Philip Kerr - Dark Matter

“What? Another damned secret?” I said.

“It is the Tower,” said Newton, as if that were all the explanation needed.

Which was true indeed. The Tower was more than just a prison and a place of safety to mint the coin; it was also a state of mind, an attitude that affected all who came into contact with its walls. Even now I am haunted by its memory. And if you would speak to my ghost you must look for me there, for it was while I was in the Tower that I died. Not my body, it is true, but my heart and soul, which were most certainly murdered while I was in the Tower. Young ladies that wished to conceive of a child were in the habit of visiting the Tower armouries, intent upon sticking a bodkin into the large codpiece of King Henry VII’s foot-armour. It is too late now, of course, but I wonder that I did not think to prick his breast that I might have found myself a new love and, perhaps, even a new life in Christ.

We travelled to Newgate to find that James Fell, who had been the head keeper, was now dismissed. But all else remained the same, with the Whit still a place of much misery, although Sergeant Rohan was not as sorry for himself as I might have expected. He met us in the condemned hold, from which darkness the only escape was with a candle, with no resentment and much cheerfulness considering that he had clearly been beaten, and the awful fate that now awaited him. Since he had said nothing at his trial, he now began with a full confession of his crimes, all of which we heard with the lice cracking loudly under our feet; and it was the most extraordinary admission that I ever did hear in that dreadful place.

“That I did, I did because I believed it to be right,” he said. “The Massacre of Saint Bartholomew’s Day has hung over me all my life. And all Huguenot Protestants such as myself have better reason than any to hate Papists. I hate Papists as other men hate the clap or the plague, and I would willingly lose my immortal soul to see every one of them dead.”

“George Macey was not a Catholic,” said Newton. “No more was your Major Mornay.”

“Poor Macey,” said Rohan. “I’m sorry he was killed. In searching for coiners in the Tower, he stumbled upon our plot, as perhaps you did yourself, sir; and it was suspected that he would betray us, when he came to understand more of what we were up to. When he was found in possession of one of our coded letters, that sealed his fate. It was Mister Twistleton who, being the Tower Armourer, took charge of the torture, at the instruction of Major Mornay, so that we might find out exactly how much he knew and who he might have told; and if the code had been broken. I think it was Macey’s screams that affected Mister Twistleton’s wits, for his mind was never the same again.”

I neglected to mention Newton’s own diagnosis of Twistleton’s madness — his syphilis — for fear of stopping the sergeant’s explanations.

“Mornay was mad anyway,” he continued. “A careless fellow, and even though we served on a French galley together, I don’t much regret killing him. He was a perverted sort of man, and had become most unbalanced, so that he was a liability, as you might say.”

After having seen what I had seen in the Southwark marshes, I found it only too easy to recognise the truth of this myself.

“You may as well know that you and the lad here were marked to die as well.”

“I know it,” said Newton. “Some of the letters we translated spoke of it.”

“And yet you still came here?”

“We bear you no ill will,” said Newton. “Do we, Ellis?”

“None at all, sir.”

“But who were those two who tried to kill me?” asked Newton.

“Paid assassins, sir. Riff-raff. A couple of coiners who bore you a grudge. Mister Vallière was waiting inside that tavern to say that he recognised old Roettier and Mister Ambrose from the Tower as having killed you.” The Sergeant spat. “Many’s the time I’ve wanted to kill old Roettier. His whole stinking family’s a nest of Catholic spies. The only reason he’s not dead already is that it was thought he might be more useful to our cause if he was left alive to be blamed for this or that.”

“But who would have believed that an old man like that would murder anyone?” I asked.

“In times like these, people will believe what they want to believe.”

Newton nodded. “And what do you believe, Sergeant?”

“How do you mean?”

“You are a Socinian, are you not?”

“Aye sir. But that’s still a good Protestant.”

“I agree with you there. And because you are condemned, I will tell you that I do hold many of your own beliefs, for I am of the Arian persuasion.”

“God bless you for that, Doctor.”

“But I think we have chosen a bad time to reappear in the world, for it seems the world has grown tired of sectarian disputes.”

“True, sir. Tired and cynical. I little thought I would ever be condemned as a damned Jacobite and Roman Catholic.”

“Their Lordships would hardly have dared to condemn you as a Protestant,” said Newton. “Not with all the feeling against Catholics there is in the country now. And yet I must also tell you I believe you are justly convicted. For you would have murdered so many that England would have been held in much opprobrium, as France was after the Huguenots were massacred. And I am firmly of the belief that such an atrocity would have given King Lewis an excuse to break the peace we have just made. But that you should be punished for the sins of your betters, as well as for your own, seems to me especially unjust. Christ asks only that we follow the example of his life, and not the meaning of his death.”

At which I uttered some remark to the effect that the rich had fine scented gloves with which to hide their dirty hands. Which was a remark directed at Newton as much as Their Lordships in Government.

“And yet I am rich, too,” said the Sergeant.

“Rich?” said I. “How so?”

“What else do you call a man who knows where the treasure of the Templars might be found?”

“You know where the treasure is?” said I, much excited by this news.

“I do. And I will tell you where it is to be found, if you can you get me out of here.”

“I think I can do very little for you,” said Newton. “Not even for the treasure of the Templars. But I shall plead for your life before the Lords Justices. I shall tell them that I do not think it right that you should be punished while others who did counsel you in this matter do go free. Not for any treasure, though. But because I believe you to be less culpable than several others.”

“That’s all I ask, sir. Why, then I’ll tell you about the secret, sir. For there I take you upon your word. If you say you will do something, I know you will do it. That is your reputation in here, and in the Tower. But mostly I will tell you about the treasure because you are of my own religious persuasion and have no faith in the Trinity, and believe that the Father is greater than the son. For the proof of that, why, sir, that’s the treasure I speak of.”

“I would give much to see that proved to my own satisfaction,” said Newton. “True knowledge is the greatest treasure of all.”

Of this I was less than sure; had I not been happier when I myself was ignorant?

“But what is this secret and how did you come by it?” asked Newton.

Sergeant Rohan took a swig from the bottle of gin I had brought him out of charity.

“Bless you for this, lad,” he said. “Well, sir, to cut a long story short, following the capture of Jerusalem in 1099, Count Hugh of Champagne, the patron of the Cistercian Order, went to Jerusalem and ordered his vassal Hugh of Payns to found the Poor Fellow Soldiers of Jesus Christ on the Temple Mount, this being the site of the Temple of Solomon that was rebuilt by Herod, and destroyed again by the Romans. Prior to this, it was said that the Cistercians sought the help of Greek scholars to translate certain texts found after the capture of Jerusalem that spoke of a buried treasure beneath the Temple Mount. And that the Poor Fellow Soldiers that became the Templars were ordered to look for this treasure.