"I understand you're an authority."
"Rubbish," Stockwell said, enjoying the compliment anyway. "But they did traipse through a period of history about which I know a little. Yank, aren't you?"
The change of subject made Lang shift mental gears before responding. "Actually, I'm from Atlanta, where a lot of people might resent being called that. Has to do with a Yankee general who was careless with fire."
Stockwell's head bobbed, reminding Lang of one of those dolls given to the first five thousand to enter a baseball game."Sherman, yes, yes. Gone With the Wind and all that. Didn't mean to offend."
"You didn't. About the Templars…"
He held up a hand. "Not me, old boy, not me at all. Had an associate, chap named Wolffe, Nigel Wolffe, was fascinated by the blokes, translated some sort of manuscript, scribblings supposedly written by a Templar before he was put to death. Beseeching God for mercy, confession of sins, contrition, all of the claptrap of the medieval church, I'd imagine."
"And of today's Catholics," Lang said. Stockwell's jaw slackened and the glasses slid to the tip of his nose. "Oh dear, I didn't mean…"
Lang smiled, an assurance they were perfectly comfortable together, just two antipapists. "You said you had an associate."
Stockwell sighed heavily. "That's right, past tense. Poor Wolffe is no longer with us. Splendid chap, played a killer hand of whist. Tragic, simply tragic."
Lang felt a chill not entirely caused by the drafts Stockwell had complained of. "I don't suppose Mr. Wolffe…"… Stockwell sneezed, doing the trick with the hankie again. "Dr. Wolffe;" "… Dr. Wolffe died of natural causes?" Stockwell stared at Lang, his eyebrows coming together like two mating caterpillars. "How's that?"
"I was asking how Dr. Wolffe died. An accident, perhaps?"
"Yes, yes. You must have read about it, seen it on the telly."
"I'm sure I did."
The professor turned to gaze out of the only window the cramped space had. There was a look of longing on his face, as though he were wishing he could go outside and play. "They said he probably left the bloody ring on after making tea. Explosion knocked out windows all the way across the Quad."
"There was a resulting fire?"
Stockwell managed to pull away from the view outside. "Extraordinary memory you have. Mr…"
"Reilly."
"Reilly, yes, yes. Surprising you would remember that from a newspaper or television account months ago." Lang leaned forward, hands on the paper-swamped desk. "His work on the Templars, it burned, too?"
Stockwell's Santa Claus face was masked with melancholy, the loss of scholarly work more lamentable than that of a colleague. "I'm afraid so. The original of the manuscript, notes, everything except his first draft."
Maybe Lang hadn't made the trip for nothing after all.
"Where might that draft be?"
"The University library."
"You mean I can just go to the library and read it?"
Stockwell stood and looked around as though he might have forgotten where he had parked his sleigh. "Not exactly, no. I mean, I'll have to get it. Poor Wolffe ran me a copy on the machine, asked for help. Chap could never edit his own work. I was working on it when he… Well, he won't be publishing anyway, not now, will he? I left it at my carrel, planned to finish it up, submit it in his memory. Let's be off, shall we?"
Lang would have been surprised had the good professor been wearing something other than a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches. He reached behind the door and took a tweed cap from a coat rack. His universal uniform of academia was now complete.
They dodged bicycles until they turned into Catte Street. Before them was the massive fourteenth-century Bodleian Library, the repository of an original draft of the Magna Carta, innumerable illuminated manuscripts and at least one copy of every book published in Great Britain.
Stockwell pointed to the adjacent round building of enthusiastic Italian Baroque architecture, featuring peaked pilasters, scrolled windows and a domed roof. "Radcliffe Camera," he said. "Reading room. Meet you there soon's I collect Wolffe's papers."
Lang entered through a heavy oak door, ducking to get under a lintel no more than five and a half feet high. Anyone who doesn't believe in evolution should try smacking their heads on a few medieval doors, he thought grimly.
The Camera served as a general reading room. Oak tables, built to modern proportions, lined two walls. In the center, some of the library's more famous contents were on display in cloth-covered glass cases. Light struggled through opaque glass windows and filtered from miserly overhead lamps. The quiet was tangible, a dusty deafness interrupted by the occasional sound of a page being turned or the beep of a laptop. A lurch in the gastrointestine made Lang wonder where the men's might be, the loo, in Britspeak. This was not the place he could pass gas and escape undetected. He had been in noisier graveyards.
Lang waited for Stockwell, lifting the light-shielding cover from one case and another. A few Latin phrases greeted him like old friends, but most of -the writing was Saxon, Norman French or some other language he had never seen.
He was concentrating on an elaborately illustrated, hand-lettered Bible in what, he was guessing, was Gaelic when the professor appeared at his elbow so suddenly he might have dropped down a chimney.
He took a sheaf of papers from under one arm and tendered them to Lang."Here you go. Drop the lot off at my office when you're done."
Lang took them,_ scanning the first page. "Thanks." Stockwell was headed for the exit. "Pleased to do it. Friend of Jacob's and all that."
Lang sat at the nearest table, concentrating on what he was reading. For the second time in a very short period, he experienced a jolt in his stomach. But this one had nothing to do with Rachel's cooking.
THE TEMPLARS:
THE END OF AN ORDER
Account by Pietro of Sicily
Translation from the medieval Latin by Nigel Wolffe, Ph.D.
4
I shed my novice status shortly after our arrival at Blanchefort, taking my vows as a Brother of the Order of the Poor Knights of the Temple of Solomon before the autumn harvest. I shed also my innocence and my faith, now I realize.
True to the inducements I had been offered, I supped on meat twice daily and bathed. myself twice weekly until All Hallows' Eve, when the air's chill made it impractical to do and I was subjected to the body's natural vermin once again. Even these deprivations seemed trivial, for I was allowed to change my vestments1 for clean ones weekly, thereby ridding myself of my small tormentors.
Not only did my belly grow with victuals far richer than those consumed by others in God's service, but my knowledge increased its girth as well. I know now that I should have remembered Eve's original sin in thirsting for forbidden knowledge, but like hers my mind possessed an unquenchable thirst. Uncontrolled lust for knowledge, forbidden or not, can be as deadly as carnal lust, as I was to discover all too late.
The castle had a library the likes of which I did not know existed except, perhaps, under the direct keep of the Holy Father in Rome. I had become used to one or two manuscripts illustrating both in word and picture the Holy Writ. The Brethren's collection included volumes with scribbling resembling worms with brightly coloured ornamentation, which, I was told, was the wisdom of the Ancients preserved by the heathen Saracen.
When I asked why works of pagans and heretics were allowed in consecrated quarters, I was told that writings forbidden most Christians were permitted here. It was a refrain I was to hear repeated often, that the Knights were not bound by the same dictates as the rest of Christendom.