“Go you to where the brothers of Bernard pray,
North and west into the forest find your way,
What you think on a rise be a stone fort,
Be in truth on the landscape a stone wart.”
“Wait,” Amanda said. “If it rhymes in English, it must have been written in English, right?”
“Fair point,” Cam replied.
“Which means it wasn’t written by the Templars, or by the guys who drew the map. They all spoke French.”
“Good point,” Cam said. “So it must have been written later by the Cistercian monks. The caretakers.”
“Then how did Ruthie end up with it?”
Cam shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe she followed the map to the abbey, then tracked down the Cistercians. They moved up to western Massachusetts after their abbey here burned down.”
“But why would they give her the poem?”
Cam shrugged again. “Maybe it’s one of those quests, where people prove they are worthy of succeeding by following the clues to the end. Maybe she was the first one to make it that far, so they gave her the next clue.”
“Guys,” Astarte said, bouncing from one leg to another. “It doesn’t matter. We have the poem. And it says to go to where the brothers of Bernard pray. I assume that means Bernard de Clairvaux. And his brothers are the Cistercians.” She gestured around them. “We’re here. The poem says now we need to go northwest.”
Amanda furrowed her brow. “Which is a different direction from where I fancied we’d look.”
“Which was?”
“There’s a monument here called Nine Men’s Misery. It commemorates where nine Colonists were tortured and killed by Native Americans during King Philip’s War in 1676. It’s actually a cairn, a pile of stones, like at the old megalithic sites. In 1928, the Cistercian monks squared off the pile and added concrete along with signage to the monument. It’s believed to be the oldest veterans’ memorial in the States.” She bit her lip. “Since the Cistercians went to the trouble of enhancing it, and since it’s a cairn like the ancient burial sites, I thought it might make a good hiding spot.” She looked down at the map. “But, again, it’s not in the right direction.”
“Interesting. But I still vote we go northwest,” Cam said. “Then, if we don’t find anything, we can circle around to the Nine Men’s Misery memorial.”
Amanda nodded. “Okay then. Northwest it is.” She glanced at the trail map. “There’s a trail that goes out that way. Sounds like we’re looking for some kind of stone formation.”
They crossed a field behind the library complex and found the path accessing the trails. The sun had dried the ground in places, but trails in shadowy areas remained spongy. Astarte, energized by the adventure, bound ahead along a path that bisected two ponds. Cam watched as, using a paper clip, she examined stray rocks along the way, concentrating on brownish-black ones with white crystals. After a few dozen unsuccessful attempts, she called out in victory. “Ta-da! Found one.”
“A piece of cumberlandite?” Cam replied.
“I think so.” She held up a lemon-sized dark stone, the paper clip hanging from it. “It’s magnetic.”
“Nice work, honey,” Amanda said.
Astarte handed it to her. “It’s for you.”
“Hey, what about me?” Cam lamented.
“I’ll look for a lump of coal for you.” She grinned. “Like the naughty kids at Christmas.”
She raced ahead again. She was at that age where she could be a mature young adult one minute and a goofy kid the next. Periodically checking to make sure they weren’t being followed, Cam and Amanda caught up to her a half-minute later at a fork in the path. “Which way now?” Astarte asked.
Amanda glanced at the sun, getting her bearings. “To the right. The left path circles back, but this one heads basically northwest. But first let’s tuck our pants into our socks. Ticks can live even through the winter and this trail gets narrow.”
After a few hundred yards, Astarte stopped and pointed to her left at a cubic white-marble rock sitting atop a triangular black stone on a bed of wet leaves in a clearing in the woods. “Do you guys see that?” Each stone approximated the size of a toaster oven, with no other rocks nearby. Just the two stones, contrasting each other in color and shape, stacked together alone in the clearing.
“That must be some kind of trail marker,” Amanda declared. “Stones don’t end up stacked that way by themselves.”
“Agreed,” Cam said. “If it’s a marker, maybe it leads to the stone fort.”
They continued in a northwest direction, the path fading to barely more than a thinning of the trees. Astarte, again in front, followed a curve in the trail and froze, her arm stretched out and her finger pointing. “Look at that.”
A massive stone outcrop, the size of a one-car garage, rose out of the ground amidst a copse of new-growth trees atop a slope fifty yards off the trail.
Cam stared. They had not seen any other outcrop in these woods, much less anything this massive. It was clearly an anomaly. Which made it an ideal marker.
“Well, that’s our fort,” Amanda said. “Or wart, as the poem says.”
They approached. The formation was almost alien, its edges sharp and ragged like one of those Transformers kid toys. “Granite is usually smooth and rounded,” Cam said. “This looks like slate. Rhode Island has a lot of it.”
“Is that important?” Amanda asked.
“I don’t know. But it’s pretty eye-catching.”
Astarte, who had again run ahead, called from the backside of the outcrop. “I found something else.”
Four small stones had been carefully stacked atop a ledge running off the back of the slate outcrop to form a cairn. “Again, manmade,” Amanda said. She shrugged. “Could be Native American, could be Wiccan, could be kids playing in the woods.”
“Or could be Cistercian monks marking a trail,” Cam replied. “But either way, I agree. This is definitely the stone wart from the poem.”
“So what next?” Amanda asked.
“I suppose I should read the next verse,” Cam said. He read aloud:
“Often a wart is found on the side of a nose,
You must find where the wart’s nose grows,
Follow the nose for 100 paces straight,
As would a Roman with his usual gait.”
“The wart’s nose?” Amanda repeated.
“I see it,” called Astarte. “It’s there, on the upper right. Sticking out.”
Cam nodded. “Cute. Instead of a wart on a nose, we have a nose on a wart.”
Amanda replied, “Not bad, I suppose, for a bunch of monks sworn to silence.”
“And it’s pointing northwest,” he said. “So 100 paces.”
“Wait, Cameron,” Amanda said. “What’s that about the Roman? It could be important.”
Astarte was ahead of them, already Googling it on her phone. “A Roman pace is a stride with both feet, not just one,” she said. “It says here it’s about five feet long.”
“Good catch,” Cam said. “We would have only made it halfway using a regular pace.”
Cam began to set off in a northwest direction, counting as he went, but stopped after ten paces. “Amanda, can you wait here at the outcrop and make sure I stay on track?”
“Okay. I’ll call you if you stray. But 500 feet is almost 200 yards, so I might lose sight of you.”
“I’ll bring Astarte with me. If you do lose sight of me, call. Then she can use the compass on her phone to set a northwest direction and track me the rest of the way.”
Cam marched stiff-legged, fighting his way through the forest, intent on keeping his strides constant at two-and-a-half feet and his direction true to the nose on the outcrop. Astarte skipped along ahead, ducking around trees, anxious to find the treasure. Cam smiled. To be young and certain that just over the next rise a treasure waited to be discovered.
And then to find it.
“Look!” she called. “I think
I found something!”
Cam was only up to pace number 72, but he could tell Astarte was in the general vicinity of where his 100th pace would fall. Despite her excitement, and his, he trudged along, counting his steps even as he peered ahead to see what Astarte might have found. He stopped only to send Amanda a quick text: Come, Watson, come. The game is afoot.
Astarte stood on a faded path which seemed to snake through the forest from the general direction of the monastery. Again she pointed, a satisfied smile on her face. “Nice pacing. But sometimes you just need to rush ahead.”
Cam rolled his eyes. “Words of wisdom from a thirteen-year-old.” Though in this case she was correct. He had stopped at pace 96, on a small rise above where she stood. Someone had placed a four-foot-long stone cross on the ground and haphazardly framed it with a series of curbstones and other flat rocks. A pair of stones had been stacked at the foot of the cross, headstone-like, the base stone shaped like a wheel and the upper stone triangular. Moss had grown to cover the cross, turning it bright green, adding to the eye-catching peculiarity of the manmade monument deep in the woods.
They waited a few seconds until Amanda arrived. “Well now.” She studied the monument. “The cross almost looks like a body.”
Cam angled his head. The upper span of the cross was, indeed, truncated, causing it to resemble a head. And there was the hint of a curve of hips on the long span.
“What’s the orientation?” Amanda asked.
Cam glanced at the sun. “East-west, with the head of the cross facing east.”
She nodded. “Facing Jerusalem.” As was the ancient custom of religious groups like the Templars and Cistercians. “I don’t think someone burying, say, a pet would do that.”
“Good point.” And this felt more … ceremonial … than a normal burial site. Cam focused on the headstone. Did the wheel and triangle symbolize something? Perhaps something Masonic? He Googled ‘triangle on circle’ and quickly found a website showing examples of similar symbology, including an all-seeing eye inside a Masonic compass and square, the pyramid (with all-seeing eye) inside a circle on the U.S. dollar bill, and the Masonic Triangle of Enlightenment, highlighting Freemasonry’s 33 degrees of enlightenment:
The examples didn’t perfectly match the headstone formation (the triangular headstone being a right triangle rather than isosceles), but it was close. The two main symbols of Freemasonry were the compass and the square, the compass being a tool to draw circles and the square a tool to make right angles. The wheel and the right triangle could be seen as physical manifestations stemming from the use of those tools. And the association with Freemasonry was consistent with the location: The Freemasons and their symbolism had long been connected to the Templars and their sister order, the Cistercians. But no. Cam shook his head. His interpretation didn’t feel right. Or at least didn’t feel complete. There was something else, something more, going on here…
Amanda interjected, seeming to read his thoughts. “The triangle is a symbol for the trinity. Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Also the three stages of womanhood—daughter, mother, grandmother. The Triple Goddess. And don’t forget what Astarte figured out about Columbus using the Triple Goddess to name his ships: the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene and the Sinclair daughter. Based on the other clues we’ve found this week, that would be my guess: This is a symbol for the Triple Goddess, manifesting itself in the Jesus bloodline.”
“And the circle?” Cam asked.
She shrugged. “A symbol for life itself. Which, of course, is given by women. And also a symbol for equality, because it has no divisions or sides. Think King Arthur’s Round Table. So, together, the stones could signify the life-giving force of the bloodline family. Or maybe the idea that the Triple Goddess, the female, should be considered as an equal to any male deity.”
Cam nodded. They had run across this theme consistently in their research on the Templars. Amanda didn’t need to remind him that it was this Templar belief in the importance of women—in particular their belief that Mary Magdalene was an equal partner to her husband Jesus—which caused them to run afoul of the patriarchal medieval Church.
They stood in silence for a few seconds until Amanda shrugged again. “Or, like I said, it could just be some kids stacking rocks in the woods.”
“No, I think you’re right,” Cam replied. “Those stones were brought out here. They’ve been worked and shaped. Which means someone had a plan. This was important. You don’t just drag stones into the forest on a lark. And they must have had a meaning, stacked like that. Probably veneration of the Goddess, like you said.”
Astarte cut right to it. “So is the treasure buried here, under the cross?”
Amanda shook her head. “I don’t think so. It’s too obvious. Anyone stumbling upon the cross might chance a dig. I think there’s one more step to this.” She turned to Cam. “Is there another verse in the poem?”
“No. That’s it.”
“Okay,” Amanda said. “Let’s think about this logically. It’s safe to say that whatever clues we have, they should mean something.” She looked back and forth to Cam and Astarte. “So are there any clues we haven’t used yet?”
“There were some markings on the back of Brian’s swagger sword that I’ve never seen before.” He cursed himself for not taking a picture. “A cross. Then some dots. Then an X mark.”
“So if this is the cross, maybe the dots indicate paces to the treasure. How many dots?”
“I didn’t get a good enough look at it. A lot. More than a dozen.”
Astarte asked, “Was it a regular X?”
He weighed the question. “No, actually, I think it was stylized. Sort of a Templar cross turned 45 degrees.”
Astarte smiled. “I think I know what to do.” She took her phone out of her pocket and explained. “When I saw this cross, something about it reminded me of the Galway Crusader’s tomb, with the cross on top.” She showed them the image.
Cam didn’t see much of a resemblance, but sometimes he was too literal about stuff like this. He allowed Astarte to continue her explanation.
“Like Mom said, this cross sort of looks like a body, and this whole thing, with the stones set around the cross, looks like a tomb.” She shrugged. “So both are tombs with crosses, both facing east. And Mom just said that all the clues are probably related.”
“And?” Amanda encouraged her along.
“Well, Dad said the back of the swagger sword has a cross and an X, with some paces in between. And so does the Galway church, with the Apprentice pillar being the X, if you look at it from above as a cross-section. I bet this site is a mirror of the Galway church. A cross and an X separated by a number of paces.”
“Ah,” Amanda said. “I get it. Like you said, mirror layouts on both sides of the Atlantic.”
“Yup.” She held out her phone again. “And based on this picture, I would say the pillar is about fifty feet from the tomb, right in line with it. So I think that’s where we are supposed to dig.” She pointed into the woods. “Straight from the head of the cross. You can check my math, but I think it’s fifty feet in that direction.”
Brian tramped through the woods of northern Rhode Island, hoping some overzealous hunter didn’t mistake him for a deer. He had tracked Thorne to the parking lot in front of the monastery using the device he had slipped under the Pathfinder’s passenger seat when Thorne had given him a ride to the Newport bus station a week earlier. Brian shook his head. Had it really only been a week since he confronted his old friend at the Tower? He flexed his hand. The cut had finally healed. But not much else in his life was in order.
As Brian expected, Thorne and his hot wife (who didn’t like Brian), along with their hot daughter (who was too young to know better), had found their way to the treasure. Or at least most of the way. How they had done it didn’t matter. What mattered was for Brian to get his hands on it.
Fortunately Brian had arrived in time. He had taken the first flight out of Ireland, landing at Kennedy
Airport in New York just after eleven this morning. From there, while waiting in the rental car line, he had tracked Thorne to Cumberland. Halfway through Connecticut, cruising at 90, Brian had noticed Thorne’s SUV leave the monastery parking lot. But thankfully he had only driven as far as a nearby hardware store, presumably to purchase digging supplies. Now, finally, nearing mid-afternoon, Brian had closed to what he hoped was within a few hundred yards.
He adjusted his Irish tweed hat and peered through the woods, a pair of binoculars around his neck and a bird-watching book stuffed into his back pocket (both purchased at a Walmart off the highway) as cover in case anyone approached. He had thrown on a long overcoat to cover his bright green pants. Thorne and family had been easy to track, three sets of footprints in the wet ground, especially once they left the trails. But Brian moved cautiously, not wanting to be made. The element of surprise was his best weapon. Other than the swagger sword itself, of course. And it wouldn’t break Brian’s heart if Thorne finished the heavy digging before he arrived.
Cam cringed every time his shovel penetrated the semi-frozen ground, though it had nothing to do with his sore neck. This was no way to unearth an ancient treasure. This dig should be the work of trained archeologists, excavating carefully to preserve not only what lay buried but also the surrounding soil in which it was found. It was the soil, after all, which would allow the exact date of burial to be determined. But trying to get a professional archeologist to pay attention to pre-Columbian history was like trying to get a cat to belly-flop into a pool. An archeologist had once told Cam that the subject of pre-Columbian exploration of America was like pornography—many archeologists were titillated by it, but none was stupid enough to take an interest in it publicly.
Cam remained certain he was digging in the correct spot. They had paced out the fifty-foot distance Astarte had estimated and stumbled upon a sharp-edged, black and copper-colored cubic stone the size of a toaster oven. The cube sat alone like a beacon in a clearing in the woods. The stone was a miniature version of the giant slate outcrop, the nose of which had pointed to the cross to begin with. Surrounding the cubic stone, buried in leaves and a thin cover of soil, a few dozen fieldstones had been set in the ground, creating a concealed circular area approximating the size of a hula hoop. It was a simple but ingenious set-up. Trees would not grow around the cubic stone—and thus not block access to anything buried below it—due to the rock bed preventing root growth. Cam had wrestled the cubic stone aside, pushed away the rock bed, and begun to dig.
The Swagger Sword Page 17