Tom Knox - The Babylon rite

Adam looked behind. It was a man in a blue uniform. Emerging from behind a door, and staring in their direction. He relaxed, slightly. ‘Nina, they are about to close early, it’s Christmas Eve. That’s just a guard, waiting for us to go.’

She shrugged, impatient and frustrated, and walked into the next cloister, the claustro de cimeterio. There were more odd, propped gravestones here, with more silent yet eloquent pentagrams carved on them.

Pentagrams, thought Adam, buttoning his coat tighter against the cold. How did pentagrams fit in? And the Grail? Those mysteries were still unsolved. And did he really believe his own Viking theory? It was possible, but it was also very tenuous, and it needed more evidence. There was still so much missing.

They had one more place to visit. Nina rejoined him and they paced to a stone staircase, and quickly climbed the helix of weathered cream marble into a spectacularly vivid and perfectly circular chapel, with a gilded ceiling raised on delicate pillars — a ceiling almost impossibly high above their heads.

‘Why’s it so tall?’

Adam consulted the little guidebook. ‘The Templars used to take communion here on horseback.’

‘What?’

‘Yes. Apparently. The knights would ride straight in and take mass on their stallions. And it’s round because it is modelled on the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, and maybe Solomon’s temple.’

Nina gazed up at the smoky distant colours of the ceiling. The whole chapel was ornately painted and silvered. Gold and sombre scarlets framed her black, black hair. ‘They really were nuts, weren’t they? Militant ravers. Murderous hippies. Taking communion on horseback. No wonder people suspected they were odd. This and the Babylon rite. Jesus.’ She paused. Then said, quite calmly, ‘Adam, I don’t buy our own theory. I don’t.’

‘Why?’

‘Because. Look at this. Look at this place.’ She gestured at the spectacular ceiling of the circular chapel. ‘This is stunning: this isn’t fake.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I don’t believe the Templars were pagan. There is no real evidence for it, yet there is enormous evidence that they were sincerely, even militantly Christian. They built churches everywhere. They were famously devout. They kissed the cross before going into battle. Yet we’re trying to claim they were secret Satanists with a sexy cat fetish? Pfft. It doesn’t pan out. It doesn’t make sense. Just disnae make any sense at all. ’

Her words died away with a faint echo. Adam sighed, deeply. If she was right, they were nowhere closer to solving the problem.

A secret that gets you killed. The Babylon rite. They’d come halfway across Europe and they were still lost in the ominous dark.

Nina was sitting on a bench, disconsolate. Adam turned and looked at the exquisite decoration of the pilasters, feeling as if he had nothing else to do. Vegetal motifs adorned every square centimetre: stone vines and painted garlands wove around stone men, snaking into their mouths, and out of their eyes. Just as with the Green Men in the Temple in London. Here were figures and faces intoxicated with the vines of life, spewing the tendrils, eating the greenery.

A memory returned, unwarranted. You’ve got to eat your greens. A man raping Hannah. Or, even worse, not raping her.

‘ Bom dia.’

Adam jumped, the adrenalin thumped. But it was just the guard, again; the official was keen to usher them out and go home for a Portuguese Christmas, for the consoada, the reunion of the family.

Hastily, they retreated to a bar in the old town by the ancient Tomar synagogue, a bar of drunks, of people on their own, people with no consoada, people like Nina and Adam.

Nina drank too much and talked about memories of her family. Playing chess with her dad when she was a little girl, playing footie with Hannah by the river in the little Borders town where they grew up. And as she drank more of the cheap vinho tinto, the night got darker and the bar noisier, and the lonely men stared at Nina, and ogled her white skin and her low top and short denim skirt with black tights, and her lips and teeth got more and more stained from the dark Douro wine, and her words became more and more slurred and Scottish. Brae. Birl. Skitie. Drookit.

And Adam sat there thinking how much she reminded him of Alicia, beautiful and drinking and funny and risky, and how much he couldn’t go there, not again, not ever again.

She stopped talking and gazed distantly at Adam in the blur of the fuzzy night and the tawdry skirl of Brazilian pop music. ‘Aren’t you ever going to try and fuck me?’

He stared her way. Embarrassed. And aroused. She was drunk and he could understand why she was drunk: the total horror of her recent experiences, the loss of her father and sister. He would be drunk every day in that situation. But this, here and now, was wrong.

‘I mean. Am I doing something wrong? Giving out the wrong signals? Don’t ya even want to kiss me at all?’

He said nothing because he was at a total loss. What should he say?

‘Fuck this, then, I’ll find someone else.’

She stood, quite swayingly drunk. Then she went to the door of the bar and pushed it. And she was gone.

For a few minutes he remained, riven by indecision. He should go after her. But he didn’t trust himself not to take advantage. He did want her. He’d been captured by her beauty that first time he saw her: the ravenly hair, the slender elusiveness. He wanted her more than he had wanted any woman since Alicia, maybe even more than Alicia. But if he touched her once he would never stop touching her. And if she tried to kiss him he would be unable to resist her red lips and her white skin, the colours of Christmas itself, of berries in the snow But what if she was in trouble? She was drunk, and he had to look after her. They had to look out for each other, they were still being hunted. She could be in trouble now.

As soon as he stepped outside the bar into the freezing old alley, by the ancient old synagogue, he saw her in the shadows. And the man holding her against a wall.

Rua Pablo Dias, Tomar, Portugal

Whether it was attempted rape or just a fumbled kiss Adam had no idea: in the dim lamplight, which he ran towards, he just saw a very big man, one of the thugs from the bar, in a dirty leather jacket. With his left hand the man was wrenching up Nina’s skirt.

She yelled, ‘Let go, leave me alone!’ Adam’s shout froze the chilly air. ‘ Leave her alone!’

The Portuguese man, tall, and thickset, turned and gazed at Adam. ‘You talking big?’ The man grinned. ‘Stupid English fuck, I open you up. Stick you in the ribs.’

He flourished something: Adam saw it was a knife, flashed from his inside pocket. That was why he was so confident, so brazen.

‘Adam, let’s go! Let’s just go!’ Nina cried.

But something in Adam said No. He’d been running away for weeks; maybe he’d been running away for years, ever since Alicia. Running from feelings, running from situations. And this nasty bastard, this boozed-up pig, reminded Adam of Ritter. Leather jacket, leather coat, creepy smile. Another arrogant bully. He gazed from the knife to the man; from the man to the knife. ‘Come on, then. Try me.’

The man waited half a second, then lunged.

The blow was wayward: Adam swerved the blade easily, then brought a forearm smashing down on the guy’s wrist. The knife twirled into the gutter. Then Adam leaned back a fraction and punched.

His fist connected so hard with the side of the man’s head it felt as if he was thumping steel, a literally stunning blow: his knuckles rang with the pain.

The reaction was instant: the man wheeled away, spinning on the spot, like an enormous toy. Eyes rolling.