by D C Macey
From behind her, Grace stretched an arm over Elaine’s shoulder, pointing to one of the boxes. ‘You like mushrooms, Mum, that’ll be a nice one,’ she said. Elaine did not respond, so Grace leant right round her, picked up a slice of pizza and dropped it on her mother’s plate. ‘Excuse fingers.’ Then she was off round the table, pouring out glasses of water for everyone.
Elaine took a reluctant bite and secretly enjoyed it, though her unswervingly stern countenance made clear to anyone watching that she was eating under sufferance. A little while later, Grace noted a second slice shift smoothly onto her mother’s plate.
Midway through the meal Sam arrived, triggering another round of introductions and enthusiastic greetings.
By the time lunch was over, Helen had definitely taken to Xavier. He had an air of leadership, you could just sense he was a man who could and would make the hard decisions, yet he was courteous and considerate to those around him. She could understand why her mother and father had befriended him, even though he was clearly not predisposed to idle social chatter. In his younger days, he must have been the epitome of the tall dark stranger.
Eating done, they migrated to the study and took seats around Helen’s desk. As everyone settled, Elaine sent her daughter out of the room. Grace started to object but then let it go and set off upstairs to resume the cleaning she was doing so diligently in John’s memory. Helen was delighted that Grace was not being exposed to anything that might put her at risk and she could tell that Elaine shared the same feelings.
The meeting started gently, a continuation of lunch’s conversation, with invitations repeated and promises given to visit Sardinia, the States, to come back to Edinburgh for the Festival later in the summer. For a moment the meeting hung in the air with nobody quite willing to take the next step.
Xavier took the initiative. His aging voice gentle yet confident; his accented Italian English delivered in a calm matter of fact way, as though proposing a parish outing. ‘We need to plan what to do. We need to face this threat that seems all around us. We need to come up with a plan to protect our friends here in Edinburgh,’ his arms swept open to include all those present, ‘and of course to protect those of us who have travelled from afar.’
A murmur of agreement rippled around the room, but Xavier held his hand up for silence. ‘Of course, such a thing is always difficult, here doubly so, as the central party,’ he nodded towards Helen who looked slightly startled at the label, ‘is not so aware of her position or responsibility.’
He pouted, shrugged and turned his hands in towards his chest, pointing at himself. A single flowing gesture that disclaimed any responsibility for drawing Helen into the problem. ‘John Dearly took her as his assistant, not me. Maybe he did not plan for that to last forever, but he died when he died. John gave her the ring. He asked her to stand for him.’ His hands raised and fell back into his lap, a resigned acceptance of what was.
Elaine nodded. ‘It’s true,’ she let her gaze roam round the room. ‘John’s last gasp committed to Helen, before my eyes. But without him here to support us it’s going to be difficult to achieve his last wish, difficult but not impossible. We’ll need to be strong now the presbytery clerk is trying to exert his influence over the parish selection process. But in the end, he can only advise, he can’t make the congregation choose someone they don’t want. I’ll stand for John’s last wishes no matter what, I’m with Helen for sure,’ she looked towards Helen, face fixed, but eyes defiant, almost angry.
Helen couldn’t help smiling to herself. Elaine seemed to be getting back on form. Helen wouldn’t fancy James Curry’s chances in a standoff between the pair now. But the threat they faced from outside was another thing altogether.
The room fell into silence for a moment and then Helen spoke for the first time. ‘Innocent people are dead and it seems more are at risk. I don’t want any special focus on protecting me. I can stand on my own two feet. There are plenty of others to be concerned about. Everyone needs the same care and protection.’
As a child she had always kept pace with her big brothers and their friends, running, swimming, playing ball, joining in whatever they did, while still managing to remain her daddy’s little girl. Much later, in preparation for joining the church, she had shared long private talks with him, much of it about her time working in West Africa. Yes, she knew she could stand when the call came, and she wasn’t a little girl any more.
Xavier nodded acceptance. ‘Good, because this is a time of risk,’ he looked around the room, his dark eyes betraying no concern for self. ‘Risk for everyone. We must all be ready, be careful,’ he gave a dry laugh. ‘For me, it is not so bad. I am old anyway, but most of all I have Angelo.’ Xavier waved towards his assistant and continued as Angelo gave a stiff nod. ‘They will find Angelo a hard shell to break.’
Francis laughed quietly. ‘Xavier, I know you know it. I think you mix up our sayings on purpose. You mean Angelo is a tough nut to crack,’ he said. The mood lightened slightly and everybody jumped at the chance to smile for a moment.
Xavier waved a dismissive hand, mocking himself. ‘Hard shells, tough nuts, who cares? Neither falls apart easily, eh?’ Then he bluntly drew the group back to the problem. ‘Now what do we do?’
Helen had a stack of questions that she and Sam had talked through endlessly over the preceding days and she took the opportunity to direct the discussion. ‘Well, I need to know what these blades or daggers are for. Why are they so important that people are being slaughtered for them, and why now all of a sudden? If they’ve been around for so long what’s triggered all this now? And you know what? How come I’ve never heard of all this stuff before?’ She looked accusingly at Francis. ‘You seem to be in the thick of all this. And my father tells me he knows all of you. Seems like Sam and I are the only ones out of the loop. Let’s start by levelling with everyone, what do you say?’
Xavier responded first. ‘Francis knows more than he should and certainly more than is good for him, I think. But that comes from a long friendship and too much of John’s fine Scotch.’
Francis agreed. ‘Helen, I’ve already told you what I can. I know just enough to understand there is a problem but not enough to provide a solution.’
Xavier looked around the room. ‘So, it must be for me to tell the story now. Yes?’ The silence around the table answered him clearly.
‘You will wonder how I know this and I will tell, but first some story. The Templar treasure… I know Francis has already explained how the Templars ended up here; what is not clear is what happened to the treasure. It was enormous, and bankrolled a good part of the Christian world. The French king seized a lot, but the main treasure escaped France with the Templar fleet and was then hidden away; nobody knows where.
‘In those final days, the Templar leadership worried about their hidden wealth, knowing it was coveted by every king and villain in Europe. They worried that their treasures, God’s wealth, might somehow fall into the wrong hands or perhaps even be lost forever. Ultimately, to protect their wealth for the future, they devised a plan to keep their secrets safely hidden and secure until they could emerge again, reclaim their wealth and resume their place in the world. They put that plan into operation.
‘Then, as formal dissolution of the order became fact, many of the knights simply vanished into history. Others were allowed to transfer, becoming knights with the order of Hospitallers of St John. As they were absorbed into their new order, Templar power and influence faded. But the most senior Templars were not so lucky; the leaders were taken and tortured, long and slow, hurt in unspeakable ways. Not to extract confession and repentance, that could be drawn from any man in a day: less than a day. This torture went on and on. Why? To extract from the leadership the hiding place of the Templars’ wealth.’ Xavier paused for a moment. His dark eyes roamed around the room, he coughed, drank from a glass of water and sighed.
‘But the Templars’ plan worked perfectly. It had been so carefully designed that no m
an alive knew the full story and that included the leaders of the order. Even under the harshest torture, they could not tell their tormentors where the treasure was; they did not know. The secret was spread around, dispersed among a group of loyal knights, each of whom had only part of the answer, and none knew to where the others had travelled. All anyone knew was they had dispersed away from the hub, the heart; away from Scotland. It was the perfect protection for the Templar’s treasure, but tragically it guaranteed those poor leaders the most awful of deaths,’ Xavier was shaking his head.
The room remained in silence for several moments, and then Helen spoke. ‘So, once again, this all just comes back to money? People are dying, being butchered and brutalised today because of a medieval treasure hunt? Tell me that people do not still believe in this stuff today.’
Francis looked at her carefully and spoke in an almost hushed voice, his tone carrying a hint of reprimand. ‘They do believe, and you see the results. Pray God now holds John Dearly’s soul safe; for those people’s beliefs sent him on his way, and Archie Buchan and all the others too. Don’t discount the savagery that greed and a lust for power breeds, Helen. It’s always been here and it always will be.’
Xavier nodded and continued. ‘You should believe it because I say it. And you have the evidence in your ring. Look, me too.’ A ripple of surprise ran through the group as from beneath his collar he pulled out an ancient gold signet ring, strung on a heavy gold chain. ‘This is the token to identify the task bearers. Each tasked to protect a part of the secret of the common wealth until called back together.’ He dangled the ring, swinging it gently on its chain. ‘And you?’ he asked, fixing Helen with his gaze and tilting his head forward slightly.
Reluctantly Helen reciprocated, slipping a hand inside the collar of her polo shirt and pulling out her signet ring; she did not need to look closely to compare them, even the gold chains were clearly identical. She looked at him grimly and felt a slight sense of foreboding as she allowed her ring to swing in time with Xavier’s, back and forth, back and forth. He gave a knowing nod, and slipped his ring away. The rest of the room had fallen silent watching the exchange with fascination and anticipation.
Xavier maintained his eye contact with Helen. An intimate link in a full room. ‘So now you know how I know. Just like you, I hold a ring. Well, maybe more like John; he and I were told, inducted, we knew what was involved. You? You knew nothing.’
Sliding her ring out of sight, Helen tried to pick up her questioning again, all the while trying to suppress the surge of excitement that had come with the revelation that she was not alone. Xavier held a ring too. ‘Okay, so there’s lots of money and greed driving this…’ her voice trailed off in response to Xavier’s arching eyebrow as he leant back one shoulder and took a short sharp intake of breath, making clear he had not finished speaking. ‘Sorry - Xavier, you have something more to say?’
The old Sardinian leant forward again. Resting his elbows on the table, he pushed his forearms a little forward while turning his open palms towards her. ‘Greed and money? Yes, you are right, but look around you,’ his hands swivelled a little to embrace everyone. ‘What have we got in common? Faith. What did the Templars do when they weren’t fighting or supporting trade? They praised God and prayed and gathered things, holy artefacts of the faith, from anywhere and everywhere. Especially from Jerusalem,’ his hands rose in the air in a display of apparent exasperation. ‘This is not so easy. It might be wealth that motivates our oppressor; it might be a thirst to find the ancient collection, the religious artefacts that defined our faith. Who knows? So we must make no assumptions about who we face and why they are coming. Yes?’
‘Well that’s progress. We find a clear motive; then it gets muddied,’ said Helen. ‘Is there anything we actually know for certain?’
Xavier allowed a space for others to contribute. No one spoke. He resumed. ‘It might be human greed for treasure. It might be a zealot’s desire to obtain holy artefacts. We don’t know. How can we know? But unfortunately it would seem those things we do know are known to our oppressors too.’ Xavier paused again and looked down at the corner of the desk in front of him. Palms flat down, he applied a steady downward pressure and watched the tips of his fingernails whiten as the blood beneath was forced away. He was about to break his second secret of the day; a secret he and others before him had kept for a very long time, and it was not to be done lightly.
Helen watched Xavier’s almost theatrical delay. She repeated her question. ‘Well, Xavier, what do we actually know?’ She waited as Francis leant forward in expectation. At last, and quite unexpectedly, he was going to learn the secrets that John Dearly had hinted at in moments of indiscretion but ultimately had kept all those years. Secrets that had eventually condemned him to an early and awful death. Elaine sat stoically listening. She was as interested as the others, but years of restraining her emotions had left her face a near involuntary mask. She would have been a great poker player if she had approved of gambling.
Without looking up from the desktop, finding some comfort in his unmoving hands, Xavier explained what he could. ‘So, it was arranged that no man knew all the details of where the Templars hid what was hidden, how to access it and what it contained. In those times they did not have computers and things to hide information in, but they were just as clever as we are today, and they could devise their own schemes to hide things. The knowledge was to be split up, dispersed and held apart until the time was right.
‘Henri de Bello was a senior Templar Knight. Old, a thinker, his fighting days long behind him, based not far from here at the preceptory in the village of Temple. I think, a headquarters in Scotland? He was clever, one of their best thinkers and, crucially, he was dying - steadily and inexorably moving towards his God. He was the last man to be trusted to hold all the knowledge of the Templars’ secret wealth and his impending death meant he would not live long enough to fall into the hands of their enemies. In those days, death was the best keeper of secrets. Perhaps it still is.
‘The story passed down to me tells us that de Bello chose daggers from their Jerusalem treasure. There are nine, each exactly the same, perfect.’ A murmur ran through the group at this revelation - it fitted with Francis’ story. Xavier continued, ‘Pure silver, and ceremonial, the blades are too soft for real fighting, but ideal to carry a message that would never change over the years. Pure silver lasts a very long time, it does not waste away quickly like iron.
‘Henri de Bello made a message. It was engraved in sections across the blades of the daggers.’ Xavier paused at Sam’s excited eureka cry.
‘Of course,’ said Sam. ‘All the patterning and lines on one side of the blade, they seemed random -’
‘But not if they line up with other blades, like sections of text,’ Helen cut in, finishing his sentence.
‘And all together they provide the full message. Brilliant!’ Francis finished off the deduction.
Xavier was nodding. ‘Yes, yes you have it. And the legitimacy of each task bearer is signed by the ring they carry.’ Then he gave one of his characteristic shrug and pouts. ‘But is it so easy? No. Not at all.’ The excitement subsided as they waited for Xavier to continue.
‘What is the message? I don’t know. Do we know where to find the other daggers? No. Have we got the dagger that Sam found in your Fife sand dunes? No. Have we got the museum dagger that Sam tracked down? No! But somebody has and they want more.’
‘We’re back to square one then. In fact, we’re worse off than when we started,’ said Helen. ‘We don’t know who wants the daggers and they have two already. They have part of the message already. And you know what? I don’t have a dagger to go with my ring.’
Sam frowned. ‘Yes, it seems whoever it is has a head start. But what are we in for? To stop the killing or to find this treasure?’ he shifted his gaze from Helen to Xavier. ‘What’s it to be?’
‘Xavier, what do you think?’ asked Helen.
The old man stret
ched his hand out, rested it on Angelo’s forearm and squeezed affectionately. ‘I have protected my part of our secret for all my working life. I’m old now, what I think matters less each day. I have had my time. For me, the days are already starting to feel too long, I don’t much care when I meet my maker now. Angelo here will soon take over from me, as you have from John Dearly. It is for you younger people to decide the course soon. But I would say this, for me - and I know for John Dearly too - life is always more precious than money. Lives should come first, always, and then you can worry about money.’
‘Hear, hear,’ Francis cut in to support Xavier and slapped his hand on the desk. ‘You can always dig more gold, but a life lost is lost forever.’
‘So how do we stop these killings? How do we put an end to it all? Do we just give these mercenaries or zealots or whoever they are, what they want? I guess that’s the dagger from here,’ said Sam. He stared around the group. ‘But we haven’t got it to give.’
‘Here’s a radical thought,’ said Helen. ‘There’s a detective over in the church right now, why don’t we go and tell him? Put it all in his lap. They’ll work out it’s nothing to do with us soon enough.’
Xavier nodded acknowledgement. ‘I understand your view, Helen, but you have seen what these people are capable of. They are driven; do you think the police can stop what is happening? They haven’t managed so far. Yet Sam is right as well when he says we don’t have it to give, to buy them off. But I wonder, even if we could give them what they want, would that stop the killing? I don’t think so. Everyone who has had even the slightest contact with our secret, knowingly or otherwise, has been killed. None of them could have caused any harm, and they would never have known the significance of what they were dealing with. They were just loose ends to be tied up. I don’t think the killing will stop just because we tell the police or they get what they want. It might even speed up the killing as they try to seal their plans. We will all have to be silenced too. Who knows, if you tell your detective, perhaps you are signing his death warrant too.’