The Templar's Code (16 page)

His belly tight with anticipation, he lifted another bag out of the box. “We next enter into evidence, several black rosary beads along with a very tarnished Sacred Heart of Jesus medallion. Inscribed with the year 1523, it is convincing evidence that the Jesuits were directly involved in the Templar massacre at Arcadia. An unpleasant smell, the stench of orthodoxy.”

“Being awfully melodramatic, aren’t you?”

“Tell that to the poor souls who met their death at the end of a Maltese sword. Since the good Jesuits were forbidden to draw blood, the Knights of Malta were often used as their armed proxies.” He placed the plastic packet on the table next to the tray. “Ah! This should pique your interest.” He removed a bag containing six gold coins.

Broadly smiling, Edie snatched it from him. “According to Lovett, these were minted
prior
to 1307. Several thousand more of these babies and I’ll be set for life.”

“Given the mass grave that Dr. Lovett uncovered, it would seem that Chiron has been paid in full.”

Edie, her smile drooping at the corners, glanced at the skeletal hand. “He charges a mean penny.”

“Indeed.” Having reached the bottom of the metal box, he removed a small field notebook. Inside the front cover was a folded map of the Arcadia Wilderness Area. He wasted no time unfolding the map. “I give you Yawgoog’s domain. Marks to Lovett for thinking outside the academic box.”

“He’s indicated four separate areas on the map: Yawgoog’s settlement, the mass grave, Yawgoog’s bridge, and the Templar stone.” Edie tapped each of the landmarks with her index finger. “Where do we start?”

Staring at the map, Caedmon gave the question due consideration, trying to determine the best course of action. “It doesn’t make strategic sense for the Templars to have hidden their most valuable assets within the settlement compound. Moreover, Lovett already scanned the settlement area and didn’t find anything of note other than the mass grave.”

“Leaving us with the stone and the bridge.”

“Which, according to the map, are within close proximity to each other.” Caedmon held up a handheld GPS device that he’d found in the bottom of the box. “This should make our scavenger hunt that much easier.” Decision made, he folded the map. “We’ll begin our hunt at the Templar stone first thing tomorrow morning. To that end, we should gather any of Lovett’s archaeology supplies that we might need.”

“I saw an empty knapsack in the living room. We can use it for the small stuff, trowels, magnifying glass, bull-whips. You know, the Indiana Jones grab bag.”

Caedmon chuckled. Edie’s quirky personality was one of the things that attracted him to his American lover. That and her indomitable spirit.

As Edie trotted off in search of a rucksack, he gathered the larger items that they might need. Bending to retrieve a pickax from the floor, he noticed several sheets of paper protruding from the fax machine. Curious, he reached for the paper instead of the pickax.

Edie reentered the office. “What did you find?”

“Mmmm . . . I’m not altogether certain.” Puzzled, he showed her the two sheets of paper.

Holding one sheet in each hand, she examined them in turn. “Well, this one is easy”—she gently shook the piece of paper in her left hand—“it’s a fax cover sheet to a Dr. Lyon at Catholic University. This other one is just plain weird. It looks like a carved message written in a mystery alphabet. Mystery because I’ve never seen letters that even remotely resemble these.”

“Lovett did mention finding a primitive script carved on an excavated foundation stone. It’s possible that he faxed the script to this Dr. Lyon in the hopes that the other man might decipher its meaning.”

He stared at the curious script.

“It could be some sort of Indian writing.” Edie handed the two sheets of paper back to him.

“I didn’t think the Narragansett possessed a written language.” He folded the fax sheets and placed them inside Lovett’s field notebook. “If, in fact, this was carved onto a foundation stone, its significance is negligible. As part of the building’s footings, the foundation stones aren’t visible. Chthonic in nature, such stones are symbolic of the grave and often carved with a message not meant to be seen by the living.”

“And on that cheery note, we need to hit the road.” She handed him the Templar signet ring.

About to replace the ring in its plastic bag, Caedmon had a sudden change of heart. Instead, he slipped it on his right ring finger. A perfect fit.

Noticing Edie’s quizzical expression, he shrugged.

“For safekeeping.”

“But I thought that you thoroughly searched the premises,” Mercurius replied, surprised to learn that the meddlesome Brit had discovered something inside Jason Lovett’s cottage.

“I did search it!” Saviour exclaimed, clearly agitated. “But I tell you, I just saw Aisquith and his bitch haul a metal box into their hotel room. I’m so
vlakas!
No! Stupid doesn’t begin to describe me. How could I have missed—”

“Shhh. Calm down,
amoretto
. The pair has obviously found Dr. Lovett’s research material.” In the process of watering an indoor lemon tree, Mercurius set the galvanized can on the nearby potting table and shifted the cordless phone to his other ear. “As with all problems, this one has a solution.” Although, at the moment, he didn’t know what that might be.

“I can deal with those two the same way that I dealt with Jason Lovett.”

Mercurius hesitated. “I’m in a quandary and must ponder this new development before I make a decision,” he said, stowing his ego lest he reach a poorly contrived solution.

“The Englishman is fucking his woman as we speak.” A child of the streets, Saviour nastily chortled. “They’re not going anywhere any time soon. Although if all goes according to plan, soon they’ll both be coming.”

Mercurius let the crass remark pass in silence. “I will speak with you shortly,
amoretto
.”

Sighing, uncertain how to proceed, he disconnected the phone and set it beside the watering can. He then pinched a yellow leaf from a slender branch. As he rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger, the plucked leaf released a delicate lemony scent. Lamb meatballs wrapped in lemon leaves was one of Saviour’s favorite dishes and always elicited an exuberant round of compliments. Given to strong emotions, his
eromenos
tended to overreact. An endearing quality, one that Mercurius had learned to temper with a firm hand.

Had Hadrian been forced to temper the high-spirited Antinous?
he wondered.

An interesting question, the play of opposites the beating heart of pederasty.

In ancient Greece, the relationship between a mature man, the
erastes
, and an adolescent boy, the
eromenos
, had been idealized. And ritualized courtship was an integral part of the relationship. The ancients recognized that mentoring was a key component in a boy’s education. How else would a youth learn to be a wise and prudent man? Saviour Panos had been a swaggering, beautiful eighteen-year-old man-child when they first met. Seven years later, he was still beautiful but not quite as brash.

Picking up the cordless phone, Mercurius left the conservatory. Through the window, he noticed that his next-door neighbor had just pulled into the driveway. The neighbors would undoubtedly be shocked if they knew the true nature of the relationship with his “nephew.” For nearly two decades, he’d resided in the same upscale neighborhood of lawyers and doctors and much-maligned financial planners. Good people who conducted their lives by the light of day but who lived in a state of darkness. No different from the “good” people of Thessaloniki.

Once the Jews had been expelled from the city in the spring of 1943, the good people went wild. Like devouring locusts, they looted vacant Jewish homes and warehouses, the Greeks convinced that Uncle Ezra had been hiding a fortune in gold and silver beneath the floorboards. Under the house. Even in the coffin, the thievery extended to the Jewish necropolis on the outskirts of Thessaloniki. The Nazis contributed to the hysteria by dynamiting the city’s synagogues.

To everyone’s keen disappointment, there was no hidden gold. There were other valuables—furniture, pianos, clothing—all of which were carefully packed and shipped to Germany.

Greek culture saturated with the notion of divine justice, the citizens of Thessaloniki paid heavily for their shameful behavior, enduring two years of privation. Food, fuel, and other basic necessities were in short supply. Hundreds perished from hunger. His own mother, forced to let go of the servants, took in laundry and learned to cook. Mercurius and his two sisters collected tinder in a small red wagon to ignite their mother’s pitiful cook fire. One day, toward the end of the occupation, he saw a Nazi officer leaving his mother’s bedroom. That night, a chicken miraculously appeared in their stewpot.

Soon after the war ended, the de Léon family immigrated to Chicago, a hirsute uncle with two spare bedrooms opening his door. In an episode similar to the one with the German officer, Mercurius caught his uncle Nikos buttoning his trousers as he left his mother’s bedroom. At the time, he’d considered it an act of disloyalty to his dead father. It wasn’t until many years later that he realized Melina de Léon had been forced to trade the only commodity she had—her extraordinary beauty—to provide for her children. Not only did Uncle Nikos, a butcher, daily provide fresh meat, he provided something that turned out to be priceless to Mercurius—a college education.

In his teen years, knowledge had been an escape. From the drudgery of mopping up entrails in his uncle’s butcher shop. From the shameful guilt of finding Rock Hudson more attractive than Elizabeth Taylor. In his twenties, while a doctoral candidate at the University of Chicago, knowledge became a gateway. A mind-blowing, consciousness-altering entry to the other side.

And, then, like a mugging in a dark alley, knowledge became a dangerous thing.

It was 1966. Twenty years earlier, the first of the Dead Sea Scrolls had been discovered by Arab Bedouin in the caves of Qumran. The scrolls, consisting of some nine hundred separate documents, had been hidden by a cloistered sect of Jews known as the Essenes. Contemporaries of the Christian Messiah, they’d maintained an impressive library in their secret grotto.

The amazing discovery proved to be the largest cache of biblical texts ever found. Moreover, the scrolls were of immense value to all three religions of the Book, containing writings from the Old Testament, noncanonical Apocryphal texts, and various sectarian manuscripts. All uncensored and unedited. And
that
worried religious leaders who feared the scrolls might ultimately prove “sacrilegious.” A direct challenge to accepted orthodoxy.

Early on, Mercurius became fascinated with one scroll in particular—the famous Copper Scroll. He’d just completed his doctoral work in ancient and extinct Semitic languages and had finagled a prestigious appointment at the Archaeological Museum in Amman, Jordan, to study the unique metal scroll. Unique, because of all the hundreds of scrolls, it was the only one
not
written on parchment or papyrus.

Unearthed in 1952, a preliminary translation was made, the Copper Scroll once again proving unique in that it didn’t contain
any
biblical scripture or commentary. Instead, it contained a detailed list of sixty-four different locations where an immense treasure trove of gold and silver had
supposedly
been hidden.

Was it any wonder that he’d been thrilled at the prospect of traveling to Jordan to study those twenty-three pieces of copper?

From the onset, Mercurius thought it odd that the scroll had been scribed on copper
—of all materials!
—and composed in an early square-form Hebrew script with intermittent Greek letters. An avid fan of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s, he approached the Copper Scroll like a detective rather than an academic.