The Adept Book 3 The Templar Treasure (30 page)

He could smell the fresh scent of wet earth as he scrambled upward. A light rain still was falling, and the steps toward the top were mud-slick and a little treacherous. Emerging into the open air, Adam stumbled back to the standing arch, the Sceptre still in his right hand, and paused within the arch to scuff away enough grass and earth to lay bare a small patch of rock in the middle of the threshold. Turning back then to face the gaping blackness of the stairwell, he set the torch aside and drew out the Seal from his pocket, bending to set it carefully in the center of the cleared space. As he tightened his grasp on the Sceptre and straightened, he called up memory of what had been imparted to him, then boldly stretched forth the Sceptre to touch the left-hand side of the arch.

“Creature of earth, thy name is Boaz,” he whispered, focusing his intent through the hallow in his hand. “Thou art the symbol of that holy darkness which is the night of the soul’s blind quest for its Creator.”

A fresh breath of air puffed past him with a heavier spat of rain, scented with dew and wet grass. Drawing another breath, he shifted the Sceptre to touch the right-hand side of the arch.

“Creature of earth, thy name is Jachin,” he whispered. “Thou art the symbol of that holy Light which is the illumination of the mind and the consummation of the heart.” Lifting the Sceptre to touch the center of the arch, he continued. “Light and dark together are the pillars of Creation. Be thou steadfast in this world and the next, according to the manifold names of Him Who ordains thee:
Yod He Vau He, Adonai, Elohim, Eheieh, Shaddai el Chai, Jehovah Sabaoth, Elohim Sabaoth, Shekinah . . .”

The holy Names seemed to resonate soundlessly across the night air, lingering as a perfume with Adam’s final whisper. In the taut stillness, pregnant with anticipation, Adam slowly lowered the Sceptre, bowed his head in homage to What he had called upon and asking indulgence for any liberties taken, then tossed the Sceptre underhanded through the arch, between the Pillars, into the dark mouth of the passageway beyond.

It caught the watery moonlight as it tumbled end over end through the air, very like an old World War I German stick grenade in the way it moved—and in the result it produced. It disappeared into the stairwell opening and struck stone several steps down, chiming as it continued bouncing downward. The final distant ping was swallowed up in a sudden deep rumble from far underground, accompanied by a burst of dazzling light that lit up the arch like a solar flare. As Adam threw up a hand before his eyes, the earth beneath him was jolted by a heavy boom that threw him to his knees.

A secondary series of shocks ripped briefly through the ground beneath him, and he made a scrambling further retreat on hands and knees as, above him, the standing arch of stones shuddered and threatened to collapse. Blinking away the lurid afterimages, he stayed down until the last rumbles had subsided, then groped in the grass for the torch.

He found it in the grass a few feet from the right-hand side of the arch, and aimed its beam through the archway with trembling hands. No trace remained of Sceptre, Seal, or stair passage. It was as if the earth itself had swallowed them up, leaving no trace beyond a few faint scorches on a small patch of bare stone at his feet.

For the space of half a dozen heartbeats while he searched, the silence was profound. Then the hush was broken by the sharp, interrogative barking of a dog, swelling to a chorus as other local animals took up the inquiry. The dark houses adjoining the field showed a sudden rash of lights.

Switching off the torch, Adam scrambled to his feet and made for the end of the playground, keeping low, heading through the tall grass for the lane. As he gained the rutted track, two dark figures detached themselves from the shadows and approached him, one slender and one burly.

“Adam?” came McLeod’s whispered query from out of the gloom. “We heard what sounded like an explosion.”

“That was the passageway closing in,” Adam said, urging them back toward the car. “Hopefully, the locals will think it was thunder.”

“But what if someone should decide to excavate the site some day?” Peregrine asked, craning his neck back in the direction of the mound.

“He would find nothing but old stone,” Adam said with grim conviction. “The authorities of the Inner Planes have ordained a new and final resting place for the Templar treasures which is not within the physical confines of this world.”

As they trotted toward the end of the lane, Cochrane’s dark-colored Passat crept abreast of the opening, brake lights showing briefly, its low idle almost silent.

“Ah, there’s Donald to whisk us out of here,” Adam murmured. “If no one suspects we were ever here, there will be nothing to explain in the morning.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

“WHAT’S GOING TO
happen to Gerard?” Peregrine finally asked, as Donald Cochrane sped them away from the village of Temple, heading them back toward Edinburgh. “I mean, are we going to hand him over to the authorities down in York?”

Adam glanced aside at the unconscious Frenchman, slumped limp between him and Peregrine in the rear passenger seat.

“Do you think that’s what we ought to do?”

Peregrine frowned perplexedly. “Technically, I suppose, the answer should be yes. But frankly, I don’t see that it would do anybody much good.”

“Why not?” Adam asked.

“Well, for one thing, he’s in no fit state to stand trial for anything,” Peregrine said with blunt honesty. “For another, the circumstances surrounding his crime are so outlandish, I don’t see how the evidence could possibly be doctored to make it legally acceptable.”

“All the same, he
did
steal the Seal, and was at least indirectly responsible for the death of Nathan Fiennes,” Adam said.

“We
know that,” Peregrine replied. “But I wouldn’t fancy trying to explain the facts to a jury. They’d probably advise the judge to have us locked away in the same mental hospital as Gerard.”

“There’s no arguing
that,
“ McLeod agreed from his seat beside Cochrane. “I take it, then, that you’re in favor of waiving the question of justice?”

“Not waiving it, exactly.” Peregrine groped for the words to articulate his feelings. “It seems to me that justice of a kind has already been done. The other man is dead—I don’t suppose we’ll ever even know who he was—and I certainly can’t think of any worse punishment for Gerard than the one he’s suffering at the moment, being literally terrified out of his mind.”

“I couldn’t agree with you more,” Adam said. “Perhaps Karma itself has decreed a fitting end to Gerard’s place in this affair.”

“Then what are
you
suggesting that we do?” Peregrine asked, caught slightly off guard by his mentor’s abrupt change of tactics.

Adam worried at his signet ring as he pondered the practicalities of his answer.

“Nathan Fiennes’ family, at least, deserve to be told a version of the truth, if only to reassure them that the killer is not still at large,” he said after a moment. “I make myself responsible for accomplishing that. As for Gerard himself—”

He glanced at the Frenchman and sighed. “He doesn’t know any of us by name, and probably wouldn’t recognize us if he were to see us again. I doubt he has any clear recollection of what happened down in the crypt, but anything he might be likely to say on that account will simply be taken as further proof of his mental disorder. That being the case, I would say that the kindest thing we could do for him is to find a safe place to leave him where he’s certain to be found and taken into care for treatment.”

“But who could help him?” Peregrine asked. “If, as you’ve suggested, the source of his problem springs from past-life guilt—”

At Adam’s droll sidelong glance, Peregrine broke off in sudden comprehension. “You think he’ll end up as
your
patient!” he murmured. “And you can make sure he does, can’t you? But—do you really think he can be helped?”

“I did say it would take time and patience,” Adam replied. “And I like to fancy that I’m reasonably open-minded. As I mentioned before, his obsessions appear to stem from guilt left over from a previous lifetime. What I didn’t realize until tonight, back at Fyvie, is that Gerard’s guilt is directly traceable to the period surrounding the suppression of the Templars. His previous incarnation from that time is known to history as Guillaume de Nogaret.”

“I’ve heard of
him!”
Cochrane said, speaking for the first time since leaving Temple. “This ties in with Masonic history. Isn’t he the one who incited Philippe le Bel to carry out the suppression of the Templars?”

“That’s right,” Adam said grimly. “He was one of Philippe’s principal courtiers. Philippe harbored a grudge against the Templars not only because of their wealth but because they had denied him membership in the Order. De Nogaret nurtured that resentment with lies to serve his own ambitions. He was probably responsible for promulgating some of the worst charges against the Templars, including the assertion that they practiced a form of idolatry by worshipping a head of some kind.”

McLeod turned to stare at Adam over the back of the seat.

“You don’t suppose he had some inkling, even then, that some of the Templars’ secrets tied in with Solomon’s Crown . . . ”

“Difficult to say,” Adam replied. “Whether or not de Nogaret was involved, what does seem clear to me now, knowing what we do about the hallows and the casket, is that the Templars treasured the Crown, in particular, because of its power to keep evil at bay. If their respect were perceived by the unknowing as veneration of a mysterious relic—it’s only a short leap of logic from a crown to a head—it’s easy to see how enemies of the Order could have distorted the truth and come up with a charge of idolatry—worshipping a head.

“A convenient little frame-up,” McLeod observed. “If that’s what really happened, they could have cleared themselves at any time by disclosing the true nature of the hallows. But if they had, men like de Nogaret might have tried to seize the power the hallows represented, and to misuse the threat of what lay hidden in the casket.”

“So the Templars elected to keep their secret intact, even at the cost of their own lives,” Peregrine finished. He sighed. “Well, at least it wasn’t for nothing. We managed to uphold the charge they’d been given. Maybe in time, Gerard will be able to face up to the folly of what de Nogaret was trying to do, and find the courage to start over again.”

“We can only hope,” Adam said. “But in the meanwhile, gentlemen, we’ve done a good night’s work—with some help from some extraordinary friends.”

Smiling wearily, he pulled the cord of the Dundee Templar cross over his head, glancing wistfully at the glint of red enamel, then reached into his pocket and drew out the Dundee ring, holding both so that they reflected light from the instrument panel up front.

“I intend to write a very complimentary article about the Templar connections of John Grahame of Claverhouse,” he said quietly. “It’s unfortunate that the whole story of his contributions can’t be told—though his name will certainly live on as one of Scotland’s great patriots.”

With a jaunty flourish, he tossed the ring into the air and caught it in his fist, then slipped it and the cross back into his pocket.

“The whole story of
our
contributions won’t be told either,” McLeod observed drily. “But that isn’t why we got into this business anyway, is it? And frankly, I’ll be just as well pleased to be able to close the book on this particular case without trailing too many loose ends behind me. There’s nothing I hate worse than having to invent explanations to satisfy official curiosity. Other than that break-in at Rosslyn, which can be passed off as grave-robbing, there’s no inconvenient evidence left behind for us to cover up.”

“True, “ Peregrine said with a sigh. “All the same, it seems a pity we never seem to end up with any physical proof that we’ve accomplished anything. I mean, after all our running around tonight, all we’ve got to show for our pains is Mr. Gerard—and we’re going to be ditching
him
on the doorstep of the first convenient hospital we come to!”

This observation produced a sly backwards glance and a deep chuckle from McLeod.

“Actually, laddie, that’s not quite true,” he said with a grin. As both Peregrine and Adam stared at him blankly, the inspector bent over and reached down under the front seat. When he straightened up, his companions saw that he was clutching the hilts of a pair of Templar swords.

“I grabbed them before we started manhandling Gerard up the stairs,” he explained to Peregrine, obviously enjoying the fact that he had taken even Adam by surprise. “You obviously were preoccupied trying to keep him on his feet and get him out of there. At the time, I was thinking we might return them to Rosslyn, where they came from, but it’s since occurred to me that there’s no way we can do that without generating far more paperwork than I care to deal with—not to mention creating a stir that’s bound to bring the newshounds sniffing around.”

As Adam rolled his eyes heavenward, nodding in silent agreement, McLeod continued.

“So it looks like we’ve become custodians of a pair of Templar swords. It might be that Templemor would be a good home for them, it being a Templar site and Adam having been a Templar. I was thinking, too, Mr. Peregrine Lovat, that they might provide a rather impressive sword arch at your wedding. Given your role in tonight’s work, I don’t think the former owners would mind. And if you ask Adam
very
nicely, he might even let you hold the wedding reception in the great hall at Templemor.”