by Steve Berry
“Which way?” Stephanie whispered.
He signaled for quiet. Then he heard voices. From his left, toward the chamber he and Cassiopeia had found.
“That way,” he mouthed.
He knew the path was free of traps until almost to the chamber entrance. Still, they inched ahead slowly. When he spied the skeleton and the words etched into the wall, he knew just ahead they’d have to be cautious.
The voices were clearer now.
“I asked if you killed my father,” Mark said in a loud tone.
“Your father was a weak soul.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“I was there the night he ended his life. I followed him to the bridge. We talked.”
Mark was listening.
“He was frustrated. Angry. He’d solved the cryptogram, the one in his journal, and it told him nothing. Your father simply lacked the strength to carry on.”
“You know nothing of my father.”
“On the contrary. I watched him for years. He moved from issue to issue, never resolving a single one. It brought him problems professionally and personally.”
“He apparently found enough to lead us here.”
“No. Others found that.”
“You made no attempt to stop him from hanging himself?”
De Roquefort shrugged. “Why? He was intent on dying, and I saw no advantage in stopping him.”
“So you just walked away and let him die?”
“I didn’t interfere in something that did not concern me.”
“You son of a bitch.” He took a step forward. De Roquefort leveled his gun. He still held the book from the ossuary. “Go ahead. Shoot me.”
De Roquefort seemed unfazed. “You killed a brother. You know the penalty.”
“He died because of you. You sent him.”
“There you go again. One set of rules for yourself, another for the rest of us. You pulled the trigger.”
“In self-defense.”
“Lay the book down.”
“And what will you do with it?”
“What the masters in the Beginning did. I’ll use it against Rome. I always wondered how the Order rose so quickly. When popes tried to merge us with the Knights Hospitallers, over and over we stopped them. And all because of that book and those bones. The Roman Church could not take the chance of either being made public.
“Imagine what those medieval popes thought when they learned that the physical resurrection of Christ was a myth. Of course, they couldn’t be sure. That testimony could be as fictitious as the Gospels. Still, the words are compelling and the bones hard to ignore. There were thousands of relics floating around then. Pieces of saints adorned every church. Everyone believed so easily. No reason to think these bones would have been ignored. And these were the greatest relics of them all. So masters used what they knew, and the threat worked.”
“And today?”
“Just the opposite. Too many people who believe nothing. Lots of questions exist in the modern mind and few answers in the Gospels. That testimony, though, is another matter. It would make sense to a great many people.”
“So you’re going to be a modern-day Philip IV.”
De Roquefort spit on the ground. “That’s what I think of him. He wanted this knowledge so he could control the Church—so that his heirs could control it, too. But he paid for his greed. Him and his entire family.”
“Do you think for one minute you could control anything?”
“I have no desire to control. But I would like to see the faces of all those pompous prelates as they explain away the testimony of Simon Peter. After all, his bones rest at the heart of the Vatican. They built a cathedral around his grave and named the basilica for him. He’s their first saint, their first pope. How will they explain away his words? Wouldn’t you like to listen as they try?”
“Who’s to say they’re his?”
“Who’s to say Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John’s words are theirs?”
“Changing everything might not be so good.”
“You’re as weak as your father. No stomach for a fight. You’d bury this away? Tell no one? Allow the Order to languish in obscurity, tainted by the slander of a greedy king? Weak men like you are why we find ourselves in this situation. You and your master were well suited to one another. He was a weak man, too.”
He’d heard enough and, without warning, raised his left hand, which held the lamp, angling the bright bar so that its strongest glow momentarily flashed in de Roquefort’s eyes. The instant of discomfort caused de Roquefort to squint, and his hand with the gun dropped as he raised his other arm to shield his eyes.
Mark kicked the gun from de Roquefort’s grip, then rushed from the chamber. He emerged from the open gate, turned back toward the ladder, but took only a few steps.
Ten feet ahead he saw another light and spotted Malone and his mother.
Behind him, de Roquefort emerged.
“Halt” came the command, and he stopped.
De Roquefort stepped close.
He saw his mother raise a gun.
“Get down, Mark,” she yelled.
But he stayed standing.
De Roquefort was now directly behind him. He felt the barrel of the gun at the back of his head.
“Lower your weapon,” de Roquefort said to her.
Malone displayed a gun. “You can’t shoot us both.”
“No. But I can shoot this one.”
Malone considered his options. He couldn’t get a shot at de Roquefort without hitting Mark. But why had Mark stopped? Allowing de Roquefort the opportunity to corral him.
“Lower the gun,” Malone said quietly to Stephanie.
“No.”
“I would do as he says,” de Roquefort made clear.
Stephanie did not move. “He’s going to shoot him anyway.”
“Maybe,” Malone said. “But let’s not provoke it.”
He knew she’d lost her son once through mistakes. She was not about to have him taken from her again. He studied Mark’s face. Not a speck of fear. He motioned with his light at the book in Mark’s grasp.
“That what this was all about?”
Mark nodded. “The Great Devise, along with a lot of treasure and documents.”
“Was it worth it?”
“That’s not for me to say.”
“It was,” de Roquefort declared.
“So what now?” Malone asked. “Nowhere for you to go. Your men are down.”
“Your doing?”
“Some. But your chaplain is here with a contingent of knights. Seems there’s been a revolt.”
“That remains to be seen,” de Roquefort said. “I’ll only say it one more time, Ms. Nelle, lower your gun. As Mr. Malone correctly notes, what do I have to lose by shooting your son?”
Malone was still assessing the situation, his mind checking off options. Then, in the ambient glow from Mark’s lamp, he spotted it. A slight depression in the floor. Hardly noticeable, except if you knew what to look for. Another floor trap spanning the width of the passage and extending from where he stood all the way to Mark. He cut his gaze back and saw in the younger man’s eyes the fact that he knew it existed. A slight nod of the head and he realized why Mark had stopped. He’d wanted de Roquefort to come after him. He needed him to come.
Apparently it was time to end this.
Here and now.
He reached out and wrenched the gun from Stephanie’s grasp.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
Back to de Roquefort, he mouthed, “The floor,” and he saw that she registered what he’d said.
Then he faced their dilemma.
“Wise move,” de Roquefort said to him.
Stephanie went silent, apparently understanding. But he doubted that she really did. He turned his attention back across the passage. His words, meant for Mark, were said to de Roquefort.
“Okay. Your move.”
Mark knew this was it. The master h
ad written to his mother that he did not possess the resolve needed to complete his battles. Starting them seemed easy, continuing them even easier, but resolving them had always proven difficult. Not anymore. His master had formed the stage and the players had acted out the script. Time for the finale. Raymond de Roquefort was a menace. Two brothers were dead because of him, and there was no telling where it all would stop. No way could he and de Roquefort exist within the Order together. His master had apparently known that. Which was why one of them had to go.
He knew that just a step ahead was a deep gouge in the floor, the bottom of which he hoped was lined with bronze stakes. In his rage to hurl forward, unconcerned with everything around him, de Roquefort possessed no idea of that danger. Which was precisely how his enemy would administer the Order. The sacrifices that thousands of brothers had made for seven hundred years would be wasted on arrogance.
When he’d read Simon’s testimony he’d finally been provided a historical affirmation of his own religious skepticism. He’d always been troubled by biblical contradictions and their weak explanations. Religion, he feared, was a tool used by men to manipulate other men. The human mind’s need to have answers, even to questions that possessed no answer, had allowed the unbelievable to become gospel. Somehow a comfort came in believing that death was not an end. There was more. Jesus supposedly proved that by physically resurrecting Himself, and offering that same salvation to all who believed.
But there was no life after death.
Not literally.
Instead, what others made of your life was how you lived on. In remembering what the man Jesus said and did, Simon Peter realized that his dead friend’s beliefs were actually resurrected within him. And preaching that message, doing what Jesus had done, became the measure of Simon’s salvation. None of us should judge anyone, only ourselves. Life is not infinite. A set time defines us all—then, just as the bones in the ossuary showed, to dust we return.
He could only hope that his life had meant something and that others would remember him by that meaning.
He sucked a breath.
And tossed the book at Malone, who caught it.
“Why did you do that?” de Roquefort asked.
Mark saw that Malone knew what he was about to do.
And suddenly so did his mother.
He spotted it in her eyes as they shimmered with tears. He wanted to tell her that he was sorry, that he was wrong, that he shouldn’t have judged her. She seemed to read his thoughts and took a step forward, which Malone blocked with his arm.
“Get out of the way, Cotton,” she said.
Mark used that moment to inch forward, the ground still hard.
“Go,” de Roquefort said to him. “Get the book back.”
“Certainly.”
Another step.
Still hard.
But instead of walking toward Malone as de Roquefort ordered, he ducked to avoid the gun barrel at his head and whirled, ramming his elbow into de Roquefort’s ribs. The man’s muscular abdomen was hard and he knew he was no match for the older warrior. But he owned an advantage. Where de Roquefort was readying himself for a fight, he simply wrapped his arms around the other man’s chest and revolved them both forward, propelling his feet off the ground and sending them down to the floor that he knew would not hold.
He heard his mother scream no, then de Roquefort’s gun exploded.
He’d shoved the hand holding the weapon outward, but there was no telling where the bullet had gone. They crashed into the false floor, their combined weight enough to obliterate the covering. De Roquefort had surely expected to hit hard earth, ready to spring into action. But as they slammed into the hole, Mark released his grip from around de Roquefort’s body and freed his arms, which allowed the full force of the stakes to grind into his enemy’s spine.
A groan seeped from de Roquefort’s lips as he opened his mouth to speak. Only blood gurgled out.
“I told you the day you challenged the master that you’d regret what you did,” Mark whispered. “Your tenure is over.”
De Roquefort tried to speak, but the breath left him as blood spilled from his lips.
Then the body went limp.
“You okay?” Malone asked from above.
He raised up. His shifting weight caused de Roquefort to settle farther onto the stakes. Grit and gravel covered him. He leveraged himself out of the cavity, then swiped away the grime. “I just killed another man.”
“He would have killed you,” Stephanie said.
“Not a good reason, but it’s all I’ve got.”
Tears streamed down his mother’s face. “I thought you were gone again.”
“I was hoping to avoid those stakes, but I didn’t know if de Roquefort would cooperate.”
“You had to kill him,” Malone said. “He never would have stopped.”
“What about the gunshot?” Mark asked.
“Whizzed by close,” Malone said. He motioned with the book. “This what you’re after?”
Mark nodded. “And there’s more.”
“I asked before. Was it worth it?”
He pointed back down the passage. “Let’s go have a look and you tell me.”
SIXTY-SEVEN
ABBEY DES FONTAINES
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 28
12:40 PM
Mark stared out across the circular hall. The brothers were once again adorned in their formal dress, convened in conclave, about to select a master. De Roquefort was dead, laid in the Hall of Fathers last night. At the funeral the chaplain had challenged de Roquefort’s memory, and the vote had been unanimous that he be denied. As he’d listened to the chaplain’s speech, Mark had realized that what happened over the past few days was all necessary. Unfortunately, he’d killed two men, one with regret, the other without relish. He’d begged the Lord’s forgiveness for the first death, but felt only relief that de Roquefort was gone.
Now the chaplain was speaking again, to the conclave.
“I tell you brothers. Destiny has been at work, but not in the manner in which our most recent master contemplated. His was the wrong way. Our Great Devise is back because of the seneschal. He was the former master’s chosen successor. He was the one sent on the quest. He faced down his enemy, placed our well-being above his own, and fulfilled what masters have attempted for centuries.”
Mark saw hundreds of heads bobbing in agreement. Never had he moved men in such a way before. His had been a solitary existence in academia, his weekend forays with his father, then alone, the only adventure he’d ever known until the past few days.
The Great Devise had been quietly taken from the earth yesterday morning and returned to the abbey. He and Malone had personally removed the ossuary, along with its testimony. He’d shown the chaplain what they’d found and it was agreed that the new master would decide what to do next.
Now that decision was at hand.
This time Mark did not stand with the Order’s officers. He was merely a brother, so he’d taken his place among the somber mass of men. He’d not been selected as one for the conclave, so he watched with all the others as the twelve went about their task.
“There is no question what must be done,” one of the conclave members said. “The former seneschal should be our master. Let it be.”
Silence gripped the room.
Mark wanted to speak in protest. But Rule forbid it, and he’d broken enough for a lifetime.
“I agree,” another conclave member said.
The remaining ten all nodded.
“Then it shall be,” the nominator said. “He that was our seneschal shall now be our master.”
Applause erupted as more than four hundred brothers signaled their approval.
Chanting started.
Beauseant.
He was no longer Mark Nelle.
He was master.
All eyes focused on him. He emerged from the brothers and entered the circle formed by the conclave. He stared at men he admired. He’d
joined the Order simply as a means to fulfill what his father had dreamed and to escape his mother. He’d stayed because he’d come to love both the Order and its master.
Words from John came to mind.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Through him all things were made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.
Simon Peter recognized and received Him, as had all who came after Simon, and their darkness became light. Perhaps thanks to Simon’s singular realization, they were all now children of God.
The shouts subsided.
He waited until the hall went silent.
“I had thought perhaps that it was time for me to leave this place,” he softly said. “The past few days have brought many difficult decisions. Because of the choices I made, I believed my life as a brother over. I killed one of our number and for that I am sorry. But I was given no choice. I killed the master, but for that I feel nothing.” His voice rose. “He challenged all that we believe. His greed and recklessness would have been our downfall. He was concerned with his needs, his wants, not ours.” A strength surged through him as he again heard the words of his mentor. Remember all that I taught you. “As your leader, I’ll chart a new course. We’ll come from the shadows, but not for revenge or justice, but to claim a place in this world as the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Solomon. That’s who we are. That’s what we shall be. There are great things for us to do. The poor and downtrodden need a champion. We can be their savior.”
Something Simon wrote came to mind. All of us bear God’s image, all are worthy to be loved, all can grow in the spirit of God. He was the first master in seven hundred years to be guided by those words.
And he intended to follow them.
“Now, good brothers, it’s time that we say goodbye to brother Geoffrey, whose sacrifice made this day possible.”