by Gregg Loomis
“Besides figures, you also can understand written language?”
“If it is in Latin or Frankish and written boldly,” I said modestly.
He seemed to withdraw within himself for a moment before he spoke again. “You have not taken your final vows here?”
I had no idea why he asked but I answered truthfully, “I have not.”
“My order needs men such as yourself.”
I was astonished. “But, I am not noble-born, know nothing of arms such as you bear.”
“You do not understand. For every knight, there must be provisioners. For every temple, there must be those who can count money and goods, scribes who can read and write languages. It is this post you can most surely fill. Come with me to Burgundy.”
He might as well have suggested I visit the moon. I had never been more than a day’s travel by foot from where I now sat.
“I cannot,” I said. “These are my brothers who need me to do God’s work.”
A smile, not entirely devout, tugged at his lips. “I have learned that God usually gets what He wants, no matter the efforts of man. I am offering you three meals a day, two of which have meat. You will never go hungry. You will sleep on a clean bed, wear washed clothes that are not a nation of lice, fleas and ticks. You will do calculations of figures the likes of which you have never dreamed. Or you may remain here, as mean, dirty and hungry as any beast. Either way you will serve God, of that I am certain.”
God nearly struck me dumb. I could not answer. Had I prayed, sought His guidance as I should have, I would have realized He was trying to tell me to remain. But, like many young men, the idea of such luxury turned my head.
“I leave right after Prime,”12 Guillaume de Poitiers said, “before washing myself and before light, please God. You may share my esquire’s ass. Or you may remain here, serving God in a lesser manner and a great deal more squalor.”
The next morning, I left the only home I could remember, a cell only large enough for a straw mattress, with a ceiling so low I could not stand in it.13 Since poverty is one of the vows of the Benedictines, I took with me no possessions other than the rude sackcloth gown I wore. And the things that infested it. Would I had chosen to endure the vile life to which I had become accustomed.
Translator’s notes:
1. All dates have been converted to the Gregorian calendar for the convenience of the reader.
2. 1290.
3. Actually, this directive came from St. Cassian. St. Benedict (ca. 526) founded the first order of monks who lived in a community rather than alone.
4. The monk in charge of provisions for the monastery.
5. The word used by Pietro is Middle Latin, noviciatus, which means the place where novices are trained. It is doubtful a rural monastery would have such a luxury.
6. A tunic of chain mail. The full battle dress of a Templar knight is described by surviving copies of the French Rule. In addition to what Pietro describes, it would have included: helmet (heaume), armour protecting shoulders and feet (jupeau d’armes, espalliers, souliers d’armes).
7. The City of Jerusalem fell to the Sultan of the Baybars in 1243. It is doubtful Guillaume or any of his contemporaries had ever even seen the Holy City, although it was the avowed goal of the Templars until their dissolution in 1307.
8. The name both crusaders and Templars gave to the Holy Land, which they viewed as simply another country under the reign of the Pope.
9. The Bible was read at all meals.
10. The last mass of the day, usually said right before bed.
11. It is assumed this Frankish word is the origin of the English bushel. The exact quantity denoted is lost to antiquity.
12. An early morning mass, usually around five A.M. The first masses of the day, Matins and Lauds, were said shortly after midnight. After Prime came Terce, then Nones, Sext, Vespers, etc., for a total of six a day.
13. Many monastic cells were intentionally constructed so the occupant was always bowed when in it, thereby enforcing the virtue of humility.
Part Two
CHAPTER ONE
Dallas, Texas
The next day
Lang hated flying. He felt helpless and out of control belted into an airline seat.
Gloomily, he sat in the waiting area for gate twenty-two of the American Airlines terminal at the Dallas–Fort Worth Airport and watched the man with the little boy.
The guy, midforties, mousey gray hair retreating from front and top, slightly paunchy, was the sort who would be the last to be noticed in a room full of people, just the sort of person Lang had been trained to watch first. The child was blond, four or five, and didn’t look enough like the man to be related. Having the kid along, though, was good cover. Somebody had been clever.
Lang had paid them minimal attention when the man had puffed his way to the Delta counter in Atlanta and bought the tickets, explaining he had to make the flight, a family emergency.
An emergency where?
Lang had booked the ticket to Dallas, paid by credit card, gone to the American counter and used cash and a false, if expired, passport from his past as ID to buy a seat from Dallas to Fort Lauderdale. He planned to cab from Lauderdale to Miami International, then catch a plane to Rome via JFK. The circuitous routing had paid off in shaking the tail out of the crowd of travelers.
In Atlanta, there had been no reason to consider the pair to be anything other than what they seemed. When they had gotten on the same tram in Dallas to go from the Delta terminal to the American terminal, Lang became suspicious. They had not had time to collect the single bag they had checked in Atlanta, although the boy had the same bright yellow backpack he had carried on board. Seeing them at the gate for the flight to Lauderdale got Lang’s attention.
Even with the airlines’ price wars, Atlanta–Lauderdale via Dallas was a bit unusual.
Lang watched the guy go to the bank of pay phones, no doubt to alert someone to be on standby in Florida. The fact that he chose a land line rather than a cellular denoted that he was either one of the few people in America without a mobile unit or wanted security for his call. Lang pretended interest in the view of the tarmac from a window next to the pay phones, a position from which he could hear every word. The man glared and hung up without saying good-bye.
When the man took the little boy to the men’s room, Lang went to a newsstand and bought a USA Today. He browsed the candy, selecting three foil-wrapped Peppermint Patties. Then he followed the guy into the toilet and shut himself into a stall. From the outside, it would look as though Lang was reading the paper as he did his business.
Lang only needed a little luck for the guy not to have time to make another call before he got back.
Returning to the waiting area, Lang glanced around as though trying to find a seat. He selected one next to the kid, who was engrossed in a Game Boy. Moving the child’s backpack slightly with his foot, Lang sat so that the little boy was between Lang and the boy’s companion. Lang swiveled in the seat so that the yellow pack was partially obscured by his legs.
“Whatcha playin’?” Lang asked the child.
He wasn’t shy of strangers. “In-ig-ma,” he said without looking up.
Lang watched the blips scramble across the tiny screen. He could feel the adult’s question: Did Lang know? But there wasn’t a whole lot Lang’s shadow could do without attracting attention.
“How d’you play?” Lang asked innocently.
He listened to an explanation surprising in its detail for a child that age.
“Sounds like it would be more fun for two,” Lang suggested.
“That’s mighty nice of you, mister,” the man said, “but you don’t have to . . .”
Lang couldn’t place the accent but it certainly didn’t come from Atlanta.
“But I want to,” Lang said. “Reminds me of my own son.” He managed a pained expression. “He was about this age when he died of leukemia.”
The eyes of the white-haired woman in the
seat across from Lang instantly glistened. There was no way the man could gracefully get Lang to leave the little boy alone. From the expression on his face, that had occurred to the minder, too.
“May I?” Lang held out a hand.
The child looked at the man for approval and handed the game over.
“Oops!” Lang dropped it.
As he reached under the seat to retrieve the little electronic box, Lang slid something out of his pants leg and into his hand.
Lang suddenly jerked erect and pointed down the concourse. “Isn’t that Mel Gibson?”
Heads snapped around in unison. Lang slipped the object into the backpack and retrieved the Game Boy.
“Guess I was mistaken,” Lang admitted sheepishly. “Show me one more time how this works.”
Lang was getting soundly thrashed when the flight was called a few minutes later.
As a first-class passenger, Lang went to the head of the boarding line, noting the table that, since 9/11, always stood ready for random searches. When he handed his ticket to the gate attendant, he also leaned forward and spoke in low tones. From her reaction, he might have made a lewd proposition.
She hurriedly turned her duties over to one of the ticket agents and scurried away.
Lang waved to the little boy and boarded.
He was sipping Scotch and trying to find his place in a paperback novel when a woman slipped a thin bag into the overhead bin and slid into the seat beside him. She wore a business suit, a matching gray jacket and skirt. Lipstick and a slight blush were her only makeup. Her ash- blond hair was gathered into a chignon by a tortoiseshell comb. The important finger sported a diamond that anywhere other than Texas would have been vulgar. She was young, twenty-something, but puffing like an octogenarian climbing his third flight of stairs.
Lang smiled at her as he put down the drink glass. “Sounds like you ran the whole way.”
She gulped a lungful of air. “I thought they were gonna cancel the flight and I have to, absolutely have to, get to Fort Lauderdale.”
If the ring hadn’t been a tip that she was a native of the Lone Star State, the flat drawl was.
Lang mustered his very best surprised expression. “Cancel the flight?”
The few stray hairs outside the comb waved like an insect’s legs as she bobbed her head. “Guy tried to smuggle a gun on board.”
“No!”
“Yeah, in his son’s backpack. Somebody tipped Security to bring one of those portable X-ray machines an’ there it was, big as life, right in the child’s pack.”
Lang gasped in amazement. “You see it, the gun?”
“No, but they, the security people, were hauling the guy away, said they were gonna search the kid’s backpack in a secure area. Wanted to make sure he didn’t have a chance to use a weapon with all the people around, I guess. Feel real sorry for the little fella.”
Lang lifted sympathetic hands. “Pretty low, involving a child in something like that.”
It was at that moment he noticed he still had smudges of chocolate under his fingernails. It had gotten there while he sat on the john, waiting for his palms’ heat to soften the outside of the Peppermint Patties so he could fashion them into the L shape of a pistol before using the tinfoil wrappers, highly X-ray–reflective, to encase his creation.
International intelligence or not, they could be outwitted.
Lang stood, stooping to avoid bumping his head. “Reckon I’ve got time to wash my hands before they make us strap this airplane on?”
CHAPTER TWO
1
Leonardo da Vinci International, Rome
The next morning
Rumpled and gritty-eyed, Lang disembarked, relishing the cool spring morning after the fetid, recirculated air of the L-1011. It was a relief to be outside even if the smell of diesel fuel filled his nose. At the base of the stairs pushed against the plane, he watched vehicles scurry across Leonardo da Vinci International like bugs across a pond’s surface. Along the airport’s perimeter, perpetual smog turned distant trees into gray lace.
A herd of busses chugged to a stop and his fellow travelers clamored aboard. For reasons as mysterious as the Poussin, the Italians rarely used jetways that allowed passengers to enter the terminal directly from the aircraft. He suspected the owner of the bus company was well connected.
Speaking of connected, the Rome airport had been a joke in years past, construction ongoing in what Lang and his peers had assumed was a permanent political boondoggle. Now it was finished. White concrete slabs, bowlike angles and portholes of tinted glass gave the international terminal a slightly nautical appearance. Inside, another surprise awaited. Elevators, escalators and stairs were also new, although their multidirectional confusion was much the same as before.
Under the bored gaze of customs officials at the nothing-to-declare exit, Lang submitted his passport to cursory inspection before ducking into the first available men’s, both from necessity and to see who from his flight might follow.
No one.
Opening his single bag, he swapped his Levi’s and button-down shirt for French jeans and a shirt with the distinctive Italian taper. Oxblood Cole Haan loafers were exchanged for the Birkenstock sandals European men insist on wearing over dark socks. A mirror splattered with hairspray and streaked with substances best not inquired into gave him back the reflection of a man dressed in Eurofashion, the combination of the worst a common market had to offer.
The unfavorable exchange of dollars for euros at the airport posed a financial hit. Still, he was willing to pay for the opportunity to see if anyone he recognized lingered while a machine completed what amounted to small-scale extortion.
Another series of people-moving devices deposited him into the train station, the one place unchanged since his last visit. A pavilionlike roof sheltered four tracks and a small arcade. He bought espresso from an old woman and a ticket from another machine. Then he sat, waiting for both the caffeine high and the train into Rome. Predictably, the coffee did its work before the Italian Railway.
The train was as refreshingly new as the airport. Comfortable seats upholstered in tasteful blue fabric had replaced dirty and cracked vinyl. Instead of small, dusty windows and cramped aisles, the cars boasted panoramic views on either side of a generous aisle.
The ride was unchanged. Lang inevitably expected a countryside dotted with ruins of temples and crumbling arches, alabaster badges of glories past. After all, this was Rome, the Eternal City. All he ever saw from train windows were weed-infested switching yards, rusting rolling stock and the backs of drab housing projects. The same disappointing intrusion of the twenty-first century every time.
When he had brought Dawn here, she had found even the blight exciting. She had almost exploded with anticipation at each dreary stop, thrilled by the very names along the route.
Dawn.
She had enjoyed every second of life, delighted in the smallest detail. He saw her not in the modern coach but the old one, relishing the filthy vinyl of the seat, alternately staring at the Italians on board and craning her neck to make sure she missed nothing of the industrialized suburbs of Rome. For the forty-five minutes the trip took, her fascination with a foreign country’s banalities never subsided.
Later, she admitted she found even the smells of the crowded coach exotic. Anyone thrilled by the aroma of fifty or so unwashed bodies reeking of garlic and hair tonic truly loved life.
Dawn.
He and Dawn stayed at a tiny hotel that had shared a piazza with the Pantheon for half a millennium. Then, the city had been romantic, fascinating, full of treasures at every turn. Now all he saw were the crowds and grime of one more big town, a place full of painful memories.
The train was creaking to a stop for Tiburtina, the end of the line, as he managed to set memories of Dawn aside as gently as he might handle fine porcelain. Where to stay? He rationalized that the place Dawn and he had enjoyed so much was too touristy, too likely to be found were someone searching
for him. The big hotels, the Hassler and Eden, were even more obvious, places that catered to Americans. A number of smaller establishments were clustered along the remnants of the northern wall, hotels that offered modest prices and a view of the Borghese Gardens over the crumbling bricks of Rome’s ancient perimeter. No good: haunts for Americans on package tours and budgets, students, academics and retirees. Worse, these hostels were within blocks of the embassy, their prices and location ideal for use by old acquaintances. He preferred not to encounter former comrades by accident. Too many questions to answer.
Assuming the people he sought weren’t Italian, he needed a place where a foreigner would be rare, easy for him to spot as he tried to blend into the fabric of the city. There were a number of small, pricey inns along the Via del Corso, places where Armani salesmen from Milan and glass manufacturers’ reps from Venice would stay to service the stores along one of Europe’s most chic shopping districts. A possibility.
As the train shuddered to a final stop, he decided upon none of the above. Instead, he chose the Trastavere district. Lang remembered it from pre-Dawn days. Like some other urban areas separated from the main city by a river, the Trastavere considered itself different, more Roman than Rome, just as Brooklynites prided themselves on being the real New Yorkers or the residents of the Rive Gauche the true Parisians.
He had originally found the area’s charm in its history. In the sixteenth century, it had been Rome’s blue-collar neighborhood, home to the artisans who built the cathedrals, painted its frescoes and carved its monuments. Michelangelo and Leonardo had both stayed in the Trastavere. In modern times it had become a haven for the bohemian lifestyle, the residence of unemployed musicians and artists looking for patrons.
There was a trattoria on the Piazza Masti where he had shared pasta with a Czech defector. The food had been abysmal, the decor worse, featuring photographs of those two Italian-American icons, Sinatra and Stallone. The piano player had mangled American tunes of the fifties. He never considered taking Dawn there.
