Brethren: An Epic Adventure of the Knights Templar (52 page)

Will pointed to the desk. It was chaotic with papers and quills, some of which were littering the floor around it.

“Perhaps it’s always like this,” murmured Garin, over his shoulder. “They are Hospitallers. Come on.” Moving past Will, he crossed quickly to the locker, taking the key from his pouch.

Will frowned as his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom. There were a number of chests and an armoire. These had all been opened and their contents disturbed. There was an odor of dampness and stale sweat in the room. “Garin,” warned Will.

Garin reached for the locker, the key in his hand, then stopped, his hand hovering over the lock. “It’s open,” he said, frowning. Putting the key into the pouch at his belt, he pulled open the door, which creaked on its hinges. “Damn it!” He looked back at Will. “It’s not here.”

To his right, a shadow sprang out from behind one of the pillars. Garin shouted in terror as a hunched figure lunged at him, russet cloak flying, rotten teeth bared in a snarl, dagger drawn.

Before Garin could even move, Rook had grabbed him, twisted him around and pressed the curved dagger to his throat. “That’s because I’ve got it, you stupid little shit!”

Will glimpsed a vellum-bound book, its title embossed in gold leaf, stuffed in the belt of the man who had tortured him in the whorehouse. He knew it was Rook by the eyes and voice. He went to draw his sword.

“You can put that down,” said Rook, looking at Will, “unless you want his throat slit.”

Will hesitated and Garin cried out as Rook sliced the blade across his skin, drawing blood.

“You know I’ll do it.”

“All right,” said Will. He went to place the sword on the floor.

“Not there,” growled Rook. “Over by those chests. I don’t want you going for it.”

Will did so.

“Get back where you were.”

Will went to his place, keeping his gaze on Rook. He watched Rook draw Garin’s sword and toss it onto the rug behind.

“Well, this is a pretty picture,” said Rook to Garin. “I knew you’d betray me.”

“I haven’t betrayed you!” Garin, breathing hard with fear, looked to Will. “I was using Campbell to get the book, then I was going to take it back to London like we agreed.”

Will’s eyes narrowed. He stepped forward.

“Stay there!” snapped Rook, dragging Garin back. “He’s lying anyway. You was never any good at it, was you, de Lyons? You don’t have the nerve.”

Will stood still, noticing that Garin’s hand was inching slowly toward the pouch at his belt.

“I, on the other hand,” Rook continued softly, unaware of what Garin was doing, “am very good at it. You might say it’s one of my talents.” He chuckled. “Like picking locks.”

“What are you talking about?” said Garin in a low voice.

“Oh, I’m going to enjoy this! You can call it payment for my having to come all this way to sort out your mess. And after I’ve told you, you and your friend here are going to get into that locker and I’ll be on my way.” He laughed louder. “I wish I could see the face of the Grand Master when he finds you cuddled up together in his safe! I expect you’ll be seeing the inside of one of their cells for a good long while.” His tone hardened. “Just be thankful I’m leaving you alive. At least for now,” he whispered to Garin. “What was I saying? Oh, yes. Remember the night we left Paris? I had blood on me and when you asked me where it was from I said I’d got cut.”

In the periphery of his vision, Will saw Garin reach into the pouch.

Rook pressed his stubbly cheek against Garin’s. “I lied. It wasn’t my blood. It was that bitch, Adela’s.”

“What?” said Garin, going still.

“I stuck her like a pig.” Rook sniggered. “Only that time with my blade.”

“I don’t believe you,” whispered Garin, but his expression said otherwise.

Rook put his mouth over Garin’s ear. “And while you’re thinking on that, just imagine what I’m going to do to your mother when I return to England.” His hot breath moistened Garin’s cheek. “I reckon I’ll have myself a lot of fun with her.”

Garin wrenched his hand from the pouch.

Will caught a flash of metal as Garin’s hand flew up. He realized that it was the tournament badge, as Garin plunged the pin of it into Rook’s eye.

There was a sudden spurt of blood. Rook began to scream.

Dropping the dagger, he staggered back, clutching his face. Garin let the badge fall to the rug, then snatched up the curved blade. He fell on Rook in a frenzy, stabbing indiscriminately at any part of flesh he could find. Rook collapsed, howling, to writhe on the floor, one hand pressed to his eye, the other trying to fend off the stinging blows. Blood spattered in long lines across the silk rug and up the whitewashed wall as Garin straddled him, plunging and withdrawing the dagger again and again. “You bastard!” he was shrieking.
“You filthy bastard!”

Their combined screams echoed around the chamber.

“Garin!” called Will, running across to him.

Garin jerked around, dagger poised in the air at Will. His gaze focused and his shoulders slumped. “I have to finish it.”

Will hesitated, then nodded. Garin raised the dagger and stabbed down, once.

Rook, almost unconscious, hardly felt the blade enter his heart.

Will pulled the bloodstained Book of the Grail from Rook’s belt, then hauled Garin up.

“Get your sword.”

He snatched up his falchion and ran for the door, but halted when Garin didn’t follow. The knight was staring at Rook’s body. Will sprinted to him, gripped his arm and dragged him away, out of the door, along the passage and down the stairs. As they reached the bottom, they heard running footsteps coming toward them. Will bundled them through a door into an empty room. He opened it a crack as the footsteps receded and saw the back of a knight disappearing up the stairs. “Come on!” he urged Garin, who followed him numbly into the balmy night.

Nicolas de Acre had been in the main quadrant when he had heard the faint screams coming from the tower. Calling two knights to his side, he raced into the main building and up the stairs to the Grand Master’s chambers. As they entered, one of the knights cried out on seeing the body with the dagger protruding from the chest, thinking it was the Grand Master.

Nicolas, sword drawn, searched the chamber while the other two inspected the corpse. “Who is it?” he said, sheathing his sword and going over to them when he found no one.

“Not one of ours,” said one of the knights.

Nicolas frowned and bent closer to the body. The face and upper torso were covered in blood and horribly mutilated. “Raise the alarm,” Nicolas told one of his comrades, crossing to the locker. “Whoever killed him might still be here.” He opened the locker and cursed when he saw it was empty. Nicolas was searching the body when the Grand Master arrived.

“What has happened?” demanded de Revel, sweeping into the room, where he was halted by the sight of the bloody corpse.

Nicolas rose. “Sir, the Book of the Grail has been taken.”

“Leave us,” said the Grand Master to the remaining knight. “By whom?” he demanded of Nicolas as the man disappeared. “And who is that?” He pointed to the corpse.

Nicolas turned to the Grand Master. “He could be another mercenary, sent by the Temple.”

“We do not know for certain that the Temple sent anyone, brother.”

“Who else would it be, sir?” said Nicolas insistently. “Everard is in the city. I’ve seen him. He knows we have his book. It makes sense that he would try to take it back.” He crossed to the door.

“Where are you going?”

“If I go now I might be able to catch whoever was with this man. They cannot have gone far.”

“No.”

“Sir?”

“I cannot allow you to pursue this any further. If our intruders were Templars, or working for the Temple, then they came to reclaim property that rightfully belongs to their Order; property we stole.” De Revel went to his desk and bent to pick up some of the fallen papers. “We cannot risk a feud with the Temple. Not when our situation is so precarious, not after what happened at Antioch. Baybars will not stop until either he is dead, or we are gone.” He rose and placed the papers on the table. “I kept my oath to de Châteauneuf. We failed. The only thing we can do now is to concentrate on what needs to be done.”

De Revel turned to Nicolas, who was watching him in silence. “The rift between our Orders has to end. We must try to put the past behind us for the good of the future.”

“W
e have to keep moving,” insisted Will, jogging back to Garin, who had been stumbling along behind him.

“Stop!” begged Garin, bending over, hands on thighs. “I’m going to be sick.” He retched, but nothing came up. After a moment, he straightened, eyes and nose streaming. He looked truly pitiful.

“They’ll have raised the alarm by now. We have to get to the church and change our clothes. We’re too noticeable in these.” Will gestured at their stolen surcoats. Garin’s was sticky with blood and gleamed wetly in the moonlight.

Garin bent forward. He retched again, then began to sob, great heaving sobs that wracked his body.

Will looked around as two men came out of a nearby building. He turned back to Garin as the men looked curiously at them. “Come on!” he hissed, grabbing the knight by the shoulders.

Garin raised his head. His blood-spattered face was taut with anguish. “It’s my fault Adela died!
My
fault!”

“We don’t have time for this.”

“Time? What’s that? Nothing, Will, that’s what time is! It’s all just empty moments unless you fill it with things that mean something. My mother, my uncle, everyone in the Temple, you all wanted me to be someone I wasn’t. Adela was the only one who wanted me to be me!”

“And you’ll mourn her and it will pass,” said Will roughly, wiping a clot of blood from Garin’s cheek with his thumb.

“Like it has passed for you?” snapped Garin. His brow creased. “I didn’t mean that. I’m sorry. God, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. Be faster.”

Garin finally responded to his urging and the two of them sprinted through the night from quarter to quarter, zigzagging between houses, shops, churches and mosques.

After depositing the soiled surcoats and collecting their mantles from the Venetian church, they made their way back to the Temple, entering the compound by the underground tunnel that ran from the harbor, rather than by the main gates.

“You should wash before anyone sees you,” said Will to Garin.

Garin nodded dumbly, then turned and sloped away across the yard. Will watched the knight go, his emotions confused, then headed for Everard’s chambers. As in Paris, the priest had his own room in the preceptory, provided by the Seneschal, one of the three remaining members of the Anima Templi. There was light coming out from under the door. Will looked at the book in his hands. The gold words on the cover glimmered beneath his fingers. For some reason, he felt like crying. He rapped on the door, waited for Everard’s rasping voice, then entered.

The priest was sitting at a table, holding a quill poised over a skin. He had a blanket wrapped around his shoulders despite the warm night and a brazier filled with charcoals was smoking in the corner. His cheeks were webbed with age and his few remaining threads of hair drifted aimlessly about his cheeks. He seemed to have aged ten years in the space of a few months.

“William,” croaked Everard wearily, “you finally deign to grace me with your presence.” He turned his attention to the skin he was writing on. “I spoke to Simon hours ago. I take it he passed on my message?”

“He said you wanted to see me, yes.”

Everard scowled. “Then why did it take you so long to—?” He stopped as his eyes moved to the book in Will’s hands. “What is that?”

Will went to him and placed the Book of the Grail on top of the skin.

Everard stared down at it. His hands began to shake, causing him to drop the quill, which struck the table and twisted down to the flagstones. He placed his hands, palms down, to either side of the book, where they trembled like two pale leaves. Looking up at Will, he said one word in a hoarse voice. “How?”

Will sat and told the priest what had happened.

“De Lyons helped you do this?” said Everard, when Will had finished.

“Yes, he wanted to make amends.”

“He had a lot to make,” said Everard sharply. “You say the man who wanted the book—Rook—is dead?”

Will nodded.

“Do you believe he was working alone?”

“Garin said he was, but we cannot be sure either way and even if he was working with someone else, Garin might not have known about it. Garin did, however, tell me Rook had threatened to hurt his mother if he didn’t comply and, from what I saw tonight, I don’t think he was lying about that.”

The priest sighed, then rose slowly, picking up the book. “Perhaps,” he mused, going over to the brazier, “it was all part of God’s grand, indecipherable plan. At least I am now here, where I am needed most.”

“What are you doing?” cried Will, leaping up as Everard held the book over the hot coals.

Everard didn’t look around. “It should never have been written in the first place. I told you that.”

“Then it was all for nothing?” said Will, watching the flames begin to lick around the thick pages, blackening the vellum and obscuring the gold writing.

“Nothing?” Everard let the book drop into the brazier. The fire caught hold and he stepped back as the dry parchment burned brightly. “We have protected the Soul of the Temple from those who would seek to destroy it. I would not call that nothing.” He held out his hands to the flames. “The Book of the Grail was Armand’s obsession. Our aims live on without it.”

Will sat back down as Everard shuffled over. “So it’s over?”

Everard chuckled. “On the contrary, William, we’ve only just started.” He sat and leaned forward, resting his gnarled hands on the table. He looked suddenly awake; wide awake and impatient, like a man who has just found out he has been given the wrong diagnosis after having been told he has only a few days left to live. “Now I can concentrate on restoring the Anima Templi. I think, over the past months, while trying to build it up, I was really just waiting for it to be pulled down. My heart wasn’t in it.” His brow creased. “I would have liked Hasan to be here for this.”

“Getting rid of Baybars has to be our most pressing priority.”

“Baybars?” Everard shook his head. “Certainly not.”

“Someone has to.”

“We must make sure they don’t,” replied Everard sharply.

“What do you mean?”

“Getting rid of Baybars, as you so eloquently put it, goes against everything that the Anima Templi has been working toward since its creation.” Everard sighed at Will’s nonplussed expression. “Robert de Sablé’s initial intent was to protect the Temple from those who would use its power to fulfill their own desires and to promote peace with the aim of fostering trade and knowledge between the races. The second aim, our ultimate aim, is an extension of this. What is the Grail, William?”

“The Grail?” Will shrugged. “The cup that caught Christ’s blood at the Crucifixion, or possibly a chalice used at the Last Supper. The stories differ on its origins.”

“A cup, or a chalice?”

“So it is written. But what does this have to do with…?”

“In earlier versions of the story, yes, but in later works the Grail is a sword, a book, a stone, even a child. In my book it appears in three different guises: a golden cross, a silver candlestick and a crescent made from lead. Which, do you suppose, is its true form?”

Will shook his head. “I don’t believe the Grail exists. I think it is a symbol, not an object.”

“Then if the story tells of Perceval’s search for the Grail what is it, exactly, that he is seeking, if not an object?”

Will shrugged.

“Salvation! Perceval’s search is his search for salvation. The Grail, the object of his quest, isn’t something that can be held in the hand. It cannot be bought or sold and it will not be found by looking, but only by opening the heart to its essence. That is where it exists.” Everard touched his breastbone. “In the vessel of the heart. Those who see the Grail as a sword believe salvation can only be found in war. Those who see it as a book believe wisdom will bring their search to fruition.”

Will had never seen the priest so impassioned; Everard’s pupils were wide, his pale cheeks blotchy with color.

“At the end of the initiation ritual, the postulant, playing the part of Perceval, is guided by one of the Brethren to a cauldron filled with burning oil, symbolized in the story by a lake of fire. Here he is given three treasures: the three Grails. He is told that the cross contains the soul of Christianity, the crescent the spirit of Islam and the candlestick, the Menorah, the essence of the Jewish faith. He is then told to throw the treasures into the cauldron where they will melt and become one. Thus, in order for Perceval to achieve salvation, or, in the case of a postulant, initiation, he must bring about a ritual reconciliation of the three faiths. And, in reality, this is what we, as an Order, must do.”

“My God!” Will’s mouth fell open. “How could that
possibly
be your intent? You’re a priest! How could you, or any Christian, sanction this? Forget heresies in some book.
This
is sacrilege!”

“I’m disappointed,” said Everard reproachfully. “I thought that you, more than most, understood that we aren’t so different from Jews or Muslims. You’ve read enough of their texts after all.”

“I know our races have similarities, Everard, but what you are proposing violates everything our society is built upon! And not just ours, theirs too. Do you honestly think Muslims or Jews would be interested in reconciliation? It goes against the laws of all our faiths. How would it work when Jews and Muslims see Christ as no more than a prophet and deny His divinity? I can imagine how hard Baybars would laugh if he knew what you are proposing. He’s a fanatic.”

“Yes, he is,” agreed Everard, “but then so is King Louis.”

Will almost laughed. “Louis? The most pious king who ever lived?”

Everard pounced. “Pious to us, yes. No doubt to the Muslims, Baybars is just as devout and Louis a savage fanatic. This circle of hatred will only ever stop when one side steps out, sees the whole and shows it to the rest of the world. Our three religions are inextricably linked in faith, tradition and birthplace. We are siblings, each with our own identities and personalities, but who have all come from the same womb and grown up in the same cradle.” Everard spread his hands. “We are like brothers, squabbling for our father’s affections.” His voice softened. “It is not such a strange notion, William. You need only walk the streets of Acre to see that we can live together quite well when given the opportunity. The Anima Templi isn’t proposing to change our faiths to suit one another. What it proposes is a mutual truce in which all children of God benefit from the knowledge and experiences of one another. And this,” he said, gesturing to the window, beyond which the city lay sleeping, “is where we will begin. Our Camelot.”

“I never knew you were such an idealist.”

Everard’s eyes narrowed. “Your father believed in this aim. And if we had realized our dream, he might still be alive. Should we ignore the ideal solution because it is too good to aim for? Or is it because we are scared of having to work to achieve it?”

“You don’t see the world as it really is, Everard,” said Will, piqued by the mention of his father. “You sit locked away in your private little room and imagine things that could never be. Acre might be peaceful, but look beyond its walls and you’ll find only death and hatred. If the Anima Templi’s aims were possible, people would have stopped warring long ago. Our faiths can never be reconciled. They are too different.”

“Faith generally has nothing to do with war. When men invade another country for better land, or resources, or greater power, faith is an excuse they hide behind to mask their mundane cause. To say that God wills it gives their actions justification. We’d all be rather more culpable if we said
I will it
, wouldn’t we? Then we would cease to be seen as men of reason and become avaricious brutes. It is rare that men wage wars because they believe. Men like Baybars and Louis believe. It makes them dangerous.”

“So, you agree? Baybars should be stopped.”

“Kill the man and make a martyr. Baybars is doing what he believes in. He is protecting his people from whom he sees as the enemy. And he has a point.” Everard held up his hand as Will went to speak. “Our aims go beyond Baybars. I doubt that they will be realized in my lifetime, but maybe in yours.” He sighed. “Maybe they will never be realized. But we have to hope, William. We have to believe we can all be better than we are.”

“So, you plan to rebuild the Anima Templi and continue with this plan?”

“Yes. I had been planning to elect new members, both here and in the West, and appoint a Guardian.” Everard pursed his lips. “That is, in fact, why I wanted to see you tonight. I wanted to tell you that I have chosen you for initiation into the Anima Templi. That is, if you don’t think it all too foolish for you.”

“Me?”

“Why not? You already know about it and I believe we have learned to work together relatively well. I haven’t whipped you for a long time.”

“I don’t know,” said Will quietly. “I just don’t know.”

“What don’t you know?”

“If I agree with you for a start.”

“I’m glad to hear it. If all of us in the Anima Templi always agreed with one another, we would go along with whatever silly idea came along. Dissension isn’t always a bad thing. Hasan was right; I have been holding our ideals too close. We need young men like you to put some fire back into us.”

Will was silent for a time. Finally, he nodded.

Everard smiled. “Your father would have been proud.”

Will said nothing. He felt cheated. He had gone through all of this, lost his father, Elwen, just to have Everard destroy the thing he had been trying to save. He felt no relief, or pride for helping to save the Anima Templi. He thought their aim, which he had been helping to fulfill for the last eight years, six of those unwittingly, was impossible. In the face of the blue-eyed sultan, reconciliation seemed ridiculous; more than that, it seemed wrong. When Will thought of Baybars, all he could see was his father’s rotted skull, one of a hundred or more stuck on a pike around Safed’s walls. How could peace be made with that?

Everard, not seeming to notice Will’s disaffection, rose. “I must speak with the Seneschal briefly. There is one thing I must do to conclude this matter.” The priest shuffled across to the door. “Then we can have ourselves a drink.”