The Last Templar

Chapter 82

T entatively, Tess reached out and touched it. She ran her hands over it, her eyes ratcheted wide, her imagination propelling her back through time to the days of the Knights Templar, to Aimard and his men and their final, fateful voyage on the Falcon Temple.

A tangle of images flooded her mind as she tried to remember Aimard's words. What had he said exactly? The chest was placed into a cavity that had been carved out of the back of the falcon's head. The remaining void had been filled with resin, then covered with a matching piece of wood that was hammered into place with pegs. That, too, had been sealed with resin.

She examined the back of the falcon's head closely. She could just about discern the marks of where resin had been packed in, and, feeling around carefully with trained fingers, she found the edges of the lid and the pegs that had held it in place. The seals all looked unscathed, and no water seemed to have seeped into the resin-covered cavities. From what she could see, it was highly likely that whatever had been locked away inside the chest was still safe and undamaged.

Looking around, she found two chunks of rock and used them as a hammer and chisel to break into the cavity. The first few layers of wood

flaked off easily, but the rest proved to be stubbornly solid. Searching around the beach, she came across a piece of rusted steel rebar and used its sharp, broken edge to scrape through the resin.

Working feverishly and with total disregard for any concerns of conservation the archaeologist in her would have insisted upon only weeks ago, she was able to claw her way under the timber lid and into the cavity. She could now see the edge of the chest, small and ornate. Wiping her sweaty brow, she scraped off enough of the resin from around the chest and used the rod to dislodge it.

Sinking her fingers around it, she finally managed to lift the small box out.

All of her excitement came surging back and she tried to control it, but it was next to impossible.

She actually had it in her hands. Although the chest was intricately decorated with silver carvings, it was surprisingly light. She carried it into the lee of a large rock where she could examine it closely.

There was an iron hasp with, not a lock, but a wrought-iron ring. She used the rock to hammer at the hasp until, finally, it came away from the wood and she was able to lift the lid of the chest and peer inside.

Carefully, she lifted out the chest's contents. It was a package, wrapped in what appeared to be an oiled animal skin much like the one Aimard had used to protect the astrolabe, and tied with leather thongs. Very slowly, she unfolded the skin. Nestling in it was a book, a leather-bound codex.

The instant she saw it, she knew what it was.

It was inexplicably familiar, its humble simplicity belying its prodigious contents. With trembling fingers, she lifted up the cover slightly and peered at the writing on the first sheet of parchment inside it. The lettering on it was faded but readable, and, as far as she could tell, the codex's contents were undamaged. She knew, with absolute certainty, that she was the first person to see it, the mythical treasure of the Knights Templar, ever since it was put into the chest seven hundred years ago by William of Beaujeu and entrusted to Aimard of Villiers.

Except that it was no longer a myth.

Cautiously, aware that this should be done in a laboratory or, at the very least, indoors but unable to resist the urge to get a better look, Tess opened the codex a bit wider and lifted up a sheet of parchment. She recognized the familiar, brownish tint of the ink used at the time made from a mixture of carbon soot, resin, wine dregs, and cuttlefish ink. The handwriting was difficult to decipher, but she recognized a couple of words, enough to know that it was written in Aramaic. She had encountered it occasionally in the past, enough to be able to identify it.

She paused, her eyes riveted on the simple manuscript in her hands.

Aramaic.

The language spoken by Jesus.

Her heart pounding noisily in her ears, she stared at parchment, recognizing more words here and there.

Very slowly, almost unwillingly, she began to fathom just what she held in her hands. And to realize who had first touched these sheets of parchment, whose hand had written these words.

They were the writings of Jeshua of Nazareth.

The writings of the man the entire world knew as Jesus Christ.