"But sir, you did not look into the eyes of those you killed here," I said, remembering the remark he had made about his wound. "They died in their huts, baking like so much bread."
He nodded, that smile on his lips. "You remember well, little brother. But there are exceptions to every rule. Those men in their shelters died of fire, one of God's four elements."
I knew the four elements consisted of fire, water, wind and earth, but I knew not what pertinence this had to killing. I indulged myself in the sin of pride. I was ashamed to admit I knew not.
Within a few hours we entered the city of Trapani, the name meaning "sickle" in Greek because of the crescent shape of the harbor there. As I have said, until this time I had never been more than a day's journey by foot from my home. I had, of course, heard of the sea, but that is different from seeing it. Thinking of those waters like those on which Our Lord walked and in which His apostles fished, I had not imagined anything like what greeted us. I am ashamed to admit my faith was so little that I could not have imagined the fashioning of anything so deeply blue, so restless or so vast. I had been used to seeing hills and mountains, trees and streams. But here I could see to the very edge of the earth.
Nor had I seen ships before, huge carts that floated upon the water with great white sails, each vessel with enough cloth to blanket the abbey I had left. There seemed to be thousands of these craft, crowding each other as they rose and fell with each breath of the mighty ocean.9 This huge fleet, I was told, belonged entirely to the Templars who, after paying what amounted to extortion to the Venetians to leave the Holy Land, had decided to purchase their own ships.10 Those members who had not already done so had gathered here to journey to their home temples.
For days we waited for a wind that would take us northward along the coast of Italy to Genoa and then to the coast of Burgundy. But even the size of these craft to the vastness of the sea, even my faith did not prevent me from becoming trepidant. This I recognized as my weakness, my failing, that I was unable to be comforted that God's will would be done.
During the time in Trapani, I came to realize Guillaume de Poitiers was not alone different from the poor monks with whom I had lived. All his Templar brethren lived well. Although it is hardly man's place in God's scheme to judge, I noted humility and poverty did not number among their attributes. They enjoyed great quantities of unwatered wine (which they were quick to condemn as inferior to the wines of other regions) and were profligate in their habits. Gaming was as common among them as prayer as was recounting stories in which the narrator was the hero, usually a little bit more so than his predecessor.
I was to learn a number of the Holy See's rules did not apply to this Order. This may well have carried the seeds of its fall from grace, a fall as disastrous if less spectacular than Satan's from Heaven.
Translator's Notes
1. Armour shielding leg and foot
2. Armour covering the arms, shoulders and upper body
3. A device for throwing large rocks, like a catapult
4. The Italian equivalent of William is Guglielmo
5. 1091-1250
6. Approximately 650 meters
7. The word Pietro uses is cycgel, Frankish for either a short heavy club or a weapon used to beat upon an opponent. In this context, it is doubtful these people would have weapons more sophisticated than could be fashioned from readily available material.
8. The author uses liste, a Frankish word which later came to include the areas used for knightly competition. Since the sport of jousting between knights was unknown at the time of Pietro's narrative, the earlier meaning of the word is used.
9. The hyperbole here is Pietro's, not the translator's.
10. There are no consistent records as to the number of ships owned by the Templars, but it is unlikely that the entire fleet would have been at an obscure Sicilian port at once or that all the ships in port would have been theirs.
CHAPTER FIVE
1
Atlanta
The same day
Morse was slouched in his chair, studying another fax, this one from the Department of Defense, Bureau of Records, St. Louis.
Reilly's dates of service matched what Morse remembered him saying, even confirmed a· bullet lodged between the seventh and eighth cervical vertebrae. If Morse understood the medical jargon correctly, the examining doctor had adopted an attitude of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." Attempting surgery to cut the damn bullet out could sever some nerve with a long name. Made sense.
Morse sat up so suddenly the casters on his chair slammed against the gray carpet with a thud, causing the detective in the cubicle next to his to look up from her computer with a glare.
"C-seven and C-eight?" he said to no one in particular before he picked up the phone and dialed the medical examiner's number from memory.
The first person he spoke to confirmed his suspicion: There was no eighth cervical vertebra. The thoracic spine began after the seventh cervical disk.
Mistake?
Could be.
He reached into the inside pocket of the suit coat draped over the back of his chair and produced his notebook. It didn't take long to find the number for Reilly's office. Now, if he could just get the minimal cooperation if the lawyer's secretary…
2
Atlanta: Offices of Arnold Krause, MD.
Morse hated doctors' offices even when he was not a patient. The worn and outdated magazines and the cheap furniture were almost as bad as the receptionist's, "The doctor'll be right with you," a promise uniformly and cheerfully given but rarely kept. He had a theory that there was a school somewhere that recycled lobotomy patients to work the hunt desks of physicians' offices.
His badge made a difference. He hardly had time to settle in with a month-old copy of People before he was ushered into an office where diplomas and certificates covered more of the walls than the dark paneling.
"Arnold Krause." A short man in a white coat entered the room right after Morse and circled him to stand behind a desk and extend his hand. "Understand you're interested in Mr. Reilly's records."
Morse savored the nervousness most people exhibited around policemen. "That's right, Doctor. There be no doctor-patient privilege in Georgia…"
Krause plopped into a leather chair behind the desk and slid a manila folder and a large envelope across the polished mahogany. "As I'm well aware. Still, we don't usually turn over medical records without a subpoena. But where a patient is subject to an investigation…"
Morse sat in a wing chair across the desk and began to thumb through the file. "I appreciate your not insisting on the formalities."
"We try to cooperate with law enforcement," the doctor said, closely watching where Morse directed his attention.
Morse read the typed notes of last fall's physical. Reilly seemed to be in good health. Impatiently, he opened the envelope, dumping X-rays onto the desk. He held them up one by one to the light from the office's only window until he found the one he was looking for.
He handed it to the doctor. "This be the neck, right?"
Krause whirled in his chair to place the X rayon a viewer built into the wall. Fluorescent light flickered and came on. "The bottom of the cervical spine, yes. Actually, the picture is a chest X-ray."
It was obvious the doctor wanted to ask why Morse wanted to know.
Morse ignored the implicit question. "And there be no foreign objects imbedded in Mr. Reilly's cervical spine, right?"
The doctor's face wrinkled into a puzzled frown. "Foreign object? Like…?"
"Like a bullet."
The doctor paled visibly. "A bullet?"
Morse leaned across the desk. "What I said, a bullet. If one were there, we'd see it, right?"