The Pegasus Secret (23 page)

I had observed neither among the order but for once held my tongue.

Just then the portcullis rattled open and we entered an area reminiscent less of a humble cloister such that I had departed than of the inner baileys of the few nobles I had visited while soliciting alms for the abbey or assisting one of the brothers in some task for which we had been summoned. There were no asses, horses, or other animals at liberty therein nor the smell of the ordure of farm animals. Instead, the fragrance of orange trees greeted our entry, mixed with rosemary, thyme and lavender which grew in sculpted beds planted on the south side of the cloister to receive the sun’s full warmth.

An elaborately carved fountain gave forth the musical sound of water from its place in the center of the cross
formed by paths that divided the garth into quadrants. The yard was encircled by an arcade, shady and cool behind its columns and open spaces.

Windows were not shuttered against the elements but were filled with glass, an extravagance I had never witnessed outside of the cathedral at Salamis, the city on an island near the place of my birth.

The interior was richly furnished with Venetian silk and Flemish tapestries, and blessed with the most holy of relics: the roasted flesh of Saint Lawrence, albeit turned to powder by the years since his martyrdom, an arm of Saint George, an ear of Saint Paul and one of the jars holding the water which our Lord turned into wine.

As was the wont of my former order after a journey, I went to the chapel to offer thanksgiving for my safe arrival. I was surprised to discover that it was round, a complete circle rather than the shape to which I had become accustomed. I subsequently learned that all Templar churches are of this design, as was the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem. The room was surrounded by columns of serpentine and red marble. The altar was in the middle, a wondrously carved solid block of the purest white marble, unveined, on which devices were carved depicting scenes from the Holy City. The cross thereon reflected the lights of a hundred tapers, for it was of solid gold. The cost of this place alone would far exceed the worth of the entire abbey from which I had come.

Nor was this end of excess. The occupants of this most marvelous place greeted the return of their brethren with a feast shared even by humble esquires such as Philippe and myself. For the first time in my life, I tasted the meat of lampreys, partridge and mutton, accompanied by a wine so strong it made me giddy.

All was as or more than Guillaume de Poitiers had promised. The meat I have described. I was given a cell larger than
the sum of any two at my previous abbey and a bed soft with wool stuffed with straw.

Would I had given my soul the same consideration as my flesh. Perhaps I would not be at the dismal place at which I find myself.

Translator’s Notes

1
. 5.029 meters.

2
. He describes a typical two-decked thirteenth–fourteenth-century galleon-type vessel used in the Mediterranean.

3
. Medieval ships carried their own sources of food for all but the shortest voyages, as the means of preservation of meats and vegetables were uncertain at best. Servants such as Pietro would have shared quarters with both the horses and other animals as may have been aboard for purposes of food.

4
. Roman cartographers devised a method roughly similar to the present system of latitude and longitude by the use of
kardo maximus
, which ran north–south and
decumanus maximus
, running east–west. Although latitude as we know it today was known by the ancients, it was not until the late eighteenth century that Thomas Fuller, an English watchmaker, devised an accurate measure of longitude.

5
. Medieval maps were absurd in their simplicity. In the seventh century, Isadore, Bishop of Seville, designed a world that was like a disk, with Asia, Europe and Africa sharing unequal quadrants with Jerusalem always at the center, based upon Ezekiel 5:5: “This is Jerusalem, which I have set in the midst of the nations and countries that are around about her.” This practice or similar ideas persisted until the Renaissance. Fortunately for Western civilization, the Arabic world both admired and continued to use the Ptolemaic method of cartography, partially described in 4 above. The Templars, no doubt, learned this method while in Palestine as they did the mathematics, engineering and navigation known in the ancient
world but lost or suppressed by a Church that did not trust knowledge of a pagan society.

6
. The actual word used is
castellum
, which could include a palace as well as a castle. The translator has chosen the word with the connotation of fortifications.

7
. 1127

8
. See 5 above.

9
. 5.029 meters. The medieval measurement was likely somewhat smaller.

London, St. James
1600 hours the same day

Gurt reread the note before she wadded it up and sent it flying into the trash can.

That bastard!
She slung her purse across the room where it smashed against the far wall with gratifying violence. She had saved his ass in Italy and used her connections, not to mention her money, to get him to London.

He thanked her by dumping her like a one-night stand.

She almost wished she could cry, so great was her hurt and humiliation. She sat on the edge of the bed and lit a Marlboro, staring at the rope of smoke spiraling towards the ceiling.

As the minutes passed, her rational nature began to take control. Lang had made her no promises, had in fact tried to talk her out of coming here. How typically male: gallantly concerned about exposing her to danger while ignoring
the fact someone needed to watch his back. Old- fashioned chauvinism, though charming, could get him killed.

Would serve him right, too.

She could shoot better on her worst day than Lang ever could, was current on modern trade craft and, most importantly, was someone the opposition, whoever they were, probably did not know was a player. With his picture on the front of a dozen newspapers, he needed the cover of being part of a couple more than ever.

Men in general and Lang in particular were capable of phenomenal stupidity. The thought made her feel somewhat better.

You need me, Langford Reilly. You need me, Schatz. And the Dumkopf factor does not diminish this fact in the least
.

She reached for the phone on the other side of the bed, stopped and stood. Stubbing out her cigarette, she left the room, trying to remember where she had seen the nearest pay phone.

Oxford
1000 hours the next day

Late the next morning, Lang turned the ancient Morris Minor off the M40. The sixty miles from London had been as uneventful as possible in a car the size of a shoe box. A small shoe box. His only problem, other than cramps in muscles he didn’t even know existed, had been a major case of flatulence, the result of an Indian meal Rachel, Jacob’s wife, had insisted on preparing for dinner. In the intelligence community of the past, Rachel had been known as one of the world’s worst and most enthusiastic cooks. Her dinner invitations had inspired legendary excuses.
Last night, she had prepared a version of Bombay aloo, a fiery potato dish, the heat of which had mercifully seared Lang’s taste buds, rendering him impervious to her latest culinary disaster. All in all, he had probably gotten off lightly with only gas.

The Magdalen Bridge was, with typical British disregard for the number of letters in a name, pronounced “maudin.” However articulated, it gave Lang a picture-postcard view of the honey-colored spires and gothic towers that were Oxford. He could have been looking at a skyline unchanged in five hundred years. The town, of course, had changed. The Rover automobile factory, among others, was located here. Still, the town had a medieval quality that its residents, both town and gown, intended to preserve.

Unlike American universities, Oxford was a composite of any number of undergraduate and graduate colleges, all more or less independent. Christ Church was one of the oldest and largest.

Just off the Abington Road, Lang found a rare parking spot among the bicycles that are Oxford’s most popular form of transportation. He entered the Tom Quad, the university’s largest quadrangle, named for the huge, multiton bell that chimes the hours there. Not only do the British ignore letters, but they also like to name towers and bells.

He had written Jacob’s directions down and read them over before proceeding along one of the paths that formed a giant
X
across the neatly trimmed grass. On the other side, two young men tossed a Frisbee.

He entered an arch and climbed stone stairs as worn by centuries of student feet as those to Jacob’s office had been by lawyers and clients. Down a poorly lit corridor, he found a tarnished plaque that informed him he was standing at the entrance to the office of Hubert Stockwell, Fellow in History. He was reaching to knock when the door
swung open and a young woman emerged, her arms full of books and papers. She gave Lang a startled look before dashing for the stairwell.

Lang was fairly certain the expression on her face had nothing to do with his digestive tract problems.

“Come in, come in,” a voice boomed from inside. “Don’t stand about in the hall.”

Lang did as ordered.

His first impression was that he had walked into the wake of a tornado. Papers, books and magazines were scattered across every surface, including the floor. This place was the brother to Jacob’s office. There was an odor, too: the smell of old, stale documents Lang recognized from his occasional foray into the court clerk’s archives at home. Bound and unbound papers were stacked on a mound he subsequently identified as a desk behind which sat a round-faced, bearded man peering at him through thick horn rims. He could have passed for a young Kris Kringle.

“You must be Jacob’s friend,” he said. “Look too old to be one of my students.”

Lang extended a hand which the man ignored. “Lang Reilly.”

“Hubert Stockwell,” the man behind the desk replied without getting up or reaching out his own hand. “A pleasure and all that rubbish.”

He started to say something else, but stopped and his face wrinkled as he sneezed. “Bloody old buildings! Drafts, damp, cold stone floors. Bleeding wonder we don’t all die of pneumonia!”

He produced a soiled handkerchief, wiped his button of a nose and returned the cloth to wherever it had come from, all in a single motion so quick Lang was unsure he had seen a handkerchief at all. Lang would not bet on any shell game the good professor ran.

“You’d be the chap interested in the Templars.”

“I understand you’re an authority.”

“Rubbish,” Stockwell said, enjoying the compliment anyway. “But they did traipse through a period of history about which I know a little. Yank, aren’t you?”

The change of subject made Lang shift mental gears before responding. “Actually, I’m from Atlanta, where a lot of people might resent being called that. Has to do with a Yankee general who was careless with fire.”

Stockwell’s head bobbed, reminding Lang of one of those dolls given to the first five thousand to enter a baseball game. “Sherman, yes, yes.
Gone With the Wind
and all that. Didn’t mean to offend.”

“You didn’t. About the Templars . . .”

He held up a hand. “Not me, old boy, not me at all. Had an associate, chap named Wolffe, Nigel Wolffe, was fascinated by the blokes, translated some sort of manuscript, scribblings supposedly written by a Templar before he was put to death. Beseeching God for mercy, confession of sins, contrition, all of the claptrap of the medieval church, I’d imagine.”

“And of today’s Catholics,” Lang said.

Stockwell’s jaw slackened and the glasses slid to the tip of his nose. “Oh dear, I didn’t mean . . .”

Lang smiled, an assurance they were perfectly comfortable together, just two antipapists. “You said you
had
an associate.”

Stockwell sighed heavily. “That’s right, past tense. Poor Wolffe is no longer with us. Splendid chap, played a killer hand of whist. Tragic, simply tragic.”

Lang felt a chill not entirely caused by the drafts Stockwell had complained of. “I don’t suppose Mr. Wolffe . . .”

Stockwell sneezed, doing the trick with the hankie again. “Dr. Wolffe.”

“. . . Dr. Wolffe died of natural causes?”

Stockwell stared at Lang, his eyebrows coming together like two mating caterpillars. “How’s that?”

“I was asking how Dr. Wolffe died. An accident, perhaps?”

“Yes, yes. You must have read about it, seen it on the telly.”

“I’m sure I did.”

The professor turned to gaze out of the only window the cramped space had. There was a look of longing on his face, as though he were wishing he could go outside and play. “They said he probably left the bloody ring on after making tea. Explosion knocked out windows all the way across the quad.”

“There was a resulting fire?”

Stockwell managed to pull away from the view outside. “Extraordinary memory you have. Mr. . . .”