The Templar Heresy

60

In the grey light of early dawn, the Église Saint-Christophe des Templiers looked pretty much the same as it had done the previous night. A solid oblong building that almost radiated a sense of impressive age and perhaps even hinted at something of the bloody history of the Order that had created it nearly a millennium earlier.

They’d had to make a brief stop en route to their destination on the outskirts of Saint-Martory, where a dark blue van was parked in a lay-by, a solitary figure, clad entirely in black, standing beside the rear doors. Bronson had pulled in behind the other vehicle and stopped the car, exchanged a few words with the man waiting there, and been given two bulky objects. Immediately afterwards, the van had driven off at speed.

After their short diversion, they’d driven slowly into Montsaunès down the main road, the Route de Saint-Girons, through the village, and then stopped the car in the same open parking area they’d occupied the previous night, a position from which they both had a clear view of the front of the chapel.

The engine of the hire car made faint ticking noises as it cooled, and in the front seats Bronson and Angela settled down to wait.

At precisely seven o’clock, a tall figure, wearing a long dark coat and a flattish cap and leaning on a cane, walked slowly down the main road. At the chapel, he made his way across to the main doors, pulling an object from the pocket of his coat as he did so.

‘So that’s the first act of the drama completed,’ Angela said, watching as the man turned the key in the heavy lock and then opened both halves of the door. ‘Or rather the second act, I suppose,’ she added, as he vanished inside the building and the windows of the chapel fronting the road were suddenly illuminated by the flare of electric lights.

‘I hope he doesn’t hang around,’ Bronson remarked. ‘This is going to be difficult enough without innocent bystanders getting in the way.’

But it looked as if the old man was following his instructions, because a few seconds later the lights were extinguished and the caretaker re-emerged, closing, but not locking, the door behind him and retracing his steps somewhat hastily along the street.

‘That looks like our cue,’ Bronson said. ‘And even if we’ve got the timing wrong, I’d still like to get inside the building and have a look at it. Are you okay to do that?’

Angela nodded in a somewhat resigned manner, but immediately opened the door of the car.

‘Yes,’ she said, adjusting the fit of her light jacket. ‘I wish there was another way, but there isn’t. And we’ve come this far, haven’t we? Let’s get on with it.’

Bronson locked the car and they walked away, crossed the main road and strode over to the looming bulk of the ancient chapel. He turned the handle on the door, opened it and they stepped inside, flicking on the lights as they did so.

It took a few seconds for their eyes to adjust to the sudden brightness, and then they simultaneously looked up to stare at the painted ceiling high above them.

‘I see what that website meant,’ Angela said in amazement. ‘That really is incredible. I’ve never seen anything like it before.’

Above them, the apex of one brick arch reached to the roof of the chapel, while another arch of similar construction but slightly smaller was surmounted by a vertical wall pierced by three windows. Between those windows was the proof — if any were needed — of the identity of the order that had constructed the building: two very clear blood-red representations of the Templar cross, the croix pattée. But that was about the only faintly religious symbol that they could see.

The dominant feature of the hand-painted ceiling was a seemingly infinite number of stars, arranged in a regular pattern of rows and columns, which ran from one end of the ceiling to the other and across it from left to right.

‘Could they literally represent the universe?’ Angela murmured, craning her head back to try to see them more clearly. ‘Could they just be a symbol here in this chapel of what the Knights Templar saw in the night sky around them?’

‘Perhaps,’ Bronson said, sounding doubtful. ‘But if that was the intention, why are they all in straight lines? You would expect them to have made some attempt to represent the constellations that must have been visible to them. No, I don’t know what they’re supposed to represent, but I don’t think it was just the night sky.’

The stars weren’t the only oddity, not by a long way. In the central section of the ceiling and bounded by the two archways were two very clear borders, each formed from a double line of alternating black and white squares, while the inside of the border was marked by a double row of semicircles, the ends of these lines making contact with the junctions between the black and white squares. Each row of semicircles was shifted by one space from the other row to create a more complex pattern.

Bronson pointed upwards, towards one of the borders.

‘As far as I know,’ he said, ‘no expert on the Templars has ever visited this chapel and attempted to explain what any of this decoration means. I don’t profess to be an expert, but just looking at those borders, it seems clear enough to me that the kind of chequerboard pattern is meant to represent the Templar battle flag, the Beauseant, repeated dozens of times. That was one of the simplest flags of all time, just a black oblong above a white oblong. It looks to me as if the semicircular lines are intended to link the flags together, perhaps to emphasize the importance of brotherhood and fraternity to the order, the way that they both lived and died together, on and off the battlefield.’

Angela nodded.

‘That does make sense,’ she agreed, ‘but what about the rest of the symbols?’

For a few moments, they just stared up at the patterns.

Between those two borders were no fewer than twenty-two circles, many enclosing a unique design, though there were also three pairs of identical circles either side of the centreline of the pattern. Along the centreline itself were four unevenly spaced circles with decorated borders, and each appeared to contain another representation of the Beauseant. Flanking those were the pairs of matching circles, all containing patterns that could represent the petals of a flower, or possibly a large star. Close to the borders and on opposite sides were two significantly larger circles containing different, though similar, spoked designs. All those symbols were basically laid out in a coherent geometric pattern, but almost all of the other symbols were asymmetric and unique.

On one side were two overlapping circles, each containing a simple star pattern, while on the other was a line of eight circles, one an elaborate design that was twice the size of any of the others, and all slightly different. Most contained the same general type of star or petal pattern, but one held the painted image of the croix pattée, while at the opposite end from the large circle was what looked like a random pattern of oval shapes.

But there were two other features that also made no immediate sense to either Bronson or Angela.

‘Is that a dagger, or what?’ she asked, pointing upwards.

In fact, there were two painted symbols that looked something like daggers on the ceiling, and in both cases the handguard, the metal cross-piece designed to protect the fingers of the user, had a pronounced forward curve so that the ends pointed towards the sharpened tip of the weapon.

‘They could be, I suppose,’ Bronson replied. ‘I think that design of handguard was quite common in the mediaeval period. The idea was that you’d trap the blade of your opponent’s sword between the blade and the guard, and you could then twist the dagger to break his blade. What really puzzles me, though, is that pyramid design directly above the middle window.’

‘I was looking at that. There’s something strangely familiar about it.’

‘It would be more familiar to you if you were American,’ Bronson said. ‘It’s very like the pyramid shape that you see on the reverse of every one-dollar bill, under the legend Annuit Coeptis, which translates more or less as “He has smiled on our undertakings”. What’s even weirder is that the decorated circle at the apex of the pyramid up there is very like part of the other symbol that you’ll find on the same side of the same American bill. That’s a circle filled with stars above the other legend E pluribus unum.’

‘“From many, one”,’ Angela translated. ‘You’re right. Of course, that’s also the design of the Great Seal of the United States.’ She paused and looked at him. ‘I do find it a bit peculiar that we’re standing here in a twelfth-century Templar chapel in southern France, and two of the symbols painted on the ceiling bear more than a passing resemblance to the design of a modern American banknote. It’s really strange. The whole place feels to me like it’s more astrological or qabbalistic than religious, at least in the way that it’s been decorated.’

‘And this is all original, I suppose?’ Bronson asked.

‘According to what I read on the Web, this place basically hasn’t been touched since the beginning of the fourteenth century.’

They walked further into the chapel, looking up at the ceiling and noting other unusual symbols as they headed towards the altar, which is where they expected to find the entrance to the crypt, assuming Bronson’s deduction was correct and there was a chamber underneath the building.

It didn’t take a lot of effort to find it. Behind the altar, the stone floor was covered with a faded red carpet, but as they walked over it they both realized at the same moment that the floor was not entirely made of stone. The feeling under the soles of their shoes was completely different in the central section.

‘Bingo,’ Bronson said shortly. ‘That feels like a trapdoor.’

Quickly, they moved to opposite ends of the carpet and pulled it back to lay it against the wall. Set into the stone floor was a square wooden door, with a recessed metal ring on one side to allow it to be pulled open.

Bronson grabbed the ring and levered it up, pulling the door all the way open so that it lay back against the stone floor. Below the door and descending into the darkness underneath the chapel was a flight of stone stairs, a sight that gave Bronson an immediate and unpleasant sense of déjà vu.

‘Shades of Shobak Castle,’ he muttered, taking a torch out of his pocket and preparing to descend.

‘Surely there must be a light switch somewhere,’ Angela said. ‘I can’t believe the priest or the caretaker would have to use a torch every time he needed to go down there.’

Bronson shone the torch around the perimeter of the hole, then nodded and snapped off the light.

‘You’re right,’ he said, and reached out to flick a switch.

Immediately, the crypt was flooded with light from a couple of fluorescent tubes mounted on the ceiling. The two of them walked down the staircase, stopped at the bottom and stared around them.

As far as Bronson could tell, the crypt was about one third the size of the chapel above it, and was largely empty. In the spaces on both sides of the staircase a number of anonymous cardboard boxes had been stacked, presumably containing materials that would be needed in the chapel above, perhaps candles and the like. The walls on both sides were concealed behind old and faded hanging drapes, possibly in an attempt to provide a degree of insulation, because the crypt felt quite cold.

But the dominant feature of the underground chamber, the one thing that could never be ignored, was the design on the stone wall directly in front of the staircase. In colours that looked as vibrant as if it had only been painted a matter of days ago, the wall boasted a huge croix pattée, the most dominant and enduring symbol of the Knights Templar. And, as a further confirmation, suspended from two stone pegs directly below the symbol, an ancient rusted Templar battle sword hung, point downwards.

‘Well, that’s interesting and impressive,’ Bronson said, ‘but what I don’t see is anywhere that the relic we’re searching for could be hidden.’

‘That’s because you’re an amateur meddling in a world that belongs to the professionals,’ a cold voice spat from behind them.

Bronson and Angela whirled around to find themselves facing two men who had walked silently down the stairs and now stood just a few feet away, each holding a semi-automatic pistol and giving every impression that he knew how to use it.

It was Angela who reacted first.

‘You!’ she gasped, with a sharp intake of breath. She was staring at one of the two men. ‘I should have guessed.’