Templar's Quest

52

Mont de la Lune, The Languedoc

1242 hours

Mad dogs and Englishmen …

Although the dog, to his credit, knew better than to attempt a perilous mountain climb without a safety harness. Cædmon, to his regret, did not, the ascent proving a savage undertaking. Far more dangerous than he’d originally envisioned.

Or perhaps his vision had been clouded by the same obsessive desire that had led more than a few Grail knights to an untimely death.

Shoving that unpleasant thought aside, he hoisted himself upward. The trick was not to think about the fact that he was ‘balanced’ on a narrow protuberance of granite no more than fifteen inches wide, while his hands clung to a second, equally narrow, protuberance located a metre above his head. Unable to see the crescent-shaped niche from his current position, he reckoned that he had another twenty metres to traverse.

‘Shite,’ he muttered, unintentionally jabbing his index finger against a sharp-edged stone. Skin punctured, blood oozed down his hand.

He cautiously tiptoed across the granite shelf. Then, very slowly, he removed his rucksack and turned around. Leaning against the rough-hewn wall, he took a moment’s ease. In the far distance, he heard the merry tinkle of sheep bells. In the near distance, an eagle soared in graceful arabesques.

Rumour had it that Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the eighteenth-century philosopher and part-time daredevil, would spend hours perched on this very sort of sheer precipice, from which he’d gleefully toss stones as he imagined them being smashed to smithereens on the rocky gulch below.

Another mad man, Cædmon mused as he rubbed his bloody finger against his trouser leg. It was a warm day and his shirt was soaked through with perspiration. He was half tempted to disrobe and fling the drenched garment over the edge like one of Rousseau’s rocks.

Rested, he hefted the rucksack on to his shoulders. Turning towards the granite crag, he continued to climb. Extending. Then pulling. Occasionally clinging. A slow but steady ascent. The sun beat down mercilessly on his head. He ignored it as best he could. A small rock shifted beneath his feet. He scrambled. Found another foothold just as the rock broke free. A deadly projectile hurtling through space.

Cædmon chanced a downward glance.

A mistake.

Seized with an unexpected attack of vertigo, he leaned into the coarse rock, afraid to breathe, move or even blink for that matter. A bird on a wire, wings clipped.

Panic-stricken, he tightened his grip on the rocky knob. A drop of blood plopped on to his face from the punctured finger, rolling down his cheek to his chin. An instant later, it joined the rock at the bottom of the cliff. Ghoulish images flashed across his mind’s eye. Broken bones. Crushed spine. Smashed skull.

‘Any moment now I’m going to plunge to my –’

Stiffen your backbone, man. To quote the American commando, you seek ‘the Holy fucking Grail’.

Cædmon gulped a deep breath. Then another. A soft breeze wafted across his cheek. A gentle caress. The irrational fear subsided. Courage shored, he extended his arm. Securing a handhold, he navigated to the next ledge.

Upsy-daisy.

Long minutes later, he reached the crescent-shaped opening. Peering inside, he saw a shallow grotto about seven feet in height, strewn with rocks and boulders. An inauspicious vault for the most sacred relic in all of Christendom.

Undeterred, he heaved his torso into the breach, wiggling his lower body as he scrambled into the narrow cavity. Crouched on his haunches, he opened his rucksack and removed a torch. Flipping it on, he aimed the beam around the cave. Which is when he saw a set of skeletal remains.

I don’t believe it … it’s the bloody Grail Guardian!

Thrilled by the discovery, he rushed forward, stumbling on a loose stone in his haste.

Kneeling beside the bones, he shoved the torch under his arm as he examined several bits of metal that looked to be a crudely fashioned belt buckle. A dried, translucent snake skin was draped over the bloke’s clavicle bone; a fragile strip of boot leather clung to his bony foot; and several horn buttons were scattered about. Everything else had long since disintegrated.

Above the skeleton, a Latin phrase had been clumsily scrawled in what appeared to be a manganese pigment. Ad Augusta Per Angusta. ‘To holy places through narrow spaces.’ Beneath the text was a crudely rendered Cathar cross.

An evocative message scribed for the ages. And while it wasn’t proof positive, it strongly suggested that these were the mortal remains of one of the four Cathars who escaped the Montségur citadel.

Cædmon perused the area, wondering if a skeletal companion lurked in the near vicinity. As he peered through the crescent opening, the Pyrenees unfolded in the airy distance like a granite accordion. The last image imprinted on the Cathar’s dying brain. Although a lonely place to spend eternity, the view was splendid. To die for, an irreverent wag might say.

‘All right, old boy, where’s the blasted Grail?’ he demanded cheekily. He shone the torch into the far reaches of the stone sepulchre, surprised to see that the cave extended deeper into the mountain.

Hope springing, Cædmon ambled through a craggy chasm which, in turn, led to another grotto. The womb of the Mother.

At a glance, he could see that there were no bones, no inscriptions and no Grail.

Angered to think that the Knights Templar may have beaten him to the prize, he turned in a slow circle, searching for a stone depository where the relic could have been stashed. His attention was drawn to a massive slab that jutted out from the grotto wall. He walked towards it, the unusual rock formation meriting further investigation.

A Cathar cross adorned the thick block of stone. Intrigued, he peered behind the slab.

‘I’ll be damned,’ he murmured upon discovering that the slab hid a passageway approximately five and a half feet high and twenty inches wide. ‘To holy places through narrow spaces.’

Bending his head, Cædmon stepped into the passage.