The Templar Tower: Peter Sparke Book Five

by Scott Chapman

  "Right round the corner."

  "That's excellent," said Pascal, clearly happy to find that Sparke was now a near neighbor. Morges was a thirty-minute train ride from Geneva where Pascal lived.

  "Please, take my card," said Pascal, pulling out his wallet. "Give me a call when you are settled in and we can catch up."

  Sparke's automatic response would have been to reach into his collection of standard excuses which would allow him to escape any social obligation, but, instead of looking for an exit, he smiled.

  "That would be a great idea, Pascal. I'd love to do that. Can I call you next week?"

  Pascal was all too aware of Sparke's solitary habits and looked genuinely pleased at the suggestion. They spoke for a few minutes more and then parted, both smiling.

  Sparke headed through the market crowd towards the furniture store, his head bent to read Pascal’s business card.

  As he raised his head, he glanced around the busy shoppers and froze in an instant. There was something wrong. There was something in his field of vision that jarred. He had no idea what he had seen but some small visual discrepancy had stopped Sparke cold in his tracks.

  For years, Sparke had excelled at managing disasters by having a different perspective than other people, by seeing things which others missed and recognizing patterns in situations that appeared random. Here, in the middle of the market in a small Swiss town, he felt that flush of cold apprehension. There was nothing out of place. He looked closely, almost minutely, at the buildings, the fruit stall, the busy cafe and the crowds. Nothing was out of the ordinary. Nothing was wrong but the sensation had been clear.

  Other people may have called it instinct, but Sparke was fully aware that instinct was simply a case of the conscious brain being unable to keep up with all of the data it was receiving.

  He wasn’t able to see or think of anything that might have triggered the response and after several minutes of looking he gave up trying to understand what had happened and continued to the furniture store. Long years of connecting causes and effects made him consider that his recent attempts at spontaneity had disrupted his perception somehow, and then he dismissed the idea.

  The people in the store were relaxed and welcoming. His was a dream project for them. He had turned up with a drawing of the apartment floor-plan and no preconceptions as to what he wanted. On Sparke’s first visit, the manager had walked him through the entire store asking his opinion on various items or room layouts. Then he had taken a copy of Sparke's plan and arranged for a visit to the apartment. A week later, Sparke was invited back and the manager and two staff members explained, room by room, their ideas. He accepted their ideas without reservation, paid an eye-watering deposit and agreed the delivery date.

  Tomorrow the entire shipment would arrive and the store staff would be on hand to place the furniture and 'dress the rooms' as they called it. The calm, practiced expertise of the staff was like a balm to Sparke, who felt more at home with the Swiss every day.

  He agreed some last details, made the final payment and walked back out in search of lunch. Within five yards he stopped dead again. The same feeling, the same response, the same lack of anything out of the ordinary. This time Sparke fell upon a plan immediately. He turned back towards the store and retraced his steps, then followed the same path back out, copying, as closely as he could remember, his exact movements. Nothing.

  Rather than invest any more time in what he knew to be a fruitless re-examination of the scene, he walked on, through the crowd. He turned the corner back towards his apartment, trying not to stare, his ideas of lunch now forgotten.

  It happened again. This time it was as clear as a ringing bell and this time he saw the fact behind the feeling. Standing in the doorway of a shop was a woman, a woman he was sure he had never seen before and she was staring directly at him.

  Fire

  The worst night in his life was now being followed by the worst day that he could remember, worse than the day his mother had left, worse than the worst of his father's tempers, even worse than the day his father punched the horse in the unploughed field.

  After slapping Rosso, their father had walked through the door without a second glance. For a long time, none of the brothers spoke.

  "I think," said Massimo eventually, "some wine before we return to the study the life of Fra Muratore."

  "Wine," said Rosso, his voice slurred. "Wine is an excellent idea."

  Salvatore looked around the hall, relieved that no servants were witnesses to the slap.

  "I will find the Houseman," he said.

  "Forget the Houseman,” said Rosso. “Find the wine. We'll be on the west wall."

  The kitchen was empty, but it took Salvatore only a few minutes to find the flagon of rough wine. Deciding that his brothers were in no mood to quibble over quality, he heaved the jug onto his shoulder, crossed the courtyard and climbed the stone stairs to the west wall that ran above the main gate. His brothers waited, standing against the wall, looking across the valley of Radda. This part of the wall was not visible from the family apartments, making it a long-time haunt of the three brothers.

  Salvatore passed the jug to Rosso, who took a long, deep drink, before passing it to Massimo, who seemed to breathe the wine into his body. Despite his slim build, he had no less of an appetite than his elder brother. Massimo passed the jug to his younger brother, who filled his mouth with the heavy, bitter wine.

  The three sat with their backs to the side of the old battle-run, their feet on the outer wall, watching the sun fill the Tuscan landscape. There was nothing to say about the events of last night, less to say about the events of this morning. The jug moved between the three. Eventually, it was Massimo who spoke.

  "These are the good days,” he said. “Believe it or not. There is little ahead of us now, except toil and care."

  "I think," said Rosso, "that you are trying to imitate wisdom in an attempt to disguise the fact that you have an ugly, pointed head."

  "But," said Massimo, "my head is so much smaller than yours."

  "Have we drunk enough of the servants' wine?" asked Salvatore. "Should we return to the stories of Fra Muratore?"

  "Almost," said Rosso.

  Salvatore watched him as he lifted the heavy flagon with one hand and drank. The mottled marks around his neck from the fight were now joined by the deep red mark on his face from his father's blow.

  "Now," said Rosso, "I have drunk enough to sit through the story of Fra Muratore and the old church roof."

  The three brothers walked, slowly and a little carefully, down the stone staircase, across the courtyard and up to the script room where the priest waited.

  Rosso fell asleep as soon as he slumped on the bench. Massimo pretended to read for a few moments, then he too closed his eyes. Salvatore watched through unfocused eyes as the priest picked up his book on the life of Fra Muratore and began to read. He seemed, to Salvatore, to be content to read the words, without regard to the audience, so Salvatore reached over to his writing desk and picked up a pen and a sheet of the good parchment.

  "My Dearest Mellissa,” he wrote. "It is hard for me to find the chance to write to you and I fear that it will become even harder now..."

  Almost as soon as he began writing, he lost sight of the room he was in. Even the sound of Rosso's snoring faded into silence. Every part of his life looked flat and grey when Salvatore compared it to Mellissa. Everything about her, even her faults, was perfect. She would be angry over the tower, but that was purely family business, and far too mundane to impact their lives, and their plans. Her grandfather had seized the tower from Salvatore's family and now Rosso had recaptured it so that it moved back from Gaiole into Radda hands. The hatred between the families only made their own love the more precious.

  With Salvatore writing and Rosso and Massimo sound asleep, the excitement of the day seemed to be too much for the priest. It was the lack of the droning voice that finally awakened Salvatore to the fact that the priest
too, had fallen asleep. Salvatore looked at his brothers, smiling, but there was no one to share the joke with, so he bent his head again over the parchment and applied himself to the challenge of finding words that could impress Mellissa with his ardor, but at the same time maintain his intellectual dignity.

  "An admirable student." The voice came from Podesta, who had entered the study room unnoticed. "Even your tutor is asleep, but you are still bent over your work." He sniffed the wine fumes in the room. "Is he drunk?" he asked, nodding towards the priest.

  "No, we are," answered Salvatore, quickly covering up his letter with a book he was reading on the calculations of the Ancient Greeks.

  Podesta laughed softly, then said, "Tell me. Was it really your idea to take the tower back from Gaiole?"

  "Certainly not," answered Salvatore. "I want nothing to do with these little wars."

  "Your mind is set to greater things? May I?" he said as he picked up the book Salvatore was pretending read. He read for a few seconds.

  "Why do you concern yourself with games and numbers?" he asked Salvatore.

  "It's not games and numbers. It is trying to understand the nature of things. There are great men in the world who spend their time in thought and discussion. What makes the stars move? Why are the sun and the moon the same size, but the moon gives no heat? Why does steam from a pot rise, but fog falls into the valley even though both are just wet air?"

  "Is there no end to these questions?"

  "No but there an answer at the end of each one."

  "And you want that to be your life, answering questions?"

  "Yes," said Salvatore. "There are many men who do nothing except that, and I will be one of them. The world is awakening, Podesta. People are learning again the things that the ancients knew. I will be one of those shining a light for others to see the world better."

  "I suppose your father has one son for the Church and one for the sword, so why not have one for the..." Podesta froze.

  "One for the what?" asked Salvatore.

  Podesta stood with his gaze fixed out of the small window of the script room.

  "Wake your brother. Wake Rosso and bring him to the gate. Hurry," said Podesta as he strode from the room.

  Salvatore stood and walked over towards the window where Podesta had been staring. Down on the flat valley floor, he could see a thin plume of smoke rising from the collection of buildings where the roads joined. At this time in the morning, no house in the valley would light a fire to keep warm, and anyway, there was already far too much smoke for it to be from a fireplace. As he watched, he realized that what he saw was the Winter House burning. It was the house where almost the entire winter feedstock for the valley was kept, and it was being consumed by flames.

  Follower

  Now that he saw her, Sparke was sure that she had been the cause of the strange sensations he had experienced earlier. He must have noticed her looking at him in his peripheral vision, but failed to catch her when he looked directly. He walked towards her across the narrow cobbled street, his eyes fixed on hers, and she, unwaveringly, looked back at him.

  "You're looking at me, I think?" said Sparke, trying to contain his rising voice. "Can I help you? I don't think we know each other." He could not explain why she made him feel so uncomfortable, but the feeling was undeniable.

  "Peter, Mr. Sparke... Peter," she said, flustered for a moment, but still holding his gaze. She took a quick breath, and then smiled. "Peter, I just want to say that I am such a huge fan of your work." Sparke hadn't thought what he expected her to say, but this was a shock.

  "My work?" he said, his mind flitting back to his conversation with Pascal earlier that morning. "You mean you're involved in crisis management?"

  The woman smiled as though Sparke had said something foolish, but forgivable, then shook her head.

  "No, I mean your research, your discoveries. I think I have read just about every article available on the things you have uncovered."

  It was only now that he noticed her soft, Midwestern accent. He stared at her, trying to put her comments into perspective. His training as a crisis manager meant that he had learned to treat the media with a great deal of respect, respect best offered from a safe distance. In every incident he had been involved in, he had made sure that there was a team of experts in place to create a barrier between the press and him.

  In terms of the historical discoveries that he had made, he had managed to maintain a one hundred percent success rate in avoiding all interviews, despite an endless barrage of press pressure.

  "Articles? You mean press articles? I'm not responsible for anything the media says," said Sparke, trying to get this encounter into a form that made sense to him. "Is there something I can help you with?" he asked.

  "Help you?" said the woman. "Yes, I hope so, you see that's exactly what I think I can do; help you. In your work, I mean."

  Sparke stared at the woman for a moment. Her responses had made him more, rather than less, uncomfortable with the situation. "How do you know who I am? How did you find me here and what do you want?" he said.

  "Well, that's a lot of questions," she said. "Don't you think it would make sense for us to sit down and talk all this through?"

  "All what through? I'm sorry, but I really don't see what there is to discuss." Sparke paused, thinking for a moment. "Did you come here to meet me? I mean did you travel to Switzerland to meet me?"

  The woman smiled. "Well, yes, now that you ask, I did come over on a bit of a mission, you see..."

  "No, no I don't see anything," said Sparke, who now wondered how to get out of this conversation. "I think I will go back to my own plans for the day and leave you to yours. I really don't think we have anything to discuss at all."

  Despite the bluntness of Sparke's language, the woman continued to smile. Sparke searched for a way to end the discussion definitively.

  "Goodbye," he said, then turned and walked along the street towards the lakeside. He felt in sudden need of a long walk.

  His mind was buzzed. Through his career, he had dealt with everything from hostage crises to tsunamis, but all of those had been within the scope of probability. There had always been a viable scenario that could be planned for and prepared for, but this was so out of the normal run of things that he struggled to absorb the meaning of the conversation he had just had. He walked briskly along the lakeside pathway.

  Some woman had found out where he lived, had travelled thousands of miles to meet him and had stood waiting in the street for him to walk past because she believed she could help him in what she referred to as "his work".

  He quickly realized that there was nothing about the incident that he wanted to think about any further. He had no questions about her, who she was, what she wanted. The only thing he wanted right now was to erase the experience and go back to a life where that woman did not feature.

  He was over a mile outside of town, on the lake path, before he slowed his pace. Despite the spring chill, he was feeling hot, so he slung his blue Barbour jacket over his shoulder and continued to walk.

  Leaving Morges, the next town along the coast was St Prex. This was the town that had brought him to Switzerland in the first place. In this tiny town there was a church dating back to Roman times, and on the walls of this church he and Tilly had found a set of medieval carvings that were an identical match to a set of images carved onto the archway of a fortified tower in the Tuscan country town of Radda.

  The footpath between Morges and St Prex was mostly made up of shaded forest trails and, perhaps because of the stress of his encounter with the strange woman, Sparke’s mind filled again with the gaps that surrounded the evidence he felt he had been slowly uncovering concerning Templar activity in the area.

  When he reached the village, he took a table on the small terrace of the chocolatarie that had become his standard destination. He ordered hot chocolate and sat, looking up at the squat church tower on the low hill just outside the town.

  H
e was convinced that this church, like the tower in Tuscany, was linked to the fate of the Order of the Knights Templar. So far the evidence was circumstantial and sketchy, but he was increasingly sure that the plain church building he was looking at now had been a key part in the last desperate days of the Templars.

  The Letter

  "Your father wants you in the Uffizi. Wake up, Massimo. Your father calls for you.”

  Through the fog of his wine-soaked mind, Massimo slowly grasped there was something badly wrong. The sound of shouting and running feet outside was shocking enough, but having Podesta tell him that he was to go to his father in the Uffizi was unheard of.

  "The Uffizi?" he asked stupidly.

  "Rosso and I are going to the Winter House with the men. Wake yourself up and get up to the Uffizi."

  "Alone?"

  "Yes, now get moving."

  Podesta disappeared from the script room at a run. Massimo peered out of the window to the courtyard below where Rosso was already waiting on his horse wearing breastplate, iron cap and sword. Podesta appeared and ran into the stables, then walked out with his own horse. The courtyard was alive with men, a dozen already mounted and all armed. Massimo rubbed the sleep from his face with the end of his tunic and walked, suddenly sober, towards his father's office. The Uffizi was a place which he and his brothers rarely visited, and he had never been summoned there alone. He reached the door of the room and stood, unsure whether he should knock or simply walk in. He knocked.

  "Come."

  The voice of his father made Massimo's body chill to the bone. He grasped the iron handle and walked into the room. Although the building was a castle, it was also a home and most of the rooms were filled with the slight comforts of a grand house. To Massimo's eye, his father's office looked like a room that had only just been occupied. A lone seat, almost a camp chair, sat in the center. A few small tables and a writing desk were the only other furnishings apart from several wooden chests, which were laid against the walls. Weapons and pieces of armor lay on the chests as though discarded. Over one of the boxes lay a horse blanket.