Authors: Matilde Asensi
“Who you yourself killed.”
“You know that as well?” he said, surprised. “Wow, goodness me, Galceran, you really are much smarter than anyone could imagine! Did Sara tell you?”
“No, I already told you that Sara feels great loyalty towards you and Evrard as well as towards the Order of the Temple. It was actually François, the innkeeper in Roquemaure.”
“Ah, yes, I remember him!”
“That good man made a note of the names of the two Arab doctors who attended to His Holiness, Adab Al-Acsa and Fat Al-Yedom, ‘Punishment of the Templars’ and ‘Victory of Molay’.”
“I really can’t believe what I’m hearing.” he muttered with growing admiration. “Some other time I will ask you how youknow so much about that story. It’s true that Evrard and I had the honor of bringing those bastards to justice. I told you before that someone always has to do the dirty work and you must admit that we did it very well. But if you don’t mind, let’s continue with our conversation because we still have much to discuss.”
“Go ahead. I’m listening.”
“Well, as I was saying, we Templars no longer exist, publicly or privately, and within a year we will be called the Knights of Christ, having recovered all of our possessions in Portugal and with a great deal of maneuverability and a wide horizon before us.”
“Portugal is neither a large nor a powerful kingdom.”
“No, you’re right, but it is a huge gateway to the ocean.”
Before I could ask him why the hell the Templars wanted a gateway to the ocean, Manrique continued.
“The General Chapter, anticipating your demand for negotiation, decided that you, Galceran of Born, are an essential acquisition for our Order. It seems that they were very impressed by your ability to derail our most secret keys (keys which nobody has been able to decipher in two hundred years), find our treasures, escape from our traps and flee from Las Medulas. We, the most able and astute, have been laughed at by one single man, so that man, the only one capable of knocking down all of our barriers, must be on our side, and not on our enemy’s side. We are not buying your silence, Galceran,” he added, slightly worried in case I hadn’t properly understood, “You just offered me that in exchange for protection. We are buying your intelligence which, my friend, is priceless. We want you to replace our security system from start to finish. If you broke it, you will repair it in such a way so no one, not now and not ever, can access our forbidden places, our documents, our communication routes or our secret missions.”
I listened to him open-mouthed, without daring to breath to not interrupt his long-winded speech.
“I can see by the look on your face that you are interested …,” Manrique smiled. “However, I’m sure that you’ll be much more interested in the offer when I tell you about the project that you are to begin immediately: We must transfer the Ark of the Covenant and the treasure of the Temple of Solomon to Portugal without delay, as well as most of the riches hidden in our old European commandries and those along the Camino de Santiago, and find a place to hide them so that they will never, you hear me, never be found.”
I must have been holding my breath for a long time because I felt how my chest, sunken and empty, expanded like bellows with a large and necessary breath of air. The sun was beginning to set at the end of the world and it would soon be devoured by the ocean.
“Do you accept?”
Martiño’s little boat, shrouded in the mist, fought against the impulse of an increasingly stormy Atlantic. My sweet Sara would be worried about me, asking herself whether, after so many hours of absence, I was still alive. I had to let her know that everything had gone well, that everything had gone much better than we had hoped for.
“Do you accept, Galceran?”
I had to tell Sara that a life was waiting for us full of experiences that included, extraordinarily, sleeping together night after night and waking up in an embrace day after day, without the fear of being found out and without the need to ever run away again.
“Galceran …? Hey, Perquisitore!”
“Yes?”
“Do you accept the deal?”
“Of course.”
This is as far as the chronicle of everything that has happened over these last, eventful years goes. I hope that I have been faithful to the truth and to the story and if I have made any mistakes I also hope that you will forgive me. The only reason for such errors would be from not knowing or my own ignorance, but never in bad faith or with ill will or any desire to deceive.
I have clarified my ideas by putting the facts into writing because as I was writing I was reflecting, and as I was reflecting I learned from the things that happened to me and that at the time I didn’t pay enough attention to. I am no longer a Monk of the Hospital of St. John; that man died in the Cemetery of Noia, barely two years ago, but I am still a knight and a doctor, and I still answer to the name Perquisitore. The person who used that name before, one Galceran of Born, no longer exists; his body, as well as the bodies of a boy and a Jewish woman who accompanied him, were found dead, murdered, on a cliff on the Galician coast. As was confirmed shortly after, the Born family of Taradell received the sad news from the Order of the Hospital, to which Galceran had belonged until his death that their son had been killed while carrying out an important mission.
Months later, a doctor from Burgandy, named Iacobus, married to a beautiful and strange woman with white hair and father to a boy who would soon be known as Jonas the Companheiro — as he felt sudden and intense vocations which led him to become an apprentice of all trades —, arrived in the Portuguese city of Serra d’El-Rei, a coastal village belonging to the new Order of the Knights of Christ.
Shortly after getting settled into this beautiful house next to the port, from where I can see the sea, and when everything was playing out just as Sara and I had planned, I was summoned by the Knights of Christ to begin the work of recovering the Templar riches and hiding them in Portugal. I was assigned a place to work from, Amourol Castle, built in the middle of the River Tagus as well as a large group of assistants who worked under my orders, among which were astrologers, mathematicians, alchemists and craftsmen of all kinds.
We are still working on it today and will naturally continue to do so for a long time. It’s possible that this task will take me more than fifteen to twenty years to complete but even so, even if I haven’t finished it, I fear that I will soon be receiving many more similar tasks. Recently, a group of excellent Jewish cartographers from Mallorca, the best navigation chart plotters in the world, occupied one of the castle’s closed-off cellars. We still don’t know anything but there is talk of maps for exploring the Atlantic and of new and far-away lands full of riches. When I go home I can see how the shipyards of Serra d’El-Rei are seething with activity while the old Templar fleet is being enhanced with brand-new, magnificent ships, capable of crossing all of the oceans.
In three months my second child will be born. Sara is doing great and is going through her pregnancy without any major problems (other than a couple of rotten teeth and stretch marks on her stomach) but that’s nothing compared to the joy she feels about her future offspring. From what she says, and from what she doesn’t say, but rather insinuates, I’m afraid that as soon as our child is crawling around she will return to her job as a witch.
And thus finishes this story, on the nineteenth day of May of the year of Our Lord 1319 in the Portuguese town of Serra d’El-Rei.
IACOBUS THE PHYSICIAN, Perquisitore
(1)
Latin, destiny.
(2)
Nimes.
(3)
Suburb, neighborhood located outside the city walls.
(4)
Saladin.
(5)
Unlike the map of the world, this is an image of the world that follows the ideas of an order predetermined by God (according to St. Augustine) which encompasses all of creation. Therefore, the notion of the Imago Mundi comprises the Earth and the Cosmos (Encyclopaedia of Symbols, by Udo Becker).
(6)
To be expelled from the Order.
(7)
Pilgrim’s Book of the Codex Calixtinus. This code is a compilation of Jacobean documents put together by Monk Aymeric Picaud in the XII century which, by reputation of the Apostle, is attributed to Pope Calixto II and describes the route to Santiago.
(8)
Somport.
(9)
‘The pilgrims, poor or rich, returning from Santiago or on their way there, must be welcomed with kindness and respect by all, for those who receive and lodge them with care will be caring not only for James but also for Our Lord, and the Gospel said: He that receiveth whomsoever I send receiveth me; and he that receiveth me receiveth him that sent me. Codex Calixtinus, chapter XI
(10)
Moralejo, S., C. Torres and J. Feo. Liber Sancti Jacobi; Codex Calixtinus. Santiago de Compostela, 1951, pages 204-205.
(11)
Moralejo, S., C. Torres and J. Feo. Liber Sancti Jacobi; Codex Calixtinus. Santiago de Compostela, 1951, pages 204-205.
(12)
“Blessed is the man who fears the Lord,” ps.111, 1.
(13)
“The heavens declare the glory of God” ps.18, 2.
(14)
Canfranc.
(15)
Famous Sufi poet (1164-1240).
(16)
Monogram of Christ formed by the first two letters of his name in Greek, inside a circle.
(17)
“If you want to live, you who are subject to the law of death, come pleading, discarding poisonous pleasures. Clean your heart of sin, to not to die a second death.” Translation from the book La ruta sagrada by Juan G. Atienza.
(18)
Odyssey, Homer. Book IX. 360-415.
(19)
Puente la Reina, in Navarre.
(20)
Ethiopie, fidèle à la Croix, by Maxime Cléret. Paris edition. Quote from The Templar Gold, by Maurice Guinguand and Beatrice Lanne. Ed. Apostrofe.
(21)
Capitulum I, Liber peregrinationis, Codex Calixtinus.
(22)
Town located at the mouth of the Danube, territory of what is now Romania. It came to be a symbol of cruelty and ferocity amongst the Romans. (Note 92 from the Medieval Pilgrim’s Guide, Codex Calixtinus, by Millan Bravo Lozano. Study Center of the Camino de Santiago.)
(23)
Our Lady of the Orchards, present church of the Crucifix.
(24)
Bridge-builder.
(25)
Snake in French.
(26)
Although the Crucifix was not at the Church of Our Lady of Orzs — known today as the Church of the Crucifix — at the time of the demise of the Order of the Temple (1314), a testament was recently found in the archives at the Casa Martija, in Puente la Reina, which places it in its current location before the 24th of June 1328.
(27)
Literally, city of the Jews or Jewish quarter.
(28)
Public prosecutor who also carried out the duties of a police officer. Caminos de Sefarad, by Juan G. Atienza, Ed. Robin Book.
(29)
Elders. Id.
(30)
In Hebrew, a woman of great talent and energy.
(31)
“Blessed is the man who fears the Lord,” ps. 111.1
(32)
Now known as Poyo Roldan, or for short, Poroldan.
(33)
Son-in-law, stepson in Hebrew
(34)
Father, in Hebrew.
(35)
St. Dominic of the Causeway.
(36)
Redecilla del Camino, in the original copy of the Codex Calixtinus.
(37)
Belorado.
(38)
River of the Goose.
(39)
Mountains of the Goose.
(40)
Nuestra Señora de Oca.
(41)
San Juan de Ortega.
(42)
Stamp.
(43)
Former border province in south-east France.
(44)
Roman name for the Mountains of Leon.
(45)
A medieval fathom measures approximately 1.70 meters.
(46)
Pliny the Elder (c. 23-79 AD), Roman writer and encyclopedist, highest scientific authority of ancient Europe.
(47)
Scalprum -i, cutting instrument, chisel, gouge.
(48)
Matias 10,26
(49)
‘There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse’ Isaiah 11, 1.
(50)
Mt. 1, 1-16.
(51)
Ex. 25, 10-22.
(52)
I Sam. 5, 6; I Sam. 6, 19.
(53)
No. 9, 15-23; Ex. 13, 21; x. 40, 34-38; I Kings 8, 10-11.
(54)
A traditional house in the northeast of Spain.