“HE DIED HERE, YOU know, less than a year after De Molay and his friend Ricoldo were executed. They were the only ones…” Abelard’s voice trailed away, lost somewhere between the candle’s flame and the shadows, flirting with the bleached stonewalls of the cell.
“The only ones?” Neisen’s voice was swallowed by the gloom of the tiny cell.
“I found the record you know,” Abelard continued. “It was there all the time, right before my eyes—in the journal of the Priory House.”
“What was there?”
“The record of their meeting. They arrived in London from opposite directions only two days apart.”
“Who?”
“Ricoldo and Walter le Bachelor, the Grand Preceptor of Ireland,” Abelard replied as if that would explain everything. His hands moved nervously about on his lap as if feeling for something. “He died here, you know.”
“I believe you told me that.” Neisen was trying hard to mask his frustration with the old man’s verbal meanderings.
“Yes, I did, didn’t I? His spirit is still here.” He raised his pale hands and let his stubby fingers pluck at invisible strings in the air. “He hovers about, condemned to remain here until…”
His long pauses were grating on Neisen’s nerves. “Until when?”
“Until the time rolls round again, of course.” Some of the old man’s fire crept back into his voice. “They both knew the end was near. Both men had lost faith in the church and knew what others in their order dared not admit, even to themselves.”
“And that was?”
“That the Templar’s’ dream was just that—an unrealistic fantasy. They realized king and pope alike had violated their order’s spiritual calling by reducing it to nothing but a military and monetary prop for the Crusades. And at the end to a convenient scapegoat for their own failures.
“You will remember from our session at Hilton Head,” Abelard continued, again in his familiar professorial tone, “the treasuries of France, England, and Rome were virtually empty, so naturally, the greedy eyes of King Philip and Clement focused on the Templar’s treasury and its vast land holdings. Ricoldo and Bachelor knew it was only a matter of time until both were lost; that their Grand Master, De Molay, was hopelessly naive to think by returning to France and personally defending the order he could salvage its reputation.
“However, one treasure was of greater value than all the other Templar possessions combined—the stone, the so-called mark of Cain. Determined it must not fall into the hands of either pope or king, they decided to hide it away until the day men of wisdom arose who could unlock its secrets and rightly use its powers. Then, as we learned from the scroll that accompanied the stone and as the Gilgamesh epic predicted, time would roll round again, the ancient prophecies would be fulfilled, and Paradise restored.”
“He died here you know.” Abelard’s mind appeared to drift again.
“Yes,” Neisen replied softly, a frisson of fear skittering down his spine. Was Abelard losing his mind?
“The Pope and King Philip were sure Ricoldo and Bachelor knew the stone’s whereabouts.
Imprisonment and torture awaited Ricoldo after he crossed the channel to join De Molay in France. However, neither could loosen his tongue, so after his execution, Holy Mother Church imprisoned Bachelor here in an effort to starve him into revealing its location.
“Right here,” Abelard raised his arms again and let them define the narrow dimensions of the room. “In this small space, where he could neither lie nor stand, our friend slowly starved to death.
“Turn and look behind you.” Abelard said abruptly.
As Neisen did, he noticed a small slit in the stone just at eye level. Looking through it, he could see the large candle still burning brightly in the center of the Round Church.
“From time to time I come here to visit with Bachelor,” Abelard continued, “and try to imagine what it must have been like to slowly starve to death to the accompaniment of the ‘Pegasus,’ ‘Agnus Dei,’ and the echo of voices repeating their ‘Pater Nosters’ and ‘Hail Marys.’
Just think of it, Frederick.”
Neisen could almost feel Abelard’s hot eyes glaring as he spoke. “Holy men read aloud from their Bibles and preached their homilies only feet from a man suffering the agonies of the damned!
“When I come here, it reminds me those in the so-called ‘holy calling’ have no real cures for the ills of society. On the contrary, they are responsible for many of them. All their pious talk about faith, hope, and love, and that claptrap about a coming Kingdom of God is just that—claptrap! Dying by starvation must be pure hell, but to die having to listen to such bilge must have been hell twice heated over!
“I’ve sat in this position until my limbs are numb.” Abelard rubbed his legs then tried to rise. “If you will be so good as to help me…”
Neisen stood as best he could, then took Abelard’s arm and helped him to his feet.
“There, that’s better,” he said as he stepped through the door into the stairwell. “Please take the candle and lead. I will try to follow as quickly as these old bones will let me.”
When they reached the top of the stairs, Abelard laid his hand on Neisen’s shoulder. “One moment, Frederick,” he said as Neisen turned to face him.
“You know, we’re not here just to remember the past but to recover a great treasure.”
He’s finally getting to the point. “I know,” he muttered, feeling his heart beat faster.
“Since I believe we are nearing the end of our search for the stone, will you please permit an old man a last indulgence? I think you’ll find it interesting.”
Not waiting for a reply, he took the candle from Neisen, turned, and walked down the long isle of the Middle Church. Just before reaching the entrance to the narthex, he turned to his right and moved along the wall to the southeast corner. There he stopped and lifted his candle to reveal still another floor crypt on whose marble lid another effigy had been carved.
“As you can see, Frederick, the likeness carved on this lid is not that of a knight but a bishop,” Abelard said.
“Whose crypt is it?”
“It is the burial vault of the Patriarch Heraclias, Bishop of Jerusalem. He is said to have dedicated this church in eleven eightyfive. The effigy on the vault implies a church prelate is buried here but that is not the case because church records show that in eighteen hundred and ten the tomb was reopened and the bones of a child were found at the feet of a man’s skeleton.
“It is believed the child was, in all probability, William Plantagenet, the infant son of Henry III, said to have been buried in the church in twelve fifty-six. Would you agree it’s more reasonable to assume a child might be buried with his father than with a bishop?”
“Yes, but I’m not sure I understand where all this is leading,” Neisen said.
“If you’ll be patient for another moment, I think you will,” Abelard replied. “Our friend Heraclias shared a morbid fear with the ancient Egyptian pharaohs.”
“And that was?”
“The desecration of his grave. So, through influence at the highest levels, he arranged during the church’s construction to have his burial vault placed beneath its stone floor with the entrance hinged in such a way only someone knowing exactly which stones to press could open it.
“Templar documents reveal this project was so secret the church commissioned artisans from Persia to construct the chamber with their ingenious system of interlocking hinges. During this phase of church construction only the Persians worked on the site, then, when their work was completed, promptly returned home.”
“So you’re saying the stone and scroll are buried with the Bishop?”
“Exactly,” Abelard replied, “I’m sure of it. But here is where the tale really gets interesting.”
“More like convoluted, I’d say,” Neisen observed.
“If you like,” Abelard replied, “ but the fact is, after the church was completed, the bishop commissioned an elaborate tomb for himself…the one you see here.”
“With no intention of occupying it?”
“Right on the mark,” Abelard said.
“So let me see if I get the picture.” Neisen paused a moment to untangle the threads of the story in his mind. “The bishop builds himself a secret tomb, and after the church is finished, he builds himself a visible one.”
“That’s right, my boy.”
Neisen sensed Abelard’s excitement mounting.
“But if the bishop dedicated the church in eleven eighty-five, he would certainly have been dead before Henry III’s son was buried there in twelve fifty-six. Even allowing that kings might evict bishops and take their tombs, opening it and finding it empty would surely raise questions,” Neisen observed.
“Not if only the inner circle of the Templar and their friars knew, and it goes without saying, death as the penalty for revealing the secret would tend to silence the talkative.”
“You mean the only ones who witnessed the interment of the bishop, the king, and his son, were Templars?”
“That’s correct,” Abelard replied. “Only the Templars and friars attached to The Brotherhood here in London. By the way, I have examined the archives of the Priory House, and they reveal the same two friars witnessed the Templars’ interment of both the bishop and the king.”
Neisen could tell Abelard was relishing building toward the climax of his story.
“You’re a bright man, Neisen,” he said. “Would you care to guess the names of those two friars?”
The pieces of the puzzle suddenly came together in Neisen’s mind.
“Ricoldo Monte Crèche and Walter le Bachelor?”
“Bravo!” Abelard was positively jubilant. “Their friendship was forged as young friars, and then sealed by the secret they shared. But I know their secret,” Abelard announced triumphantly as he turned and began walking back toward the Round Church.
“But where…?” Neisen called out from behind him.
In his exuberance, Abelard strode as briskly as someone half his age. “Follow and I will show you,” he said without as much as a backward glance.