The Swagger Sword

by David S. Brody

  Pushing his emotions aside, he used the drive to try to figure out their next move. Part of the problem was that he had no idea who was behind the attacks on him in Ireland and on Ruthie in New York. The assailants were after information on the Templar treasure, obviously. But beyond that he had no sense of their identity, or even their motivations. Were they after wealth? Religious zealots hoping to suppress certain uncomfortable historical revelations? Collectors seeking religious relics? Cam had dealt with all three in the past, and his experience had been that each group could be ruthless—murderously so—in their own way. And what was Brian’s role in all this? The police capturing the third Long Island home invader might provide a lead, but that might take days or even weeks. Based on the past 36 hours, his gut told him he didn’t have that kind of time.

  All of which led to one conclusion: This ended only when someone found the treasure. And since Ruthie’s heroic stand meant he had the only copies of the map, that probably meant this ended only when Cam found the treasure.

  Dog tired and eager for a hot shower, Cam paid cash at the toll and began to cross the Newport Bridge just after nine o’clock. A light snow fell even as a full moon peeked from behind the clouds to illuminate the waters of Narragansett Bay. On the far shore, the In Hoc stone lay in a few feet of water (it being high tide) not far from where the Templars would have landed before building the Tower. Amanda and Astarte waited for him someplace close by. Hopefully.

  He gripped the steering wheel, his eyes searching the far shoreline for any sign of them, resisting the urge to speed across the slick bridge. Easy, you won’t do anyone any good wrapped around a bridge stanchion.

  At the far side of the bridge he veered off the main road and parked in a service entrance to a Colonial-era cemetery a few blocks from the shoreline. He was certain he had not been followed, having reversed course a number of times and even once making an illegal U-turn on the interstate. But he needed to be certain about Amanda as well.

  Presumably she was parked along the shoreline near the ancient artifact. Cam removed his yellow windbreaker and replaced it with a black fleece and dark baseball cap. He thought about pretending to be a local jogger out for a nighttime run, but that would limit him to a single pass through the neighborhood. He needed more certainty than that.

  A few streetlights lit the densely-packed residential neighborhood, but he was able to keep to the shadows as he walked the three blocks toward the harbor. In the distance, the sound of waves gently lapping against the breakwall beckoned him. Light snow, gentle waves, soft moon. He hoped they didn’t lull him into a false sense of security. Somehow their enemies, whoever they were, always seemed to be one step ahead. He had to assume that might be the case tonight.

  He moved methodically, stopping a block away from the waterfront to survey the surrounding streets. Idling cars, joggers, slow-moving vehicles, even utility vans—any of them could portend imminent danger. Finding nothing, he doubled back. Still nothing.

  He took a deep breath. Time to move to the actual meeting spot, the road running along the shore where the In Hoc stone rested in the surf. He gripped the metal flashlight he had slid into his pocket. Thus far, their enemies had not been subtle. If they had followed Amanda, it was entirely possible they lay in wait only feet away. Cam reached the corner and crouched behind a car, scanning the neighborhood. He immediately spotted his maroon Pathfinder, breathing a sigh of relief at the sight of a pair of heads silhouetted in the front seat. At least they had made it this far. A street sign warned against overnight parking, which had the effect of limiting the number of cars to a single vehicle other than Amanda—a dark pickup truck, six or seven car lengths away. Cam squeezed the flashlight.

  A spotlight went on and a door closed as an elderly woman put a small dog out on a leash in her front yard. The light illuminated and apparently startled the occupants of the pickup, a pair of amorous teenagers parking along the oceanfront. The truck engine roared to life and raced away. Cam exhaled. Turning, he scanned the area behind him one final time. Nothing. He released his grip on the flashlight. They were, by all appearances, alone.

  He circled, approaching from the front so as not to startle his wife and daughter. Amanda rolled down her window and smiled. “Howdy, Sailor. Welcome ashore.”

  He leaned through the window and kissed her, lingering for an extra second, breathing her in, finding comfort amid the roiling emotions of the past day.

  “Gross,” Astarte sang from the passenger seat.

  Cam winked at Amanda. Their kissing had never bothered Astarte before. But she seemed to have crossed some kind of threshold with her budding romance with Raja and was perhaps dealing with strange and new feelings in her own body.

  Cam shook the thought from his head. They were a long way from normalcy, and things like Astarte’s teenage love life would have to wait. He disengaged and climbed into the back seat.

  “You certain you were not followed?” Amanda asked.

  “As certain as I can be.” They had been careful to pay cash for everything, but the rental car was in Cam’s name, and he could be tracked if someone somehow gained access to the Hertz data base. Was it possible? The answer totally depended on who was stalking them, which remained a complete unknown. And his Pathfinder had been sitting in the airport parking garage for five days; someone easily could have attached a tracking device. He explained his concerns to Amanda. “So we may still not be totally off the grid.”

  “Well, let’s get off it then. I have an idea.” They picked up Cam’s rental car and together drove to the outdoor parking lot next to the bus station and tourist information center. “We’ll leave our vehicles here and take a Lyft to the inn. There must be hundreds of lodging spots in Newport. Even if they tracked us this far, there’s little chance they can find us tonight.”

  Cam nodded. “Okay. But what about tomorrow?”

  “We worry about tomorrow, tomorrow.”

  Tossing next to Cam in a lumpy queen-sized bed, Amanda kicked off the covers, the regular breathing of Astarte and light snoring of Cam in sync with the lapping of waves below the slightly-open window of their waterfront cottage. She could not shake the dream. In fact, she had awakened three times now, only to have the dream repeat itself, in one form or another, every time.

  She knew better than to ignore her subconscious. It was calling to her, sending a message. So rather than go back to sleep, she climbed out of bed to write down every detail she could remember while it was still fresh.

  Using the light on her phone, she sat at a wobbly desk, pen in hand, and replayed the dream in her mind, dissecting and analyzing. Each of the versions of the dream had been different—disjointed and choppy, as most dreams were. But the gist remained the same and, using poetic license, she distilled the sometimes incoherent wanderings of her subconscious into a rational narrative:

  She and Cam stood over the Crusader’s Tomb, back in St. Nicholas Church. Nearby, Astarte and Emmy played hopscotch, using the tombstones inlaid into the floor of the church as hopscotch squares. As at the Milano Farm, Emmy insisted that every game end in the now-familiar chant: “Two, one, seven, three, Emmy!”

  With an eerie creak, the lid of the Crusader’s tomb rose. Vampire-like, a medieval knight wearing a Templar cloak sat up, his chain mail jingling in the still air of the church. Amanda and Cam stepped back, not out of fear but to allow the knight room to step out of his coffin. He did so stiffly, reaching for his sword. Blinking, he scanned the far wall, the wall which boasted the skull-and-crossbones above the exterior of its arched door. The figure of a large, bearded man passed through the thick wall, as if the passageway had not yet been sealed shut. The bearded man approached, his wool cloak rustling as he walked, and removed his three-cornered leather hat. He bowed, showing a bald head and aquiline nose, his skin creased and weathered. Ignoring Amanda and Cam, he spoke to the Templar knight. “I am Columbus. At your service.”

  The knight bowed in turn. “It is a service for which we are w
illing to pay dearly, as has been agreed.”

  “Members of your Order have always been more than generous in our dealings,” Columbus replied, his tone formal and diffident.

  As Astarte and Emmy continued their game, seemingly oblivious to the scene unfolding around them, the knight pulled his sword from its scabbard—not a medieval battle sword, but rather a short-bladed weapon with a dark wooden handle, the blade encoded with a series of symbols and lines, the specifics of which were hidden from Amanda’s and Cam’s view. Columbus eyed the sword greedily, but the knight turned away and set the weapon aside. From inside the scabbard, the knight removed a tightly-rolled parchment scroll, undamaged despite sharing its encasement with the razor-sharp edges of the sword blade. With two hands extended and his head bowed, the Templar held the scroll out to Columbus. “Many of my Brothers have paid with their lives for this. And many more will die to protect the secrets it holds.”

  Columbus nodded. “I will deliver it safely. Upon my honor.”

  The knight studied Columbus for a count of three, a look of doubt apparent in his visage, before exhaling. Apparently resigned to the fact that he had no choice but to trust Columbus, he reached into the tomb and extracted a leather rucksack. “The charts,” he said simply, presenting the bag to the navigator.

  Columbus bowed and accepted the offering. “Again, more than generous.”

  The Templar lifted his chin. “May the Goddess bless your voyage.”

  “And may the Goddess bless your soul.”

  As the Templar returned to his tomb, Columbus turned, retraced his steps, and passed through the same stone wall through which he had entered. As he disappeared, Emmy’s chant filled the church, as if in victory: “Two, one, seven, three, Emmy!”

  Amanda tapped her pen. Was there anything else? She had the vague notion of someone lurking in the shadows, his face reminding her of Brian’s, his eyes mismatched like Emmy’s. But his role in the dream was undefined, as if her subconscious hadn’t yet determined his importance in their drama.

  But even without Brian, there was plenty to chew on. She eyed Cam in the blue-gray light of dawn, deep in slumber. She’d let him sleep. But when he awoke, they had some things to figure out.

  Cam awoke at seven to see that Amanda had already walked to the main house of the inn to scavenge a light breakfast. “I thought we should stay out of sight as much as possible,” she said.

  “Good idea.” In addition, as much as he would have enjoyed a hot meal, he was anxious to dive into Ruthie’s map and documents. After a hot shower, he had downloaded them off Ruthie’s Dropbox account last night, smiling as he input the ‘matzo ball soup’ password. But he and Amanda agreed they were simply too fatigued to do them justice.

  “Before we tackle Ruthie’s map, I had a dream.”

  He grinned. “Tell me your dream and I’ll tell you what it means.” Had it only been a week since she had said the same thing to him about his own dream, with Brian’s bloody hand covering Cam’s face? It felt like a lifetime ago.

  “Wait,” Astarte mumbled from the sofa bed as she rolled over. “I want to hear it also.”

  After washing up, they sat around a square butcher block table on oak chairs in an alcove of the cottage overlooking the Atlantic, the morning sun bathing their room in a warm glow, and ate croissants and fruit salad. “So, my dream,” Amanda said, describing in detail an encounter in St. Nicholas Church between Columbus and the Templar knight. “The meaning is obvious: Columbus brought a scroll to North America in exchange for some maps, probably ones to help him navigate the Atlantic. What I don’t know is, is it true?”

  “Well,” Cam said, “your subconscious thinks so. It analyzed and weighed the evidence, and this is what it came up with.” “So you think there really is a Templar-Columbus connection?”

  He nodded and stood, retrieving a legal pad from his overnight bag. “Sorry to be so analytical, but I like to make lists for stuff like this. So what are all things tying Columbus to the Templars?”

  They brainstormed as they ate. After ten minutes, Cam had the beginning of a list:

  1. Templar flags on sails of Columbus ships.

  2. Columbus in a Galway church with Templar ties.

  3. Columbus marriage ties to the Sinclair family, who had historical ties to Templars and maps to America.

  4. Columbus’ father-in-law, himself a member of the Knights of Christ (the Portuguese chapter of the Templars), gives naval charts to Columbus as dowry.

  5. Columbus from Genoa, near Templar headquarters of Seborga, where Templar journals detailing trip to North America kept.

  6. Molander book detailing Columbus 1477 journey to Clark’s Harbor, near Oak Island and Templar treasure.

  “What about his signature?” Astarte asked. “I saw a documentary showing his signature with a Hooked X mark, like all the rune stones in North America.”

  Cam replied, “It’s not actually his signature, it’s his mark. That’s what some people did in medieval times.” He pulled up Columbus’ mark, comprised of a cryptic stacking of letters and dots, on his phone.

  Cam pointed to the two large ‘X’ letters at the far left of each of the bottom two lines. “You can see the hooks on the upper right staves of the two ‘X’ letters. Some people think they’re just serifs, or stylized pen marks. But they’re not at the end of the stave, like they are with some other letters, so I think they could be intentional.”

  “I have something also,” Amanda said. “A Genoese coin dating back to the 13th or 14th century was discovered just across the bay from Oak Island, in the town of Chester, during road construction.”

  Cam nodded. “Good find. I didn’t know about that. If we’re right that he was on Oak Island, that’s a key clue.”

  Astarte stammered, “Um, I have another one. But I’m not sure I’m right about it.”

  “Go ahead, darling,” Amanda said.

  She swallowed. “Okay. I was working on this on the plane. For, like, forever. You know the names of Columbus’ ships, right?”

  Amanda shook her head. “We didn’t really study him in school.”

  “We did. Probably too much,” Cam said. “There were three—the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria.” He looked out the cottage window, over the Atlantic, half-expecting to see the three caravels approaching from the east.

  “The first thing I learned is that these were not the original names,” Astarte said. “Columbus changed them before his trip.”

  “What were they originally?” Amanda asked.

  Astarte held up her hand. “I’ll get to that. But first I want to explain what I was thinking.” The words rushed out of her. “Dad was talking about how the Templars were Goddess worshipers, and then you started talking about the Virgin Mary, and that Bernard guy drinking her milk, and Santa Maria really being another name for the Virgin Mary, but then you said it wasn’t really the Virgin Mary but Mary Magdalene in some of the paintings, and then Dad started talking about the Sinclairs and the bloodline and being descendants of Jesus and Mary Magdalene and the girl Sarah and the Hooked X stuff, and I remembered Columbus was related to the Sinclairs—”

  She stopped to breathe. “And well, it all just came together.”

  Amanda smiled. “Research can be amazing that way.”

  “So tell us what you found,” Cam said.

  “Okay.” Astarte shifted in the wooden chair. “Like I said, Santa Maria is the Virgin Mary, right? Saint Mary?”

  “Sure,” Cam said.

  “And Nina means girl in Spanish. That’s easy. So we have the Virgin Mary and the girl.”

  “I think I see where you’re going,” Amanda said, leaning forward.

  “And Pinta means ‘painted one’ in Spanish. That one took me a while to figure out. But then I Googled it to find out what it meant in medieval times.” She paused. “That was the word they used for prostitute. La pinta.” She blushed. “Because they painted their faces, you know, with makeup.”

  Amanda nodded, urg
ing her on.

  “Well, then I did more research. It turns out that’s what they called Mary Magdalene back then. A prostitute. Una pinta. Even though there’s nothing in the Bible that says that.”

  “That was part of the medieval Church trying to denigrate women,” Amanda replied.

  “So,” Astarte continued, patting the butcher block table, “we have the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene, and the girl.” She took another deep breath. “Then I found the original name of the Nina. The ship was called the Santa Clara until Columbus changed it—that means Saint Clair, shortened to Sinclair. The Santa Clara Nina.” She smiled triumphantly. “The Sinclair girl.”

  Cam, somewhat stunned that his little girl had done such compelling, intuitive research, simply nodded, while Amanda leaned over to give her a hug. “Bravo, darling,” she said. Smiling at Cam, she said, “Never underestimate a teenager with an internet connection.”

  “Especially one who’s been learning about the Templars since before she could read,” Cam replied, chuckling.

  Astarte summarized, just to make sure they both understood. “So Columbus renamed his ships after the female bloodline.” She held up three fingers and counted them out:

  “First, the mother of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, the Santa Maria.

  “Second, the wife of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, the so-called prostitute, the Pinta.

  “And third, the daughter of Jesus, the girl, Sarah, the hook inside the X, from the Santa Clara family, the Nina.”

  Cam scribbled a few notes and tossed the legal pad onto the table. He had quickly updated it, adding points seven through nine:

  7. Hooked X in Columbus signature.

  8. Medieval coin from Genoa found near Oak Island.

  9. SHIP NAMES!

  Cam lifted his chin. “What you found clinches it, Astarte. Sensational work.”

  “So what does it all mean?” Amanda asked.

  “It means your dream could be, as you say, spot-on,” Cam said. “I think Columbus made a deal with the Templars. They gave him maps, and he did them a favor by bringing some scroll to North America.” He nodded, agreeing with himself; the assessment felt right to him. “That’s the story that makes the most sense to me. Now all we need are the details.” He covered Amanda’s hand and smiled. “For tonight, I’d like you to dream about the Super Bowl. If you can figure out who’s going to win, we can pay for that entire Ireland trip.”