The Lost Crown of the Knights Templar

22 Canto in the Dark

Nina woke to the sound of chanting, the likes of which made her flesh crawl, even in the state of heavy inebriation she found herself. She couldn’t recall how she’d fallen into a slumber, or coma by the heaviness of it, but she remembered a burlap hood being pulled over her head before several strong hands subdued her from behind the chair she was sitting on.

“Dr. Hooper! Dr. Victor!” she cried out in the solitary darkness that was wrung around her body like a heavy wool blanket on a summer’s day. Nina’s mind opened little by little, allowing her to remember bits and pieces of what happened, but she could hardly breathe. By the choking humidity that aggravated the heat, she figured that she was probably not in the Nirvana Public Morgue anymore.

Her heart pounded as the deep masculine voices repeated the litany over and over, only broken by the sound of a bell to divide each verse. A crescendo in volume echoed through the structure she was in. Nina reluctantly reached out into the blackness.

“Oh God, please, don’t let me touch a cadaver… or a spider,” she mumbled. Her tongue was numb in her dry mouth, her sight worthless in the dense darkness. But she would gladly have sacrificed her hearing instead. Their cantos in hierarchal voices terrified her to her core. It was not the aspect of the unknown that frightened Nina, or the sinister sound of monks singing odes in voices with the power of an Iron Maiden concert. Something in the words, the words she did not understand, appealed to her soul, beckoning like a beautiful nightmare. It promised the sublime pain of redemption and the calling of higher orders, and that made her tremble.

Her fingertips found cold stone, slightly rugged, and under her body a slab of the same composition. Soft wool cradled her body, draped over the stone to make her more comfortable.

Maybe it’s your funeral shroud, her inner voice warned.

A loud bellow ensued from one man, and the chants ceased instantly, followed by a deafening gust of wind that roared through the place. Under Nina’s hand, the stone wall trembled under the force of the din. Inadvertently she began to weep. Fear and uncertainty mated in her heart, but it was the sheer power of the moment that shook her to tears, the power of something so awesome that she could hardly breathe in its magnificent presence.

Chains clattered, startling her enough to cease her crying for the sake of ascertaining the nature of the sound. Nina sat shivering, cold, in the pitch-blackness of what she construed to be a cavernous prison, listening. Heavy steel ground like nails on a chalkboard, hoisting up something big while the men started their final aria.

She remembered their hoods over shadowed faces, giving them the illusion of not being human and robbing them of individuality. Now she was putting that image together with their perfect voices, deep male voices in unison — quite the opposite of their hoodies and sweats at the morgue.

Aside from a slight headache, Nina actually felt fine otherwise. Physically, she had no injuries or discomfort, a strange occurrence for someone who had been taken by force. Gradually she became used to the powerful song, but the words disturbed her immensely. In her quest to procure King Solomon’s diamonds, she had learned much about the binding of catastrophes into stones by her Egyptian alchemist colleagues. The names of demons written in the Testament of Solomon whirled in her memory like a thousand colors poured into a maelstrom, difficult to isolate, but some of the names had stuck in the process.

Latin was not Nina’s strong suit, yet she recognized root words like infestus, forneus, and malefica. Not names, per se, but unsettling words normally used in conjunction with nefarious deities. In a sea of noise, their chants grew more and more forceful, almost violent, until with another bell chiming, it all stopped. Nina held her breath, too scared to whimper. Nothing but the dampened fury of that previous gust prevailed, bring a restlessness to the fresh emptiness.

Eventually she heard men’s voices in casual discussion that she could tell by ear were moving in various directions. She imagined them moving all about the place by how the sound was traveling. At once, a man spoke right in front of her. “Did you enjoy the sermon, sister?”

Nina jumped at the phenomenon. He’d been invisible to her, she thought, until he moved into a growing light against the wall behind him. In fact, he’d been standing in front of her all the time, masquerading as a shadow, but it was her own distorted perception that had deceived her.

“I love the song, but the lyrics suck,” she retorted indifferently.

To her surprise, he chuckled at her snide comment and called out, “Ayer, she is with us!”

When the man had moved into the light, Nina realized that she was not locked in some chilly prison chamber after all. There was no door, no obstruction, to stop her from leaving. The molten darkness had fooled her sight to the illusion of confinement, making her feel a right fool when she discovered the contrary. But she did not mention it.

Ayer, the man she’d seen on the screen at Sam’s apartment, stepped into the doorway. Physically, he was unremarkable, unlike the lion in his eyes. She could see that he was a leader none would question, but their obedience was not born from fear, rather from reverence.

“Dr. Gould, are you hungry?” he asked simply. Nina could not figure out what his intentions were, for his idle offer did not give any indication. Indifference slid through his question, yet he smiled warmly and held out his hand to her.

“Famished, actually,” she replied.

“Then come, have something to eat,” he suggested, and proceeded to stand aside, waiting patiently for her to creep out of the small room.

“I quite expected to be the meal, not the guest,” she jested without humor.

“Now why would you think us cannibals, madam?” he asked in amusement. Nina’s head was a bit dizzy from getting up too rapidly, but she carefully made her way to him in the slight light that reflected off the wall at the entrance. When she reached him, she gave him a solid look in the eye and shrugged, “Well, if you can kill security personnel and God knows who else in order to steal dead bodies, I would not expect morality to be in your nature.”

“Morality is a subjective term, madam,” he answered, unperturbed by her mild hostility. “We know why we do what we do, and the rest is a matter of speculation, judgement, and opinion, none of which means a thing to us.”

“Care to fill me in on that, mister…,” she asked.

“Call me Ayer, Dr. Gould. Ayer Molay of Troyes, in the Grand Est region of France. Maybe you have heard of it?” he asked in a charming manner.

“Patroclus the Martyr, as I recall, was spawned there. Am I correct?” she answered, keeping her tone cordial, even though her words were cast in contempt for her captor.

“Oui!” Ayres smiled. “You really are living up to your reputation as one of the world’s foremost historians, madam.”

“Merci,” she said, accepting his praise as she followed him down the stone corridor that looked more like that of a sports stadium than a hallway of some antique and secret meeting place. “But wasn’t he a very rich man before the drowning attempts and… you know, the ultimate beheading?”

“He was very wealthy, known for his charity and generosity,” Ayer replied, catching on to her intended disrespect.

“Like the Templar Knights,” she sneered, “possessing such riches behind a veil of piety.”

He gave her a long glare, but Nina pretended not to notice, wary of meeting eyes with him. “And like the Templars, his riches profited his good deeds nothing in the eyes of his intolerant critics.”

“Aye, leading other converts into the claws of those same persecutors,” she persisted.

“Madam, it is clear that you do not accept the beliefs of those you deem fools in the light of your obvious expertise, but I implore you to cease your war for the moment. At least enjoy a few minutes with us at the dinner table before continuing your war on us,” he suggested.

Nina was astonished at his docility towards her attacks, no matter how she tried to vex him. Another oddity was his fluent and well spoken English in person, particularly since she’d thought his message on Sam’s footage was only well rehearsed words.

“We understand absolutely that you would feel this way towards us,” he continued as they turned the corner and entered a kitchen with a modest table and chairs in the center. “Anyone would detest someone who kidnaps them, I am sure.”

“At least you do not feel bad for having committed a crime against me,” she raised an eyebrow. A few men stood around, waiting. On the table was a meal of ciabatta and olives, roast beef, and potatoes. “Please excuse the quality of the feast,” Ayer apologized. “We did not expect to eat tonight.”

“I would also lose my appetite if I ran around with the bodies of my friends, trust me,” she mumbled audibly. Ayer pulled out a chair for Nina and gestured for her to sit down.

“Please, have a seat, madam,” he requested. Nina looked around suspiciously, clearly having this notion that she could be seated just to be tied up or worse. The other men looked like ravenous wolves. They were dressed in jeans, sweats, sneakers, hoodies and sweaters — like average young men in casual attire, yet their demeanor was unnerving. Nina looked at their faces, now that she was afforded the chance, to better distinguish them in a line-up later.

She sat down. Apprehensively, they stared at her. The only sound in the kitchen was dead air from a police scanner and an old transistor radio, tuned in to some AM frequency station that played classic rock hits.

“Please, take what you wish onto your plate, Dr. Gould,” Ayer reassured her. They all watched as she filled her plate with a bit of everything, trying to take small portions, even though she was famished. When she was done, she placed her hands in her lap.

Motionless, the whole bunch of them stood watching her. Nina figured she had to say something, if only to kill the awkward atmosphere. “Aren’t you going to eat as well?” she asked inquisitively. Nina was met with a sudden charge, a rush of hungry men to the table. At her word, they found their permission, and it made Nina feel oddly flattered. She watched as they greedily dished up before each sitting down one by one as soon as their plates were stacked, wolfing down their meals.

“Aren’t you guys supposed to say grace or something?” she asked, trying to act dainty with a small morsel of roast beef on her fork. They knew better. If Nina’s manners would have permitted it, she would have buried her face in the plate and licked it clean.

“Say grace?” one of the men asked.

“Aye,” Nina frowned, flabbergasted that they didn’t practice such an obvious tradition, so relevant to their order. “You are Templars, are you not? Men of the cloth, practically? Do you not pray before you eat?”

A roar of laughter erupted at the table, with the solitary woman looking decidedly perplexed at their reaction. Eventually, the laughter dwindled to chuckles, until finally they just ate. Reluctantly, Nina joined in on the dinner, still bewildered. With the scratchy radio transmitter in the background, Nina found her question still unanswered.

Frustrated, as she was with Sam’s lack of disclosure back at the apartment — and similarly desperate for answers — the petite historian tried not to be too pushy, considering her position.

“May I ask, what was the din I woke from? A service of some sorts?” she asked, expecting more ridicule, but Ayer gave Nina a straight answer. “A funeral.”