The Adept Book 3 The Templar Treasure (6 page)

McLeod sat back in his chair and pulled off his glasses with a sigh, to massage the bridge of his nose.

“I think he may be a player, Adam. Call it a cop’s sixth sense, if you like, but to use a cop term I picked up in the States, there’s something ‘hinky’ about him.”

“You think so too, eh?”

“Good, then. I’m glad it isn’t just me,” McLeod said. “When I get back, I’m going to make a couple of calls to Paris. My friend Treville at the Sûreté owes me a favor or two. I’d like to see whether he knows anything about our man.”

He replaced his glasses and put the lids back on the two file boxes, then pushed them farther toward the back of the desk. “You planning to catch the same flight tomorrow night?”

Adam nodded. “The funeral’s at eleven, so the timing’s just about perfect. A lot of people will be coming back to the house afterwards, so I shouldn’t have any trouble getting someone to run me to the airport. If you could call Humphrey and alert him when you get back, I’d appreciate it.”

“Will do.”

When McLeod had gone off with Phipps, Adam returned to join the Fiennes family for the soothing and civilized ritual of afternoon tea, made more formal by the subdued clothing and conversation of those partaking. Members of the Fiennes clan had been arriving all afternoon, from far-flung comers of the world, and Rachel and Risa, Peter’s wife, were diverting their sorrow by catering to their guests. After tea, to give the family some privacy, Adam took himself off for a walk into the ancient city of York, with notice to Peter that he would find his own evening meal. He needed time to assimilate what he had been reading, and space apart for an hour or two, to deal with his personal sorrow at Nathan’s passing.

His meanderings soon took him into the grounds and then the rear entrance of the cathedral, which was in the midst of Evensong. Especially drawn by this offering of thanksgiving and praise after the sorrow of the past twenty-four hours, he slipped inside and sat listening quietly in the back, for he did not wish to intrude on the service in progress. Heard down the length of the great nave, the pure sound of the boys’ voices floated poignant and sweet. As Adam settled back to actually listen to what they were singing, he realized that they could not have chosen better, had they known that they marked the passing of Nathan Fiennes.

“Remember, Lord, how short life is,

How frail you have made all flesh.

Who can live and not see death?

Who can save himself from the power of the grave . . . ?”

Much moved, Adam slipped to his knees and offered up a silent prayer of thanksgiving for the life of Nathan Fiennes, knowing that his old friend would not mind that it was given in a Christian place of worship. The actual words of the scripture readings that followed did not carry well to where he was seated, so he let the drone of the reader’s voice simply carry him deeper into communion with the All. After a while, kneeling there with his eyes closed, he found the image of Nathan’s Seal before him in his mind’s eye, dispelled only when the choir began to sing the
Nunc dimittis.
“Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, according to Thy word . . .” That, too, was a fitting farewell to his old friend.

After the service was over, Adam lingered for a little while to savor the beauty of the cathedral, strolling up as far as the transept to crane his neck backwards and gaze up at the soaring vault of the lantern tower, the largest of its kind in England. Shortly thereafter, vergers began quietly herding visitors toward the door, so he drifted outside to mount the city wall at Bootham Bar and stroll along its esplanade, gazing out over the city by the light of the dying day.

After tea so late in the afternoon, he did not feel like eating dinner, so he returned to the Fiennes residence at about half past nine and, after inquiring whether there was any way he could assist the family, declared his intention to head up to bed for a proper night’s sleep after the short hours of the night before. Before retiring, however, he paused at the phone in a niche at the foot of the stairs to make a brief call to McLeod.

“Hullo, Noel,” he said without preamble, when McLeod himself answered. “I know you’ve only been home a few hours, but any progress?”

“None on Gerard,” McLeod replied, “though I did talk to Treville. He’s supposed to get back to me sometime tomorrow. I had some luck with Nathan’s computer, though. Have you got a minute?”

“What did you find?”

“Well, he’s got some very interesting files in here,” McLeod said. Adam could hear the gentle click of the keyboard as McLeod called up material on his screen to refer to it. “A lot of it is diary-type entries, probably similar to what you were reading in the notebooks, but he’s got some actual transcripts and translations of some of his documents as well. Do you want to hear some of this?”

“Give me a sampling,” Adam replied, pulling a notepad closer and taking out a pen. “I don’t want to tie up this line too long, in case relatives are trying to get through to the family, but it might give me something to work on while I sleep. I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted after last night’s late hours.”

“So am I,” McLeod agreed, to the accompaniment of more keys clicking. “I nodded off on the flight home, slept right through the landing. I’ve never done that before. Anyway, I’m looking at a chain of references that appears to link the Templars with our Graeme of Templegrange, who pawned the Seal. A minor demesne called Templegrange is mentioned in a letter of 1284 from King Alexander III to the Bishop of Dunkeld. The wording leaves it uncertain whether Templegrange belongs to the King or the bishop, but Nathan cites later evidence suggesting that the property was probably a minor Templar commandery at the time of the Order’s dissolution in 1314. The Order had a lot of land in Scotland, as you know.”

“Yes, Templemor has a similar history,” Adam said, jotting down notes. “Go on.”

“A little later on, Nathan references a grant of lands by Robert the Bruce to a Sir James Graeme of Perthshire, in gratitude for support given to the King at the Battle of Bannockburn the previous year. There’s no transcription of the document itself, but even I remember that Bannockburn was also 1314. After that, something else is obviously missing, but Nathan somehow makes the connection that Templegrange was the particular land granted to Sir James Graeme, and concludes that this same Sir James may have been an ancestor of the Graeme of Templegrange who pawned the Seal in 1381. Have you got all that?”

“It seems like a straightforward chain of logic, if it’s all supportable,” Adam replied. “The important thing is the Templar connection—though we’d supposed that, from the name Templegrange.”

“There’s more,” McLeod continued, “and you’re going to feel really foolish over this one. I certainly did.”

“Go on.”

“Well, I also cracked the Dundee file. I think Nathan meant the person, not the place-as in ‘Bonnie Dundee,’ whose full name was—?”

“John Grahame of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee,” Adam supplied, feeling foolish as predicted—though how the Seal of Solomon and a Templar secret connected with a seventeenth-century Cavalier general, he had no idea.

The man remembered as Bonnie Dundee was perhaps one of the most flamboyant and controversial figures of the early Jacobite period of Scottish history. Known to every educated Scot as the victor of the Battle of Killiecrankie, fought in 1689 against a superior force of English soldiery, Claverhouse had been feared by his enemies as “Bluidy Clavers” and adored by his Highland followers as their “Dark John of the Battles.” Though he had not survived his famous triumph, his undoubted courage and gallantry had made him the hero of many a song and story—none, so far as Adam knew, with any connection to Knights Templar or mysterious seals. It briefly occurred to him to wonder whether Nathan’s whole story might be just as fanciful as the historical fantasies of Henri Gerard—except for the urgency of Nathan’s dying declaration.

“I know you’re probably hunting for a connection, the same as I’ve been doing,” McLeod said, intruding on Adam’s brief speculation. “Other than the link of the names—Graeme and Grahame—I haven’t a clue what that connection might be, since the Seal was pawned well over three hundred years before Dundee died. And it’s been
another
three hundred years since then.

“But Nathan obviously thought there
was
a connection,” McLeod went on, “or he wouldn’t have cluttered up his hard disk with all these Dundee files. We have to assume that Graeme of Templegrange never redeemed the Seal, since it ended up in the Fiennes family; so where does John Grahame of Claverhouse come in?”

Adam shook his head, even though he knew McLeod could not see it.

“I haven’t the foggiest idea,” he said truthfully. “Not even an inkling. There’s nothing in all that Dundee material to suggest anything?”

“I honestly don’t know,” McLeod replied. “It took me a while to hack into these files, and I’ve only had a chance to skim through. Would you like me to print out what’s here? I could have Donald run the hard copy out to Strathmourne tomorrow, so it’ll be waiting for you when you get in. I’ll have to stick close to the office myself, to wait for that callback on Gerard.”

“I think that might be a good idea. Yes, do that.”

They parted on the understanding that Adam would try to check in again between the funeral and leaving for the airport. Meanwhile, he had been given much new food for thought. As he headed upstairs, he chided himself again for missing the Dundee connection with John Grahame of Claverhouse.

And how did the Jacobite hero connect with the Templars and the Seal of Solomon? That was not at all clear. Dundee had been a staunch supporter of the Stuart cause—but again, how did that connect to Templars?

He let his brain mull the questions as he brushed his teeth and readied for bed, and found a traditional, haunting melody running through his head, accompanied by the immortal words of Sir Walter Scott:

To the Lords of Convention ‘twas Claver’se who spoke,

‘Ere the King’s crown shall fall there are crowns to be broke;

So let each Cavalier who loves honour and me,

Come follow the bonnets of Bonnie Dundee.

The melody stayed to haunt him as he drifted off to sleep, with snatches of the lyrics weaving in and out of consciousness until at last he sank beyond awareness. The first few hours were dreamless, as he made up for the night before. But then images of increasing vividness began to tease at semi-consciousness.

The source of the initial impressions was not difficult to determine: glimpses of Dundee astride a great, plunging bay steed, sword in hand as he urged his followers on—the archetypal Cavalier hero. Then, gradually, the buff-coated Highland cavalry following him became crusader knights charging into battle, red crosses emblazoned on their white surcoats and the black and white beauceant banner of the Order of the Temple fluttering overhead in the bright sun of desert climes.

But there was a tension building. Suddenly the equestrian images yielded to a ghostly apparition of King Solomon himself, bearded and potent, majestically robed in flowing vestments of scarlet adorned with Qabalistic symbols, and crowned with a shining golden diadem that looked like a six-pointed star with the points bent up. In his left hand he held up what was surely Nathan’s Seal like a protective talisman. His right hand wielded a sceptre or wand, its tip so brightly glowing that Adam could barely look upon it.

Adam’s dream-self flung up an arm to shield his eyes, but a word of command from the great King bade him look where the Sceptre pointed. Trembling, Adam obeyed—to find himself being drawn toward a roil of churning yellow cloud, alive with sickly flickerings of greenish-yellow light. From within the clouds came waves of such dread as to make his stomach turn.

He woke in a cold sweat, gasping, his heart pounding as he instinctively drew on deep protections to envelop and protect him. He did not turn on the light, for by the sliver of light leaking underneath the bedroom door from the hall, he could see that there was nothing physically there. But certain it was that the dream had been a warning—whether merely from his unconscious, embroidering on what he had been reading about Nathan’s speculations regarding the missing Seal, or from some external source, he could not tell.

But this was not the time or place to find out, alone and in unfamiliar surroundings, without even a clear picture of the problem yet, much less the solution; and certainly not under the added tension of the palpable grief in the Fiennes house. The urgency was unmistakable, but more active investigation must wait until tomorrow, when he returned home, and as more of the background became clearer.

Yet the residue of menace lingered, so much so that eventually he got up and fetched from the pocket of his suit coat a handsome gold signet ring set with a dark sapphire. Slipping it on his finger as he padded back to bed, he simultaneously offered up a formal prayer for protection and then touched the stone to his lips in salute. The ring was an outward symbol of his esoteric calling, and sometimes a tool of that vocation, and the little ritual grounded him firmly back in the realms of reason.Further ritual before he lay back down again made of his bed a focus of celestial protection—a simple rite known as Sealing the Aura, which called upon the great archangels to guard the quarters and was sealed at last with a six-pointed star. His sleep thereafter was undisturbed by dreams, but he still slept lightly, as a part of him kept watch and pondered what had surfaced.

Chapter Five

NATHAN FIENNES’
funeral
took place shortly before noon the following morning, in the presence of his family and scores of friends and colleagues who had come together in shock and grief to mourn his passing. In keeping with Jewish custom, the service was starkly simple and unpretentious, all the more poignant for the weight of ancient tradition that shaped its form. Adam, sitting directly behind the family in the chapel adjoining the burial ground, was struck, as always, by the commonalities that united all men and women of goodwill, especially at a time of loss.

“O Lord, what is man that Thou dost regard him, or the son of man that Thou dost take account of him?” the officiating rabbi read. “Man is like a breath, his days are like a passing shadow. Thou dost sweep men away. They are like a dream, like grass which is renewed in the morning. In the morning it flourishes and grows, but in the evening it fades and withers . . .”

Following along in the service book, caught up in the cadences of ancient ritual, which alternated between Hebrew and English, Adam was yet aware of the physical setting of this farewell and memorial to his departed friend. The chapel itself contained no religious symbol of any faith. Its focus was the plain and unadorned wooden coffin set before the congregation, covered with the pristine wool drapery of a tallit, such as all observant Jews customarily wore at their devotions. This one, Adam knew, had been brought by Lawrence from Jerusalem, in hopes that he might wear it in thanksgiving at his father’s recovery; now it lay in tribute upon his father’s coffin. Nathan’s own tallit would have been lovingly wrapped around his shrouded body before laying it in the coffin, with one of the fringes cut to render it no longer fit for use—for Nathan no longer had need of it.

A single candle burned behind the coffin, but no flowers adorned coffin or chapel, for Jewish custom did not deem this appropriate in a time of sorrow. The men all wore yarmulkes on their heads, as did Adam himself, out of respect for Jewish custom.

“O God, full of compassion,” the rabbi prayed, “Thou Who dwellest on high, grant perfect rest beneath the sheltering wings of Thy presence, among the holy and pure who shine as the brightness of the heavens, unto the soul of Natan, son of Binyamin, who has gone unto eternity, and in whose memory charity is offered. May his repose be in Paradise. May the Lord of Mercy bring him under the cover of His wings forever, and may his soul be bound up in the bond of eternal life. May the Lord be his possession, and may he rest in peace. Amen.”

Following a brief but moving eulogy and more prayers, Adam was among those who joined Nathan’s sons in shouldering his coffin to bear it out into the cemetery, their halting procession accompanied by the cantor’s solemn recitation of the beautiful and moving ninety-first Psalm.

“He that dwelleth in the shelter of the Most High abideth under the shadow of the Almighty. I say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress; my God in Whom I trust. For He shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence. He shall cover thee with His pinions, and under His wings shalt thou take refuge . . . .”

The graveside rites were as bleak as the wind that sighed in off the Yorkshire downs.

“Tzidduk ha’din . . .” The Rock, His work is perfect, for all His ways are judgment: A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and right is He . . . The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord . . . May he come to his place in peace.

The coffin was lowered into the earth with simple finality. After that, beginning with Peter and then Lawrence, those wishing to pay their final respects came forward to turn three shovels of earth onto the coffin; the shovel was not passed from one to the next, but left upright in the mound of earth beside the grave. Earlier, briefing Adam on what to expect, Peter had explained that the symbolic gesture expressed the prayer that the tragedy of death not be passed on.

The silence was broken only by the hiss of the shovel being thrust into earth, occasionally ringing against stones, and the thump of falling earth, first hollowly on the wooden coffin and then, as the grave began to fill, the softer, more solid patter of earth on earth. When Adam’s turn came, he made of each of his oblations of earth a prayer as well, drawing on his Celtic heritage for the words of his own silent farewell.

Blessings in the name of the Father of Israel,

Blessings in the name of the Rabbi Jesus,

Blessings of the Spirit Who brooded on the waters—

Thus may you be blessed as you travel on your way . . .

He thrust the shovel into the mound of earth beside the grave with bowed head and stood back, melding into the crowd.

The process continued until the grave had been completely filled in, the men taking turns with the serious business of shoveling earth, once the token gestures had been made. Then, after the rabbi had offered another short prayer and led the assembled mourners in recitation of a Psalm, Peter and Lawrence stepped forward to offer Kaddish for their father for the first time—an ancient prayer Adam had learned from Nathan many years ago, and which he now offered in company with those around him, giving somber response to Nathan’s sons.

“Yisgadal v’yiskadash sh’may rabbah,”
the two read,
“b’olmo d’hu asid l’is-chadosho . . .”
Magnified and sanctified be His great name in the world which He will renew, reviving the dead, and raising them to life eternal . . . May He establish His kingdom during your lifetime, and during the life of all the House of Israel, speedily; and let us say, Amen. Let His great name be blessed forever and to all eternity! Blessed, praised, glorified, and exalted; extolled, honored, magnified and lauded, be the name of the Holy one, blessed be He. He is greater than all blessings, hymns, praises and consolations which can be uttered in this world; and let us say, Amen. May there be abundant peace from heaven, and life for us and for all Israel; and let us say, Amen.

“Oseh shalom bimeromav, Hu ya’aseh shalom, alenu v’al Kol yisroel; v’imru amen.”

“Amen, “ the congregation replied, in affirmation of the final exhortation.

When the last prayer had been offered and the last Psalm recited, those present formed a double line through which the family passed, offered comfort by ancient formula:
“Ha’makom yenachem et’chem b’toch she’ar avelei Tziyon vi’Yerushalayim.”
May the Omnipresent comfort you together with all the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.

Adam held back a little as the rest started to disperse slowly toward the cars, watching as some of the attendees plucked grass and cast it behind them. Several more paused to set small stones on the grave, bowing their heads in what Lawrence had told him was an Israeli custom, asking forgiveness for any injustice they might have committed against the deceased. Bowing his head, Adam added his own silent promise to Nathan to persevere in the task set before him, even though it seemed overwhelming at present. He had just turned to join the rest, heading toward the car in which he had ridden with several of Nathan’s distant relatives, when Peter Fiennes detached himself from the immediate family, leaving his mother in the care of his brother, and came to fall into step beside Adam.

“Thank you again for being here,” he said quietly. He hesitated slightly, then added, “I didn’t realize you were so familiar with Hebrew ritual. Your accent is almost better than mine.”

“I owe my instruction to your father,” Adam said with a faint smile. “When he and I were both at Cambridge, a close friend of mine was drowned in a boating accident, and I asked your father to teach me to pray Kaddish in Hebrew for him. It’s one of those universal prayers that speaks from the heart of mankind. Nathan always maintained that a common thirst for communion with the Divine was what united all truly spiritual people, whatever their formal religious affiliations might be.”

Peter accepted this tribute with a wan smile. “That sounds like Dad, all right. He was lucky to have you for a friend. If anyone can recover the Seal for him, I know you can. I wish there were more I could do to help, besides just drive you to the airport in a couple of hours.”

“Just pray for our success,” Adam said, “and I mean that quite literally.” He smiled and added, “Actually, there is one, more concrete thing you could do, and that’s to let me take the rest of your father’s notes away with me for further study. It’s beginning to look like we need to speak with Henri Gerard, but we still don’t know exactly what we’re up against. Also, if anything else should turn up in the next few days, or you should think of anything that might have bearing, please let me know.”

“I’ll do that, of course,” Peter agreed. “And do take the notes, by all means. In your hands they may do some good.”

“I devoutly hope so,” Adam said. In his own mind was the thought that if Nathan was to rest easy in his grave, he and McLeod were going to have their work cut out for them.

Back at the Fiennes home afterwards, where many of those present at the funeral had retired to offer their condolences and share a light repast of bagels and coffee, Adam excused himself to go upstairs and pack, then moved into Nathan’s study where, after packing up the rest of Nathan’s notes in a briefcase he found there, he rang McLeod at his office, charging the call to his home number.

“Hullo, Noel,” he said without further preamble. “Any progress on Gerard?”

“A bit—for all it’s worth,” McLeod said without enthusiasm. “The address and telephone number we found for him are good, but Gerard isn’t there. To make a long story short, he’s supposedly gone off to Cyprus on a four-week camping holiday.”

“That’s convenient.”

“Yes, I thought so,” McLeod agreed sourly. “According to my friend Treville, our boy purchased a round-trip air ticket to Nicosia and picked it up from the travel agent’s on Monday of last week. He paid for it with a credit card. His bank records show that he drew a substantial amount of money from his standing account the selfsame day.”

“How substantial?”

“Nearly ten thousand pounds—more than he’d need for any camping holiday,” McLeod replied. “But Gerard is known to be a collector of antiquities. It could be argued that he simply wanted to have sufficient cash on hand, in case he ran across any irresistible finds while on holiday. Treville’s men are still trying to find out if he bought any camping gear recently, but again it could be argued that he already had what he needed in the way of kit. So you be the judge.”

“If it’s a cover story, it’s a reasonably useful one,” Adam allowed. “I wouldn’t fancy having to track down the whereabouts of a camper on the move. Has anyone verified that Gerard actually made the trip?”

“Treville had Interpol check it out,” McLeod said, “and they checked with the Cypriot authorities. Both the airline and the passport-control people show in their records that on Wednesday the eleventh, a Monsieur Henri Gerard got on the plane in Paris and got off again in Cyprus. But you and I both know that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. With enough cash and a forged passport, our boy could have bought another ticket out to London within hours of his arrival on Cypriot soil, and departed thence without anyone in Nicosia being the wiser.”

“So much for that lead, then,” Adam replied. “What next?”

“Oh, I’m not finished,” McLeod said. “Bearing in mind what Peter Fiennes said about Gerard being something of a nutter, I asked Treville if he’d get somebody to look into Gerard’s psychological background. He made the inquiries himself, and it turns out that our boy has a history of emotional instability. His colleagues in French antiquarian circles say that Gerard’s interest in the Knights Templar amounts to something of an obsession; he’s fanatically convinced that all the charges laid against them were true, and has set himself to prove as much. He bases this assertion on the belief that he is, in fact, the present -day incarnation of a medieval French nobleman who lived to witness those events.”

“Very interesting,” Adam murmured. “Very interesting, indeed. If there’s more to this assertion than mere romantic fantasy, it could explain a great deal. I’d be curious to know whether or not he has a psychic past. If his interest in Nathan’s Seal dates back to a previous lifetime, we may be dealing with someone far more dangerous than a mere eccentric.”

“That was my thought too,” McLeod replied. “I don’t suppose you’ve had any more insights about the Seal itself? What it was for, and so on?”

“Not yet, but I’m working on it. I had an interesting dream that I’ll tell you about when I get back. Meanwhile, I think it might be safest if we proceed on the assumption that Gerard is actually here on British soil. At very least, I’d like to know what he tells the York Police about his movements two days ago, if they can turn him up. Have you relayed your information to the authorities here in York?”

“All the conventional information, yes. And Treville is faxing me a photo later on. What do you want to do about the other?”

“Just sit tight until I get home,” Adam replied. “Did you send those printouts to the house?”