“No one will ever find it,” he said grimly.
“I said before, Manrique,” I said quickly, “that I still have something else to offer you.”
“Speak, damn it! Get it out!”
“The parchment of keys.”
“The parchment of keys? What parchment of keys?”
“The parchment of keys that I found in the crypt of St. John of Ortega, a scroll of leather full of secretive signs and Latin texts written in Visigoth writing that begins with a verse from the Gospel of Matthew: ‘Nihil enim est opertum quod non revelabitur, aut occultum quod non scietur’. ‘There is nothing hidden that will not be revealed, and nothing secret that will not be made known’.”
Even though I didn’t move a muscle on my face, inside my spirit was overflowing with satisfaction. I had won the game, I told myself proudly. Checkmate.
“Yes,” I declared, “that parchment of keys.”
Manrique of Mendoza’s stone mask had turned into the face of an incredulous man, overwhelmed, crushed under an incredible weight that had suddenly fallen upon his shoulders. The blood had left his cheeks and his eyes had begun to emit a glow of madness.
“No, it’s not possible.” he stuttered. “How …?
“Do you mean to say that you weren’t aware of its disappearance?” I asked innocently.
“There are only three copies,” he said, wiping his brow with his hand to dry the cold, stinking sweat. “There are only three copies in the whole world. And only two people know where those copies are: the Grand Master and the Commander of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, our advocate treasurer. Even I didn’t know that one of them had been hidden at the Church of St. John of Ortega.”
“Badly played,” I said, feigning regret. “I guess your Order is convinced that it has a foolproof security system.”
“There’s no doubt about it. But how did you know what it referred to?”
“The truth is that I only knew that it was a key code. As far as its content, I’m still not sure if it deals with something similar to a universal key that allows access to any of the Order’s secret places or if it’s just to reach the Ark of the Covenant and the Treasure of the Temple of Salomon. In any case, I know its worth, sire, and I repeat that I have it in my possession.”
“Do you have it on you? Let me see it.”
I couldn’t believe what I had just heard. Either Manrique thought I was a fool, or the indisputable fool was he. The surprise must have registered on my face because immediately after because Manrique began to laugh.
“Well!” he said with good humour. “I had to try! You would have done the same.”
“Let me clear something up for you,” I said angrily. “If I don’t return to Sara and Jonas today ….”
“Why do you always say her name first? Have you already made her yours?”
I lunged at Manrique, and before he had time to react, I punched him in the mouth. But if I had thought that the weakness of his heart was going to stop him from responding to my attack, I was very mistaken. He jumped on me like a bull and plunged his head into my stomach, doubling me over and leaving me breathless, following with a knee to my chin.
“Enough!” he shouted between gasps, taking an unsteady step backwards. “Enough!”
He had a split lip and blood was pouring from his chin.
“You sick bastard!” I spat at him from the ground, breathing heavily.
“If it wasn’t for the fact that I’m following orders, you wouldn’t leave here alive!”
“Swine!” I said as I sat up with difficulty and regained my composure. I brushed off my clothes and looked at him defiantly. “If I don’t return today to Sara and Jonas, they have instructions to take the parchment to the Grand Hospitaller Commander of France, frey Robert of Arthus-Bertrand, Duque of Soyecout, who I’m sure you’ve heard of. However, if we manage to reach an agreement, I will personally give it to you as soon as the woman, the boy and myself are out of harm’s way.”
Manrique remained silent. His tired eyes scanned the cliff, stopping on the blurry figure of Martiño’s boat.
“She’s there, isn’t she?” he asked with a sudden sadness. It was then that I understood everything. He still loved Sara.
For the first time in my life, I felt the sting of jealousy wrapping itself around my heart. I wondered what she would think, what she would feel if she knew. Would she want to go back to him? Had she loved him more than she loved me? No, I told myself, Sara’s eyes didn’t know how to lie. Sara’s body would never lie.
“You have chosen freedom,” Manrique said finally. “I have always followed orders. We are living in difficult times and someone has to do the dirty work.”
“Do you accept my proposal?” I urged, getting back to the matter at hand. I was in a hurry to get back to Sara, to get out of that place.
“No.”
“No?”
I knew it could happen, I knew that the possibility existed but deep down in my heart I had wanted so much for everything to turn out well that I was taken aback.
“No?” I repeated with disbelief.
“No.”
He sat down heavily on the rock he had been using as a chair and looked at me.
“You have told me your needs and what you want from us. Now it’s my turn to tell you what the Temple wants from you.”
“Isn’t my silence enough, my disappearance, my handing over the parchment?”
“I’m not saying that it wouldn’t be interesting,” he smiled. “What’s more, I’m sure that my Order would have very much appreciated your offer to not interfere with other important elements. It would have been the easiest way to resolve a problem that’s keeping a large part of our forces occupied. But there’s something that the Order of the Temple needs above everything else, and without it there is no deal.”
“What do they want?”
“You, Galceran of Born. You.”
I didn’t think that I had understood him well, and went over his response several times in my head until a light came on deep in inside me.
“Me!”
“Don’t you think it’s time to eat something? The sun is high and we still have a lot to discuss. I’ve brought bread, cheese, dried fish, smoked bacon, apples and a good skin of wine. Would you like some?”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Fine, well, allow me to eat something. The sea breeze is giving me an appetite.”
He ate little and quickly, and I nibbled on a bit of bread and left over cheese so he wasn’t eating alone even though I wasn’t in the mood. The wine, strong and transparent, calmed us down, and when we had finished the food we continued to talk.
“What does the Temple want from me? It would be crazy for you to ask that I take the Templar vows when I have just abandoned the Hospitaller vows!”
“The Temple doesn’t want you, Galceran of Born. The Temple wants Perquisitore.”
“But I am Perquisitore!” I replied indignantly.
“How many men like you do you think exist? None! You have made that very clear. Which is why we need you. We are not asking you to profess in our Order or for you to renounce the life you desire. We just want you to work with us and the payment in return will be everything you have asked for, and maybe much more, since we are convinced that a man like you will be generously rewarded for taking part in the projects we are working on.”
“How presumptuous! Your attitude only makes your offer sound less appealing.”
“Wait. I haven’t finished!”
His face reflected a deep satisfaction, a secret indulgence that I could not understand. Why should I give in to his demand? I had my weapons and I had laid them out: If they didn’t give me what I wanted, I would carry out my threat, and there would be no more to discuss, although I must admit that I was rather curious about Manrique’s offer.
“The General Chapter of the demised Order of the Temple, held a few days ago in Portugal, declared that gaining the collaboration of the Perquisitore was a priority for certain endea
vors we are carrying out. You should know that Pope John XXII has authorized a new military Order in Portugal, the Order of the Knights of Christ.”
“He did authorize it in the end!”
“Ah, you have heard about it then? Well, so you know that the King of Portugal, Don Dinis, is an ardent ally of ours and with the formation of this new Order, which will be made official next year, he aims to facilitate our survival and return our Portuguese possessions which were legally given to him by the dissolute bull of Pope Clement V.
“Who you yourself killed.”
“You know that as well?” he said, surprised. “Wow, goodness me, Galceran, you really are much smarter than anyone could imagine! Did Sara tell you?”
“No, I already told you that Sara feels great loyalty towards you and Evrard as well as towards the Order of the Temple. It was actually François, the innkeeper in Roquemaure.”
“Ah, yes, I remember him!”
“That good man made a note of the names of the two Arab doctors who attended to His Holiness, Adab Al-Acsa and Fat Al-Yedom, ‘Punishment of the Templars’ and ‘Victory of Molay’.”
“I really can’t believe what I’m hearing.” he muttered with growing admiration. “Some other time I will ask you how youknow so much about that story. It’s true that Evrard and I had the honor of bringing those bastards to justice. I told you before that someone always has to do the dirty work and you must admit that we did it very well. But if you don’t mind, let’s continue with our conversation because we still have much to discuss.”
“Go ahead. I’m listening.”
“Well, as I was saying, we Templars no longer exist, publicly or privately, and within a year we will be called the Knights of Christ, having recovered all of our possessions in Portugal and with a great deal of maneuverability and a wide horizon before us.”
“Portugal is neither a large nor a powerful kingdom.”
“No, you’re right, but it is a huge gateway to the ocean.”
Before I could ask him why the hell the Templars wanted a gateway to the ocean, Manrique continued.
“The General Chapter, anticipating your demand for negotiation, decided that you, Galceran of Born, are an essential acquisition for our Order. It seems that they were very impressed by your ability to derail our most secret keys (keys which nobody has been able to decipher in two hundred years), find our treasures, escape from our traps and flee from Las Medulas. We, the most able and astute, have been laughed at by one single man, so that man, the only one capable of knocking down all of our barriers, must be on our side, and not on our enemy’s side. We are not buying your silence, Galceran,” he added, slightly worried in case I hadn’t properly understood, “You just offered me that in exchange for protection. We are buying your intelligence which, my friend, is priceless. We want you to replace our security system from start to finish. If you broke it, you will repair it in such a way so no one, not now and not ever, can access our forbidden places, our documents, our communication routes or our secret missions.”
I listened to him open-mouthed, without daring to breath to not interrupt his long-winded speech.
“I can see by the look on your face that you are interested …,” Manrique smiled. “However, I’m sure that you’ll be much more interested in the offer when I tell you about the project that you are to begin immediately: We must transfer the Ark of the Covenant and the treasure of the Temple of Solomon to Portugal without delay, as well as most of the riches hidden in our old European commandries and those along the Camino de Santiago, and find a place to hide them so that they will never, you hear me, never be found.”
I must have been holding my breath for a long time because I felt how my chest, sunken and empty, expanded like bellows with a large and necessary breath of air. The sun was beginning to set at the end of the world and it would soon be devoured by the ocean.
“Do you accept?”
Martiño’s little boat, shrouded in the mist, fought against the impulse of an increasingly stormy Atlantic. My sweet Sara would be worried about me, asking herself whether, after so many hours of absence, I was still alive. I had to let her know that everything had gone well, that everything had gone much better than we had hoped for.
“Do you accept, Galceran?”
I had to tell Sara that a life was waiting for us full of experiences that included, extraordinarily, sleeping together night after night and waking up in an embrace day after day, without the fear of being found out and without the need to ever run away again.
“Galceran …? Hey, Perquisitore!”
“Yes?”
“Do you accept the deal?”
“Of course.”
EPILOGUE
This is as far as the chronicle of everything that has happened over these last, eventful years goes. I hope that I have been faithful to the truth and to the story and if I have made any mistakes I also hope that you will forgive me. The only reason for such errors would be from not knowing or my own ignorance, but never in bad faith or with ill will or any desire to deceive.
I have clarified my ideas by putting the facts into writing because as I was writing I was reflecting, and as I was reflecting I learned from the things that happened to me and that at the time I didn’t pay enough attention to. I am no longer a Monk of the Hospital of St. John; that man died in the Cemetery of Noia, barely two years ago, but I am still a knight and a doctor, and I still answer to the name Perquisitore. The person who used that name before, one Galceran of Born, no longer exists; his body, as well as the bodies of a boy and a Jewish woman who accompanied him, were found dead, murdered, on a cliff on the Galician coast. As was confirmed shortly after, the Born family of Taradell received the sad news from the Order of the Hospital, to which Galceran had belonged until his death that their son had been killed while carrying out an important mission.
Months later, a doctor from Burgandy, named Iacobus, married to a beautiful and strange woman with white hair and father to a boy who would soon be known as Jonas the Companheiro — as he felt sudden and intense vocations which led him to become an apprentice of all trades —, arrived in the Portuguese city of Serra d’El-Rei, a coastal village belonging to the new Order of the Knights of Christ.
Shortly after getting settled into this beautiful house next to the port, from where I can see the sea, and when everything was playing out just as Sara and I had planned, I was summoned by the Knights of Christ to begin the work of recovering the Templar riches and hiding them in Portugal. I was assigned a place to work from, Amourol Castle, built in the middle of the River Tagus as well as a large group of assistants who worked under my orders, among which were astrologers, mathematicians, alchemists and craftsmen of all kinds.
We are still working on it today and will naturally continue to do so for a long time. It’s possible that this task will take me more than fifteen to twenty years to complete but even so, even if I haven’t finished it, I fear that I will soon be receiving many more similar tasks. Recently, a group of excellent Jewish cartographers from Mallorca, the best navigation chart plotters in the world, occupied one of the castle’s closed-off cellars. We still don’t know anything but there is talk of maps for exploring the Atlantic and of new and far-away lands full of riches. When I go home I can see how the shipyards of Serra d’El-Rei are seething with activity while the old Templar fleet is being enhanced with brand-new, magnificent ships, capable of crossing all of the oceans.
In three months my second child will be born. Sara is doing great and is going through her pregnancy without any major problems (other than a couple of rotten teeth and stretch marks on her stomach) but that’s nothing compared to the joy she feels about her future offspring. From what she says, and from what she doesn’t say, but rather insinuates, I’m afraid that as soon as our child is crawling around she will return to her job as a witch.
And thus finishes this story, on the nineteenth day of May of the year of Our Lord 1319 in the Portuguese town of Serra d’El-Rei.
/>
IACOBUS THE PHYSICIAN, Perquisitore
(1) Latin, destiny.
(2) Nimes.
(3) Suburb, neighborhood located outside the city walls.
(4) Saladin.
(5) Unlike the map of the world, this is an image of the world that follows the ideas of an order predetermined by God (according to St. Augustine) which encompasses all of creation. Therefore, the notion of the Imago Mundi comprises the Earth and the Cosmos (Encyclopaedia of Symbols, by Udo Becker).
(6) To be expelled from the Order.
(7) Pilgrim’s Book of the Codex Calixtinus. This code is a compilation of Jacobean documents put together by Monk Aymeric Picaud in the XII century which, by reputation of the Apostle, is attributed to Pope Calixto II and describes the route to Santiago.
(8) Somport.
(9) ‘The pilgrims, poor or rich, returning from Santiago or on their way there, must be welcomed with kindness and respect by all, for those who receive and lodge them with care will be caring not only for James but also for Our Lord, and the Gospel said: He that receiveth whomsoever I send receiveth me; and he that receiveth me receiveth him that sent me. Codex Calixtinus, chapter XI
(10) Moralejo, S., C. Torres and J. Feo. Liber Sancti Jacobi; Codex Calixtinus. Santiago de Compostela, 1951, pages 204-205.
(11) Moralejo, S., C. Torres and J. Feo. Liber Sancti Jacobi; Codex Calixtinus. Santiago de Compostela, 1951, pages 204-205.
(12) “Blessed is the man who fears the Lord,” ps.111, 1.
(13) “The heavens declare the glory of God” ps.18, 2.
(14) Canfranc.
(15) Famous Sufi poet (1164-1240).
(16) Monogram of Christ formed by the first two letters of his name in Greek, inside a circle.
(17) “If you want to live, you who are subject to the law of death, come pleading, discarding poisonous pleasures. Clean your heart of sin, to not to die a second death.” Translation from the book La ruta sagrada by Juan G. Atienza.
(18) Odyssey, Homer. Book IX. 360-415.
(19) Puente la Reina, in Navarre.