The Templar legacy

5:25 AM

DE ROQUEFORT SLAMMED THE DOOR SHUT BEHIND HIM. THE iron clanged against the metal frame with the retort of a rifle, and the lock engaged.

"Is all ready?" he asked one of the assistants.

"As specified."

Good. Time to make his point. He strolled ahead through the subterranean corridor. He was three floors below ground level, in a part of the abbey first occupied a thousand years ago. Endless construction had transformed the rooms surrounding him into a labyrinth of forgotten chambers, now used mainly for cool storage.

He'd returned to the abbey three hours ago with Lars Nelle's notebook and Royce Claridon. The loss of Pierres Gravees du Languedoc, the book from the auction, weighed heavy on his mind. He could only hope the notebook and Claridon would supply him with enough of the missing pieces.

And the dark woman-she was a problem.

His world was distinctly male. His experience with women minimal. They were a different breed, of that he was sure, but the female he'd confronted on the Pont St.-Benezet seemed almost alien. She'd never shown even a hint of fear, and handled herself with the cunning of a lioness. She'd lured him straight to the bridge, knowing precisely how she planned to make her escape. Her only mistake was in losing the journal. He had to know her identity.

But first things first.

He entered a chamber topped by pine rafters that had remained unaltered since the time of Napoleon. A long table spanned the room's center, upon which lay Royce Claridon, prone on his back, his arms and legs strapped to steel spikes.

"Monsieur Claridon, I have little time and I need much from you. Your cooperation will make everything so much simpler."

"What do you expect me to say?" Desperation laced the words.

"Only the truth."

"I know little."

"Come now, let us not start with a lie."

"I know nothing."

He shrugged. "I heard you in the archives. You are a reservoir of information."

"All that I said in Avignon came to me then."

De Roquefort motioned to a brother who stood across the room. The man stepped forward and laid an open tin container on the table. With three extended fingers, the brother scooped out a sticky white glob.

De Roquefort pulled off Claridon's shoes and socks.

Claridon raised his head to see. "What are you doing? What is that?"

"Cooking grease."

The brother rubbed the grease onto Claridon's bare feet.

"What are you doing?"

"Surely you know your history. When the Templars were arrested in 1307, many means were used to extract confessions. Teeth were pulled out, the empty sockets probed with metal. Wedges were driven under nails. Heat was used in a variety of imaginative ways. One technique involved greasing the feet, then exposing the oiled skin to flame. Slowly the feet would cook, the skin falling away like meat from a tenderloin. Many brothers succumbed to that agony. Those who managed to survive all confessed. Even Jacques de Molay fell victim."

The brother finished with the grease and withdrew from the room.

"In our Chronicles, there's a report of one Templar who, after being subjected to foot burning and confessing, was carried before his inquisitors clutching a bag with his blackened foot bones. He was allowed to keep them as a remembrance of his ordeal. Wasn't that kind of his inquisitors?"

He stepped over to a charcoal brazier that burned in one corner. He'd ordered it prepared an hour ago and its coals were now white hot.

"I would assume you thought this fire was to warm the chamber. Below ground is chilly here in the mountains. But I had this flame forged just for you."

He rolled the cart with the brazier within three feet of Claridon's bare feet.

"The idea, I'm told, is for the heat to be low and steady. Not intense-that tends to vaporize the grease too quickly. Just as with a steak, a slow flame works best."

Claridon's eyes went wide.

"When my brethren were tortured in the fourteenth century, it was thought God would fortify the innocent to handle the pain, so only the guilty would actually confess. Also-and quite convenient, I might add-any confession extracted from torture was nonretractable. So once a person confessed, that was the end of the matter."

He pushed the brazier to within twelve inches of the bare skin.

Claridon screamed.

"So soon, monsieur? Nothing has even happened yet. Have you no endurance?"

"What do you want?"

"A great many things. But we can start with the significance of Don Miguel de Manara Reading the Rules of the Caridad. "

"There's a clue there that relates to the abbe Bigou and the tombstone of Marie d'Hautpoul de Blanchefort. Lars Nelle found a cryptogram. He believed the key to solving it lay in the painting." Claridon was talking fast.

"I heard all that in the archives. I want to know what you failed to say."

"I know nothing more. Please, my feet are frying."

"That's the idea." He reached into his cassock and removed Lars Nelle's journal.

"You have it?" Claridon said in amazement.

"Why so shocked?"

"His widow. She possessed it."

"Not anymore." He'd read most of the entries on the trip back from Avignon. He thumbed through until he found the cryptogram and held the open pages up for Claridon to see. "Is that what Lars Nelle found?"

"Oui. Oui."

"What's the message?"

"I don't know. Truly, I don't. Can you not remove the heat? Please, I beg you. My feet are in agony."

He decided a show of compassion might loosen the tongue quicker. He slid the cart a foot back.

"Thank you. Thank you." Claridon was breathing fast.

"Keep talking."

"Lars Nelle found the cryptogram in a manuscript that Noel Corbu wrote in the sixties."

"No one has ever found that manuscript."

"Lars did. It was with a priest, whom Corbu entrusted the pages to before he died in 1968."

He knew about Corbu from the reports one of his predecessors had recorded. That marshal, too, had searched for the Great Devise. "What about the cryptogram?"

"The painting was referenced by Abbe Bigou himself, in the parish register, shortly before he fled France for Spain, so Lars believed it held the key to the puzzle. But he died before deciphering it."

De Roquefort did not possess the lithograph of the painting. The woman had taken it, along with the book from the auction. Yet that could hardly be the only recorded image of Reading the Rules of the Caridad. Now that he knew what to look for, he'd find another.

"And what did the son know? Mark Nelle. What was his knowledge?"

"Not much. He was a teacher in Toulouse. He searched as a hobby on weekends. Not all that serious. But he was looking for Sauniere's hiding place in the mountains when he was killed in an avalanche."

"He did not die there."

"Of course he did. Five years ago."

De Roquefort stepped close. "Mark Nelle has lived here, in this abbey for the past five years. He was pulled from the snows and brought here. Our master took him in and made him our seneschal. He also wanted him to be our next master. But thanks to me, he failed. Mark Nelle fled these walls this afternoon. For the past five years he's scoured through our records, looking for clues, while you hid like a cockroach afraid of the light in a mental asylum."

"You speak nonsense."

"I speak truth. Here is where he stayed, while you cowered in fear."

"You and your brothers were who I feared. Lars feared you, too."

"He had reason to be scared. He lied to me, several times, and I detest deceit. He was given an opportunity to repent, but he chose to offer more lies."

"You hung him from that bridge, didn't you? I always knew that."

"He was a nonbeliever, an atheist. I believe you understand that I'll do what is necessary to achieve my goal. I wear the white cassock. I'm master of this abbey. Nearly five hundred brothers await my orders. Our Rule is clear. The order of the master is as if Christ commanded it, for it was Christ who said through the mouth of David, Ob auditu auris obedivit mihi. He obeyed me as soon as he heard me. That, too, should place fear in your heart." He motioned with the journal. "Now tell me what this puzzle says."

"Lars thought it revealed the location of whatever it was Sauniere found."

He reached for the cart. "I swear to you, your feet will become nothing but stubs if you don't answer my question."

Claridon's eyes went wide. "What must I do to prove my sincerity? I only know parts of the story. Lars was like that. He shared little. You have his journal."

An element of desperation clothed the words with believability. "I'm still listening."

"I know Sauniere found the cryptogram in the Rennes church when he was replacing the altar. He also found a crypt where he discovered that Marie d'Hautpoul de Blanchefort was not buried outside in the parish close, but beneath the church."

He'd read all that in the journal, but he what he wanted to know was, "How did Lars Nelle learn that?"

"He found the information about the crypt in old books discovered at Monfort-Lamaury, the fief of Simon de Montfort, which described the Rennes church in great detail. Then he found more references in Corbu's manuscript."

He despised hearing the name Simon de Montfort-another thirteenth-century opportunist who commanded the Albigensian Crusade that ravaged the Languedoc in the name of the Church. If not for him, the Templars would have achieved their own separate state, which would have surely prevented their later downfall. The one flaw in the Order's early existence had been its dependency on secular rule. Why the first few masters felt compelled to link themselves so closely with kingship had always perplexed him.

"Sauniere learned that his predecessor, the abbe Bigou, erected Marie d'Hautpoul's tombstone. He thought the writing on it, and the reference Bigou left in the parish records about the painting, were clues."

"They are ridiculously conspicuous."

"Not to an eighteenth-century mind," Claridon said. "Most were illiterate then. So the simplest of codes, even words themselves, would have been quite effective. And actually they have been-staying hidden all this time."

Something from the Chronicles flashed through de Roquefort's mind, from a time after the Purge. The only clue recorded to the Great Devise's location. Where is it best to hide a pebble? The answer suddenly became obvious. "On the ground," he muttered.

"What did you say?"

His mind snapped back to reality. "Can you recall what you saw in the painting?"

Claridon's head bobbed up and down. "Oui,monsieur. Every detail."

Which gave the fool some value.

"And I also have the drawing," Claridon said.

Had he heard right? "The drawing of the gravestone?"

"The notes I made in the archive. When the lights went out, I snatched the paper from the table."

He liked what he was hearing. "Where is it?"

"In my pocket."

He decided to make a deal. "How about a collaboration? We both have certain knowledge. Why don't we pool our efforts."

"And how would that benefit me?"

"Having your feet intact would be an immediate reward."

"Quite right, monsieur. I like that a great deal."

He decided to appeal to what he knew the man wanted. "We seek the Great Devise for reasons different from you. Once it's found, I'm sure a certain monetary remuneration can compensate you for your trouble." Then he made his point crystal clear. "And besides, I'll not let you go. And if you manage to escape, I will find you."

"I seem to have little choice."

"You know they left you to us."

Claridon said nothing.

"Malone and Stephanie Nelle. They made no effort to save you. Instead, they saved themselves. I heard you pleading for help in the archives. So did they. They did nothing." He allowed his words to take root, hoping he'd correctly judged the man's weak character. "Together, Monsieur Claridon, we could be successful. I possess Lars Nelle's journal and have access to an archive you can only imagine. You have the gravestone information and know things I don't. We both want the same thing, so let's both discover it."

De Roquefort gripped a knife lying on the table between Claridon's outstretched legs and severed the bindings.

"Come, we have work to do."