The Priests' Code

by B. B. Balthis

  * * *

  ‘Leading on from that is another Templar link, because their full title was The Poor Fellow Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon. The Templars’ true role during their crusades has been much debated over the years, but I am strongly beginning to favour the idea that they were voyeurs and adventurers. The looting of original treasures of the Temple of Solomon and what was supposedly hidden under it, that is, the Holy Grail and the Ark of the Covenant, along with various other treasures, was their sole aim.’

  ‘That’s an interesting conclusion to make, and the right one, I think. Maybe they had reason enough to do it? After all, they wouldn’t want anyone else to find it, so the motivation wasn’t entirely greed. In the wrong hands, whatever was there may be have been devastating to the world order at the time… the Church would certainly have thought so. And we know that the Templars certainly weren’t poor… quite the opposite. One wonders if they really did find the Grail, in whatever form, or the supposed Ark of the Covenant? If the king and pope’s demands to hand it over were either refused or their finds denied, then that could be what brought about the massive condemnation of them, and their ultimate slaying or dispersal? I don’t doubt, though, that any treasure was long gone and hidden or buried by the time the king’s men arrived.’

  ‘I knew you were interested in the Templars, Benoît, but you always keep so much to yourself. You never tell me anything.’

  ‘It’s not deliberate… if you’d asked I would have told you.’

  ‘I’m not sure about that, but my belief is that they, along with the Cathars, who I am convinced were part of the story, and ultimately the Church, were involved in a massive conspiracy. Perhaps the biggest in known history, and one that is still in existence today.’

  I stood up. ‘Why don’t we go over to the church now, and we can finish going through this when we get back?’

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  The lane looked deserted, and we quickly dashed over to the church, which was directly behind the house. Locking the heavy door from inside, I switched on the lights. It was a wholly unattractive place, rather like an old barn, and quite unlike most of the other churches around here. The entire interior had been stripped back to the stone, although in places it was still possible to see where remnants of wall paintings had been, especially on the domed ceiling over the chancel. Whatever had been there, it was a massive loss to the ancient church, and was nothing short of vandalism. One could only assume that it had been removed with great deliberation. Perhaps it showed something that the Church didn’t want people to see? I could think of no other reason.

  There was, however, a lovely marble altar with golden caryatids across its front, and a pair of fine seventeenth-century statues of Saint Andrew and Saint Peter, with odd, grimacing faces. An ancient but simple baptismal font stood in the aisle at the back, its drain hole filled with rubbish. It had clearly been moved and refixed to the floor, which was made of rough stone. It wasn’t difficult to see that most of it had been lifted recently and replaced with pale cement holding down the uneven slabs.

  A narrow flight of stairs went up to a mezzanine area where a statue of Joan of Arc stood. A hole came right through the floor from here for the bell ropes, no longer used, but the framework of stone looked very old, and had clearly been reused. The other statues were Germaine, Roch, Theresa, John the Baptist, and Our Lady of Lourdes. Using the A from Arc and the L from Lourdes, there would still be the words GRAAL, like at Rennes-le-Château. I remembered that the statues at the Templar church at Campagne-sur-Aude also spelt this out, as did the statues in Bugarach, along with the chancel being covered in very fancy Rs with an S running through them, and a crown above each one. I mentioned this to Caro.

  ‘Yes, I know. I went there a few weeks back. R for Rex, king, from Rex Deus, I assume, and S for Sara. If you look carefully, you can also see the M and J, both upside down, at the top and bottom of the R. Did you see the stained-glass window with the boat and tarot style wheel of fortune? Very odd, as is the font covered in hearts.’

  ‘Yes, it is a bit out of place, and the font too.’

  Here, the little window of stained glass in one of the alcoves caught my eye, and I had always admired it for its striking simplicity. It showed a red cross, an eight-pointed star, and to either side a fish and eye, which might also be alchemical symbols for the sun and gold. It didn’t have any great age, but was beautiful all the same, as were the plainer ones, which looked like they were set back and gave a corridor-like illusion of distance, especially from the outside when it was dark and the church was lit from inside.

  * * *

  The water stoup or piscina by the door was dusty and empty. We both looked at it with dismay, as it was quite clear that it had recently been moved. The cement on the floor was new and already cracked, and there was pale cement holding the bowl to the side wall, also cracked. The interior of the bowl appeared to have a cement coating, which shouldn’t have been necessary with marble, and there was a large X scratched into a slab just in front of it. Clearly there was some reason for this, but short of taking it up, there was little that we could do to investigate it further.

  The stone wall behind the piscina and to either side looked like it had been taken out to chest height and had been replaced using pale mortar. On closer examination, the bowl was badly damaged underneath, and had clearly been set upon with a crowbar to try to lever it from its base. It wasn’t large, and I should have been able to move the top from its stand, which showed no signs of cement between the two, but it wouldn’t budge. We both tried several times to no avail. It was clearly being held together with pins or bolts of some sort, probably coming straight down from the actual bowl, which was why it now had a cement liner to cover up the holes. There was nothing we could do but give up, for now anyway.

  ‘There are several possibilities. Whoever has been here in the past few years has quite clearly stripped the place. They’ve taken up the floor and pulled out part of the walls. Obviously, they were looking for something and were very determined to find it. The piscina has definitely been moved, and one imagines that if they had permission to crowbar it, they would have had permission to use more tools to separate the bowl from the stand.

  ‘On the other hand, maybe the damage was done by Saunière, or even Bigou and his English friends all those years ago, and no one has separated the two since then? That’s wishful thinking! Maybe someone without permission took a crowbar to it? Oh, Ben, even seeing an empty cavity in the pillar would have been wonderful… I’m sure there is one. What a disappointment, even though I fully expected it. Let’s take a look at Joan, because I’m sure he found or hid something there.’

  * * *

  We walked to the back of the church, and up the narrow staircase to the small mezzanine area and looked closely at the dusty statue.

  ‘She’s been got at, Caro. The base has been smashed; she’s not standing on it properly, and part of her banner has been damaged. At least it confirms that your theories were correct, which is something. I would say that either the government or the Vatican have been in here. We always knew that would be the most likely scenario, and so did Hortense.’

  ‘You’re right of course. And we still have the rest of her papers to go through, which hopefully should tell us what was written on the parchments. I do wonder if anything has been left in Peter’s church in England by way of records… it does seem likely. Let’s get back; I’ve got things to do for tomorrow, and perhaps we can go through the papers again and look for the ones we haven’t yet seen.’

  She took more photos, and we both stopped in front of a statue of John the Baptist. He was also damaged, particularly around the base, where there was a large area showing a white plaster repair. His right arm had also been broken right off and repaired with the same white plaster.

  ‘And they’ve had a go at John. Look, Caro, two fingers raised instea
d of one! I think that’s the first time I’ve ever seen that…how very strange!’

  We locked the church, and walked around the outside of the building. Built into the wall were several stones with old red paintings on them. One seemed to be of a house or tent, and another had a word written in an ancient script: ‘Clovis’… one of the Merovingian kings. We had known these painted stones throughout our lives, but were no clearer about their origins now than we were then. Some parts of history refused explanation, and we had no more than our imaginations by which to understand their purpose or where they had come from.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  Back in the house, Caro made various calls, and an hour later we sat at the table, a bowl of soup in front of each of us.

  ‘To go back to Asmodeus…’

  ‘Carry on, if you don’t mind my slurping.’

  ‘No, I don’t mind, good job too, considering that eating is your favourite pastime!’

  My mouth full of soup, I ignored this dig, and she sorted her papers.

  ‘Right, here we are. If you remember, throughout the Stations of the Cross, Saunière used silver bowls, silver discs, and other silvered objects. This replicates and links to the clue of the whereabouts of the parchments in the Asmodeus statue.’

  ‘I remember us working that out ages ago, but I never understood the salamanders. Why are they there? Do you know?’

  ‘Yes, I think so. The salamanders above Asmodeus link in with the 1314 and Jacques de Molay, as well as the painting of him by François de Fleury, and the one of Joan of Arc, who was also burned at the stake. Salamanders generally represent fire and the ability to survive it, as well as sometimes being used symbolically for Jesus and Mary. Saunière was linking them up and expressing the fact that despite death by fire, the truth still survived and lived on.

  ‘Interestingly, Simon de Montfort married into the family of the Counts of Angouleme, who also had a salamander as part of their coat of arms. The Counts of Angouleme had links with Joan of Arc in later years. Montfort comes into the story again, because he was great friends with Almeric, one of the Saint-Amands, also known as Saint-Omer. They went crusading together. It was the Saint-Amands that owned one of the manors in your village in England, Ben. His relative and predecessor, Godfrey de Saint-Amand, or Geoffrey de Saint-Omer, founded the Knights Templar with Hugues de Payens in 1118.

  ‘Their family also had a close friendship with Bernard de Blanquefort, also known as Bertrand de Blanchefort, the sixth grand master of the Knights Templars. That’s Blanchefort, or Blanca Fort, near Rennes-le-Château, later owned by the Voisin and d’Hautpoul families. The connections between the Templars and the two places in France and England are considerable, including one Hugh Saint Omer, who died in 1106 holding the title of Prince of Galilee and Tiberias. Godfrey may well have been taking up the reigns of his relative when setting up the Knights Templar, already having been given prior information.’

  ‘That sounds likely. He would certainly have passed on anything of importance, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Absolutely, and there’s something else I discovered that might interest you. It’s believed that one of the bells in your village church is very valuable and unusual, having a high silver content. There’s a story that the Templars at Le Bezu hid a silver bell down a well. It’s never been found, of course, but supposedly its ghostly rings can be heard on the anniversary of their arrest by the king of France. Much of their treasure is rumoured to have been stashed at Le Bezu. It was owned by Pierre de Voisin for some time, who, as we know, was also lord of Rennes-le-Château, and we mustn’t forget the Templiers code left on Marie’s de Nègre’s gravestone. Make of it what you will, but I firmly believe that much of the Templar treasure was re-hidden elsewhere, well before their fleeing or arrest, or eventually retrieved by those who escaped, or by their ancestors, quite possibly with some being taken back home.’

  ‘That’s fascinating, and certainly possible. We should go up to Le Bezu. I haven’t been there for years.’

  ‘Let’s do that, Ben. Now, back to Asmodeus.’

  * * *

  ‘The circled fingers of Asmodeus’s right hand, much argued about as representing various monuments in the region, is where a stick should be. It’s as simple as that. The hand on the knee, also much argued about, is a simple historical fact, as Asmodeus is traditionally known as the devil on two sticks who had a limp. The marks on his left wing are not runes or any other language. They’re little more than symbolic battle wounds, which he showed off and wore with pride. There are six scratch marks, not the five so often mentioned, but only five are coloured black. The numerological symbolism of five is fire, and six a union. Asmodeus was also the thirty-second demon in the Lesser Key of Solomon, a seventeenth-century spell book. 3+2=5.

  ‘As for the B.S. emblem on the front, I suspect it’s just the initials of Bérenger Saunière. He had the Asmodeus statue made to his own design, and is quite simply claiming it as such, although it’s possible that the B stands for “benitier,” a water stoup, and the S for “sous,” under. The parchments are under the water stoup or piscina. Take your pick. Maybe, in typical Saunière style, he was saying both. B is the second letter of the alphabet, and S the nineteenth, which is a numerological 3. Benitier is also the French word for giant clam, which is what Asmodeus is holding up.’

  She paused and tidied her papers. ‘Our old friend Asmodeus tells quite a tale, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Saunière must have spent ages planning it,’ I replied. ‘I had thought that the Andrews’ plaid blanket was conclusive to the Antugnac connection, and had made a guess about the water stoup solely because of the quote above Asmodeus, “by this sign,” and the downward finger pointing to the water. A lot of the other information is new to me, though. Did you ever read the booklet written about his year as priest here at Antugnac? It was all taken from his journal; masses of it, even copies of the sermons he preached in the church. He sounds quite manic and over the top and, in my view, he was really scared. It’s like he was trying to convince himself of how dedicated and devout he was, and didn’t ring true at all. As far as I’m concerned it was just another cover-up.’

  ‘I’ve got a copy, and that’s exactly what I thought. Poor man, his whole life had been turned upside down. I’ve tried so hard to understand how he might have felt, especially when he had just made a discovery. The nearest I got was a mixture of terror and excitement, but I guess we’ll never know for sure.’

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  I put Hortense’s leather case on the table to try to find the compartment that she wrote about. Caro leaned over and pulled at one of the metal rods that ran along its base, and immediately the bottom flipped up, revealing a compartment, some four or five centimetres deep. Inside was a brown envelope and a stiff flat package, which I assumed were the Templar parchments. Charles had obviously done all he could do preserve them, with various layers of special tissue and card, the edges still showing some of their original wax seal. We both sat down and I began to carefully remove the layers.

  As Hortense had said, there were two parchments, both in remarkably good condition. The edges were a little frayed and there were a few shadowy stains across them, but they had survived the years well and were easy enough to read. I found myself holding my breath, as I so often did in the presence of things so old, created by humans to convey messages to those who were to follow. I felt the usual goosebumps as I started to read out the first parchment.

  It was written in standard Latin, which I was glad of, because my Occitan, which I knew the Templars also used, was nowhere near as fluent. It was dated to October 1307 and thanked the owners of the château for giving them shelter in the ‘most difficult’ of times. They used the plural, so I assumed that there were more than one of them. They went on to say that they and their descendants would remain indebted to them in perpetuity, and the small token of their gratitude
left behind went no way towards repaying this kindness. At the top and bottom were small Templar emblems of two men on a horse, surrounded by a circle, around which words were written.

  AMOR VINCIT OMNIA.

  ‘Love conquers all; What do you think of that? Have you ever seen anything like it? I’ve got shivers down my spine.’

  ‘Amazing! Like you, I’ve seen lots of old documents, but to have something connected to your house makes it very special. I hope they escaped and managed to find a place of safety somewhere. Let’s look at the other one. It’s a map, just like Hortense said. Knowing the area like we do it’s rather obvious, as it would have been to our parents. Oh, Benoît, it must have been so exciting for them – I wish I’d been there.’

  The map was exactly as Hortense had described. It showed the location of Blanchefort, the Templar watchtower just a few kilometres from here. Drawn over the top of the cistern, which could still be seen to this day, was a circular diagram showing both the dial of a clock and the positions on a compass, one directly on top of the other.

  Written down one side were various numbers and letters, presumably to give the positions on the circle of the buried pockets of gold. It was simple enough, and for a moment I tried to imagine our parents, Charles and Hortense, out on the mountainside, probably in the dark, digging for the treasure that had been left for them.

  ‘Me too. What an astonishing experience it must have been.’ We were both quiet for a moment, our thoughts, and perhaps part of ourselves, momentarily up on that bleak rocky outcrop, with the past whistling all around us in the wind.