She glanced at Bronson to make sure that he was still following, which he was.
‘There’s no information about where the hoard originated, only its movement once it began its travels, I suppose you could say. And that trail leads from “the castle that fell” to “the fortress above the waves”. Hopefully, with your knowledge of Templar activities in the Holy Land, you’ll be able to identify those two locations, though I’m not sure that it matters too much even if you can’t, because I already know where the third place was on the route.’
‘Those two are pretty easy,’ Bronson replied. ‘There were a number of castles and fortifications that were captured by the enemy at various times during the Crusades and the period when the Knights Templar were operating in this area. But putting those two references together almost certainly means that the first castle referred to was the one at Acre. And we know that because pretty much the night before that castle fell to the Mamluks, the treasurer of the order was instructed by the Marshall, a man named Pierre de Sevry, to take the Templar treasure and as many non-combatants as he could fit into his ship, and make his escape north up the coast to Sidon.
‘And the point about that, I suppose, is that the fortification at Sidon was known as the “Sea Castle”, because it occupied almost the entire land area of a small island just off the mainland and was linked to it by a narrow causeway. If you were going to describe that castle in just a few words, calling it the “fortress above the waves” would be about as accurate a description as you could hope for. So the hoard — and from what I know of Templar history that almost certainly means the order’s treasure in Outremer, the land beyond the sea — went from Acre to Sidon. And we even know where it went next, because the Templar Treasurer, a man named Tibauld de Gaudin, got back on his ship a short time after he’d arrived at Sidon, and set sail for Cyprus, intending to raise reinforcements.
‘Acre was already lost. De Gaudin would have known that because the Mamluk army that was encircling the city was so huge that even if he had managed to summon ten thousand knights, not even that number would have been enough to make a difference. The next logical target for the Mamluks would probably have been Sidon. Because it was essentially an island fortress approachable only along a narrow causeway, and which might have been able to withstand a prolonged siege, perhaps it was de Gaudin’s intention to make a stand there. Maybe he thought that if he could reinforce the garrison at Sidon, the Templars could keep a toehold in the Holy Land and eventually regroup and retake Jerusalem. But that never happened and he was never able to produce any reinforcements at all. Not that long afterwards the Sidon Sea Castle was attacked by the Mamluk army and fell quite quickly because the defenders were hopelessly outnumbered, and that pretty much marked the end of the crusades and the Templar presence there. There were some abortive attempts to re-establish the order at a place called Ruad, but they never came to anything much.’
Angela nodded and traced the remainder of the line on the piece of paper with the tip of her finger.
‘This doesn’t use the proper name Cyprus, or any proper name, in fact, but it does refer to the hoard being transferred to “the island of copper”, and in antiquity Cyprus was famous as a good source of copper, so that seems fairly clear. The historical record that you know about and this translation are in accord with each other, at least so far. What are you smiling about?’ she added.
‘I was just thinking that on this occasion we might be on the trail of something big, something worthwhile. The Templar treasure of Outremer was never found, was it? Certainly there was no suggestion that it was left in the cellars of the castle at Acre, and de Gaudin’s voyage to the Sidon Sea Castle and on to Cyprus is well documented. He was the Treasurer of the order and the obvious man to be entrusted with the wealth of the Templars, and although most experts believe the treasure was carried off to Cyprus, it then simply vanishes from the historical record. This translation of that obscure inscription, as far as I know, is the only documented reference that might possibly show where it ended up.’
‘So what was this hoard?’ Angela asked. ‘Gold bullion or something?’
‘It would have been a mixture of a lot of different stuff — most likely gold and silver as bullion or coinage, as well as jewellery of various types. Most of it would have been owned by the Templars, but there would also have been valuables deposited by other people, either for safe keeping or as collateral. The order basically conceived the banking system that we still use today, so a businessman could deposit funds in, say, the Paris Preceptory, receive a coded letter of credit in exchange and take that to the Templar castle at Acre or wherever and withdraw the same funds less a handling charge, so he could travel perfectly safely on his journey, knowing that he could never be robbed. In fact, really, the Templar assets were less a treasure in the conventional sense than simply their working capital. And the other things they would have held were lots of land deeds, because many of their assets were immovable property — castles, houses, farms and estates scattered throughout Europe.’
Angela nodded and turned her attention back to the sheet of paper in front of her.
‘Right,’ she said, ‘the next bit is slightly ambiguous. In fact, I can read what it says but I’m not sure that I know what it means. This next phrase translates as “there was safety in separation”, which perhaps suggests that the treasure was divided into two or more smaller units. But I’m not actually sure that that’s what it means, because there’s another reference here to the “truth”, just like there was in the first part of the inscription, and the way it’s written could mean that the treasure went one way and this “truth”, whatever it is, went somewhere different.’
She paused for a moment and reread the translation of the decrypted text.
‘I don’t know if I’m reading more into this than is actually there, but the emphasis seems to be that the hoard — presumably the assets of the Knights Templar order in the Holy Land, as you said — is of less importance to the writer, and to the Templars, than the “truth”. The text is describing the route the two separate things took from the castle at Acre, but the object the Templars really wanted to save was this “truth”, and the treasure was almost of secondary importance, just along for the ride, as it were.’
‘So does it say where either object ended up?’
‘Yes, but only in the vaguest terms. In fact, although that earlier section describes the separation, the following sentence states that they both ended up in the same place, in “the land from whence came the nine”, which I presume means France, as that’s where the first Knights Templar originated from. But the text doesn’t say where the objects finished up in France, and that’s a very big country. It also doesn’t state that both the treasure and the truth ended up in the same place in France, and because of that phrase about “separation” I suppose you could reasonably assume that they were taken to different destinations.’
‘So that’s it,’ Bronson said, sounding bitter. ‘After all this, all that inscription is actually saying is what we could have probably guessed anyway, that the Templar treasure was sent from Acre to Sidon and then on to Cyprus, and from there it was taken to France when the position of the order in the Holy Land finally became completely untenable. Jacques de Molay, the last Grand Master of the Templars, had accompanied Tibauld de Gaudin in his flight from Acre, and took over from him when the Treasurer died on the island. Most investigators have always assumed that, when de Molay returned to France with the remnants of the order, the treasure went with him, probably to the Paris Preceptory.’