The Templar's Secret (The Templar Series) (27 page)

Edie peered
up at the circular tower that soared above them. ‘It makes sense since that’s the only piece of the riddle that we haven’t solved.’

Hit with a stray thought,
Caedmon contemplatively tapped his chin. ‘Since Lucas is the Latinized name for Luke, the signpost might well pertain to the Evangelist Luke, the author of one of the four canonical gospels.’

Edie shoved
her sunglasses to the top of her head. ‘We’re looking at nearly sixteen thousand square meters of stone. Even if we make the connection between Luke and Ponferrada, I put our odds at one in a thousand.’

‘
Like you, I’m not wildly optimistic,’ he muttered in a dispirited tone of voice. ‘Nevertheless, we must soldier on.’

‘I’m too frazzled to charge into battle. Every time I blink, I wipe out the memory of what I just said.’ Shoulders slumping
, his usually plucky partner sat down on the grassy lawn. Her cheeks pale and her eyes rimmed with dark circles, Edie appeared to be on the verge of total collapse. ‘Sorry, but my brain stopped working about an hour ago.’

‘
Why don’t you walk into town and get us a hotel room?’ he suggested. ‘You can take a quick nap while I –’

‘
I’ll sleep when you sleep.’ Gracing him with a weary smile, Edie unfolded the tourist pamphlet that they’d been issued at the ticket counter. The supply having been picked over, the only available brochure had been the French-language version.

‘
While I appreciate your steadfast commitment to –’

‘
Oh . . . my . . . God!
’ Edie suddenly exclaimed. ‘I think Ponferrada’s twelve towers have something to do with the zodiac.’

‘
I beg your pardon?’ Caedmon wondered if he’d heard correctly. ‘Did you say “the zodiac”?’

‘Here. See
for yourself –’ Edie handed him the tourist brochure. ‘Your French is a whole lot better than mine. Read the sentence beneath the aerial shot of the castle complex.’

Caedmon
quickly scanned the line of text. ‘
Les douze tours de la forteresse imitent schématiquement les douze constellations ou signes du zodiaque.’

‘T
he twelve towers of the fortress schematically mimic the twelve constellations or signs of the zodiac,’ he translated aloud. Elated, he glanced at his partner, his lips curving in an appreciative smile. ‘Brilliant
and
beautiful.’ He extended a hand in Edie’s direction. ‘Come. Let’s investigate whether the audacious claim is true or not.’

‘Where the hell are you two going?’ Calzada abruptly demanded to know, eyeing them suspiciously.

‘No need to sound the alarm,’ Caedmon assured him. ‘We’re simply going up to the parapets so we can better scan the compound.’

The explanation sufficed, Calzada
waving them on their way. His lack of concern undoubtedly stemmed from the fact that there was only one exit from the castle interior via the gatehouse. In order to escape, he and Edie would have to first steal past the gun-toting Bête Noire who would not hesitate to draw his weapon.

Green light given,
Caedmon set off for the nearest set of stairs, Edie in tow.

Both of them breathless, they reached the top of the staircase and rushed down the walkway adjacent to the curtain wall. Finding a good vantage point to view the castle complex,
Caedmon stopped at a crenellated parapet.

Perfect.
Bird’s eye
.

In the near distance,
the slow-moving River Sil snaked past the adjacent town where tourists traipsed along cobbled lanes in groups and pairs, roving from hotels to tapas bars in a boisterous meander. In the far distance, the Aquilianos Mountains rose up out of the shadowed landscape in a sober montage of beige, brown and amber. More Rembrandt than Renoir.

He took a deep breath, the late-day sun coaxing
from the landscape a heady mixture of scents: citron, thyme and a hint of saffron.

Gazing at the stone-laden compound,
Caedmon could see that the castle conformed to a rectangular plan, the focal point being the drawbridge and gatehouse flanked by twinned towers. There was one other set of identically matched circular towers to the rear of the gatehouse; the other eight towers, positioned around the twenty-foot-high curtain wall, were irregular in design, six of them being square-shaped, the remaining two spherical. A dry moat bounded two sides of the castle.

Caedmon
carefully scrutinized each of the towers, able to detect where, over the centuries, repairs had been made, mismatched mortar the giveaway. While medieval towers inevitably delighted modern observers, during the Middle Ages they served a strictly military purpose. But the towers of Ponferrada also contained a hidden esoteric meaning.

If only these stones could speak.

Moving her index finger in the air, Edie silently counted. ‘Okay, I’ve verified that there are indeed twelve towers.’

‘
A numeral that harkens to a surfeit of associations: months of the year, the apostles of Christ, fruits of the Cosmic Tree. The list is endless.’

‘
And let’s not forget, signs of the zodiac. Incidentally, didn’t our tour guide mention that Ponferrada is the
only
Templar fortress constructed with twelve towers?’ When he nodded, Edie continued and said, ‘Okay, so we’ve established that twelve is a number chock full of significance. But it’s a mystery to me how these twelve towers relate to the known constellations. I thought the word “zodiac” meant “circle of animals”.’

Again,
Caedmon nodded. ‘The word is taken from the Greek
zodiakos
, from which is derived the abbreviated “zoo”.’

Edie fingered a line of dry mortar on the parapet, the work of a skilled craftsman long since dead and buried in his grave. ‘
But all of these towers are set around a square design.’

‘
They are at that.’

She
raised a quizzical brow. ‘So, then, there’s no
zodiakos.
’

‘
Ah, but there is.’ Caedmon unsnapped his rucksack and removed pen and paper. Using the top of the parapet as a makeshift desk, he quickly drew what he believed to be the Ponferrada zodiac.

‘
As you just mentioned, the signs of the zodiac are based on twelve constellations or star groups, each designated by a different animal; an ancient mnemonic device originated by the Babylonian astrologers.’ Finished with the drawing, he handed Edie the sheet of paper.

‘
While the circular zodiac is the more familiar design, during the Middle Ages a square zodiac containing the twelve houses was occasionally used. The triangular shape is symbolic of the fact that each house of the zodiac governs mind, body and spirit and does so throughout the course of one’s life from birth through adulthood until death.’

Smiling, Edie lightly slapped her forehead with the base of her palm.
‘Of course! Lucas’s “house” refers to one of the twelve houses of the zodiac. Begging the question: which house? Other than the Star of Bethlehem, there’s no mention of a celestial event in Luke’s gospel.’

Caedmon
gestured to her shoulder bag. ‘Would you mind booting up the iPad and accessing the Gospel of Luke so that – Belay that!’ he blurted in the next instant. Having just figured out the clue, he excitedly pointed to the square zodiac and said, ‘The Apostle Luke
is
the bloody key to the cipher!’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Because in the Middle Ages, the four evangelists – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – were each symbolized by a different animal. Luke was always depicted as a winged oxen.’ Caedmon tapped his finger against one of the triangles on the zodiac. ‘And
that
, in turn, corresponds to the second house of our square zodiac, Taurus, which, as you undoubtedly know –’

‘Is symbolized by the ox,’ Edie interjected. Snatching the pen, she quickly scrawled the symbol for Taurus.

‘And I might add that Taurus also symbolizes hidden treasure.’

‘Brilliant
and
beautiful!’ Edie exclaimed, leaning over and kissing him soundly on his unshaven cheek.

‘
I couldn’t have figured it out without your attentive eye.’ Indeed, he’d been too quick to discount the tourist pamphlet when they first arrived.

‘So all we need to do is
figure out which of the twelve towers represents Taurus.’

‘Since Taurus is the second house of the zodiac –’
Caedmon again tapped the triangle inscribed with the symbol for Taurus before pointing to the two twinned towers at the entry – ‘I believe the correct tower is one of the matched set that flanks the gatehouse.’

‘Because those are the first two towers that a person encounters when they enter the castle,’ Edie correctly deduced.

‘And I would further posit that, as one stands on the drawbridge and faces the castle, the tower on the left-hand side is Aries, the first house of the zodiac, the constellations traditionally configured counterclockwise.’

‘Making its twin on the right, Taurus. Second tower, second house. Makes perfect sense,’ Edie concurred.

For several long moments Caedmon stared at the second tower, contemplating his next move. ‘Fortes de Pinós could have very easily cached the three copper plates that comprised the
Evangelium Gaspar
in an arrow slit or recessed window. The opening would then have been sealed over with stone and mortar. A simple but effective means to hide something of great value from prying Church eyes.’

Edie hitched a hip on to the edge of the parapet. ‘And I’m guessing that our brother knight would have then marked the new stones in some way to distinguish them from the thousands upon thousands of stones at Ponferrada.’

‘Our thoughts run a similar course.’ Folding the sheet of paper, Caedmon placed it inside his rucksack. ‘Fortes de Pinós lived in dangerous times and clearly did not intend to take the secret of the
Evangelium Gaspar
to the grave. That’s why he devised the Chinon Riddle. Even at the end, when he knew that he wouldn’t survive his ordeal, he still clung to the hope that a brother knight, perhaps Jacques de Molay or another high-ranking Templar, would be acquitted and released from custody.’

‘Little did Fortes know that Jacques de Molay would be burned at the stake in front of Notre-Dame cathedral.’

Caedmon hefted the rucksack on to his shoulder. ‘In the time remaining we need to search the circular stairwell inside the second tower for a
signum
,
a mark or sign, to indicate where Fortes may have hidden the gospel. And we mustn’t rule out the possibility that the
signum
was placed on the tower’s exterior.’

Hearing that, Edie’s eyes opened wide. ‘But that would mean you’d have to scale the outside of the tower. Surely, you wouldn’t attempt that without climbing gear?’

‘I’m not as reckless as all that,’ he assured her. ‘If we hurry, we should be able to locate a shop in town where I can purchase the necessary equipment. At the very least, I’ll need a flashlight, chisel and hammer, and a length of rope.’