I stopped in front of the mountains of slabs, piled one on top of the other against the walls of the church, and spent some time looking at the drawings on each of them, drawn in forgotten times. According to the tradition, Noah’s ark had stopped in Noia after the Flood and although this was nothing more than a myth, that myth hid a much more important and secret truth. It is true that following the major disaster that struck the Earth, a ship did arrive at Noia but it wasn’t Noah who sailed that ship, just as it wasn’t St. James who was buried at Compostela.
I turned my attention back to the gravestones. Those stones, that looked like tombstones, were covered in mystical symbols, images and emblems, and lacked any kind of inscription that could identify the supposed death of the owner. It wasn’t difficult to understand the engravings, despite the time that had passed since I had studied that language and, through them, I heard the distant voices of those whom, like myself, had gone there to leave a past life behind forever, renouncing their old beliefs and faiths in search of a new truth.
“Do you understand their meaning?” asked a voice from behind me.
I didn’t turn around. Whoever it was had been waiting for me.
“You know I do,” I said calmly.
“That pile of laudas sepulcrais are blank. Pick yours.”
“Any one will do, don’t worry.”
“Have you eaten, sir?”
“No.”
“Well, please, follow me. Come into the church with me.”
When I left the cemetery at dusk, a new slab was leaning against the south wall of the church. I myself had chiseled in my ancestry and my lineage, my past pains and my solitude, the long love that I had felt for Isabel of Mendoza, my Hospitaller vows, my years in Rhodes, and everything that constituted the biography of Galceran of Born. I had a new identity, a new secret name that I could never reveal but that I must always think of myself as. “Goodbye, past,” I said as I walked away from my own gravestone.
We boarded Martiño’s boat in the middle of the night. It was a solid two-masted vessel, close-hauled, with a long sharp prow, helms that hung from the rudders, and high sides to better resist the onslaught of the sea, so rough and stormy along those coasts. We left Noia crossing the spit towards the Port of Muros to the north and from there we followed the contours of a landscape of rugged cliffs and sandy beaches. Over the next few days we left behind the broad inlet of Carnota, the legendary Mount Pindus, which passed through every possible shade of pink while it was in our sight, and the amazing Waterfalls of Ezaro, where the water from the river flowed into the sea, cascading from a prominent, pointy cliff.
After five days of traveling at sea we were finally approaching Finisterre, the terrible End of the World, the last stronghold inhabited by man before the great kingdom of Atlas, the giant ocean, after which there is only an infinite void, the place where according to history the Roman legions of Decimus Junius Brutus were terrified to see how the Mare Tenebrosum swallowed the sun and made it disappear; in short, the last land that the dead trod before boarding Hermes’ boat to be taken to Hades … We could have arrived much sooner but Martiño approached land and tossed his anchor in front of every village, hamlet or lone pigeon that appeared along the coast. He picked up a cow in one town and dropped it off at the next; in another he unloaded a bale of forage and in return loaded six or seven baskets of scallops, clams, crabs, barnacles and squid; in the neighboring hamlet he brought fabrics aboard which he later exchanged for cereal. Jonas, who before reaching Noia had only seen the sea (in passing) the day that we had hurriedly left Joanot and Gerard in the port of Barcelona, happily joined in with the ship’s crew, bursting with energy and enthusiasm, performing hard tasks that put his muscles to the test and left him exhausted but satisfied. Two days before disembarking, after dinner, he came over to Sara and myself as we were talking quietly, leaning on the side of the ship, and blurted out, “I want to be a sailor.”
“I was afraid of that,” I said, slapping my forehead without turning around.
Sara laughed and Jonas looked deeply upset.
“But not now!” he shouted angrily. “When we finish this strange journey!”
“Thank goodness …! I feel so much more relieved,” I muttered, barely able to contain my laughter.
I had never felt so happy, had never felt so rich and powerful, had never had everything that I wanted in the world all at once. The new Galceran was a lucky man, even though he still had to walk straight into the dragon’s den.
“Do you know something?” whispered Sara when Jonas had disappeared, very offended, into the shadows of the boat.
“What?”
“I’m tired of this ‘strange journey’ as Jonas so rightly calls it. I want us to stop now, I want us to find a place to live and buy a house where we will always be together, you and me. We have a lot of money! We still have four bags of gold left over from what we were given in Portomarin. We could buy a farm,” she said, lost in her thoughts, “and lots of animals.”
“Stop dreaming, Sara,” I said sadly. I would have liked to have held her and kissed her right then. I would have liked to have made love to her right there. “We can’t allow ourselves to dream yet. In two days, if everything goes well, we will put an end to this ‘strange journey’. But we still don’t know what’s going to happen, Sara, we don’t know what will become of us, we can’t even be sure that we won’t have to carrying on running.”
She looked at me with sadness in her eyes.
“I don’t think it’s worth living a life where we always have to be hiding, escaping, lying and concealing ourselves from the world.”
There was nothing I could say. I couldn’t tell her that if things went badly in Finisterre that was the best future we could hope for. I don’t want our future to be like that either. Who would wish for a life like that?
“Listen carefully, Sara,” I said, containing my affliction and moving on to tell her some important details. “This is what I want you and Jonas to do ….”
Very early the next day, the ship anchored in front of Corcubion, at the entrance to the river past the islands of Lobeira and Carromoeiro, and remained bobbing in the tide of those cold, transparent waters with turquoise reflections. From what I could see from the harbor, which was crowded with big fishing boats, Corcubion seemed to be a rich, prosperous town, with large and stately stone mansions whose windows shone in the sun like mercury and silver.
“This afternoon we will reach the Fin de Mundo,” said Martiño with satisfaction, “Fisterra,” and he began to sing under his breath: “O que vai a Compostela … fai ou non fai romaría … se chega ou non a Fis-terra ….”
“I have a proposal for you, Martiño,” I said quietly, interrupting his song.
“What is it?” he asked.
“How much would you want to make a small change to your route?”
“A small change to my route? What change?”
“I need you to moor your boat here, in Corcubion, and later, at midnight, take us to Finisterre, but not to the port, to the cape itself. You leave me on land and you stay at sea, keeping a prudent distance from where I can see you and, from that time on you obey my sons’ orders who will tell you when you should return to land to collect me or drop them off, or if you should take them to wherever they tell you and leave me behind.”
Martiño looked very thoughtful, biting his bottom lip. He was a man of about twenty-five or twenty-six, tanned, burly and willful, and you could tell a mile off that thinking was not his thing, that he had enough on his plate splendidly steering his ship along the coast. However, he was also a skilled trader, and I hoped that he would not pass up a good opportunity. If he refused, I would have to go ashore at Corcubion and find another boat.
“I don’t know,” he muttered. “How about one gold doubloon?”
“One doubloon!”
“O.K., O.K.! A hundred maravedis, just a hundred maravedis! But you need to keep in mind that the reefs off Cape Fisterra are the most
dangerous in the world. It will be very difficult to get you there.”
I began to laugh.
“No, Martiño, one doubloon is fine! I’ll pay you one doubloon now and another when we are done. Will that suit you?”
Of course that suited him; he wouldn’t have been able to earn that sort of money doing even fifty of his tough voyages. But it was difficult enough trying to keep the boat safe in that rough sea, and what I was asking him to do — and I knew it —, was to perform a miracle: to hug the coastline of the sharp cliffs of the edge of the world, dodging the jagged rocks and reefs, and leaving me safely on shore shortly before sunrise. That was certainly worth two gold doubloons.
However, that night Martiño demonstrated his great navigating skills and his unwavering courage. A gust of wind almost blew us onto the Bufadoiro reef but he guided his ship with unsurpassed expertise and just before dawn the side of the boat brushed against the granite rocks of Cape Finisterre. After a small jump, I stepped foot on the edge of the world.
“Be careful, father,” said Jonas as the boat was pulling away.
I took a few steps forward and stopped to look around. There were no more paths to travel. I had arrived.
As I waited for the sun to rise and Manrique of Mendoza to arrive, I walked around and around that deserted peninsula, feeling the pained look that Sara had given me when I had left the boat deep in my heart like a dagger. Her black eyes had wanted to trap me, as if they suspected that it was the last time they would see me, and I would have loved to have taken her in my arms and given her millions of kisses and whisper in her ear how much I loved her and how much I needed her. I was there for her, walking along the crags of the end of the world, blue with cold, for her and for that lanky, gangly lad who had my voice and the temperament of a thousand devils. If they hadn’t existed, if they hadn’t been on board that small vessel that I could see rocking on the open sea just off the coast, I wouldn’t have been risking everything that morning which sadly didn’t have the best chances of going well.
I was armed, of course, but the thin dagger I had hidden at my chest, under my doublet, would be of no help at all if an armed retinue of Templars had have appeared on that deserted rock with the intention of ending my life. It wouldn’t have been in their best interests — which is what I was counting on —, and they obviously knew that, judging on the speed with which they had agreed to negotiate with me. Nevertheless, there was always the dangerous possibility that Mendoza was determined to deal with the problem quickly, trusting in moves that I had not anticipated or had not thought of through ignorance or bad judgment.
With increasing desperation I went back over the main points of my offer, thinking, as the hours passed by without Manrique making an appearance, that they were increasingly weak and inconsistent but I decided that that impression was just a product of fear at that time, and fear was the only feeling that I couldn’t let myself feel, as it turned me into the loser before the game had even begun.
Finally, when midday was approaching, after about the sixth hour, I could make out the figure of a man riding on a horse to the east. Despite the fact that the fog was low, so I couldn’t see him at first, there was no doubt in my mind that it was Manrique of Mendoza.
“I see that you got here first!” he shouted when he was closer. I was waiting for him, standing with my arms crossed over my chest in defiance.
“Did you doubt that I would?” I replied proudly.
“No. No I didn’t. You are a cautious man, Galceran of Born, and that is a good thing.”
He dismounted his horse and tied the reins to some bushes.
“Here we are again, old friend,” he said scrutinizing me, looking me up and down, like someone looking at a lackey to whom they should give approval. “Destiny has brought us together once again, isn’t that strange? I remember when Evrard and I returned from Cyprus sixteen years ago and we spent a few weeks at my father’s castle. There you were, still a boy, a young servant, head over heels in love with my stupid sister. Hahaha!”
I had to contain my anger, I had to remain indifferent to his dirty provocation.
“I also remember …,” he continued as he looked around for a suitable place to sit, “I also remember how intently you listened to Evrard and I when we told stories of the Crusades, the Holy Land, the great Salah Al-Din, of the black stone of Mecca. You were a bright lad, Galceran! It looked like you had a great future ahead of you. It’s a real shame that your lineage didn’t allow you to carry out the expectations that your family had of you.”
Restrain your wrath, Galceran, restrain your anger, I told myself, struggling not to throw myself at him and hit him squarely in the chest to cut off his breathing.
“It was a sweet time, yes,” he continued, finally sitting down on a rock. His horse snorted uneasily. “My companion Evrard … my poor companion Evrard and I commented at the time how far you would go when you were a man. Evrard was particularly convinced that we would hear a lot about you and a lot of good things. He thought very highly of you, freire. It was a shame that you were so pathetic.”
I didn’t move a muscle or say a word. I let him continue with his string of stupid memories that were nothing more than an evil ploy to weaken my position before getting into the ring. Luckily, he seemed to have run out of old accounts of my long-ago youth and was finally quiet and thoughtful. Perhaps it was due to his strong resemblance to my son — that’s what Jonas would look like when he was forty-five, I told myself, shaken —, but I stopped to look at him, and noticed the terrible signs of aging caused by the passing of time, of an increasing shortness of breath accompanied by a very flushed face and bloodshot eyes which left no doubt about the deadly illnesses he had inside him, although, unlike him, I refrained from saying anything. My strategy did not include refuting him before the fight.
“Well, my friend,” he said, raising his blue, bloodshot eyes, “you requested this meeting and here we are again, so speak.”
“I thought you’d never finish,” I muttered. “Did you need that preamble to feel better about yourself?”
He looked at me and smiled.
“Speak.”
It was my turn. The game was almost over and we were down to the last moves. There would be no more midnight flees or disguises. Now talent and quick-thinking prevailed.
“I’ll tell you what I want,” I began. “I want protecting from the Church and from the Hospital of St. John. I have no wish to return and I can’t so I am requesting that the Temple gives me a safe place to live with the woman and the boy. I don’t require provisions: I am perfectly capable of maintaining my family by working as a doctor. In addition to that protection, I also request that you put an end to your persecution once and for all and that you place us in a city or town in one of your territories in Portugal or Cyprus, or wherever suits you best. We will adopt new identities and you will let us live in peace, keeping us safe from the papal henchmen and the Hospitaller soldiers.”
Manrique looked at me in amazement, struck by surprise. I don’t know what the hell he thought I was going asking to ask him for but by the look on his face, he wasn’t expecting that. He suddenly let out one of his loud laughs.
“Good God, Galceran of Born! You always manage to surprise me. And why would we have to agree to such an extraordinary request? The Perquisitore begging the Temple for a little place to curl up in and die! I swear that I never expected that!”
“You will have to grant me my request for various reasons. First, because I have seen the Ark of the Covenant,” Manrique flinched involuntarily, “and I know where you keep it, and even if you have changed its hiding place, the mere fact that I know for sure that you have it could turn all of the Christian kingdoms in Europe against you, even those who have been merciful throughout the process.”
“I could kill you …,” he muttered, full of hate. “Anyway, how can I be sure that you haven’t already told the Papacy and the Hospital and all of this isn’t just a filthy trap? How can I know t
hat the secret of the Ark will remain safe?”
“Killing me won’t do any good, sire, given that Sara and Jonas also know where it’s hidden and they would make sure to spread it to the four winds before you could catch up with them which would be very damaging for the Temple. With regards to whether I have kept the secret about the Ark, I have no evidence other than the stupidity and greed of His Holiness and my superiors: Do you really think that if I had told them about the Ark when we escaped from Las Medulas a month ago, they would have waited this long to send their armies to the underground tunnels of Bierzo? However much I would have begged for prudence and stealth (although I don’t know for what purpose), the tunnels would have been full of soldiers by now.”
Manrique remained silent.
“The second reason you will grant my request,” I said, without giving him any respite, “is that I know the way to find your gold inside out, and I’m not referring to the key of the Tau but to the method, the process you use to hide the gold. I know that that key isn’t the only one, that there are many others with similar characteristics, and I don’t think that it would take me too much work to figure them out. Although the truth is that I’m thinking I could carry on a little longer with the Tau, because it’s impossible that you could have changed the place of all the riches hidden under that sign already. On the other hand …,” I continued, “on the other hand, I know that the Temple not only has the Ark of the Covenant but also the treasure of the Temple of Solomon. Am I right?” Manrique’s face was a stone mask. “It has always been rumored that the Templars possessed both things, the Ark of the Covenant and the Temple treasure but it has never been proven. However, if you have one of them, which I know for a fact that you do, why wouldn’t you also have the other? I bet you anything you want that it’s also in Las Medulas since it’s the only place that guarantees the security necessary for something so valuable.”
Iacobus Page 31
