The Templar’s Bowl
by
Peter “Lou” D’Alessio
Copyright © 2011
Chapter 22: An Odd Quest for a Holy Grail
Do not be deceived by my speech. I sound as though the only souls aboard my ship were Norse. There were Templars from all their different times, but aye, their numbers were small. These were souls that were tied to mine, and served to remind me I was not a Viking but a Templar Knight. These men had sailed or fought with me from one end of the known world to the other. Through near three of the most violent centuries of human history, wherever we were ordered to be, so we went. As always, I knew what I was doing, but not always the why. The Knights in my command eased the human side of me that felt it had been denied, but never knew of what... but the spiritual side of me was beginning to cry out for more. I had transported what was perhaps the greatest fortune in human history, yet I had never seen the most prized of all Templar acquisitions: the Holy Grail. Could the Grail heal me, as was purported to be one of its graces? I had learned not to seek reward for my service... but still, it seemed something was missing, something I needed to complete this great journey I was on. Perhaps it was the knowledge that, while I served without question, it was not the same as the Nazis warriors who also obeyed without question—but as mirror image of God’s servants.
The dark plague that was spreading across the earth possessed the most influential weapon of war made by human hands. Its influence on the Nazi army showed all over Europe, and was a conflagration that seemed to be consuming mankind in great quantities. I had seen the black death move from Asia through Europe with a frightening speed, and it left near half the world dead in its path. I had prayed that such a curse would never fall again upon my kind. But the Nazi war machine rivaled—and in many places surpassed—the simple malevolence of disease. These Nazis killed with less discrimination and a greater joy than the Black Death! Because of the power of the Spear of Destiny, for good or evil, these insane devils killed more efficiently than any force ever known to man.
We had held them at bay in Canada, but it took three centuries of Teutonic Knights, Templars, Vikings, and even an Arab Potentate to stalemate them... and this, too, had its price. While my Vikings were replenished in my command with every new day, de Flor wasn’t so lucky. The German Knights, once returned to the void, stayed for the rest of eternity, and his sailors as well. The U-boats tore his caravels and lapstrakes to pieces, and unlike Halamin’s dhow they did not return to stardust but instead shredded and cracked as wood in the world of the here and now. It had never occurred to me that my Dragonship would do the same, even with the damage done during our first effort. But de Flor spent, as I was to later learn, almost half his time on earth hunting for proper usable timber in the northern forest.
I had chased a U-boat out of the Saint Lawrence and up the northern coast. God had been with us, and a boulder from the bow hoist had caught and cracked a hatch gasket badly. The ship’s captain was no fool. He had watched us behead several captives from a crew we had taken the night before, and ran as soon as we spotted him, hoping to position his craft for a torpedo—quite effective against a lapstrake ship, my oath upon’t! We caught him, barely—in another hundred yards he would have left us in his wake—and, uncharacteristically for a Hitlerite, he turned and ran as if he was afeared of true death. Out of the water he sprang as a lion might leap at its prey... but then sat upon the surface and ran as a scared deer.
We headed north on the trail of our quarry and, with a strong wind and a little rowing, kept pace for four long days, falling behind but never losing sight. Floating ice was appearing on the water and played to our advantage, slowing our prey, who were more cautious of striking ice than we were. Better still to our advantage was the sudden appearance of a grand ship flying the flag of the Skull of Sidon. In a sudden twisting of ice, metal, and wood, the caravel, U-boat, and our Dragonship scraped sides and again God graced us. As we rose up on a great wave and the U-boat fell low to the wave’s valley, instead of releasing the boulder from the net that held it and losing height and seconds as the web that held it leisurely released, Askold severed the line holding the whole rig and it dropped on the very tip of our adversary’s vessel. A good crack it caused, allowing the briny water in. I surmised these sons of Herr Himmler thought a watery death was better than a beheading. It went down as a coward without so much as a whimper. At its depth, what pockets of air were inside the vessel rose to the surface, eliciting calls and cheers from both our ships.
“Aye, Captain Thompson,” a familiar shade called out, “be it throwin’ stones at the enemy ye have resorted to?”
“As did young David to mighty Goliath, Captain de Flor! Have I permission to come aboard?”
“Aye, Captain Thompson, ya do. And bring that old pirate Guthrumsson with you!”
Our visit with de Flor was an enlightening one, as I came to learn the duration of time that had flown by. Engrossed in our mutual endeavor, without realization the better part of God-knew-how-long had gone by. And as Roger and Askold talked, visions started filling my head of needles, tubes, and lines running in and out of my body as I vegetated in my bed, surrounded by doctors and clergy. I could see Hamet sitting at the base of my bed, his precious bowl in hand, praying for the salvation of my life, or at worst of my soul.
As I was trained to obey, so was I trained to reason and think also. Despite McCorvy’s insistences to the contrary, that ugly red bowl had to be the vessel used at the Last Supper, that caught the blood of the Christ as he died on the Cross. Theo told me that I had brought the Grail with me when I sailed from France to Nova Scotia. I knew every bauble, trinket, and trifle in that mountain of gold, and there was nothing there that even with a wild stretch of imagination could fill the bill... except that ugly red piece of clay. Theo had sworn he brought it with him from Scotland, but I had not seen him disembark. And such as the Grail would be kept with as grand stealth as a Templar master can muster. Knowing Theo, there was a secret drawer, or pocket, or hole somewhere on the ship used to carry it safely and unseen to the new world.
“Ten? Ten is it, Cap’in?” Askold’s voice pulled me back into the conversation. “Be it ten we sent to the bottom?”
Oh, U-boats! “No,” I answered, “eleven.”
De Flor looked at his blonde comrade. “Paisan Viking, when you run out of fingers to count on, how many times must I tell you—pull off your boots and use your toes!” The Viking looked at me as if to say, why do I suffer this fool? but one glance and he knew I was elsewhere. So did de Flor, who reached out and slapped me on the shoulder with the back of his hand. “ ’Way! Come back. I need you to take a message to Beaumond and that fat Templar accountant he’s spending eternity with. I’m out of men, little paisan, barely enough to keep the few ships I have afloat.” De Flor looked at me through a squint. “It’s beginning to look like we have stalled their efforts, though... all except for one boat. Master Hitler is very upset with you and I, paisan. He is sending a new boat, the U-215, to settle the matter and bring home the Grail, if not the whole treasure! Or so a poor dying Nazi soldier told me... right before I cut his throat.”
“Do you know how long we’ve been out here?”
My response caught de Flor off guard. He looked at me and blinked, but answered my query. “Four... maybe five years, my friend. Why do you ask?”
My head turned away from them, and I gazed into that infinity comprised of sea and sky. “I cannot tell one day from another. I no longer have a hold on time.” I spoke in a very matter-of-fact tone. “Not, I suppose, that it makes a difference. I do what I’ve been prepared to do.”
At that moment in time, it was more of God’s honest truth I spoke than I had ever spoken before. I had been bounced in and out of time like the ball in a ping-pong match! I had flown forth and back across the net of time so often, I no long knew who or what I was—or, for the love of God, what time I actually belonged in! Was the here and now the real time I lived in? I knew I had not been out here for five years... but could not say for how long for certain. Was I real and all this a dream, or was I the dream swimming through reality? Perhaps, I think, as had been speculated, I was a man who stood alone in a moment and the river of time rushed past me in its eternal course. And I realized... it didn’t matter. Neither God, nor time, nor I cared.
I turned back to Askold and Roger. “What message do I bring?”
The black-garbed German Knights had halted the Nazi advances onto Canadian lands, and in so doing had neutralized the power of the Spear of Destiny—not completely, but a great deal. The Teutonic Order had regained their honor, bringing the cause of Righteousness to Nazi tyranny and cracking, if not breaking, its stranglehold on the world. There had been many small conflicts and several very large ones and, at an unusually high cost in souls, they had made this effort unprofitable for Heir Himmler. The tide of war was changing, and it was sending ripples of horror right through the Nazi regime. As the power of the Spear was brought under control through the sacrifices of Von Salza and his Teutonic Knights, who were re-dying in great numbers in this frozen place, the realization of the atrocities that had been committed, and the price that would have to be paid for the forgiveness of the nation that had perpetrated these crimes, was becoming visible. What remained of the medieval army was becoming invisible, slowly fading back into the void.
In Hitler’s twisted mind, only the possessing of the true Grail could heal the wounds placed upon his empire of darkness by the Allied forces. Like so much in the life of that warped man, his point of focus became an obsession demanding a successful resolution. At all cost, he would come to own the Grail, and it would carry him and his Nazi army to the conquering of the planet.
The fifty-man crew of U-215 had been handpicked from the best of the remaining naval personnel, the finest of the SS, and one very intelligent and well-traveled archeologist. He had been ignored when he said the Templars had not traveled north. After losing countless subs and their crews, this man would finally lead the plague in a southern direction. The war had drained Germany. If the treasure of the Templars was only half of what it was thought to be, it would revitalize the Nazi war machine—but more importantly, if the Grail could be located then its power, combined with the Spear, would overwhelm the Allies as no bomb or weapon could.
The ancient maps the man studied from the Viking era had been created for vessels built with the lapstrake design, and they could survive the ice and cold of the northern seas which were but little different from their homeland waters. But the archeologist had questioned how well the European designs of the day could handle these conditions. He could not have known that it was Viking ships that had crossed the Atlantic to America. No, in his mind it had to be Nova Scotia, or perhaps even further south into the United States. He was right—but not for the reasons he had in mind. On this, her maiden voyage, the U-215 would comb the Canadian coast foot by foot right down into New York state if needs be, and would terrorize all shipping that crossed its path no matter what ships they be in order to create a notion that the U-215 was spreading terror, not hunting for a prize. It had to be this way—failure was not an option for the master race. They would hunt for the Grail starting in the vicinity of the Money Pit. And this would be the beginning of the end for one side or the other.
We had been wary of every slight sound over the water, every piece of floating debris in the water—any sign of anything that looked like it was related to German U-boats. I did not need to be torpedoed at this place in time. Though I knew we would not be seen by living Canadian eyes if we followed the coast, I thought it wiser to stay well off the coast in the deeper waters—well away from a U-boat meant for combing a coastline! As we approach our bay besides the cave, I held us offshore until sunset, then quietly floated in to anchor as quietly as possible.
I ordered no fires lit, neither laughter nor loud voices or noises permitted. I did not have to say these things, but thought it wise to refresh memories to be safe. I dressed ‘Viking’ and prepared to disembark with Guthrumsson, but Egil blocked my path. I would not leave the ship unless my shield man came along with me, the world here being too dangerous for Egil’s taste. He put up such a fuss (which was not his usual custom) that, despite my better judgment, I allowed it.
As quietly as mice, we walked through the woods to the cave, but stopped suddenly as we approached the well. A large form seemed to hover above the well’s mouth, weaving and bobbing unsteadily. In the darkness, there being no moon, we knew this form as neither friend nor foe. We crept slowly forward with much caution, and as we did so we began to hear the moans of the form. We recognized the sounds as Theobor and rushed to his aid. In the dim light we could see that most of his face had been torn or burned away, and to my mind, he would be dead soon. He stood there pouring water from the bucket onto his wounds with great effort, and trying to quench his thirst from the old cup which he held tightly in his fist. He jumped as we startled him with our presence. He waved our aid off and pointed us towards the cave, a very Templar thing to do.
I turned to the cave mouth. There was a reddish glow illuminating the entrance. It did not bode well, as I had never seen such a sight. Theo, through his pain, kept gesturing us towards the cave. As we assumed an attitude of war, we left him there and slowly closed in. We had not gone twenty yards when we came across the bodies of several dead SS soldiers and a Templar Knight who had been shot to pieces. We halted to examine the Knight for signs of life, but there were none. A few feet from the corpses was Theo’s shield and more dead Nazis.
One of the first things I had learned about being in combat was that it was neither the time nor place to mourn for dead comrades. There would be, as de Payens had told me, all eternity for that later. Even so, I think my Norse comrades were surprised by the lack of what they considered Saxon sentimentality. I knelt on the ground beside Beaumond and signed for Askold to return to the ship and gather all our warriors. I would have preferred to send Egil, but I would have had greater luck divesting myself of my shadow. It was only with great effort that I convinced Egil to stay where he was as I slowly crawled to the cave’s entrance to look inside.
