Temple of the Grail(56)

‘Dear boy, lies are an abomination unto the Lord!’ he exclaimed fervently, adding without even the slightest hint of guilt, ‘but a very present help in times of trouble!’

‘So what did you find out by lying?’

‘Christian, you must learn to think with the head God gave you. Setubar, a man who can quote word for word from the old book, a man whose eyes are as sharp as his, is not in possession of an addled mind. Besides, the old are known to have very fine memories of distant events, even though they cannot remember what they had for breakfast, as Daniel has admitted. Setubar should have remembered something so significant as the alteration of a church. No I do not know as yet why he lied, but I have my suspicions.’

At this point it began to snow, not lightly as earlier in the day, but a heavy, pregnant fall, more appropriate to winter than to spring. I patiently followed my master as he walked among the graves whose positions were denoted only by white crosses. My master, who had always been unperturbed by death, whistled as he inspected every cross and there were indeed several.

I drew the cowl over my head to protect it from the snow, which even now found its way into the collar of my habit and down my back. Suddenly I heard my master say ‘Aha!’ with such exuberance that I slipped on the icy ground, and narrowly escaped falling face down onto the grave of Sibelius Eustacious.

‘Eureka!’ he exclaimed.

‘Master?’ I asked, a little annoyed.

‘Eureka,’ he said, amazed that I did not recognise it. Then impatiently, ‘Archimedes . . . Eureka! In other words mon ami, I’ve got it!’

I shook my habit of snow and said, not too politely, ‘What do you mean, you’ve got it?’

‘Look at this!’ he pointed to a headstone of moderate height. It was situated nearest to the mountain wall that cradled the abbey, quite a distance from the others. I walked over to it and my master grabbed me by the arm in his excitement and said, ‘What do you see? Come now for I am cold and we are losing light.’

I looked at it closely. It was a rectangular stone upon which only the shape of a sword was carved.

I told my master what I saw and he looked at me and said with irritation, ‘Dear Christian, I too can see! No, I do not mean that you should describe it to me, I mean to know if you recognise it.’

It was as though I had suddenly become blind, for the more I looked the less I saw.

‘Dear boy!’ he exclaimed. ‘How can you not know it? It is a Templar grave!’

‘A Templar grave?’ I said, stunned. Why should I have recognised it? In the East men were buried in haste, with rarely a wooden cross to mark their remains.

Kneeling with some difficulty Andre removed a portion of the shallow layer of snow covering the grave. ‘This is an old grave. It must have been an important monk, for no other headstone can be found here . . . very interesting.’ He stood looking around. ‘This is perhaps finally making some sense.’

‘But that would mean . . .’

‘Do not make assumptions, Christian, it may be the grave of a wealthy knight who, on his way to the holy land – partaking of the generosity of the monastery – died here of something or other.’

‘But ...’

‘We must wait before committing these things to our hypothesis, we must first take a look at the great book in the chapter house. Come, lest we draw attention to the headstone.’

So we left the graveyard and as we rounded the courtyard, passing first the abbatial church then making our way to the cloister buildings, we came upon the bishop ambulating toward us. My first instinct was to turn and walk the other way and I could tell from my master’s momentary hesitation that he too felt the same, but we could not avoid him.

He walked towards us with unsteady gait, for walking was not a simple matter for the bishop. Not only did his considerable size impede his progress – I dared not imagine what layers of fat must be hidden beneath his ecclesiastical vestments – but also a vacuous haziness that I suspect was the result of a good deal of monastery wine.

On our journey to the abbey, my master had commented, rather unkindly, that the bishop was like a man who wore ill-fitting clothes. I noted his sumptuous ermine and velvet, his absurdly huge pectoral cross, catching the meagre light and throwing it back in brilliant colours, and I realised that my master was right. For all his regalia nothing served to soften the troubled expression that had long ago settled on his blotched face, leaving deep furrows and wrinkles, clouds of mistrust and disdain. My master enlightened me that his appointment in France made him an outcast at the king’s court, as he was seen as a papal infiltrator, sent to spy on France. He, in turn, viewed everyone with derision, perhaps feeling that he deserved a better position than an inconsequential bishopric, miles from Rome, and further still from any chance of career advancement. Whatever the case, he was a man capable of the deepest hatred, so it seemed to me, a man envious of all men, as though he moved inside a storm; his mere presence appeared to signal bad weather.