The Templar's Secret (The Templar Series) Read online

  THE TEMPLAR’S SECRET

  C. M. PALOV

  The Templar’s Secret © 2012 C.M. Palov

  All Rights Reserved

  PART I

  ‘Roma locuta causa finite est . . . Rome has spoken and that settles the matter’ – St Augustine

  PROLOGUE

  Chinon Castle, France

  15 March, 1308h

  The king’s henchman hefted the iron hammer, vigorously swinging his arm with unerring precision. In the next instant, an agonized scream rent the chill morning air, reverberating off the stone walls.

  A lone Dominican, his face hidden by a hooded cowl, stood in the shadows observing the proceedings. On the other side of the cell, a second man, studiously hunched over a writing desk, sharpened an ink-stained quill.

  ‘For the love of God! Make him stop!’ the accused shrieked, having endured one blow too many.

  Hearing that agonized plea, the apostolic inquisitor, Friar Raymbaud le Breton, stepped towards the wooden wheel that had been set in the middle of the dungeon. Wrinkling his nose, the stench unbearable, he inspected the torturer’s handiwork. The bare-chested man who’d been lashed to the breaking wheel writhed in pain, his lower leg a bloody pulp of mangled flesh and splintered bones.

  Satisfied that the accused Knight Templar had been sufficiently chastened, he nodded his approval. The henchman, hammer clutched in his fist, obediently stepped away from the wheel.

  Thus far, Fortes de Pinós had steadfastly maintained his innocence, insisting that he had no direct knowledge of the Great Heresy and that he’d never been to Château Pèlerin. But if that was true, why had Brother Fortes made the perilous sea voyage to retrieve the ancient gospel known as the Evangelium Gaspar? More importantly, why did he refuse to disclose the gospel’s current whereabouts?

  Impatient to continue with the proceedings, Raymbaud picked up a sheet of parchment from the scribe’s desk. He gave it a cursory glance before returning his attention to the accused. ‘Fortes de Pinós, do you understand the charges that have been brought against you?’

  ‘As I have repeatedly avowed, I am innocent of your despicable accusations,’ the Templar hissed. Although he had fifty-four winters on his graying head, Brother Fortes had a surprisingly muscular physique that belied his age. His brawn was a testament to years of rigorous training, the warrior monks able to hold their own against any foe on the field of battle.

  But this was not a battlefield. This was a damp dungeon in Chinon Castle.

  The inquisitor handed the parchment back to the scribe. ‘Brother Fortes, I grow impatient with the tiresome lies that spill from your lips with Lucifer’s ease. In order to save your mortal soul, you must tell me where you hid the Evangelium Gaspar.’

  ‘I will tell you after the Grand Master and the other Templar knights have been released from custody.’

  ‘We both know that will never happen.’ Raymbaud’s belly growled with hunger. If not for this uncooperative Templar, he’d be in the refectory breaking his fast. ‘Your fate, and that of your brother knights, has been sealed.’

  ‘Then I gain nothing by disclosing the gospel’s whereabouts.’ The gauntlet tossed, Fortes de Pinós glared at him, a haughty sneer on his blood-splattered face. The silent taunt affirmed what they both knew full well: any man, rich or poor, could become a Dominican friar, but only a man of noble birth could become a Knights Templar.

  ‘In giving true witness, you gain the Lord’s forgiveness. Or is that meaningless to an arrogant Knights Templar?’

  ‘I will not testify to a hellhound in the employ of the Devil!’

  The inquisitor flinched, the insult digging deep. Because of their sacred obligation to root out heresy, the Dominican Order was known as Domini Canes, the Hounds of the Lord. If not for their tireless sacrifice, Christendom would be overrun with heretics and idolaters.

  ‘I demand that you reveal the location of the Evangelium Gaspar.’

  ‘To see the house where Lucas dwelled, the faithful pilgrim sought the brother’s way. Setting forth from the lion’s castle, he dropped the French iron in the Spanish harbor,’ the Templar recited in a wooden tone.

  Raymbaud tamped down his ire. It was the same nonsensical riddle that Brother Fortes uttered each time the question was put to him.

  Sighing resignedly, he motioned for the henchman to approach the wheel. ‘Loosen his tongue.’

  Frustrated by the Templar’s refusal to make a full confession, Raymbaud stepped over to the loophole on the other side of the dungeon. In a surly temper, he glanced at the crudely scrawled symbol – the Seal of Solomon – that the Templar had incised into the soft limestone. Yet another mystery that Brother Fortes had refused to explain.

  Turning a deaf ear to the pain-wracked bellows that ensued, he peered through the loophole. The new day had dawned, gray as chain mail, a snarl of wind lashing the weathered castle. Through the wisps of early-morning mist, he could see the fast-moving Vienne, the river curdled with chunks of ice that bobbed on the frothy rapids.

  Behind him, the tortured screams intensified. Not even a stalwart Knights Templar could withstand an iron hammer wielded by one of God’s own. Proving himself a wise pontiff, Pope Innocent IV had sanctioned the use of torture, stipulating that intense pain flushed the evil residue from a man’s soul.

  And how else can I pry loose the Templar’s secret?

  Once he had the Evangelium Gaspar in his possession, Raymbaud intended to use it to elevate his status within the Dominican order, fulfilling his long-held dream to become an abbot at a wealthy monastery. After his many years of service, he deserved to spend the rest of his days in comfortable ease, his earthly burdens alleviated.

  Determined to put an end to the Templar’s maddening truculence and uncover the gospel’s whereabouts, he raised his hand, signaling the henchman to cease his ministrations. Approaching the breaking wheel, he was pleased to see that the Templar’s white linen braies were stained crimson, several of his pelvic bones having been crushed.

  ‘Again, I put the question to you: where can I find the Evangelium Gaspar?’

  Blood-caked lips curved into a ghost of a smile. ‘Go . . . to . . . the . . . Devil . . . Dominican!’ the Templar rasped through a foaming gob of spittle.

  ‘It does not profit your soul to –’ Raymbaud stopped in mid-stream, horrified.

  Without warning, the accused had begun to convulse, bucking wildly upon the wheel as his face turned an unnatural shade of blue.

  Just as suddenly as the episode began, it ended, Fortes de Pinós’ lifeless gaze set upon the heavens.

  ‘No!’ Raymbaud screamed, pounding his fist on the dead man’s chest.

  His fury was for naught. The Knight Templar had bested him, taking his secret to the grave.

  1

  Lourdes Grotto, Vatican City

  15 August, The Present Day

  ‘We pray for our Mother, the Church upon earth,

  And bless, dearest Lady, the land of our birth.

  Ave, Ave, Ave, Maria! Ave, Ave, Maria!’

  The chorus of male voices swelled before it fell into a respectful silence, the devotional hymn a paean to the one woman whom they all loved in common, the Blessed Virgin Mary.

  The ‘woman clothed with the sun’.

  Or in this instance, given the lateness of the hour, garbed in the flickering flames of processional candles. Glancing at the attendant crowd that was cordoned off from the grotto and forced to celebrate the sunset Mass behind steel barricades, Cardinal Franco Fiorio wondered how many of the faithful knew that the salutation ‘Ave’ had once been used by Roman gladiators to greet Caesar before they engaged in mortal combat: ‘Ave, Caesar! Morit
uri te salutant!’

  ‘Hail, Caesar! Those who are about to die salute you!’

  Somehow Franco doubted that the ragtag Christians who provided the gruesome opening act for the gladiatorial games ever uttered those fateful words before they were mauled by hungry lions.

  The Mass concluded, the recessional slowly filed past the grotto. Led by the cross bearer, the cavalcade included ruddy-cheeked altar servers holding crimson labara emblazoned with the Chi-Rho cross, solemn-faced acolytes carrying elongated candles and, finally, the Cardinal Camerlengo who’d officiated.

  Franco cast a last lingering glance at the cave-like grotto. The rocky lair was an artificial contrivance that replicated the famous shrine at Lourdes where, in 1858, a fourteen-year-old illiterate French girl had been visited by Our Lady. Making it a fitting location to celebrate one of the most important holy days on the liturgical calendar, the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Always celebrated on the fifteenth day of August, it was the day on which the Mother of God had been taken bodily into heaven. One of the sacred mysteries of the Church, the Assumption was still hotly contested in religious circles.

  ‘Hogwash!’ Protestants were always quick to decry, adamant that the devotional feast was another example of the Roman Catholic Church turning a pagan ritual into a high holy day. Sola scriptura! By scripture alone. If a ‘sacred’ event wasn’t contained within the pages of the Bible, it never happened.

  Taking his place in the recessional queue, Franco fell into line with the scores of cardinals who were similarly attired in ecclesiastical choir dress. When he was younger, he’d secretly despised the vestures, considering them overly fussy, making men of God look like clerical cross-dressers. His attitude had mellowed considerably with the passing decades as he’d come to embrace the inherent symbolism of the richly fashioned robes: the red cassock denoting a cardinal’s willingness to give of his very blood to safeguard the Church; the white lace-trimmed rochet symbolizing his spiritual purity.

  Moving in slow lockstep, the candlelit procession wound its way through the Giardini Vaticani, the fifty-seven acres of gardens and parkland that encompassed most of the Vatican Hill. Passing sparkling fountains, cleverly designed topiaries and artfully laid flower beds, the garden evoked the idyllic splendor of Eden. On the eastern horizon loomed Michelangelo’s magnificent dome, the architectural tour de force bathed in a golden glimmer cast by the setting sun. Barely visible through the leafy bowers was the soaring defensive wall that had been built to keep out the enemies of the Church – of which there have always been many – and that now served as the international boundary for the Vatican City.

  As they approached St Martha’s Chapel, their procession was greeted by an overflow crowd comprised of devoted congregants and curious tourists. Like the cardinals, each and every one of them clutched a lit candle, creating a flickering sea of frail fireflies. But what should have been a joyous throng was visibly mired in grief, many openly sobbing, all grim-faced. More than a few held up photographs of Pope Pius XIII.

  The recently deceased Pope Pius XIII.

  The Vicar of Christ, the man who represented the Savior here on earth, was dead, having succumbed to a massive coronary stroke four days ago during his private morning mass. His unexpected death had plunged the Holy See into a state of sede vacante, the pontiff’s seat vacant. And it would remain vacant until the College of Cardinals met in conclave to elect St Peter’s apostolic successor.

  No sooner had the pope been officially declared dead than the Camerlengo, the papal chamberlain, had initiated a series of centuries-old rituals to safeguard against the unholy ambitions of scheming cardinals. The pope’s ring, used to seal official documents, had been ceremonially crushed to thwart would-be forgers. The pope’s private quarters had then been secured with wax seals to prevent the looting of the papal chambers. But as Franco full well knew, neither of those measures would deter an enterprising cleric.

  ‘Never was anything great achieved without danger,’ he mused as the procession of cardinals slowed to a halt, Machiavelli’s sage advice as apropos in the twenty-first century as it had been during the Renaissance’s back-stabbing heyday.

  Unobtrusively slipping out of formation, Franco silently observed the various cliques. Heads bent, red-clad shoulders hunched, the same topic was being discussed in each tight-knit cluster. The soon-to-be-elected new pope, as the leader of more than a billion Catholics worldwide, would be an important figure in the religious and political arenas. If the right man was selected, he could become a game-changing figure on the world stage.

  And so it had begun. The jockeying. The scheming. The arm-twisting. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.

  Like his brethren, Franco was also planning for the upcoming conclave.

  As the Prefect of the Archivo Segreto Vaticano – the Secret Archives of the Vatican – he’d examined the texts and codices safeguarded in the underground vaults and locked cabinets. In so doing, he’d fatefully happened upon the Templar trial records pertaining to the Evangelium Gaspar. An ancient gospel, it predated the four canonical gospels by several decades. Reason enough for a high-ranking Knights Templar named Fortes de Pinós to have embarked on an incredible sea voyage, searching for the Evangelium Gaspar in India, of all places. According to the Templar trial records, the Evangelium Gaspar contained ‘The Great Heresy’, a truth that was decidedly more profane than sacred. And one that, should it ever surface, would not only implode the Holy See, but change the course of human history.

  During the Middle Ages, the Dominican inquisitors tried, in vain, to unearth the gospel. But Franco, unlike the Dominicans, had the advantage of the digital age with a wealth of information at his fingertips. He also had something else – a cadre of men at his disposal who were far more ruthless than the fourteenth-century inquisitors.

  A learned man who knew how to seize the initiative, not unlike Machiavelli’s perfectly conceived prince, the Prefect knew that ‘no enterprise is more likely to succeed than one concealed from the enemy until it is ripe for execution’.

  Four days ago the bitter fruit had suddenly ripened – in that euphoric instant when his longstanding enemy, Pope Pius XIII, had unexpectedly thrown off the mortal coil.

  2

  Fort Cochin, India

  17 August, 0806h

  ‘It’s not too late to apply to the London School of Economics.’

  Anala Patel stared at her mother, flabbergasted by the suggestion. ‘And then what? Become an investment banker?’ Shaking her head, she defiantly folded her arms across her chest. ‘In order to change society for the better, we have to change our political thinking. That’s why I intend to do my graduate work at Oxford’s Department of Politics and International Relations.’

  ‘This might surprise you, but I don’t particularly relish the notion of my daughter leading the charge to change the world.’ Her mother punctuated the avowal by glancing pointedly at the black-and-white poster of Julian Assange that was taped to Anala’s bedroom wall, her gaze zeroing in on a bright-red lipstick kiss plastered on his forehead.

  ‘By the by, that happens to be my favorite shade, Chanel’s Dragon Red,’ Anala said cheekily. ‘And you know what they say . . . lead, fight or get out of the way. Just so you know: I will live my life as I see fit. I’m no longer a child. I’m a twenty-two-year-old woman.’ One who’d been coerced into spending the summer holiday, not in Europe with her mates sunbathing on the Greek Isles, but in the sweltering backwater of India. At her mother’s insistence. Yet another reason for their strained relationship.

  I am tired of playing the dutiful daughter to a woman who is clearly going through some sort of mid-life crisis.

  Two years ago, for some unknown reason, Gita Patel suddenly embraced her Indian heritage like it was a long-lost child. Accepting a job as head curator at the Kerala Cultural Museum, she moved from London to Fort Cochin, India. Why she did this, Anala had no idea; her mother had had an enviable job at the British Museum
and the inexplicable relocation was a definite downgrade. Stranger still, though her mother was an Anglo-Indian – born, raised and educated in England – she’d gone completely native, now proudly wearing a sari and bindi dot.

  Anala stared at the small red bull’s eye that had been perfectly applied between her mother’s hazel-green eyes. This is not what I meant, Mummy, when I told you to ‘get a life’.

  ‘You will always be my child, Anala. Always.’

  ‘Oh, really? And here I was thinking that I was just your bloody retirement fund! That’s the real reason why you want me to go into investment banking rather than politics, isn’t it? Because then, with my Midas salary, I’ll be able to take care of you in your old age.’

  ‘How dare you!’ Her mother physically recoiled, clutching her chest with her right hand as though she’d just been struck by a poison-tipped arrow to the heart.

  Anala rolled her eyes. Overreacting much?

  Convinced that what her mother really suffered from was a stab of conscience, Anala held her ground. ‘No, how dare you, dictating what I will or will not study at university. Like every Indian mother, you probably wish that you’d given birth to a son rather than a daughter.’

  Hearing that, her mother gasped . . . just before she soundly slapped Anala across the cheek.

  For several stunned moments they stood motionless.

  Dazed, unable to speak, Anala gaped at her mother.

  A few seconds later, snapping out of her fugue state, she put a hand to her cheek. Blimey, I didn’t see that coming.

  ‘We’ll discuss this when I get home.’ Clearly flustered, her mother glanced at her wristwatch. ‘I . . . I need to get to the museum. And I’m very sorry that I slapped you.’

  Anala snorted derisively at what she considered an obligatory afterthought. ‘Sorry? I suspect you’ve wanted to do that for a long time. Nothing like exorcising one’s demons, eh Mum?’