The noise of the door opening brought him back to the present with a snap.
“Still here? I thought you would have buggered off back to the hotel,” she said.
“No, you know me,” said Sparke wearily, “thoroughly predictable. I’m afraid there is nothing here that seems to have any clear relevance. I’ll upload all the images to the screen later and find out if there are any linkages to other artifacts.” He ran his eye across the collection of objects. “Funny to think that men may have died for these things in the past and now here they are, ignored in the back room of an old church. Every one of these things must have been through some sort of journey that turned them from random objects into something special.” He peered into one of the cases and examined the closest object. “Chalice of Saint Senga. Seems she gave water to lepers. Thing looks ancient Greek.”
Tilly glanced at the cup. “Attic pottery, first century BC, could be temple-ware” she said. “Probably been in the possession of generations of different types of holy men, now it’s a Christian relic. Anyway, why are we standing in a dusty room when there is a massive pool waiting for us at the hotel?”
“Pool, yup, that sounds like a plan. How did it go with Laszlo and the priest?”
“Not so good so far,” she said. “Let’s give them a day or so to cool down. I think they’ll come around and let us use the materials they showed us. They’re worried that we might ridicule them if we think their documents aren’t authentic.”
“That’s not what I said,” said Sparke. “I just said that the version of events in that last letter didn’t sound very credible.”
“That’s what you thought you said,” said Tilly, “what they felt they heard was a wee bit different. Still, never mind that now, let’s get rolling. There is a French Martini with my name on it back at the Intercontinental.”
Last Dawn
“They’ll come tomorrow after dawn,” said Whitehead.
“Not before?” said Salvatore.
“The men they will send are not disciplined troops, they need daylight to move. No matter when they do come, you need to rest, this is the most comfortable room we have.”
Salvatore looked around the small chamber. He had been here before.
“You can do something for us tomorrow before they come,” said the Grand Master.
“Tell me,” said Salvatore.
“You see this,” said Whitehead, flicking his head towards the small alcove in the wall where the lepers’ chalice sat. “Every day we take it out to let the light of the sun touch it. It is our promise. The first of our Grand Masters pledged that we would do so every dawn until, as he said, ‘we had seen the last of our sunsets.’”
“He was quite a poet.”
“He was, and now our pledge towards this cup of his is over we will never see another sunset. Sometime after dawn tomorrow we will fight our last battle, and before the sun goes down we will be dead men. Tomorrow, I want you to be the one to take the chalice out for the last time. It is better.”
Salvatore walked over to the niche in the wall. “May I?” he asked.
“Of course, it is just a piece of pottery. Look after it tonight, after tomorrow it will be in other hands.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean the Muslims have a habit of preserving things like this when they seize them. Most Christian relics are sacred to them too.”
Salvatore picked up the cup and ran his fingers over the black figures that covered its surface. The lid that closed the top of the vessel looked as though it was made of carved black marble.
“It’s in safe hands,” said Salvatore. A moment later he was alone in the small chamber. It was a small task to prise the lid from the chalice.
Salvatore took the heavy pouch that he had retrieved from the Old Guardian’s body and cut open the leather thong that held it closed. He had no idea what he had expected to find, but the small, dull roll of silver plate came as a shock to him. He walked over to the small lamp in the wall and peered at it. He could see characters cut into the small area of metal which could be seen. He thought for a moment about trying to unroll it, but dismissed the idea as pointless as he knew that death was virtually certain at dawn.
He placed the scroll inside the chalice, replaced the lid and set it back in its niche in the wall.
Beyond the walls of the small bastion, in the shattered streets and squares of Acre, the Martyrs were being gathered.
The fervor of their belief was now unquenchable. They had no other wish but to die for the religion they so fervently believed in. To die in the act of ridding their land of the last vestiges of infidel power was a double blessing. The Caliph’s army treated the Martyrs with ill-disguised contempt; they were not soldiers, they were dangerous fanatics good for nothing except dying. However, when it came to dealing with the Christians’ leper knights the Martyrs were the ideal weapon.
Infantrymen pushed and shoved the Martyrs into long columns on the streets that led up to the killing ground around the bastion. Many had to be held back with clubs, they were so desperate to get at the bastion’s defenders that most would have rushed the walls on their own. Few were armed, dying was more important than killing, so the Caliph’s soldiers handed out weapons captured from the dead Christian defenders of Acre: daggers, swords and spears. There was no demand for shields or helmets.
The leaders of the Martyrs had begged the Caliph’s generals to do nothing that would besmirch the perfection of their sacrifice; not a single arrow would be fired by the Saracen army in support of the assault. It would be the purest death.
As the dawn’s first light touched the bastion, the Martyrs’ host caught sight of movement on the roof and a low murmuring roar spread through their ranks. One of the figures on the roof stepped onto the rim of the battlements displaying his own contempt for life. At this the mob of Martyrs surged against the line of soldiers that penned them in. The figure on the roof wore the uniform they had all been told about, the long white surcoat with the green cross of the lepers’ legion on the left shoulder. The Martyrs knew their task, they would be the ones to slaughter the cursed Christians.
A single, clear trumpet blast cut through the morning air and the columns of Martyrs erupted from the streets, streaming towards the lepers’ stronghold. On the rooftops of surrounding buildings, the Caliph’s soldiers observed. They would have no part in this but it was not something to miss, a story that would last a lifetime.
The first ranks of the charging men crumpled silently to the ground, their bodies pierced with Christian arrows. Their corpses were trampled underfoot by the following waves.
The first column smashed against the walls like hail, literally bouncing off the stone until they were pressed forward again by the mass of men behind them. None paid any attention to the metal spouts that appeared over the lip of the wall until the cascades of boiling oil spewed out onto their unprotected heads. The screams of the burning men echoed across the city and brought the first rush to a halt; the tide of attackers fell back from the walls.
There was a moment’s pause, then the lines surged forward again. Now the Martyrs streamed around the sides of the bastion, men scrambling up the mounds of rubble that had been the Templar castle the day before.
Again the metal spouts poked their noses over the edges of the bastion wall. This time the men in the front ranks of the Martyrs knew what to expect and most tried to flee, some climbing over the heads of those behind them in their frantic efforts to escape the burning hell that leapt from the bastion.
This time the leper defenders ran to the walls and hurled pots of bitumen oil into the attackers which erupted into flames engulfing scores of Martyrs with each explosion.
Again the attack wavered. A martyr’s death was welcomed, but this clinging fire was more than mere death.
Across the killing ground, now strewn with scores of dead and dying Martyrs, a thin sound came from the bastion. None of the attackers knew what it meant, but it was clearly an infidel
taunt.
“Te Deum laudámus, te Dominum confitémur.”
The Martyrs swarmed forward for a third time, trampling the bodies of their own dead and dying, ignoring those who fell around them to the arrows of the defenders. They crashed into the walls and gates, tearing at the defenses with their bare hands. Those who rushed over the mound of rubble behind the bastion walked into a wall of flame as the defenders ignited a ditch full of oil.
On the roofs of the city buildings the professional soldiers watched the sheet of flame erupt and the dozen Martyrs who were caught in the inferno. They recognized it for what is was, a last line of defense, the start of the closing chapter.
“Te ætérnum Patrem omnis terra venerátur.”
Individual Martyrs leapt through the sheet of flame to be immediately skewered by waiting knights. The flames began to die down and the trickle of attackers grew. Still, each was hacked down by waiting lepers who swung their swords like reapers and kicked the bodies back into the burning pit.
At the front of the bastion, Martyrs climbed up on each other’s shoulders to reach the lip of the battlement. All were hurled back, their heads smashed in two.
“Tibi omnes Angeli; tibi cæli et univérsae potestátes.” The chanting was coming from the Knights of Lazarus on the walls and from deep within the building where those no longer able to stand lay in bunks, clutching weapons.
The burning oil from the spouts on the walls came to an end and the Martyrs roared, surging forward yet again. A human pyramid of men now reached to the top of the walls allowing attackers to spill out across the walls. Hard-trained and skilled knights brought them down by the dozen, but each man they killed was immediately replaced by others who fought to get to the front line.
“ Tibi Chérubim et Séraphim incessábili voce proclámant.”
The flame barrier died and the rear of the castle was now open. A dozen knights held the line for a moment then disappeared under the wave of attackers. The Martyrs attacking from the front and the rear now saw each other and rushed to close the distance between them.
Standing on the narrow wall, the last knights on the outer defenses fought back to back until, one at a time, they were dragged down by Martyrs happy to give their lives.
The watching Saracen soldiers gave the attackers a wild cheer when they saw them waving the torn and bloody surcoats ripped from the bodies of the leper soldiers. Still the thin chanting continued from within the building.
“Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dóminus Deus Sábaoth.”
The timber doors leading to the inside of the building were ripped from their hinges and streams of Martyrs rushed into the dark interior.
“Pleni sunt cæli et terra majestátis glóriæ tuæ.”
The screams from the fighting inside could be heard across the dead city. Room by room, ambush by ambush, the Martyrs fought their way through the slaughterhouse that the leper knights had made.
The last of the knights died, their hands clawing the throats of their attackers, feet slipping on the blood they had shed.
The bastion fell silent.
User-friendly
“Peter, I have something to share with you.”
“Turn that thing off,” said Tilly, “Please. I mean having a talking computer is one thing, but this new voice is wearing me down.”
“I know,” said Sparke. “Do you think I should tell it to find another personality?”
“Anything would be an improvement. Did I tell you that your computer tried to friend me on Facebook?”
“What?”
“Yup, your computer now has a more active online presence than you do.”
“I’m going to turn it off.”
“Well, do it carefully, you don’t want to hurt its feelings,” said Tilly.
“What sort of personality style should I give it, do you think?”
“You could go for Dalek style.”
“You think I’m like a Dalek?”
“No,” said Tilly. “You’re like Dr. Who. Of course, the real Dr. Who would offer to make some tea.”
“Tea? Uhm, good idea,” said Sparke. “I suppose you think that is one of my duties as your assistant?”
“If you think you’re up to the task,” said Tilly, smiling as she picked dates from the plate in her lap. The hotel staff seemed obsessed with food as every time either she or Sparke turned around there was someone offering them dried fruit or a sticky honey cake.
“Peter, when you have a moment there is something in our research here that you may want to look at,” said the screen.
“Your computer just said ‘our research’. She is bonding with you,” said Tilly.
“English Breakfast or Earl Grey?” said Sparke, examining the range of teabags next to the small electric kettle. Tilly was curled up on the bed reading from her tablet. Her bag and jacket lay discarded next to her.
“Earl Grey,” she said, ripping open a small packet of Walker’s Shortbread. “You having tea or coffee?”
“Tea,” said Sparke. “Why?”
“Nothing, just that you always drank coffee when we first met, now you seem to have drifted into being a tea drinker.”
“I wonder what the screen has found,” said Sparke, pouring boiling water into the two cups and pointedly ignoring the fact that Tilly had use the word “drifted” again.
“Screen, display research findings,” he said.
The screen, which was projected onto the wall of the hotel bedroom, brightened and the photographs he had taken that day of the Christian Orthodox relics filled the wall.
“I thought you’d want me to share this,” said the screen.
“Show research findings,” said Sparke.
“None of the items photographed show any correlation to anything on record or to any previous search,” said the screen. “But there is something that you’ll want to see.”
Tilly sat up on the bed and took the cup of tea from Sparke. “She’s teasing you,” she said. “She knows how to keep a bloke interested.”
Just then Tilly’s phone rang. She picked it up and spoke for a few moments then dropped it on the bed. “Bugger, that’s not good.”
Sparke stood with his back to her, looking at the image projected on the wall.
“That was your wee pal Laszlo,” said Tilly. “He says that the Church doesn’t feel that they should work with us since we don’t feel that their records are historically accurate. He really is hacked off.”
“That’s a problem,” said Sparke.
“It’s a problem, but not really that serious,” said Tilly.
“No. It really is quite a serious problem.” Sparke stepped to one side so that Tilly could see the image on the screen.
“Oh,” said Tilly. “That might be a problem after all.”
The wall of Sparke’s suite was filled by an image of one of the church relics. It was a small earthenware pot covered with dark figures and sealed with what looked like a dark stone lid. Clearly visible on the lid was a roughly scratched image of a tonsured holy man with one hand pointing upwards and the words “Fra Muratore” written in a circle around it.
Death
This is less than I expected, thought Salvatore. Life has been less than I hoped, this death is nothing at all to fear. Does something happen now? Do I wait like this? Perhaps I will go mad with boredom. Is hell madness? No, that cannot be, because madmen have no understanding of anything. Madness is freedom and I cannot imagine the end of life being nothing more than simple madness. There must be more. I will set myself to waiting. I will be a grain of sand. Once my mind is empty I can sit here, or lie here, in the midst of this black desert waiting for something to happen, or waiting for nothing to happen. He tried again to move a limb or take a breath but neither was possible. No body, no pain, no light, no sound, not signs of the passage of time. The obvious answer was death.
My death was not even something I recall. Strange, I thought often about death when I lived and then, when it came, I failed to notice the
event. It must have been a decent death. I was in the bastion with Whitehead and the other lepers when the Arabs came over the walls. We killed and killed. I took more heads than any other day of my life. Those Martyrs fought each other for the right to die on my blade. They had weapons but were worse than farmers at using them. Still, there had been so many that defeat and massacre was always the only result.
How I died is of little matter. Now I am a corpse and am lost in this blackness waiting for something or nothing to happen. Could it be that hosts of angels and demons await me? But why would I be waiting? Are there too many dead for the spirits to deal with? Hard to believe that the world eternal is like a busy tavern. Are there too few eternal hosts to meet today’s dead?
Salvatore, as was his habit, recognized that he had no control over his new situation and settled into waiting, quietly aware that his wait could last an eternity. It was not an unpleasant thought.
Screen natural
“I love this bit, don’t you?” said Tilly.
“If you love it, I love it,” said Sparke, sitting on the couch next to her.
“Liar, I bet you’re just as curious as me, even a wee bit excited, after all, this is as much yours as mine.”
Sparke reached across to the table and picked up his tea cup. “Thanks for the thought, but my input was just donkey work.”
“Smart donkey,” said Tilly, inspecting a plate of biscuits.
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
The two sat in the living room of Sparke’s apartment in Switzerland in front of the frozen image projected onto the wall.
The Templar Scroll: Book six in the series Page 24