumstances. I appreciate that. And yes, I’ll send you the cheque as we agreed. Thank you, Clive. Thank you. Would you please pass me back to Mum for a moment?’

  The connection ended and Hart stared at his phone.

  ‘Who is Clive?’ said Amira.

  ‘My honorary stepfather. Or so he likes to call himself.’

  ‘Did he just hang up on you?’

  ‘No. He hasn’t got the imagination. The connection broke. Or Clive pressed the off switch before he had time to listen to what I was asking him. I’m used to it. He does it all the time.’ He blew air out through his lips. ‘Both of them are off their trolley. Only in subtly different ways. My mother chemically, Clive genetically. But it no longer matters. The damage has been done.’

  ‘What damage?’

  Hart shook his head. He motioned for Amira to precede him back to their seats. She eased her way through to the window and he sat down beside her. He spent a long time rearranging the cup on his tray whilst Amira stared at him.

  ‘John. What is this damage you’re talking about?’

  Hart rubbed his forehead, his elbows outspread like butterfly wings. ‘It concerns my father.’

  ‘Clive?’

  ‘No. My real father. My American father. James Hart.’

  ‘Your American father? I didn’t know you were American. You never told me you were American. You don’t sound American. You don’t even look American.’

  ‘That’s because I’m not American. My mother is English. I was born in the Bristol Royal Infirmary. My father left my mother when I was three years old. Some sort of breakdown, apparently. But then I no longer know what to believe when it comes from my mother. Half of what she tells me stems from memories she can’t be sure she ever really had. One thing I do know, though: my father now lives in Guatemala. Under a false name.’

  ‘Why would he use a false name?’

  ‘Maybe he’s become one of those nutters who thinks the CIA is after him? Or the Internal Revenue Service? Or the Child Support Agency? I haven’t seen the man for thirty-six years, Amira, so I really don’t know. He’s calling himself Roger Pope, according to Clive. Well, at least the bastard has a sense of humour.’

  ‘John. Stop joking please. You joke about everything.’

  Hart closed his eyes. He let out a ragged breath. ‘My father is dying. Clive tells me he phoned my mother and told her he needs to see me. Urgently. To pass some kind of message on to me. Something of crucial importance that has only recently come to light. And my mother, being my mother, promised him that I would go.’

  ‘And she’s sure that it was him?’

  ‘She’s not that far gone, Amira. She was married to the man for seven years.’

  ‘And you’re planning to go?’

  Hart shrugged. ‘Yesterday, before that stuff happened in the square, I’d have said no. That nothing on earth would get me out of Syria. That my father could go fuck himself. But suddenly, for the first time in years, I’m a man with no assignment. And no cameras.’ Hart made a phantom pass towards his chest, as if he was responding to some ancient muscle memory known only to photojournalists. ‘Staring down the barrel of that pistol has shaken me up. Last night I dreamt of the kid we might have had together. That he was talking to me. Urging me towards something. But I couldn’t make out what he was saying. Maybe my father feels the same way about me? Maybe he has the same nightmare? Maybe he wants to apologize for leaving me when I was three? I suppose I should be grateful that he didn’t persuade my mother to have me aborted.’

  Amira grasped Hart’s arm. Her face was ashen. ‘I had to abort our baby, John. You know that. I’ve told you over and over why I never wanted to bring children into this filthy, stinking world. Why I never wanted to be a mother.’ She struck her chest with her fist. ‘I’m a journalist. And a good one. That is who I am. Nothing else. My career is the whole of me. You knew that right from the start. I thought we were agreed on that? That the rest was just icing?’

  ‘You might have asked me. About our baby.’

  ‘I know what you would have said.’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  Amira turned her face away from him and refused to answer.

  SEVEN

  The Hitlerbunker, Reich Chancellery, Berlin

  29 APRIL 1945

  ‘We’re dead.’

  Inge von Hartelius stared at her husband. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean that we’re dead.’ The colonel held out the palm of his hand. Two blue ampoules nestled in the valley formed by his headline, his lifeline and his mound of Venus. ‘The Führer gave these to me. He assures me that he has had them tested out on his Alsatian, Blondi, and that they work. Actual tears sprang into his eyes as he told me. Now he’s handing them around to his people as if they are lollipops.’ Hartelius gave an involuntary shudder, as if someone, somewhere, had just walked over his grave. He glanced up at the ceiling of the anteroom and raised his voice. ‘It is a great honour to be asked to die with the Führer.’ He lowered his voice to little more than a whisper. ‘They’re potassium cyanide. Two hundred milligrams. Bite one and you lose consciousness in seconds.’

  ‘How…’

  ‘Heart attack.’

  ‘I mean how long will it take for us to die? If we’re desperate enough, or stupid enough, or frightened enough to bite on one of these things?’

  Hartelius pocketed the pills. He reached for his wife’s left hand, squeezed it in both of his own, and kissed the ring finger. It was a long-standing ritual, and each recognized its significance. ‘The actual time span is irrelevant, Schatzi, because we will no longer be conscious of the process once it has begun. In reality, between thirty minutes and three-quarters of an hour. But even if the Ivans burst in just as we are taking them, they will not be able to resuscitate us or avenge themselves on our bodies in any way that we will notice. From the moment we bite into these we will be freed from any such nonsense.’

  ‘But what about –’

  ‘Inge. No.’ Hartelius pressed a finger to his wife’s lips. His gaze travelled round the upper corners of the anteroom. He cleared his throat and raised his voice. ‘Ever since the July plot the Führer has become justifiably suspicious.’ He rolled his eyes to show that he was in deadly earnest about the possible presence of microphones. ‘All of us are searched. Nobody is immune. Not even our generals. Yesterday he had the traitor Fegelein brought in. His own brother-in-law, I tell you, accused of conniving with that sewer rat Himmler. The Führer has brought in Müller of the Gestapo to question him personally. This is happening as we speak. Then he is to be taken out and shot. Good riddance, I say.’

  Colonel Freiherr von Hartelius raised his hands in mute supplication as if to apologize to God for the gulf between his words and their meaning. He was a Wehrmacht officer. A career soldier. Instinctively non-political. For the past two years he had seen Adolf Hitler steadily arrogate all military power and all strategic decision-making solely onto himself. First it was the fifty-six-year-old and otherwise healthy General Guderian who had been overruled and forced to take sick leave; now it was General Krebs’s turn. Everybody knew that the daily strategy meetings held in the bunker had become little more than a screaming match in which Hitler blamed everybody but himself for the imminent collapse of the thousand-year Reich. He was the Gröfaz, after all – the greatest comm
ander-in-chief of all time.

  ‘But Johannes. Why did the Führer order me to fly you out here if all he intends for us to do is to die with him? It’s grotesque. And why us? What significance do we have? We are little people compared to the Bormanns and the Goebbels of this world.’

  Hartelius shrugged. ‘Because they couldn’t spare any male pilots, I suppose. And you just happen to be number two on the Führer’s favoured list of celebrity female test pilots. You also happen to be my wife, Schätzchen, and I’m not able to fly a plane to save my life. Lieutenant Colonel Weiss just explained to me that we were called in as last-minute replacements for another husband-and-wife team. Any guesses who they might be, in the light of what I’ve just said?’

  Inge von Hartelius rolled her eyes.

  ‘Yes. General Ritter von Greim and Hanna Reitsch. Who are unfortunately a little higher up in the pecking order than we are. Even though they are not, strictly speaking, married.’ Hartelius’s laugh was almost a bark. Test pilot Hanna Reitsch, alongside film-maker Leni Riefenstahl, was the most famous woman in wartime Germany, and her affair with von Greim was an open secret. ‘The pair flew in on the twenty-sixth. But just as Greim was landing his Fieseler Storch on the East–West Axis, they were hit by a Russian artillery shell. It blew out the bottom of the plane and damaged Greim’s foot. I got all this verbatim from von Loringhoven, who is one of Krebs’s aides. Hanna Reitsch had to take the controls herself and land the plane. But Greim has since recovered and the Führer has sent them away again. Greim has been promoted to Field Marshal, apparently, and is now in charge of the Luftwaffe.’

  Inge began to mouth the words ‘what Luftwaffe?’ but her gesture was swamped by the crump of incoming Russian shells landing on the nearby Chancellery.

  The vibrations in the Hitlerbunker were more or less constant now. Water trickled everywhere – down the corridors, down the walls, from the ceiling – and the smell of unevacuated waste was overpowering. As Hartelius and his wife waited for the shelling to diminish, the emergency lights began to flicker. Smoke and dust drifted underneath the doors and through the ventilation shafts as if strobe lit.