The Templar’s Bowl
by
Peter “Lou” D’Alessio
Copyright © 2011
Chapter 6: A Golden Hoard
Such wonders as there are in the world were made known to me that summer. While my body seemed to slowly deteriorate, my mind expanded in ways few minds could. I was being raised above my station and guided to an end, but what these strange souls were cultivating inside me was more than leaning of letters and numbers. I was learning to dream the dreams of man, to see what was on the other side of the door in everything. Now when I sat by my window I did not watch ships sail by, I sailed them. I shot the azimuth, hoisted sail, ran the sun to ground and chased the moon into the sea on white-capped waves that carried my Norse Dragonship beneath me. No big Spanish caravel for me, I didn’t want to be Columbus! I was a Viking! I stood at the tiller and saw the great woolen sail fill with wind while my Viking crew waited fiercely at the ready for conquests in this new world.
Theo had taught me to navigate using the simple instruments of his day, compass and cross-staff, quadrant and astrolabe—or my own eye if needs be. I felt, even sitting in my chair, that I was unstoppable! From Beaumond I had learned the riggings and dynamics of the lapstrakes, so named for their construction for Norse shipwrights built ships in a fashion from outside in, they flexed and twisted in storms, refusing the demands of the sea for tribute! I was to learn these shipwrights were the most superior of all ship builders employed by the Templars. Four kinds there were, one of the kind good for war and its brother boat of wider bottom and greater sea worthiness, good for transport. And while a meager store of four or five big clumsy European ships moved pilgrims, vegetables, and horses from France to the Kingdom of Jerusalem, a deal was struck in secret with those of the Northlands. To my delight Theo told of how Norse pirates in their shallow drafting boats flew over the water like dolphins. And from Hamet, songs of the sea filled my heart, in Scottish and Arabic, for Arabs were great sailors and men of the sea too, having sailed their light, lateen-sailed dhows from the Mediterranean sea to the Atlantic Ocean, from the China Sea to what we know now as the Bering Strait! These things of the sea gladdened my soul as I was my father’s son, after all, and felt the sea pulling at me.
I deceive you, I fear. My greatest learning was neither of book nor boat, but of heart. How difficult it must be to understand the limitations of another’s life when one can only see through their own eyes. In those days, so long ago, the world saw me only as a living shell, incapable of the basic functions of speech, self-motion, of living in the richness of life as the very people who would be my judges shaped it. My first decade was spent tormented by a myriad of medicos, poked, stuck, and prodded, then when they saw they weren’t God (yes, eventually I did come to know Him), left me for dead. I had given myself up, too.
To my ten-year-old mind, the wonder I was truly seeing was the wonderment of friendship. I had been, for intent and whatever purpose, adopted by these three spirits who had no place in time... my time, but who seemed to care little about it. More startling still, as much as I valued their friendship, they valued mine! That, Mr. Liebenstein, was the wonder.
By early September my parents had all but given up on psychiatry and were moving into more spiritual areas with my poor sister, Beth. They had taken up with a rather charmingless woman whose second car, I am certain to this day, was a broomstick. They were moving into what today might be considered past-life regression. I do not understand the concept, but I had no problem with what they were doing. It gave me more unsupervised time and I was glad for that. My parents would be gone for whole evenings and Lewis could be counted on to be sleeping soundly by nine. It was on such occasion that I began to realize the extreme power of my friends and mentors.
I sat by my window watching stars shoot over the cold Canadian ocean that night when I became aware of the same moving voices I had first heard in the spring. While the song they sang was solemn in tone, it did not possess the same ring of sadness of our first meeting. While Lewis snoozed quietly on the couch, the radio giving the latest war news, three specks of light appeared off in the forest and I made these to be candles in Templar hands. I rolled as quickly as my springs could carry me and was surprised to see the door being opened for me by three very official looking spirits.
“Master Thompson,” spoke a rather fineried Monk from behind the screen door, “having conferred ’mongst ourselves, and prayed earnestly for God’s hand to guide our decision to His cause, and upon your coming to your eleventh year of life, it is time that our student enter his training for the Knighthood and then, with God’s grace, to enter the ranks of Templars. Will you accept?”
I don’t know what amazed me more, Hamet’s knowledge of my birthday or the offer of training for the Knighthood! I stared vacantly at the Monk, as my mind tried to assemble his words into cognitive thought. Gone was the tattered robe and my mentor was garbed in fine white cloth, embroidered with excellent gold thread, and on the left breast was the Cross Pattée. Beaumond and Theobor were also attired in a different fashion then I had ever seen them in. Starched and pressed, so to speak, and carrying swords that were almost as tall as they, not at their sides, but slung across their backs; the great swords of the Templars, bigger than I’d ever imagine a weapon could be. While in their left hand they held candles, cradled neatly under their left arms were square bucket-like helmets, the likes Templars wore to battle. There was a seriousness, a devout fierceness to them I had never seen. Though the moon seemed now to be captured by clouds rolling onto shore from the sea, all three shone brightly through the darkness as if they had been transformed into beacons welcoming lost ships seeking safe harbor and a safe passage home.
“Talk, boy!” Hamet demanded. “Will you join us in Knighthood and live your life as a righteous man?”
I nodded, unable to speak and not knowing what to say.
“Good! Then follow us, young Richard Thomson, for the greatest adventure of your life beginith here and the now!”
Our procession paused at the tree line. In the cooling September night we waited, watching a small rowboat off the oak-covered island. He fished the shallows surrounding the island for the creatures that moved in to shore as darkness engulfs the world, trolling for hungry fish looking for a meal. He fished these shallows now, slowly rowing in and out of the low near-shore waters, dragging his bait many yards behind him. I had never seen this side of the isle. There were signs of excavation. Many drilling rigs waited in silent anxiousness for their turn to remove sandy dirt from the huge, cancerous hole that was chewing its way through the small island.
“Brother Geofray,” I asked, “what do they do?” I sensed a strange sadness suddenly grow inside the great warrior. His head turned slowly, as he surveyed the work done. “They waste God’s precious time, Richard, hunting for three great troves of wealth, each more vast than the trove atop it. Treasures they cannot ever hope to possess.”
I leaned forward in my chair as best I could. “There are more than one, sir?”
“Three, boy. The wealth of the Templars, the cargo of a French pay ship, and a vast hoard of Spanish gold coin—stolen, buried and lost by the English, scarcely more than two hundred years ago. With great luck and much hard work, these looters might reach the Saxon gold, but the infernal digging weakened the timbers that the hoard of French gold from the pay ship rested on. It collapsed into the great cavern below and was swallowed by the wetted lands below that.”
Theo’s great paw gently came down on Beaumond’s shoulder. “Your design was flawless, Brother.” Geofray’s face sagged, as a man who has performed a distasteful task might.
“God willed it so, Theo.” The Knight looked down at me. “Someday, boy, you’ll know of the clever contrivances Brother Theo laid into the pit. So cleverly architected was it, the two great treasures laid to rest on top of Templar treasure sink deeper and deeper each year, laying down a false trail as they sink further and further under the sea. If someday they do find these ships God hath sent us to bait the pit with, men will think they’ve found our horde.” Theobor nodded, his eyes seeming to shine in the moonlight. “Eh! Two hundred Templars working began the pit, and eighty years later, the family of Henry Saint Claire and many men from Ros’lyn Castle dug out the traps and brought the Templar fortune to rest.” Then he too looked down to me. “Lad, no living soul has looked upon what you are about to see in five hundred years. Come!”
We did not cross the water to the island, but turned in to the woodland. We followed a poorly maintained path that entered into a place where two massive boulders kissed at the base of a hill. Often, the two Knights lifted my chair and carried it and me several feet off the ground, there not being enough path to wheel on. Pushing heavy shrubbery aside, I was lifted from my chair and handed through a small opening in the hill. Hamet held me as Theo removed the wheels of the chair to fit it through the point of access, and slipping the pieces through, he rebuilt it on the inside. We traveled in a downward direction I would guess for several hundred yards until the small walkway widened into a great cavern. Beaumond lit a lantern here and we proceeded even more downward on a stone path across the pools of water that appeared as a floor.
Breathing for me was becoming more and more difficult. As my gasps became loud enough to be heard, we paused. From beneath his robes, Hamet produced his clay bowl and filled it with several leaves from another pocket, or perhaps from a bag he wore under his robes. When ignited, the smoky vapors were strong enough to make my eyes tear. “Here, boy,” Hamet spoke as he placed the bowl on my lap cuffed my hands about it. “Hold on to this, breath in deeply, and you’ll feel better.” The smoke was not choking, but strongly vapored with a mint-like bouquet, and it opened my chest well. And in short time, as Hamet had promised, I soon became strong enough to continue.
We walked several hundred yards more and seemed to nearly run out of cave. “Listen!” Theo spoke, pointing upward. There was a faint scraping noise, irritating and regular. “It seems our fisherman friend has decided to try his hand at some moonlight treasure seeking!” A broad grin crossed his face. “The damned fool will fall and break his tail if he is not most cautious!”
As he spoke, Theo walked past me to where two great sheets of stone seemed to meet. With a great moan, he pressed his back to the one on the left side and it slid neatly on what appeared to be a track chiseled into the stone below it. I had never seen that kind of absolute animal strength in a human being, and it amazed me.
This sight I beheld as they pushed me through the opening door, and to this day I have never seen its equal. Of us four, Beaumond and his lantern was the last man to enter in. The singularly weak light seemed at once to magnify ten fold as its flicker caught the radiance of the metals contained therein. I blinked and tried to rub my eyes to see if the vision I beheld would disappear, but it did not. If anything, with every step the Knight took farther in, greater grew the brightness. As Hamet and Brother Theo walked about the cavern lighting candles and torches, the rising illumination showed me beyond doubt why so many for so long had come to the small island to dig.
The cavern was not fully natural, but seemed to have been carved almost square with ledges cut into the rock wall so that valued relics and cherished goods could be laid upon them. Neatly stacked by commodity throughout the enormous chamber sat neat piles of precious goods an ’undred kings and potentates could not match. Crucifixes of the purest gold and studded with silver and gems of great value, priceless crowns of more than generous size and proportioned in wealth greater than the kingdoms they had been ripped from, furniture and thrones carved of exotic black woods, a carved marble and alabaster bejeweled alter, hand copied books of history, mathematics, philosophy and learnings of all manners, enough to fill five libraries of very rich princes—the very best of the wealth of the Middle Ages sat silently before the wheels of my chair. But what caught my fanciful young eyes the most were the racks upon racks upon racks of weapons gathered. Swords by the hundreds, spears and crossbows and bows both long and short, kirks, daggers, and all manners of armor for both man and horse were stacked as if waiting for a Holy Army to come and reclaim it for God’s service.
Theo had quietly watched me study the vast wealth of the room. “We could not accept money in return for the loans or aide we gave.” He remarked as he reached for a particularly tall candle to light.
“Aye, lad,” Hamet continued the remark, “in the eyes of Holy Mother Church it would have been the sin of Usury. So all gave us gifts—gold trinkets, tracts of land, weapons for our campaigns. It is amazing what such things you can gather in two or three hundred years.” He paused from his task of raising an iron chandelier, having tied it off neatly to a spike handle affixed to the wall. “Because of what you see here,” he muttered into the stonewall he was facing, “so many good people went to their death.” He stood motionless until Beaumond clapped a hand on his shoulder and he returned. “Well!” he suddenly proclaimed. “To the matter at hand!”
The room was well illuminated now and a warming fire had been lit. “So much for the procession!” Hamet fairly cried, smacking his hands together. He removed his priestly vestments, revealing the tattered robe I had grown used to seeing. He strode to my chair and spun it full around until I faced him. He sat on the cold stone floor in the fashion I’d seen Indians sit in, and looked me cleanly in the eye. “Richard, lad! We know these are not your ways, but know now, this be no sport! Are ye willin’ to come with us, a one by one, to times before your time? To a place, not your place? Are ye of a will to find the God that made ye and me and us? To know of Templar Knights and Great Saracen Lords? We, who are neither shadow nor shade, nor flesh and bone, we are they who served best and were cursed by a selfish king who was led by a Grand Master to the throne of God for judgment! We have guarded God’s cache at this strange place for a half-millennium now, with no other true company save you. We have seen the likes of mankind come and go, for only God’s time is infinite, and then come and go again, and neither could we touch them nor make ourselves truly known to them of the woe they...”
“All things have purpose, Richard.” Theo stepped towards me from the shadows on the wall he had leaned upon. “It is no idle chance your eyes can hold our image, your ears heed our singing. We have spoken ’twixt ourselves, boy. You have learned much, but it is not enough! Look you there!” Theobor pointed to the far wall where the arms were stored. Laid across a bejeweled cruciform sword was a single white garment, the Cross Pattée, red as blood, set to the front. “Of all the earthly treasures we carried to this strange land, it is what we valued most. It has never had a master.”
“One day every decade we are granted to return to our time, to our places in time.” Beaumond leaned down at me from behind Theo’s shoulder. “It is to remind us of our place on earth and under God’s heaven, of things and those we loved, and events of our lives lived through and what made life so worthy of our sacrifices. Come with us lad, and see the world through our eyes. God wills it.”
