‘Oh, yes,’ he answered with reluctance, ‘and I shall take that secret to my deathbed, preceptor, where I shall whisper it into the ear of my successor, as it was whispered into mine.’
‘But surely if Brother Samuel died suddenly, as we have heard from all accounts, how could he have told you?’
He was momentarily caught off guard. ‘Yes, it is strange. He came to me the night before he died and told me, as if he knew his end was near . . .’
‘This begs another question, do you have an oblate to replace you? Perhaps now that he is free of his obligations in the library . . . Anselmo?’
‘Perhaps . . .’ The other man fell silent.
‘So you, too, will keep secrets from your acolyte, just as Setubar did with Asa, and Samuel with you?’
‘Oh, it is only tradition,’ he shrugged. ‘What more can a good monk do than follow tradition?’
‘I thank you again,’ my master said with a bow, and the master of music left us for the church.
‘Things are a little clearer, inshallah!’ Andre said, carefully adding the precautionary exclamation (if God please) after the monk was out of earshot, the infidel in his nature momentarily surfacing like a hydra.
‘How so, master?’ Frankly, I found that hard to believe. There were further suspicions to confuse us and I was speculating on the abbot’s motives, and even on those of Sacar!
‘There is now little doubt this monastery has two functions; it operates on the surface as any monastery of its kind and below the surface as a centre for the translation of secret texts. Moreover, the four old brothers had only been here ten years and this date coincides with another event of interest.’
‘The year of the siege at Montsegur,’ Eisik added.
‘It proves that Setubar was not lying to the inquisitor. The Cathar castle is some distance away, but not too far to discount its connection to this place. I am convinced that the old brothers were indeed the heretics of Montsegur, all four of them. Let us look at what we know. Firstly, the abbey was established the year before the fall of Jerusalem. Brother Sacar said nine of the founders were monks from distant lands, he did not say they were Cistercian monks. Four were from France. All the abbots had either lived in the Holy Land or knew the most important Eastern languages for translating. Each abbot was head translator before becoming abbot. We have seen one Templar grave in the cemetery, the first abbot of the monastery. Sacar told us this in his own way. There may be more unmarked ones that we have not seen.’
‘Are you saying that the founding monks were Templars?’ I asked.
‘I told you, Andre! I could smell them,’ Eisik waved a threatening finger at him, ‘but you did not listen.’
‘That may explain . . .’ my master said absently, as though he had not heard Eisik, ‘why the grand master was present at our meeting with the king and also why we have been sent here.
This is only an assumption, a hypothesis, and we must bear in mind what a dangerous thing it is to hypothesise because it may limit us to one idea when there may be others just as worthy of our attention.’
‘Why would nine knights establish a Cistercian monastery so far from the Holy Land? Why not a preceptory?’ I asked.
‘Perhaps to carry out some arcane translations, with the sanction of St Bernard, away from ecclesiastic scrutiny, and that may explain why the abbots of this monastery have never attended a meeting of the general chapter. Perhaps our order in those days found the eternal gospel hidden in the bowels of Temple of Solomon . . .’
As we walked past the stables, my master said, ‘Whatever it is the monks of this monastery are doing, we must above all stop the inquisitor from getting his vulturous claws on the original copy of the gospel.’
‘But Netsamur!’ Eisik exclaimed, his eyes fairly popping out of his bony skull. ‘From what the boy says, Setubar may have already told him everything!’
‘Yes, but I do not think Setubar knows the formulas of orientation . . . unless he dragged them out of Daniel . . . We must see him and question him ourselves.’ He looked around him reflectively. ‘Where would the old man be? What time is it?’
‘Almost sext, master,’ I answered.
‘We must also figure out what the strange numerical code on the organ means.’ He looked a little distracted. ‘The inner room . . . the sanctuary perhaps where a young boy brought here by the four brothers is sequestered . . . along with original sacred texts . . .’
‘We had best sharpen our wits!’ Eisik whispered harshly, afraid. ‘Stop musing, Andre! The living are becoming rare in this monastery! Look around you, the corpses are piling up!’