The Tenth Chamber

by Glenn Cooper

  Luc looked through the rest of the file but there was nothing else of interest, nothing about the Raphael painting. But the discovery of a tangible link to Ruac gave him the enthusiasm to keep pressing on to the last box.

  In the late afternoon, Chantelle left the research room to fetch two cups of coffee. The overhead fluorescents were now brighter than the light streaming through the windows. There were only two boxes left and when he was done, he’d get a taxi back to Paris and meet Isaak. Box 29 was largely filled with a photo archive, hundreds of glossy shots printed on the heavy paper of the day. He moved through them quickly, as if he was dealing cards at a poker game, and the moment the girl came back with coffee was the moment he saw the photo with the hand-written caption printed in black ink on the white border, G EN. DE G AULLE IN R UAC CONGRATULATING THE LOCAL MAQUISARD

  UNIT, 1949.

  De Gaulle towered above the others. He was dressed in a dark business suit, squinting into the sun over the photographer’s shoulder. Behind him was the village cafe looking much the same as it did now. He was flanked by six people, five men and a woman and was shaking hands with the oldest man.

  Luc’s eye was drawn immediately to the old man. And then another young man, and then the woman.

  ‘Coffee?’ Chantelle asked.

  He couldn’t respond.

  Because Chantelle disappeared.

  And the room disappeared.

  It was him and the photo. Nothing else.

  The old man looked strikingly like the mayor, Bonnet. The young man looked like Jacques Bonnet. The woman looked like Odile Bonnet.

  He stared some more, from face to face.

  He shook his head in confusion. The resemblance was uncanny.

  Paris was glowing in the twilight. From Luc’s taxi he hardly noticed the Eiffel Tower alight in the distance. With all the rush hour traffic, he had just enough time to get back to his hotel before Isaak came to pick him up but now he wished he hadn’t made the appointment.

  He had thinking to do, facts to sort through, puzzle pieces to assemble. He didn’t need idle chit-chat. He’d be better off sitting in his room with a clear head and a clean sheet of paper. He’d be seeing Colonel Toucas the next day. He wanted to lay out a coherent theory, not ramble on like a nut. He wanted to be back home; if he hadn’t already missed the last train he would have preferred travelling tonight.

  He ought to cancel.

  He called Isaak.

  ‘What are you, telepathic?’ Isaak said. ‘I’m just working on a translation for you.’

  ‘You did it earlier. What do you mean?’ Luc asked.

  ‘The new one!’ Isaak exclaimed. ‘The Belgian guy’s been busy. He’s finished! Margo forwarded his email an hour ago. I wanted to have it ready for you by dinner.’

  ‘Look, about dinner. Do you mind if we postpone? I’ve got some urgent work.’

  ‘No problem. What about the translation?’

  ‘I’m stuck in traffic. Could you read it to me over the phone? Would you mind?’

  ‘Luc, whatever you want. Let’s do it now.’

  ‘Thank you. And Isaak, before you start, what was the last key word?’

  ‘That’s what got me excited. It’s one of those words that get a medievalist’s heart beating. It was TEMPLARS.’

  THIRTY-ONE

  Ruac, 1307

  Bernard of Clairvaux had been dead for a very long time but a day did not pass without someone at Ruac Abbey thinking about him or mentioning his name to make a point or punctuate a prayer.

  He took his last breath in 1153 at the age of sixty-three and in near-record time he was canonised when, in 1174, Pope Alexander III made him Saint Bernard. The honour both thrilled and saddened his brother, Barthomieu, who was still troubled to live in a world without Bernard’s weighty presence.

  On the occasion of his brother’s sainthood, Barthomieu journeyed to Clairvaux with Nivard, now his sole surviving brother, to pray at Bernard’s tomb. They did so with trepidation. Would any of Bernard’s contemporaries at Clairvaux be alive and remember them? Would their secret be exposed?

  They thought not, but in the event some old monk might look them over suspiciously or try to engage them in conversation, they would remain aloof and would keep their heads cloaked in hooded anonymity.

  This was an exchange they would not entertain:

  ‘Good monks, you remind this old man of the brothers of Saint Bernard! I met them once, a great many years ago.’

  ‘We are certainly not these men, brother.’

  ‘No, how could you be? They must be dead or if not, they would be in their eighth decade!’

  ‘And as you can see, we are young men.’

  ‘Yes, to be young again. How marvellous that would be! But still, you sir are the image of Barthomieu and you sir are the image of Nivard. My old mind must be playing tricks.’

  ‘Let us get you out of the sun, brother, and bring you some ale.’

  ‘Thank you for that. Tell me, what did you say your names were?’

  No, they would not permit that conversation.

  Their secret was closely held. No one outside the tight confines of Ruac Abbey knew. Over the years, the abbey had involuted, turning increasingly inward, an island unto itself. Partly, this was due to their doctrinal shift towards Cistercianism, in homage to the teachings and filial ties to the ever-more influential Bernard. The outside world held only temptation and sin. Bernard taught that a good monastic community needed only the sweat of its members to tend to earthly needs and heavenly prayers to Christ and the Virgin Mary to preserve them spiritually. But in increasing measure, the monks at Ruac were losing synchronicity with their secular brethren at Ruac village and for that reason, they needed to tuck themselves away.

  Once a week, sometimes twice, they would brew their Enlightenment Tea and retire to the solitude of their cells or, if the evening was fine, a blanket of ferns beneath a favourite oak. There they would drift away to another place, another time, another plane, one which they were certain, brought them closer to God.

  For a time, Barthomieu had fretted over Bernard’s hostility. His distant words were still fresh. ‘The Devil visited evil upon us last night. Do you have any doubt of this?’

  He had waggled an accusatory finger. Wicked! Wicked!

  Bernard was a supremely learned man, infinitely more so than he. With Abelard he shared the honour as the most intelligent man Barthomieu had ever known. Popes turned to him to settle disputes. Kings. But in this matter, as Barthomieu ultimately convinced himself, he was in the right – it was Bernard who was short-sighted.

  Nothing about the tea robbed Barthomieu of his ardour for Christ. Nor did it sap his resolve to pray and work towards spiritual purity. In fact, it increased his physical and spiritual vitality. He awoke every morning to the timbre of chapel bells with love in his heart and a spring in his step. And they bore their forays into distemper stoically enough, taking the bad with the good, and endeavouring not to cause each other harm.

  He and Jean the infirmarer and herbalist preached the virtues of the tea among the abbey’s monks and soon it was widely used by all as a vitality tonic and spiritual chariot. The monks did not talk freely about their personal experiences but on the days large batches were prepared, they lined up eagerly for their rations. Even the abbot held out his personal chalice before scurrying off to the privacy of his abbot house.

  And as the years went by, Barthomieu and the others noticed something creeping up on them, almost imperceptible at first but inescapable in the fullness of time. Their beards were remaining black or brown, their muscles stayed taut, their eyesights stayed keen. And in the delicate matter of their loins, despite their vows of celibacy, they retained the extravagant potency of their youth.

  From time to time the monks of Ruac had need to do commerce with outsiders or perchance they would meet a Ruac villager out on a ramble. It was during these encounters that the realisation eventually dawned. Time was claiming the outsiders but was not
visiting itself upon the monks.

  Outside the monastery, people were growing older.

  They were not.

  It was the tea, there was no doubt.

  It became something to be jealously guarded. Nothing good could come from exposing their practice to outsiders. These were uneasy times and charges of heresy flew easily. Yes, there were rumours. There were always rumours about the secretive doings inside an abbey’s walls. The whispered speculation from villagers who lived near an abbey usually turned to debauchery, drunkenness and the like, even black arts from time to time. And yes, there were rumours in Ruac about monks who never seemed to die, but they stayed as just that – rumours.

  So they hid themselves away, and when that became untenable, as when some of them were obligated to travel to the Priory of St Marcel on the occasion of Pierre Abelard’s death vigil, they hid their faces as much as possible. At his deathbed, Barthomieu was forced by dint of his devotion and respect to his brother Bernard, to reveal his secret, only to him.

  Bernard once again was furious and in private, railed against the tea and its inherent affront to the laws of nature. But, for the sake of his sole-surviving brothers, he swore an oath to take the secret with him to the grave, as long as Barthomieu and Nivard agreed never to see him again.

  And painfully, that bargain was struck. That was the last time Barthomieu saw Bernard in life.

  Nivard, the youngest of the six brothers from Fontaines, came to Ruac to join Barthomieu in a circuitous fashion. There were two traditional family paths that he might follow: the priesthood or the sword. At first, he chose neither.

  Two brothers, Gerard and Guy had fought for the king. The others, Bernard, Barthomieu and Andre had donned the habit. Andre died a young man, struck down by the pox during the first harsh winter at Clairvaux Abbey. Gerard and Guy left the King’s arms and came to Clairvaux when it was established. They took the cloth but soldiering never left their spirit. So it was a matter of course that following the Council of Troyes in 1128, they would become Knights of the Church. And when the Second Crusade began, they slipped on their white mantles with red crosses and joined their fellow Templars in the ill-fated raid on Damascus. There they fell under the deadly swarm of Nur ad-Din’s archers and were lost in a melee of blood.

  As a young man Nivard was pious and hoped to follow his famous brother Bernard to Clairvaux but that was before he laid eyes on a young woman from Fontaines. Anne was a commoner and the daughter of a butcher. His father was livid, but Nivard was so smitten by the shapely, cheerful girl that when he was not with her he could not eat, sleep nor pray in earnest. Finally, he forsook the noble traditions of his family and married her. Cut off from the munificence of his father, he became a lowly tradesman and apprenticed himself to his father-in-law in a offal-filled butcher’s stall near the market place.

  Three years of happiness was wiped away when the plague came to Fontaines and Nivard lost both his wife and infant child. He became a despondent rover, a drinker and an itinerant butcher and found himself in a godless haze in Rouen where, in 1120, in a stinking tavern smelling of piss, he heard of a position as a butcher on a new sailing ship. It was called the White Ship, the greatest vessel ever built in France. It was deemed so reliable and mighty that on a calm November night, it set out from Barfleur carrying the most precious of cargoes. On board was William Adelin, the only legitimate son of King Henry I of England, and with him a large entourage of British royals.

  Navigation errors were made – or was it sabotage? It was never known. Near the harbour, the ship was steered into a submerged rock which tore through the hull. It quickly sank. Nivard was deep in the holds, fortified for his maiden voyage by wine, clad in butcher’s ramskins. He heard the cracking timbers, the screams of the crew, the whoosh of the incoming water and the next thing he knew the ship was gone and he was all alone in the dark sea, bobbing in his buoyant ramskins. The next morning a fishing boat plucked him from the channel, the only survivor. A hundred were lost. The heir to the throne of England was gone.

  Why was he saved?

  That question perplexed Nivard, nagged at him, caused him to foreswear strong drink and led him back to God. His embarrassment over his youthful transgressions prevented him from venturing to Bernard’s gate at Clairvaux. How could he explain his life and his choices to one so rigidly imperious? He could not. Instead, he made his way to the more forgiving climes of Ruac, where Barthomieu welcomed him with open arms.

  ‘You are my brother in blood and in Christ!’ he declared. ‘And besides, we can use a monk who knows how to butcher a hog well!’

  The years passed. Nivard became an ardent user of the tea, a fellow cheater of time.

  The monks at Ruac came to understand that while their infusion could do many things, it was certainly not a shield of invincibility. It was no protection against the scourges of the day: the white plague – just look at poor Abelard – the black plague, the pox. And bodies could still break and be crushed. Jean, the infirmarer, fell off his mule one day and broke his neck. There was a story there. Scandalously, a woman was involved.

  But notwithstanding the Devil’s evil tricks, most of the brethren lived, and lived and lived.

  It was high irony that one of Bernard’s most famous actions, the one that would resonate through history, would lead to Barthomieu and Nivard’s demise.

  In 1118 Hugues de Payen, a lesser noble from Champagne, arrived in Jerusalem with a small band of men and presented his services at arms to the throne of Baudouin II. With Baudouin’s blessings, he spent a decade of rag-tag service protecting Christian pilgrims on their visitations to the Temple Mount. Then, in 1128, de Payen wrote to Bernard, the most influential man in the Church, the shining star of monasticism, to sponsor his fledgling effort and create an order of Holy Knights to fight for Jerusalem, for Christendom.

  Bernard took to the idea readily and penned a treatise to Rome, De Laudibus Novae Militiae, a vigorous defense of the notion of holy warriors. At the ecclesiastical Council of Troyes, in his home territory of Champagne, he rammed through the approval, and Pope Innocent II formally accepted the formation of The Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon.

  The Templars were born.

  Some of the earliest knights joining Hugues de Payen were blood relatives of Bernard, including Andre de Montbard, his maternal uncle, and his brothers Gerard and Guy. A gaggle of nobles from Champagne took the oath. And from the moment of their inception, the Templars venerated Bernard and were unwavering in their affection – up to the fateful year of 1307.

  With Bernard’s powerful patronage, the Templars received gifts from the nobility to aid their holy mission: money, land, noble-born sons. They could pass through any border freely. They paid no tax. They were exempt from all authority, save that of the Pope.

  Though they were not able to secure a major victory during Bernard’s lifetime, and in fact suffered ignominious defeat at Damascus during the Second Crusade, in the years that followed they flourished as a militia. Gloriously, in 1177, five hundred Templar knights helped defeat Saladin’s army of twenty thousand at the Battle of Montgisard. One of these knights was Nivard of Fontaines, monk from Ruac, and a man his comrades could count upon to butcher a goat or camel.

  Their reputation was secured and over the next century their fortunes swelled. Through a cunning mix of donations and business dealings, the power of the Templars exploded. They acquired huge tracts of land in the Middle East and Europe, they imported and exported goods throughout Christendom, they built churches and castles, they owned their own fleet of ships.

  And then, the inevitable: because everything that rises must at some point fall.

  The Templars, still exempt from the control of countries and other rulers, in effect a state within a state, were both feared and despised by outsiders. When an animal is wounded, other predators strike. Over the years the Templars were wounded. They suffered military setbacks in the Holy Land. Jerusalem was lost. They retreated to Cyprus,
their last stronghold in the Middle East. Then Cyprus was lost. Their prestige waned and lords of the land, powerful foes, closed in for the kill.

  Philippe de Bel, King of France, harboured a long-simmering feud against the Order ever since as a young man his application to join them had been rejected. He had also racked up massive debts to the Order, which he had no intention of repaying. The King pounced.