The Templar Legacy (54 page)

Listening, I thought of the man Jesus and what happened to him. The reader seemed to speak directly to me when he spoke of God’s plan to strike the shepherd so that the sheep may scatter. At that moment a love took hold of me that would not let go. That night I journeyed outside Jerusalem to the spot where the Romans had buried the man Jesus. I knelt above his mortal remains and wondered how a simple fisherman could be the source of all truth. The high priest and scribes had judged the man Jesus a fraud. But I knew they were wrong. God did not require obedience to ancient laws in order to achieve salvation. God’s love was boundless. The man Jesus had many times said that, and in accepting his death with great courage and dignity, the man Jesus had given one final lesson to us all. In ending life we find life. Loving is to be loved.

All doubt left me. Grief vanished. Confusion became clarity. The man Jesus was not dead. He was alive. Resurrected within me was the risen Lord. I felt his presence as clearly as when he once stood beside me. I recalled what he said to me many times. “Simon, if you love me you will find my sheep.” I finally knew that loving as he loved will allow anyone to know the Lord. Doing as he did will allow us all to know the Lord. Living as he lived is the way to salvation. God had come from heaven to dwell within the man Jesus and through his deeds and words the Lord became known. The message was clear. Care for the needy, comfort the distressed, befriend the rejected. Do those things and the Lord will be pleased. God took the man Jesus’s life so that we could see. I was merely the first to accept that truth. The task became clear. The message must live through me and others who likewise believe.

When I told John and James of my vision they saw, too. Before we left Jerusalem, we returned to the place of my vision and dug from the earth the remains of the man Jesus. We took him with us and laid him in a cave. We returned the next year and gathered his bones. Then I wrote this account which I placed with the man Jesus, for together they are the Word.

MARK WAS BOTH CONFUSED AND AMAZED. HE KNEW SIMON.

He’d was called first Cephas in Aramaic, then Petros, rock, in Greek. Eventually he became Peter and the Gospels proclaimed that Christ said, Upon this rock I shall build my church.

The testimony was the first ancient account he’d ever read that made sense. No supernatural events or miraculous apparitions. No actions contrary to history or logic. No inconsistent details that cast doubt on credibility. Just the testimony by a simple fisherman of how he’d borne witness to a great man, one whose good works and kind words lived on after his death, enough to inspire him to continue the cause.

Simon certainly did not possess the intellect or ability to fashion the type of elaborate religious ideas that would come much later. His understanding was confined to the man Jesus, whom he knew, and whom God had reclaimed through a violent death. In order to know God, to be a part of Him, it was clear to Simon that he must emulate the man Jesus. The message could only live if he, and others after him, breathed life into it. In that simple way, death could not contain the man Jesus. A resurrection would occur. Not literal, but spiritual. And within the mind of Simon, the man Jesus had arisen—he lived again—and from that singular beginning, during an autumn night six months after the man Jesus was executed, the Christian Church was born.

“Those arrogant assholes,” de Roquefort muttered. “With their grand churches and theologies. Every bit of it is wrong.”

“No, it’s not.”

“How can you say that? There’s no elaborate crucifixion, no empty tomb, no angels announcing the risen Christ. That’s fiction, created by men for their own benefit. This testimony here has meaning. It all started with one man realizing something in his mind. Our Order was wiped from the face of the earth, our brothers tortured and murdered, in the name of the so-called resurrected Christ.”

“The effect is the same. The Church was born.”

“Do you think for one minute the Church would have flourished if its entire theology was based on the personal revelation of one simple man? How many converts do you think it would have obtained?”

“But that’s exactly what happened. Jesus was an ordinary man.”

“Who was elevated to the status of a god by later men. And if anyone challenged that determination, they were deemed a heretic and burned at the stake. The Cathars were wiped from the face of the earth right here in the Pyrénées for not believing.”

“Those early Church fathers did what they did. They had to embellish in order to survive.”

“You condone what they did?”

“It’s done.”

“And we can undo it.”

A thought occurred to him. “Saunière surely read this.”

“And told no one.”

“That’s right. Even he saw the futility of it.”

“He told no one because he would have lost his private treasure trove. He had no honor. He was a thief.”

“Perhaps. But the information obviously affected him. He left so many clues in his church. He was a learned man and could read Latin. If he found this, which I’m sure he did, he understood it. Yet he placed it back in its hiding place and locked the gate when he left.” He stared down into the ossuary. Was he looking at the bones of the man Jesus? A wave a sadness swept through him as he realized all that remained of his father were bones, too.

He locked his gaze on de Roquefort and asked what he truly wanted to know. “Did you kill my father?”

MALONE WATCHED ASSTEPHANIE HUSTLED TOWARD THE LADDER, a gun from one of the guards in her hand. “Going somewhere?”

“He may hate my guts, but he’s still my son.”

He understood she had to go, but she wasn’t going alone. “I’m coming, too.”

“I prefer to do this alone.”

“I don’t give a damn what you prefer. I’m coming.”

“I am, too,” Cassiopeia said.

Henrik grabbed her arm. “No. Let them do it. They need to resolve this.”

“Resolve what?” Cassiopeia demanded.

The chaplain stepped forward. “The seneschal and the master must challenge each other. His mother was involved for a reason. Let her be. Her destiny is below with them.”

Stephanie disappeared down the ladder and Malone watched from above as she hopped to one side, avoiding the pit. He then followed her down, lamp in one hand, gun in the other.

“Which way?” Stephanie whispered.

He signaled for quiet. Then he heard voices. From his left, toward the chamber he and Cassiopeia had found.

“That way,” he mouthed.

He knew the path was free of traps until almost to the chamber entrance. Still, they inched ahead slowly. When he spied the skeleton and the words etched into the wall, he knew just ahead they’d have to be cautious.

The voices were clearer now.

“IASKED IF YOU KILLED MY FATHER,” MARK SAID IN A LOUD TONE.

“Your father was a weak soul.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“I was there the night he ended his life. I followed him to the bridge. We talked.”

Mark was listening.

“He was frustrated. Angry. He’d solved the cryptogram, the one in his journal, and it told him nothing. Your father simply lacked the strength to carry on.”

“You know nothing of my father.”

“On the contrary. I watched him for years. He moved from issue to issue, never resolving a single one. It brought him problems professionally and personally.”

“He apparently found enough to lead us here.”

“No. Others found that.”

“You made no attempt to stop him from hanging himself?”

De Roquefort shrugged. “Why? He was intent on dying, and I saw no advantage in stopping him.”

“So you just walked away and let him die?”

“I didn’t interfere in something that did not concern me.”

“You son of a bitch.” He took a step forward. De Roquefort leveled his gun. He still held the book from the ossuary. “Go ahead. Shoot me.”

De Roquefort seemed unfazed. “You killed a brother. You know the penalty.”

“He died because of you. You sent him.”

“There you go again. One set of rules for yourself, another for the rest of us. You pulled the trigger.”

“In self-defense.”

“Lay the book down.”

“And what will you do with it?”

“What the masters in the Beginning did. I’ll use it against Rome. I always wondered how the Order rose so quickly. When popes tried to merge us with the Knights Hospitallers, over and over we stopped them. And all because of that book and those bones. The Roman Church could not take the chance of either being made public.

“Imagine what those medieval popes thought when they learned that the physical resurrection of Christ was a myth. Of course, they couldn’t be sure. That testimony could be as fictitious as the Gospels. Still, the words are compelling and the bones hard to ignore. There were thousands of relics floating around then. Pieces of saints adorned every church. Everyone believed so easily. No reason to think these bones would have been ignored. And these were the greatest relics of them all. So masters used what they knew, and the threat worked.”

“And today?”

“Just the opposite. Too many people who believe nothing. Lots of questions exist in the modern mind and few answers in the Gospels. That testimony, though, is another matter. It would make sense to a great many people.”

“So you’re going to be a modern-day Philip IV.”

De Roquefort spit on the ground. “That’s what I think of him. He wanted this knowledge so he could control the Church—so that his heirs could control it, too. But he paid for his greed. Him and his entire family.”

“Do you think for one minute you could control anything?”

“I have no desire to control. But I would like to see the faces of all those pompous prelates as they explain away the testimony of Simon Peter. After all, his bones rest at the heart of the Vatican. They built a cathedral around his grave and named the basilica for him. He’s their first saint, their first pope. How will they explain away his words? Wouldn’t you like to listen as they try?”

“Who’s to say they’re his?”

“Who’s to say Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John’s words are theirs?”

“Changing everything might not be so good.”

“You’re as weak as your father. No stomach for a fight. You’d bury this away? Tell no one? Allow the Order to languish in obscurity, tainted by the slander of a greedy king? Weak men like you are why we find ourselves in this situation. You and your master were well suited to one another. He was a weak man, too.”

He’d heard enough and, without warning, raised his left hand, which held the lamp, angling the bright bar so that its strongest glow momentarily flashed in de Roquefort’s eyes. The instant of discomfort caused de Roquefort to squint, and his hand with the gun dropped as he raised his other arm to shield his eyes.

Mark kicked the gun from de Roquefort’s grip, then rushed from the chamber. He emerged from the open gate, turned back toward the ladder, but took only a few steps.

Ten feet ahead he saw another light and spotted Malone and his mother.

Behind him, de Roquefort emerged.

“Halt” came the command, and he stopped.

De Roquefort stepped close.

He saw his mother raise a gun.

“Get down, Mark,” she yelled.

But he stayed standing.

De Roquefort was now directly behind him. He felt the barrel of the gun at the back of his head.

“Lower your weapon,” de Roquefort said to her.

Malone displayed a gun. “You can’t shoot us both.”

“No. But I can shoot this one.”

MALONE CONSIDERED HIS OPTIONS. HE COULDN’T GET A SHOT ATde Roquefort without hitting Mark. But why had Mark stopped? Allowing de Roquefort the opportunity to corral him.

“Lower the gun,” Malone said quietly to Stephanie.

“No.”

“I would do as he says,” de Roquefort made clear.

Stephanie did not move. “He’s going to shoot him anyway.”

“Maybe,” Malone said. “But let’s not provoke it.”

He knew she’d lost her son once through mistakes. She was not about to have him taken from her again. He studied Mark’s face. Not a speck of fear. He motioned with his light at the book in Mark’s grasp.

“That what this was all about?”

Mark nodded. “The Great Devise, along with a lot of treasure and documents.”

“Was it worth it?”

“That’s not for me to say.”

“It was,” de Roquefort declared.

“So what now?” Malone asked. “Nowhere for you to go. Your men are down.”

“Your doing?”

“Some. But your chaplain is here with a contingent of knights. Seems there’s been a revolt.”

“That remains to be seen,” de Roquefort said. “I’ll only say it one more time, Ms. Nelle, lower your gun. As Mr. Malone correctly notes, what do I have to lose by shooting your son?”

Malone was still assessing the situation, his mind checking off options. Then, in the ambient glow from Mark’s lamp, he spotted it. A slight depression in the floor. Hardly noticeable, except if you knew what to look for. Another floor trap spanning the width of the passage and extending from where he stood all the way to Mark. He cut his gaze back and saw in the younger man’s eyes the fact that he knew it existed. A slight nod of the head and he realized why Mark had stopped. He’d wanted de Roquefort to come after him. He needed him to come.

Apparently it was time to end this.

Here and now.

He reached out and wrenched the gun from Stephanie’s grasp.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

Back to de Roquefort, he mouthed, “The floor,” and he saw that she registered what he’d said.

Then he faced their dilemma.

“Wise move,” de Roquefort said to him.

Stephanie went silent, apparently understanding. But he doubted that she really did. He turned his attention back across the passage. His words, meant for Mark, were said to de Roquefort.

“Okay. Your move.”

MARK KNEW THIS WAS IT. THE MASTER HAD WRITTEN TO HISmother that he did not possess the resolve needed to complete his battles. Starting them seemed easy, continuing them even easier, but resolving them had always proven difficult. Not anymore. His master had formed the stage and the players had acted out the script. Time for the finale. Raymond de Roquefort was a menace. Two brothers were dead because of him, and there was no telling where it all would stop. No way could he and de Roquefort exist within the Order together. His master had apparently known that. Which was why one of them had to go.