The Adept Book 3 The Templar Treasure (26 page)

“You may set your explosives now,” he told Logan. “I will close off the way behind us.”

Logan shot his employer a wary look, now convinced that Gerard was a complete nutter, but rather than waste valuable time arguing, it seemed most expedient to comply. When he had finished, he stepped out of the room and watched uneasily as Gerard stooped low to paint a final symbol on the floor just beyond the threshold of the vaulted chamber. Then they both hurried up the stairs to the safety of the sanctuary.

Crouching low behind the Apprentice Pillar, Logan counted off the time on a stopwatch he pulled from his pocket. As the final second ticked away, he braced himself for the rumble of a muffled explosion. A faint shudder reverberated through the floor beneath him and rained down a shower of dust from the transoms overhead, but there was no audible sound.

Scarcely able to believe his ears, Logan turned to stare at Gerard in blank astonishment. Arrested in the act of removing the Seal of Solomon from his bag of equipment, the Frenchman glared back at him.

“I told you no sound would escape,” he said tartly. “Now, let us get on with our business.”

Slipping the Seal into a black nylon waist pouch, he led the way back down into the crypt, pausing to smear over the still-wet symbol he had drawn with a sweep of his foot. The floor beyond was littered with broken bricks and scorched bunting. Peering over his employer’s shoulder, Logan saw that there was now a gaping black hole in the wall opposite the entrance. When Gerard shone the lantern inside the cavity, the beam showed up a low-ceilinged passageway of dressed stones beyond.

Gerard was first to enter the passage, ducking low to traverse the three or four yards to its end, where a low groined archway in the right-hand wall gave access to a shadowy chamber beyond.

The stagnant air stank of damp and old decay. Entering behind Gerard, Logan fetched up short with a curse at the sight of two long rows of stone tomb slabs, each holding a mouldering corpse in full armor. Gerard gave the thief a fleeting death’s-head grin over one shoulder.

“Behold the former Barons of Rosslyn,” he murmured. “It was their custom to go armed to their graves, perhaps as guardians of what we seek.”

Logan was only half listening. As Gerard shone the lantern around the confines of the chamber, the swath of yellowish light picked up here and there the colored glint of precious jewels in sword hilts and belts. A gemmed dagger caught Logan’s eye, gripped in the gauntleted hand of the skeletal figure immediately to his right. Avarice supplanting his initial revulsion, he reached out to take it.

Gerard’s hand fell heavily upon his wrist. “Don’t burden yourself with trifles,” he told Logan. “The real prize lies there.”

He gestured with the lantern toward the far end of the vault. The broad “V” of light showed up a large mural covering most of the wall. As the two men advanced between the tomb slabs, the mural resolved into a large shield bearing the St. Clair arms:
argent,
a cross engrailed
sable,
surmounted by the family crest in the form of a crowing cock. As supporters, the shield was borne up by the life-sized figures of two kneeling Templar knights wearing the cross-emblazoned white mantles of their Order.

Gerard unzipped the pouch at his waist and took out the Seal. Walking up to the right-hand figure, he applied the Seal firmly to the center of the cross on the mantle. With a rusty grinding noise, the section of wall with the shield pivoted round like a door. Beyond the opening it revealed lay a whitewashed inner chamber into which Gerard and then Logan quietly passed and then stopped stock-still.

The life-sized figures standing vigil all around the room were only painted Templars, but the two kneeling to either side of a small, child-sized stone sarcophagus in the center of the chamber were real, though long dead—perhaps the very men depicted in the mural outside. Clad in suits of chain mail, mail-coifed heads bowed over their swords, the threadbare remnants of once-white mantles still trailed from their shoulders. The lid of the sarcophagus was crested both with the Templar cross and with the St. Clair arms.

Breathing hard with excitement, Gerard set the lantern on the floor and approached the sarcophagus, slipping the Seal back into his belt pouch. Stone grated against stone as he set his fingers to the edge of the stone lid, but the weight was more than he could shift unaided.

“Here! Help me!” he rasped at Logan.

Logan darted forward to comply. In moving closer, his feet caught in the remnants of one of the mouldering mantles and pulled over its wearer in a startling clatter of collapsing chain mail and separating bones. The skull skittered almost under Logan’s feet, and the thief kicked it aside with a grimace of disgust as he got a grip on the edge of the lid opposite Gerard. Grunting and straining, the two of them were just able to shift it off and lean it on edge against the side of the sarcophagus. At Gerard’s gesture, Logan snatched up the lantern again and shone it inside.

Within lay something long and narrow, wrapped in a pall of purple silk whose color remained miraculously undimmed by age. Fingers trembling, Gerard bent over and lifted away the top folds. Beneath, pillowed on more silk, lay a slender rod of rich, untarnished gold. One end was capped with a decorative knob supporting a three-dimensional star of interlocking triangles nearly the size of a man’s palm—surely the sign of Solomon—and the other had a miniature version of the Seal carved into the flat, so that it, too, could be used as a seal.

Gerard gave a wordless moan of triumph as he allowed one trembling forefinger to stroke down the shaft. Then, with an ecstatic sigh, he rewrapped the Sceptre in its silken shroud and reverently lifted it from its resting place. While his attention was so diverted, Logan’s gaze strayed toward the gleam of the fallen knight’s fallen sword. But as he made a move to pick it up, Gerard rounded on him, flushed with hectic pride.

“Leave that piece of trash where it is!” the Frenchman ordered. “Now that we have the Seal and the Sceptre, the true treasure of Solomon is only waiting for us to claim it!”

Chapter Twenty-Five

MIDNIGHT WAS FAST
approaching when the helicopter carrying Adam, Mcl.eod, and Peregrine touched down on the helipad at Dalhousie Castle in a light rain. Parked at the edge of the tarmac beside the landing circle, a dark grey VW Passat Estate flashed its headlights once as the pilot cut the engine.

“There’s our next ride,” McLeod said, as they disembarked from the chopper. “Thanks very much, Mr. Pearson. Someone will be up to collect the car in the next day or two.”

Clutching their bags and ducking low under the still turning rotors, the three of them made a dash for the car. Before leaving Adam’s Range Rover at the heliport, they had changed blazers and tweed jackets for the ubiquitous green waxed jackets that were more suitable for the weather and their probable activities. Detective Donald Cochrane threw open the front passenger door as they approached, a quizzical look on his face as they piled in, McLeod and Peregrine in the back and Adam up front.

“Good to see you, Donald,” McLeod said. “Now see how fast you can get us to Roslin. Sir Adam will direct you. “

Acknowledging the order with a wordless nod, Cochrane popped the car into gear and punched the accelerator. As they roared out of the car park to the departing chuff of helicopter rotors behind them, Adam opened the road atlas he had brought along and breathed a silent prayer that he and his companions would be arriving in time. Ahead of them, the Midlothian landscape was flooded with watery moonlight, bright enough to show him individual sheep dotting the fields on either side of them.

Turning right out of the car park, Cochrane sent the Passat shooting like an arrow up the deserted highway, only slowing to turn southerly again at the crossroads in Bonnyrigg. A long, straight run of about two miles brought them to Rosewell, whence they wove more westerly until they were creeping through the outskirts of Roslin itself. As they turned down an unpaved road that was signposted to Rosslyn Chapel, Adam instructed the younger detective to kill their headlamps and proceed very slowly, turning then to speak to Peregrine. McLeod was pulling the Browning Hi-Power out of his bag, slapping a clip into the butt, slipping the weapon into the waistband of his trousers.

“Keep your eyes open,” Adam advised in a tight undertone, handing Peregrine a small torch. “If you See anything out of the ordinary, let us know at once.”

The great wall surrounding Rosslyn Chapel loomed ahead, the pointed Gothic spires of the chapel itself glistening beyond in the moonlight.

“Pull over there,” Adam instructed their driver. “And just wait for us here.”

With a glance back over his shoulder at McLeod, Cochrane did as he was bidden, parking in the shadow of a weeping cherry tree and killing the engine.

“If we’re not back in an hour, call for reinforcements,” McLeod murmured, handing Cochrane his cell phone as he and his companions got out of the car.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you, sir?” Cochrane asked hopefully.

“Quite sure, thank you. I want you to stay here with the car in case somebody has to give chase.”

“Whatever you say, sir,” Cochrane sighed. He added plaintively, “I wouldn’t mind somebody telling me what’s going on.”

McLeod reached over and gave the younger man a clap on the shoulder. “Later,” he said with gruff firmness. “Right now, you’re right where you’re most likely to be needed.”

Carrying his medical bag, which now housed the Crown, Adam led the way up to the actual entrance through the surrounding wall and tested at the door, but it was firmly locked.

“Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean a thing,” McLeod muttered. “Our friends could have climbed over the wall just as easily as we’re going to do.”

Adam was already testing his weight on the copestones farther to the right, and turned to hand Peregrine the medical bag.

“Hold this until I get on top.”

Watching as the taller man swung himself up onto the wallhead as easily as mounting a horse, Peregrine glanced down at his legs and grimaced.

“There goes another pair of perfectly good trousers.”

He passed the medical bag up at Adam’s gesture, then scrambled after him. McLeod joined them a moment later, and together they made their way over to the chapel itself. The side door was secure, but the great door at the west end was standing ajar.

“Damn!” McLeod mouthed silently.

Drawing the Browning, he gave the door a nudge and cat-stepped across the threshold, dropping warily to a crouch as soon as he was inside. After a twenty-second span of silence, he eased his stance and beckoned his companions forward. Padding after Adam, Peregrine found himself in near-total darkness.

Not daring to switch on his torch until one of his superiors gave the word, he instinctively drew a breath and narrowed his eyes in an effort to see. The surrounding darkness gave back shadowy impressions of Gothic stonework. Then his deeper sight picked up a ghost-glimmer of movement among the columns ahead. The breath caught in his throat.

“What is it?” Adam’s voice hissed in his ear.

“I thought I saw something,” Peregrine whispered back. “Over there to our right.”

All three men stood still and listened intently. “I don’t hear anything,” McLeod muttered.

“It may have been just a visual resonance,” Peregrine allowed in an undertone.

“If Gerard were still here, we would have been aware of it by now,” Adam decided. “Let’s have a bit of light.”

He switched on his torch. Peregrine did the same. The crossplay of the beams threw fantastic shadows round the walls, but the chapel itself seemed to be empty. They pressed forward up the aisle, making for the distinctive Apprentice Pillar. Just beyond it and to the right, at the top of the stairs leading down to the crypt, McLeod came to an abrupt halt.

“Gerard’s been here all right,” he said quietly. “And Jesus, what a mess he’s made!”

He pointed his torch down the stairs to the level below and started down. Hurrying to join him, Peregrine and Adam saw that the floor of the crypt was strewn with rubble from a controlled explosion, fanned outward from an opening to the left. McLeod fetched up short before he reached the threshold, his craggy face contorting in a grimace of disgust.

“Ugh, Black Wards!” he said shortly, shining his light among a number of dark smears on the floor. “Our boy left in such a hurry, he didn’t bother to neutralize them properly.”

Coming to stand beside McLeod in the doorway, Adam could sense the murky pulse of malignant energies.

“We’ll have to deal with them before we attempt to go any farther,” he murmured.

He handed his bag to Peregrine to hold, then opened it up and took out a vial of salt and a small, silk-wrapped bundle. Inside the bundle was a long, narrow piece of magnetized lodestone, the size and shape of a wolf’s tooth, that Peregrine had seen several times before. Palming this in his right hand, Adam took the vial in his left hand and sprinkled salt over the blood-sign immediately across the threshold. The ring on his right hand flared blue as he reached out with the toothstone.

“The Light shineth in the darkness,
“ he intoned in a low voice,
“and the darkness comprehendeth it not. Blessed be the true Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world, for the darkness shall not abide in its presence.”

Before the power Adam had invoked, the Black Ward guttered and died like a snuffed candle flame. Proceeding around the chamber to the left, he dealt with each of the remaining three wards in turn. Peregrine was aware of the tooth stone drawing off the dark energies Adam’s words had unbound. By the time the older man had finished, the atmosphere in the chamber was empty, neutral. As Adam beckoned Peregrine to enter the chamber, pocketing the salt and the toothstone, McLeod went over to inspect the gaping hole in the adjacent wall.

“I don’t think we missed our boy by much. These stones are still warm from the blast” , he reported over his shoulder.

“Well, let’s see if he got what he came for,” Adam replied. “I don’t doubt that he did, but we’re going to have to hunt for some clue to where he’s gone next.”

The Frenchman’s trail was heartbreakingly easy to follow. Inside the burial vault, with its generations of long dead Barons of Rosslyn laid out on their biers—some of them perhaps Adam’s distant ancestors—Adam and his companions came to the yawning entrance to the inner chamber, passing between the guarding Templars painted on the wall. The empty stone sarcophagus told the tale, with the bones of one of its last guardians strewn beside it. Adam gave the other one respectful distance as he wearily leaned both hands on the edges, trying to decide what to do next.

“It was
here,”
Peregrine murmured forlornly. “I can almost see its afterimage. If only we could have gotten here half an hour sooner!”

“Wishing won’t help,” McLeod said a little impatiently. “What I want to know is where Gerard and his pal may be planning to go from here.”

“His pal?” Peregrine looked to the inspector in surprise.

“Aye. If you take the trouble to look, you’ll see there are
two
sets of footprints in the dust on the floor. Furthermore, whoever set that explosion knew what he was doing—probably the same thieving professional who helped Gerard turn over the Fiennes house. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn he was the one who did the killing.”

Peregrine sighed heavily, casting a dejected glance over the remaining Templar.

“If only our friend there could talk,” he murmured. “Maybe
he
knows where the casket is.”

Following Peregrine’s glance with his own, Adam pulled a thoughtful frown.

“If only our friend could talk . . . ,” he mused, then abruptly straightened and grinned. “Maybe he can. Peregrine, you’re brilliant!”

Beckoning for the artist to bring him his bag, Adam dropped to one knee beside the skeletal figure of the remaining dead Templar and lifted out the Crown of Solomon.

“What are ·you going to do with that?” McLeod demanded. “You know what Lady Grizel said about wearing it.”

“
I’m
not going to wear it,” Adam said.

Clasping the Crown between his hands, he closed his eyes in a brief, silent prayer, then reached out and set the diadem gingerly on the dead knight’s mailed head, at the same time plunging into trance and allowing his own submerged Templar persona to overshadow him with past memories.

“Non nobis, Domine, non nobis, sed Nomini Tuo da gloriam,
“ he murmured, using the ancient Templar motto as a seal upon his intention. Not to us, Lord, not unto us but unto Thy Name be the glory . . . .

“Assist me, my brother,” he went on softly. “Let me take up your burden. The despoiler of your rest has taken what you guarded, and goes now to awaken that which should never be freed. Tell me where it lies, that I may stop him.”

There was an electrifying pause, during which Peregrine felt the hairs on the back of his neck begin to bristle. Then the Templar’s mummified skull shifted upright with a creaking of dry neck bones. Beneath the Crown, twin points of pale light gleamed within the sunken sockets of the eyes, and the fleshless jaw moved.

“
Stop him . . .
” said a voice both heard and sensed. “
Stop the enemy of our Order . . .”

“The casket,” Adam pressed urgently. “Tell me where to find it, I beg of you.”

The ghost-light flamed up with sudden vehemence within the dead man’s skull.
“Our preceptory at Balantrodoch!”
came the sepulchral response.
“There it lies. Go now, before it is too late . . .”

“Balantrodoch?” McLeod’s voice was almost as harsh as that of the dead knight. “Where is
that?”

Peregrine was trembling visibly with fearful excitement, but this answer, at least, he knew.

“Not far!” he whispered. “I remember it from Adam’s maps. The place is called Temple now, and it’s only a few miles from here!”

His hazel eyes widened as he realized the import of what he had just said. “Adam, Gerard could be there already!”

Even as he spoke, and before McLeod could forestall him, the young artist reached out an eager hand to grasp Adam’s shoulder in emphasis. His peremptory touch snapped Adam back out of the past with a dizzying wrench, eliciting a choked exclamation as Adam clutched at his head. In the same instant, the bones of the Templar clattered apart and collapsed into a heap of mouldering rags and broken bits of armor.

“You bloody fool!” McLeod snapped, springing to Adam’s aid. “Don’t you know better by now than to jerk somebody out of a trance like that?”

“I’m—I’m sorry,” Peregrine whispered. “I wasn’t thinking . . .”

“Let it pass, Noel.” Adam got his legs under him with the inspector’s assistance and staggered upright, clapping a hand to the nape of his neck as he gulped air and willed his nausea to recede. “I’m all right,” he assured them. “He didn’t mean it. I’ll get myself in hand on the way to Temple. In the meantime, Peregrine’s right. We’d better move fast.”

Retrieving the Crown from the tangle of brittle bones at his feet, he fumbled it away in his bag with McLeod’s help. As he did so, his pain-bleared eyes lighted on the two Templar long-swords lying in the dust among the scattered bones and mail.