Temple of The Grail (27 page)

‘Rainiero, I am certain this incident
is an innocent one. The man hit his head and has become stupefied, that is all.
Murder has not been established, Rainiero. I believe there is another agent
responsible . . .’

‘Really?’ The other man was angry now,
and his face was turning the colour of my master’s radish. ‘Pray enlighten us
all, preceptor, perhaps I should defer to your wisdom, for you seem more adept
in such matters than I.’

My master ignored him and continued,
vegetable in hand, ‘I believe the cook has somehow partaken of a poisonous
herb, perhaps the same that killed Brother Ezekiel .’

‘Why then is he not dead?’ the other
man argued, turning blue.

‘I have not figured it all out yet,
but perhaps it is because he did not ingest it, he only inhaled it when the
herbs were set alight.’

The cook merely gazed from one man to
the other. ‘No! No!
La Virgen!
’

‘And so how is it that you know what
poisonous herb was used, preceptor? That is, unless you are in collusion with
heretics!’ he cried, ‘The wolf and the fox are cunning, but the lamb is wise!’

‘You are the wolf!’ the cook
exclaimed. ‘Death to the wolves!’

And then he howled like a madman.

Rainiero’s mouth twisted in an evil
grin. ‘Aha! Now we see the true nature of the beast! Death to the wolves! The
cry of a
Ghibelline!
’ He turned to the abbot. ‘Not only do you harbour
men who deal with infernal powers, but you also protect imperialists!’

The abbot frowned, lost for words.
Once again my master ventured his opinion, ‘The man does not know what he is
saying, he is still under the influence of the herb and the blow to his head.
You fail to see that there is more here than meets the eye.’

The inquisitor laughed a terrible
laugh. ‘Tomorrow we shall see what he says under oath! Guards, seize this
vermin and take him to the room provided us by the abbey.’

The guards took the cook brutally by
both arms. He cried in sudden desperation, realising the gravity of his
situation. They dragged him out of the kitchen through the door to the gardens
in the time it took to say one amen, and I felt a terrible sense of
powerlessness.

‘Infirmarian, you are to stay in your
infirmary until I learn what part you have played in this terrible business, a
guard will be posted at your door with orders to allow no one in without my
sanction. And you . . .’ He glared at my master, ‘I’ll have no more of your
intrusions in the affairs of the inquisition, preceptor, your duty lies as a
watchful servant of the king and nothing more. If I catch you sniffing about I
shall have no other recourse but to have you and your apprentice seized until
the conclusion of this dreadful inquiry which is fast running a straight course
toward inquisition.’ Turning towards the captain of the guards, he ordered that
he post archers at all known exits out of the monastery. No one was to enter or
to leave without his orders. He also ordered that all food prepared for the
members of the legation must first be tasted, and that this included all the
wine. After this he left, amid the wails and moans of monks.

T
he storm came, not suddenly, but quietly. We were sitting in
my master’s cell, Eisik, my master and I. Having heard the commotion Eisik was
unable to contain his curiosity, and had made his way stealthily to the
pilgrims’ hospice where we sat, deep in thought, as the wind began to rage
outside the window. In the beginning it was nothing more than a gust, slowly,
however, it became violent, pounding on the stone walls of the building with
enough strength, it seemed, to carry a man. The sky, nearly black now, looked
heavy with snow clouds that sequestered the mountain, and announced a heavy
fall. Soon, up in the higher reaches, the peaks would become dangerously
congested, like a pregnant woman longing to give birth to its excess – I
fervently hoped, not on the abbey.

Avalanches were not extraordinary, so
a brother told us when he knocked on our door to announce that the meal would
be delayed. He had brought us a tray of nuts and bread and while he set it down
he told us that this phenomenon was the consequence of unusually wet winters
and that only ten years before, a brother, while crossing the grounds to the
stables, was asphyxiated under an enormous mantle of snow that had loosened from
overhead.

‘He was not found until the next
morning,’ the brother said in a thick vulgar accent, one eye permanently
closed. ‘When they dug his carcass out of the snow we prayed for his soul, God
grant him, soaring lightly in the heavens, even as his testicles were as heavy
as glass.’

Now we could see almost nothing except
snow from my master’s window.

Andre lay stretched out on his pallet
staring into nothingness, his mouth working the nuts that he, from moment to
moment, popped into his mouth. Eisik paced the floor like a caged animal and I
sat on a chair impassively.

‘Master?’ I asked.

‘Yes?’ He raised his chin.

‘What are you doing?’

‘I am thinking, boy.’

‘About the deaths?’

‘Yes, that too.’

‘What are you thinking?’

‘I am thinking that there are far too
many things to think about, nevertheless, I believe we are progressing in our
hunt.’

‘To which hunt do you refer, master?
I must admit I no longer know whether we are hunting for murderers or for ways
to get into tunnels or for . . . final conclusions, or monks who disappear . .
.’

‘We are hunting all those things,’ he
answered calmly.

Eisik shook his head from side to
side. ‘And the hunter shall become the hunted . . . mind what I say, Andre!
Holy tribes of Israel! What a predicament you have found for us!’

‘Firstly,’ Andre said, ignoring his
friend, ‘in the matter of the . . . we shall call them murders, we have two
dead monks whose deaths are preceded by similar symptoms, at least one had, at
the moment of death, a curious sensation of flying.’

‘But a sensation of flying, master?
Is that not also what the cook said?’

‘Yes, he has come in contact, though
only slightly, with the poison. I have read something, somewhere, about a
certain compound . . . if only there was order to be found in my poor
confounded head!’ He sighed, ‘In any case, we must cheer up, we must think . .
. What do we know? Firstly we know from our conversation with Asa that Samuel
was seeking to go down to the tunnels to see something, though he was warned by
Setubar against it. We then learn that a young novice, a friend of our Greek
genius, has gone missing, having broken the interdict and ventured where no man
must go.’

‘Too many loose ends! There are too
many!’ cried Eisik, jubilantly pessimistic.

‘Precisely, and so we must tie them
all together, but not too soon. Let us not be overcome by it all, for there are
many things to consider, and if we act in haste we may indeed tie the wrong
ends together!’

‘But the dying are piling up, master!’
I said impatiently.

‘Hurry not, learn deliberation!
Remember that an Arab horse makes a few stretches at full speed, and breaks
down, while the camel, at its deliberate pace, travels night and day, and gets
to the end of its journey. Now let us ponder things a little, shall we? What
were the similarities between the two dead monks?’

‘They were both old enough to know
many secrets about the past of the abbey?’ I ventured.

‘Precisely, old enough, as we have
seen, to know something of the tunnels, and what is hidden therein.’

‘Perhaps the killer wants these
secrets to remain secret, master? Perhaps the killer did not want them going
down to the catacombs?’

‘That would be the less taxing
explanation,’ he answered, ‘but just because something is plausible that does
not make it probable. In any case, first let us examine the profile of our
killer from what we know of him.’

‘But we do not know anything, master,
only that he knows Greek and that he is left-handed.’

‘Nothing, he knows nothing!’ Eisik
thundered, waving his arms about. ‘And still he meddles . . . The inquisitor
hates him and still he baits and taunts him so that, in his sleep, the
Dominican dreams of pyres whereupon he burns innocent Jews and Templars. In
truth, Arabs are renowned for their arrogance, and you are the proof. Say
nothing, think nothing. Do nothing more than what is asked of you.’

‘What do you say? One impatient and
one reticent?’ my master said, sitting up a little. ‘My lord, if you are not
the most empty-headed . . . You are, you are human beings, therefore you can
think! Think! If we are surrounded by enemies we must alter our management of
affairs and change our strategies to keep the enemy from recognising them, that
is all. One moment we are submissive, the next we are forceful. One moment we
act, the next we wait. We must secretly guard our advantages.’

‘Which are?’ Eisik raised a black
brow.

‘That we know a great
deal.’

‘Do we, master?’

‘Of course, we can construct the
murderer’s character as one constructs a house. Each brick is a little scrap of
knowledge that we have of him, and even that which we don’t have, and can only
hypothesise. Firstly, we must venture a
propositum
of his motives
because motives are closely tied to characteristics . . . We do what we do,
Christian, because of who we are, is that not so?’

‘That is so,’ I agreed.

‘Now, what reasons could a man of God
have for doing away with his fellow monks? And notice I don’t just see him as a
man because he is not any man, he is a monk whose life is devoted to
relinquishing sin. Either he is not a good monk – which we may say at the
outset is most likely – or he doesn’t see these murders as sinful, he
justifies them in some way, as holy necessities. Let us consider what kind of
monk would do such a thing, shall we?’

‘A man who hates another, obviously,’
Eisik contributed, ‘and considering the powerful hate of a gentile . . .’

‘All that aside, Eisik, hate is a
strong motive, and usually a passionate one. In such a case the crime would be
more violent, less . . . planned.’

‘Greed, fear, jealousy, vanity,
power?’ I ventured.

‘Very good, very good,’ he nodded his
head.

‘But which one? Which one, for the
love of Israel?’ cried Eisik, overcome with an access of emotion.

‘Perhaps a mixture of all of them, my
friend. Let us see, he has succeeded in his crime, so he is clever, and those
who are clever . . .’

‘Are envious of others whom they
suspect of being more clever than they, this is well known,’ Eisik finished,
pacing the room.

‘We must remember that a community of
monks is like a mirror of the world, only many times smaller,’ Andre said.

‘You mean that monks are no better
than those peasants in the village who are envious of each other, who blaspheme
and who go about their greedy business?’ I asked aghast. ‘Master, how can that
be so?’

‘There are not many men, be they monk
or peasant, who are not this very day performing penance for some sin of pride
or vanity. In any case we must continue by surmising that our killer may be
envious, but why is he envious of older monks?’

‘Perhaps the killer was envious of
another’s wisdom, master, because he is ambitious to be thought wiser.’

‘The boy is brighter than you credit
him,’ said Eisik, ‘for he sees that either the killer is young and therefore
despises the wisdom of the old because it is not new, or he is old and envies
the young whose fresh new ideas he detests, or perhaps he envies his equals
because he falls a little short of having what they possess. This is usual in
the case of envy, especially among learned men.’

‘But that brings us no closer, Eisik,
for he could be any age at all!’ I cried.

‘Precisely,’ answered Eisik, ‘but
knowing nothing is also something, for now we can surmise that he is also vain.
You may ask me how I know this but I will tell you that only a vain person will
kill another to possess more knowledge than he already has! There again we see
the avarice of learning.’ He threw my master a pointed look.

‘That is assuming envy is at the root
of it,’ my master replied serenely, ‘which, of course, it may not be. What
else? Oh, yes . . . fear! If you have done something horrible or perhaps not
horrible, but punishable, would you be terrified that those with a knowledge of
your secret might one day betray you?’

‘So you are saying, master, that the
old monks knew something about the killer? Some terrible secret from the past?
What about the cook? It is possible that he told others of his time in Italy.’

‘On the other hand,’ Eisik’s face
took on a reflective seriousness, ‘the killer, God forgive him, may have done
something to someone else who may be in a position to do something to him, and
so he forestalls him . . . perhaps his motive
is
fear?’

‘I do not think so,’ Andre retorted, ‘the
killer must be confident. Who else but the most confident of men would go on a
killing spree when the abbey is not only crawling with men at arms, but also a
temporary home for the inquisition? Either he has never experienced brutality,
or his experience gives him the means to deal with it. Those whom we do not
fear are either weaker than ourselves or we have more supporters than they.’

‘So there may be more than one
killer?’ I asked, so caught up in our puzzle that I momentarily forgot the
seriousness of our subject.

‘In truth, we must not discount this.
The one who hit me on the head today was able-bodied, for this was shown by his
quick actions, he is also shorter than I.’

‘How do you know that, master?
Because of the angle of his strike?’

‘No, and you may take some credit for
this, my good Christian, because you asked me about his shoes which drew my
attention to his feet whose dimensions were small. It is only natural that
people with small feet are generally shorter than those with large feet.’

‘So the demon is short and
able-bodied . . . Oh son of David! That is why he is not afraid of the old,
fragile monks. He must be young or in his prime. These are always the most
dangerous men.’

‘That we may assume with confidence,
Eisik. In any event that only tells us the physical characteristics of the
author of our note, and he may not be our killer. We must take care not to
assume too much, not unless some other piece of evidence tells us otherwise.’

‘What else do we know, master? Do you
think that he is motivated by greed?’

‘Yes, greed. Our killer wants
everything, or maybe only one thing, but it must be of great importance.’

‘Yes, my sons, the desire to have
what one may not have is a strong one.’

‘So those whom our murderer kills may
be denying him something, or impeding him in his aim at something and this
brings to mind something else . . . What if the killer is after the same thing
that has brought us here? Have you thought of that?’Andre said.

‘But what has brought us here if not
the king’s command, master?’

‘Yes, I know, but I speak of whatever
it is that has compelled his command, something valuable, powerful . . .’

Eisik shivered, groaning deeply, ‘So,
what you are saying, Andre, is that the old brothers were not mere innocents.
You are saying, and it will be heard in the four quarters of heaven, that they
were in possession of something . . . something terrible!’

I must have paled for my master
became annoyed and he muttered some profanity in his native tongue which I
shall not recount.

‘Perhaps they are in possession of
something, or they know how to come by it, and will not tell? Or perhaps they
are ready to tell others about it, thereby denying the killer’s sole ownership
if he already knows it,’ Andre finished, and popped another nut into his mouth
with a gesture of defiance.

I was silent.

‘Now, to the deaths . . . What is the
rule? The poison, the note. Let me see the note.’

I searched in the repository inside
my habit and produced the note. My master snatched it from my hands and
proceeded to read it: ‘Except the lord build the house: their labour is but
lost that build it.’