The second rider pulled his horse around and, angered by the knight’s counterattack, came storming back. Conrad didn’t move. He stood his ground, giving his mind the time it needed to find an opening in the man’s reckless charge, coiling his muscles for the next assault.
He saw it and made his move, darting sideways, putting the dead Turk’s body between himself and the horseman to confuse his advance. The rider made the same mistake his crony had and allowed Conrad to get onto the wrong side of his blade, giving the knight the advantage of going for his undefended flank. Conrad let his sword rip, swinging with ferocious strength and opening up a wide gash right through the man’s thigh, virtually chopping it off. The rider instinctively pulled on his reins, shocked by the sight of his exposed muscle and flesh. Conrad didn’t give him any breathing space. He charged after him and was on him before the rider even realized he was there, striking him from the right, ripping his back open before shoving him off his saddle and finishing him off with another blow.
And that’s when the bolt struck his shoulder.
It rammed into him from behind with a violent, silent impact.
Conrad staggered forward a couple of steps under the momentum of the hit, then turned around, heavy-footed. Qassem had dismounted. He was standing by his horse, staring at Conrad, the spent crossbow in his hand. He threw it to the ground, drew his scimitar, and strode toward Conrad, his brow gnarled in an infernal scowl.
Conrad knew it was bad. It had hit him in the right shoulder. His good arm. His only good one. The one he needed to work the sword. The arrow was lodged firmly in his shoulder blade, unleashing a cascade of pain with the slightest movement of his right arm.
A cascade he would have to ignore if he was going to defend himself.
Qassem didn’t break step, his eyes locked on Conrad, his sword held low to his side. Then his stride turned to a trot, then a sprint, and with a loud howl, he raised his sword and, with a running leap, brought it crashing down onto Conrad.
Conrad lunged sideways, putting his body out of reach and blocking the blow with his own sword. The blades clanged heavily into each other, the strike reverberating through Conrad and shooting a spasm of white-hot pain across his shoulder. He felt his knees buckle, but he couldn’t let them fail him now, couldn’t let the pain cripple him. Qassem spun around and swung again, his blade flying through a full loop before crashing back down against Conrad’s sword.
The third strike flung the scimitar out of Conrad’s hand, his fingers unable to ignore the agony in his shoulder.
Qassem stood still, breathing in deep snorts, and smiled. His eyes dropped to the dagger strapped to Conrad’s forearm and his smile turned into a mocking grin.
“I don’t know whether to kill you, or just take your other hand off—maybe your feet too—and let you live on like a pathetic, crippled maggot,” he chortled. “Maybe I should do that to you both.”
Conrad’s feet faltered. He was having trouble breathing, and he felt a taste of blood in his mouth. His heart spasmed at the realization. The arrow hadn’t just lodged in his shoulder. It had punctured his lung.
He knew how that would end.
He’d seen it enough times.
He looked up at Qassem, and saw a reflection of his realization in the Turk’s face. The man held his gaze for a moment, then raised his scimitar like an executioner and held it there.
“What the hell. Maybe I’d better do it now before you rob me of the pleasure—”
And his face froze in a tight clench just as something thumped into him from behind and crunched its way out of his chest.
A bolt.
He stared down at the arrowhead that was sticking out of his rib cage and dripping with blood, and surprise flooded his face. He turned around, slowly, Conrad following his gaze.
Maysoon was standing in the clearing, by his horse.
A crossbow in her hands.
Pain visibly etched into her face.
The woman from the fields, the one the Turk had taken hostage, was there, beside her. A clutch of bolts in her hand.
Qassem moved to head toward them, but Conrad wasn’t about to give him that chance. He pushed hard on his legs and rose up, using his body’s momentum to tackle the Turk and plunge his dagger deep into his back, twisting and turning and grinding it in, making sure he cut through as many organs and ducts and arteries as possible.
The two men tumbled to the ground in a bloody, dusty heap.
The Turk spasmed and gurgled for a few seconds, his eyes wide and locked on to Conrad with silent rage, before he gave out a final shudder and his body went limp.
Conrad let his head drop back onto the hard, dry soil. He stared at the sky, then Maysoon was right with him, cradling his head, running her fingers through his hair, tears streaking down her face.
“Don’t leave me,” she sobbed.
“Never,” he replied, but he knew he was lying. Blood was bubbling out of the edge of his mouth and his breathing was getting more ragged. The air he was fighting to take in was escaping before getting a chance to do its job.
“Keep it safe,” he mumbled. “Find a way. Keep it safe. And maybe, one day, someone will be able to do what we couldn’t.”
“I will. I promise … I will.”
With startling speed, his lips began to turn blue and his skin took on a dusky pallor. His mouth felt heavier, and as his brain grew starved of oxygen, his words became more slurred.
And then he was gone.
Chapter 57
They buried him there, in the church. Then she came to Konya and settled here,” the old woman continued. “She joined a tekke. And for the next several months, she went back to that cave many times, alone, taking an extra horse with her, and brought back the texts, one small load at a time. She kept them hidden and didn’t tell anyone about them. And then, years later, she met someone.”
“A draper,” Tess guessed. She was utterly spellbound, hanging on the woman’s every word.
“Yes. He was also part of the same lodge. She confided in him. Told him her secret. Eventually, they got married. Started a new life together, here, in Konya.” Her face softened into a bittersweet smile. “They were my ancestors.”
“So the mural, the lines from the poem … that came after?” Tess asked.
The woman nodded. “Yes. She went back and had it added much later. In the church where Conrad was buried, as you saw.”
Reilly asked, “How do you know all this?”
The woman pushed herself to her feet and crossed to an old desk. She rummaged through it and recovered a small key, which she used to open one of its drawers. She pulled out a folded document and brought it over to show Tess.
It was composed of several handwritten pages, old and yellowed. Tess couldn’t read them, as they were covered in a tight Arabic script, the alphabet used in Turkey before 1928.
“This tells the whole story,” the old woman said. “It’s everything Conrad told Maysoon. It’s been handed down from generation to generation. Has been for close to seven hundred years.”
“And all this time, the texts stayed hidden,” Tess said.
“Maysoon had promised Conrad to keep them safe and to try and share them with the world. But there was no way for her to do that. Not back then. East and West were fiercely divided. In this land, the Seljuks were on the way out and the Ottomans and their hordes of ‘warriors of the faith’ were taking over. They were out to create an Islamic empire, and the last thing Maysoon wanted was for these writings to be used as a weapon to discredit an enemy faith.”
Tess glanced at Reilly. He’d also caught the echo in the woman’s words and gave Tess a discreet, cognizant nod that caused a small flutter in her belly.
The old woman caught their drift and half-smiled wistfully, then her mouth folded with despair. “She didn’t know who to turn to in the West either. The Templars were gone, of course. And the Church was hugely powerful back then. No one, not even a king, would have dared to champion something t
hat threatened its dominance.”
“So they kept them tucked away … here?”
“Yes,” the woman said. “Safely stored, waiting for the right day.”
Tess’s throat tightened up like a pinched straw. She had to ask again. “Here here?”
The old woman nodded.
Tess swallowed an invisible golf ball. “Can we see it?”
The woman didn’t answer at first. Then she got up from the couch and stepped across to the desk, where she retrieved some keys. She turned to face them and said, “Come.”
She led them across the living room and through a dark, narrow hallway that had the kitchen off one side and looked like it gave onto a bedroom at its far end. It had a lower ceiling than the living room and was lined with cupboard doors on one side. A kilim carpet hung from a brass rail on the opposite wall. The old woman opened a cupboard door and brought out a flashlight, then went up to the kilim and pulled it to one side. Cut into the wall behind it and barely visible in the darkness was a narrow, winding staircase, not much wider than a man’s shoulders.
The old woman entered the niche and climbed down, taking each of the tall risers with care, steadying herself against the curving wall, the light of her flashlight playing against its rough, pockmarked surface. Tess and Reilly followed. The stairs wound down twice before ending in a tunnel, also narrow and rough. It all had a similar feel to the underground city they’d been trapped in, and Tess wondered if it was of the same vintage.
The old woman led them past a series of old wooden doors lining one side of the tunnel, over a length of about thirty yards, until she reached the last door, one that faced down the tunnel. She then unlocked it, stepped inside, and ushered them in behind her.
They were standing in a small room. More of a walk-in cupboard, really. It was windowless and low-ceilinged and, like the chambers in the underground city, had a pleasant temperature despite the heat aboveground, and none of the humidity.
Tess looked around, and every last molecule of air in her lungs gushed out.
All of the small room’s walls, apart from the one with the door in it, were lined with shelves. The shelves, in turn, were lined with books. Old books. Small, leather-bound, positively ancient codices. The oldest books on the planet: two-thousand-year-old gospels, from the earliest days of the Church.
Dozens of them.
Tess couldn’t believe it.
Her mouth managed to ask, “May I?” as she pointed at one of them.
The old woman gave her a resigned “help yourself” gesture.
Tess reached out and picked up one of the books. It was very similar to the two codices she’d found in Conrad’s grave. Same kind of leather binding, same folded back, same strap wrapped around it. It seemed in equally good condition. She hesitated, then peeled back the fold and opened the book and looked inside. It had similar lettering, Koine Greek.
She translated its title page aloud: “The Gospel of Eve.”
Tess wasn’t familiar with it. The old woman watched her with slight bemusement, then said, “I was curious about that one too. But it’s not the Eve you think.”
Tess gave her a curious look. “You know what’s in these books? You’ve read them?”
“Not entirely. I’ve just taught myself a little bit of Coptic and some old Greek here and there and managed to understand some of what’s inside them.”
A particular question was clawing away inside Tess, desperate to get out. “If I ask you about a particular text, would you know if it’s here or not?”
The old woman shrugged. “Probably.”
Tess inhaled nervously. “A few years ago, I held in my hands something I believed was the journal of Jesus. His own writings. His diary.”
The woman’s eyes widened. “You saw it?”
“Yes, but I couldn’t tell if it was real or if it was a forgery. And I never got a chance to put it through any lab tests to find out. Do you know anything about it? Do you know if it was the real thing?”
The woman smiled, then shook her head. “It wasn’t. It was a forgery.”
The finality of her answer stunned Tess. “How do you know that?”
“Maysoon’s letter. Conrad told her all about it.” She ordered her thoughts, then added, “They were only able to make it because they had all this to work with,” gesturing at the shelves of ancient texts.
“Wait a sec, you’re saying the Templars knew about this trove all along?”
“Knew about it? They wouldn’t have existed without it. That’s how it all started. With the original keepers of this trove, the men who looked after it and kept it safely hidden at the Imperial Library in Constantinople. It was all their plan.”
“You’re saying the Templars were dreamt up in Constantinople?”
The old woman nodded. “The Keepers had been guarding the trove of Nicaea for centuries, ever since Hosius had saved it from burning and smuggled it off to safety in Constantinople. The Keepers guarded it, waiting for the right time to make it public and share it with the rest of the world. But that moment never seemed to come … and by the end of the first millennium, the world took a darker turn. The pope was out of control. And when he came up with the notion of a holy crusade and ordered Christians to go to war and kill in the name of Christ, they knew he had lost it completely. Jesus’s message had been completely obliterated. But the crusaders were winning their battles and giving the pope more and more power. With control over the Holy Land and all the monarchs of Europe kissing his feet, the pope would have supreme power over most of the known world. The Keepers were horrified by what was happening and felt they had to do something. They needed to find a way to rein him in. And they came up with a radical idea. They decided to create a counterforce. A military organization that could challenge Rome’s supremacy and keep its influence in check. They had all this to work with,” she said, waving at the astounding collection of writings around her. “The threat of making it public would have probably been enough to scare the pope into giving them what they wanted, but they felt they needed more. They needed to be sure. They needed one more book. One hugely powerful text that would terrify Rome into submission. So they decided to create the ultimate gospel.”
“The personal journal of Jesus,” Tess said.
“Exactly,” the old woman nodded.
Tess looked at Reilly, and that fateful moment of years earlier came rushing back. The two of them, standing on that cliff. Watching the vellum pages glide down and get swallowed up by the churning sea. The answer they never got—until now.
The old woman pressed on. “They had all this to base their work on, to create their forged masterpiece, to get it right. It would also make the find seem unquestionably believable. After all, all these books are the real thing. It was only natural for Jesus’s own journal to be part of this collection. So once it was ready, they acted. They sought out others who shared their concerns. Knights, learned and enlightened men from across Europe who they had met over the years, at the library. Nine of them.”
“The first nine Templars. Hughes de Payens and his men,” Tess said.
The old woman nodded again. “The knights went to Jerusalem, where they approached the king. They told him they were there to protect the pilgrims coming to the holy city, and got him to give them the ruins of the old temple to use as their base. And after years of supposedly digging around, they sent a message to Rome, saying they’d found something. Something … disturbing. The pope sent his envoys. The knights showed them some of the gospels that you see here. Then they showed them the real prize. The pope’s men were horrified. They went back to Rome and confirmed the find. The pope gave the Templars everything they wanted in exchange for keeping it quiet.”
Tess’s head was spinning. It was a lot to take in. “And after that, the Templars sent the gospels back here—or rather, back to Constantinople?”
“They’d been safe there for many centuries. The Holy Land was a war zone. The Keepers wanted to make sure the gospels were
safe.”
“But not Jesus’s diary?”
“No,” the old woman said. “That stayed with the Templars, at Acre. It was the source of their strength. They wanted to keep it close, under their guard. Which was a mistake. But remember, it was also a forgery. As far as the Keepers were concerned, its value was strategic, not historic.”
Tess was completing the puzzle in her mind. “So then in 1203, the pope’s army is at the gates of Constantinople. The Keepers are worried about losing their trove. They send out a distress signal.”
“Yes. The Templars send out a few men to smuggle it out to safety. But they lose it until Conrad and Maysoon manage to get it back … a hundred years later.”
“But by then, it’s too late to do anything with it. The Holy Land is back in Muslim hands, the forged diary of Christ is lost, and the Templar Order’s been wiped out by the King of France, with the help of his puppet pope.” Tess frowned, remembering the unfortunate tale of the last survivors of the Falcon Temple that she and Reilly had uncovered three years ago. “Imagine … If Conrad had managed to get his hands on this just a few years sooner … it could have changed everything.”
The old woman shook her head. “There was no chance of that happening. Conrad only heard about it because he was living in Constantinople. And the only reason he was there was because the Templars were wanted men.”
Tess nodded. The cruel machinations of fate had loaded the dice against him right from the beginning. “These Keepers,” Tess asked. “What happened to them? Did Maysoon try to find them?”
“She did,” the old woman said. “But there was no trace of them. They were probably killed during the sacking of the city, maybe by agents of the pope who were looking for the trove.”
“And so Maysoon and her descendants—your family—became the new Keepers,” Tess observed.
The old woman nodded. “Come,” she said. “Let’s go back up. I’ll make another pot of coffee.”