The Templar Tower: Peter Sparke Book Five

by Scott Chapman

  They forced their way into peasant houses when there was no other shelter from storms. They made the hovels so warm with their shared body heat and that of their horses that snow melted on the roofs.

  Near the high point of the pass stood a monastery, built centuries before to care for exhausted pilgrims and now a virtual shrine in itself. The Templar troop found good, warm refuge for themselves and their mounts. When the men looked for the source of the heat they saw no fires. Then they realized that the heat of the room came from the floor itself. Hidden channels carried warm air under the flags and the rise in temperature soon melted the ice that clung to every piece of clothing and equipment. They entered the building cold, but dry, and now found themselves shivering in damp clothes.

  The monks had strung ropes between the pillars of the room and the Templars stripped off their sodden clothes, spreading them out to dry. Within a few moments the air was full of the stink of steaming wool and the men, stripped to their waist-cloths, crowded around tubs of hot water, washing the old sweat from their bodies.

  As the rest of the troop was rubbing themselves dry on clean sacking towels, Salvatore alone began to unwrap a razor and shave his face.

  "You like to keep a clean face, sir," said Henk, his own face covered by the full beard that other Templars favored.

  "A small vanity I allow myself," said Salvatore dragging the razor over five days of stubble.

  "If you are without your uniform no one would take you for a Templar."

  Salvatore looked at Henk for a moment, then nodded and said, "That has been of value on occasion."

  Salvatore knew that Henk had been a sergeant of the Order for almost twenty years. He was not of noble birth, so had no chance of being a knight, but as an experienced sergeant, he was awarded respect that few commoners could hope to attain.

  "Henk, if anything should happen to me, I need you to take on a task for me," said Salvatore.

  "Of course, sir."

  Salvatore turned to look directly at Henk. The others of the group were out of earshot.

  "The frame of my battle saddle is hollowed out. Under the padding there is a quantity of gold coins. If I cannot do so, you will take the saddle to a town in the valley ahead of us called Sion. In Sion there is a man who owns a salt mine. He is a fat man. His name is Odo. There is no message. If he gets the gold he will know who it is from."

  Henk nodded, absorbing the information, then said, "But there will be no reason for me to take on this task. Nothing will happen to you."

  Salvatore wiped his razor carefully. "Nothing will happen to me," he said, "how could it when I am surrounded by my brother Templars?"

  Breakfast of Champions

  "I´m sorry, sir, we do not have pancakes on our menu, but I can ask the chef what he recommends." The waiter retreated towards the kitchen to negotiate with the staff, a look of pained apprehension on his face.

  "Mrs. Nagel," said Sparke, "I hate to disappoint you, but I am not searching for any kind of lost document. It looks as though you are, so I wish you the best of luck, but mostly, I wish you and your colleague would go away and leave me alone."

  "Well Mr. Sparke, if there´s one thing you can be commended on it´s your direct approach to matters. Let´s leave to one side the subject of your activities here in Morges. If I were you I would say exactly the same thing. Here´s the deal. If you agree to listen to my Dr. Laszlo here for a few minutes, I´ll agree to abide by whatever you decide to do next. If you choose to walk away, you have my word that we will never contact you again. If you decide to stay, we can work out a nice, friendly way to work together. How does that sound?"

  "All I have to do is listen to Dr. Laszlo?"

  "He´ll be finished talking before the pancakes arrive," said Mrs. Nagel, smiling.

  Sparke glanced at Tilly, who shrugged. "All right Dr. Laszlo, tell me your story."

  Laszlo cleared the table on front of him of cutlery and leaned forward.

  "Mr. Sparke," he said, "we know, of course, about your amateur interest in the last days of the Templars. It is commendable, even if it is driven by the curiosity of the treasure hunter."

  He looked sharply at Sparke who was pouring tea for Tilly and himself.

  "I´m sorry," said Sparke, "I wasn´t listening. You were saying?"

  Laszlo smiled tightly. "Perhaps you have heard of a document called ´The Concordat of Sion’. It was written by the Grand Master of the Order near the end of the thirteenth century."

  "As you know, I´m an amateur," said Sparke, "a treasure hunter. I only care about big chests full of gold coins and things."

  "Gentlemen," said Mrs. Nagel. "This is not getting us anywhere. Dr. Laszlo, could you tell Mr. Sparke what you have found for us?"

  Laszlo gave Mrs. Nagel a long look, then turned back to look at Sparke. "In the course of her studies, Madame Preverenge received a letter from a medievalist working in the Prague Imperial library. At that time it was still controlled by the Hapsburg Empire of Austria Hungary so their records were extensive both in the amount of time they covered and the geographical area they referred to. But perhaps you may have seen something about the Hapsburgs on television or in a magazine? Regardless, this letter made reference to a document found in the archives that he felt she might be interested in.

  "It came from the hand of a senior member of the Order of Knights Templar." Laszlo paused, his eyes fixed on Sparke. "It has become known as `The Prague Parchment’ and it gave explicit details of their plan to create a Templar state in the Alps. It contained details of the amount of money to be used to bribe local tribes, orders to attack and seize lands of the neighboring Duke of Savoy, descriptions of where the borders of the new state should be drawn and the structure of the new regime. The historian in Prague was absolutely certain the Prague Parchment was original and cited the specific materials it was found with. Its provenance was impeccable."

  Sparke looked back at Laszlo. If he walked away now, he would be free of this strange pair, but if he walked away now...

  He stared at Laszlo, but said nothing. Laszlo´s smile flickered slightly.

  "The Prague Parchment," said Laszlo, "is the only known proof that the Templars had a clear intent to seize territory in the heart of Europe and create their own kingdom. The Alps are a natural fortress and the Templars could have defended themselves here indefinitely. After all, the Swiss maintained their independence against all threats from the early middle ages. Only Napoleon ever conquered them, so it is safe enough to assume that a Swiss-Templar alliance would have been even more formidable."

  Sparke sipped his tea and a silence fell across the table. Eventually it was Laszlo who found the quiet unbearable.

  "The document remained in the archives," he said. "Madame Preverenge died and there was only a limited amount of interest in such a niche area and no one seems to have done any further research on the topic. The next event we know about was that the document, along with several other original documents which related to mediaeval Switzerland, was offered in an auction in Zurich in 1921, but failed to reach the reserve price and was not bought."

  "How did it get from the Imperial Library in Prague to a Zurich auction room?" said Sparke, in spite of himself.

  "Sadly, in 1918," said Laszlo, "Prague had a very difficult time. The Czechs had been on the losing side of the First World War. There was fighting against the Austrian Hapsburgs for independence, a Bolshevik revolution, a counter revolution, anti-Hungarian riots, food riots; a difficult time. I would say that when people are fighting and starving, maintaining historical records correctly does not get the priority it deserves."

  "And after the Zurich auction?" said Sparke.

  "The packet of documents returned to Prague where they were in the possession of a Czech family who owned a company that made clockwork toys. They somehow managed to get through the Great Depression with their business intact, but in 1940 the Germans invaded. They were a Jewish family. They did not survive the war, except for one child, a daug
hter who was sent to England on one of the last trains out in 1938. There were several such trains, but not enough. The child´s parents tied a label to her coat in Prague Central Station and sent her on a train across Europe to Britain as Fascist tanks crossed the Czech border and prayed they were doing the right thing."

  For a moment Laszlo seemed to lose track of his thoughts. He reached across the table, picked up Sparke´s teacup absently and took a drink from it. Sparke refilled it for him. Laszlo looked across the table and nodded his thanks and took another sip.

  "After the war, there was the Soviet era," said Laszlo, "a terrible, terrible time, and worse after 1968. So it was only many years later that the daughter could return to her family home and try and find any of the few possessions that her family might have left, including the document we are now discussing."

  "What a marvelous story," said Sparke after a long pause.

  "I know," said Laszlo, looking deeply into Sparke´s eyes.

  "Was it true?"

  "Oh, yes," said Laszlo, “in several places."

  Trust

  "Trust no one." If Salvatore had learned any lesson from the Mason, it was this. The only way for a man to earn trust was to demonstrate that he deserved it and the only way to demonstrate it was through a test. He peered into a small polished metal mirror as he shaved.

  Salvatore could now look back over the past ten years and see that his whole life as a Templar had been one test after another. From the day he had been initiated into the Order the Mason had goaded and challenged him, given him responsibilities far beyond his years and set him tasks that seemed impossible and that demanded absolute confidentiality. In most cases, Salvatore had succeeded. When that happened he had received only the slightest of praise. Sometimes he had failed. When that happened he had never heard a word of reproof.

  A test was of no use if it´s only purpose was to prove that a good thing was good. A test had to be able to distinguish a good thing from a bad thing and, after two weeks in the saddle from Radda, Salvatore was more concerned about finding the bad than proving the good.

  He stretched the skin of his face to ease the path of the razor and thought for the hundredth time about the sequence of events over the past weeks. His brother had appeared in Radda, their rural Tuscan home town, at the same time as Salvatore had. Then, within weeks, he had appeared in Moncalieri at exactly the same time as Salvatore and his troop. Both events could be explained away, but could they be coincidence?

  "Trust no one". It was easy to imagine that someone, even a Templar, could believe that his duty lay with obedience to the Church rather to any other oath. People like Father Massimo claimed the absolute power to send people to damnation or to literarily open the door to eternal life. Little wonder that their influence spread far beyond the spiritual realm. The fear of displeasing the Church could, perhaps, have persuaded a fellow Templar to pass information to the Inquisition.

  Salvatore finished shaving and looked across the room to where his troop fussed over their damp clothes. Hygiene was a near obsession in the Order and the men were lost in concentration as they scraped mud from their woolen clothes.

  Before being sent to Radda, Salvatore had never met any of them. His decade of Templar life had often been spent on solitary duties, so he lacked the ease of companionable leadership. His troop were all strangers to him, but Henk had made himself valuable to Salvatore on many occasions on this trip. He was always close at hand, always seeing ways to be in Salvatore´s company. He had done nothing to raise Salvatore´s suspicion except be more visible, but perhaps that was enough.

  The next day the Templars started down the long, winding path that took them onto the land beyond the Alps, their horses often chest deep in snow. It took a full day to cover the first five leagues and as they unsaddled their mounts at the Inn of St Lazerat, they could turn and see the place they had departed from that morning. The going was easier the next day and in the early afternoon they finally descended below the snow line.

  The difference between this valley and the one they had left on the other side of the pass was immediately obvious. Fields were ringed with solid stone walls and the houses were larger and often roofed in slate. A watermill turned at the edge of a stream and the waterway was spanned by a stone bridge. Despite the patches of snow, livestock were already out on the grass and small herds of goats wandered on the grassland between the hillside and the farmland.

  "These people know how to use the land," said Henk.

  Salvatore nodded silently, peering down the long valley ahead of them. A small hamlet was visible in the distance and Salvatore could see that it was surrounded by a well-built wall, high and unbroken with towers at each corner. Each of the farmhouses they passed were of two stories, sometimes three, and the ground floors had no windows, making them into virtual blockhouses, easy to defend, costly to attack.

  A short distance before the village, the troop passed an outcrop of rock that jutted from the valley side about one hundred feet above the pathway. On the tip of the outcrop stood a fortified position, a single tower with a wall, that seemed to grow directly out of the rock it stood on. It was of the type that mountain people liked to call an "Eagle´s Nest".

  It had a commanding view over the valley, looking directly down on the road and overlooking the village. From Salvatore´s perspective, there seemed to only one way to approach it and that was from a path that zigzagged up from the floor of the valley. The path was in clear view, and within arrow-range of the castle, for its whole length; a perfect defensive position. He halted the troop and allowed the men to water their mounts in the stream.

  As the others rested, Salvatore gazed at the fort. At first, the fort seemed to be well matched with the neat, well maintained environment of the rest of the valley. It was a position no different from hundreds like it across Europe and not dissimilar to the tower at Radda, but there was something not right about it.

  "Wait here for me," he said to his troop and then nudged his horse towards the castle path. He allowed his horse to set its own, easy pace as he directed it upwards.

  Halfway up the slope was a small stone sentry hut with a good field of fire. It was unmanned. But with so little traffic on the road this early in the spring, there was little reason for it to be.

  Another ten minutes of ascent brought Salvatore to the spine of the outcrop, level with the main gate. There was a flagstaff on the roof of the tower, but no banner flew, there was a portcullis for the gate, but it was raised and one half of the iron-studded timber gate stood ajar. Several crows sat on the crenellated top of the wall, watching Salvatore.

  He walked his horse slowly towards the gate, waiting for a challenge from a sentry, but none came. At the gate he dismounted and walked into the small courtyard. To his left there was the entrance to a stable and directly ahead a short staircase that led to a timber door. Both stood open. He walked into the stables. They were as bare as a cave. No harness or tools hung from the walls, no feed sat in the bins, the straw on the ground was old and grey. He crossed the courtyard and climbed the steps into the interior of the castle. The hall he walked into looked as though it had never been occupied. Not a bench or table was visible, no cloth on the wall, the ashes in the fireplace had hardened like rock.

  He walked through a low arch into a smaller chamber. Like the hall it was bare of any stick or stitch. The only sign that the place had ever been occupied was the pile of dead bodies stacked, frozen, in one corner.

  Decision

  "Would I be right in assuming that you have somehow managed to track down this document?"

  "I believe I have."

  "Good for you. I look forward to reading all about it one day. Now, perhaps you can explain to me why you have gone to such lengths to tell me all this?"

  Laszlo´s face took on an expression of martyrdom and he waved his hand towards Mrs. Nagel. "My client insisted," he said. "You understand."

  Sparke nodded, then turned to Mrs. Nagel. "I listened to this marv
elous story, and I really enjoyed it, but now we are leaving. A deal is a deal. I have considered the options you offered and I´m taking the one that involves me never talking to you again. I have no idea how the law works in Switzerland, but I am going to find out how I can make sure that you stay very far away from me in the future. I really hope there is no ambiguity in that?" He looked briefly around table, but heard no argument. "Goodbye," he said, standing and looking at Tilly.

  Ten seconds later Sparke and Tilly were out of the hotel and crossing the road into the park that faces the lake.

  "He really knows his stuff," said Tilly. "The Prague archives were partly looted during the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It would have been pretty easy for someone to grab documents that they thought they could sell and take them over the border to Switzerland if they thought they could find a market for them there."

  "It´s a great story," agreed Sparke.

  "Certainly plausible."

  "Do you really need to go home today?" said Sparke.

  "Not all of us have millions of quid in the bank, you know," said Tilly. "We proles still have to earn a crust."

  "I know, but you could phone in sick if you really wanted to."

  "I never get sick."

  "Great, so statistically, you´re overdue a sickie."

  "But, I´m not sick, plus I´m useless as a liar."

  "Best way to tell a lie is to tell the truth, but not all of it. You can tell them that you were caught up in that tunnel fire and that you´re going to be back a couple of days late. Nobody is ever going to challenge that."

  "I suppose," said Tilly, “I was caught up in that fire. Maybe I can take a day or two off as vacation."

  "Maybe you can," said Sparke. “A day or two might be a good idea."