The Templar’s Bowl
by
Peter “Lou” D’Alessio
Copyright © 2011
Chapter 23: The Templar’s Bowl
I did not crawl to the very edge of the cave but, knowing the terrain, slipped into a recess in the earth that had been created by a boulder being removed long ago. My small size again served me better than the big brawn body of a German Knight would have. I knew well how these Nazi warriors guarded their paths, so being a good distance away from where they hid was wise. The earth tones of the Norse garb in the moonless night would blend me into the earth so that, while I was no more than ten yards from the entrance and lying flat, I was invisible to them. Peering in, I saw that the glow was not from the fire that blazed mid-room, but from several metal brands in a fire that illuminated the cold darkness with a red glow, turning all things in the cave a bloodish red color. What I saw distressed me deeply.
On my first visit to the cave so long ago Theo, with great strength, had pushed a great stone aside to grant entrance into the treasure cave. The stone had never been rolled back—until now. The mountain of treasure was well hidden behind a ton of solid Canadian rock. Against the far walls were several chests filled with riches, and while they were filled to overflowing, they were the smallest of the dozens of chests we had brought from the repositories in France. The goods they held were the poorest of our riches, but enough to dazzle the eyes of greedy men.
Sailors and those of the SS were crating everything into wooden boxes to return to their U-boat. But not all! I could see a man not dressed in military array, but as a modern man might on casual holiday: slacks, a shirt with sleeves rolled to the elbow, work shoes, and a leather pilot’s jacket, as if he were to hike through the woods. With this man were several officers of the black sun, the metal bits on their collars glistening as they turned towards the fire. They seemed to be kicking at some small creature on the ground. The man in the slacks raised his hands up as if to say, “enough, no more!” As the triumvirate of tormentors backed away, I could discern the shape of a smallish man, naked and bloody on the stone floor of the cave. He struggled to turn himself onto his back. It wasn’t until an SS man kicked him over that he rolled onto his back. He began pointing to a dark pile several feet away. The man in the slacks casually walked over to it and, as he gingerly lifted it off the ground, I saw it to be the robe of a Cistercian Friar.
The man shook the cloth in an attempt to discern the location of something of weight. His hand slid down the robe until they found the opening of a pocket. Slipping his hand inside and groping about, he drew out a clay bowl. I could see the man smile as he nodded to his cohorts. One drew a pistol, and the face on the ground lifted its head and reached out his hand toward the bowl bearer as if there were enough strength left in his body to attempt to stop him. There was a flash from the tip of the pistol and the head dropped, slamming very hard into the ground.
I did not realize it, but I had risen from my prone position to one of kneeling. As the shot had sounded, a full ship of Vikings and Templars had come up behind me. Before the echo of gunfire had melted from the cave, I had lifted myself to a standing position and, snatching a war ax from a Viking, tossed it as hard as I could into the darkness of the cave. It impacted the man with the pistol at his nose and the broad blade carried down his neck to the top of his chest. His arms flared and his eyes blinked rapidly, as I had split his head from below the eyes near in two parts—which satisfied at least some of my need for revenge. He would die in pain and be conscious of a helpless death. The soldier seemed to topple, as a great felled tree would, but before his body touched the ground, his fellow troopers turned and from the entrance of the cave came a fury of hot metal hail the likes of which none of us had even imagined. All about me, explosions of stardust filled the air.
When confronted with this mighty force, even the bravest of souls think nothing of pulling back. The souls in my charge had been great warriors in life and were nothing less in this spiritual twilight. These above all others throughout time knew the value of fighting another day. So, with Egil’s paw upon my collar dragging me backwards, I ran too. We fell into the darkness just far enough out of sight to disappear. Through the gloom made darker by the passing of Hamet, we watched them carry their stolen booty from the cave. They, my mentors, had lied to me. The ugly red bowl was the Grail! Leading the unholy procession was the man in the slacks, holding the bowl carefully in front of him as though it itself was light; but the light they followed were from lamps and lanterns that burned with no real flame. So sure were they that we could not harm them that they employed no stealth, and with little concern of the native population—or us—almost paraded back to their ship. All we could do was watch. When they reached their goal, they loaded their horde on board and, for no other reason than to show us who owned the largest penis, the fired a barrage of automatic weapons in the woods and sent up cheers as specs of exploding light dotted the wood line.
There was little we could do before dawn, as our numbers were so depleted that there weren’t enough of our two hundred man crew left to set sail. All we could do was wait for the revitalization a new day brought. We would catch them. They were in no rush, judging by the leisurely pace they had set as they sailed off. So we lit the fires, but we did not rest. Of the Templars left alive, Pedro de Toleda was an experienced engineer and had served under the Jolly Roger many times. Upon reaching our vessel, Pedro commandeered several Vikings, all the remaining Templars, and began disassembling the forward hoist. Using the lumber he took apart and with parts of several trees readily cut down, he created a sturdy catapult. The first rays of the sun found it completed and, while it wasn’t the prettiest war engine I had ever seen, there was no doubt in anyone’s mind it would work well. The two large boulders left from the front hoist were rolled to ship’s stern, a pile of well-round stones Gardar and Egil had gathered were put aboard, and we set oar to water and sail to sky.
As we went towards the mouth of the Saint Lawrence, de Toleda set the catapult’s rigging. As I watched, awaiting a call for assistance, the Spaniard suddenly stopped his work. “How close can we get, Captain?”
I thought, but had no honest answer. “Why, Pedro? Will it matter?”
The Spanish Templar stood up straight and stretched his aching back. “If we can’t get in close, I’ll rig it for distance, if we can...” A smile crossed his face that for some reason reminded me of de Flor. “If we can, I’ll send the stone almost straight up, maybe two or three hundred yards high but only twenty or thirty yards ahead of us.” He leaned forward and raised one fist high over his head and brought it down with great force into the open palm of his other hand. It was obvious to me what he intended. The catapult’s missile was only a quarter of the hoist’s boulders, but by dropping it from a greater height more force could be generated. I nodded.
“We’ll be on top of them, Pedro. I swear it upon the Grail!”
She was a good ship, and she was running with God’s own wind in her hair. Strong Viking arms caressed the water at her sides. As we approached the mouth of the river, darkness was falling. A military convoy had made its way downriver and was heading out to sea, with many smaller vessels trailing alongside and near behind for protection.
The Nazi ego demanded that the U-215, besides returning with the Holy Grail, would have to take life too, and we all felt it inside us. I was prepared to turn into and go upriver, but a voice in my head told me to join the convoy. The order to join in caused some mumbling at the oars, but my crew knew better than to resist.
There were several problems that went with this. A military convoy did not allow ships lights at night—why give the enemy a clear shot? While living eyes could not see us, we could smash ourselves on the side of a ship and sink! And we were quite visible to the Nazis. So we lagged behind the living ships with a great torch hanging from the Dragon’s mouth as if he were spitting fire, creating the perfect target. On the seas we worked our way in and around many ships. Trawlers and crab boats heading north to the cold Northern Sea turned away after a few miles. Deep-sea fishermen heading towards the fishing waters off of Nova Scotia stayed with the convoy into the deeper ocean—all who followed clung to the illusion of safety in the midst of the more armored military vessels. And none admitted to themselves that even these grand warships could easily fall prey to the U-boat.
Darkness at sea is a living thing. As we sailed along in the darkness, the darkness was filling my head with many thoughts. My mentors were all dead. By now, Theo was gone. My last sight of Theo saw him gesturing to us as though he wished us to stay with him as he washed the water from the well over himself... but he could pour all the water on the planet over those wounds and it would not help. All the weight of the world was settling on my shoulders, crushing me. If the Grail was brought to the Spear of Destiny... I could not imagine the horror that would cover the earth. I had been trained for centuries to prevent this, and I did not wish to even think what would happen to my immortal soul if I failed! I don’t know how long I was lost in my own thoughts, but I was suddenly slammed back into the here and now.
I felt a jolt as if we had struck a rock. But something was very, very wrong. This was neither a Templar vessel, nor a Viking dragonship. It was a ship of my Father’s fleet. I had seen it, knew the crew. I heard the screams of dying men and the ship being blown asunder. I saw my father shouting orders to his crew. I could not observe the ocean clearly. Were we past our attacker? Was he in front of us? I called out to my father’s ship as it burned alongside us. He could not hear me, and I was to disoriented to know which way to turn to find our adversary.
As on a run-away ride at an amusement park, my ship swung about wildly. I might not have known where the enemy was, but my tiller man did. Helgi had watched the torpedo’s path, thrown his full body weight against the tiller, and we twisted about as a rope in the wind. It was such a sharp turn that several oars on the starboard side cracked and split as Helgi maneuvered us into the swarm of small crafts coming to my father’s rescue. Our sail was full and we were flying head-on to ships that could not see us in the water. As we cleared a deep-sea fisher craft, we nearly turned into oncoming torpedoes which passed us for a bigger prize. In frenzy, we lowered our sail, shot the torch out of the Dragon’s mouth and, jigging through the confusion of ships that surrounded us, faded into the moonless horizon, still flying through waves but now directly at the place Helgi had seen the missiles spring from.
Well, I say ‘directly,’ but for clever Helgi, ‘directly’ meant pulling into the convoy and making a semi-circle that would put us in a direct line with U-215. He had assumed (correctly) that the U-boat was running parallel to the convoy, so therefore needs be placing her grand glass eye mid-ship, not looking ahead but sideways. Through our silent run, I stood at the bow with de Toleda waiting for the range needed to hurl a crushing stone. Askold walked up behind me and laid his paw on my shoulder.
“What we do, cap’in? Sink her or board her?”
Now there was a question! Did I risk losing the Grail forever by sinking the U-boat, or letting the Grail slip away to Germany by failing to board the sub? When I failed to answer, Guthrumsson figured we would play it as we went. Which, essentially, is what we did.
The first shot we launched surprised the hell out of the Nazi war vessel, which had sat upon the waters hidden against the darkness. The stone crashed right atop its tower and, guided by the Deity’s hand, took off the glass eye from its base. As we rushed by the blind beast, Askold at his station by the rear hoist sent a boulder dancing across the deck. U-215 shuddered and two torpedoes jumped out in the darkness, aimed only at the blackened horizon. We swung about and pitched two great stones that smashed the metal hull. Wounded and blinded, she began to dive for the bottom as we chased after. Her nose was already well below the waves when Guthrumsson let loose his last boulder. It caught well and hard at her stern... too well and too hard! Instead of forcing a crack and making her surface, Askold had ripped away a good chunk of stern and U-215 must have swallowed more water than she could handle. As she sunk below the waves, we could see by the air bubbles rising that she had been damaged by more than one of our missiles. And sink she did; Nazis, treasure, red bowl and all.
My heart sank, too. A sacred icon that had been carried by the Poor Knights of the Temple of Solomon for ten centuries... and I had lost in a single night.
It was as if we had anchored. The wind left our sail and we sat there staring into the black waters. Off in the distance, fires burned on a number of the convoy ships. My father’s vessel had gone down with half its crew—but as luck would have it, father was plucked from the cold dark waters with the remainder of his fishermen. After many minutes, Egil appeared in front of me and asked with a shudder, “Did we win?”
I put my arm around his shoulder and quietly said, “Yes, Egil, we’ve won.”
There was confusion in his face. “We did? Why we still here?”
Now there was a question!
We took to the oars, for no wind blew now. After many hours, as the sun was barely peeking over the horizon, we rested in the now-quiet bay besides the money pit. As soon as my feet were on dry land, my fine ship and crew faded before my eyes back into God’s sleep. There was a funny feeling in stomach, a sense of loneliness that I was certain would stay inside me for the rest of my life. The adventure was over, yet nothing seemed complete. I was no longer a Templar Knight... and yet I was not in my wheelchair or lying in my deathbed! My throat and mouth had a strange dryness and, despite how I dreaded seeing my mentors and friends covered in gore amidst Nazi corpses, I walked towards the well. Templar law did not permit me to give them proper burial, so throwing them in an unmarked hole seemed to be my only option. After all the centuries of friendship, all these men had shown me, dropping them into a hole was not, to my mind, fair.
By the time I reached the well, my thirst was near unbearable. To my surprise, all the bodies had been taken away. There were drag marks in the dirt that led off into the forest. I was going to follow them, but my mouth had turned so dry that my tongue was sticking to my teeth and my body was filling with the weakness of body I remembered from my time in the real life I had lain aside to embrace the Templar cause. I leaned on the brick wall of the well to support myself and lowered the old cup down to the cool water. My arms felt as though I had rowed halfway around the world, and I could barely raise the cup to my lips.
As my lips touched the water, a calm coolness rushed over me and I was filled with a peace that I had never known for my life, the world, and me. I was still filled with a great weakness of body, but it no longer mattered. As my legs began to fail me, I and the cup in my hand slid down the well’s outer wall, and I rolled against it that I might at least be in a more seemly sitting position when someone found me. I barely moved my torso around and only with the greatest of difficulty did I move my head and face forward. There in front of me, watching the whole affair, were my three Masters.
“Well, Richard,” spoke Hamet as he knelt down to be at eye level with me, “may we have the Grail back?”
“Master,” I whispered. “It is sunk to the bottom of the sea. I have lost it.”
McCorvy’s eyes widened as with disbelief. “Lost it? Then what’s that in your hand?” He pointed at the old cup barely in my grasp. I looked down at the battered old cup in my fingers.
Theo walked over, looked down, and smiled. “At a spot not far from here, we sat at a fire and I told you—it is in a safe place where it serves humanity.”
“Many a good man’s thirst was quenched here,” Spoke Beaumond.
“But the bowl!” I protested.
“Is just a bowl. And we told you that, Richard!” McCorvy smiled at me. “It was a token that reminded Templars of their vow, made friends of an old Arab and a Scotsman, and helped to beg for mercy from the poor.”
I rolled my eyes. “All this time, it was always near me... and I had not seen it.”
“Neither did the Nazis!” Theo grinned. “They walked past it, held it, drank from it, and never once saw the Grail. They wanted magic, Richard. The Grail has no magical power. I’ve never seen a miracle performed, a body healed, or any of the attributes of legend. But the healing of a hurting soul? That is the power, lad, that is the power and the secret of the Grail.”
Beaumond carried my young body back to my chair, which still sat in the kitchen where I had left it. It was early morning, the early morning of the day I had left. Again, time was of no importance to God. As Geofray laid me into the cradle of my chair, he blessed me, and as he prayed I knew I would never see him again...nor would I see any of my teachers again, except in my dreams.
“On April 30, 1945, Allied forces reclaimed the Spear of Destiny. Two hours later, Hitler was dead.”
The reporter turned off his recorder. The great hall had grown quiet in the momentary lull and the sound of the switch resounded as a hammer on a drum.
“Doc,” he said with more than a little restraint. “Doc, I... are you going to ask me to believe that your life was changed by three medieval crusaders? In Kansas? In the twentieth century?”
“No. My life was changed by God through the intercession of a Scottish Monk in the service of the Poor Fellow Knights of the Temple of Solomon... and two Templar Knights.” Thompson smiled at the young reporter. “In July of 2004, a diving team off the coast of Nova Scotia—”
“I covered that. A U-boat was found on the bottom of the fishing grounds off the coast of Nova Scotia with forty-nine bodies intact. They thought it was U-215. She disappeared on her maiden voyage, on her way to lay mines in Boston Harbor.” The young reporter stopped suddenly. “The divers found a body clutching an old red bowl, at least a thousand years old.”
“And now that you know the truth, Bill, what will you do with it?”
There was a pause from the young man, who pondered the outlandish story. “Did it change your life or Thompson’s, Doc?”
“I should image,” the old man began, “that the jury is still out on my life, but it certainly changed Thompson. The pursuit of a Templar’s life—real or imagined—gave him the courage to beat death until a ripe old age. He never rose from his chair, but he taught himself to speak. And in time, he rose to the top of his field. People, students and teachers, swore that he’d been born in the middle ages. This house, young Master al Din, in all its splendor was his, as was his responsibility to protect the Grail. And wealth beyond imagination! Some say he found the Templar Fortune, even the Grail.” Liebenstein calmly rose. “Follow me, William Liebenstein, I have something for you.”
He led the reporter towards Beaumond’s chapel. He was spry for an old man and Liebenstein had to hurry to keep up. “Do you know the value of a great fortune? You can obtain things, things of great value, and gift them to others.” He suddenly stopped and, raising a finger to his lips for quiet, they entered in.
“But I’m Jewish,” the young reporter protested.
“Don’t worry,” said the old man, “it’s a Templar chapel.” Thompson led the reporter to the base of the altar, where the great golden box had its desired effect. When the door was opened, the golden chalice within struck the reporter momentarily dumb.
“You wish to give that to me?” the mystified lad muttered.
The aged teacher looked over his shoulder, smiled, and, turning back to the golden box, carefully pushed the chalice aside and produced an ugly red clay bowl.
“No boy, I have a gift of greater value for you.”
THE END
Pete D’Alessio
Completed June 1, 2011
From the Vaults of Cosmos Compository
