by James Becker
Mallory, on the other hand, was faced with thick undergrowth that necessitated him pulling branches aside in order to see what, if anything, lay behind them. Nevertheless, within a couple of minutes he had discovered an opening. Another fairly small cave, which he looked inside briefly before calling Robin over and pointing it out to her.
“If you’re right,” he said, “this could be the first of the three caves indicated on that stone, so rather than waste time looking inside this one, let’s see if we can find the other two.”
Because it was clear that there was nothing to find on the left side of the ravine, Robin joined forces with Mallory and the two of them began working their way along the right-hand side, taking it slowly and ensuring that they didn’t miss anything. But it wasn’t until they were almost at the end of the ravine that they found a second cave. Before they went into it, Mallory and Robin walked out of the northeastern end of the ravine, but there was no sign of any other opening in the rocks as far as they could see.
“Two down and one to go,” Mallory said, striding back into the ravine. “In fact,” he added, “if this is the second cave, the middle one, then this is what we’ve been looking for.”
“That seems too easy,” Robin objected. “This cave is right down here at ground level. Anybody could walk in and stroll away with anything they found. I was expecting Tibauld’s cave to be either pretty inaccessible or really well hidden.”
“Sometimes the easy option is actually the right one.”
“What’s that? ‘Philosophy for a Really Lazy Man, Chapter One’?”
“Not really,” Mallory said with a smile. “Just a random thought, I suppose.”
They stepped inside the gloom of the second cave, but apart from a handful of discarded beer and soft drink cans in one corner, there was no evidence that anybody, and especially not a group of medieval knights, had ever been in there.
“I hate to say it,” Mallory said, “but this looks like a busted flush. Either that or we haven’t found the right cave yet.”
They stepped outside again and for a few moments both stood in silence, looking up and down the ravine. Then Mallory shifted his gaze upward, to look at the upper levels of the rock walls on either side of them. The rock on the western side was almost sheer and clearly possessed no openings of any sort, and because of its orientation it would have been in sun for most of the day. The eastern side, in contrast, was comparatively broken up, had at least twice as much vegetation growing on it, and it was possible that some parts of it would normally be in shadow. There was also what looked like a ridge running along most of that side, perhaps twenty feet above the floor of the ravine, and whatever was on it was invisible from where they were standing.
To Mallory, that looked like a much more interesting—and a far more likely—prospect.
“I think we should go and have a look up there,” he said, pointing toward the edge of the ridge.
“Suits me. I think we’re just wasting our time down here.”
There were no paths leading up from the floor of the ravine, but the broken surface on that side meant that it was a comparatively easy climb. A couple of times they each lost their footing, but without mishap, and within about five minutes they were standing on a long and narrow ledge, a mixture of rock and grass underfoot. Presumably because of the fractured nature of the stone on that side, the area possessed thick undergrowth, which would clearly conceal any cave that might be there. There were no signs that the ledge had been visited by anyone at any time, and all Mallory could see on the ground were a few droppings probably from either goats or rabbits: he wasn’t a competent enough biologist to know the difference.
They made their way slowly forward, pulling back branches on bushes to check behind each one as they made steady progress along the ledge. But every spot they looked at displayed only the featureless surface of the rock, and both began to feel increasingly despondent.
“I don’t think it’s here,” Robin muttered.
But at that moment, Mallory pulled back a hefty branch from a large and bushy shrub, and behind it both of them immediately found themselves looking into the darkness of a small cavity in the rock.
“Bingo,” Mallory said.
The undergrowth largely obstructed the entrance to the cave, and for a fleeting moment Mallory wished he’d brought a machete. But within a couple of minutes they had made their way inside the cave and were able to look around.
“You do realize that this is roughly halfway between those other two caves we found in the ravine?” Robin asked.
“I do now,” Mallory replied, and switched on the flashlight to flood the cave with light.
It wasn’t a particularly impressive sight. The entrance was probably only about four feet wide at the base and perhaps five feet high, the sides narrowing markedly higher up, while the cave itself was bigger than the entrance suggested, perhaps fifteen feet wide at the maximum, at about the halfway point, and roughly twenty feet deep, the far end tapering almost to a point.
But there was not the slightest sign that it had ever been used for any purpose at all by human beings.
“I’m beginning to get a bad feeling about this,” Mallory said. “Apart from the fact that it’s a bit bigger, this cave looks exactly like the others.”
“You’re right, but that doesn’t mean we’re not in the right place. This cave is inaccessible, and it’s also hidden from view, which is what I would have expected if Tibauld had chosen this as the place where he was going to hide the treasure.” She paused for a moment and walked back to the entrance, glanced around outside, and then strode back. “Part of the castle wall is visible from here,” she added, “and that’s another point in its favor.”
“It can have as many points in its favor as it likes,” Mallory retorted, “but that doesn’t alter the fact that there’s nothing in here now. This is just an empty shell. If this cave ever was used to store the Templar treasure of Outremer, either Tibauld himself or some other member of the order must have come along at a later date and removed it. Maybe they did decide to take it back to France or just to another location in Cyprus or somewhere else in the eastern Mediterranean, and for some reason that fact was never recorded in the Templar archives.”
“That’s not necessarily true. I wasn’t expecting to walk into the cave and find half a dozen ironbound chests just sitting there. Tibauld wasn’t stupid, and even with the entrance to the cave being virtually invisible and very probably being watched from the castle above, he would still have wanted the treasure to be concealed. There might well be some kind of hidden partition or something of that sort in here.”
Mallory laughed shortly. “You mean that sometime in the fourteenth century, in a moderately inaccessible cave in the middle of Cyprus, some medieval engineer turned up and built a false wall? Like a Bob the Builder of the Middle Ages?”
“Don’t knock it. Medieval engineers were a lot cleverer than most people think. Don’t forget the book safe.”
Mallory nodded.
“Point taken,” he said, bent down, and picked up a fist-sized lump of rock from the floor of the cave. “If there’s a false wall in here, I promise you that I’ll find it.”
He stepped over to the left-hand side of the cave and rapped the stone sharply against the wall. The unmistakable sound of stone on stone rang out. “Solid as a rock. In this case, literally.”
He moved on, working his way down the side wall of the cave and using the stone as a hammer, listening out for any indication of a cavity. At the far end, he had to work his way around a pile of fallen rocks to reach the right-hand wall and return toward the entrance, where Robin was waiting.
“I’m sorry,” Mallory said, “but unless I’m missing something the walls are absolutely solid.” He tossed the stone onto the ground in disgust. “If the Templar treasure ever was here, it’s long gone now. I’m afraid we’ve been wa
sting our time, chasing shadows and following ghosts. Let’s get out of here.”
But Robin didn’t move, staying right where she was and staring toward the back of the cave.
“What is it?” Mallory asked.
For a few seconds, Robin didn’t respond, just continued looking in the same direction.
“What is it?” Mallory repeated.
“It’s the rocks,” Robin said. “They’re wrong.”
Mallory switched the flashlight on again and shone it at the pile of tumbled boulders at the far end of the cave.
“What do you mean ‘wrong’?” he asked. “It’s just a pile of old rocks.”
Robin shook her head. “No, it isn’t. When I came in here and looked around for the first time, I saw the rocks just as you did, and like you, I guess, I assumed that that was a result of a rock fall centuries ago. But I was wrong, and so are you.”
Mallory lifted the flashlight beam so that it illuminated a part of the cave roof, then dropped it down again, back to the rock pile. “You’re obviously seeing something that I’m not. What I see is a pile of old rocks. What do you see?”
“I see a pile of old weathered rocks,” Robin replied.
For the first time, Mallory actually focused his attention on the rocks themselves, rather than on the shape of the pile. And he realized that Robin was right. Unlike the walls of the cave itself, which were largely clean, untouched by wind or rain, the rocks at the far end of the cave had clearly spent many years exposed to the elements. They were, without a doubt, weathered rocks. What he didn’t see was why that should be important. “So?”
“So why would anyone bother to climb up to this moderately inaccessible cave in the middle of Cyprus—I think that was how you described it—and then carry about half a ton of rocks into it from the outside? That just doesn’t make sense. Or rather it only makes sense in one context. This was the cave in which Tibauld de Gaudin concealed the Templar treasure of Outremer, exactly as we thought, and he hid it in a hole at the far end of the cave. Then he covered it over, probably with heavy wooden planking, and piled rocks on top of it to hide it from prying eyes. The only mistake he made was to have his men collect rocks that had been outside for years, but he probably had no option because there weren’t enough inside the cave to hide what he’d done.”
She pointed at the rock pile. “And unless somebody thought it was a good idea to remove the treasure and then replace the wooden planking and all the rocks again, to hide the hiding place, as it were, it looks to me as if the treasure is still buried over there, in the place where Tibauld de Gaudin’s men originally put it.”
61
Cyprus
Shifting the rocks was hard work. Obviously there was no moving air in the cave, and although it was much cooler inside than out, within a few minutes of starting work both Robin and Mallory were sweating profusely. But at least the cave was big enough to allow them to just roll the rocks out of the way, to move them to one side. They didn’t have to carry them anywhere, which was a bonus.
Just before they started, they’d taken a moment to look at the area covered by the boulders, which was roughly circular, and Mallory was surprised that he hadn’t spotted this apparent anomaly himself. A rock fall would not have been anything like as neat.
It took them almost half an hour, but when they’d finished they were standing together at the end of the cave and surrounded by a kind of perimeter of boulders. At their feet, barely visible under a thick layer of dust and dirt, was a flat surface delineated by a number of straight parallel lines, the unmistakable shape of a wooden platform of some sort. But before they attempted to move it, Robin and Mallory shared the last of the lukewarm water in the first bottle. Despite their eagerness to shift the wood and find out what lay beneath, both of them knew the importance of avoiding dehydration.
“I don’t know if these are individual planks or some kind of platform, the lengths of wood nailed together,” Mallory said, “but we’ll soon find out.”
As well as the water and the flashlight in his rucksack, he had assembled a selection of tools that he’d thought might be useful in their quest, despite not knowing exactly how it would be likely to end. Two of the pieces of equipment he had selected were a small crowbar and a collapsible trenching tool, which combined both a shovel and a pick.
He took out the crowbar, used the point to locate the ends of the lengths of wood, slid it underneath what seemed to be the center of the platform, and pushed down hard. There was a faint creaking and cracking noise, but nothing else happened.
Mallory changed position, sliding the point of the tool under the end of the adjacent plank of wood. This time he placed his foot on the other end of the crowbar and pressed down firmly. With another creaking sound, this one much louder, the wood lifted a few inches. He abandoned the crowbar, slid his fingers underneath the end of the wood, and pulled upward. The wood was stiff and difficult to move, lifting only when he applied all his strength to the task, and it came free very slowly and with great reluctance. Giving a final heave, he wrenched the wood upward, and with a loud cracking sound it lifted clear of the ground and he was able to shift it to one side.
It wasn’t a platform, he had realized immediately as he lifted the wood, but a number of thick wooden planks lying parallel to each other and covering a hole excavated in the floor. In fact, it was a double layer, because underneath the length of wood he had just moved were half a dozen other planks laid at right angles to the top layer, obviously intended to provide additional support to cope with the substantial weight of the rocks.
With the first plank moved, shifting the others was comparatively easy, and within a few minutes, with Robin’s help, Mallory had lifted all the planks from the top layer and placed them to one side. He again used the crowbar to lift the end of one of the planks situated underneath and moved that length of the wood out of the way as well. That provided an opening that allowed him to look down into the cavity below.
“What can you see?” Robin asked.
“A whole lot of nothing at the moment. Pass me the flashlight.”
Mallory shone the beam vertically downward into the hole, and they both stood there, staring down.
A visible tremor of excitement ran through Robin. Directly below them, through the gap in the wooden planking that Mallory had created, they could see the unmistakable shapes of two ironbound chests. They weren’t very big, perhaps two and a half feet long by eighteen inches wide, and about the same in height, though it was difficult to estimate that with any degree of accuracy from where they were standing. The iron on the top of each chest was chased into an intricate pattern, and large metal handles were fitted at their ends for ease of lifting and carrying.
For a few moments, neither of them spoke; then Mallory handed Robin the flashlight.
“I’ll need to shift the rest of these planks before we can get them out,” he said, matter-of-factly.
“Yes,” Robin replied, equally calmly. “You will.”
“I suppose the biggest problem,” Mallory said, levering up another heavy length of wood and moving it to one side, “will be deciding what we should do with the stuff once we’ve got it out. I mean, I have no idea how Turkish law treats buried treasure. Do they have anything similar to the British law of treasure trove, which guarantees the finders either the object they’ve discovered or its cash value?”
Robin snorted in derision.
“I have no idea,” she replied, “but from what I’ve heard about the Turks I think we’d be more likely to find ourselves thrown into jail and charged with looting important national artifacts while a bunch of local officials split the proceeds between themselves. Did you ever see that film Midnight Express? Well, I don’t suppose that conditions in most Turkish slammers have improved much over the years. In my opinion, absolutely the last thing we do about this is tell anyone in authority. Our best bet will be to
get it out of here and bury it somewhere ourselves, preferably on the Greek side because I think it’s easier to get to from the outside world, and then take a number of holidays in Cyprus over the next couple of years, putting the odd gold bar or bunch of coins in our luggage before we leave the island.”
“You’re obviously assuming that these chests are full of treasure. They might be empty.”
Robin shook her head.
“Not a chance,” she snapped. “Nobody would go to this much trouble to hide a couple of empty boxes. Okay, I don’t know what’s inside them, but I’m prepared to lay money that they won’t be empty.”
“We’ll soon find out,” Mallory replied. “One thing does strike me, though,” he added doubtfully, “because it really doesn’t make sense. Those are just two quite small chests. Unless they’re both stuffed full of really valuable stuff—gold bars and coins, that kind of thing—they’re really too small to hold all the assets of the Knights Templar in Outremer. I was expecting chests about twice that size and perhaps half a dozen of them.”
He shifted the last piece of wood planking and then lowered himself into the cavity. Robin passed him the flashlight and he looked around before touching either of the chests, and immediately made a surprising discovery.
“That’s odd,” he said, shining the beam toward the back of the cavity.
“What?”
“I’d more or less supposed that this was just a hole excavated in the floor of the cave, but it isn’t. It looks as if there’s some kind of underground passageway here, leading back into the mountainside.”
“Interesting, but not helpful,” Robin said. “Now stop messing around and lift those chests up here.”
“Hang on a minute.”
Mallory took out his mobile phone and snapped a number of pictures of both the chests, first showing where they were positioned in the cavity and then several more showing each close up. Then he bent down and seized the handles on the first chest and tried to lift it. He relaxed and glanced up at Robin.