“There’s no point in ducking what’s happened on the Pape Ranch. It is what it is and it’s not going away until you sell it. Saddle up, Hopalong. Go see what they want,” I said and hoped my Hoppy Gene would fire off soon so I could get through all of this. That was what I liked about my Hoppy Gene; when I was under its influence, I didn’t have to think much.
Not many people knew about that character trait in me that allowed me to operate on auto-pilot. Hopalong Cassidy had been my boyhood hero. And I don’t mean the one on TV who was played by the actor William Boyd. Boyd was the iconic good guy who rode a white horse and sang. No, that was Gene Autry. Anyway, when the Hoppy Gene went off I was transformed into Clarence E. Mulford’s 1905’s Hopalong Cassidy. He was a crude, dusty old cowboy with his own sense of right and wrong; that also drank too much and who would shoot the bad guys first and worry about the consequences later.
When I walked in through the front door, you’d have thought the Pope was visiting instead of a Bishop for all the deference everyone was showing him. It had been a while since I had been involved with the Church, but I’d thought a Bishop was like a supervisor; he was one the low men on the management totem pole and certainly not due the reverence he was being shown. He flushed the toilet just like everyone else did.
“There he is,” Ariana said. She got up and walked over to me and gave me a hug. I could see the smirk on Sunny’s face. “Come meet his Excellency, Bishop McCrory.”
He stood up and we shook hands. He looked to be in his fifties and was portly in stature.
“Bishop,” I said.
“Mr. Howard, so nice to meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you,” he said and nodded at Ariana.
Well, there was where the leak about the cistern had come from; my daughter-in-law. I hadn’t expected that. Who else had she told? It was probably all over the County by now. I hadn’t told her to keep what she was doing a secret.
“And, you met my brother, Eduardo,” Ariana said.
“Not formally,” he said and extended his hand. “Father Eduardo Alvarado.”
“Max Howard,” I said and shook his hand. “Nice to meet the both of you. What brings you to the Howard Ranch?”
“If you could spare me a few minutes, Mr. Howard, I’d like to speak to you on a matter concerning the Church.”
“His sins have finally caught up with him,” I heard Emily say to Sunny and then she flashed me a grin that would have made a Cheshire cat proud.
“Sure, you guys want a beer?” I asked to be hospitable.
“Thank you, we’re fine,” Bishop McCrory said.
Poor Ariana, I thought she was going to faint. Like clergy didn’t drink.
“Well, I’m gonna have one. Come with me, we can talk outside on the patio.”
I heard Sunny clear her throat, like she expected to be invited. “We’ll just be a minute,” Bishop McCrory said to assure her he wouldn’t keep me long. Bad mistake, I knew.
“With all due respect to your office, you are a guest in my house. Anything you have to say to my husband, you can say to me.”
That was the wifey, I knew. Emily smiled. Ariana froze and was obviously shocked Sunny would speak to her Bishop like that. Man, what she didn’t know, I thought to myself.
“I apologize, Mrs. Howard. Of course, please join us.”
On the way outside to the patio, I grabbed a beer for Sunny and me. “Did Ariana tell you her mother-in-law was the former Police Chief for the Lummi Indian Tribal Nation,” I said to Bishop McCrory.
“No, she didn’t. That’s very interesting, Mrs. Howard. I’m not familiar with that specific tribe.”
“We’re part of the Salish People in the Pacific Northwest. Is this about the cistern Max found?” Sunny said.
She was definitely in her cop mode for this man of the Church who had slighted her. I knew how she thought. His organization had not treated her brothers well in their conquest of the Americas for God and King and she didn’t trust him.
“So, it is true, then?” he asked and looked at me.
“We’re in the process of evaluating what we have,” I said.
“Is it possible that I might see it?”
“I don’t guess it would hurt to show you a couple of pictures of the site. Unfortunately, I don’t have my phone with me. It’s in the truck.”
Sunny frowned at me for my cavalier attitude about having a cell phone within a moments reach.
“No, I meant, see the cistern itself,” he said.
“What’s your interest in the cistern, Bishop?”
“It could have historical significance related to our early presence here in Texas. And, to be honest, we are looking for property close to San Antonio. I’m not ready to go public with this just yet, you understand, but we want to establish a seminary and retreat for the Faithful in the Americas that will rival anything in Europe. Having an early Spanish cistern on the grounds would certainly add to the prestige of the seminary and retreat.”
I looked at Sunny. She looked at me. I think we both were thinking the same thing. We were about to become rich. That aside, he was the second person to express an interest in buying the Pape Ranch. I felt like the potential buyers knew something I didn’t and I was about to be asked to bend over and hold the proverbial jar of Vaseline.
“Let me talk to my archeologist and maybe we can arrange a site visit. Leave me your number and I’ll call you.”
“Or, we could see it this afternoon,” Bishop McCrory said as if he was a man who was used to getting his way. He actually arched his eyebrow.
That didn’t sit well with Sunny any more than it did me. I thought he was being pushy. “I’ll call you,” I said to end the conversation and stood up.
“I look forward to it. Would it be permissible to bring someone with me? He is well qualified in the real estate market and is helping me in the site selection process.”
“Sure. Just out of curiosity, how did you learn about the cistern?” I asked as we headed back inside. I wanted to confirm my suspicions.
“I’m sorry, I thought you knew. Ariana mentioned to her brother that she was translating a journal for you, which by the way, I would very much like to see. It piqued my curiosity. My undergraduate degree was in history.”
I remembered the anguish I felt as a boy when we ate meat on Fridays, which we always did. My soul was doomed to the everlasting fires of hell until I could get to confession at school on Monday morning and explain my situation. My father didn’t go to church; Catholic or otherwise. I was always afraid I would die over the weekend from falling off the tractor or getting snake-bit. I felt that same old guilt in my heart once again, but now for thinking a Bishop of the Church was lying through his teeth. The Catholic faith was built on guilt when I was a young boy and here I was in the twilight of my life feeling responsible to God for thinking bad thoughts about a Bishop of His Church. The chains to Catholicism were harder to break than I thought.
. . .
That night, Sunny expressed her feelings on my woeful lack of responsibility for what had happened on top of the mesa. In a moment of weakness, as she dressed for bed, I’d told her about our trip to the top. I guessed I had a need to confess. That was always my favorite Catholic ritual. Sunny was hard to get a read on, though. I didn’t really know how much of Magali’s story she believed, if she did at all. And, I wasn’t sure if I was going to get any absolution. She was more into the penance for my sins. After I finished, she told me she wanted a divorce, after we sold the Pape Ranch to the Bishop.
“I don’t know if mentioned it before, but James Lee has someone who might be interested in the Pape Ranch, too. Having two people interested in the ranch at the same time could work to our favor.”
“Don’t even think about playing one off the other.”
“Me?” I asked and slipped beneath the covers.
“I know you. Whatever you are planning to do, don’t. Just sell the property to the Bishop. That ranch has been nothing but trouble since you inher
ited it and it will make Ariana happy.”
“It wouldn’t hurt if the other party knew someone else was interested.”
“What do you think we could get for it?”
“James Lee said he mentioned seven and a half million to the buyer and he didn’t blink.”
That took the wind out of her sail. She just sat there on the edge of the bed and looked at me. “Seven and a half million dollars? Really?”
“It could be higher with an appraisal. After taxes and expenses, the Howard Family Trust should do alright. You do remember the Trust owns the ranch, not us.”
“Oh, yeah. I guess I won’t divorce you then.”
“Whew! I’m sure glad to hear that. You had me worried,” I said with a smile she couldn’t see in the dark.
“I’ll bet. Are you going with me to Kevin’s Basic Training graduation ceremony? Nick will be there. He’s got a one week leave.”
“Good, that means Nick can come back with you for a few days. I’m going to stay here with Ariana since she can’t fly out there.”
“I wish you’d come with me.”
“The boy owes you an apology and a word of thanks for what we’re doing for him while he’s off playing soldier. I haven’t heard either one yet.”
“What happened to unconditional love?”
“He’s had unconditional love his whole life. Now that he old enough to be a Marine, he’s due more.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Turning a blind eye to bad behavior won’t help him to grow into that uniform. He has to know we have expectations of him just like the Marines do.”
“Why are you so stubborn?”
“I don’t get enough loving would be my guess.”
“Are you serious?”
I wasn’t sure by her tone if she was questioning the undeniable logic of my answer or that I wanted to make love to her and she was just playing hard to get. She sighed and rolled over; her back to me. It was her signal to me to go to sleep. I snuggled in close.
A couple of hours into our sleep I felt Sunny get up in the middle of the night and go into the bathroom. I was semi-awake when she called me from the hallway a few minutes later.
“Max, wakeup. Katie’s not in her bed.”
Our daughter Katie was a sleepwalker and had, I thought, grown out of it. It had been a year since she had an episode. Back then we had installed chains on the doors up high and out of her reach so that she couldn’t leave the house.
I turned my boots upside down and shook them out before stepping into them barefoot. In my pajama bottoms and boots, I headed for the door, but then turned around. I grabbed the Maglite flashlight I kept in the night stand next to my side of the bed and then went outside to the backyard. Sunny was right behind me. Katie was on the patio curled up in a ball in Sunny’s chaise lounge chair. I scooped her up gently so as not to wake her and carried her back inside to her bed. Sunny was beside herself with anguish, I knew. She was leaving in the morning for Washington.
Sunny spent the night sleeping in Katie’s bed with her. In the morning over breakfast Katie had not remembered a thing and we didn’t say anything about her nocturnal walkabout. Sunny made me swear on my life, cross my heart and hope to die, that I would check the chains on the doors every night before I went to bed while she was gone. I promised.
Chapter 21
After we saw Sunny off at the airport the next day, and I took Ariana and Katie back to the ranch, I met with Shane and Hannah at the Meeting Center. I was anxious to hear what Hannah had learned on the internet and to tell them about the new interest in the Pape Ranch property by the San Antonio Catholic Diocese.
“I think we’re on to something big,” Hannah said after I told them about my conversation with Bishop McCrory. “Two institutions that have a thousand-year-old history together suddenly want to buy the Pape Ranch…. it’s almost unbelievable. It’s epic in its historical significance. We’ve missed something,” she said. “The Knights Templar and the Jesuits are both Orders in the Catholic Church,” she added and then shook her head, as if she was amazed by the fact of what she said.
Shane snapped his fingers and beamed like a man who knew he had been right all along. “It’s about the gold treasure, I know it.”
“If this is about a treasure, I doubt it’s on the Pape Ranch. Both the Knights Templar and the Jesuits accumulated immense wealth. That wealth gave them power and the ability to influence others, which was always a threat to Rome’s authority. The Church struggled throughout its history to reign in the organizations that they sanctioned. Back then, wealth was not something you kept in a bank. Wealth had a physical component before paper money and its value was in proportion to its size. It had to be stored, protected, and guarded. Hiding wealth and safe guarding it was no easy or small task, but the Templars were very good at it,” Hannah said. “Their ability to amass wealth and a military army to protect their wealth was always a threat to Rome and the sovereign kings of France and Spain,” Hannah said.
“I’m inclined to agree with you, Hannah. I don’t think there’s a hidden treasure on the ranch,” I offered. “At least not more than what was mentioned in the inventory of the Jesuit’s journal.”
“The Catholic Church was a very complex institution back then and has resorted, over the course of its history, to everything it preaches against today. If you think the Spanish Inquisition was abhorrent, then the history of the Crusades would shock you beyond belief. I’ve read up on more than I want to know, but to make a long story short, there was a military component to the Catholic Church that became known as the Order of the Temple of Solomon. Its duty was to seize, hold, and protect the Holy Land, as well as protect the pilgrims coming from Europe to the cities in the Holy Land. The knights that made up the Templars became very wealthy in the process and it’s been rumored over the centuries that the Templars made off with everything from the Arc of the Covenant to the chalice Jesus Christ used at the Last Supper before Jerusalem was eventually recaptured from them,” Hannah said.
“The Holy Grail,” Shane interjected.
“That’s more legend than fact. Nobody knows for sure, Shane. Did you see the movie The Da Vinci Code with Tom Hanks or read the book by Dan Brown?” Hannah asked.
“I don’t remember it,” Shane said.
I shook my head, no, I didn’t remember either one.
“You need to stream the movie some weekend. It’ll widen your perspective,” she said and then smiled. She continued, “The Templar Knights were eventually driven out of the Holy Lands in 1187 AD and they escaped with most of their accumulated wealth intact. When they resettled in Europe their influence and power began to threaten some, especially King Philip IV of France. In 1307 AD he began the French Inquisition during which he rounded up all the Templar Knights he could find, seized their wealth, and executed them, burning some of them at the stake as heretics. Fortunately, most of the Templars got advance warning of the King’s plan for their arrest and they escaped with their families and wealth.”
“What happened to them?” Shane asked.
“Only about ten percent of the army from the Holy Land was made up of real knights. Their descendants flourished from their ill-gotten wealth and then after the French Inquisition those that escaped blended into the major cities of Catholic Europe and put their wealth to work in commerce and banking. Many fled to Scotland and Portugal and formed new Military Orders within the Catholic Church. One thread I’d like to pursue is the one between the descendants of the Templars and the founder of the Spanish Jesuits. It was alluded to in one of the documents I read, but I didn’t have time to get into it. Most people think the French Templar Knights were lost to history, but others say the Order of the Temple of Solomon still exists.”
“Let me see if I have this straight?” I said. “A Bishop in the Catholic Church and a descendent of a Templar Knight’s family are both interested in property that a Jesuit priest may have stopped at on his way to French New Orleans in 1757.
And now some woman, who claims to be a ghost that was cursed by a Mayan god, says there’s an ancient death mask buried here. Is that how you see this?” I asked Hannah.
“It sure sounds like to me they’re looking for the gold the priest was carrying with him,” Shane says to reinforce his argument for a gold treasure.
Hannah waggled her hand in the air. “Ignoring for the moment, what the woman told us; yes, that pretty well sums it up. I think there was a jade death mask here at one time. The real question as I see it is what these potential buyers know that we don’t. Do they know that the gold mentioned in the inventory list of the Journal never made it to New Orleans and is still on the Pape Ranch? Or do they know about the map on the capstone and what it supposedly hides? Shane could be right, I suppose. Maybe the Jesuits did bury some of their wealth in Guatemala. We certainly don’t know the answer to either question.”
“You’re probably right, Shane. It’s about the gold. The Jesuit caravans are pretty well known to history now, but the two interested buyers would have had to read the Journal to know about the death mask. I doubt that Constance Pickering’s translator was good enough to pick up that the caravan was carrying a jade Death Mask or a carved capstone with a map scribed on it. And we know they buyers haven’t seen our translation, although, maybe the Bishop has. I suppose Ariana could have shown her brother her translation or told him about it,” I said, but didn’t really want to believe that Ariana had gone that far.
“The first translation of the Journal didn’t pick up on the capstone or the jade Mayan death mask. But if the young Jesuit was carrying the carved capstone that would imply the cistern already existed. It was a destination for the caravan, before they arrived in New Orleans,” Hannah said. “This is so exciting. A real historical mystery and I’m going to solve it.”
The Turbulence of Butterflies (Max Howard Series Book 6) Page 28