by James Becker
“The pope then got in on the act, and with typical papal generosity and arrogance, and ignoring the territorial claims of any other nation, he gave Ruad to the Templars. Jacques de Molay organized the reinforcement of the fortress island, and stationed a large force of knights there, some hundred and twenty, who were supported by five hundred archers and four hundred servants. He was obviously hoping that the island could eventually be used to stage an invasion of Tortosa, but it all came to nothing.
“In either 1302 or 1303 the Mamluks sent an invasion fleet of sixteen ships to Tripoli, and from there they besieged Ruad, setting up their own encampments on the island and finally starving out the defenders. After the final surrender, the Mamluks behaved with their normal duplicity and disregarded the terms they had just agreed to. All the archers were executed and the majority of the Knights Templar were taken in chains to Cairo and imprisoned under appalling conditions, most of them dying through ill treatment and starvation. And the surrender of Ruad,” Mallory finished, “marked both the end of the Crusades and of the presence of Christian knights—whether Knights Templar or from one of the other two military orders—in the Holy Land. There were plans and schemes after the event, mainly orchestrated by the pope, but none of them ever came to anything.”
Mallory braked the car to a stop conveniently close to the end of the causeway linking the Sea Castle to the mainland, and for a couple of minutes the two of them just sat in silence, staring out at the ruined fortress in front of them.
“So, what happened here?” Robin finally asked.
“When the castle fell to the Mamluks, they did their best to demolish it. That seems to have been almost a kind of policy with them: whenever they took a Templar stronghold, like Acre, the order’s main power base in the Holy Land, or the castle of Athlit, they systematically dismantled the fortress, presumably in an attempt to make sure it couldn’t be reused, or not without a lot of rebuilding work. Here at the Sea Castle, they apparently changed their minds a bit later on, because they then came back and rebuilt it themselves, and also constructed the stone causeway that you’re looking at right now. That wasn’t the end of the story, because the castle was later abandoned, but it was rebuilt yet again by a local emir in the seventeenth century. It was extensively damaged in later conflicts, so it’s had a long and somewhat traumatic life.”
Mallory pointed at the old fortifications. “Pretty much all that’s left now are the two towers you can see and a wall that connects them. The rectangular tower is the better preserved of the two, but in some ways the east tower, the other one, is the more interesting. That was built by two different groups of people at different times. The lower levels date back to the days of the Crusaders, the Templars, while the upper part was constructed by the Mamluks. The wall that links them is interesting, too, according to what I’ve read. That includes Roman columns, built into it as horizontal strengtheners, and that was quite a common technique in areas where Roman remains were found, because the stones they used were strong and regularly shaped and offered an easy way to increase the speed of construction.”
Robin looked at him.
“Well,” she said, “we certainly aren’t going to find any kind of clues or information Tibauld might conveniently have left for us sitting here in this car staring at it. Let’s get over there and take a look.”
The rectangular western tower was, as Mallory had explained, in quite good condition, given its turbulent history. It was over to the left of the entrance of the site as they left the causeway, and when they walked in they entered a very large room with a vaulted ceiling. There were a number of carved capitals in the room as well as several rusting iron cannonballs, presumably a legacy of the later conflicts that had raged around the building.
A staircase wound its way up the internal walls and gave access to the roof of the building, on which a small mosque had been constructed during the reign of the Ottoman Turks. More impressive was the view of the harbor and the old city from the roof, a wide and unobstructed vista. But they weren’t there to sightsee. They spent a few minutes on the roof, then walked back down the staircase into the large room, waited for their eyes to become accustomed to the much lower level of lighting inside the building, and then began their search, working their way around the groups of tourists wandering in and out of the building.
They took their time, first looking around the interior but without seeing anything that immediately struck them as being interesting, and then began a much slower and more careful inspection of the lower levels of masonry, the parts of the building that would most likely have been standing when the Knights Templar were in occupation.
“It would be a help,” Robin said, more than a trace of irritation in her voice, “if we had the slightest idea what we were actually looking for.”
Mallory grinned at her.
“That’s the problem,” he said. “What we’re doing could be a complete waste of time. We still don’t know if Tibauld left any kind of clue here, and if he did there’s really no way that we could guess what it might be. Obviously I’m assuming that it wouldn’t be anything very obvious—not, for example, an outline map of Cyprus with a large cross in one location and a note in Latin beside it saying ‘the treasure is buried here’—but I’m hopeful that he might have left something. He would also have known there was a good chance that the castle would fall to the Mamluks within a matter of weeks or months, and that it would then be badly damaged and possibly even demolished by them, so if he did leave any kind of indication, it would almost certainly be carved into a single stone, not inscribed on a number of them, in case the wall or whatever was demolished.”
“That’s slightly interesting,” Robin said, “but not actually helpful. You know more about this sort of stuff than I do, so let’s look at it from the other side, as it were. I agree that marking a single stone would make good sense, and he would most probably have picked a stone that forms a part of the foundations or the very lowest levels of the fortress, because those would be the parts of the structure most likely to be left standing after the Mamluks had done their worst. So I suppose we’re looking in more or less the right place. But what form could any clue possibly take? And there are a lot of symbols and letters and even whole words carved on these stones, many of them medieval graffiti and in everything from Latin to Arabic, so picking out the right inscription or carving isn’t going to be easy.”
Mallory considered for a moment.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s think it through logically. He obviously knew that he was going to take the treasure to Cyprus, because the island was not only under the control of the Knights Templar, but for a while they’d actually owned it and had set up their headquarters in Limassol. They bought it from Richard the First, Richard the Lionhearted, back in 1192, and he’d captured the island a year earlier during the Third Crusade. The Knights Templar later sold it to Guy of Lusignan. The island has a long history of conflict that’s still the case even today with the Greeks and Turks arguing over it. With their toehold in the Holy Land becoming ever more tenuous, Cyprus was really his only possible destination. So there’d be no point in writing the name of the island or drawing a map of it, because any member of the order would already know that was where he would have to be going. But what he might have done was draw a map of a particular section of the island, or possibly write the name of the place he had chosen to secrete the wealth of the order. And I suppose that he might also have included some kind of Templar symbol, something unmistakable, so that anyone following the trail would be able to recognize the significance of the inscription. Maybe a drawing of the croix pattée, something like that.”
“That’s still really vague,” Robin said, “but I’ll let you know if I see anything that might fit the bill.”
They worked their way diligently around the walls, moving in opposite directions until they finally met up again near the entrance door.
“I d
idn’t see anything that looked helpful,” Robin said, “though some of the Latin graffiti was interesting, not to say inventive. How about you?”
Mallory shook his head. “Nothing at all. Maybe we’ll have better luck in the other part of the castle.”
The other principal section of the castle, the eastern tower, was in a much more dilapidated state, lacking a roof and with large sections of the walls damaged or missing completely. The only good thing about the tower’s poor state of preservation was that the missing roof meant it was much easier to see and interpret the marks on the stones. And there were a lot of those, spanning the ages.
There were fewer visitors in this part of the fortification, probably because there was less to see in the ruined tower, and just as they had done in the western tower, they circled the interior of the building looking for anything that stood out and could possibly be a clue.
“Keep your eyes open for initials as well,” Mallory called out to Robin.
“I am,” she replied shortly.
But again, their search appeared to be entirely fruitless and, somewhat despondently, they met in a spot near the center of the ruined tower to compare notes and share the lukewarm contents of a bottle of water. It was a hot day, and they both knew the dangers of dehydration, of forgetting to drink when you were busy doing something else.
“I didn’t see anything,” Mallory said. “I’ve looked at dozens of crosses scratched into the stones. I’ve seen Christian, Coptic, and Greek Orthodox symbols, crosses in squares, and crosses in circles, but what I haven’t seen anything like a croix pattée. No sign of the splayed ends that are so characteristic of that Templar symbol.”
“What about initials?” Robin asked. “Nothing useful there, either, I suppose?”
Mallory shook his head. “No. I’ve had my eyes peeled for TDG—Tibauld de Gaudin—all the time we’ve been here, and I’ve looked at dozens, maybe hundreds, of letters and initials on those stones, and that’s one combination I’ve yet to see.”
Robin took the bottle from him and had another long swallow. But as she handed him back the plastic water bottle, a sudden thought struck her.
“Hang on a minute,” she said. “If Tibauld did write his initials, he probably wouldn’t use those three letters. The name Tibauld de Gaudin is what we know him as, the way that history records his name, but the ‘de Gaudin’ bit isn’t actually a part of his name, is it? That simply tells us where he came from. He was a man named Tibauld who came from a place called Gaudin, and if he walked up to us right now and introduced himself, he would just call himself Tibauld.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Mallory admitted. “So if he was going to write his name in shorthand, as it were, what would he do? What letters would he use?”
“That I don’t know for sure, but if you look at the way shorthand forms have developed over the years, one very common characteristic is that you lose the vowels, because it’s really the consonants that give the word its shape. So thanks becomes thnx, though that’s probably not a very good example. But if Tibauld was going to use an abbreviated form of his name, it would probably be something like TBLD or perhaps just TBD.”
“Now, that,” Mallory said, “does ring a bit of a bell with me. I’m sure I’ve seen the letters TBLD somewhere in this place.”
“What, where we are now?”
Mallory shook his head. “No. I think it was in the other tower.”
Without saying another word, the two of them abandoned the eastern tower and quickly walked back into the other structure.
“Where did you see it?” Robin asked.
“That’s the tricky bit,” Mallory replied, “because I can’t remember exactly. I think it was over on that wall there”—he pointed to the opposite side of the large room—“but I can’t be absolutely certain. We’ll just have to search until we find it. What I do remember is that the letters were quite large and whoever had inscribed them had enclosed them in a kind of square box. And don’t forget,” he added, “that even if I’ve remembered the initials correctly, there’s no guarantee those letters are anything to do with Tibauld de Gaudin.”
“I know,” Robin said briskly, “but that’s absolutely all we have found, so let’s take a look at it and try to work that out.”
In the event, finding the four initials—and Mallory had been right about them—didn’t take very long. Only a couple of minutes after they’d walked over to the opposite wall, Robin lifted her arm and beckoned him over.
“Is this what you saw?” she asked.
On the old gray stone directly in front of her was a rough square, itself divided into two equal parts by a horizontal line. Below the line and centered in the lower half of the square were the letters TBLD, clearly and accurately carved, in contrast to some of the other marks they had found, which were little more than surface scratches. These letters, and the line that formed the bisected square, had apparently been incised with a metal chisel, and had been done with considerable care. Above the dividing line and also centered were four other letters—SOIM—which made no sense to either of them.
“It doesn’t look to me as if whoever carved this was simply some mindless little git who wanted to make his pathetic mark here for posterity,” Robin said, tracing the outline of the letters with the tip of her forefinger. “This was obviously done using proper tools and looks to me like a deliberate and thoughtful carving, intended to last for eternity. The only problem is that there’s no sign of a Templar symbol anywhere near it, so I really don’t think that we’re any further forward. This could have been carved by Tibauld de Gaudin, or probably more likely by someone acting on his orders, or it could equally well have been put here by some unknown bloke called ‘Thomas Brian Liam Doyle’ or another equally forgettable name. Though if it was, I don’t know why he would have taken so much trouble over it.”
Mallory nodded, and gave her a brief smile.
“You’re absolutely right,” he said, “except for one thing. When we started looking here, I suggested you keep your eyes open for any depiction of the croix pattée, but I think now that I was wrong. The Templar cross was so well-known as the symbol of the order that it would simply be too obvious a shape to carve. Anybody seeing it, and especially somebody on the track of the Templar treasure and looking here, would immediately be alerted. The fact is that there’s a Templar symbol right in front of us, but it’s much more subtle than the croix pattée. What we’re looking at is actually an accurate representation of the Beauseant, the battle flag of the Knights Templar.”
“It is?” Robin sounded something other than totally convinced.
“It is.”
Mallory pointed at the square carefully incised into the gray surface of the old stone and traced the outline.
“The Beauseant was one of the simplest flags that has ever been created,” he said. “All it consisted of was a roughly square piece of material dyed black at the top and white at the bottom, the dividing line occurring at the halfway point. Some later versions also contained the croix pattée, but in these circumstances that would have been too much of a giveaway. But I think what we’re looking at here is the simplest possible design of the Templar battle flag, with a shortened form of the name of the newly elected grand master carved into the lower half. I’m certain this is the clue that Tibauld de Gaudin left here before he sailed to Cyprus.”
Robin still looked doubtful.
“Don’t you see?” Mallory said urgently. “Tibauld would have known the likely fate of the Sea Castle, so he couldn’t have left an overt message or other indication, for fear of it being too obvious. But this”—he pointed again at the carving—“this is just a bunch of letters in a square. It only makes sense if you already know that Tibauld de Gaudin was here, and that he was the former treasurer and then the grand master of the Knights Templar, and that he had been entrusted with the treasure of the order and was leaving
imminently for the safe haven of Cyprus.”
Robin looked at him, and then back at the carved letters and lines on the stone. Then she pointed at the part of the stone directly below the carved inscription. There were a number of other marks inscribed, with equal care but nothing like as deeply carved, in that area.
“Are those a part of it, do you think?” she asked.
Mallory took a small black aluminum flashlight out of his pocket and shone it where Robin was indicating. He could see an unusual shape, somewhat like large and small capital letters L, the small one directly above and to the left of the larger one, and joined to it.
“It could be,” Mallory agreed. “It looks as if it’s been incised with the same care as the main carving, but I haven’t the slightest idea what it means.”
A couple of inches over to the right was what looked like a letter V, but lying on its side with the apex pointing to the left. And to its right were three other, smaller, shapes, each of which also looked like the letter V but inverted, the middle one slightly smaller than the other two but more deeply incised and with a short horizontal line directly below it.
“I also have not the slightest idea what these might mean, if anything,” he added. “But I’ll take a bunch of pictures of them, just in case.”