The Sword of the Templars

6

Holliday stepped out of the office. Ms. Branch, the secretary, was sitting at her desk. A large purse stood waiting beside her computer screen, now shrouded with a plastic cover. She was reading a pale green hardcover book. It looked very old; Holliday couldn’t see the title. Ms. Branch looked up, closing the volume, her index finger inserted to keep her place.

Holliday saw the cover. There was a picture of a beautiful young woman with long auburn hair inset into the fabric. The title was stamped beneath it in faded gold: Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery. Surprise, surprise; it seemed there was still a romantic little girl hidden inside the secretary’s arid soul. The book looked as though it might have come straight off Uncle Henry’s shelf of children’s books.

“Yes?” Ms. Branch said.

“According to his passport my uncle traveled to Canada a few months ago.”

“That’s right, in March.”

She didn’t even have to consult a day book. Interesting.

“Do you know where he went?”

“Toronto.”

“Do you know why?”

“Yes,” said Ms. Branch. “He went to see a colleague at the Centre for Medieval Studies. The University of Toronto. Dr. Braintree.”

“And then he went on to England and Frankfurt?”

“Yes.”

“Any particular reason?”

“Certainly,” said Ms. Branch, her tone crisp. “The Master’s Lunch.”

“The Master’s Lunch?”

“Balliol College, Oxford. They have a lunch for the senior Old Members every two or three years.”

“He went to England to have lunch?” Holliday asked.

“He had a great many friends at Oxford,” said Ms. Branch.

“Any in particular?”

“I wouldn’t know.” Icy.

“What about Frankfurt?”

“Are you asking me if I know why the professor went to Germany?”

“Yes.”

“I have no idea,” said Ms. Branch. She stiffened in her ergonomically designed chair. “And I’m not sure I like being interrogated.”

“I’m sorry,” said Holliday. “I didn’t mean it to sound that way.”

“I’m afraid it did.”

Holliday paused. Something was nibbling at his subconscious. More than a year ago Henry had been diagnosed with early-stage macular degeneration: his eyes were failing. He’d voluntarily stopped driving. He tried to visualize his uncle riding the Greyhound. Somehow it didn’t compute.

“How did he get to Toronto?”

“I drove him to Buffalo,” said Ms. Branch. “He caught the afternoon train.”

A little bit of color flushed her cheeks. Her eyelashes fluttered slightly. She clutched the book in her lap like a drowning sailor. She looked almost demure-Bambi caught in the headlights of an oncoming car. Years peeled away in an instant. Suddenly, Holliday got it. Curtains parted, the fog lifted, the veil dropped from before his eyes, and all was revealed.

Of course.

The old copy of Anne of Green Gables probably had come from Uncle Henry’s shelves. They were lovers, or had been once upon a time.

It seemed strange now-and maybe high on Peggy’s ee-uw scale-but not so strange if you went back forty-three years to young Caroline Branch’s arrival in Fredonia, hormones freshly released from the all-girl confines of the Albany Academy.

Holliday did the math: the mid-sixties, the Playboy Philosophy, the Summer of Love, and all that malar key; she would have been nineteen or twenty and fresh as a daisy. Uncle Henry would have been in his forties, very much the pipe-smoking debonair professor, maybe even a little bit of distinguished gray at the temples. Hugh Hefner with an education.

Teacher and student for as long as it lasted and maybe longer than that. It wouldn’t be the first time in academia that a professor had bedded a coed. Henry had never married and, according to the nameplate on her desk, neither had Ms. Branch. Maybe it really was an old-fashioned love story. He stared at the secretary with fresh eyes.

“Do you have any other questions?” Ms. Branch asked stiffly, perhaps reading his mind a little.

“Not right now.”

“It really is getting quite late,” she prompted baldly.

“We won’t be much longer.”

Holliday turned on his heel and went back into the office, shutting the door behind him. Peggy was sitting in front of Henry’s computer, trying passwords.

“Try Caroline,” said Holliday, keeping his voice low.

“What?” Peggy asked, brow wrinkling.

“The password. Try Caroline.”

“But…”

“Later. Just try it.”

Peggy gave him a look, but she typed the name into the slot and hit return.

“Nothing,” she said. She sounded almost relieved.

“Try Caroline Branch, all one word,” he instructed. She typed. She stared at the screen.

“I’ll be damned,” she whispered. “It worked.”

“I think they were lovers back in the day,” explained Holliday quietly.

Peggy snorted. “Grandpa, you old dog!”

“What kind of files do you see?”

“The usual stuff. Looks like a lot of old lectures in his ‘My Documents’ files. One called ‘Letters,’ another labeled ‘Expenses.’ ‘Graduate students.’ ‘Tutorials.’ Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing about a sword anyway.” She glanced up at Holliday. “Presumably that’s what we’re looking for.”

“Is there an e-mail account?”

“Grandpa Henry using e-mail? Come on, now.”

“Grandpa Henry having a love affair with Ms. Branch?” Holliday grinned.

“Point taken,” said Peggy. “I’ll check.” She tapped a few keys. “You’re right. There’s a Hotmail account: medievalscholar99@hotmail.com.”

“What’s the last message he sent?”

“It’s to medievalscholar123@hotmail.com,” said Peggy. “Sent a week ago.”

“What’s the subject line?”

“It’s a thank-you for a reply from the 123 person. The subject line for the original message is ‘QUERY.’ ”

“What does it say?”

“It says: ‘Dear Henry, as I suggested to you on your visit it looks like you have some early combination of a Book/Masonic-Pigpen/Elian problem going on, but without the key I’m afraid it’s probably indecipherable. There’s no mention of it anywhere in the literature that I can find. There’s a fellow in Jerusalem named Raffi Wanounou who knows a lot about crusader castles; maybe he can point you in the right direction. He works at the Institute. Sorry I can’t be more help. It was nice seeing you in March. Hope things went well with Donald. Keep in touch.’ It’s signed Steven Braintree.” Peggy made a face. “There’s such a name as Braintree?”

“It’s part of Metropolitan Boston. John Quincy Adams was born there,” said Holliday. “Apparently this particular Braintree is a professor at the University of Toronto.”

“What’s all this ‘Book/Masonic-Pigpen/Elian’ stuff?” Peggy frowned. “It’s all gobbledygook.”

“I think he’s talking about codes,” answered Holliday. “You ever read a book called The Key to Rebecca by Ken Follett? They did a TV movie of it back in the eighties with Cliff Robertson.”

“Not my era.”

“It was about a code based on a Daphne du Maurier novel called Rebecca.”

“Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine. 1940. Alfred Hitchcock.”

“The forties is your era?”

“Absolutely.” She grinned. “All that noir stuff. Great lighting, everybody smoking cigarettes.”

“I thought you quit.”

“I did. Sort of.”

Holliday sighed. Peggy was going off on one of her tangents. He headed her off at the pass.

“Anyway, the book was used as the key for the code. I think that’s what the e-mail means when Braintree refers to ‘book.’ Pigpen is sometimes called the Masonic Code, which sort of fits in with the sword. I have no idea what ‘Elian’ refers to.”

“Did Grandpa have some particular interest in codes?”

“Not that I knew of,” said Holliday, shaking his head.

They spent another few minutes browsing through Uncle Henry’s files without success, then gave it up, retreating under the barrages of psychic artillery coming through the closed door from Ms. Branch’s direction. They drove back to the Hart Street house and spent the next two hours going through Uncle Henry’s study and anywhere else they could think of, looking for anything else that might shed some light on the sword wrapped in the flag and Henry’s reasons for hiding it away so carefully, including a close look at the file of correspondence in the old man’s desk. The only thing they came up with of any interest at all was Henry’s invitation to the Balliol College Old Master’s Lunch with an obscure message scrawled on the back:

Oxford 4:20 Abingdon Express-40

bus/Reading train/Reading toward

Carmarthen change Newport toward Arrive

Trains Wales-Holyhead to Leominster. Will

pick up. No cabs. L’Espoir, Lyonshall, Kingston,

Herts. 44-1567-240-363

“Directions from Oxford to Leominster, in Her efordshire,” said Peggy, pronouncing it “Lemster.” “I know it’s pronounced that way because a Welshman once corrected me.”

“There’s a place in Massachusetts with the same name,” said Holliday, “They pronounce it ‘Lemon-Stir, ’ home of Foster Grant sunglasses and the original plastic pink flamingo.”

“Your brain must be a very strange place,” said Peggy, laughing.

“In my business your head tends to get clogged with a lot of irrelevancies. Take horses. Did you know Adolf Hitler had a thoroughbred named Nordlicht, or North Light, and that it died on a plantation in Louisiana in 1968? Or that George Armstrong Custer was riding a horse named Victory at the Little Big Horn, not Co manche for instance? Or the fact that Teddy Roosevelt was the only one of his Rough Riders at San Juan Hill who had a horse at all?”

“And I’ll bet you know its name,” said Peggy.

“Of course.” Holliday grinned. “It was called Little Texas. By the time they got to San Juan Hill the horse was exhausted, so Roosevelt had to dismount and lead the charge on foot.” He laughed. “Although I think it probably had more to do with public relations; didn’t look good in the papers to be the only one in the saddle.”

“That’s enough history,” said Peggy, holding up her hands in defeat. “Let’s go eat.”

“Gary’s Diner again?” Holliday said.

“Let’s try something more upscale,” suggested Peggy.

Upscale in Fredonia, New York, meant the White Inn, an outsized mid-nineteenth century clapboard farmhouse with an overdone columned portico and a wrought iron fence that made it look like an imitation of its namesake in Washington, D.C. According to Peggy they served a mean chocolate martini in the lounge and great prime rib in the dining room. Holliday let Peggy have the prime rib while he ordered the baby spinach and shrimp.

“You sure you don’t want the prime rib?” Peggy asked. “That thing on your plate looks like an appetizer.”

Holliday looked at the immense slab of meat Peggy was happily carving her way through. It looked like enough to feed a small army and came complete with a giant baked potato swimming in butter and sour cream, butter beans, and a side salad besides. She popped a forkful of meat into her mouth, then tore up a dinner roll and used it to swab up a small puddle of au jus that was wending its way dangerously close to the baked potato and its sour cream and dripping butter pat summit.

Holliday speared a shrimp.

“You’re young. I’m old. Gotta watch my figure.”

“I’m like a hummingbird,” said Peggy, scooping up some baked potato. “I have to eat my own weight every day or I fade away.” She ate some butter beans. “And you’re not old, Doc, you’re distinguished.”

Holliday looked at her fondly. In jeans and a T-shirt Peggy could probably pass for a freshman at the university. He, on the other hand, had salt-and-pepper hair that was now considerably more salt than pepper, used reading glasses, wore Dr. Scholl’s in his shoes, and occasionally felt twinges of arthritis in his joints. She was still climbing uphill in the morning of her life, and he was sliding slowly down in the early evening; a world of difference.

“Easy for you to say,” he said wistfully. Who was it who said that youth was wasted on the young?

“George Bernard Shaw,” he said.

“Huh?” Peggy asked.

“Nothing,” said Holliday.

Peggy sliced off another chunk from the slab on her plate.

“Speaking of old, what are we supposed to make of Grandpa Henry and the secretary?”

“He wasn’t always old.”

“He didn’t mention her in the will.”

“I’m not surprised. Wills are public documents, and discretion is clearly important to her,” he shrugged. “Besides, he may have already given her his bequest.”

“What do you mean?”

“She was reading a copy of Anne of Green Gables when we came into the office.”

“So?”

“It was a first edition.”

“You think Grandpa gave it to her?”

“Probably,” he nodded. “You still have that BlackBerry machine?”

“I’ll have you know it’s called a personal digital assistant,” said Peggy airily, swabbing a piece of prime rib in a generous blob of horseradish. “Or sometimes ‘CrackBerry’ for its addictive qualities.”

“You have it with you?”

“Always,” nodded Peggy. She put down her fork, rummaged around in the old denim messenger bag she used as a purse, and eventually pulled out the flat little rectangle of black plastic.

“See if you can find out what a first edition of Anne of Green Gables is worth.”

Peggy tapped away briefly, using thumbs instead of fingers. The device reminded Holliday of the all-knowing featureless black slabs in the epic space movie 2001. Except, he thought, 2001 the year was long gone, the slab fit into one hand, and this time we are the monkeys.

Peggy’s eyes widened.

“Twelve thousand five hundred dollars,” she said, awed.

“What did I tell you?” said Holliday. He ate another shrimp. “The Anne book probably isn’t the only thing he gave her.”

“That sounds like the punch line to a Marx Brothers joke.”

“I’m serious.”

“He must have cared for her,” she said. “I wonder why he never made it formal.”

“Maybe she didn’t want to get married. Maybe he liked the status quo.” Holliday shrugged. “We’ll probably never know. Children never really know their parents; that goes double for nephews and grandfathers.”

“So what do we do now? About the sword and all that, I mean?”

“I’m not sure. The sword belongs in a museum, I know that much. Or we can sell it if you want. It’ll be worth more than the Anne of Green Gables, that’s for sure.”

“I don’t need the money.”

“Neither do I,” said Holliday.

“Why don’t we donate it to a museum in Grandpa’s name?” Peggy suggested.

“Good idea,” agreed Holliday.

“And the house?”

“Selling it, you mean?”

“I’ve got a three-room apartment in New York that I’m barely ever in. You live at the Point. We’re the only heirs. I don’t have any room for half that stuff.”

“Ditto.”

“Why not an auction?”

“Sounds good to me,” said Holliday, although he hated the idea of having to sort through his uncle’s possessions; history was one thing, but personal history was a different thing altogether. He wondered if they should quietly tell Miss Branch that she was welcome to a memento from the house if she wanted it. Maybe better to let sleeping dogs lie.

“Buy me one of those chocolate martinis in the lounge for dessert, and then we’ll go back to the house and start figuring out what we want to keep and what we want to let go. How’s that?”

“Deal,” agreed Holliday. Two of the frothy, too-sweet cocktails and a long-necked Heineken later they headed back to Hart Street, a few blocks away on the other side of Canadaway Creek.

It was almost fully dark by the time they turned off Forest Place and steered into the short cul-de-sac. Lights were on in the few houses on the tree-lined street, and a soft breeze was blowing, taking some of the edge off the early-summer heat.

“I love that smell,” murmured Peggy happily as they left her rental car at the curb. “Somebody’s burning leaves.”

That wasn’t right.

“In July?” Holliday said. They reached the stone wall in front of Uncle Henry’s house and turned up the walk.

Peggy squinted ahead into the gloom.

“What’s that in…”

The concussion from the explosion lifted them both off their feet, throwing them backward onto the ground, flaming debris and broken glass blossoming into the air as they fell. Holliday rolled with it, holding his arms up across his face. He got to his hands and knees just in time to see the giant fireball swallowing up the entire front of the house in an all-consuming whirlwind. A moment later Peggy groggily began struggling to her feet.

“Down!” Holliday yelled. Concussion, then blast, then fire: the first axiom of the thermochemistry of explosives. He lurched forward and bowled Peggy off her feet, tumbling them downward as the firestorm roared briefly overhead.

Out of the corner of his eye Holliday caught a flicker of shadowy motion and turned his head to follow it-a figure, hunched, carrying something, racing away from the house, heading through the trees. Peggy must have seen the man, as well.

“Get him!”

“Are you all right?”

“Yes! Yes! Just get him!”

Holliday scrambled to his feet again and ran forward, skirting the angry fire spitting out of the burning house in long fiery tongues. The blazing heat was already beginning to shrivel the young leaves on the surrounding trees. A bank of rosebushes planted on the protective flank of the old house burst into flames; the first early-summer flush of blooms turned to black ash in an instant. The upstairs windows began to explode like gunshots, and the first searching fingers of fire crept out through the tinder-dry shingles of the roof.

The shadow figure appeared again, outlined in the light. The figure turned, and for a split second Holliday had a glimpse of a startled face, pale and narrow, some sort of hood or cowl disguising the rest of his head. The eyes were wide and glistening. Then the man turned away, running hard toward the creek.

For a moment Holliday thought that the man might have a boat in the water, but at this time of the year the creek was too low for that, and besides, where would he go? The creek wound its way through the town and into the suburbs, finally emptying into Lake Erie; not the smartest escape route. Could he have a car waiting at one of the bridges along the route? It seemed too elaborate.

The man fell; Holliday heard the dull explosive grunt as he hit the earth. He picked himself up, but Holliday had gained valuable ground. For the first time he saw what the man was carrying: Uncle Henry’s sword, still in its ghoulish silken shroud. Burn down a house to cover his crime? Crazy. What was going on?

Broadbent the lawyer?

No; this man was tall and lean, legs pounding like a long-distance runner. Broadbent was built like a Tele-tubby. The purple one, Tinky-Winky or whatever the hell his name was. The one with the purse.

“Stop!” Holliday yelled, feeling like an idiot even as the word burst out of his mouth. The man was a thief and an arsonist; why would he stop? Holliday sprinted after his quarry, one eye on the ground in front of him looking for obstacles, the other on the runner.

He was breathing hard now, but he forced himself to go even faster. The thief had stolen Uncle Henry’s sword and burnt down a house full of memories-Holliday’s memories, the best ones from a childhood where they were few and far between. In the distance Holliday heard sirens.

The man fell again, tripping on a branch, almost losing the sword, and Holliday gained a few more yards. He twisted around one of the willows at the embankment and then jumped down onto the narrow strip of stony beach below. Holliday was hard behind him, close enough to see the reflective swoosh on the heel of the runner’s New Balance shoes.

The fugitive splashed into the water, pushing himself toward the opposite bank. The creek was no more than two feet deep at the foot of Uncle Henry’s property, but the rocks were slippery, covered with weed and algae. The man slipped, regained his balance, then slipped again. The breath was tearing out of Holliday’s lungs in angry gasps, but he was gaining. He slammed into the water. Ten, maybe fifteen feet away now, so close he could hear the other man’s ragged breathing as well as his own.

The running thief reached the far bank of the creek. There were only two ways to go. To the left, the bank was shallower, and led up to the football field where the Fredonia Hillbillies played. The right side was steep and wooded. He’d go left. Holliday swung that way, trying to cut him off. The runner reached the far bank then turned suddenly, throwing the silk pennant to one side and brandishing the sword.

Holliday pulled up short, arching back from the swinging blade. The man was no swordsman, but thirty inches of sharpened steel was daunting in anybody’s hand. He caught a better glimpse of his antagonist; not as young as he’d first thought, maybe late thirties, clean shaven, hair hidden under the hood of a black sweatshirt.

Ducking under the swing, Holliday lunged forward, shoulder dropping, and caught the thief in the chest, knocking him backward, half up the embankment. The thief swung the sword again, the blade slashing toward his head in a whistling arc. Holliday threw himself to one side as the sword came close to decapitating him.

The man turned, tossing the sword away, and scrambled up the bank, using both hands to haul himself upward. Holliday lunged again, managing to grip his attacker’s ankle. The man kicked back furiously, this time connecting, catching Holliday in the chin. Holliday fell away, stunned, then tumbled back down the embankment. By the time he got to his feet again the man who’d burned down Uncle Henry’s house and tried to steal the mysterious sword had vanished into the night.