The Templar Scroll: Book six in the series Page 5

  Sparke peered at the surface. At first glance they looked like lead, but, what he had at first thought were random scratches were in fact rough engravings. He pulled his smartphone from his pocket and flipped on the application that worked as a magnifier. It took a second to focus, but the image soon jumped onto his phone screen.

  It was the image of a man, tonsured like a monk with one hand pointing upwards. Scratched around the image in a circle were the words, “Fra Muratore”.

  Killing

  Some massacres don’t need planning. The courtyard crowd erupted when they heard that the sheriff was being attacked. It took seconds before the first blade had been drawn and plunged into one of the Arabs. His scream flashed through the mob which turned into a mass of struggling men before his body hit the ground.

  There were at least four Christians for every Muslim and everybody was armed. A knot of Muslims managed to push their way to a corner where they stood, backs to the wall, their blades flashing, keeping the angry mob at bay.

  The appearance of the sheriff, alive and well, at the top of the steps did nothing to slow the violence.

  “The sheriff is saved!” shouted a voice. Somehow, this brought new vigor to the killing. Half a dozen foot soldiers ran into the courtyard, each carrying their eight-foot-long pikestaffs. No orders were required for them to line up against the Arabs in the corner and charge. These weapons could spit a horse so the lightly armed and unarmored Arabs stood no chance. As they fell before the pikemen, a wave of furious Christians washed over them, hacking at the prone bodies, soaking the mass of figures in blood.

  During this slaughter Ibrahim’s father and his group had been trapped in the sheriff’s chamber. Now the door was flung back and the sheriff’s men at arms began to throw them, one at a time, down the stairs to the mob.

  A roar greeted each victim as he was pitched down the stone steps, tripping and stumbling into the waiting blades below. It took a while for them all to die. A bloodied head was placed on a hitching post.

  There was a moment of silence as the mob scanned the heaped corpses. Then two passing Arab porters made the mistake of peering in through the gate. It was the last mistake they ever made. Not only did it ensure their own deaths, it brought the blood-spattered mob out into the street.

  The porters tried to run, but they were tripped to the ground and cut to pieces in half a dozen paces. Sheer momentum now pitched the mob onwards, any Muslim, any Arab, any dark-skinned man or woman was a target. Two Jews who were standing by a fountain were thrust under the water until they drowned. Victims who managed to run made their death into a sport.

  Hearing the tumult, the watchmen of the Venetian and Genoan quarters ordered the gates that bordered their quarters closed. It took the City Watch three hours to assemble a troop of men to restore order.

  Sixty-five bodies were collected by the city and stacked at the edge of the Arab Quarter. No arrests were made.

  Saints and signs

  “It’s the same,” said Tilly.

  “I know it’s the same, that’s why I’m showing you,” said Sparke.

  “But me saying that it’s the same is much more important than when you say it.”

  “Of course it is, Professor,” said Sparke, smiling. He peered closely at his laptop, then clicked the mouse a few times to split the screen to show two other images. Both were of stone carvings showing the same figure, a tonsured monk with one hand pointing upward.

  “What do you think, Sherlock?” said Tilly.

  “Well, since I am not some boring professional expert like you I can think anything I like, and what I think is that it shows a possible, no, a probable link between the Vault and the locations we know which were backwater Templar positions occupied just before their suppression.”

  Tilly nodded. “That’s a fair statement. It’s a very rare emblem, apart from the ones you have found it’s not seen outside of the region where Fra Muratore lived.”

  “No one noticed these markings before?” said Sparke. “I thought you had all these experts examining everything?”

  Tilly turned from the screen and said, “Peter, there is more information in this Vault than a hundred researchers can cover in a decade. Things need prioritization. This kind of thing is tertiary.”

  “Tertiary? You mean low priority?” said Sparke.

  “I mean that there are so many primary artifacts in the Vault that the team needs to focus. This isn’t a race or anything. We’ll get to the smaller items, don’t worry.” Tilly looked at the screen again. “In fact, if you are so keen to find out, why not put a bit of time into it yourself?”

  Sparke sat back in his chair. Tilly was right. If it was worth finding out more then why shouldn’t he be involved?

  “I think I might just do that. You need to spend time on all your exciting budget meetings, so I’ll get out of your hair for a bit. I need to go back to my place anyway to sort out things with the Swiss tax authorities.”

  “What? Are you in trouble with the tax man?” said Tilly.

  “Nothing like that,” said Sparke. “It’s just that in Switzerland, if you have, you know, quite a lot of money, you sit down with your accountant and the tax people and sort of negotiate your tax bill.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “Seriously, you just chat about it over a coffee and everyone agrees on a number. They like having foreigners with lots of money living there, so they work out what seems fair.”

  “Very Swiss.”

  “Yup,” said Sparke, “Switzerland is very Swiss.”

  “Let’s go for coffee,” said Tilly. “I’ll tell you where we are on the Copper Scroll thingy.”

  They grabbed their coats and walked the short distance to Broughton Street and found a table in their favorite café. They spent the next hour talking about Jerusalem in the first decades AD, the Jewish rising against the Roman Empire and the sack of the city.

  “Most of the dates we have for the scroll put it in the years just after the destruction of the Temple,” said Tilly, “which supports your idea that it was some kind of response to the disaster that overtook the Jewish population. It could be a great angle to look at it from.”

  “You’ve decided to do the program then?” said Sparke.

  “I thought you decided I should do the program?”

  “That’s right, we make each other’s decisions. I forgot that’s what couples do.”

  The next morning Sparke took the first flight back to Geneva and he was home before lunchtime. He breathed a sigh of relief at being home.

  Tilly’s tiny Edinburgh flat was comfortable and, since she had lived there for most of her adult life, it felt every inch Tilly’s place. His apartment was a total contrast: everything in it had been chosen and delivered by the local furniture store, everything had a place where it should be and nothing was out of place.

  Tilly was quietly happy to have her own space back for a while. It was a one-person place and, tidy as he was, Sparke still made the place feel a little crowded at times. On the up side, when he was there the place was never a mess, he even separated her drinking glasses by size.

  If home was calm, the office was frantic. Budget time was a never-ending round of meetings and presentations, a necessary evil in Tilly’s world. Before opening her computer, Tilly went into the office kitchen to make some tea and find someone to talk to rather than face her emails.

  “How’s things with Peter?” said AnneO who was making herself a coffee.

  In Tilly’s office there had originally been only one woman who was named Anne, but when second Anne joined she was christened, “The Other Anne” by the staff. When a third Anne became part of the team there was a period of confusion over what to call her. Since she was an American and came from Omaha, she was soon known as “AnneO”, or occasionally “Annie Oakley” since anyone from Nebraska was obviously a cowgirl.

  Unlike her Scottish colleagues, mid-western American AnneO had no compunction in discussing personal lives and had be
come the go-to woman for all matters of the heart.

  “Great, he’s great,” said Tilly. “Just learning what it means to be part of a couple, same as me.”

  “He sounds like quite a guy,” said AnneO. “He was married before, right?”

  “Yup, for three years, to a German girl. I get the feeling that it wasn’t that much of a great romance.”

  “Interesting.”

  “What do you mean ‘interesting’?” said Tilly.

  “Oh, you know, from what you tell me he’s this super decisive disaster management guy, dealing with explosions and earthquakes and all what all, but when you talk about his romantic side he sounds… I get the picture that he is not… not much of a lady’s man. He sounds a little… reserved with women.”

  Tilly thought for a moment. “That’s probably an understatement. It takes a while for him to get comfortable with people. Not a chit chatty type of bloke.”

  “Wonder how he managed to get married once before?” said AnneO.

  “Yes, I do wonder,” said Tilly, looking into her cup.

  Egypt

  Yusuf nodded and Omar cut the twine that bound the bundle. The pile of rags tumbled out over the marble floor of the main mosque in Cairo. Heads turned and silence fell over the crowd. Many of the robes and turbans they looked at were cut or torn, and all were heavily marked with deep red-brown stains.

  Lifting his hands upwards, Yusuf said in a deep calm voice, “The blood of our brothers.” At this, three other men behind him cut the twine on bundles they had been holding and threw them in the air. Dozens of bloody garments, taken from the corpses of the massacre at Acre, floated to the ground.

  One of the bystanders, a corn merchant who visited Acre every year, picked up the nearest robe. It had been a fine garment, the sort he would wear himself. He held it up at arm’s length, allowing the evening light to shine through the half dozen knife holes, turning the bloodstains black. Had he known its owner? Now the family of the dead man was without a father, his wife a widow. Who would care for his children? Who would deliver justice to his killers?

  “The blood of our brothers,” said the corn merchant.

  Other men now picked up garments and looked at this evidence of savage death.

  “Who can bring them justice?” said Yusuf.

  “Justice!” shouted a voice. Within a heartbeat the terrace echoed to the sound of scores of men, some shouting in anger, some weeping in fury.

  “The Christians in Acre offer no justice,” said Yusuf. “They laugh at our sorrow.”

  He turned and walked away from the crowd. By the time he disappeared around the corner, the crowd was over a hundred strong, the bloody robes had become banners and the noise they created had started to draw people from every direction. Above the cacophony of voices two words were repeated over and over again: justice and Acre.

  In a quiet garden courtyard of his palace, the Caliph Qalawun heard the heartbeat of the city change. He listened as the clamoring voices grew in numbers and in volume. He heard the noise coming closer. Experience told him that Cairo crowds needed a while to make their minds up. They either approached his palace in anger or in supplication. He gave them an hour to decide and sent some of his servants into the streets to take measure of the mood.

  He stepped out onto a small terrace, high on the front wall of his palace overlooking the square where the crowd had gathered. A shout went up at his appearance as over a thousand men turned to look at him. Above their heads they waved the torn and bloody garments of the victims of Acre. He raised his hands and the crowd fell silent.

  “What do you want of me?” he said.

  The crowd erupted, the bloody rags waved furiously. After a moment the shouting coalesced into a single word, “Justice”.

  “You require justice for our dead brothers?”

  The crowd screamed its assent. Qalawun appeared, and for a moment he seemed lost in thought, then he stepped forward so that his hands rested on the balcony before him.

  “I can only do my duty. I will bring you justice.”

  The shouting echoed through the city as the crowd turned and walked along the main thoroughfare back towards the mosque.

  Their route took them past a corner of the area where the small Jewish community lived. It was not clear what part the Jews had played in the massacre, but the crowd was in no mood for detail so they looted and burned a dozen Jewish shops, killing the score or so of Jews who fell into their hands.

  Stepping back into the room, Qalawun reached out his hands over a copper basin and allowed a slave to pour rose water over them.

  “Tell the Christian Council of Acre that we need the killers of our brothers delivered to us here in Cairo before the end of the month. Tell them we know that there were at least fifty killers and we want fifty prisoners, and make sure they know that we won’t accept just fifty beggars or criminals. Tell them the family of every one of our victims must be compensated with one hundred marks each, two hundred for those who leave children. Tell them to do these things and we will consider justice to have been served.”

  “Is it even worth giving them such a message?” said Yusuf. “There is no possibility that they will consider it.”

  “Of course, you are right,” said Qalawun. “But I like to respect the formalities.”

  Screen

  “Screen,” said Sparke as he sat down with his coffee.

  “Good morning, Peter, how can I help?”

  “Screen, get me an image of the artifact known as the Copper Scroll.” It took Sparke’s computer less than a second to access the image and to project it onto the wall of his apartment. Sparke loved technology, he just didn’t need to see it all the time, so his computer system was built into the room.

  Sparke looked at the image. “Screen, why is it in thin strips?”

  “Data shows that it was not possible to unroll it in one piece, so the researchers decided to slice it into strips then reassemble it.”

  “Screen, run semantics analysis on the contents.” A small icon appeared in the top left-hand corner of the screen.

  “Analysis complete.”

  “What do you have?”

  The screen began to scroll a list of references down the right-hand side as it delivered the results of the analysis of the language used in the scroll.

  “Give me the summary,” said Sparke.

  “The language used is not the formal language used in documents of the period. It has little in common with the other documents found in the archive known as ‘The Dead Sea Scrolls’. It bears several indicators that suggest it may have been taken from direct speech.”

  “Dictated?” said Sparke.

  “High probability,” said the screen. “Research indicates that this artifact may have been created as a copy from an original document. The same word is spelled differently in several occasions.”

  “Someone who was familiar with engraving copper, but not a scribe?”

  “Very high probability,” said the screen.

  Sparke sipped his coffee and tried to put this information into the context of the era. From what Tilly had told him, the scroll was created during the years immediately after the savage Roman suppression of the Jewish Revolt. It seemed likely that it was taken from a set of verbatim statements that indicated where wealth had been hidden. Why would someone who had this important information be able to speak but not be able to write? Why would someone then have these statements transcribed onto copper by someone who had limited experience of engraving lengthy documents onto metal?

  “Screen, what is the probability that this text is part of a larger document?”

  “All sources are unanimous that this is part of a greater document.”

  “Screen, find any links between The Copper Scroll and the Order of the Knights Templar.”

  “There are twenty-four thousand, six hundred and ninety-five available references which contain both subjects.”

  “How many?” said Sparke, unable to stop himself
looking at the control panel of the system.

  “Twenty-four thousand, six hundred and ninety-five.”

  “That’s a surprisingly high number,” said Sparke.

  “What number were you expecting?” asked the screen.

  “Screen, you’re a computer. I don’t discuss my expectations with you. Take notes.”

  The screen went blank except for a small blinking cursor.

  “Point,” said Sparke. “The text of the scroll was taken down verbatim from someone unable to write. Point, it was later transcribed into a highly durable medium. Point, there are missing parts of the document. Point there are multiple references connecting the artifact to the Knights Templar.” As he spoke his words appeared on the screen in neat bullet points. “Screen, apply these points to the Trondheim Scenario Developer.”

  “Of course, Peter.”

  The image dimmed as the system linked in to the distant Trondheim program. It had been designed and built as a disaster planning system that would run scenarios based on a small number of available facts and present possible scenarios with their probability.

  It could take more than an hour to run the scenarios. Sparke waited. He sat patiently in the tasteful living room of his beautiful apartment. He was good at waiting, he had spent much of his career in airports waiting for delayed departures, in planes waiting for delayed landing slots, watching television and computer screens waiting for terrible things to happen. He was immune to boredom.

  I’m bored, he thought. I’ll call Tilly. She answered on the second ring.

  “What’s up?” she said.

  “Oh nothing, just waiting for the screen to do some things,” he said.

  “Careful there, a girl might get jealous of that kind of relationship. You spend way too much time talking to it,” said Tilly.

  “What are you doing?” said Sparke.

  “Watching dinner cook.”