‘I were thinking summat in a pot.’
‘That can be arranged.’
‘Ta.’
Outside, it had started to rain out of a half-blue sky. Merrily accepted the pages of text Huw was waving at her, glimpsing a Maltese cross before he grabbed them back.
‘Save you some time and bullshit.’ He turned over a couple of the sheets, tapped a paragraph. ‘Start there.’
‘What is it?’
‘It’s about how to become a Knight Templar,’ Huw said.
‘Now or then?’
‘For you, never. It’s a lads’ thing.’
Who comes here?
Merrily read.
Answer:
A pilgrim on his travels, hearing of a Knights Templar encampment, has come with a hope of being admitted
.
‘This somebody’s primary school project, Huw?’
‘Save the sarcasm. Over the page and read the bit I’ve marked.’
Merrily sat down. Under the heading
Obligation
, she read about the pilgrim having his staff and cross taken away in exchange for a sword, placed in his hand by the Grand Commander.
After which, he swore that he would never knowingly take the blood of a brother Templar, but espouse the brother Templar’s cause, knowing it to be just. And if he failed …
‘Oh dear.’
… May my skull be sawn asunder with a rough saw, my brains taken out and put in a charger to be consumed by the scorching sun and my skull in another charger, in commemoration of St John of Jerusalem, that first faithful soldier and martyr of our Lord and Saviour. If ever I wilfully deviate from this my solemn obligation, may my light be put out from among men, as that of Judas Iscariot was for betraying his Lord and Master.
Merrily sighed, put down the papers. ‘Masons.’
‘Masonic Order of Knights Templar,’ Huw said. ‘But fear not. Only Christians are admitted.’
‘That’s good to know.’
‘It’s in the rules, lass.’
‘If you’re going to have your skull sawn open and your brains fried, best to have it done by a good Christian, that’s what I always say.’ Merrily propped her elbows on the table, chin falling into cupped hands. ‘Huw, I’m feeling tired already. This is a big subject, I’m a little woman. I know nothing about Freemasonry.’
‘Why I’ve come over, lass. I’m a man, and I know a fair bit.’
‘What?’ She looked up. ‘Does that mean …?’
‘No. Not that I haven’t been approached, mind. Twice, in fact.’
‘Since being ordained?’
‘
Only
since I were ordained. Despite all the disapproving noises and a number of critical reports, there’s still scores of clergy in the Masons. Most of ’em at ground level. Not so many in the Templars, unless they’ve got a private income. Can’t pick up your surcoat and sword in Asda.’
‘They actually … dress up like Templars?’
‘Oh aye. Full bit. Costs an arm and a leg for a full Templar kit, but they get it back. One way or t’ other.’
‘So I’ve heard. Huw …’
Huw looked at her, thin smile.
‘Why do I need to know this? Are you telling me the Bishop of Hereford …?’
‘That’d be nice, wouldn’t it? But, sadly, Brother Dunmore, according to my information, never progressed beyond basic Craft Masonry and hasn’t been to a Lodge meeting for a number of years. Although the bugger’s never formally resigned.’
‘Why would a man like Bernie get into it in the first place?’
‘Happen his dad were in it. That’s how it usually happens. Fathers, brothers. Family tradition.’
‘What do they get out of it? Apart from contacts and favours. Allegedly.’
‘Get out what you put in. Most of ’em, it’s a social club. Relaxed night out. Well, relaxed after you’ve gone through the bit where they hold you at knifepoint. For others, it’s a spiritual journey. Sounds like a joke, but for some it becomes just part of your life – it
is
your life. Endless passageways, lass.’
‘Leading to?’
‘The light. Masonic light. You’re travelling towards enlightenment. Through knowledge.’
‘Gnosticism.’
‘A prominent Mason, Canon Richard Tydeman, said – famously – that trying to describe the joys of Masonry to an outsider was like trying to describe the joys of motherhood to a spinster.’
‘How would he know?’
‘Suffice to say it brings a sense of order and direction and personal satisfaction to men who were just meandering along. Gives their lives a very clear focus. Whether this—’ Huw shook the papers ‘—mirrors any actual Templar rituals we’ll never know because the Templars never wrote owt down, but it’s become one of the most popular and sought-after degrees in Masonry. Read the next bit.’
The sword is taken from the candidate and a skull placed in his hand
Furthermore, may the soul that once inhabited this skull, as the representative of John the Baptist, appear against me in the day of judgement …
‘What’s that say to you, lass?’
‘Baphomet,’ Mrs Morningwood said, and Huw smiled at her and stretched his legs under the table, hands behind his head.
‘One major theory is that Baphomet translates as
baptism
– the official start of a spiritual life. The head, in this context, is therefore the head of John the Baptist, and some scholars are convinced that’s what the Templars venerated.’
‘And that’s the Christian bit, is it?’ Merrily said.
‘Or the Christian veneer. Borrow a Biblical figure, make him your own. Regular, ground-floor Masonry you only have to accept a supreme ruler of the universe. Whose name, for the record, is Jahbulon, which they’re not supposed to say outside the temple. And which opponents of Masonry say is a weird combination of Christian and Satanic – principally, Jah, for Jehovah, and Baal, the opponent or Devil. The Methodists
brought out a report in 1985 that reckoned the name “Jahbulon” constituted the single biggest barrier to a true Christian being a Mason.’
‘Personally, I’d’ve thought that threatening to saw open somebody’s skull …’
‘That’s just the Masonic Templars. Your bog-standard Craft Mason merely accepts that if he gives owt away his tongue will be ripped out by the root and buried in the sand of the sea at low-water mark.’
‘Oh well, that’s OK, then.’
Merrily thought of the Templar who claimed he’d been brought before Jacques de Molay at Garway and ordered to
deny Him whom the image represents
or get himself put in a sack and dumped somewhere less than congenial.
Huw was looking at her over his glasses.
‘The skull bit – it’s quite likely the original Templars swore a similar oath. Fighting-men in brutal times. The idea of Jahbulon is a total composite god. Three syllables, note, a trinity. Again, in line with what many scholars accept as Templar belief, which was a cobbling together of Christianity, paganism, Judaism and Islam. I believe some of the Templars
were
Gnostics. I think it’s likely that some
did
support the bloodline-of-Christ theory. And I think some of them were devoted to undermining Christianity from within.’
Mrs Morningwood got out her cigarettes.
‘Mind if I …?’
‘Aye, please yourself,’ Huw said.
‘Mr Owen … how many of these Knights Templar Masons are there?’
‘Thousands in this country. A proportion of them higher clergy.’
‘And they’re here? In Herefordshire?’
‘You could say that.’
‘OK.’ Merrily sat up. ‘Where’s this leading, Huw?’
‘All roads lead to the cathedral. But you knew that. You had it from Callaghan-Clarke.’
‘She said the Archdeacon was a Mason.’
‘Mervyn Neale is Grand Commander, I’m told.’
‘Of the Templar Masons?’
‘On an Archdeacon’s screw, you can afford the kit,’ Huw said.
T
HINK ABOUT IT
, Huw said. The oldest cult in the West.
He talked. He was persuasive. Clouds had closed the sky’s one sunny opening, like a cut healed over, and the kitchen had gone grey. Merrily left the lamp off.
Occult: it meant hidden. Freemasonry was occult in every sense, Huw said. A template for all the nineteenth and early twentieth century magical orders – notably the Golden Dawn, where Crowley started, and W.B. Yeats. The symbols, the ceremonial, all there.
‘But how much of basic Masonry,’ Merrily asked him, ‘is actually based on the Templars?’
‘Some Masonic scholars would say the lot. The Temple of Solomon, all the architectural jargon? God with a set square and protractors?’
‘Where did you find all this out?’
‘General knowledge, lass.’
‘I mean about Mervyn Neale.’
Huw said that was fairly widely known, too. Not as secretive as they used to be, the Masons. Not in much of a position to be, now they’d been outed in popular books and most of the rituals were online. Taken Huw all of twenty minutes to find and download the Templar initiation ritual, with the sword and the skull and the threat of sunburned brains.
‘The Archdeacon,’ Merrily recalled, ‘was with the Bishop at the Duchy reception in Hereford, where Adam Eastgate first mentioned the problem with the Master House.’
‘Merv’s ears pricking up. Always been fascinated by Garway, the Masons. Funny you’ve not run into the bugger up there.’ Huw looked at Mrs Morningwood. ‘Where do you come into this, lass?’
‘
Lass
.’ Mrs Morningwood smiled wistfully. ‘How kind.’
‘This Sycharth Gwilym on the square, you reckon?’
‘Ticks all the right boxes, I should’ve thought, Mr Owen. His particular business, in a city like Hereford …’
‘Still a lout of clout in Hereford, the Masons,’ Huw said. ‘So I’m told. Cathedral. Tory council. You going to see Gwilym today, Merrily?’
‘I’ll call The Centurion again. Go this afternoon, if he’s free.’
‘We’ll have a quick chat before you go. Just go over them family names again – Sycharth … Gruffydd … Fychan …?’
‘Madog.’
‘Aye, that’s a good one.’
‘And …’ Merrily glanced at Mrs Morningwood. ‘Cynllaith?’
‘
Cynllaith
,’ Huw said. ‘Lovely. People round there really don’t know where all these names come from, Mrs M?’
‘We’re inclined to suspect Wales,’ Mrs Morningwood said, and Huw smiled.
‘I’ll do a last check. Use your computer, lass?’
He stumped off into the scullery, shutting the door, and Merrily turned to Mrs Morningwood.
‘People certainly seem to know about Jacques de Molay. Or they did.’
‘Naomi Newton.’ Mrs Morningwood took off her sunglasses and applied a tissue to an eye. ‘I suppose Roxanne related that episode in all its gory detail.’
‘Well,
you
certainly didn’t.’
‘Better you heard it from them. Not my family’s finest hour. Haunted my poor grandmother to her own dying day.’
‘Anything else you’re keeping to yourself that might be relevant?’
‘Darling, I have over half a century’s worth of knowledge. Who knows what’s relevant?’
Huw was back within a few minutes, nodding, satisfied.
‘If you were worrying about the Duchy of Cornwall, no need. You’re looking at the first generation of male Royals
not
tied up with Masonry. Duke of Edinburgh, he were one – lasped now, mind. Queen’s not eligible, of course, but her old man, George VI, he was
well
in. And so it goes.’
‘If Charles broke the chain,’ Merrily said, ‘how does the Masonic hierarchy feel about that?’
‘Aye, well, you might’ve put your finger on summat there, lass.’
‘Erm …’ Merrily shook out a Silk Cut. ‘In your message on the machine last night, you talked about …’
‘The feller who advised the Duchy of Cornwall that you wouldn’t blab.’
‘I think I’ve managed to contain my curiosity quite well.’
Huw looked at Mrs Morningwood, who gathered up her cigarettes and matches.
‘I need to go and bathe my eyes.’ She stood up, Roscoe stretching at her feet. ‘Perhaps apply something foul-smelling to other abused areas.’
‘Nice dog,’ Huw said.
‘Interesting woman,’ he said when she’d gone. ‘Always been attracted to strong ladies. When you get past a certain age, mind, almost all womankind develops a strange and sorrowful allure.’
Merrily sat back, arms folded, gazing at the ceiling.
‘All right,’ Huw said. ‘Sorry for the anticlimax. You were right first time. Well, I couldn’t say owt on the phone, could I?’
‘You bloody
denied
it!’
‘No big deal, anyroad. I’m not an official consultant or owt like that, just acknowledged as not linked to any of the factions in the Church. Safe pair of ears, in other words.’
‘You’ve met him?’
‘No. Never. No need. Best not to, really. Basically, this is summat I inherited from Dobbs. No offence to you, but he could never trust a woman. And you weren’t around then, anyroad. Essentially, there’s a handful of us – Jeavons is another.’
‘Ah.’
Canon Llewellyn Jeavons, once tipped as the first black Archbishop of Canterbury – until his wife died and he went strange, becoming an expert on healing and deliverance with an email address book containing Somali witch doctors and Aboriginal songline-hoppers. It figured.
‘It was decided that certain people close to the throne needed a bit of looking out for. With regard to spiritual aspects of their lives and work. This lad, his heart’s in the right place, but he will keep putting his foot in it.’
‘BMA chauvinism and architectural carbuncles?’
‘Tip of the iceberg, lass. He gets frustrated and fires off letters to Government ministers. Well, fair enough, I say. An independent mind. If a man thinks he can see the civilized world going down the pan and he wants to use whatever influence he’s got to try and stop it, I’m all for it. But
they
don’t like it. Far as the Government’s concerned, the Family ought to know its place. Which is on the sideboard.’
‘Strictly ornamental.’
‘Exactly. You heard from that chippy little copper?’
‘Bliss? Yesterday.’
‘Got a feller on his back, you said.’
‘Jonathan Long.’
‘Aye. Slime like him, see, times’ve changed. Used to be the spooks automatically supported royalty as an institution. Now they’re Government animals. Servants of spin. And if the Government of the day should contain a number of people of, shall we say, republican instincts, in key positions … You know what I’m getting at?’