The Templar Salvation (2010)

ALSO BY RAYMOND KHOURY

The Last Templar

The Sanctuary

The Sign

Copyright (c) 2010 by Raymond Khoury

All rights reserved

For my father,

the kindest soul I ever met.

Prologue

CONSTANTINOPLE

JULY 1203

Stay low, and keep quiet,” the grizzled man whispered as he helped the knight clamber onto the walkway. “The ramparts are swarming with guards, and this siege has them on edge.”

Everard of Tyre glanced left and right, scanning the darkness for any sign of a threat. There was no one around. The towers to either side were distant, the flickering torches of the night watches manning them barely visible in the moonless night. The Keeper had chosen their entry point well. If they acted fast, there was a reasonable chance they could scale the rest of the fortifications and make their way into the city unnoticed.

Making it back out safely—that was a different matter.

He yanked on the rope three times to signal the five knight-brothers who waited below, in the shadows of the great outer wall. One by one, they climbed up the knotted rope, the last one of them pulling it up behind him. With their swords now unsheathed and clenched tightly in their calloused hands, they slithered across the rampart in a silent single file, following their host. The rope was unwound, this time down the side of the inner wall. Minutes later, they’d all touched solid ground and were trailing a man none of them had ever met, advancing into a city in which they’d never set foot.

They crouched low, uncertain of where the Keeper was leading them, wary of being spotted. They wore black surcoats over dark tunics instead of their traditional white mantles, the ones bearing the distinctive red, splayed cross. There was no need for them to announce their true identity. Not when traveling through enemy territory, and even less when sneaking into a city that was under siege by Pope Innocent’s crusaders. After all, they were crusaders. To the people of Constantinople, the Templars were the pope’s men. They were the enemy. And Everard was fully aware of the grisly fate that awaited knights who were captured behind enemy lines.

But the warrior-monk didn’t consider the Byzantines the enemy, and he wasn’t here at the pope’s behest.

Far from it.

Christian against Christian, he thought as they slipped past a church that was closed for the night. Is there no end to this insanity?

Their journey had been long, and arduous. They had ridden with only the briefest of pauses for days, exhausting their horses to near-death. The message that had come from the Keepers, deep inside the Byzantine capital, was unexpected—and alarming. The city of Zara, on the Dalmatian coast, had been inexplicably sacked by the pope’s army—inexplicably, given that it was a Christian city, and not just a Christian city, but a Catholic one at that. The Venetian fleet ferrying the rapacious men of the Fourth Crusade was on the move again. Constantinople was their next target, ostensibly to restore its deposed and blinded emperor, and his son, to the throne. And given that the Byzantine capital wasn’t even Catholic, but Greek Orthodox—and given the massacre that had taken place there a couple of decades earlier—the portents for the city didn’t look promising.

And so Everard and his brother-knights had left the Templar stronghold at Tortosa in a great rush. They had ridden north all the way up the coast, then west, crossing through unfriendly Cilician Armenian and Muslim Seljuk territory, navigating across the arid moonscapes of Cappadocia, steering clear from any settlements and towns, doing their best to avoid confrontation. By the time they reached the environs of Constantinople, the crusader fleet—more than two hundred galleys and horse transports under the command of the formidable Doge of Venice himself—was well entrenched in the waters surrounding the greatest city of its time.

The siege was on.

Time was running out.

They sheltered in the shadows while a patrol of footmen trudged past, then they followed the Keeper through a small cemetery to a thicket of trees where a horse-drawn wagon awaited them. Another graying man, one whose solemn expression couldn’t mask a deep unease, waited alongside it, holding the reins. The second of three, Everard thought as he gave him a small nod, while his men climbed into the back. They were soon advancing deep into the city, affording the burly knight an occasional glance through the narrow slit in the wagon’s canvas cover.

He had never seen such a place.

Even in the near-darkness, he could make out the hulking silhouettes of the soaring churches and monumental palaces that were of a scale he hadn’t imagined possible. The sheer number of them was astounding. Rome, Paris, Venice … he’d had the good fortune to visit them all, years earlier, while accompanying his grand master on a trip to the Paris Temple. They all paled by comparison. The New Rome was indeed the greatest city of them all. And when the wagon finally reached its destination, the sight that greeted him was no less awe-inspiring: a magnificent structure fronted by a soaring Corinthian colonnade, its pediment disappearing high overhead in the near-darkness.

The third Keeper, the eldest among them, was waiting for them at the top of the edifice’s grand stairs.

“What is this place?” Everard asked him.

“The imperial library,” the man nodded.

Everard’s expression flagged his surprise. The imperial library?

The Keeper caught it and his face lightened up with the merest hint of a grin. “Where best to hide something than in plain sight?” He turned and headed in. “Follow me. We don’t have much time.”

The older men escorted the knights up the flight of steps, through the entrance vestibule, and deep into the cavernous building. The halls were deserted. The hour was late, but it was more than that. The tension in the city