Temple of the Grail(24)

‘Precisely. That is what we must find out. It is again as I thought. There are tunnels under this abbey . . .’ he muttered, ‘tunnels . . .’

I nodded, feeling ashamed at not having come to the same conclusion.

Andre added, ‘He also said something about a widow being wise . . .’ ‘But what has a widow to do with a monastery?’ ‘It points to a sect called the Manicheans.’ ‘The who?’

‘A sect led by Manes, known in the early centuries as the ‘son of a widow’. Cathars, my boy, believe in Manichean ideals – in other words, heresy. The inquisitor was right about one thing, our dead brother spoke like a heretic.’ ‘So we know then, master, that there are heretics here, and that there are also tunnels in which, perhaps, some are hidden?’ ‘You have made up for your lack of wits! Yes, that’s it . . . for now that is what we know.’ I nodded a little pleased, though, to be honest, I remained confused.

We made our way through the stalls to that which had previously been occupied by the dead brother. Here, on the ground where the poor man fell, there remained a little pool of brownish fluid.

‘And the note?’ I asked, looking away, trying not to imagine what it was like to die such an agonising death, ‘Do you think it has anything to do with the brother’s death?’

My master seemed to ignore me, and began his inspection by picking up a small something, which I could not quite see. ‘Raisins.’ He sniffed it. ‘Old men are always eating raisins, it helps to restore the saliva . . . Now to answer your question: all things are possible in the beginning. Let us progress through our chain of causes, we shall then be in a better position to say many more things with confidence. If the poor monk was murdered, the question we must ask ourselves is why? The note read that he who seeks the light of knowledge dies in ignorance. What could this mean? Let us ruminate. Could it mean that our Brother Ezekiel was a seeker of knowledge? Or did he merely die in ignorance? Perhaps he sought the light of knowledge because he was going blind, or he may have been in possession of a knowledge that someone wants to keep in the dark? Only the abbot knew that we were about to ask him questions.’

‘So the abbot is a suspect, then?’

‘Right now, it is as though we were a good distance away from a friend, and in our eagerness we run to him and call out his name…’

‘Only to find that he is not our friend at all, but one who bears a likeness to him.. .’

‘So you remember Plato, well done! We will have deceived ourselves, because we were looking only at the general things, which, from a distance, are only ill defined; his height, his weight, the colour of his hair, so on. And not at the particulars which, on closer inspection, reveal his nose, eyes, the peculiar turn of his mouth. You see, from a distance, he could be anyone. And that is how we must think, until we come closer. We will then see with clarity, that is, one step at a time. Sometimes, however, one can see better from a distance, and at other times it is preferable if the object of our attention comes to us. Remember to follow outward signs is to be like the captive in a cave who believes the shadows cast by a fire to be the real world and not what lies above and outside the cave. So, as captives we must allow the nature of things to tell us their secrets. That means that we must listen carefully, and reserve our judgements for a later time. At any rate, at this stage all we see is a man who is not a man but a eunuch, throwing a stone that is not a stone, but a pumice-stone, at a bird that is not a bird, but a bat, sitting on a twig that is not a twig, but a reed!’

‘You mean nothing is what it seems?’

‘Precisely.’ He bent over and retrieved something from the ground beneath the seat. He inspected it, ‘Another raisin . . .’

‘Do you think it was the inquisitor, then?’

‘Hm?’ My master looked up from his kneeling position. ‘The inquisitor? The inquisitor what? What are you saying now?’ He bellowed.

‘Do you think he wrote the note?’

‘Why should he have written it?’ He continued looking about beneath the seats. I looked away, for it did not seem a very dignified position for a master.

‘Because he does not want our interference.’ I answered, ‘he may have been warning us not to meddle in the inquiry.’

‘Whoever wrote the note is clever, for he has a command of Greek, and the inquisitor knows no Greek at all, not having recognised my vulgar use of it at the dinner table this evening. No, I’ll wager five hundred Saracen ducats that someone is playing a little game with us.’

‘So, the librarian? Brother Macabus?’