Christopher, Paul - Templar 01

by The Sword of the Templars

  According to Amedeo Maiuri, among those documents were the Angevin Templar Archive and a volume once possessed by the famous Templar navigator Roger de Flor, the near-mythical seaman knight who was said to have somehow spirited the Templar treasure out of the Holy Land and hidden it for safekeeping.

  Maiuri had once seen the book and read the Latin inscription on its cover that said the words within the volume could only be understood by the man who owned the True Sword of Pelerin. The book was a copy of De laudibus novae militiae, the letter written by Bernard of Clairvaux to Hugues de Payens, first Grand Master of the Templars and Prior of Jerusalem.

  Once again, according to the diary, Lutz Kellerman had gone to the villa, met with Signora Nicolini, the owner, and also with the resident director of the displaced Archives, a man named Antonio Capograssi. On being questioned by Kellerman, even under the threat of burning the villa and the contents of the Archives, neither the woman nor Capograssi admitted anything.

  Capograssi insisted that no such book was in the Archives, and to prove it he showed the entire inventory to Kellerman. There was no mention of Roger de Flor or any copy of De laudibus novae militiae. Not satisfied, Kellerman began to pry open crates, helped by his men, including a young Rudy Drabeck.

  After several hours they had found absolutely nothing. In the diary Kellerman mentioned that while they tore open crates they could hear the sounds of artillery in the distance. Allied artillery, coming up and inland from Salerno, on the way to Rome and eventually, as the SS general confided to his diary, to certain victory. Italy had fallen, the Reich would soon follow; it was only a matter of time. Finally, frustrated with the sound of artillery growing with every passing hour, he gave the order to his men: “Alles einaschern”—“Burn it all.”

  Which is exactly what they proceeded to do. The members of his platoon piled paper, straw, and gunpowder in the four corners of each room, and then set it alight. Within minutes the Archives was enveloped in flames. In less than an hour the entire villa was an inferno. By the following morning the Villa Montesano was a smoking ruin, never to be occupied again, and Lutz Kellerman was gone.

  Following the map directions they’d been given by the rental company in Naples, Holliday drove the little red car to the outskirts of the town of Nola, then turned onto the via Castel Cicala and headed into the open countryside again. They went around a high, circular hill crowned with the ruins of an ancient castle and into a small wooded and steep-sided valley. They turned onto an even narrower road then rose up out of the valley on the winding strada Comunale Nola-Visciano, then slowed.

  “It should be somewhere on the left,” said Holliday, peering through the windshield. “Two big pillars on either side of a long driveway.”

  “If Lutz Kellerman burned the Archives, why are we bothering with this place anyway?” Peggy asked.

  “Because it’s the only thing we have to go on right now,” said Holliday. “Quit being a wet blanket.”

  “I’m trying to be a realist, Doc.” She punched him affectionately on the shoulder. “Someone’s got to hold my romantically inclined uncle in check.”

  Holliday caught something on the edge of his peripheral vision and slowed the car even more.

  “There,” he said, spotting what he’d been looking for: two crumbling, turret-like pillars guarding the entrance to an overgrown, rutted driveway, both sides of the road guarded by groves of ancient, twisted olive trees. He turned the car, and they bounced down the driveway, the tall weeds in the center of the ruts brushing against the bottom of the chassis. Loose stones clattered against the side panels. A hundred yards farther on, they reached the weed-clotted remains of what had once been the Villa Montesano.

  They parked the Fiat and wandered through the scattered stones of the once-proud estate. Even in ruins it was impressive. The palazzo had been oriented to the east, looking down the wooded hillside. From the crest of the hill, the view swept out over the town a few miles away and farther to the city and the Bay of Naples, a sublime azure dream melding with the bright blue sky in the distance.

  Once there had been a lavish terraced garden below a series of columned balconies where now there were only weeds, broken stone, and heavy undergrowth. The floors of the palazzo, once a rich display of mosaic, lay shattered and stained by over sixty years of exposure to the elements. Room after room lay roofless and open to the sun and rain, their frescoed walls faded and blotted with mold.

  Roof beams rotted on the ground like scattered bones. Wrens made nests in the lintels of empty windows. A gold and brown, delicately checkered Marsh Fritillary butterfly drank nectar from the purple trumpets of a Dragonmouth nettle in the shelter of a doorway. Somewhere a cicada sang its droning, high-pitched song. There was no wind at all; the air was perfectly still. A frozen country landscape painted by Canaletto.

  Behind the ruins on the plateau of the hill there were the remains of several outbuildings, the abandoned ornamental gardens, long forgotten, overgrown, and choked with weeds. The only building that looked intact and at all maintained was a small gardener’s potting shed at the edge of the neglected flowerbeds. At the far side of the estate there was a screening stand of walnut trees. Beyond that, in the middle distance, were more verdant hills, and then the first rugged mountains of the Apennines.

  Holliday stood in the middle of what once had been the oratory, or chapel, of the villa. The walls were no more than a few stones high, and part of the charred floor had sagged and tipped into the cellar below.

  Often when he stood in places like this Holliday could almost hear the voices calling to him out of the past. A long time ago, standing on Burnside’s Bridge at Antietam, he’d felt the vibration of men’s feet and the thunder of horses’ hooves as Union and Confederate soldiers fought in the bloodiest battle of the Civil War. Walking down the broad boulevard of the avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris, it was the deep-throated rumble of German tanks that haunted him, history come alive in his imagination. But this was a dead place; even the ghosts had gone.

  “You were right,” he said to Peggy. “It was a waste of time. There’s nothing here.”

  “Look,” she answered, pointing.

  Holliday followed her pointing hand. A short, somewhat stooped man was approaching them from the direction of the stand of bushy walnut trees. He was carrying a wicker basket and wore the distinctive white habit and black scapular apron of a Cistercian monk: the order founded by St. Alberic of Cîteaux, the spiritual father of the Knights Templar and the author of De laudibus novae militiae, the text embedded with the coded message of the Templar sword.

  17

  They walked out of the ruined oratory and met the monk as he came across the open field. From the white hair peeping out from beneath his wide straw sun hat, his spectacles, and his wrinkled face, the monk looked to be in his mid-seventies, but still too young to have been anything more than a very small child when Lutz Kellerman gave his destructive order.

  When he spoke the monk’s voice was soft and evenly modulated. The basket in his hand was full of walnuts.

  “Il mio nome č Fratello Timothy. Lo posso aiutare?” My name is Brother Timothy, may I help you?

  “Parla inglese?” Holliday asked. His Italian was fluent, but Peggy barely knew enough phrases to order a meal.

  “Yes, of course,” answered Brother Timothy. The accent was cultured and intelligent.

  Holliday decided not to beat around the bush.

  “This is the Villa Montesano where the Archives were destroyed in 1943?”

  “Yes,” said Brother Timothy.

  “By an SS officer named Lutz Kellerman?”

  “He did not leave his name, Mr. . . .?”

  “Holliday. Doctor, as a matter of fact.”

  Better to use whatever ammunition you had.

  “Ah,” said Brother Timothy. “And your companion?”

  “My name is Peggy,” she replied. “Blackstock.”

  “Ah,” said Brother Timothy once again. “An inter
esting name. Black stockings were an article of formal dress in seventeenth-century England, rather than the more informal blue stockings worn by the masses. Perhaps that is the origin of your name.” He gestured toward the basket at his feet. “I have been gathering walnuts for some experiments I am doing regarding the use of walnut extract as a high blood pressure supplement. Perhaps you’d like to tell me what you are doing here.” It wasn’t a question.

  An etymologist and a research scientist in a monk’s habit. An interesting combination. The message was clear: Brother Timothy was no country bumpkin and nobody’s fool. Holliday silently reminded himself to tread carefully.

  “It’s complicated,” said Holliday, hesitating. The monk picked up his basket of walnuts.

  “I’m a tired old man,” said Brother Timothy. “I should not stand about too long in the hot sun. My feet swell up like little sausages. Perhaps you’d like to join me for a cup of tea? I keep a few things in the gardener’s cottage.”

  The monk led the way, and they followed.

  The potting shed was a single, cozy room, windows on all sides, walls lined with shelves loaded down with stacks of terra-cotta flowerpots. The floor was made of fitted paving stones covered with a single braided-rope rug. Brother Timothy had made a little haven underneath one window with a small desk, a camp stove, a kettle, an old brown teapot, and several pottery mugs. There were a few small lemons in a little wooden bowl, a paring knife, and a glass jar full of sugar cubes. Above the kitchen things there was a shelf with several dusty books. Holliday read one of the titles: Nova genera et species plantarum by Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland. Beside it was what appeared to be an Italian edition of George Nicholson’s Dictionary of Practical Gardening.

  There were two old chairs and a padded leather ottoman. The cell-like room smelled comfortably of pinewood and baked clay. The monk busied himself making tea for a few moments then sat down in one of the chairs, gesturing for Holliday and Peggy to seat themselves, as well. Peggy perched herself on the ottoman, and Holliday took the other chair.

  “We’re here about the sword,” he said slowly, watching Brother Timothy’s face for a reaction. There was none.

  “Sword?” Brother Timothy replied, his expression politely curious.

  “A Templar sword found by Amedeo Maiuri in the ruins of Pompeii and presented to Adolf Hitler by Il Duce, Benito Mussolini.”

  Brother Timothy laughed.

  “Why would a Templar sword be found in Pompeii?” the monk said. “Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D., long before the Crusades. And why would a renowned Italian archaeologist like Amedeo Maiuri give anything at all to Mussolini and that thug Hitler? I’m afraid someone has been telling stories to you.”

  “Perhaps as you are telling stories to me?” Holliday answered. “French historians say that the Templars were founded by Hugues de Payens, a knight of Champagne, but there is a great deal of evidence to show that Hugues de Payens was actually an Italian named Hugo de Paganis from Nocera dei Pagani in Campa nia, whose largest city is Naples. In a straight line the town of Nocera is about fifteen miles from Pompeii, a little farther if you travel on the coastal road, which anyone would have taken back then if they were on their way to Naples. The sword could very easily have been found in Pompeii.”

  “You know something of the Templars, I see,” nodded Brother Timothy. He poured the tea. “Lemon? Sugar?”

  They took both.

  Holliday continued.

  “I also know that the sword found by Maiuri has an inscription on it: Alberic in Pelerin fecit. Made by, or for, Alberic in Castle Pelerin, the last crusader castle of the Templars in the Holy Land. St. Alberic of Cîteaux, the founder and patron saint of the Cistercian Order. Your order, Brother Timothy.”

  “You really do seem to know a great deal, Dr. Holliday,” said Brother Timothy calmly, sipping his tea.

  “I also know that this sword had a coded message embedded in it and that the key to that code lay in a particular copy of De laudibus novae militiae, a letter written by—”

  “A letter written by St. Alberic of Cîteaux to Hugues de Payens, or Hugo de Paganis, depending on your point of view,” completed Brother Timothy. “That particular copy having been hidden among the tens of thousands of books and papers in the Naples State Archives, which were once stored in this very place.” The elderly monk smiled pleasantly. “As the hippies used to say back in the days of my youth, Dr. Holliday, life is a wheel and what goes around indeed does come around again.”

  “You know about the sword then?” Holliday asked.

  “Certainly. I have known about it for many years. Sometimes it is called the Sword of Pelerin, the One True Sword, the True Sword of Pelerin. Another myth of the Crusades.”

  “No myth,” said Holliday. “The sword exists, believe me.”

  “How do you happen to know of the letter?” Peggy asked.

  “Because of the warning on the cover of the holy letter written by St. Alberic: ‘The words within shall only be known to the holder of the True Sword of Pelerin.’ The cover is made of solid silver, the words chased in gold.”

  “You’ve seen it?” Holliday asked. He felt a sudden surge of hope. If Brother Timothy had seen the copy of the letter that meant it had somehow survived the destruction of the archives.

  “Yes,” replied the monk. “It makes interesting reading. An apologia from a saint on the subject of spilling blood in the name of Christ. A philosophy espoused by less saintly men, several of your American presidents in particular.”

  “You would have been too young to know about the book during the war,” said Peggy, ignoring the pointed comment and voicing Holliday’s unspoken objection.

  “I was nine, a foundling orphan. Our abbey, l’Abbazia di San Martino di Camaldoli, lies on the next hill, less than a kilometer from here. I watched the palazzo burn from the window in my room. It burned for a day and a night. It made Brother Albano, our abbot and the man who raised me, weep.”

  “I’m not sure I understand,” said Holliday. “What was the connection between your abbey and the Archives?”

  “The Villa Montesano was originally the Priory of San Martino. Even after the property was sold the Abbey held stewardship of the villa’s lands. It still does, which is how I come to gather walnuts here.” The monk sipped his tea, added a slice of lemon, and then went on.

  “Brother Albano was more than just the abbot. He was also the sacristan, personally in charge of the scriptorium and the library for which our abbey was well-known. Mussolini despised the Roman Catholic religion from an early age. In fact, Brother Albano had taught him as a boy in the Salesian Fathers’ boarding school in the town of Faenza.

  “He worried that Mussolini would take his revenge on the monasteries the way Henry VIII did in England, so he hid the most precious of the monastery’s volumes at the Villa Montesano just in case. Before he died Brother Albano charged me with their care, particularly the copy of De laudibus novae militiae.”

  “How did it survive the fire?” Peggy asked. “Why didn’t Lutz Kellerman find it?”

  “Do you know the meaning of the word ‘crypsis’?” Brother Timothy responded.

  “Something to do with codes?” Holliday ventured.

  “With subterfuge certainly,” answered the monk. “Crypsis is the ability of an organism to escape detection.”

  “Camouflage?” Peggy said.

  “Quite so,” said Brother Timothy. “The Dead Leaf Mantis, which looks exactly like its name. The Tawny Frogmouth owl of Australia whose feathers mimic tree bark perfectly. The Gaboon viper of Africa, colored to look like the jungle floor. These are all cryptic animals.”

  He paused, plucking the lemon slice from his tea and popping it in his mouth. He chewed thoughtfully on the pulp for a moment, then put the bare rind down on the little table. He continued speaking, his voice a pleasant professorial drone.

  “Brother Albano was something of an amateur naturalist, a follower of the renowned Italian collector Franc
isco Minŕ Palumbo. Albano’s great interest was the common wall lizard, a cryptic reptile, Podarcis muralis, a familiar creature among the rocks and stones hereabouts. The ability of the creature to disguise itself within its natural environment fascinated him.”

  “I don’t quite see what all this has to do with the book,” said Peggy, sounding a little frustrated.

  “I do,” said Holliday, putting it all together. “It means the book was hidden in plain sight.”

  “And where would you hide a book in plain sight?” Brother Timothy asked, smiling.

  “In a library,” said Peggy.