Paul Christopher: The Sword of the Templars

“Only one way to find out,” answered Holliday. He put the bike in gear, eased off on the brake and opened the throttle. They turned down the road leading to the crater. Five minutes later Holliday slowed and stopped again as they climbed a final hill. There, below them, almost a thousand feet deep, lay the bottom of the crater, a gigantic punchbowl amphitheatre at least two miles across, the walls rising, green and steeply sloping, on three sides. At the very bottom of the crater were two small lakes, and between them on a connecting strip of pasture they could see a small cottage surrounded by a stone wall. The priest’s house.

Suddenly, out of the rags and tatters of fog and cloud there was an alien sound: the steady drumming beat of an aircraft engine. A few seconds later Holliday and Peggy spotted the source of the noise-a big Cessna Caravan flying low over the caldera, looping south almost directly overhead.

The colors of the aircraft’s livery were green and red, not the simple blue on white of SATA airline; not a scheduled flight-a charter. Holliday looked up uneasily as the airplane droned off into the distance. He tried to shake off the feeling of apprehension; the flight was probably just a group of tourists on a day-tripper outing to the little island. He dropped the motorcycle into gear with a bone-jarring clank, and they headed down into the crater, engine coughing and rattling as they went.

The cottage was small and typically Portuguese: whitewashed lava stone and mortar, gently sloping roof of terra-cotta tiles, shuttered windows bracketing a sun-worn door of bleached planking. A man stood in the doorway, watching them approach, one hand up, shading his eyes.

He was very tall, at least six five and slightly stooped. His shoulders were as broad as a stevedore’s, and he was barrel-chested with heavy arms and massive, stoneworker’s hands. His face was square, the eyes deep-set with dark rings around them. He was clean-shaven, the dark stubble flecked with gray. His hair was thick and white as snow. The man was wearing faded twill trousers and a rough cotton shirt, faded and thin. He wore sandals on his feet. At a guess he was in his early sixties and clearly very fit.

Holliday braked, and the old motorcycle ground to a halt on the dark gravel path in front of the cottage. He climbed out of the saddle, and Peggy levered herself out of the sidecar. The tall man in the doorway smiled and stepped forward, his hand extended. He spoke.

“Doctor Holliday, Miss Blackstock. I’ve been expecting you. Welcome to my home. My name is Helder Rodrigues.”

“You know who we are?” Peggy asked, surprised.

“Of course,” said the tall, stooped man. “Very little goes on in Corvo that I am not privy to.”

“You said you were expecting us,” said Holliday.

“Yes, for some time now,” nodded Rodrigues. When he spoke it was without accent, the voice cultured and educated. The white-haired man might live in a cottage in the middle of nowhere, but it was clear that in his time he had traveled the world.

He stepped aside and gestured.

“Please, come in,” he said. “I was just making coffee for us.”

They stepped inside. The interior of the cottage was plainly furnished. An open fireplace stood at one end of the single room, and an old-fashioned trundle bed was fitted into the wall opposite. A very old-looking double-barreled shotgun hung on pegs above the fireplace. In front of the hearth was a large, oval braided rug, the once-bright twisted rags faded to soft pastels. There was a plain wooden table in the middle of the room with four chairs around it. Kitchen things were arranged on a counter under one window and a small desk and a shelf of books beneath the other.

There were a few electrical fixtures, but most of the lights seemed to be glass-chimneyed, oil-fed hurricane lanterns. Holliday hadn’t seen any electrical wires on the road so the cottage had to be powered with a generator. There was no television and no obvious telephone anywhere. A very old-looking dark brown Bakelite radio sat on the windowsill.

Rodrigues indicated that they should sit down, and then busied himself finding cups and pouring coffee from the old enameled pot hanging over the coals in the open fireplace.

“Expecting us for some time?” Holliday said. “How’s that, Father Rodrigues?”

“Not Father, Doctor Holliday, not for many years. Just call me Helder.”

“Why a Dutch name like Helder?” Peggy asked.

The big man shrugged.

“The Dutch and the Portuguese were both great sea-faring nations in times gone by. A Dutch ship in a Portuguese port, a Portuguese ship in a Dutch port. Who knows how the world entangles itself?” He laughed. “Den Helder is a small village in North Holland, that I know. I believe the name comes from the word ‘Helledore,’ which means ‘the Gates of Hell.’ ”

“Interesting,” said Holliday. “But it still doesn’t answer the question of why you’ve been expecting us for some time. I didn’t even know where Corvo was until a few days ago.”

“You don’t need to know where you’re going to get there,” said Rodrigues obscurely with a soft smile. “I knew you would get here eventually because I knew the kind of man you were.”

“And how did you know that?” Holliday asked.

“Because I knew what kind of man your uncle was.”

“You knew Grandpa?” Peggy asked.

“I knew him quite well,” said Rodrigues. “I read him while I was at Cambridge studying Classical Archaeology. I met him later in Madrid, which is where we became friends. We ran into each other regularly over the years. Cairo, Athens, Berlin, even Washington.”

Washington, thought Holliday. So the priest had also been a spy, but for who?

“But why did you expect us in particular?” he asked.

“Because I heard that Henry had died,” answered Rodrigues. “I knew that you would come eventually.”

“How does that follow?” Peggy asked.

“I knew the sword would bring you,” said Rodrigues simply. He sipped his coffee, looking at them over the rim of his cup, dark eyes twinkling.

“You knew about the sword?” Holliday said, stunned.

“Four of them actually,” offered Rodrigues. “Aos, Hesperios, Boreas, and Anatos. The so-called Xiphкphoros Peritios Anemos.”

“East, West, North, and South, the Swords of the Four Winds in ancient Greek,” translated Holliday.

“Quite so,” said Rodrigues. “The benefits of a classical education, I see,” he smiled. “The Swords of the Four Winds. The sword your uncle had was named Hesperios, the Sword of the West. It was carried by a man named the Chevalier Guillaume de Gisors, not to be confused with the man of the same name who is sometimes reputedly referred to as a Prior of Sion. This Gisors was a simple knight in the service of Henry II of Jerusalem. The city of course had fallen long before, but by then Saladin’s treasure had been removed, first to Castle Pelerin and then to Cyprus.”

“Saladin’s treasure?” Holliday asked. “Richard the Lionheart’s Saladin?”

“His full name was Salah al-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub, a warrior born in what is now known as Iraq. Tikrit to be precise.”

“But how is it his treasure?” Holliday said. “Didn’t the Knights Templar excavate the treasure from the Temple of Solomon?”

“The Templars never excavated anything from Jerusalem,” said Rodrigues. “Saladin was no fool. He knew that he couldn’t hold on to Jerusalem forever. Eventually it would fall again, and given the emotions involved it would probably be pillaged and sacked by whoever held it next.

“Saladin knew bloodshed was almost inevitable, but he knew that the treasure had to be saved above all else. At that point the Knights Templar were the greatest united force Saladin had to negotiate with; on the promise that they would neither reveal the origins of the treasure nor disperse it he secretly let the Templars remove it from the city. Had the negotiations ever come to light it is probable that both Saladin and the Templar leaders would have been executed for treason.”