The Templar Scroll: Book six in the series Page 13

  The Mason heard a second voice. It was equally casual and was clearly not directed to him.

  “You’re a boat builder, if everyone followed your advice you would have no business.”

  “True, but I have the good fortune to be able to make a living from the stupidity of others. Anyway, even reasonable men need to go to sea sometimes.”

  The Mason was floating in a warm fog, unable to see or feel anything. The voices sounded muffled and dislocated from reality. Could the men see him? For a moment the warm murmur of the men’s voices caused the Mason to drift away deeper into the comforting mist. Slowly and gently he floated back towards the voices. What they were saying made no sense, but they were obviously deep in a long-running discussion.

  I wonder if I am dead? thought the Mason. He could think of no other explanation. Is this all there is to death?

  “What I am saying is that anyone who gets into a boat without good reason is a fool, and what you are doing makes the worst fool in the world look like Solomon the Wise.”

  “What I am doing, Dimitrios, is the most reasonable thing in the world given the situation,” said the second voice.

  “I don’t want to know what the situation is. The further I am away from your madness the better.”

  The Mason found himself trying to piece together what he was hearing. Whatever the men were talking about they sounded as though they were enjoying the conversation, the words they used were harsh, but the tone was relaxed and they spoke like old friends. One of the voices was new to him, but the other was not. It was a voice he knew. Hanging in the fog, the Mason began to focus on the voices. He imagined himself underwater and pushed himself to where they seemed to be.

  A pale light glowed ahead of him and the closer he willed himself the brighter the glow became. He felt his eye flicker and a flash of bright light filled his brain. There was a rush of cool air in his nose, the smell of the sea. He blinked again. The voices stopped talking and one of the voices spoke. “He moved,” it said.

  Then it hit. An avalanche of pain crashed over the Mason. Every part of his body felt like it was being twisted and pierced, and there was no part of him that was not on fire. He tried to scream but his voice died in his throat. Desperate to escape the pain he tried to turn back into the fog, but it had washed away leaving him stranded, crushed under the weight of agony, pinned down into a bed of hot coals.

  He heard his own voice let out a low groan.

  “Get the smoke,” said one of the voices.

  A moment later a thick, sweet smell filled the Mason’s nose and the pain began to ebb.

  “Can you hear me?” said one of the voices. “It is me, Salvatore. You’re safe, alive. You’re wounded. Don’t try and move.”

  The Mason forced his eye open. Only the one would respond. Salvatore’s face swam into view, unfocused.

  “Enough of that smoke, Dimitrios, give him air.”

  The smell faded and the Mason managed to bring Salvatore into clear focus. Behind him stood a man he had never seen before, an olive-skinned man who held a smoking pot.

  The pain was there, but it sat at a distance. The smell was faintly familiar and the Mason looked at the smoking pot in the stranger’s hand. Salvatore followed his eyes.

  “Dimitrios brought this,” said Salvatore. “He calls it ‘The Breath of Herat’. He tells me that Arab physicians use it to stop pain.”

  The Mason tried to speak but found that his mouth failed to work for some reason. He tried to nod his head and the gesture sent a new wave of pain crashing through his body. He clenched his eyes shut until it passed. A moment later he managed to reopen his eyes.

  “You should have told him not to move his head,” said the stranger.

  Salvatore nodded in agreement and said, “Don’t move your head. You’re injured, you were knocked off the main wall.”

  The Mason kept his eyes fixed on Salvatore and concentrated on the muscles in his mouth. It took several tries before he managed to gasp out a single word.

  “Where?”

  “Where?” repeated Salvatore. “Where were you injured? You mean which part of your body? We don’t know, but it looks like all of you is broken.”

  “You were like a sack of broken pottery when we picked you up,” said the stranger. The Mason looked at him.

  “This is Dimitrios,” said Salvatore. “He built the frame you are in.”

  It was only now that the Mason became aware that his body was actually held in a tight grip everywhere he could feel.

  “I saw it in Smyrna once,” said Dimitrios. “They put a thief into a steel cage shaped like a man and left him hanging down by the harbor until he died. I thought it was best to stop you moving.”

  “Dimitrios built the whole thing in a few hours,” said Salvatore. He turned and spoke to Dimitrios. “Fetch the plate for me,” he said. Dimitrios nodded and walked out of view, then returned a moment later with a woman’s looking-plate. Salvatore took it and held it in front of the Mason’s face.

  The Mason had seen his own reflection a few times in the past, but nothing he saw now was familiar. The looking-plate reflected a twisted image of a man’s face. His skin was grey and lifeless, and the whole right side was bruised a livid blue and yellow. His face was surrounded by a crude wooden frame, its edges wrapped in rags. He looked deep into the reflection of his one good eye and saw more death than life.

  He took a long, slow breath into his body and, as gently as possible, tried to speak.

  His voice croaked out of his throat, and his lips struggled to shape the words. Salvatore leaned forward, turning his ear to the Mason.

  Again, the Mason drew in a long, slow breath, and this time he managed to form words as he exhaled.

  “The rest,” he said.

  Salvatore nodded and pulled the looking-plate away, angling it so that the Mason could look down the length of his body.

  He was naked, except for a loin cloth. His right arm and both legs were wrapped in bandages so tightly that they looked like bindings. His entire chest was a mass of bruises and the skin was bloody and torn in several places. His whole body was encased in the wooden frame that Dimitrios had built. He looked like the dried corpse of some saint in a reliquary.

  His arms stretched out directly on either side of him and his legs were tied to planks of planed timber.

  “We’re not sure if your arms and legs are all broken, but we think they probably are,” said Salvatore.

  “Most of your ribs are definitely broken,” said Dimitrios, “so we thought it best to stop any part of you moving.”

  The Mason only just managed to stop himself from nodding. He looked again into the plate at the reflection of his broken and torn body.

  He turned his one working eye to Salvatore. “Take me to the lepers,” he said.

  Control

  “What’s happening? You know what’s happening,” said Tilly, her voice rising sharply above the scream of the engines. “Tell me.”

  The aircraft was bouncing more violently now, buffeting from side to side and pitching forward and backwards. Their bodies were being lifted out of their seats and thrown back down every few seconds. Shouts and screams could be heard coming from the other sections of the aircraft.

  Sparke looked over at Tilly. “The pilot is diving, he needs to pick up speed I think,” he said. “Everything is going to be all right.”

  Not knowing what else to do, he reached over and squeezed her arm. Tilly looked back at him with an angry, bewildered expression. Sparke was not sure what was meant to happen when you put your hand on someone’s arm to comfort them, but it obviously had no effect on her. He smiled lamely and turned back to the discussion thread screen of his tablet.

  Sparke: “Situation in recovery. Aircraft experiencing a lot of change in pitch. Think we are all good.”

  Skywatcher: “I spoke to Israel Air Traffic Control by phone. Think your pilot needed a shake.”

  Sparke: “Must have been busy with the weather.”
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br />   Skywatcher: “You say you feel change?”

  Sparke: “More shaking, more engine noise, definitely in fast descent. All good?”

  Skywatcher: “Wait.”

  Sparke: “Waiting, what do you see?”

  Skywatcher: “Wait.”

  Sparke glanced out of the window just as a flash of lightning cut across the sky. Their aircraft had obviously dropped down below a layer of high altitude cloud. It stretched over them like a solid ceiling.

  For a second he could not process what he was seeing, then he realized that the plane had its nose in the air. It was not diving to recover flight speed, it was falling again.

  Sparke: “Think we’re still in trouble.”

  Skywatcher: “Data not good. Still not moving fast enough.”

  In the cockpit, the senior pilot looked across to his co-pilot.

  “Take your hand off the control. I have it now,” he said in a calm, almost friendly voice. “Sit back in your seat and get an update on the weather for us. Just sit back and take your hand off the control stick.” The young co-pilot gave no sign of having heard him. He had his hand on his control stick, pulling full back.

  The computer system that took instructions from the pilots now had two, directly contradictory, orders: the pilot ordering a steep dive and the co-pilot ordering a steep climb. The two control sticks were not linked mechanically, so whatever one pilot did it had no impact on what the other experienced.

  At first when the pilot had pushed his control forward the aircraft had lurched downwards, but almost immediately it balanced out the two commands and was now trying to fly straight and level, but without adequate airspeed it simply resumed its flat stall.

  The pilot looked at the altimeter. They were at eight thousand feet. A skydiver takes five or six seconds to fall a thousand feet so Flight 771 had less than a minute before it hit the sea. Assuming there was some lift still pushing up against the wings they might have double that.

  Panic was not a new thing for the pilot. He had experienced that feeling, the loss of control, the snapping of logic that could overwhelm anyone given the right circumstances. He had learned his flying in the military, trained partly by the British Royal Air Force who had seen their share of war. His education had been designed by men who had a familiarity with extreme situations. They had known that the only way to train young pilots on how to deal with disaster was to drill them on basic flying techniques in a way that blocked out the logical processes that could kill you. He was taught to respond to situations without thought.

  His young co-pilot had trained the modern way, through commercial aviation schools that focused more on getting pilots through flight exams as fast as possible rather than molding real pilots.

  When the pilot had thrown the plane into a steep dive his co-pilot had instinctively responded by doing the thing that felt right. He pointed the aircraft upwards, sending it plunging down towards the sea. The co-pilot was frozen into a control posture that would kill everyone on board and no logical order would break through the wall of panic that enveloped him.

  The captain reached down and unfastened his seat belt, an act that was, in itself, a punishable breach of protocol. Keeping his hand on the control stick, he lifted himself out of the seat and reached across the narrow gap that separated the two men.

  Lepers

  “Why is your hair always wet?”

  The voice woke the Mason instantly, more for its familiarity than its tone or volume. It was a voice from an old version of his life.

  “Forget my hair, what can you do for him?”

  The Mason opened his one good eye and looked at the group of men standing around him. Salvatore was in the middle and, as the voice had said, his hair was plastered to his forehead. Next to Salvatore was the olive-skinned man who had built the frame that held him. To his left stood the tall, slim figure of Whitehead, the Grand Master of the Order of Lazarus.

  This time his waking had not been accompanied by a wave of agony. Instead, the Mason could feel specific pains: his chest felt as though it was being squeezed by a giant hand and his left shoulder throbbed with a dull, burning hurt.

  “He’s awake again,” said the olive-skinned man.

  “Ha, you’re alive, are you? You take a lot of killing,” said the leper knight.

  The Mason took a slow breath, and said, “How can I sleep with a gang of crows like you croaking around me?”

  “You need more of the smoke?” said the other man. Dimitrios, thought the Mason, he had heard Salvatore call him Dimitrios.

  “Thank you, no,” said the Mason softly.

  “Pain is good for the healing,” said Whitehead.

  “My good, Brother Whitehead,” said the Mason, “how do you come to join us here? I told them to take me to you. I did not think you could enter the main castle.”

  “Your boy here,” he gestured towards Salvatore, “threw a cloak over my head and made me carry a bundle of straw on my back so that no one would pay me any heed.”

  “You told me to take you to the Legion,” said Salvatore. “But we thought it best to bring the Grand Master to you instead.”

  Whitehead leaned forward and looked closely at the Mason’s wounds.

  “You can move your fingers and toes?” he said. The Mason paused for a moment, then flexed each of his hands. There was no increase in pain. Then he made his feet wiggle slightly.

  “Move your left hand,” said Whitehead.

  “I did,” replied the Mason. He noticed Whitehead and Salvatore exchange a glance.

  Somewhere outside, the Mason could hear a faint, but clear noise. It was irregular, but constant, like the sound of rocks breaking.

  “Catapults,” said the Mason.

  “The Arabs have set up a very decent barrage,” said Whitehead. “You would approve, a good rate of fire and well aimed. Good enough to hit you at any rate. They’re keeping our men’s heads down as they start their tunneling. From what I can tell they are going for the Accursed Tower.”

  “A good move,” said the Mason.

  Whitehead nodded. “Meanwhile our leaders have us doing nothing,” he said. “It is as it always is.” He straightened up from his inspection of the Mason’s broken body. “More reinforcements keep arriving, the sea lanes are open, but there is nothing for them to do except drink and hide from Saracen missiles. There is talk of a great counter-attack by our forces, and talk of parley.”

  “And you?” said the Mason. “Your Order?”

  “Us? The Order of Lazarus is kept are arm’s length, we are lepers, we are not here to parley, and we are not here to sit on councils of war. They have given us the old bastion attached to this castle. It’s not so bad. We are forbidden to take a place on the outer walls in case we contaminate the others. We cannot share the Templar quarters, so they have found a place for us in the least defensible part of the inner circle. A good enough place to die.”

  “It is,” said the Mason. “It is a good place to die. Your brothers are ready?”

  “More than ready. The few we could not carry here from Cyprus, the weakest, wept when we left to come here. A fast death in combat is infinitely preferable to the death we have in store for us. Leprosy is not a kind killer. This battle will be the end for us. We brought the dearest of our treasures here so that we can die close to the things we love the most.”

  “Even the chalice?” said the Mason.

  “Even the chalice. Would any other Christian touch it? It can share our fate,” said Whitehead. He turned to Salvatore and looked at him. “You call yourself Salvatore and you have the accent of a Tuscan.”

  Salvatore returned the look, and said, “Yes, I am Salvatore di Radda. Why do you ask?”

  “I think that perhaps you are the brother of the famous Father Massimo di Radda of the Inquisition.” It was not a question, but the silence that followed it forced Salvatore to reply.

  “He is my brother but my family is the Order now. I do not speak for him and he does not speak for me. Why
do you ask?”

  “Why?” said Whitehead. “You should know about your famous brother. Do you not know that he has made it known that he believes that lepers are tainted by God, that we are damned to this disease as a punishment?”

  Salvatore looked at the face of the leper knight. The skin on his face had flaked and swollen to such a degree that he could never have recognized the man had he ever known him. He knew from the Mason that he had been high-born and an admired warrior before the disease claimed him. Like the rest of his order, he had chosen to live and serve with other victims of the illness rather than retire to some remote property as other rich men had done.

  “Master Whitehead,” said Salvatore, “you are a friend of the Mason and that makes you a friend of mine for as long as you wish to take my friendship. If you need some proof of this, ask for it. If you take me at my word, then know that you have a brother in me.”

  “So, you don’t believe that we are cursed by God?” said Whitehead, his tone lightening.

  “I know that the disease that struck you and your brothers is well known in the Holy Land but is less seen in northern lands. Either there are fewer sinful men in the north or the disease is bound to these hot lands. I know that anyone, rich or poor, can be struck down, even kings, even bishops. It is an illness like any other.”

  Whitehead turned to the Mason and said, “You taught him well.”

  “No,” said the Mason, “he came to us like that. Now what are we to do with this broken wreck of a body of mine?”

  Everyone in the room now looked towards Whitehead. The illness that plagued them had made the Knights of Lazarus as knowledgeable as any Christian on medical matters. The leper peered again at the Mason locked into his wooden frame.

  “Your friend here,” said Whitehead, gesturing towards Dimitrios, “saved your life. By some freak of luck it looks as though all of your major organs are still working, but with all the broken bones in your body any movement could have pierced them.”