Days Without Number (30 page)

'Where do the Templars come into this?'

'I'll distil it for you as best and briefly as I can. For a fuller version I must refer you to my book, a bargain at six ninety nine. But here goes. The Holy Grail is a constant in Western literature. What is it? The cup from which Christ drank on the Cross. Some at least accept it as such. Others look for symbolic or hidden meaning. Is it to be found in the Old French word Sangr�al - the royal blood? Proponents of this school of thought believe Christ had children by Mary Magdalene, the Grail being no more and no less than the Divine bloodline. Mary Magdalene and Christ's hypothetical children fled to Provence after the Crucifixion and their descendants supposedly founded the Merovingian dynasty of French royalty. So far, so diverting. There's no evidence for it, 253

of course, not a shred, although the belief may have underpinned the hazy theology of the Cathar heretics, who were certainly active in Provence and were brutally put down by Pope Innocent the Third early in the thirteenth century. An authenticated bloodline of Christ would have been an unanswerable challenge to Papal authority, so his ruthless suppression of the Cathars is held to prove the theory.

'What does this have to do with the Templars? Nothing directly. We must turn to another school of thought to learn their role in alternative history. Its proponents equate the Grail with the Ark of the Covenant, the greatest treasure of the Jewish people. They believe the Ark was buried deep beneath King Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem to prevent it falling into Roman hands when the city fell to the legions of Titus in seventy ad - or ce, as I'm now required to call it. They also believe the Ark contains a wondrous secret. And they further believe the Knights Templar were formed after the capture of Jerusalem by the Crusaders in ten ninety-nine specifically to search for the Ark. I apologize for overtones of Indiana Jones, by the way. The knights supposedly spent many years excavating beneath the Temple and eventually found what they were looking for. If not the Ark itself, then what it had all along merely stood as symbol for: the secret of secrets; the truth; the gnosis of man's relationship with God.'

'And what's that?'

'A good question, Paleologus. A divine question, you might say. It's as unknown as it's unknowable. It's as broad as it's wide. These myths thrive because they are all things to all men. When Jerusalem was recaptured by Saladin in eleven eighty-seven, the Templars moved their headquarters to the fortress of Acre, along presumably with any treasure they held. When Acre fell in its turn, in twelve ninety-one, they moved again, to Cyprus. And there they remained until suppressed by fiat of Pope Clement the Fifth in thirteen hundred and seven on grounds of heresy, sodomy and blasphemy, though his motives were more likely envy of the order's wealth and influence compounded by subservience to King 254

Philip the Fourth of France, who happened to be massively in their debt. The last Templar Grand Master was burned at the stake in thirteen fourteen. Fetching names these medieval popes chose for themselves, don't you think? Innocent and Clement. They seem to have been neither.'

'What became of the Templar treasure?'

'If it existed, you mean? Ah, well, that's what so many books have been written about. Where did it go - this secret; this great and awful thing? Many have convinced themselves that the Templars got wind of the moves being prepared against them and sent their most precious possession away for safekeeping. Robert the Bruce having been excommunicated, the Templar properties in Scotland at the time were immune to the Pope's proscription of the order. The theory therefore goes that it was sent here and lies here still, somewhere beneath Rosslyn Chapel.'

'You're not serious.'

'I'm serious when I say that many believe it. Construction of the chapel did not begin until fourteen forty-six, more than a hundred years after the suppression of the Templars. To my mind that constitutes a serious objection to the idea, but the true believers finesse their way round it easily enough, arguing that the chapel was a permanent solution to what had originally been envisaged as a temporary problem. And there we have it, shorn of its many elaborations. I'll spare you Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, the Priory of Sion and the mystery of Rennes-le-Chateau. They all have their place. But the long and short of the Templar myth is: did they find something - the Ark, the Grail, what you will - beneath the Temple? That's the question I tried to answer in Shades of Grail.'

'And what is the answer?'

'No-one knows. No-one can know. For certain, that is. There's no evidence. There's most certainly no proof. There's only . . .' Drysdale shrugged. 'Rumour and legend.'

'But what do you think?'

'As a historian, I think rumour and legend darken as much

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as they illumine. Gnosis is a concept, not an object. It's not susceptible to excavation. Surely that stands to reason. Such treasure is by definition . . . intangible.'

'So there's nothing hidden under the chapel?'

'The bones of a few dead knights. That's all.' Drysdale gazed into the blackness of the empty fireplace. 'That's all people ever find when they dig for gold.' He looked up at Nick with the ghost of a smile hiding beneath his whiskers. 'The secret is that there is no secret.' Then he chuckled. 'Not my published conclusion, I must confess. Shades of Grail paints a more tantalizingly ambiguous picture. Such is the commercial imperative. But with someone of your distinguished ancestry I'll not dissemble. After all, you rather prove the point yourself.'

'I do?'

'Bloodlines lead nowhere. The past is neither curse nor salvation. We are what we are. That is the knowledge we have to learn to live with - and to die with.'

Nick left Roseburn Lodge unsure whether Drysdale had intended to preach a sermon about his siblings' cupidity or not. The myth of the Doom Window and the lure of Tantris's money had yielded precisely the discovery the professor could have claimed to predict. Worse, they had ravelled themselves into circumstances leading to the death of Nick's father and brother. The old man's warnings recurred to Nick's mind as he walked down the lane towards the chapel. If they had heeded them, if they had just listened to him . . . 'Trust nothing except primary sources in this game.'' At the time, Nick had taken this as a narrowly academic precept. Now he was beginning to suspect that his father had meant exactly what he had said. 'Nothing except primary sources.' It was a fine principle. But where were such sources to be found?

The photograph on the front of the guidebook Nick bought at the entrance showed Rosslyn Chapel to be an oddly disproportionate structure, with oversized buttresses and a west 256

wall extended to either side as if part of some larger building that had never been completed, though he could see little of this for himself because of a huge steel cover positioned over the chapel to facilitate roof repairs.

Inside, it was apparent that the stone carving was as remarkable as Sasha had said. Imps, angels, knights and dragons adorned every beam and pillar. Archways teemed with imagery. Figures and symbols were waiting to be discovered wherever he glanced. The masons had worked the stone miraculously, as if it had been clay for them to squeeze and shape. The guidebook drew his attention to the many Templar associations, notably the tomb of William St Clair, great-grandfather of the founder of the chapel. A proclaimed Knight Templar, he had died heroically in Spain in 1330, while trying to transport the heart of Robert the Bruce to the Holy Land. His tombstone was decorated with the likeness of a rose within a chalice, or grail. The hint was hard not to take.

There were connections with the original Temple as well. According to the guidebook, the most gorgeously decorated pillar in the chapel was supposed to have been carved by a mere apprentice, in the master mason's absence. Enraged upon his return to discover this demonstration of his pupil's superiority, the master mason had slain the apprentice, by striking him on the head with his mallet. The guidebook suggested the apprentice's pillar was modelled on one that had supported the inner porchway of King Solomon's Temple and that the apprentice's murder was a reference to the slaying of Hiram Abif, architect of the Temple, also by a blow to the head.

Nick was thinking of another death now and another blow to the head. He had heard the story of Hiram Abif before, though he could not remember how. It had been a form of sacrifice, he had understood, a ritual murder. But who was master and who was apprentice in the reworkings of the myth? Did secrets always die with their holder?

Nick abandoned the tour and blundered out into the open air. It had actually felt colder inside the chapel, he realized,

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cold as a tomb and silent as an unquiet grave. Some other visitors looked at him oddly as they passed him to go in. When he put his hand to his brow, it was damp with sweat.

He walked back up the lane to the village and went into the bar of the hotel on the corner of Manse Road. He sat with his beer by the window, isolated from the Sunday lunchers near the fire, drinking slowly, waiting for his thoughts to assemble themselves. Long before they had, his mobile rang.

'Nick?' It was Terry, already sounding anxious. 'This is the first chance I've had to phone you.'

Ts there something wrong, Terry?'

'Of course there's something bloody wrong. How have you got on with Tom?'

'Not very well. Before I could accuse him of anything, he did a moonlight flit.'

'He's run away?'

'That's what it looks like.'

'Oh Christ. Kate'll go spare. I was hoping . . . well, no news might be good news.'

'Not in this case.'

'Bloody hell. Kate's phoned him a few times and got no answer. Now I know why.'

"Fraid so.'

'Where's he gone?'

'Haven't a clue. Any suggestions?'

'I haven't a clue either. He's a closed book to me. For Christ's sake, Nick, can't you ... do something?'

'What did you have in mind?'

'I don't know. Just . . . something to get us out of this mess.'

'Well . . .' Nick fingered the keys in his pocket. 'I'll see what I can come up with.'

Nick's patience - with Tom, with Terry, with the situation he had been placed in - was fading rapidly. Before leaving Roslin, he returned to the chapel shop. As Drysdale had said, 258

its bookshelves were crammed with Rosslyn-related esoterica. Nick bought a copy of Shades of Grail and started back for the hotel, where the taxi he had ordered would soon arrive. He did no more than glance at any of the other titles. But a glance was enough. They held no answers.

In the taxi, bowling north through the Edinburgh suburbs, he settled his strategy. He would give Tom until nightfall. Then, if there was still no-one at home, he would enter the flat using Sasha's keys and see what he could find. That might be nothing, of course. But there was nothing else he could do.

He sat in his hotel room as the afternoon slowly uncoiled, reading Drysdale's book. The professor had already told him the gist of it and the full version added only details to the central theme. But those details were many and colourful, wreathed around one another like the carved serpents in Rosslyn Chapel. As promised, the Freemasons and the Rosicrucians had walk-on parts as possible inheritors of Templar secrets and beliefs, while a French secret society, the Priory of Sion, lurked in the shadows of the Templars' origins. Rosslyn was evidently only one candidate for the repository of their treasure. The old Cathar stronghold of Languedoc was another. Portugal was also in the frame, along, incredibly, with Nova Scotia. Many seemingly unrelated topics - from the Turin Shroud to Pre-Columban voyages of discovery - got in on the act. Drysdale summarized the various writings on the subject with no more than a hint of satire. He was content to let the evidence speak for itself. And where was the evidence? 'The secret is that there is no secret.' Nowhere did the phrase appear, but it echoed in Nick's brain as he read.

Night fell. Nick ate a meal in the hotel diner and set out, stopping at the Caf� Royal on the way. There was no hurry, he kept telling himself. The longer he delayed, the greater the chance that Tom would return of his own volition.

But he had not returned. That was evident to Nick as he gazed at the black, uncurtained windows on the ground floor

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of 8 Circus Gardens. It was nearly nine o'clock. Delay was at an end.

The first of the Yale keys he tried opened the front door. Nick hesitated in the hall, listening for sounds on the stairs. There were none, though he thought he could hear music, drifting down from Una Strawn's flat. He opened Tom's door and stepped inside, shutting the door smartly behind him.

The kitchen, bathroom and bedroom were to his right, consumed in darkness. To his left, an amber, rain-dappled wash of lamplight stretched across the drawing-room carpet. He headed through the open doorway to the windows on the far side of the room, where he tugged the curtains closed before moving back to the light switch.

For a second, he was dazzled. Then he saw, in front of him, lying on the coffee-table, a white envelope, torn jaggedly open, and, half-hidden beneath, another copy of the photograph of Tom with Elspeth Hartley at Robusta.

Nick picked the photograph up and stared at it. It was the same, it was exactly the same, as the one that had been slipped under his door at the Thistle. This envelope too was blank. There was no accompanying note. But maybe there had not needed to be. Maybe Tom had got the message loud and clear.

Where should he look for clues to Tom's whereabouts? The drawing room was a sterile space. If there were secrets stashed anywhere, it was not here. The bedroom was a better bet. Nick dropped the photograph, turned and headed back along the passage.

The bedroom was at the rear of the house, overlooking the garden, so Nick felt less need to be cautious. He switched on the light as he stepped through the open doorway.

His heart jolted and he stopped in his tracks. For a shard of a crazy second he thought Tom was simply lying on the bed, watching him. But he was too still, too utterly motionless. And he was not watching anything. His eyes were staring blindly at the ceiling. His mouth was open, vomit' crusted 260