The Last Templar ts-1

by Raymond Khoury

  Although Tess had been anxious earlier to get Sean to a proper hospital, she wasn't so sure anymore. "I've been thinking about what you said. Do you really think we should take him there?"

  A gracious smile crossed the doctor's face before he answered. "Frankly, it's up to you. It's a very good hospital and I know the man in charge there, they'll look after him well, I can assure you." The uncertainty must have been etched clearly all over her face, because he then added, "We don't need to make any decisions now. Let's see how he is in the morning, and we can decide then."

  They walked across the street, skirting a couple of big puddles of water, and reached a slightly rusting old Peugeot. Mavromaras opened its door, which, Tess noticed, wasn't locked.

  She glanced up and down the narrow street. Even in these overcast conditions, the town was breathtaking. Tier upon tier of neat, neoclassical houses painted in warm pastel colors straddled the steep hill all the way down to the small harbor below. Many of them had triangular pediments and red tile roofs and were of a pleasing, subde uniformity of style. Water spilled down overwhelmed gutters at the sides of the road and tumbled down the steep flight of steps cutting up the hill.

  Overhead, the bruised sky still looked poised for another onslaught.

  "That was one hell of a storm," Tess observed.

  Mavromaras eyed the clouds, nodding. "It was far worse than anything anyone can recall, even the oldest people in town. And especially for this time of year ..."

  Tess flashed back to the storm that had hit the Fa-Icon Temple all those years ago and, almost to herself, she murmured, "An act of God."

  The doctor cocked a curious eyebrow, surprised by the comment. "Maybe. But if you want to think in those terms, think of it more as a miracle."

  "A miracle?"

  "Of course. A miracle that you and your friend were washed ashore on our island. It's a big sea out there. A little bit further north and you would have landed on the Turkish coast, which, in this area, is rocky and completely deserted. The towns are all on the other side of the peninsula. A bit further south and you would have missed the island entirely and been carried out into the Aegean and ..."

  He raised his eyebrows and nodded knowingly, leaving the rest for her to fill in, then shrugged and threw his medical bag into the passenger seat. "I have to go. I'll be back this afternoon."

  Tess didn't want him to leave just yet. There was something comforting about his presence. "Isn't there anything I can do to help him?"

  "Your friend is in good hands. My wife is an excellent nurse, and, although this isn't anything like the hospitals you're used to in America, trust me when I tell you we've had a lot of experience dealing with all kinds of injuries. Even on small islands like this, people do get hurt." He paused, thought about it for a moment as he studied her, then added, "Have you talked to him yet?"

  Tess was taken aback by the question. "Talked to him?"

  "You should do that. Talk to him. Inspire him, give him strength." His tone was almost fatherly and then he smiled, shaking his head slightiy. "You must think you've fallen on some small-town witch doctor. I promise you that's not the case. Many studies by prominent physicians support the idea.

  Just because he's in a coma, doesn't mean he can't hear. It just means he can't respond . . . yet." He paused, his eyes beaming with hope and empathy. "Talk to him . . . and pray for the best."

  Tess let out a small chuckle and looked away wistfully. "I'm not very good at that."

  Mavromaras didn't look convinced. "In your own way, although you don't realize it, you're already doing it. You're praying for him just by wishing he would recover. A lot of prayers are being said for him." The doctor pointed across the way toward a small chapel. She could see a few locals greeting each other at its door, some of them leaving while others were heading in. "Many of the men on this island earn their living from the sea. There were four fishing boats out at sea the night the storm hit. Their families prayed to God and to the archangel Michael, the patron saint of seafarers, for their safe return, and those prayers were answered. All of them managed to come back to us unharmed. Now, more prayers are being said, prayers of thanks. And prayers for your friend's recovery."

  "They're all praying for his recovery?"

  The doctor nodded. "We all are."

  "But you don't even know him."

  "It doesn't matter. The sea brought him here to us, and it's our duty to nurse him back to health so he can go on with his life." He climbed into the car. "Now I really must go." And with a small wave and a parting glance, he drove off through pools of muddy rainwater and disappeared down the hill.

  For a moment, Tess watched him go. She turned to walk back into the house, then hesitated. She couldn't remember the last time that she had been inside any chapel or church or religious building of any kind, except for her work and, of course, during the brief episode in the burned-out remains of the church in Manhattan. Splashing her way across the soaked road, she crossed the small pebble courtyard, pushed the door open, and stepped inside.

  The small chapel was half full with people huddled in earnest prayer on pews that were old and worn smooth through many years of use. Tess stood at the back, looking around. The chapel was simple, its whitewashed walls covered in eighteenth-century frescoes and lit by the glow of scores of candles. Moving around the chapel, she noticed an alcove that held silver icons of Saint Gabriel and Saint Michael, which were adorned in precious stones. Swept away by the flickering candlelight and the hushed tones of prayer, a strange sensation came over her. She suddenly felt like she wanted to pray. She felt uncomfortable with the notion and shook the unsettling thought away, convinced that to do so would be hypocritical.

  She was turning to leave when she spotted the two women who had brought over the food and clothing the day before. They had two men with them. The women saw her and hastened over, fussing all over her with unabashed delight at her recovery. They kept repeating the same phrase,

  "Doxa to Theo" and although she couldn't understand what they were saying, she smiled back

  and nodded, moved by their genuine concern. Tess understood that the men were their husbands, the fishermen who had also escaped the storm's wrath. They greeted her warmly. One of the women pointed at a small cluster of candles in a niche at the rear of the chapel and said something Tess didn't catch at first, but gradually became clear. She was telling Tess that both women had lit candles for Reilly. Tess thanked them and glanced down the nave of the chapel at the clusters of townspeople who were sitting there, joined in prayer in the dimming candlelight. She stood there quietly for a moment before turning and heading back to the house.

  ***

  Tess spent the rest of the morning at Reilly's bedside and, after a hesitant start, she found that she was able to talk to him after all. She avoided talking about the recent events and, knowing so little about his life, she decided to stick to her own past, telling him stories about her adventures in the field, her successes and her embarrassments, anecdotes about Kim, whatever crossed her mind.

  Eleni came into the room at around midday, inviting Tess downstairs to have lunch. The timing couldn't have been better, as Tess was running out of things to say and was headed ever more perilously toward having to actually face and talk about what she and Reilly had lived through together. She still wasn't comfortable with the idea of discussing anything meaty with him while he was still unconscious.

  Mavromaras had returned from his consultation, and Tess informed him that she had thought about the idea of moving Reilly to Rhodes but preferred to keep him where he was, as long as the doctor and his wife were still happy to have them there. Her decision seemed to please them, and she was relieved to hear, in no uncertain terms, that she and Reilly could stay until such a time when a major decision regarding his condition needed to be taken.

  Much of the evening and most of the next morning saw Tess continuing her vigil in Reilly's room, but, after lunch, she felt she needed to get some air. Noticing how
much the storm had abated, she decided to venture out a little further.

  The wind was now nothing more than a strong breeze and at long last the rain had completely died out. Despite the dark-bellied clouds still crowding the skies over the island, she decided she rather liked the town. It wasn't blighted by the slightest modern development and had kept the charm of its simple past intact. She found the narrow lanes and the picturesque houses calming, the smiles from passing strangers comforting. Mavromaras had told her that hard times had befallen Symi after World War II, when a large part of the population had packed up and left after the island was bombed by both the Allied and Axis powers, which had traded roles as occupiers. Happily, the recent years had seen a marked improvement in the island's fortunes. It was thriving again now that Athenians and foreigners were catching on to its appeal, buying up the old houses and caringly bringing them back to their former glory.

  She climbed up the stone steps of the Kali Strata past the old museum and reached the remains of a castle, which had been built by the Knights of Saint John in the early fifteenth century on the site of a much older fortification, only to be blown up while housing a Nazi munitions dump during the war. Tess meandered through the ancient site, stopping at a plaque commemorating Filibert de Niallac, the knights' French grand master. More knights, even here in this lost little corner of the world, she mused as she thought back to the Templars and stared out at the spectacular views over the harbor and the whitecapped sea beyond. She watched as swallows darted in and out of the trees by the old windmills and saw a lone ship, a trawler, venturing out from the sleepy port. Seeing the wide blue expanse that surrounded the island triggered an unsettling feeling in her. Smothering her discomfort, she felt an urge to see the beach where she and Reilly had been found.

  She headed for the main square where she found a driver who was headed for the monastery at Panormitis, beyond the small settlement at Marathounda. A short, bumpy ride later, he dropped her off at the entrance of the town. As she made her way through the small cluster of houses, she ran into the two fishermen who had found her and Reilly. Their faces lit up at seeing her, and they insisted on having her join them for a cup of coffee at the small local taverna, and Tess happily agreed.

  Although the conversation was severely limited due to the language barrier between them, Tess understood that more debris from the dive boat had been found. They led her to a small dump just beyond the taverna, and showed her the bits and pieces of timber and fiberglass that had been picked up from the beaches on either side of the bay. The storm and the sinking came rushing back to Tess, and she felt saddened at the thought of the men who had lost their lives on the Savarona and whose bodies would never be recovered.

  She thanked the fishermen and was soon walking on the deserted, windswept beach. The breeze carried the fresh smell of the churned sea, and she was relieved to see that the sun was hinting through the clouds, prying its way through them after a long absence. She moved slowly along the edge of the tide line, scuffing her feet in the sand, the hazy images of that fateful morning flooding her consciousness.

  At the far end of the beach, well out of sight of the small settlement at the mouth of the bay, she reached an outcropping of black rocks. She climbed onto it, found a flat patch, and sat down, hugging her knees and staring out at the sea. A long way out, a large rock jutted out from the water, small white-topped breakers surging around it. It looked menacing, yet another danger she and Reiliy had escaped. She became aware of the wails of the seagulls, and looking up she saw two of them swooping down playfully and tussling over a dead fish.

  All at once she realized that tears were rolling down her cheeks. She wasn't sobbing, or even crying, really. They were just tears, welling up out of nowhere. And just as suddenly as they had started, they dried up, and she realized that she was shivering, but not with cold. It was something more primal, rising up from deep inside her. Feeling a need to shake it off, she rose to her feet and continued her walk, climbing across the rocks and finding a small pathway that snaked its way along the shore.

  She followed it, past three more rocky inlets, and reached another, more remote, bay at the southern tip of the island. There didn't seem to be any roads leading down to it. A crescent of virgin sand arced away from her, ending with another headland that rose into a towering, jagged overhang.

  She looked down the beach in the diffused twilight, and an odd shape attracted her attention. It lay on the far end of the bay at the edge of the rocks. She squinted, willing her eyes to pull it into focus, 199

  and she was aware that her breathing was quickening, her mouth suddenly dry. Her heartbeat raced ahead.

  It can't be, she thought. It isn't possible.

  And then she was running along the sand until, gasping for breath, she came to within a few feet of it and stopped, her mind reeling at the possibility.

  It was the falcon figurehead, all tangled up in the harness of its rig, the orange floaters wrapped, half-deflated, around it.

  It looked intact.

  Chapter 82

  T entatively, Tess reached out and touched it. She ran her hands over it, her eyes ratcheted wide, her imagination propelling her back through time to the days of the Knights Templar, to Aimard and his men and their final, fateful voyage on the Falcon Temple.

  A tangle of images flooded her mind as she tried to remember Aimard's words. What had he said exactly? The chest was placed into a cavity that had been carved out of the back of the falcon's head. The remaining void had been filled with resin, then covered with a matching piece of wood that was hammered into place with pegs. That, too, had been sealed with resin.

  She examined the back of the falcon's head closely. She could just about discern the marks of where resin had been packed in, and, feeling around carefully with trained fingers, she found the edges of the lid and the pegs that had held it in place. The seals all looked unscathed, and no water seemed to have seeped into the resin-covered cavities. From what she could see, it was highly likely that whatever had been locked away inside the chest was still safe and undamaged.

  Looking around, she found two chunks of rock and used them as a hammer and chisel to break into the cavity. The first few layers of wood

  flaked off easily, but the rest proved to be stubbornly solid. Searching around the beach, she came across a piece of rusted steel rebar and used its sharp, broken edge to scrape through the resin.

  Working feverishly and with total disregard for any concerns of conservation the archaeologist in her would have insisted upon only weeks ago, she was able to claw her way under the timber lid and into the cavity. She could now see the edge of the chest, small and ornate. Wiping her sweaty brow, she scraped off enough of the resin from around the chest and used the rod to dislodge it.

  Sinking her fingers around it, she finally managed to lift the small box out.

  All of her excitement came surging back and she tried to control it, but it was next to impossible.

  She actually had it in her hands. Although the chest was intricately decorated with silver carvings, it was surprisingly light. She carried it into the lee of a large rock where she could examine it closely.

  There was an iron hasp with, not a lock, but a wrought-iron ring. She used the rock to hammer at the hasp until, finally, it came away from the wood and she was able to lift the lid of the chest and peer inside.

  Carefully, she lifted out the chest's contents. It was a package, wrapped in what appeared to be an oiled animal skin much like the one Aimard had used to protect the astrolabe, and tied with leather thongs. Very slowly, she unfolded the skin. Nestling in it was a book, a leather-bound codex.

  The instant she saw it, she knew what it was.

  It was inexplicably familiar, its humble simplicity belying its prodigious contents. With trembling fingers, she lifted up the cover slightly and peered at the writing on the first sheet of parchment inside it. The lettering on it was faded but readable, and, as far as she could tell, the codex's contents
were undamaged. She knew, with absolute certainty, that she was the first person to see it, the mythical treasure of the Knights Templar, ever since it was put into the chest seven hundred years ago by William of Beaujeu and entrusted to Aimard of Villiers.

  Except that it was no longer a myth.

  Cautiously, aware that this should be done in a laboratory or, at the very least, indoors but unable to resist the urge to get a better look, Tess opened the codex a bit wider and lifted up a sheet of parchment. She recognized the familiar, brownish tint of the ink used at the time made from a mixture of carbon soot, resin, wine dregs, and cuttlefish ink. The handwriting was difficult to decipher, but she recognized a couple of words, enough to know that it was written in Aramaic. She had encountered it occasionally in the past, enough to be able to identify it.

  She paused, her eyes riveted on the simple manuscript in her hands.

  Aramaic.

  The language spoken by Jesus.

  Her heart pounding noisily in her ears, she stared at parchment, recognizing more words here and there.

  Very slowly, almost unwillingly, she began to fathom just what she held in her hands. And to realize who had first touched these sheets of parchment, whose hand had written these words.

  They were the writings of Jeshua of Nazareth.

  The writings of the man the entire world knew as Jesus Christ.

  Chapter 83

  Gripping the leathery skin that held the codex, Tess walked back slowly, along the beach.

  The sun was setting, the last glimmer of light poking through the gray wall of cloud that lingered on the horizon.

  She had decided against carrying the chest back, choosing to hide it behind a large rock instead, in order not to attract unwanted attention. She would come back for it later. Her mind was still floundering with the implications of what she believed she held in her hands. This wasn't a shard of pottery, it wasn't Troy or Tutankhamen. This was something that could change the world. It had to be handled, to say the least, with extreme care.