The Templar’s Bowl

 

by
Peter “Lou” D’Alessio
Copyright © 2011

 

Chapter 15: I Know This Place

 

“Ricardo, trust God and believe your maps.  Soon, we will find land—the map swears to it, and I can feel it!”  For the men on deck who heard him, a new confidence grew and spread from ship to ship faster than the Black Death had through Europe.  The sense of doing God’s work returned to us, quelled our fears and lifted our hearts.

Late that afternoon, while Zeno and I shared dried apples and honey, a gull was seen flying in the path we were headed.  Immediately a cry of joy went up, praising God for delivering us as we waited for the revelation of land.  Pietro’s nephew, Umberto Petillossa, a lad of eleven years, served as what we called today a cabin boy.  He appeared from the stern carrying my cup filled with water and one for his uncle.  This was a compromise with fear, as water was growing scarce, and a full cup was a vote of confidence!  For the first time in weeks, I could see his young face free of fear.  As with many of the crew, trusting in old Viking charts would not prevent you from falling off the edge of the world.  To begin seeing birds in the sky did more to strengthen their courage than any Pope or Admiral could do with prayers or orders.

It took two more days to glimpse a shoreline, but the smell of green earth filled our noses while still miles away from it.  I rejoiced in my heart that all hands had come through alive and we had not lost one ship.  At first sight of land, Zeno shook his finger at me.  “See!  A Zeno doesn’t lie!  I said there was land—”

“I know, I know,” I cut him off.  I could hear cheering from all the Templar ships in formation.  It took some doing, but as we neared land I quelled the celebrations.  We knew nothing of this strange place and, discounting the Viking myths we had heard, a reconnoitering was in order.  We sailed North by compass along the shoreline, as the sun seemed to spend days on end shrouded by fog or cloud.  I kept a goodly distance out to sea so as to discourage any visitation from natives in small boats.  The last thing I wished was to renew the ways of the old world in this new one by killing strange men.  I had a task to perform and I was not prepared to fight.

I ordered the ships to anchor in the midst of a place of hundreds of islands of all different measures, and sailed my ship alone amongst the islands.  I thanked God for these holy crafts we sailed, drawing but a few fingers deep of water, many times coming an oar’s length to land.  This was a lusher land than ever I beheld.  Even the Norse amongst my crew, though it much reminded them of Scandinavia, agreed.  In honor of the country that had not turned us out when the rest of Europe had, we called this place New Scotland.  As Scotland had taken in Templars, New Scotland would take in the Templar treasure.

My ship was more than a day away from our fleet when we sailed near an island not a mile in length that was covered heavily in oak as with other brush.  There was no sign of man that we could see as we walked to and fro at this most favorable place.  The mainland was but a toss of a rock away, and I suspected it could supply a large crew of workmen with game and water for a quite a while.  Keeping ten men skilled with the bow and five of spear with me on the mainland, I sent my ship off to gather our fleet.

As the day was near spent for daylight, we settled a camp and built a good quality fire as the air turned ungodly cold with the darkness.  There were all manners of strange noises in the gloom as things unknown walked about.  Even with a well-kept fire, I did not sleep well.  As the sun rose, I found myself looking off to the east, at this island we had found for our cause.  There was an extraordinary sense of familiarity to it.  I thought to myself, ’I know this place’.  Why I should think so was beyond my wit.

With the rising of the sun, I divided our host into three hunting parties of four men and sent out these men into the west, north and south.  I, and the men remaining, stayed at the camp to begin laying out a plan for when the ships arrived.  We felt it would be wisest to separate into different communities along the coast, shuttling men needed from different communities in our Viking Karves.  A Karve is kin to a Dragonship, but smaller, and we had several.  They were perfect for shore skipping such as this, and while another community may be miles further down the coast, they could fetch from them in but a few hours.  Theo’s plan for the hole we were to construct was more intense than any plan I had ever seen.  It was full of contrivances and contraptions and demanded an army of engineers and diggers.  Yet they could not all be working at once, neither could those idle be left to wander in boredom and leave signs that men were here.  No, better to spread them apart to ferret out game and to fish and to prepare for winter, for we would be there for at least a year.  We had planned for this, but the storms had stolen our supplies.  Houses needed to be built if what our Norse friends had said of the winter here was true.

As the parties went out, my base crew and I began to explore our immediate area, and built several piles of wood with green boughs covering that could be turned quickly into a smoking fire to alert ships looking for us.  We decided the very spot we had chosen was good for a base camp.  It was elevated and offered a clear view of the bay, yet hidden from sight a bit.  There was an abundance of nearby timber, and a bounty of large and small game—but outside of a few roots we knew to be safe and some berries, neither fruit nor vegetables could we find.  Nor could I find a spring nearby from which to draw fresh water.

As my men began clearing an area and marking trees for a house, a spearman and I explored our region, and my sense that I knew this place became overwhelming.  We intersected a small animal path and, at my insistence, followed it.  It seemed to dead end at two large stones rising against a small mountain, but when I pressed through the bushes I felt an opening taking us inside.  Pushing the greenery aside, we stepped through into a cave that seemed to meander through the entire mountain.  We stepped outside to find materials to fashion torches, then followed our path through the cavern.  Again we found our way seemingly blocked, but again managed to get through.  The path turned downward and we could tell we were below sea level.  At last we found ourselves in a greater cave.  As we looked about, it was clear to me a great place had been found to store our treasure until our work was complete.

 

 

From the very first day, the land was friendly to our cause.  The hunting parties I had sent out all returned with substantial provisions of marvelous proportions.  Venison and fowl of all type, strange and familiar.  They had found streams aplenty, teaming with trout and salmon of a sort not seen by Europeans before.  I had sent them out at daybreak again, and again they returned, and more quickly, with enough meat for a week.  So we set up fires and roasting pits so that we could prepare a meal for our crews when they arrived.

We gathered those skilled in the cutting of stone and secured and prepared the great cave we had found as soon as the ships anchored.  They cut ledges and shelves and made certain the walls were secure and dry.  In little more than a week we began moving the cache into it until we finished our pit on the island.  As each ship was emptied it sailed off the coastline, north or south, to find a place for settlement.  Soon, within a line north and south of twenty miles, we had formed six settlements.  Hunting was most fruitful and those who knew how to smoke and preserve set to work.

As the treasure was safely hidden for the moment, I ordered the erecting of sheltering houses and the Norse, rather than the engineers, set to work.  They cut the trees and cleaned and prepared them and started building their simple longhouses, which served our needs well.  I employed our engineers at exploring the island we had selected, telling them what Theo wanted in his plans.  I had hoped Theo would be true to his word and come to us soon.  His skill would carry the key steps of our task through.

All was going remarkably well, with one small exception.  The settlement we had placed nearest the cave, the campsite of our first night, had no nearby source of water, the nearest spring or stream being well beyond a mile.  Men working in summer heat need water, and sending ten men with barrels out into the forest was not practical—and rather dangerous.  A bear of remarkable size attacked and killed two men before being taken down.  So I ordered a well dug, and the spot I chose proved how well our luck was holding, as we soon had a ready supply of water by the bucket or cup.  We lined the well with stone and placed a wooden covering over, and tying a new bucket to the cover and my old cup also, a parched man might satisfy his thirst by a cup rather than pulling a whole bucket, we had a plenteous supply of cold, crisp and sweet water.

Through the summer months our community shaped itself.  Food was gathered, houses built, and work begun.  Two ships, so designed, were being disassembled for their wood; engineers knew where the trenches Theo wanted were to be placed, and things were well.  Work was beginning, and I knew Theo would be here soon.  I could feel it... or perhaps I could feel him, his presence bringing that damned ugly red clay bowl he’d extracted from an old grave.  Putting Alexander Beaujeu in charge, I provisioned a Karve, selected a crew mainly of the Norse—and of course, Zeno—and set off to see if the rest of this great country was familiar to me.

This land was greater than any land any of us had ever beheld.  We sailed north and followed the shoreline from a safe distance out ,and what we learned first was that the rivers here were not like the old country.  While there was water in great abundance, the rivers here shallowed very quickly.  Even our lapstrake design often did not get us far up a river, with one great exception.  We had made it to the tip of New Scotland and turned to the west as an old map had directed.  After many days, we realized we had sailed into a great bay wherein salt water met with fresh, the sea turning brackish in nature where the two mixed.  It was a great river and the Norse had us headed into the great deep channels faster than Pietro could add it to his map.  Where this great river took us was the same land... but yet different.  The river fogged over often at night and it was distressing to us, but we continued.  And what we saw!  A land great in a wildlife not seen in Europe, or anywhere in the world.  There was lumber and fresh water, and land!  We traveled a good two hundred leagues up the river when we came upon a strange race of darkish people who were camped at river’s edge.  We did not stop, as they were rather hostile, but there we turned and went back.  I thought it quite sad that when we departed this great land, our mission done, we’d forget where we’d left it.  When this cheerless treasure was placed in its coffin, all memory and trace of our having been here would be wiped from the earth and forgotten.

The trip back to base camp was uneventful except for the chunks of ice already floating about.  The weather was colder and damper than I was used to, and my forty-year-old body ached at times.  It was late September and I knew winter would soon be upon us.  I could feel it in my bones.

As we neared our settlement, I could see a sail on the horizon that I did not know, and knew my old mentor had arrived.  This place, with its dampness and cold, would take its toll on him no doubt, but it would offer him—and us—the thing he and we needed most: Solitude.  This was a quiet place to set in our minds what had happened to us Templars, and decide what our lives required.  Our Order had fallen and we were stripped of our honor.  Many of us had given our lives to protecting this horde, and it weighed heavily upon us that it no longer had a purpose or cause.

I had them row Zeno and me to the island.  I knew that Theobor would be there, giving orders and shouting out commands.  Well, I was half-right.  The Theobor I found aside a pit that was being created was a shriveling old man who spoke softly and gently pointed to the place things were supposed to go.  His head was down, reading from his plan, and he did not see us coming.  I slowed my pace.  It had been years since my teacher had appeared without the Cross Pattée surcoat.  When but a handful of paces away, the old man raised his head and looked at us.  With a tired smile he told us that Molay was gone, and the Order in Europe was in shambles.  Then he paused.  He beamed an old familiar smile and threw his arms about our shoulders.  “Good to be with friends again.”  He told the workman to continue until dusk and led us to a small rowing boat.

“Now, Master of Ships,” he said to me, “master the oars and take us home.”  I stretched my legs and pushed us through the short row to the mainland.  “God, it’s good to see friends!” Theobor exclaimed.  “This is an excellent place, Richard, with plenty of coastline for the Italian here to map.”

Zeno just grinned.  “Seniore Theo, there is more coastline here than five Zenos could map!”

The old man seemed pleased.  At the other side, we tied the boat to a stone mooring and walked up the short way to camp.  The longhouse had been completed and Zeno went there to work on his maps, but Theo and I went to where the fires had been built and warmed ourselves.  Inevitably, the conversation got past amenities and turned to our task.

“I’ve been here about a week, Richard.  I sent six ships back.  Tomorrow, two more.  I want you to go with them.”  I looked at Theo with uncertainty.  “Don’t argue, I want you to go.  Your work is done, and you’re needed elsewhere.”  We sat there in the warmth of the fire’s glow.  Just for something to say, I asked Theo what this wondrous pit was about, if it were permitted for me to know.

For the first time in a very long time, Theo’s teeth gleamed in the new moonlight as they had the night we’d met, and his smile had the gleam of adventure.  “Watch!” he said.  “It’s very simple, in theory.”  He tilted a piece of slate rock up and balanced it on a short, stout piece of wood.  Taking a longer stick he tapped at the balance pole until it fell away and the slate dropped.  “There’s much more in practice, but the more someone digs, the more the balance rod vibrates, till at last... it falls.  We’ll dig almost a hundred feet down.  At the bottom, a cement vault with a few baubles in it.  Every ten feet down from the top, a trap will drop, appearing as if a platform were placed—for what reason, no one will know.  This for fifty or sixty feet.  About midway down, the sea will break in and flood all!  Brilliant!  Absolutely brilliant!  I found the plans in some old parchments left by a French Templar.  According to his notes, the whole bloody scheme is based on a rabbit trap the Knight had used as a boy.  I know not what he was planning to do with this design, but it serves us well!”

We sat for a moment, pondering what Theo said. I had only one question.  “Master Theo, you say there’ll be a vault at the bottom with but little treasure?”

The old man chuckled at the question.  “That, Richard, is the beauty of the idea.  The Templar treasure is where it is supposed to rest right now.  In a cave of God’s making, deep in the earth.  It will take years, perhaps centuries, for men to reach the bottom of the pit—if it can be reached at all by those not knowing its secrets.  If what I suspect be true, the pit will rest on a great ledge, the island sitting as if a plateau.  The currents may even sweep any near-by scuttled ship under the vault, if we be lucky, and its contents be thought our treasure.”

“Is this work for naught?”

The old man looked at me with tired eyes.  “Others will follow us, Richard.  Others, who would use our gatherings for evil.  It is not for naught.  Think!  Who would build such a contrivance if not to hide a thing of great value?  This is true!  Things of great value are hidden... just not where one would think, in our case.  The bowl is again laid to rest, the Grail—”

“GRAIL?”

“Voice down, Richard.  Did you think that was a myth?  The skull of Sidon, now that was a myth... but the Grail, the Spear of Destiny—which is now lost to us—the great Arc, the Shroud...  These things are real and ours, at the cost of many lives.  You have found a great vault to keep them safe from evil hands, for their power is the power of man, both good and evil.”

“The Grail?”  I had drifted away.  This was new to me.  “I suspected the bowl was...”

The old man laughed at me.  “Lord no, Richard.  The bowl is a reminder that serves to be reminiscent that we have betrayed the Christ.  Mathew—”

“I know, Mathew 26:23.”

“When you took your vow as a Templar, you confessed to the world it was you who dipped his hand in the bowl with Christ and betrayed Him.  The bowl is the beginning of all forgiveness; it is salvation for he who knows it secrets.”  The evening chill was early tonight and it fell upon us, so we stoked the blaze higher.  As the flames curled up, spending wood and heating us comfortably, we sat quietly.  I asked again if Theo really wanted me to leave tomorrow, and the old man nodded.  And time passed.

Soon we were joined by several of the Norse, and we sat waiting for sleep to drive us indoors. “Theo,” I asked, “years ago, when you threw me into the clutches of de Flor and Guthrumsson...”  The elder commander looked up at me with a smile, as if recalling a happy thought.  “Even with all the pirating in ships swifter than the wind, you beat us to Jerusalem with an overland route.  I’ve studied maps for all these years, and still can’t figure out how you did it!”

Theo leaned in as if to tell me a secret, and in my ear he whispered, “De Flor went to his grave never knowing how I did it, and so did that old pirate Guthrumsson.  What makes you think I’m going to tell you?”

 

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