The Templar Heresy

by James Becker

  By the time he walked back across the street, Angela had already moved over to the front passenger seat of the car.

  ‘It was locked, I presume?’ she asked.

  ‘Locked securely,’ Bronson replied, ‘which at least means that if we can’t get in, no one else can either. All we can do now is wait until tomorrow morning.’

  ‘You took a photograph,’ Angela stated.

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  He fished his mobile out of his pocket, tapped the screen to open the gallery, then handed it to her.

  The picture showed two angelic figures – each had a halo – that appeared to be supporting an ornamented stone circle within which was an unusual symbol, at least to Bronson’s eyes. It looked like an enlarged letter X with the elongated shaft of a letter P driven down through the centre point of the X.

  ‘What is it?’ Bronson asked.

  ‘It’s a Chi Rho,’ Angela replied. ‘Of a sort, anyway. It’s one of the oldest Christian motifs, a monogram that contains the first two letters of the word “Christ” in Greek, the letters chi and rho.’ She pointed at two other symbols, either side of the central motif. ‘That’s the Greek letter alpha on the left and what’s left of omega on the right, the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. The beginning and the end, if you like.’

  ‘So it’s a common symbol?’ Bronson asked.

  ‘Yes. Some Christians still use it, but this particular Chi Rho is a bit different. I’m not sure what this symbol at the top means. It looks like a kind of flattened and elongated letter omega, but it’s not something I’ve seen on a Chi Rho before. But perhaps the oddest feature is the snake.’

  ‘Snake? What snake?’

  ‘Here. Entwined around the upright of the letter rho.’

  ‘I thought that was the letter “S”.’

  ‘That’s what it looks like, but it’s almost certainly a serpent. There’s evidence that the Chi Rho symbol actually existed perhaps half a millennium before the time of Christ, in the writings of Herodotus and Plato, for example. It was known as the Chrestos, and it was kind of backwards, if you like. The Chi Rho was accepted as a religious symbol that was created by combining two Greek letters, but the Chrestos was a symbol from the first. The “X” on the Chrestos is almost certainly a representation of the solar ecliptic path and the celestial equator, not the letter Chi, which is why the two straight lines don’t cross at right angles.’

  Even in the darkness of the hire car Angela could see Bronson’s expression starting to glaze.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ she said. ‘All it means is that the symbol is a lot older than most people think and originally had nothing to do with Christianity. It probably meant good fortune, and was hijacked by the early Church because the shape of the cross was a visual reminder of the crucifixion.’

  ‘And the snake?’ Bronson asked.

  ‘Oh, yes. The snake’s been an important symbol for religions and societies for millennia, and most likely that’s astrological in origin. It’s the sign of serpens, the serpent, and referred to the serpent healers of antiquity. So although most people think of the Chi Rho as a Christian symbol of the crucifixion, it actually isn’t. It’s much older and had a completely different meaning.’

  They hadn’t seen a hotel in the village, but even if there had been, Bronson wouldn’t have wanted to stay that close to their objective. Thinking ahead earlier in the evening, on their way to the village of Montsaunès, they’d pulled off the autoroute at Boussens and picked a hotel at random close to the banks of the River Garonne, checked in, locked their bags in their room and then driven on.

  Back in the hotel, they sat side by side on the double bed consuming the sandwiches and soft drinks they’d bought earlier at the airport, while Bronson talked through his plan.

  ‘This really has to be the end of the trail,’ he said. ‘I can’t believe we’ll get inside the church and find some other clue intended to send us scampering off to yet another ruin in yet another country. And I’ve had an idea about where we’ll find the relic.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  Bronson picked up the camera that he’d used in the tunnel under Shobak Castle. He flicked through the pictures he had taken, and selected the one that seemed to him to be the clearest and held the camera in front of Angela.

  ‘Some of the information we’ve been using has relied upon placement,’ he began. ‘Things like the positioning of the code words on either side of the alphabet to allow us to decipher the Atbash. I think that the positioning of the symbols on this last clue is just as important. The name is the simple bit, really, because that’s brought us to where we are now, or where we will be at dawn tomorrow morning, this tiny village in France. The Christian cross above the name of the village seems to me to be telling us that the place we have to look is the chapel, because that’s how you would normally indicate a chapel or a church on a map, and I’m sure the same sort of symbology has probably been used for centuries.

  ‘But note that the Templar cross, the croix pattée, is placed under the name. To me, that suggests that the treasure or the relic, whatever it may turn out to be, is somewhere underneath the chapel, in a crypt or cellar or somewhere of that sort.’

  ‘I suppose we’ll find out tomorrow,’ Angela said, ‘but if there’s an iron-bound box sitting in a crypt underneath the chapel, why has nobody thought to open it before?’

  Bronson shook his head. ‘I don’t think it’ll be anything like as simple as that. The amount of secrecy involved in this and the number of layers of codes and ciphers that we’ve had to peel away and decrypt suggest that the relic will be extremely well hidden. It won’t be a matter of just pushing open the door to a crypt and saying, “Oh yes, there it is.” I think there’s a good chance that the entrance to the crypt itself will be concealed, and possibly even the existence of the crypt will be unknown to the priest or whoever is in charge of the building. Finding it is not going to be easy, but I suppose the difference is that because of the trail we’ve been following, at least we know that there is something there to be found. Or at least that something was hidden, and hopefully it’s still there.’

  ‘So what do we do? Just march into the building tomorrow morning and tell the priest that we want to explore his crypt and would he kindly show us the way? Then find the relic and push off with it before the bad guys turn up, guns blazing?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ Bronson replied. ‘I had to leave the pistol in Jordan, obviously, because there was no way I could get on to the aircraft with it, so we’re completely unarmed. The opposition would also have had to fly from Iraq or wherever they’re based to Israel, and they would have had the same problem. But within a very short time of them getting there, they were touting pistols, so clearly they have good international connections that allow them access to weapons quickly and easily. It wouldn’t surprise me if they’d made arrangements to collect weapons soon after they’d arrived in France. In fact,’ he added, ‘that’s more or less what I’m hoping they’ve done.’

  Angela looked at him quizzically.

  ‘You hope they armed themselves? Why?’

  ‘Because we can’t handle them by ourselves, and that means we need professional assistance. And the kind of professional assistance I have in mind will only be available if there’s a credible opposition force. And,’ he added, taking a last swig from his soft drink, ‘that means it’s time for me to start making a few phone calls.’

  Thirty minutes later, Bronson ended his final call, put the mobile on the bedside cabinet and connected the charger.

  Angela looked at him and nodded.

  ‘I think I followed most of your French,’ she said, ‘and I can see exactly what you’ve got planned. But it all sounds pretty risky to me. Are you sure this is the only way we can do it?’

  ‘I think so, yes. But if you’re not happy to go ahead, you can stay here and I can go it alone.’

  Angela shook her head. ‘No. I told you before. Where you go, I go,’ she said, ‘
and obviously it’ll be more believable if I’m there as well, because they must know who I am. If you’re right, I’ve been their main target ever since the attack in Iraq.’

  ‘Good. Right, now we really do need to get to sleep. I’ll set the alarm for five thirty, and we need to be on the road by six at the latest.’

  But despite all that had happened, sleep didn’t come easily to Bronson. At two o’clock, with Angela’s head resting on the crook of his left arm, he was still awake, eyes wide open and staring at the ceiling, wondering if there was anything else he could or should do, or anything he’d forgotten.

  And above all, he was supremely conscious of the number of things that could go spectacularly and terminally wrong.

  60

  Montsaunès, France

  In the grey light of early dawn, the Église Saint-Christophe des Templiers looked pretty much the same as it had done the previous night. A solid oblong building that almost radiated a sense of impressive age and perhaps even hinted at something of the bloody history of the Order that had created it nearly a millennium earlier.

  They’d had to make a brief stop en route to their destination on the outskirts of Saint-Martory, where a dark blue van was parked in a lay-by, a solitary figure, clad entirely in black, standing beside the rear doors. Bronson had pulled in behind the other vehicle and stopped the car, exchanged a few words with the man waiting there, and been given two bulky objects. Immediately afterwards, the van had driven off at speed.

  After their short diversion, they’d driven slowly into Montsaunès down the main road, the Route de Saint-Girons, through the village, and then stopped the car in the same open parking area they’d occupied the previous night, a position from which they both had a clear view of the front of the chapel.

  The engine of the hire car made faint ticking noises as it cooled, and in the front seats Bronson and Angela settled down to wait.

  At precisely seven o’clock, a tall figure, wearing a long dark coat and a flattish cap and leaning on a cane, walked slowly down the main road. At the chapel, he made his way across to the main doors, pulling an object from the pocket of his coat as he did so.

  ‘So that’s the first act of the drama completed,’ Angela said, watching as the man turned the key in the heavy lock and then opened both halves of the door. ‘Or rather the second act, I suppose,’ she added, as he vanished inside the building and the windows of the chapel fronting the road were suddenly illuminated by the flare of electric lights.

  ‘I hope he doesn’t hang around,’ Bronson remarked. ‘This is going to be difficult enough without innocent bystanders getting in the way.’

  But it looked as if the old man was following his instructions, because a few seconds later the lights were extinguished and the caretaker re-emerged, closing, but not locking, the door behind him and retracing his steps somewhat hastily along the street.

  ‘That looks like our cue,’ Bronson said. ‘And even if we’ve got the timing wrong, I’d still like to get inside the building and have a look at it. Are you okay to do that?’

  Angela nodded in a somewhat resigned manner, but immediately opened the door of the car.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, adjusting the fit of her light jacket. ‘I wish there was another way, but there isn’t. And we’ve come this far, haven’t we? Let’s get on with it.’

  Bronson locked the car and they walked away, crossed the main road and strode over to the looming bulk of the ancient chapel. He turned the handle on the door, opened it and they stepped inside, flicking on the lights as they did so.

  It took a few seconds for their eyes to adjust to the sudden brightness, and then they simultaneously looked up to stare at the painted ceiling high above them.

  ‘I see what that website meant,’ Angela said in amazement. ‘That really is incredible. I’ve never seen anything like it before.’

  Above them, the apex of one brick arch reached to the roof of the chapel, while another arch of similar construction but slightly smaller was surmounted by a vertical wall pierced by three windows. Between those windows was the proof – if any were needed – of the identity of the order that had constructed the building: two very clear blood-red representations of the Templar cross, the croix pattée. But that was about the only faintly religious symbol that they could see.

  The dominant feature of the hand-painted ceiling was a seemingly infinite number of stars, arranged in a regular pattern of rows and columns, which ran from one end of the ceiling to the other and across it from left to right.

  ‘Could they literally represent the universe?’ Angela murmured, craning her head back to try to see them more clearly. ‘Could they just be a symbol here in this chapel of what the Knights Templar saw in the night sky around them?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Bronson said, sounding doubtful. ‘But if that was the intention, why are they all in straight lines? You would expect them to have made some attempt to represent the constellations that must have been visible to them. No, I don’t know what they’re supposed to represent, but I don’t think it was just the night sky.’

  The stars weren’t the only oddity, not by a long way. In the central section of the ceiling and bounded by the two archways were two very clear borders, each formed from a double line of alternating black and white squares, while the inside of the border was marked by a double row of semicircles, the ends of these lines making contact with the junctions between the black and white squares. Each row of semicircles was shifted by one space from the other row to create a more complex pattern.

  Bronson pointed upwards, towards one of the borders.

  ‘As far as I know,’ he said, ‘no expert on the Templars has ever visited this chapel and attempted to explain what any of this decoration means. I don’t profess to be an expert, but just looking at those borders, it seems clear enough to me that the kind of chequerboard pattern is meant to represent the Templar battle flag, the Beauseant, repeated dozens of times. That was one of the simplest flags of all time, just a black oblong above a white oblong. It looks to me as if the semicircular lines are intended to link the flags together, perhaps to emphasize the importance of brotherhood and fraternity to the order, the way that they both lived and died together, on and off the battlefield.’

  Angela nodded.

  ‘That does make sense,’ she agreed, ‘but what about the rest of the symbols?’

  For a few moments, they just stared up at the patterns.

  Between those two borders were no fewer than twenty-two circles, many enclosing a unique design, though there were also three pairs of identical circles either side of the centreline of the pattern. Along the centreline itself were four unevenly spaced circles with decorated borders, and each appeared to contain another representation of the Beauseant. Flanking those were the pairs of matching circles, all containing patterns that could represent the petals of a flower, or possibly a large star. Close to the borders and on opposite sides were two significantly larger circles containing different, though similar, spoked designs. All those symbols were basically laid out in a coherent geometric pattern, but almost all of the other symbols were asymmetric and unique.

  On one side were two overlapping circles, each containing a simple star pattern, while on the other was a line of eight circles, one an elaborate design that was twice the size of any of the others, and all slightly different. Most contained the same general type of star or petal pattern, but one held the painted image of the croix pattée, while at the opposite end from the large circle was what looked like a random pattern of oval shapes.

  But there were two other features that also made no immediate sense to either Bronson or Angela.

  ‘Is that a dagger, or what?’ she asked, pointing upwards.

  In fact, there were two painted symbols that looked something like daggers on the ceiling, and in both cases the handguard, the metal cross-piece designed to protect the fingers of the user, had a pronounced forward curve so that the ends pointed towards the sharpened tip of the weapon
.

  ‘They could be, I suppose,’ Bronson replied. ‘I think that design of handguard was quite common in the mediaeval period. The idea was that you’d trap the blade of your opponent’s sword between the blade and the guard, and you could then twist the dagger to break his blade. What really puzzles me, though, is that pyramid design directly above the middle window.’

  ‘I was looking at that. There’s something strangely familiar about it.’

  ‘It would be more familiar to you if you were American,’ Bronson said. ‘It’s very like the pyramid shape that you see on the reverse of every one-dollar bill, under the legend Annuit Coeptis, which translates more or less as “He has smiled on our undertakings”. What’s even weirder is that the decorated circle at the apex of the pyramid up there is very like part of the other symbol that you’ll find on the same side of the same American bill. That’s a circle filled with stars above the other legend E pluribus unum.’

  ‘“From many, one”,’ Angela translated. ‘You’re right. Of course, that’s also the design of the Great Seal of the United States.’ She paused and looked at him. ‘I do find it a bit peculiar that we’re standing here in a twelfth-century Templar chapel in southern France, and two of the symbols painted on the ceiling bear more than a passing resemblance to the design of a modern American banknote. It’s really strange. The whole place feels to me like it’s more astrological or qabbalistic than religious, at least in the way that it’s been decorated.’

  ‘And this is all original, I suppose?’ Bronson asked.

  ‘According to what I read on the Web, this place basically hasn’t been touched since the beginning of the fourteenth century.’

  They walked further into the chapel, looking up at the ceiling and noting other unusual symbols as they headed towards the altar, which is where they expected to find the entrance to the crypt, assuming Bronson’s deduction was correct and there was a chamber underneath the building.