‘Of course we will, Mr Blake. Don’t you worry.’
Blake’s red-rimmed eyes followed the consultant and her perfectly tailored dress out of the door. Before the door clicked shut, Blake was on his feet. He walked over to the head of Sarah’s bed, opened the drawer to her bedside cabinet, picked up the Gideon Bible and dropped it into the drawer, which he pushed shut with a little more force than necessary.
Chapter 14
Brother Nathan quickly gathered up the assorted papers on the simple wooden writing desk and threw them onto his bed. After closing the window shutters, he sat down and found the page in the crimson notebook. The thumping of his heart sounded in his ears.
I stared at the pictogram marked out in base flour on the table before me and started to tremble, the passions of hope and fear so strong in my heart. It was as if the motions of the heavens had stopped, waiting for Mr F to answer my question. What did the knights discover to be in the chest buried so deep beneath the foundations of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre? Before Mr F could answer, the front door of the house rattled remarkably with a bluster of wind, which gave myself and the learned gentleman a dreadful fright.
After a long silence, he held up the crimson book and explained that it was the journal of Gérard de Ridefort, Grand Master of the Knights Templar. According to the words contained within, so exactly published in illuminated French and Hebrew script, the wooden chest contained a religious relic of such importance that the fate of Christendom itself lay in its safe keeping. This most virtuous and religious knight had no doubt the relic was none other than the rod of Aaron, an object hewn by Almighty God himself that had journeyed with the prophets and kings of Israel across the millennia. An object so endowed with the miraculous power of God that it will be given as a sceptre to the Christ on his second coming, in token of his authority over the heathen.
I hung on his every word. His answer seemed not the rash conjecture of a fanciful man but the considered conclusion of an incorrupt seeker of truth. He returned to the crimson book and read aloud from it; the French tongue I understood well. From its account I heard again how the holy relic had voyaged with Heraclius, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, and Lord Roger des Moulins, Grand Master of the Knights Hospitallers, to the shores of England some sixty years after its discovery in Jerusalem. Their undisclosed undertaking was to secretly intern it at some sanctified place in England until the danger from Saladin and his hoards was past, or the arrival of Christ Himself from the heavens.
Though a man of some seventy years, Mr F was brisk and vigorous and circled the table quickly. With his finger, he added to the outline of the drawing set out in powder on the surface of the table. I leant forward to have some better view of his design. Compounding another perfect triangle with the one he had earlier made, my learned friend had created the form of a hexagram, a symbol with which I was well accustomed from my alchemic studies to mean transmutation, the upward triangle symbolising fire and the downward water. But I realised that the cryptogram laid out before me had an altogether different significance.
Praying I would retain every particular to give a full account of things later, I begged him to continue. He told me thus: According to Gérard de Ridefort’s journal, the month before their meeting at Reading Abbey, the Patriarch and the Grand Master had already met the King and consecrated two new churches in London. Commissioned by the Knights Templar and the Knights of the Hospital of St John, the foundations of the Temple Church and the Priory of St John were placed in a holy geometry with the great Cathedral of St Paul’s. Taking three nutmegs from a pot near the fireplace, he placed one at each corner of the newest triangle—St John’s to the north, the Temple Church to the west and St Paul’s to the east—, their foundations forming a perfect triangle. With an earnest countenance, he then imparted that a pledge of the utmost secrecy was then sealed between the parties to hide the blessed relic within the territory of these three London churches. The exact location of its internment had been coded in a map on the last page of Gérard de Ridefort’s journal. Like a bolt of lightning, Mr F snapped the book shut, giving me stern warning not to betray its whereabouts.
The first bell for evening prayers sounded down the corridor outside Brother Nathan’s room. The noise momentarily shook the priest from his intense concentration. Ignoring the bell’s call, Brother Nathan inhaled deeply and continued reading. The pages that followed turned his face white with shock.
Chapter 15
Mary always kept the needle in her shoe. After unpicking it from the sheet of cardboard that formed the insole, Mary placed it between her lips. It felt cold and sharp against her tongue, but soon it would feel like fire. Her other materials were laid out on the step in front of her: a reel of sewing thread, a metal teaspoon, a box of matches, a bottle of writing ink, and a half-bottle of Captain Morgan’s spiced rum. Mary sat alone in the doorway, although a black dog paced along the pavement in front of her. She would have to work fast. Before long, her hands would be too cold to hold the needle. On the third attempt, she managed to light a match and began to move the needle back and forth across the sterilising flame, its burnished surface becoming blackened by soot. Before the match was consumed fully by the flame, she extinguished it with a puff from her mouth. She then unwound a length of the white thread from the reel and snapped it off with a sharp tug. Shifting her body so that her hands were in the direct light of the street lamp above, she began to wind the cotton thread tightly around the needle. After every circumference, she pulled it taut. Within a few minutes, she had created a densely packed sheath of thread along its length some five layers thick, only the last millimetres of the sharp point left exposed.
On seeing Mary rock herself onto her feet, the dog stopped its pacing and stared at the thin dishevelled woman moving restlessly in the doorway, her shoulders wrapped in an old blanket. She bent down and picked up the unopened bottle of rum that stood upright by her feet. The weight of the bottle felt good in her hand, but she would need every drop to finish what she had just started. She broke the seal and took four long swigs of the tawny liquid. It burned as it travelled down. She crouched, almost tottering over as she did so, and placed the bottle of ink and the teaspoon next to each other on the ledge beside the fire-exit door. With trembling hands, she poured a small quantity of the black ink onto the spoon; large drops of the dark pigment coalesced at the bottom. It was time.
As Mary turned to face the deserted back street, she let the thick blanket around her shoulders drop to the ground. She tugged at the layers of clothing surrounding her right arm leaving her forearm exposed to the orange glow of the street light. A series of black marks criss-crossed her pale skin. Squinting, she located the most prominent mark, a fresh scab forming the outline of the letter ‘M’ gouged into the surface. She picked up the needle in her left hand, leant over to the ledge supporting the spoon and dipped the tip into the ink. The black pigment was quickly drawn up through the loops of cotton thread to form a reservoir of ink behind the sharp point of the needle. Holding it between her thumb and index finger, she measured a finger width from the scab and then pricked deep into the white skin. She gasped as the cold jolt of pain shot down her arm. She did it again and again, only pausing to recharge the needle with more ink. When it was over, she poured rum over the tracts of the wound and fell to the ground exhausted. The word was complete: ‘MASTEMA’.
The black dog emerged from the shadows and climbed the steps to the doorway. He lay down next to Mary’s shaking body and for a brief moment they stared at each other. Then she wrapped the heavy blanket around herself and the dog.
Chapter 16
A single shaft of light streamed through the gap in the window shutters of Brother Nathan’s bedroom. Even though the bare uninsulated walls of the priest’s sleeping quarters were thoroughly chilled by the cool night air, Brother Nathan’s forehead was bathed in sweat. The priest double-checked the position of the chair wedged against the hand
le of his bedroom door and returned to the small crimson book lying on his desk. Trembling, he turned the page.
Sighing grievously, Mr F then spoke of the old religion and the many names and forms, both male and female, that the dark angel was known by. He talked at great length of the folly of common interpreters of history, who are blind to the concealed truth of events and understand them no more than do ass or monkey. Since its arrival onto the shores of this land, the agents of the enemy have been close behind in search of the holy relic and have left little unsearched.
The learned gentleman recounted the events of the Great Rising of the year 1381, events some now call the Peasants’ Revolt. This is what he imparted to me: It was true that the taxes for the common folk of England at that time were grievous and intolerable, leaving little for bodily sustenance or rent, but the truth of the direction of the ensuing riots across London was part of a concealed devilish plot to uncover the holy relic. Christendom was never in so much danger as when these peoples rose against the will of God.
Vast mobs with swords, staves, forks and stones stormed the properties of the Knights. On the day of the tenth of June, a furious and zealous horde sacked and burned the Hospitaller Commandery of Cressing Temple. Two days later, they were moving through the city like an avenging cloud, looting and destroying all Hospitaller property. The Temple Church was ransacked. The rolls and records of the church were burned in the streets. Those valiant Knights who conducted themselves so bravely on that day were barbarously run through by sword and murdered in cold blood. All places of holy sanctity were violated by the fury of the sacrilegious mob. The miserable spectacle moved to the Grand Priory of St John at Clerkenwell, where pillaging erupted with a devilish passion. They went with axes and hammers and shut themselves in. Then they tore the floor, not sparing the monuments of the dead, so hellish an avarice possessed them. After the underground crypt had been searched for a long while, that most venerable church was razed to the ground.
Walter the Tyler, the leader of the rebellion, accompanied by a small band of henchmen, commanded that the drawbridge of the Tower of London be put down. Inside they found Sir Robert Hales, the Prior of the Order of the Knights Hospitaller, who was at solemn prayer. It is written in the chronicles that fearing some great jeopardy to the Prior’s life, the priest held the consecrated host in front of the horde, trying to repel them back, a custom known to drive out demonic forces. But alas, the resistance proved useless, and the virtuous knight was dragged outside, his head struck off with a hatchet and mounted on a spike on London Bridge.
After such a horrid act of murder, the Tyler’s deputy in arms, one Jack Strawe, accompanied by a band of rebels, then marched north to the Hospitaller Manor of Highbury and destroyed it utterly. Plans were then devised to search the crypt of the mighty St Paul’s Cathedral and were only foiled by the timely death of the Tyler on Smithfield at the blade of the Lord Mayor. Seeing their leader mortally wounded, the rebel advance was stalled, and the King’s nobleman quickly regained control of the city. During those fateful days in the summer of 1381, the holy staff was in great peril of discovery, such that the whole of Christendom was teetering on the brink of a fiery pit. My learned friend imparted that he had no knowledge of whether the sanctity of the three churches had been broken and the relic lost forever, until that very evening when I recounted the events of the past days.
Not fully comprehending the terrible apprehension in his warnings, I returned to the subject of the holy relic and the interpretation of its finding within the scriptures. With a voice and countenance full of solemn portent, he recalled the clear prophecies concerning the things to be done to herald in Christ’s second coming and the re-establishment of his kingdom where all righteousness dwells. These were the three signs concerning the end of times.
Like a clergyman preaching from the pulpit, he named the first two signs. First, the nation of Israel will be rebuilt, ruins restored, and places built to honour the Holy One of Israel. With his face consumed with zeal, he delivered the second sign: the return of the Jewish people to the Promised Land. To mark the foretelling, he quoted from the prophet Ezekiel: ‘I will save my people from the countries of the East and the West. I will bring them back to live in Jerusalem; they will be my people, and I will be faithful and righteous to them as their God.’ He panted for breath and for a moment fell silent. I pressed him to reveal the third sign to me, my mind resolute that I must know. Gravely, he gave account of the last sign: the rebuilding of the third Temple in Jerusalem from which Christ Himself will rule during the end times. ‘He shall build the temple of the Lord; and he shall bear the glory, and shall sit and rule upon his throne; and he shall be a priest upon his throne.’ With his eyes fixed upon me like daggers, Mr F made clear that the discovery of the hidden rod was the signal for the start of the rebuilding. Without it, the third sign could not come to pass. He recounted what was written in the sacred scriptures on this matter: ‘When the Messiah comes it will be given to him a sceptre in token of His authority and He will rule them with a sceptre’.
With that, he drew a great breath into his lungs and blew as hard as he could across the hexagram, creating a cloud of flour like a snowstorm in the air and erasing its form from the table. His last words filled my heart with terror. The rod, he solemnly imparted, was the key to the unsealing of the Revelation of St. John the Divine. The return of the rod to Jerusalem would herald the rebuilding of the Temple and the beginning of the end of days. Grabbing my arm, and greatly agitated in his mind, my learned teacher declared to me that now was the time for God’s anger, and dreadful judgements were approaching, such that all but a few would soon perish in the flames of Armageddon. Now fighting to catch his breath, he slumped into his chair. Shaking his head with most disquiet, he uncovered a small golden amulet that was tied around his neck and kissed it. Later, I saw that the talisman was also fashioned into the shape of a hexagram. After imparting such a terrible warning, Mr F compelled me to leave and we agreed to meet again the following morning.
Newton’s handwriting was then interrupted by a curious diagram. Brother Nathan moved the book closer to the light. Though only two inches or so in height, the drawing had been expertly executed in fine black ink. The design was of a circle divided into twelve equal quadrants, like the hours of a clock or the quadrants of a compass. At the centre of the circle was written a single word: Clavis.
Chapter 17
Tuesday 10 November
Brother Nathan was expecting his friend to arrive at the Observatory’s library reception area at eleven o’clock in the morning, but she was fifteen minutes early. He watched the arrival of the Mercedes taxi from his office window and waited for her to emerge from the back of the vehicle. The dark burden he had inherited from the pages of Gérard de Ridefort’s book was etched deeply on his face.
Sabatini closed the door of the taxi and paid the driver. The traffic from Fiumicino Airport had been unexpectedly light, and she had made good time. She was an attractive Italian woman in her mid-thirties, with striking dark eyes. Though she was tall, her shoulders barely reached the top of the ornamental stone vases that lined the driveway to the library. Swinging her large leather suitcase in time with the crunching sound of the gravel under her feet, she quickly covered the short distance to the library entrance.
‘Ciao, Brother Hummingbird,’ she shouted across the courtyard, her arms waving excitedly. Hummingbird was the pet name she had given him when she had been his research student in the States. It was a name that just seemed to fit with his boundless vigour and love for alcoholic nectar. The friendly dig at his ever-expanding waistline compared to the tiny weight of a hummingbird also added to the name’s attraction.
‘Ciao, Carla.’ The two friends moved closer to embrace, but almost instantly Sabatini detected a heaviness in her old mentor’s demeanour.
‘Nathan, is anything wrong? You look very serious.’
The priest return
ed a strained smile.
‘I guess I have been feeling the cold more than usual. Let’s get indoors. I’m sure I will feel better with some coffee inside me.’
Brother Nathan took Sabatini by the arm and led her through the main doors of the library. A small table with a steaming pot of coffee and a collection of assorted pastries had been set up at one side of the foyer. The priest poured the coffee into two small white china cups. The delicious aroma of Colombian coffee quickly lifted Brother Nathan’s spirits. He handed one of the china cups to Sabatini and warmed his hands on the coffee pot. The warmth seemed to melt away the frown from his ruddy round face.
‘My dear Carla, tell me more about the Sotheby’s auction.’
Sabatini nodded and took a welcome sip of the strong black coffee.
‘Since his death in 1727, Newton’s personal papers and effects were kept hidden from public view at Hurstbourne Park, the family home of the Earls of Portsmouth. The collection was concealed from academic scrutiny until 1936, when Viscount Lymington instructed Sotheby’s to auction the papers in an open sale to clear substantial death duties.
‘The papers were organised into 331 separate sales lots, and up until your phone call, I believed that Lot 249 had been lost to a private collector. Now I know that the papers were acquired on behalf of the Vatican, who at that time had become very interested in Newton’s writings on the Early Church.’
Excitedly, Sabatini returned her cup to the table. ‘Nathan, can I see the papers?’
Brother Nathan smiled at his ex-student. She was as impatient as ever.
THE HISTORY OF THINGS TO COME: A Supernatural Thriller (The Dark Horizon Trilogy Book 1) Page 7