Julia Navarro - The Brotherhood Of The Holy Shroud

"Sit down," she invited Ana. "So you're a friend of Jean's?"

"Well, actually we met just recently, but we hit it off, I guess, and he's been a huge help to me."

"That's Jean," Paul said. "He's like one of the three musketeers-all for one and one for all-though he's not aware of it, I think. But he's a great judge of character. Now, Ana, I want you to tell Elisabeth everything you've told me."

The situation began to make Ana nervous. Paul Bisol seemed to be a nice enough person, but there was something about him she didn't like; Elisabeth, too, gave Ana an uneasy feeling, though she couldn't put her finger on why. She just knew she felt like getting out of there as fast as she could. Her years as a reporter had given her a finely honed sense of the dubious and dangerous, and she felt herself sailing into uncharted waters with these two. But she shook off the feeling, at least for the moment, and launched again into her suspicions about the Holy Shroud.

Elisabeth, too, listened without interruption, as her husband had done. When Ana finished, the couple looked at each other, obviously weighing wordlessly how to proceed. Finally Elisabeth broke the tense silence.

"Well, Ana, in my opinion, you're on the right track. We've never made this particular connection, but if you say that you've found links between the Templar de Charney and the shroud family in the Lirey archives, well, then… it seems clear that the two Geoffroys were somehow related. So the shroud really did belong to the Templars. I'm not surprised; that fits with indications we've found, too, coming at it from other directions. Why was it in the hands of Geoffroy de Charney? Off the top of my head I'd say that since Philippe le Beau wanted to grab the Temple treasure for himself, the Grand Master may have decided to send it to a safe place. It's so logical-Jacques de Molay ordered Geoffroy de Charney to carry the shroud away to his own lands and secure it there, and years later it turned up in the hands of a relative, the other Geoffroy. There's always been talk of a mysterious treasure associated with the Temple, and the shroud must have been that treasure-after all, they all took it to be authentic."

"But it isn't," Ana replied, playing the devil's advocate. 'And they would have known it wasn't. The Holy Shroud dates to the thirteenth or fourteenth century, so…"

"Yes, you're right, but it may have been represented to the Templars as authentic in the Holy Land. Back then it was hard to determine whether a relic was authentic or a fake. What seems clear is that they believed it to be real when they sent it off to be safeguarded. You're right about this, Ana, I'm sure of it. But you have to be careful; you don't get near the Templars without risk. We have a good genealogist, one of the best, and he'll help you find out if there are other leads out there. As for your current friend in the family, give me an hour or two and I should be able to tell you a bit more about him."

As Ana left Elisabeth's office with Paul, she told him she'd be back that afternoon to meet with the genealogist. She'd see then what Elisabeth had found on the man she was sure had visited his family estates in Lirey not so very long ago-Padre Yves de Charny, the secretary to the cardinal of Turin.

She wandered around Paris aimlessly, turning over in her mind everything she knew and had guessed. Around noon she sat in the window alcove of a bistro and had lunch, reading the Spanish newspapers she'd found at a kiosk on the street. It had been days since she'd had any news of what was happening in Spain or Italy. She hadn't even called her newspaper, or Santiago, although she sensed that the Art Crimes investigation must be coming to its end. She was convinced that the Templars had had something to do with the shroud, that as popular suspicions through the centuries suggested, it had been they who had brought it back from Constantinople. She remembered the night in the Dorchester in London, when it had hit her as she looked through her appointment book that the handsome French priest in Turin, the cardinal's secretary, was named de Charny. Until now she'd had no solid lead, just that it appeared that Padre Yves had visited Lirey several years ago-if there was one thing she was sure of, it was that it had been he. There just weren't that many priests so strikingly handsome that everyone who mentioned them said how good-looking they were.

It was possible that Padre Yves was related to the Templars, but was it a relation to the distant past, to long-dead knights, or to something happening now? To people- Templars -living now?

But that would mean nothing, she told herself. She could just picture the handsome priest with his innocent smile telling her that, yes, his ancestors fought in the Crusades, and that indeed his family came from the region of Troyes. And what of it? What could that possibly prove? Nothing, it proved nothing. She certainly couldn't picture him lighting fires in the cathedral. But her instinct told her that there was a thread that led somewhere-a thread leading from Geoffroy de Charney to Geoffroy de Charny that then wound in twists and circles for generations until it came to Padre Yves.

She hardly ate. She phoned Jean and felt better the minute she heard his voice reassuring her that, even if Paul Bisol was a litde strange, he was a good man, and she could trust him.

At three she went back to the Enigmas offices. When she arrived, Paul was waiting for her in Elisabeth's office.

"Well, we did turn up something," Elisabeth said. "This priest of yours belongs to a very well-connected family. His older brother was a representative to the French National Assembly and is now in the cabinet, and his sister is a justice of the Supreme Court. They come from the lesser ranks of the nobility, although since the French Revolution the de Charnys, no e, live like perfect bourgeois. Yves has protectors high up in the Vatican-Cardinal Visier-in charge of church finances, no less-is a friend of his older brother. But the bombshell is that Edouard, our genealogist, who's been working for three hours on the family tree, is almost certain that this Yves de Charny is indeed a descendant of the de Charneys, with an e, who fought in the Crusades and, even more important, is a very close descendant of the Geoffroy de Charney who was precept of the Temple in Normandy and died at the stake alongside Jacques de Molay."

'Are you sure?" Ana asked, uncertain whether to believe her or not.

'Absolutely," replied Elisabeth without the slightest hesitation.

Paul Bisol saw the doubt reflected in Ana's eyes.

'Ana, Edouard is a historian, a professor at the university. I know Jean is a litde doubtful about our magazine, but I assure you, we've never published anything we can't prove. This is a magazine that investigates enigmas of history and tries to find answers. The answers are always developed and provided by historians, sometimes aided by an investigative team made up of reporters. We have never had to print a retraction or a correction. And we never print anything we aren't absolutely sure of. If somebody has a hypothesis, we print it as a hypothesis, never as a fact.

"You maintain that some of the mishaps in the cathedral of Turin have something to do with events in the past. I don't know-we've never looked into it. You think that the Templars were the owners of the shroud, and there you may be right, just as you're apparently right that this Padre Yves comes from a very ancient family of aristocrats and Templars. You wonder whether the Templars have any relation to the accidents in the cathedral. I can't answer that question-I don't know, but I very much doubt it. I honestly don't think that the Templars have any interest in damaging the shroud, and one thing I can assure you is that if they wanted it for themselves, they'd already have it. They are a very powerful organization, more powerful than you can imagine-right, Elisabeth?"