Ava gathered her thoughts before changing the subject. “Forgive me,” she challenged De Molay, “but none of this actually proves anything. Anyone could call themselves De Molay. And any serious collector could have picked up your Templar chain and seal on the black market for the right price. How does any of it prove the Templars still exist, or that you’re truly connected to them?”
Saxby turned to face her directly. Gone was his enthusiasm for talking about the Order’s past. His voice was now deadly earnest. “Dr Curzon, you have to ask yourself why we would make up such a story? I actually agree with you—it’s a highly implausible tale. But if we were going to fabricate a cover story to protect the Foundation’s identity, we’d hardly select a group like the Templars, about which you’re rightly sceptical. Wouldn’t it be easier for us to invent something about a front for a covert government agency? Or a cartel of influential industrialists and bankers? Or perhaps even an organized crime syndicate? Any of these would be more plausible, and more likely to silence your curiosity. By saying we’re the Templars, we’re only inviting a hundred more questions and doubts.”
Ava could see the sense in what he was saying. If they were making this up to keep her onside, it was a risky strategy to pick a group as implausible and controversial as the Templars.
On the face of it, the idea they were the Knights Templar was an outrageous claim.
But, despite herself, a part of her was close to believing them. Deep down, as far-fetched as it all seemed, she had for some time been privately wondering if there was a Templar connection.
She had first thought of the Templars when she had noticed Saxby’s e-mail address in Baghdad the day he first contacted her—[email protected]. She had immediately seen the crude anagram of ‘Templar’. But she had thought little more about it—anagrams were hardly an exact science. After all, eleven-plus-two was an anagram of twelve-plus-one. One could go on seeing unrelated connections and coincidences forever.
But she had thought much more seriously about it at the Royal Society in London, when Saxby had seemed so knowledgeable about Pope Clement III and the crusading bull for the Third Crusade. That depth of knowledge was, she knew, hardly something ordinary members of the public possessed in such detail.
At the time, when she had questioned Saxby, he had answered that the Foundation had “a considerable interest” in the Third Crusade. That reply had struck her as odd. She had immediately wondered how many organizations were interested in a series of battles that took place over eight hundred years ago and over three thousand miles away. She had instinctively thought of the Templars—one of the few groups prominent in both the catastrophe that led up to the Third Crusade, and the battles of the Third Crusade itself.
Then, later at the same meeting, her suspicions had been further aroused when Saxby related the detailed legend of the Templars finding the Menorah in Jerusalem and passing it to the Vatican. As she heard him relate the story, she had again wondered who would know the amount of detail Saxby clearly possessed. After all, she had specialized in biblical archaeology for over twenty years, immersing herself in the strange history of its artefacts, and she had never once come across the legend. When she had tried to research it afterwards, she had found no information on it anywhere. It was as if Saxby had simply made it up. Yet, the account had been accurate in all regards, as the Menorah had indeed been where the medal said it would be.
And finally, she had again thought of the enigmatic white-robed knights back at the basilica, when she had overheard Saxby telling Max to take their fallen comrade to “the commandery.” She knew ‘commandery’ was the name medieval Templars used to describe their fortified monastery-castles. She remembered reading about them when visiting a Roman dig near the Templars’ castle at Kolossi in southern Cyprus. She had, in fact, seen it on the back of a wine bottle,
Commanderia
wine, which claimed not only to be the world’s oldest named wine, but also to bear the name of the area—the Templars’ Grand Commandery in Cyprus.
So, as far-fetched and implausible as De Molay and Saxby’s claims sounded, on some level they tied in with her own speculations and growing suspicions.
She breathed deeply, trying to see a way through the myriad possibilities of truth and fabrication.
Was it really possible?
She glanced across at Saxby. He still looked every inch the English aristocrat. There was not a silver hair out of place, and his face was a picture of calm and reason.
Looking over to De Molay, she could believe he was from a family that traced its line back to the crusades. She could readily imagine his ancestors riding into battle under the hot Middle-Eastern sun, and it was not such a stretch of the imagination to picture his face swathed in a chainmail coif and a great helm.
She felt the need to pinch herself.
Could the ‘Foundation’ really be Europe’s most elusive and mysterious underground chivalric Order?
“You’ll understand,” she explained after a moment. “It’s pretty hard to believe what you’re telling me. I’m sure you know that. And if I’m totally honest, I’m not sure I want to be connected to an ultra-secret society inside the Catholic Church.”
She was cut short by a short chuckle from Saxby. “Have no fears on that account,” he grinned. “You see, we’re hardly fans of the Church ourselves.”
“But you’re a Church Order.” Ava countered. “It’s what the Templars are—a-dyed-in-the-wool papal army. It’s in your DNA.”
“Were.” De Molay corrected her. “We
were
a Catholic army. Once. But do you really think the Order would stay loyal to a Church that threw it under a bus to save the skin of one minor medieval pope whom history has long forgotten?”
“Anyway,” De Molay smiled. “The picture is a little more involved. You see, there may be some truth in the idea the Templars had moved on in their religious thinking, even before the crusades came to an end.”
“Are you saying the king of France was right?” Ferguson sounded incredulous. “That the Templars
did
have secret heretical beliefs?”
“Well,” De Molay looked genially across at him. “Heresy is a strong and judgmental word. It depends on your perspective.”
Ava shook her head. “Forgive me, but it doesn’t work that way.”
“Go on.” De Molay raised an eyebrow.
“There was no such thing as religious freedom at the time—you were a Catholic or a heretic,” Ava continued. “As monks, the Templars had even less choice than most.”
“Monks?” Ferguson sat forward in his chair. “I thought you said the Templars were soldiers. Knights.”
“Knight-monks,” De Molay clarified.
“Knights and monks, at the same time?” Ferguson looked unconvinced. “That sounds pretty contradictory.”
“You’re right,” De Molay answered. “It was a radical idea—forged in the heat, blood, and uncertainty of the fragile early crusader kingdom. Once the First Crusade had conquered Jerusalem, the barons took the prime land, and the rest of the knights went home, leaving the new Christian lands largely undefended, and highly vulnerable to attack. The settlers urgently needed crack troops to defend them from enemies all around. So the Templars were born—religious warriors: half-knight and half-monk, ideologically committed to a Christian Palestine. On one level they were no different to any other medieval monks. They took vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience. They had chapels in their commanderies in the crusader states and all over Europe, where they prayed the monastic hours eight times a day, just like all other monks. But, when they weren’t praying, the Templar monks didn’t spend their days illuminating manuscripts or making cheese and beer. They trained relentlessly for war. And when it came, they crushed everything in their path. They were lethal professional warriors in an age of amateurs.”
“But they weren’t free to just change their minds about what they believed,” Ava objected. “They were monks—part of the Church’s religious fabric.”
“And yet, many earnest and holy people drifted into heresy in medieval times,” De Molay countered. “Joan of Arc, Jan Hus, Savonarola. Giordano Bruno, the Beguines and Beghards, the Fraticelli. The list goes on and on. And many others, like Francis of Assisi, Hildegard of Bingen, and Roger Bacon, lived dangerously close to the edge, under permanent threat of being hauled in and condemned.” He paused. “And you must see that the pope’s betrayal changed everything.” De Molay appealed to her. “The knights had been among the most famous and powerful people in Christendom for two centuries. Yet as they burned, they knew their two main reasons for existence, the Church and the crusades, now had no more use for monks of war.”
“So what did they become?” Ava asked.
“Well,” De Molay frowned. “That’s the mystery that has inspired a million myths. There are legends of our appearing throughout history, usually to avenge De Molay. One story says some of us fled to Scotland, where the excommunicated King Robert the Bruce provided shelter against our common enemy, the pope. It is said we fought alongside the Bruce at Bannockburn against King Edward II of England in revenge for Edward’s allowing the pope’s men into England to interrogate imprisoned Templars.”
“Apparently we built the enigmatic and esoteric Rosslyn chapel in Scotland, encoding our secrets into its walls in riddles which remain unsolved to this day. And in Scotland we also apparently founded freemasonry, which we used as a spy network to coordinate the Jacobite rebellions under the Old Pretender and Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1715 and 1745.”
“Some have also seen our hand in the great English Peasants’ Revolt, in which much of London was damaged, although the Temple area was mysteriously spared.”
“And our revenge on France was apparently the French revolution, in which the kings of France lost their throne forever.”
“Others have suggested it was Templar red crosses that flew proudly from Columbus’s three ships, the
Niña
,
Pinta
, and
Santa Maria
, as they set off to discover the Americas. Apparently we sponsored his voyage, and gave him access to our old naval maps. We then established the United States on Templar and freemasonic values, with full independence of the state from the Church, guaranteed by the fact a great number of signatories to the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence were, or soon became, freemasons.”
“And then of course,” he sat back in his chair, strangely animated at the chance to speak openly about the Order’s hidden life, “people say some of the knights’ confessions to their inquisitors were true, and that we really did have secret esoteric rites, like worshipping an idol called Baphomet which could make crops grow and flowers bloom.”
Ava felt she may never get another opportunity to ask. “So are any of these stories true?”
De Molay put his hands on his knees and tapped his foot a few times in thought. He smiled ruefully. “My ancestor, Grand Master Jacques de Molay, may have been old—but he was no fool. He saw clearly the Order was doomed, and knew he would be sacrificed on the pyre of the king of France’s ambition to make his country more powerful than the Vatican.”
“So as the end approached, he secretly charged fifteen of his most faithful knights with a critical mission—to be carried on for all time, underground. Entrusted with their covert orders, the fifteen fled the Paris Temple under cover of darkness the night before the king’s men arrested all Templars in the land. The fifteen galloped across country to the port of La Rochelle on the west coast. There, they boarded one of the Order’s ocean-going ships, weighed anchor, and sailed off into the night, and history—never to be seen again. The king’s men hunted for them at length, but no trace was ever found.”
“Were they the knights that fled to Scotland?” Ava asked, “to seek sanctuary with Robert the Bruce?”
De Molay shook his head. “No. They went … elsewhere. As you can imagine, the knights felt the pope’s betrayal bitterly. Jacques suddenly saw the medieval Vatican for what it was—a powerful machine, whose inner heart beat to the rhythm of European politics and not the gospels their priests read in church for popular consumption. He realized everything he and his men had given their lives for was empty. So he gave orders for the fifteen knights to do exactly what both the king of France and the Vatican had done—to reinvent themselves in a role fit for a new world without crusading.”
“But what was the mission given to them?” Ava looked openly at De Molay, hoping her candour would inspire a similarly frank answer from him. “Where did they go? What has the Order secretly stood for during the last seven hundred years?”
“
Flamma fumo est proxima
,” De Molay answered enigmatically. “There’s rarely smoke without fire, Dr Curzon. Although the king of France was largely unaware of it, his accusations of secret rites and esoteric knowledge were not wholly untrue.”
Ava’s eyes widened.
De Molay’s eyes twinkled. “Let’s just say the Orient has always been a mosaic of religious philosophy and belief—the crucible of so many of the world’s great religions. Through long years in the Middle East, something of its ways rubbed off on the Templars. They came to know that the world was not as black and white as the Church had led them to believe.”
“They converted to another religion?” Ferguson asked, amazed.
De Molay looked uncomfortable for a moment. “No. They were finished with organized religion. But you’ll forgive me if I do not elaborate. We’ve been very candid with you. But some things are best left unsaid. For all of us.”
Noting Ava’s disappointed expression, he added benignly. “You now know more about us than any living person who is not part of our Order. I said I’d tell you who we are. I did not say I would, and indeed I cannot, give you every detail. And it’s best for you if I don’t. It will be a burden for you to keep silent about these things. But I hope we have given you enough to answer your questions for now.”
“Well, maybe if I could just ask one more thing,” Ava began, but was cut short by Max’s voice coming through from the adjoining office, where he was still watching the monitors.