The Templar Heresy

54

Bronson and Angela bought two tickets and a slim guidebook, which explained what was known of the history of the place in multiple languages. The man who sold them the tickets told them in broken English that there were two guides conducting other people around the castle at that moment, and if they went up there straight away, they could probably tag on to the end of one of the tours.

‘I wonder how much of it was left when our mysterious mediaeval contact came here to carve his clue,’ Bronson mused as they walked down towards the castle.

‘That all depends on when he came. The place was built in 1115 and suffered a number of attacks that century and was finally captured in 1189. According to the guidebook, not much happened to it for the next couple of hundred years until the Mamluks decided it would be a useful strategic location for them to occupy, and they restored it during the fourteenth century.

‘My guess is that they probably left the castle within a hundred years or so, because their main focus and their power base was Egypt, not Jordan. Once they’d abandoned it, I don’t suppose it would have taken long for the local people to recognize that they had a massive supply of cut and shaped stone sitting up here on the top of the hill, just waiting to be carted off and used for other projects. It says here that there was once a large boundary wall surrounding the castle lower down the hill’ — Angela pointed over to the right — ‘about level with where we are now, in fact, and that’s completely disappeared. That would have been the first structure to be dismantled: I’ll bet that almost every house in the village at the bottom of the hill is built at least partly with stones that once formed the boundary wall and maybe the upper floors of the castle itself, because there’s virtually nothing left of them now.’

‘I just hope that the clue is still up here,’ Bronson said, ‘because if it’s on a stone that’s now a part of the wall of some village house, that’s the end of it.’

‘I don’t think you need worry. Both the clues we’ve found so far — the inscription and the letters and carving in the Western Wall Tunnel — were chiselled on to stones that were permanent features of the structures they were a part of. I’d imagine that this clue will be the same — on a foundation stone or something.’

The road led quite steeply down to the bottom of the narrow valley that lay between the visitor centre and the castle itself, and then ascended just as sharply around the left-hand side of the natural hill upon which the fortification had been built.

‘This looks to me like the path of the original approach road,’ Bronson suggested, ‘because there are no gates anywhere in the outer wall that I’ve seen so far.’

A couple of minutes later he was proved right, because the metalled road terminated in an open area that was more or less level and bounded on two sides by the walls of the castle. In the right-hand wall, close to where the two walls met, was what had clearly originally been the main entrance to the inner part of the fortification. It was a large stone gateway, closed by two heavy wooden doors, but it was immediately obvious to both Bronson and Angela that it was not substantial enough to have resisted a determined siege for any length of time.

‘The outer wall, the one that’s now vanished, would have been the first line of defence,’ Angela said. ‘The gateways in that would probably have been about twice the size of this one.’

A heavily built but somewhat sad-looking Jordanian trader had set up a wide stall against the left-hand wall, and regarded the passing visitors with dark eyes from under a flat cap, his heavy black eyebrows complemented by a broad and impressive black moustache. They glanced briefly at the wares on offer, then ignored the trader’s eager blandishments and turned right to walk through the open door and into the castle.

The exterior walls near the doorway appeared to be in good order, but when they stepped into the interior of the structure, that impression of solidity was immediately dispelled. It was at once apparent that the walls of the castle were in far better condition than what lay inside them. Most of the structures they saw were incomplete and many were tumbledown.

‘This doesn’t look good,’ Bronson said, glancing round at the disarray that surrounded them. ‘I don’t know where we’d even start searching.’

‘Nor do I,’ Angela replied, ‘but let’s at least try.’

They’d arrived at the castle only a few minutes behind one of the organized tours, and over to their right they could see and hear the guide explaining, in broken but intelligible English, exactly what the members of his group were looking at. They moved up, over the rock-strewn surface, and stood at the back of the dozen or so people who were listening to the Jordanian.

‘We can probably learn a lot just by hearing what he has to say,’ Angela murmured. ‘My guess is that he’ll do a circuit of the castle. At the very least that should orient us so that we know which bits are which, and hopefully give us a few pointers about where we should start looking.’

So they followed on, keeping within earshot of everything the guide said, and taking their turn to look in various small rooms within the castle and inspecting some of the fortifications that still formed part of the walls. These were generally speaking in good condition, no doubt because the stones that formed them were simply massive, in some cases well over three feet thick. Too massive, far too heavy and simply too inaccessible, in fact, to be attractive to any local Jordanian house-builder.

But what they didn’t see was any obvious sign of what they were looking for. There were clearly not hundreds but thousands of stones making up the structure of the castle, and their only clue was the ‘62 down’ notation they’d deciphered. When they discussed it, they’d assumed that it might refer to a particular stone located, for example, as part of the sixty-second course of stones below the battlements. But as soon as they’d seen the castle, they’d realized that that wouldn’t work because most of the battlements had been torn down over the centuries.

‘I think we’re wasting our time here,’ Angela said. ‘There’s been so much damage to the castle, and so much dismantling, that I have no idea what that notation could possibly mean.’

Bronson nodded agreement, his expression grim as he surveyed the piles of old stones and half-listened to the guide explaining the function of each structure when it had been standing.

‘I think you’re right,’ he said. ‘I hate to say it, but I think this might be the end of the trail.’

For another few minutes, they continued following the guide and the group of tourists, in the absence of any better ideas, their attention wandering because both of them now believed they were essentially just wasting their time.

‘I can’t believe we’ve come all this way only to find that the final link in the chain isn’t here — or if it is here, that we can’t find it because of the damage the castle has suffered over the centuries. That’s just so bloody unfair.’

The frustration in Angela’s voice was unmistakable.

Bronson shook his head. ‘It is,’ he agreed, ‘but because of the state this place is in, I just don’t think there’s any way of even working out where we should be looking.’

But just a few seconds later, he seized Angela’s arm and pulled her to a stop.

‘Did you hear what he just said? The guide, I mean?’ he asked.

Angela shook her head. ‘No, not really. I was thinking dark thoughts about the amount of time we’ve wasted, chasing shadows.’

‘Chasing shadows, maybe,’ Bronson said, a smile on his face, ‘but I think I know exactly where we need to look now that we’re here. It’s so obvious that I should have guessed it sooner.’

‘You know?’

‘I think so, yes.’

‘So tell me,’ Angela demanded.

‘I’ll do better than that,’ Bronson replied. ‘I’ll show you.’

He led her over to the edge of the path and to the remains of the internal boundary wall, then pointed down into the valley below, to the south of the fortification.

‘Do you see that, down there?’ he asked.

‘I see a lot of stuff. What am I supposed to be looking at?’

‘Pretty much at the bottom of the valley. What looks like a very small building or perhaps just a biggish box shape. Made of the same sort of stone as the castle. It’s not an old structure, though what’s underneath it has been there for millennia.’

Angela kind of sighted down his outstretched arm, then nodded.

‘Yes, now I see it,’ she said. ‘What is it?’

‘What every castle needs if it’s going to have the slightest hope of surviving a siege.’

For a moment, Angela looked blank, then she smiled and nodded.

‘Got it. A cistern, or a spring. Some kind of a source of water, anyway.’

‘Precisely,’ Bronson said. ‘I didn’t hear exactly what the guide said it was, but that was where they obtained their water when the place was under siege. And,’ he added, turning back and pointing towards an opening in the ground encased by two walls, ‘that’s the start of the staircase that they had to walk down in order to reach the water. Think it through. That staircase would have been one of the first things the Crusaders constructed when they built this castle, because there would have been no point in erecting any kind of a fortress here without having a water source and a protected access to reach it. And irrespective of what construction and destruction went on here over the centuries, the steps leading down to the well or the cistern would never have altered. So that’s where the clue is, on or near the sixty-second step below the entrance — that has to be what the reference to sixty-two down means — and all I have to do now is get down there and find it.’

‘Don’t you mean we have to go down there and find it?’

‘I think it’s best that I go alone,’ Bronson replied. ‘That staircase is almost certainly off-limits to visitors, and if both of us vanish somebody might well notice, which would be bad news. In fact, I think the best thing would be if you go back to the visitor centre right now and get in the car ready to leave. That way, if I am spotted and have to make a run for it, you’ll be ready and waiting to pick me up.’

Angela glanced at the deep shadow that filled the entrance to the long staircase and shook her head, apprehension washing over her.

‘You’ve got a torch and a camera?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’ Bronson handed her the keys to the hire car and then looked around them.

The party being escorted around the perimeter of the castle walls was virtually out of sight in front of them and, apart from two men who appeared to be examining the stones on the wall about forty yards behind them, there was nobody anywhere near them.

‘This is as good a time as any,’ Bronson said. ‘Go now. I’ll be as quick as I can.’

Angela stretched up, gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, then turned and walked away, heading back towards the castle gate and the road that led down to the visitor centre.

After a few seconds, she looked behind her, but Bronson was already out of sight.