Tom Knox - The Babylon rite

The immensity of inland Spain devoured them. This time Nina slept as he drove the dusty windswept regions. Navarre, Rioja, Castile — they were heading south into wilder, truer Spain. The first glimpse of mountains, far away, broke the horizon; a welcome sight after the brown and endless Castilian plateau. But still far away.

As evening fell they arrived in a town which was only half built, surrounded by white, hollow, unfinished concrete apartment blocks stretching into the cold semi-desert where no one lived, the abortions of a property bust.

They drove a couple of kilometres and found a turning to a motorway hotel, another Ibis: same soap, same unsatisfactory narrow pillows in their rooms. Supper was a few average tapas and cheap Rioja in an almost deserted hotel bar where they talked about the Templars, not just because it was central to their pursuit but because it allowed them not to talk directly about what had happened.

Nina finished one saucer of patatas bravas, and napkinned the hot tomato sauce from her lips. ‘So we know the Templars allegedly had a Babylon rite. Some of the medieval chroniclers actually called it this — “a Babylonian rite or ritual”. Referring to the, y’know, whole gay sex thing. The initiation ritual.’

‘Yes. The phrase was pejorative, hinting at the homosexual acts. So, what we need to know is, where did this initiation ritual come from, and what did it comprise? Possibly some pagan gods; that seems likely. And they must have got it from Peru, the Moche. There must be a link. Otherwise your dad would not have gone there.’

‘And this pagan ritual must have hypnotized them, or put them in a trance…’

Adam looked at her. ‘And of course this Templar rite must have been the same ritual, or very similar, to that enacted by the kids in London. The suicides?’

‘Yep.’ She drank half of her glass of wine. The barman was staring at them with definite interest as he counted the day’s meagre takings. There was just one other customer, playing the fruit machine, fruitlessly. The pings and electronic whistles filled the bar.

‘By the way the ritual also explains the-’ she stabbed at the last chunk of fried chorizo, glistening with oil, ‘-the violence and courage of the Templars.’

‘Sorry?’

‘We know they were famously brave, right? A few of them on the battlefield could turn a whole battle in favour of the Christians, even if they were totally outnumbered.’ She reached for her bag and brought out Archibald McLintock’s Guide. ‘Listen, my dad says in the intro, “In the early years of the Latin East, the Templars quickly developed a fearsome reputation as the best-trained soldiers the Franks possessed, showing an almost suicidal bravery at times. This reached an apogee under the Mastership of Gerard de Ridefort, who died during a reckless attack at Acre.”’ Her eyes met his.

‘An almost suicidal bravery…?’ He swallowed the very last of his Rioja. ‘Yes. If they were aroused to a homoerotic frenzy by these rituals, then they would have yearned for pain and violence, even to the point of death.’

‘So the only question is what the actual ritual was, what they believed, what exactly they worshipped. And of course how this hypnosis worked. Still quite a big list.’ She sighed.

Adam was writing, and nodding. Then he closed his notebook. Nina stood up. They kissed formally, even chastely, like brother and sister. The kiss was somehow too chaste: a new awkwardness. And then they went to their separate rooms. Adam took with him another bottle of Leclerc Rioja, and drank half of it in his room, watching a Spanish lottery show on the cheap Korean TV, as he waited for sleep. For the inevitable dreams about Alicia, wandering around a school, looking for him, naked. He’d been having this dream for a week. Every single night.

The dream was cruel because sometimes the school turned into a white pristine spaceship and still he couldn’t talk to her, and then he realized why he couldn’t talk to her: because she was outside the spaceship, beyond the thick glass, she was outside and floating, against the stars, floating away and smiling. And he was inside, trapped.

And then at 4 a.m. he woke, startled, horrified, panting. Horrified by what? A frightening noise: a rat? Something scratching at the door? Someone trying to break in? The man with the gun going to slice out his heart? Adam’s pulse was frenzied and erratic. He reached for the light, then went to the door. Outside, an Ibis corridor carpeted with Ibis carpets stretched down to the Ibis fire door. He heard a door slamming downstairs. He sat on the bed for an hour, staring at nothing. And then realized what the dream meant. It was something Alicia had said once: that we are all, all mortal humans, like astronauts, heading on a mission into deep space, heading for the stars: every day we live, we are all on a journey to a place we do not know, on a mission from which we can never return. Sailing for the edge of the world. Goodbye.

Adam felt like crying. Alicia. But instead he slept again.

In the morning a scratchy sun was cold, trapped behind the glazing of thin wintry clouds. The tawny Spanish plains stretched to a horizon of pylons. Then those far, tempting mountains.

Adam’s mind was more focussed. Perhaps interpreting the dream had helped. He said, firmly, ‘America.’

Nina frowned. ‘What?

‘America! That’s still the other big mystery. How did the Templars get all this stuff from South America, from the Moche, from Peru? Columbus didn’t reach Hispaniola till, what, 1489? The Templars were long defunct before by then. How did this ritual, this sacred trance, get from Peru to Europe, before Columbus?’

Nina shrugged, inertly. She looked as if she had been crying again, in the night. Adam pursued his own thoughts.

By the afternoon the sulking, ugly plains had at last given way to those prettier, if chilly, hills, and to murmurous wind-bitten pine forests. Here was their destination, a village called Trevejo. They parked and disembarked.

The wind was cutting as they walked through the humble streets, staring in perplexity at the low stone hovels, made from field boulders. These incredibly mean, almost Neolithic thoroughfares apparently led to the Templar church and castle.

The Templars built here in hilly Trevejo, Adam knew from his research, because it was the frontier of the Reconquista, when Spain and Portugal were wrested back from the Moor. The castle was built during another violent Templar crusade against the heathen.

As they walked, he thought of that effigy in Templar church: the knight still clutching his sword, eight hundred years later. Ready to fight for Christ, entranced by the violence of his trade.

He already knew about Extremadura: he’d been here on holiday years before. This land was notably poor today, just as it had always been. This was Extremadura, literally the Land of Extremity, a place of impoverishment and drought and burning sun, yet rich in men and valour.

Extremadura, the lost realm of Spain, was the womb of warriors. This was where Habsburg eagles soared over bleak little villages, which somehow bred men who conquered entire empires. Pizarro. Valdivia. Alvarado. Cortes. All of them came from here. Together, these men had defeated the mighty Aztec and the imperial Inca, together these men from poor, provincial sun-lashed Extremadura had vanquished two continents, discovered new deserts and jungles, and sailed the entire Amazon for the very first time.

Adam mused. He thought very, very hard as they walked to the castle.

Extremadura was also the last refuge of the Spanish Templars. A small town south of here — Jerez de los Caballeros — Jerez of the Knights — was a town once owned by the Templars, and it was the place the Templars had made their final stand against the kings of Spain: one tower of the Templar castle was still known as the Bloody Tower, because this was where the cornered Templars threw themselves off the battlements, hurling themselves to their deaths, rather than be captured.