Secreta Corporis

A.D. 1193. To avoid an arranged marriage, Rolant, who was only recently knighted, joins the Templars, the monastic order of knights who take vows of chastity and poverty and who live, when not on the battlefield, as simply and devoutly as monks in an abbey. Rolant is soon transferred from France to the Holy Land. At the citadel in Jaffa, the Crusader city that is the main port of entry for pilgrims traveling to Jerusalem, Rolant is paired with Audric, a more experienced knight, and is sensitively introduced to a secret brotherhood of Templars who commit “the sin not named” in the dense groves of tamarisk trees among the dunes along the coast.

Those Templars who frequent the groves begin receiving cryptic threats drawn in blood on their bedsheets. A knight and a squire close to Rolant and Audric are murdered, and when they learn they are the next to be killed they, very reluctantly, quietly leave the Order. Finding few options in Crusader society, they eventually seek livelihoods among the Muslims.

A seemingly insignificant clay tablet that Rolant had found in a dirt pile near a new well turns out to hold heretical information in its ancient text that the Templar leaders can use to manipulate the papacy. But threatening the papacy with disclosure of the artifact will be effective only if the laity remain unaware of its existence. Rolant and Audric are among the very few people who know of the tablet, and the Templar leaders secretly target them to suppress their knowledge.

The story continues in the present day in the sequel *The Talpiot Find*.

Rating: H [Safe for heterosexual readers]