The Templar Salvation (2010) (2 page)

Which was why Everard and his men were there.

“The news isn’t good,” the eldest of the Keepers told them. “The usurper Alexius lacks the courage to take on the enemy. He rode out with forty divisions yesterday, but didn’t dare engage the Franks and the Venetians. He couldn’t get back inside the gates fast enough.” The old man paused, his eyes despondent. “I fear the worst. The city is as good as lost, and once it falls …”

Everard could already imagine the vengeance that would be taken out on the city’s nervous inhabitants if the Latins ever breached their defenses.

It had only been twenty years or so since that the Latins of Constantinople had been massacred. Men, women, children … no one had been spared. Thousands upon thousands of them, wiped out in a murderous frenzy the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the taking of Jerusalem in the First Crusade. Venetian, Genoese, and Pisan merchants and their families who had long settled in Constantinople and who controlled its seafaring trade and its finances—the entire Roman Catholic population of the city—had been slaughtered in a sudden upwelling of anger and resentment by the envious local population. Their quarters had been reduced to ash, their graves upturned, any survivors sold off as slaves to the Turks. The city’s Catholic clergy didn’t fare better at the hands of their Greek Orthodox enemies: Their churches were burned, and the pope’s representative was publicly beheaded before his head was tied to a dog’s tail and dragged through the city’s blood-soaked streets in front of a jubilant crowd.

The old man turned and led the knights deeper into the storeroom, to a second door, which was partially hidden by some heavily laden shelves. “The Franks and the Latins talk about taking back Jerusalem, but you and I both know that they’ll never get that far,” he said as he fidgeted with the door’s locks. “And in any case, they’re not really out to reclaim the Holy Sepulchre. Not anymore. They only thing they care about now is lining their pockets. And the pope would like nothing more than to see this empire fall and have its church brought under the authority of Rome.” He turned, his expression darkening. “It’s been long said that only the angels in Heaven know the date of the ending of our great city. I fear they’re not the only ones to know it now. The pope’s men will take Constantinople,” he told the knights. “And when they do, I have little doubt that there’ll be a small contingent of them whose sole task will be to lay their hands on these.”

He swung the door open and led them in. The room was bare, save for three large wooden chests.

Everard’s heartbeat spiked. As one of the chosen few within the highest echelons of the Order, he knew what lay within the simple, unadorned trunks. He also knew what he now had to do.

“You’ll need the wagon and the horses, and Theophilus will help you again,” the old man continued, glancing to acknowledge the youngest of the three Keepers, the one who had helped Everard and his men sneak into the city. “But we’ll need to be quick. Things could change at any moment. There’s even talk of the emperor fleeing the city. You need to be on your way by first light.”

” ‘ You’ … ?” Everard was surprised by the man’s words. “What about you? You’re all coming with us, aren’t you?”

The elder exchanged a mournful look with his cohorts, then shook his head. “No. We need to cover your trail. Let the pope’s men think that what they were after is still here long enough to make sure you’re clear of any danger.”

Everard wanted to object, but he could see that the Keepers wouldn’t be swayed. They’d always known that a time like this might happen. They’d been prepared for it, as had every generation of Keepers before them.

The knights lugged the chests onto the wagon, one at a time, four of them hefting each heavy load while two others stood guard. By the time they had set off, the first hints of dawn were seeping into the night sky.

The gate that the Keepers had chosen, the Gate of the Spring, was one of the more remote entries into the city. It was flanked by two towers but also had a smaller postern to one side of the main gates, which was where they were headed.

As the heavily laden wagon driven by two cloaked figures clattered toward it, three footmen converged to block its path, eyeing it curiously.

One of them raised his hand in a blocking gesture and asked, “Who goes there?”

Theophilus, who was at the reins, let out a pained cough before mumbling a low reply, saying they urgently needed to get to the Zoodochos monastery that was just beyond the gates. Seated next to him, Everard watched in silence as the Keeper’s words did the trick and seemed to intrigue the guard, who moved closer and spat out another question.

From under the cowl of his dark tunic, the Templar watched the man approaching them and waited until he was close enough before launching himself onto him and plunging his dagger deep into the guard’s neck. In the same instant, three knights rushed out of the back of the wagon and silenced the other guards before they could sound the alert.

“Go,” Everard hissed as his brothers rushed to the gatehouse, while he and two of the knights crouched down and scanned the towers overhead. He motioned for Theophilus to sneak away into cover, as they had agreed. The old man’s work was done, and this was no place for him; Everard knew all hell could break loose at any second—which it did when two more guards emerged from the gatehouse just as the knights had pulled off the first of the crossbars.

The Templars recovered their swords and cut the guards down with stunning efficiency, but not before one of them had yelped out loudly enough to alert his companions in the towers. Within seconds, lanterns and torches were moving frenetically on the ramparts as alerts were sounded. Everard darted a look at the gate and saw that his brothers were still working on loosening the last of the crossbars—just as arrows bit into the parched ground next to him and by the hooves of the wagon’s horses, narrowly missing one of them. There was no time to lose. If one of the horses were to be felled, their escape would be scuttled.

“We have to move,” he roared as he loosed a bolt from his crossbow, hitting a backlit archer high above and sending him tumbling down from the rampart. Everard and the two knights alongside him reloaded and fired again, spewing bolts upward, keeping the sentries at bay, until one of the knights yelled and the gates creaked open.

“Let’s go,” Everard shouted as he waved his men on—and as they scrambled to get back on the wagon, a bolt slammed into the knight by his side, thudding downward into his right shoulder and lodging itself deep into his chest cavity. The man—Odo of Ridefort, an ox of a man—crumbled to the ground, blood spurting out of him.

Everard darted over to him and helped him back onto his feet, calling out to the others. Within seconds, they were all over their wounded brother-knight, three of them firing upward defensively while the others helped him into the back of the wagon. With the archers covering him, Everard sprinted to the front, and as he climbed onto the bench seat, he turned to shoot a parting nod of gratitude to Theophilus—but the Keeper wasn’t where he’d last seen him. Then he spotted him—a short distance away, down on the ground, motionless, an arrow through his neck. He glanced at him for no more than a solitary heartbeat, but it was still long enough for the sight to brand itself permanently into his consciousness—then he leapt onto the wagon and whipped the horses to life.

The other knights clambered on board as the wagon charged through the gates and out of the city under a deluge of arrows. As Everard guided it up a hillock before turning north, he cast his eye over the glistening sea below and the war galleys that were gliding past the city’s walls, banners and pennants flying from their sterncastles, shields uncovered, bulwarks garnished, ladders and mangonels raised threateningly.

Insanity
, he thought again with a pained heart as he left behind the sublime city and the great catastrophe that would soon be upon it.

THE ROAD BACK WAS SLOWER. They’d recovered their horses, but the cumbersome wagon and its heavy payload were holding them back. Avoiding towns and any human contact was more difficult than when they were just on horses and could roam away from the well-trodden trails. Worse still was that Odo was losing a lot of blood, and there was little they could to stop the bleeding while charging ahead. Worst of all was the fact that they weren’t traveling incognito anymore: Their exit from the besieged city hadn’t been as discreet as their entry. Armed men—ones from outside the city walls this time—would be coming after them.

And sure enough, before the first day’s sun had set, they did.

Everard had sent two knights ahead of the wagon and two others behind, early-warning scouts for any threats. That first evening, his prescience paid off. The convoy’s rear guard spotted a company of Frankish knights, thundering in from the west, hot on their tail. Everard sent a rider ahead to bring back the forward scouts before cutting away from the more obvious, and well-trodden, southeasterly route the crusaders would expect them to take and heading farther east, into the mountains.

It was summer, and although the snows had melted, the bleak landscape was still tough to navigate. Lush, rolling hills soon gave way to steep, craggy mountains. The few trails that the wagon could take were narrow and perilous, some of them barely wider than the track of its wooden wheels and skirting the edges of dizzying ravines. And with every new day, Odo’s condition worsened. The onset of heavy rain turned an already terrible situation into an accursed one, but with no other options, Everard kept his men to the high ground whenever he could and trudged on, slowly, eating whatever they could forage or kill, filling up their gourds in the downpours, forced to stop when the light faded, spending the miserable nights without shelter, always tense in the knowledge that their pursuers were still out there, looking for them.

We have to make it back
, he thought, ruing the wretched upheaval that had been heaped upon him and his brothers without warning.
We cannot fail. Not when so much is at stake.

It was easier willed than done.

After several days of sluggish progress, Odo’s condition was desperate. They’d managed to remove the arrow and stem the bleeding, but a fever had set in, the result of his infected wound. Everard knew they’d have to stop and find a way to keep him immobile and dry for a few days if he were to have any chance of making it back to their stronghold alive. But with the scouts confirming that their stalkers hadn’t yet given up, they had to soldier on through the hostile terrain and hope for a miracle.

Which was what they found on the sixth day, in the shape of a small, isolated hermitage.

They would have missed it entirely, had it not been for a pair of hooded crows that were circling above it and drew the ravenous eyes of one of the forward scouts. A tight cluster of rooms carved out of the rock face, the monastery was virtually undetectable and perfectly camouflaged, high up in the mountains, tucked into the crook of the cliff that towered protectively above it.

The knights rode as close as they could, then left the horses and the wagon and climbed the rest of the way up the rock-strewn incline. Everard marveled at the dedication of the men who had built the monastery in such a remote and treacherous location—from the looks of it, many centuries ago—and wondered how it had survived in the region, given the roaming bands of Seljuk warriors.

They approached it with caution, swords drawn, although they doubted anyone could possibly be living in such an inhospitable spot. To their amazement, they were greeted by a dozen or so monks, weathered old men and younger disciples who quickly recognized them as fellow followers of the Cross and offered them food and shelter.

The monastery was small, but well stocked for a place that was so far removed from the nearest settlement. Odo was comfortably settled into a dry cot, some hot food and drink helping rekindle his body’s worn defenses. Everard and his men then lugged the three chests up the hill and placed them in a small windowless room. Next door to it was an impressive scriptorium that housed a large collection of bound manuscripts. A handful of scribes were busy at their desks, concentrating on their work, barely looking up to acknowledge their visitors.

The monks—Basilian, as the knights soon found out—were stunned by the news the knights brought with them. The idea of the pope’s army besieging fellow Christians and sacking Christian cities, even given the great schism, was hard to fathom. Isolated as they were, the monks hadn’t been aware of the loss of Jerusalem to Saladin, or of the failed Third Crusade. Their hearts sank and their brows furrowed under the repeated blows of new information.

Throughout their conversation, Everard had carefully glossed over one tricky issue: what he and his fellow Templars were doing in Constantinople, and what their role had been in the siege of the great city. He was aware that, in the eyes of these Orthodox monks, he and his men could easily be seen as part of the Latin forces that were poised at the gates of their capital. And related to that was an even trickier issue, which the monastery’s
hegumen
—its abbot, Father Philippicus—finally chose to address.