by James Becker
Satisfied with that decision, he sent a brief text in reply to the duty officer—with a request that he advise Vitale accordingly when he arrived in the building—put his phone back on charge, and went back to sleep.
31
Somerset
“Mind you,” Mallory said thoughtfully as he steered the Porsche at an entirely legal speed toward the village of Templecombe, “I do see a couple of potential problems in finding this license or whatever it is.”
It had been too late to drive there the previous evening, so they’d set off immediately after breakfast that morning.
Robin looked across at him and nodded for him to continue. He’d offered her the keys to the car at the hotel that morning, but—as he had expected—she’d shaken her head in refusal. If any vehicle she was in was going to be driven in a sensible and responsible manner, then she was never particularly interested in getting behind the wheel, because that kind of driving simply bored her, and she’d much rather be a passenger.
“We do know that Templecombe existed as a settlement before the Knights Templar arrived and built a preceptory there at the end of the twelfth century—that was when they were given the land by a man called Serlo Fitz Odo—and we also know that the name of the village came from the Latin Combe Templariorum. But the origins of the Templecombe Head are much more mysterious.”
“I know,” Robin replied, “because I did a bit more research this morning while you were snoring like a bull with chronic asthma on your side of the bed. Reading the decrypted text suggests, at least to me, that whatever we are supposed to find is somewhere behind the Templecombe Head. That’s the obvious interpretation of the phrase ‘behind the eyes,’ and that’s also the problem. As you know, the Head itself is a painting done on wooden boards that depicts the face of a human male, but experts can’t agree on whose face it is.”
“One account I read said that Jesus Christ was a contender.”
Robin nodded.
“He is, but the problem is that artistic convention in the early Middle Ages decreed that paintings of Christ should show him with a halo, as a mark of divinity, and the Templecombe Head has no halo. The counterargument is that the Templars were known to use images of Christ without a halo, which might imply that it was a painting owned or commissioned by the Templars. The other option is that it might be intended to show the face of John the Baptist, who was obviously a very important character in the early Christian Church, but not considered to be divine. So, the short, snappy summary is that it could be either of these two men, or neither of them, and it could even be somebody entirely unknown to history but of some importance to the painter or to the society in which he was working. In short, nobody knows. But what we do know, because of radiocarbon dating, is that the wood on which the painting was done dates from about the thirteenth century, so it is more or less contemporary with the presence of the Knights Templar in and around the village, and the style of the painting suggests that it dates from roughly the same period, so we’re probably not looking at a nineteenth-century painting on a piece of thirteenth-century wood, for example.”
“I do know that the Head is now on display in the local church, the Church of Saint Mary, at Templecombe,” Mallory said, dredging a possibly unrelated fact from his memory vault, “but as far as I remember it hasn’t always been inside the building.”
“Spot-on. In fact, nobody knows where the painting was originally displayed, or even if it was ever on display at all. It was only found by accident back in 1945, when a local woman found it in an outhouse, where a part of the ceiling had fallen down. She was either trying to do some kind of repairs to it, or possibly collecting wood—the surviving accounts vary—when she looked up and saw a painted face staring down at her from the ceiling, which must have been a slightly surreal moment. Apparently the painted panel had been put in the roof to keep it out of sight years earlier, because it was wired to the inside of the roof, and then the ceiling had been plastered over. We also don’t know why this was done, unless it was simply for safekeeping. Maybe it was because of fears of a German invasion of Britain in either the First or the Second World War, and then the person who’d hidden it either died or perhaps just forgot about it.
“After that, the painting had a bit of a hard life, because the local vicar decided to clean it in his bath using scouring powder, which had the effect of removing most of the color. It was restored in the late 1950s before being given to the church in 1956, and was restored a second time in the 1980s. It occasionally gets taken out of the church to be exhibited elsewhere, but most of the time the Church of Saint Mary is its home.”
“That’s pretty much the story as I remember it,” Mallory said, “and you’re right about that creating a problem. If we knew for a fact that the Templecombe Head had always hung in the church, then there would be a reasonable chance that whatever we’re looking for would be carved into the wall behind it, or something like that. But because of the history of the painting, the way it’s been treated, and the peculiar sequence of events that ended up with it being given to the church, the one place we can be pretty sure we can forget about is the wall where it’s hanging. After all, we don’t know for certain that that painting ever had anything to do with the church, though my guess is that it did, because the way the face was painted suggests to most people that it was a kind of sacred art.”
“So where do we start looking?”
“At the picture, if we can get access to it, because the other possible meaning of the phrase is better, just about. The alternative explanation of ‘behind the eyes’ is really simple and obvious. Maybe it refers to the back of the painting itself, to the wooden panel on which it’s painted. But you know what the downside of that is.”
“Yes. That idiot vicar scrubbing at it in his bath and then the two later restorations. They would obviously have been working on the painting, on the face painted on the wood. They probably wouldn’t have bothered even looking at the reverse, unless there was some clearly written text or message, and even if there had been, they’d most likely have ignored it unless it helped establish when the picture was painted, or who either the artist or the subject was. But I don’t recall reading about a text on the reverse.”
“That’s because there isn’t anything there, at least as far as I know. Did your researches tell you anything else about the Head?” Mallory asked.
“No. That was pretty much as far as I got.”
“It might be worth checking up on this once we get to Templecombe, but I remember reading somewhere that the painting had probably been used as a door at some point in its history, because on one side there are, or perhaps there were, hinges and on the other side a keyhole. As far as I can see, the only thing we’ve got going for us is that we’re pretty sure that the painting is important and can lead us to what we’re looking for. So what we really need to find is a space that the painting could be used to secure as a door, and if we can track down something like that, we might just crack this.
“The other thing in our favor is that some parts of the church are original, and date back to the twelfth century, and I suppose it would be reasonable to assume that whatever the Templars hid, they might well have concealed in the church, on the basis that the secular buildings in the village and even the preceptory itself might well be torn down, modified, or rebuilt, but the church was likely to remain in its original state, apart from necessary repairs and perhaps extensions, purely because of its religious significance. Oh,” he added as another thought struck him, “the other obvious problem we have is that after the order was purged, the village and all the Templar properties there were given to the Hospitallers. They had no reason to like the Templars, and so it’s certainly possible that they might have found whatever was hidden and either used it or destroyed it. And if that is what happened, we’ll be wasting our time even going to the village.”
“Then let’s hope that didn’t happen.
So, the church should be our first stop?” Robin asked.
“I think so, yes. And if we find nothing at the church, we’ll just have to think again.”
• • •
Ten minutes later Mallory braked the Porsche to a halt on the outskirts of Templecombe, selecting a quiet street—and there were plenty of those—more or less at random.
“It’s probably better to leave the car here,” he said, “away from prying eyes, just in case we’ve got unwelcome company. It’s too distinctive to park in a more obvious place.”
“Makes sense. So, where’s the church?”
Mallory pointed to a sign at the end of the road they’d just driven down.
“I think that will tell us which direction to go,” he said.
The signpost did, and minutes later they were standing outside the churchyard and looking at the ancient gray stone building.
English country churches are often elegant structures, the old walls penetrated by delicate stone tracery studded with the rich glowing colors of stained glass, and frequently topped by a soaring tower that seems to be almost literally reaching up toward the heavens. They are usually calm, peaceful, gracious, and welcoming buildings, whatever your religious persuasion or lack of one.
The Church of Saint Mary at Templecombe was different from that description in almost every respect.
“It looks more like a fort or a castle than a church,” Robin commented, when they stopped on the road outside the substantial wall that enclosed the church and the grassy area that composed the churchyard.
“I know exactly what you mean. Even if I didn’t know anything about the history of the place, I think I’d probably guess that it was originally a Templar chapel. It just has that solid and uncompromising look about it that was so characteristic of a lot of their architecture.”
For a few seconds they stood there in silence, staring at the building in front of them.
They were looking at the face of the tower, but there was no elegant spire reaching up toward the salvation of God in heaven. Instead, the tower was squat, square, and solid, and looked more as if it was getting ready to withstand an attack or a siege than to welcome a group of worshippers.
Massively constructed of gray stone—probably hamstone, Mallory thought, bearing in mind where they were—it dominated that part of the building. In the center, at ground level, was a Gothic arch, seemingly too small, almost out of proportion with the tower above it. Recessed a short distance inside the arch was an equally small door, the ancient solid wood glowing a dark gray-brown in the sunlight. The reason for that part of the design was obvious: a large door would have offered a bigger target and potential way of getting inside for any attackers, so the Templars invariably made their entrances as small as reasonably possible, to provide a more effective defense.
And that philosophy was continued in the rest of the structure. Perhaps a dozen feet above the arch was a window, an opening filled with diamond-shaped panes of leaded glass, but so narrow that it did not appear to have been constructed to allow light inside the building. What it looked like more than anything else was a large arrow slit, a break in the solid wall that would allow a couple of bowmen to stand side by side and engage an approaching enemy, and possibly also wide enough for the defenders to pour boiling oil or other noxious substances over a group of people trying to break down the main door and so repel them.
Directly above that was a clock, and a little higher was another, larger window, this one without glass but barred with slabs of horizontal worked stone separated by gaps, presumably intended to allow fresh air into the building. The top of the tower was marked by a line of crenellated battlements, and they looked like the real thing, not any form of decoration. They had clearly been built to permit a defending force to engage an enemy from the roof of the building whilst themselves still being protected by the thick stone. At each of the four corners, prominent gargoyles jutted out to allow water to drain off the flat roof, and the whole structure was supported by solid stone buttresses at each corner at ground level.
Behind the tower, a more conventional church building extended to both the left and the right, complete with windows of a more normal size.
“According to what I read this morning,” Robin said, “this place was given a major Victorian renovation in the nineteenth century, which was probably when most of what we’re looking at now was modified. But the tower most likely hasn’t been touched since it was built in the twelfth century. And it stands on Saxon foundations, so there’s been something—some religious building, I mean—on this spot for a hell of a long time.”
“And it looks like it, too,” Mallory agreed. “Well, standing here looking at it butters no crumpets, as they say, so let’s get inside.”
32
Somerset
“How accurate is this information?” Toscanelli asked.
The voice at the other end of the call, that of the duty officer in Rome, was slightly distorted by the scrambling system he was using, his words interspersed with anomalous squelching sounds and occasional breaks. In reality, it wasn’t that unlike a normal mobile-to-mobile call, when both phones were at the very edges of their respective cells, and what he was saying was clearly understandable.
“Very. The tertiary has reported two sightings of the target vehicle from traffic cameras, one near the center of a town called Portishead, which is near Bristol—”
“I see it,” Toscanelli interrupted, looking at the local area map spread out on the table in front of him and placing his right forefinger firmly on the town the duty officer had just identified. He and his men were sitting at adjoining tables in a café on the east side of Bristol, having driven up there in their two hire cars first thing that morning to await further orders or information from Rome, information that would let them hunt down their quarry.
“Good. The second camera was on one of the roads leading out of the town, down toward the south, and that ties up with the transcription of the ancient text. There is a small settlement named Templecombe that lies in that direction, and we believe that Mallory and Jessop are making their way there. Our experts here have now decrypted most of the text. The statements are obviously subject to interpretation, but they believe that one section refers to that village and to an ancient painting found there years ago. It’s known as the Templecombe Head and it’s on display in the local church. We think that is what the two of them are trying to examine.”
“Understood,” Toscanelli said, looking again at the map. “I see where this place Templecombe is. We can be there in less than an hour.”
“There’s something else. The next part of the text tells us to ‘seek behind the eyes,’ and we think that means there’s something written or carved into the back of the painting, because it was done on wood, not canvas. That means you have to get hold of the painting so we can examine it.”
“Understood. Anything else?”
“Yes. I have a message for you from Silvio Vitale.”
“Oh, yes?” Toscanelli replied cautiously. Any message from the head of the enforcement arm of the Dominican order was not necessarily good news.
“He said,” the duty officer continued, “that now we have the decryption almost complete, Mallory and Jessop are of no further interest or use to us. We have all the information needed to complete the quest. You are to find them and kill them, as a matter of urgency.”
“It will be a pleasure,” Toscanelli said, his voice a dangerously soft purr.
33
Templecombe, Somerset
“So, that’s it?”
Robin’s remark was framed as a question, but as they were both standing in the church and looking up at the enigmatic features of the Templecombe Head, Mallory took it as no more than a statement of fact and didn’t respond to her comment. Instead, he glanced over toward the altar, where the rector was explaining something about the history of
the building to a tour group of about a dozen people. The tourists had already spent a few minutes in front of the Templecombe Head and had then moved elsewhere in the building, allowing Robin and Mallory to step forward and examine it.
“We’re lucky we arrived at about the same time they did,” he said. “I didn’t realize the church was usually kept locked for security. For the security of this painting, actually.”
It was positioned on the south wall of the church at a little over head height, so looking at the image was easy for both of them. Even without the knowledge they had of the history of the painting, it would have been quite obvious that it was old. Everything about it—the style, the way the features were painted, and even the borders and layout of the picture—looked medieval.
Staring back at them was the face of a bearded man with long hair of a light brown shade that almost verged on ginger. His eyes and mouth were open, and although his face was largely expressionless, the emotion conveyed in it by the painter was, if anything, surprise. The head appeared disembodied, with no sign of even a neck below the face, though the colors were so faded that the paint strokes depicting the figure’s neck and shoulders might simply no longer be visible. Surrounding the image was a geometric pattern, a shape that looked almost like a painted stone border that could possibly have been intended to represent an ornate window, or perhaps a kind of frame within the painting to emphasize the importance of the subject. The upper part of the painting was cut off at about the level of the top of the head, which suggested that originally the panel might have been slightly larger.
Attached to both sides of the design and to the bottom center were three identical shapes with a distinctly floral appearance, almost like stylized leaves. The one to the left of the face was far clearer than the other two. Mallory pointed to that one.