Phil Rickman - The Fabric of Sin

‘Why I’ve come over, lass. I’m a man, and I know a fair bit.’

‘What?’ She looked up. ‘Does that mean …?’

‘No. Not that I haven’t been approached, mind. Twice, in fact.’

‘Since being ordained?’

‘ Only since I were ordained. Despite all the disapproving noises and a number of critical reports, there’s still scores of clergy in the Masons. Most of ’em at ground level. Not so many in the Templars, unless they’ve got a private income. Can’t pick up your surcoat and sword in Asda.’

‘They actually … dress up like Templars?’

‘Oh aye. Full bit. Costs an arm and a leg for a full Templar kit, but they get it back. One way or t’ other.’

‘So I’ve heard. Huw …’

Huw looked at her, thin smile.

‘Why do I need to know this? Are you telling me the Bishop of Hereford …?’

‘That’d be nice, wouldn’t it? But, sadly, Brother Dunmore, according to my information, never progressed beyond basic Craft Masonry and hasn’t been to a Lodge meeting for a number of years. Although the bugger’s never formally resigned.’

‘Why would a man like Bernie get into it in the first place?’

‘Happen his dad were in it. That’s how it usually happens. Fathers, brothers. Family tradition.’

‘What do they get out of it? Apart from contacts and favours. Allegedly.’

‘Get out what you put in. Most of ’em, it’s a social club. Relaxed night out. Well, relaxed after you’ve gone through the bit where they hold you at knifepoint. For others, it’s a spiritual journey. Sounds like a joke, but for some it becomes just part of your life – it is your life. Endless passageways, lass.’

‘Leading to?’

‘The light. Masonic light. You’re travelling towards enlightenment. Through knowledge.’

‘Gnosticism.’

‘A prominent Mason, Canon Richard Tydeman, said – famously – that trying to describe the joys of Masonry to an outsider was like trying to describe the joys of motherhood to a spinster.’

‘How would he know?’

‘Suffice to say it brings a sense of order and direction and personal satisfaction to men who were just meandering along. Gives their lives a very clear focus. Whether this—’ Huw shook the papers ‘—mirrors any actual Templar rituals we’ll never know because the Templars never wrote owt down, but it’s become one of the most popular and sought-after degrees in Masonry. Read the next bit.’

The sword is taken from the candidate and a skull placed in his hand

Furthermore, may the soul that once inhabited this skull, as the representative of John the Baptist, appear against me in the day of judgement …

‘What’s that say to you, lass?’

‘Baphomet,’ Mrs Morningwood said, and Huw smiled at her and stretched his legs under the table, hands behind his head.

‘One major theory is that Baphomet translates as baptism – the official start of a spiritual life. The head, in this context, is therefore the head of John the Baptist, and some scholars are convinced that’s what the Templars venerated.’

‘And that’s the Christian bit, is it?’ Merrily said.

‘Or the Christian veneer. Borrow a Biblical figure, make him your own. Regular, ground-floor Masonry you only have to accept a supreme ruler of the universe. Whose name, for the record, is Jahbulon, which they’re not supposed to say outside the temple. And which opponents of Masonry say is a weird combination of Christian and Satanic – principally, Jah, for Jehovah, and Baal, the opponent or Devil. The Methodists brought out a report in 1985 that reckoned the name “Jahbulon” constituted the single biggest barrier to a true Christian being a Mason.’

‘Personally, I’d’ve thought that threatening to saw open somebody’s skull …’

‘That’s just the Masonic Templars. Your bog-standard Craft Mason merely accepts that if he gives owt away his tongue will be ripped out by the root and buried in the sand of the sea at low-water mark.’

‘Oh well, that’s OK, then.’

Merrily thought of the Templar who claimed he’d been brought before Jacques de Molay at Garway and ordered to deny Him whom the image represents or get himself put in a sack and dumped somewhere less than congenial.

Huw was looking at her over his glasses.

‘The skull bit – it’s quite likely the original Templars swore a similar oath. Fighting-men in brutal times. The idea of Jahbulon is a total composite god. Three syllables, note, a trinity. Again, in line with what many scholars accept as Templar belief, which was a cobbling together of Christianity, paganism, Judaism and Islam. I believe some of the Templars were Gnostics. I think it’s likely that some did support the bloodline-of-Christ theory. And I think some of them were devoted to undermining Christianity from within.’

Mrs Morningwood got out her cigarettes.

‘Mind if I …?’

‘Aye, please yourself,’ Huw said.

‘Mr Owen … how many of these Knights Templar Masons are there?’

‘Thousands in this country. A proportion of them higher clergy.’

‘And they’re here? In Herefordshire?’

‘You could say that.’

‘OK.’ Merrily sat up. ‘Where’s this leading, Huw?’

‘All roads lead to the cathedral. But you knew that. You had it from Callaghan-Clarke.’

‘She said the Archdeacon was a Mason.’

‘Mervyn Neale is Grand Commander, I’m told.’

‘Of the Templar Masons?’

‘On an Archdeacon’s screw, you can afford the kit,’ Huw said.

THINK ABOUT IT, Huw said. The oldest cult in the West.

He talked. He was persuasive. Clouds had closed the sky’s one sunny opening, like a cut healed over, and the kitchen had gone grey. Merrily left the lamp off.

Occult: it meant hidden. Freemasonry was occult in every sense, Huw said. A template for all the nineteenth and early twentieth century magical orders – notably the Golden Dawn, where Crowley started, and W.B. Yeats. The symbols, the ceremonial, all there.

‘But how much of basic Masonry,’ Merrily asked him, ‘is actually based on the Templars?’

‘Some Masonic scholars would say the lot. The Temple of Solomon, all the architectural jargon? God with a set square and protractors?’

‘Where did you find all this out?’

‘General knowledge, lass.’

‘I mean about Mervyn Neale.’

Huw said that was fairly widely known, too. Not as secretive as they used to be, the Masons. Not in much of a position to be, now they’d been outed in popular books and most of the rituals were online. Taken Huw all of twenty minutes to find and download the Templar initiation ritual, with the sword and the skull and the threat of sunburned brains.

‘The Archdeacon,’ Merrily recalled, ‘was with the Bishop at the Duchy reception in Hereford, where Adam Eastgate first mentioned the problem with the Master House.’

‘Merv’s ears pricking up. Always been fascinated by Garway, the Masons. Funny you’ve not run into the bugger up there.’ Huw looked at Mrs Morningwood. ‘Where do you come into this, lass?’

‘ Lass .’ Mrs Morningwood smiled wistfully. ‘How kind.’

‘This Sycharth Gwilym on the square, you reckon?’

‘Ticks all the right boxes, I should’ve thought, Mr Owen. His particular business, in a city like Hereford …’

‘Still a lout of clout in Hereford, the Masons,’ Huw said. ‘So I’m told. Cathedral. Tory council. You going to see Gwilym today, Merrily?’

‘I’ll call The Centurion again. Go this afternoon, if he’s free.’

‘We’ll have a quick chat before you go. Just go over them family names again – Sycharth … Gruffydd … Fychan …?’