Steve Berry - The Templar legacy

They trudged across the hard ground, grit crunching with every step.

"Sauniere was once buried here, too, beside her, but the mayor said the grave was in danger from treasure hunters." She shook her head. "So a few years ago they dug the priest up and moved him into a mausoleum in the garden. Now it costs three euros to see his grave… the price of a corpse's safety, I assume."

He caught her sarcasm.

She pointed at the grave. "I remember coming here once years ago. When Lars first arrived in the late sixties, nothing but two tattered crosses marked the graves, overgrown with vines. No one tended to them. No one cared. Sauniere and his lover were totally forgotten."

An iron chain encircled the plot and fresh flowers sprouted from concrete vases. Malone noticed the epitaph on one of the stones, barely legible.

"I read somewhere that the marker was too fragile to move," she said, "so they left it. More for the tourists to see."

He noticed the mistress's gravestone. "She wasn't a target of opportunists, too?"

"Apparently not, since they left her here."

"Wasn't it a scandal, their relationship?"

She shrugged. "Whatever wealth Sauniere acquired, he spread around. The water tower back at the car park? He built it for the town. He also paved roads, repaired houses, made loans to people in trouble. So he was forgiven whatever weakness he may have possessed. And it was not uncommon for priests of that time to have female housekeepers. Or at least that's what Lars wrote in one of his books."

A group of noisy visitors rounded the corner behind them and headed for the grave.

"Here they come to gawk," Stephanie said, a touch of contempt in her voice. "I wonder if they would act that way back home, in the cemetery where their loved ones are buried?"

The boisterous crowd drew close, and a tour guide started talking about the mistress. Stephanie retreated and Malone followed.

"This is nothing but an attraction to them," Stephanie said in a low voice. "Where the abbe Sauniere found his treasure and supposedly decorated his church with messages that somehow led the way to it. Hard to imagine that anyone buys that crap."

"Isn't that what Lars wrote about?"

"To an extent. But think about it, Cotton. Even if the priest found a treasure, why would he leave a map for someone else to find it? He built all of this during his lifetime. The last thing he'd want was for someone to jump his claim." She shook her head. "It all makes for great books, but it's not real."

He was about to inquire further when he noticed her gaze drift to another corner of the cemetery, past a set of stone stairs that led down to the shade of an oak towering above more markers. In the shadows, he spied a fresh grave decorated with colorful bouquets, the silvery lettering on the headstone bright against a crisp gray matte.

Stephanie marched toward it and he followed.

"Oh, dear," she said, concern in her face.

He read the marker. ERNST SCOVILLE. Then he did the math from the dates noted. The man was seventy-three years old when he died.

Last week.

"You knew him?" he asked.

"I talked with him three weeks ago. Just after receiving Lars's journal." Her attention stayed riveted on the grave. "He was one of those people I mentioned who worked with Lars that we needed to speak with."

"Did you tell him what you planned to do?"

She slowly nodded. "I told him about the auction, the book, and that I was coming to Europe."

He couldn't believe what he was hearing. "I thought you said last night no one knew anything."

"I lied."

DE ROQUEFORT WAS PLEASED. HIS FIRST CONFRONTATION WITH the seneschal had been a resounding victory. Only six masters had ever been successfully challenged, those men's sins ranging from thievery, to cowardice, to lust for a woman, all from centuries ago, in the decades after the Purge, when the brotherhood was weak and chaotic. Unfortunately, the penalty of a challenge was more symbolic than punitive. The master's tenure would still be noted within the Chronicles, his failures and accomplishments duly recorded, but a notation would proclaim that his brothers had deemed him unworthy of memory.

In recent weeks his lieutenants had made sure the requisite two-thirds percent would vote and send a message to the seneschal. That undeserving fool needed to know how difficult the fight ahead was going to be. True, the insult of being challenged mattered not to the master. He would be entombed with his predecessors no matter what. No, the denial was more a way to deflate the supposed successor-and to motivate allies. It was an ancient tool, created by Rule, from a time when honor and memory meant something. But one he'd successfully resurrected as the opening salvo in a war that should be over by sunset.

He was going to be the next master.

The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Solomon had existed, unbroken, since 1118. Philip IV of France, who'd borne the despicable misnomer of Philip the Fair, had tried in 1307 to exterminate them. But like the seneschal, he'd also underestimated his opponent, and managed only to send the Order underground.

Once, tens of thousands of brothers manned commanderies, farms, temples, and castles on nine thousand estates scattered across Europe and the Holy Land. Just the sight of a brother knight clad in white and wearing the red cross patee brought fear to enemies. Brothers were granted immunity from excommunication and were not required to pay feudal duties. The Order was allowed to keep all its spoils from war. Subject only to the pope, the Knights Templar was a nation unto itself.

But no battles had been fought for seven hundred years. Instead, the Order had retreated to a Pyrenean abbey and cloaked itself as a simple monastic community. Connections to the bishops in Toulouse and Perpignan were maintained, and all of the required duties were performed for the Roman Church. Nothing occurred that would draw attention, set the abbey apart, or cause people to question what may be happening within its walls. All brothers took two vows. One to the Church, which was done for necessity. The other to the brotherhood, which meant everything. The ancient rites were still conducted, though now under cover of darkness, behind thick ramparts, with the abbey gates bolted.

And all for the Great Devise.

The paradoxical futility of that duty disgusted him. The Order existed to guard the Devise, but the Devise would not exist but for the Order.

A quandary, for sure.

But still a duty.

His entire life had been only the preamble to the next few hours. Born to unknown parents, he was raised by the Jesuits at a church school near Bordeaux. In the Beginning, brothers were mainly repentant criminals, disappointed lovers, outcasts. Today they came from all walks. The secular world spawned the most recruits, but religious society produced its true leaders. The past ten masters all claimed a cloistered education. His had begun at the university in Paris, then been completed at the seminary in Avignon. He'd stayed on there and taught for three years before the Order approached him. Then he'd embraced Rule with an unfettered enthusiasm.

During his fifty-six years he'd never known the flesh of a woman, nor had he been tempted by a man. Being elevated to marshal, he knew, had been a way for the former master to placate his ambition, perhaps even a trap whereby he might generate enough enemies that further advancement would be impossible. But he'd used his position wisely, making friends, building loyalties, accumulating favors. Monastic life suited him. For the past decade he'd pored through the Chronicles and was now versed in every aspect-good and bad-of the Order's history. He would not repeat the mistakes of the past. He fervently believed that, in the Beginning, the brotherhood's self-imposed isolation was what hastened its downfall. Secrecy bred both an aura and suspicion-a simple step from there to recrimination. So it must end. Seven hundred years of silence needed to be broken.