by D C Macey
• • •
Grace helped Helen up the steps into the manse. They pushed off their shoes and brushed away the light dusting of snow that had caught them in the walk from taxi to front door. ‘We’re back,’ called Grace. ‘Anyone in?’
‘I’m in the study with Francis and Xavier.’ Sam’s voice reached them as they slipped off their coats. His head appeared around the study doorway. ‘Welcome home. A successful trip, I hope?’
Helen laughed. ‘Oh yes, we’ve got the goods.’ She moved as quickly as she could to the study, greeted everyone, and with a little groan of comfort, settled into her chair behind the desk. ‘Oh, that’s better,’ she said, closing her eyes, sighing. She eased her leg out, straightening it and stretching.
‘Well?’ said Sam.
‘Franz was away on a skiing trip, so I saw his chief cashier instead. He’s so nice.’ She opened her eyes. ‘I have what you want; let’s hope it’s what we need.’
Sam sat in the chair beside the desk as Helen opened her bag and pulled out a small but sturdy little box. Sam turned the box, inspecting each side carefully. He looked up at Helen. ‘No mysteries with this one?’
‘None. It’s a simple box. The lid just comes off.’
Sam lifted the lid and peered inside.
‘Everything is just as I first found it last year. Six old coins and, beneath them, four medallions.’
Sam took out the artefacts and spread them across the desk. He inspected each one carefully then turned them over and examined the reverse sides.
‘What do you think?’ said Helen.
‘Hmmm,’ said Sam. ‘Hmm.’ He pulled out his pocket magnifying glass and did a more detailed inspection of each artefact then measured their sizes before finally ordering them by size on the desk. He looked up. ‘I think it’s time to make sure these are the right things.’
‘Do you think they are?’
‘I think they are, but let’s just make sure. These round ones are not coins. I see why you might have thought they were, right sort of size and shape. But they are something else. Tokens of some sort.
‘These are quite special. One side is marked, the other is absolutely smooth, no monarch’s head, no text, no image, nothing. I think having an image on only one side avoids confusion as there is only one logical way to place the discs into the glass indents - image up, so the worked face can be seen. You can’t get it wrong. I’m guessing, if you have got the box open and have the tokens in your hand, you’ve passed the security tests and can just place your tokens in the indents to access the message. And look at this, on five of the discs, there’s an identical design style: an ornately worked border, the centre filled by a simple line engraving.
‘Then the sixth. Had you noticed that already?’ Sam gently touched the disc where it rested on the table.
‘Not really. I glanced at them on the flight over, but they were meaningless to me.’
‘Well, you should have recognised this one.’ He slid the disc across the desk towards her.
It had the same ornate border as the others, but as she studied the central section Helen realised what she was looking at. ‘It’s the Templar seal. Two knights on a single horse.’
‘Spot on.’
‘Great, so what’s it for?’
‘I don’t know. But the Templar seal tells us the contents are their secret; we are on the right track.’ He drummed his fingers on the desktop. ‘I might take the lot off to my place and spend some time alone to think it all over. I need peace and quiet to concentrate for a while.’
Grace entered the study carrying a tray with teapot and cup, and a plate with bacon rolls. ‘Right, you lot, this is for Sam. Remember, Helen, you said on the plane the best bet was to leave it with Sam to think through. Mum and I have bacon rolls and tea ready for everyone else in the kitchen.’ She put the tray on the desk and looked about. ‘Come on then, let’s go.’ She took Helen’s arm and shooed the unresisting priests out of the study.
Sam moved round the desk and sat in Helen’s chair. He decided to focus on the two rows of golden tokens first. Lifting the smallest, he attempted to place it in the smallest indentation. It slipped into place and Sam smiled. ‘Looking good,’ he said to himself as he reached for the second token.
One by one, he fitted tokens into their appropriate places. But as he searched for meanings and patterns, nothing came. Only the token to the top right, the Templar seal, was recognisable. The other five tokens were without apparent meaning. He gently spun the discs in their grooves, steadying his breathing. The quiet stretched out.
Looking across at the second box, Sam wondered if it might help to turn his attention to that one and the oval medallions for a little while.
Even as he reached out for the box, he saw what he needed, and his hand kept going, past the second box, settling instead on a neat little desk calendar that Helen had recently received from the management at the late Archie Buchan’s sheltered housing complex in Dunbar, East Lothian. A small offering of thanks for Helen’s cash bequest to restore the fire-damaged cottages where poor Archie had been so cruelly killed last summer. His had been the first death of many.
The calendar’s January picture had caught his attention. One glance at the engraving on the bottom right token confirmed his impression. It was the Bass Rock, a prominent rocky outcrop located just off the coast, opposite the town of North Berwick, only a few miles from Dunbar.
He picked up the token and looked more carefully. No doubt at all; it carried an engraving of the Bass Rock’s distinctive outline of high cliffs and domed summit. But why? What was the Bass Rock doing on this ancient token?
What makes the Bass Rock special? Sam wondered. It’s permanent. Distinctive, for sure. But they’re not enough to work with on their own. There must be something else.
Not a Templar base. There were Templar settlements dotted across East Lothian, but he’d never heard of a connection with the Bass Rock.
He turned his attention to the other tokens. Now he had a geographical theme to play with, almost at once he recognised another.
‘That’s Arthur’s Seat and Salisbury Crags,’ he muttered, touching the bottom left disc. Once identified, the engraved pattern on the disc was obvious. The craftsman’s skills faithfully reproduced an image of the ancient volcano that had worn down through the ages to form a distinctive hunchbacked hill, the centrepiece of Edinburgh’s royal park, its lower slopes defended by a fringing line of cliffs or crags.
Sam’s adrenalin was rising. He lifted out the middle bottom disc to get a closer look. Its central feature was just a bump.
A geographical feature? A hill, perhaps? Certainly unremarkable.
Bottom right, the Bass Rock in East Lothian. Bottom middle, unknown bump or maybe hill. Bottom left Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh. He swivelled the tokens in their places. ‘What are you hiding from us?’ he muttered to the box. ‘What is it? What am I missing? What feature is there between the Bass Rock and Arthur’s Seat? Dirleton Castle, perhaps?’
He crossed to a bookcase, selected a map of southeast Scotland and spread it out across the desk. His finger tapped on Arthur’s Seat before tracing a line eastwards towards North Berwick and the Bass Rock. There were few distinctive hills to consider as his hand continued to track back and forth across East Lothian’s mostly gently rolling farmland.
He paused at Dirleton Castle for a moment then shook his head. It’s certainly built on a hill. But the engraving doesn’t feature a castle or any building for that matter, just a plain mound or hill. If it were Dirleton, wouldn’t the engraving feature the castle? His hand continued on.
His search ended back at North Berwick with no further distinctive hill features. And there it was, under his finger, North Berwick Law! Actually at the town of North Berwick. His initial enthusiasm waned as he considered its proximity to the Bass Rock. Were they too close together?
He reached again for the desk calendar and began flicking over the monthly pages. He stopped at August. The ph
otograph of North Berwick Law was a near perfect match for the engraving on the middle token.
Sam was content that he knew what the engravings on the bottom three tokens represented, but he still had no idea what their purpose was. He sipped his tea, then leant forwards and again studied the tokens carefully. His magnifying glass flicked from one to another and back again.
‘Ah ha. What have we got here?’ He leant still closer, peering through the magnifier at the left-hand disc, Arthur’s Seat. Now he saw the tiniest little dot punched into the rim of the token, completely concealed within the border decoration, unless somebody was searching or knew to look. He scanned the token again; further round the rim, he found another mark, a tiny cross.
Switching his attention to the disc featuring North Berwick Law, he found a single dot, just like on the first disc. And checking further round the rim, found another concealed mark, two dots. He moved on immediately to the right-hand token, and there, buried in the border pattern of the Bass Rock token, he found two dots and yet further round, he found three more.
After a little thought, Same rotated the tokens so one dot and one dot aligned, two dots and two dots aligned - so that all three tokens in the bottom row were aligned by their dot marks, one to the next.
Returning his attention to the left-hand token, the one featuring Arthur’s Seat, he considered what the purpose of the tiny cross mark was. He scanned the left-hand token in the upper row and felt satisfied to discover, buried within its border pattern, a single cross and a double cross. He rotated that token in its indentation until the single cross lined up with the single cross on the token in the line below.
The rotation had brought the token’s double cross mark round to a three o’clock position - pointing along the top row of tokens.
Sam started working more quickly. The middle upper disc had both a two cross and a three cross sign within its border. He lined up the two crosses with those on the left-hand token. This positioned the three crosses at about two o’clock on a clock face.
The Templar token set in the upper right indent had both a three cross and a three dot marking. Sam rotated the token within its indent and aligned the three cross mark with the same mark on the upper middle token. He checked at once to see if the Templar disc’s three dot mark aligned with the three dot mark on the lower right Bass Rock token. It did. It worked. This, surely, was how the tokens had to sit.
Bottom left, Arthur’s Seat. Bottom middle, North Berwick Law. Bottom right, the Bass Rock. Each with a dot pattern on the rim that could be used to align them neatly.
The bottom left and right tokens also had a little cross sign and a three dot sign respectively. The position of these two signs were locked in by the alignment of the other dot patterns. The two signs also aligned with identical marks in the top row to lock those tokens in position too. Perfect.
So, in that case, what did the top row of discs represent? More geography?
Following a logical process, Sam tried to isolate the geographical feature, if that’s what it was, of the top left token. The position of the bottom left token’s single cross at ten o’clock suggested whatever it was lay to the north and west of Arthur’s Seat. He pulled the map across the desk and started to trace a line, then stopped. His heart suddenly sank.
Sam knew exactly where the line was taking him. He looked again at the token and recognised its shape - Cramond Island. A place familiar to him from innumerable coastal walks, but that was not what had thrown his thoughts into turmoil.
His mind had once again returned to the previous summer, to a time when they had not yet understood the violence and depths of brutality their opponents would sink to. He thought about poor Suzie Dignan, the museum worker who had so willingly offered to help, had found Sam the clues he needed and had died for her troubles. Murdered, drowned by Cassiter and his men who then abandoned her body into the tidal flow at Cramond Island in a failed attempt to conceal the true cause of death. Sam blamed himself for her death. The weight of her loss was a burden he would carry, always.
He forced his attention back to the upper row of tokens. The Cramond Island token had two crosses at nearly three o’clock, roughly east, that lined up with the middle token in the upper row. He looked at the shape displayed on the middle token. It was odd. Logically, heading east from Cramond Island was heading out to sea, so it must be an island, but even knowing it was an island, he did not recognise the engraved shape on the middle upper row token at all.
He ruled out Inchcolm at once. It was more north than east. Only a few months earlier, he had made the trip out to Inchcolm to visit his friend Pete Summers, the resident archaeologist. If it were Inchcolm, it would have to have included Inchcolm Abbey in the engraving. The ruin of the abbey was the dominant feature on the island today just as it had been back in its heyday when the Templars had laid their plans. There was no building on the middle token, just an unfamiliar shape.
Casting back to his early school days, he began to recite a list of the islands. ‘Inchgarvie, Inchcolm, Inchmickery, Cramond, Inchkeith …’ Inchkeith was certainly east of Cramond Island, but it was completely the wrong shape. But what if …?
He turned to the computer and opened a photograph search site. It took a minute or two, but he found confirmation of what he wanted.
Throughout his life, he had seen Inchkeith Island hundreds of times from the shore. But what if you were looking at it from Cramond Island? That was it! Problem solved. All the engravings were true line of sight representations from one to the next. Like most locals, he was familiar only with the view of Inchkeith seen from the shore. But seen from Cramond Island, Inchkeith had a completely different profile, a profile that matched the one on the token.
There was only one thing left to identify - the Templar token. Where could it be? Was it even a place? What did the Templar image itself represent?
Sam leant across the desk to look again at the map and began tracing lines across it with his finger.
He pulled open a drawer and rummaged for a ruler and pencil. Positioning the ruler on the map, he slowly drew a line, while talking himself through his thinking process.
‘So, the three tokens in the bottom row are each identified by the location engraving. Now draw a line to link the three locations on the map … it’s straight. Hmm …
‘Two locations linked by line of sight is fine, easy. Three locations linked by line of sight that actually form a straight line is extraordinarily unlikely, unless that was the choice being made from the outset; the straight line is the reason for the choices. And what does that mean for our top row of tokens?’
Using the ruler, Sam began to draw another line on the map, this one linking Cramond Island to Inchkeith Island. Then he kept going. He hoped it would take him to the place designated with the Templar sign.
The pencil kept moving, crossing the blue of the estuary, leaving a black line in its wake as it progressed steadily out towards deeper water. At the point on the map where the firth finally merged into the North Sea, the pencil crossed a dot of isolated land. Sam pulled back. Now he was talking out loud. The excitement was back in his voice.
‘Join the dots by line of sight. Three in a row and there you are. The Isle of May!’ He drew a circle round the little island.
Sam closed his eyes and thought through the steps he had just followed. Then, content, a smile played across his lips.
• • •
‘Knock, knock,’ said Helen, pushing open the study door. ‘Any progress yet?’
Opening his eyes, Sam smiled, nodded. Helen knew right away. She disappeared back into the hall. ‘Breakthrough, everyone!’ She entered the study, and everyone else was there in a moment.
It did not take long for Sam to explain his reasoning and its product.
‘So, it’s the Isle of May then,’ said Helen.
‘So it seems. I’m guessing that whatever the Templars hid is out there. The concealment is so complex, it must be very important.’
�
��You know what I think is there,’ said Xavier.
Francis nodded. ‘I do, and I think the same. It is the real treasures of the Templars, not their bars of gold and boxes of coin.’
‘Do you really think it might be the Grail?’ said Grace.
‘It would be a wonderful day if it was, truly wonderful,’ said Francis.
Xavier stood up, rested his hands on the side of the desk and glanced about the group, finally locking eyes with Helen. ‘Henri de Bello started all this from here so long ago, sending his ring bearers away to the ends of the earth. Now perhaps, it falls to us, to you, Helen, to complete the circle and restore what was.’
‘Yes. And the Isle of May … it’s so close. Who’d have thought? Who’d ever look there? Henri de Bello, you clever, clever man. He’d the whole world to choose from, and he hid it in his own backyard!’ said Helen. ‘Well done, Sam; this is great. When are we going out there?’ Helen fixed Sam with an expectant look.
‘As soon as possible. Though perhaps, it’s not a journey for you with that leg wound. I’ve never been to the May, but I’ve heard it’s pretty wild, especially in winter. I want to speak with Pete Summers at Historic Scotland. He knows all these islands like the back of his hand. If we’re going out there, we need his advice for certain.’
There was a collective lifting of the mood as progress was recognised and a plan started to form. Grace stood. ‘Well, I don’t know about all of you, but I’m putting the kettle on again.’
Angelo stood to help, lifting Sam’s mug and plate, but Grace intervened. ‘Thanks, Angelo, but I’ll take that stuff.’ She eyed an uneaten roll crust and some bacon fat. ‘The birds will welcome the extra food in this bad weather.’ Taking the few steps towards the window, she passed behind the desk and froze.
‘Sam! Sam, there’s someone out there. Outside the window!’ Grace rushed to the window. ‘He’s going, running down the drive.’
Sam and Helen joined her at the window, quickly followed by the others. Angelo had sprinted to the door. They watched him rush past the window and hurry down the drive before vanishing into the road.