unpleasantness in certain areas.'
'And that's not what I meant,' Laura replied, but her attention had already been drawn by the disturbing iconography.
'Why did Sir William decide to build it?' Shavi asked. 'There must be some records.'
'Many of them went missing in 1700 after a cleric drew on them to write a history of the St. Clair family,' Marshall said. 'Just one of the mysteries that surround the place.'
'Perhaps he uncovered something that others wanted to remain hidden.'
'Perhaps. But it may have been that the St. Clairs remained Roman Catholics instead of giving in to the Reformation. The religious divide has always remained strong in Scotland and many Catholics have suffered persecution down the centuries. The desire to remain secure in such a volatile atmosphere has led both the truth and the history to be obscured.' His eyes were bright and intelligent; he seemed to have been transformed by boyish enthusiasm at the hope that some of the mysteries might finally be unveiled. 'But the St. Clairs also had very strong links to the Freemasons, who guard their secrets jealously. And, some say, to the Knights Templar. And the Rosicrucians. It has been said that the true history of the world is the history of secret societies and if that is true, then all history converges here at Rosslyn.'
'Are you going to keep me in the loop or carry on speaking in this foreign language?' Laura asked tartly. 'In which case I'm going off to find an icon to kick.'
In the Middle Ages there were many stories about the existence of Enlightened Ones,' Shavi explained patiently, 'the Rosicrucians, an intensely secret society whose leaders were only known to an innermost circle of adepts and the great and good leaders of society who protected them. They were supposedly highly advanced alchemists who were former members of the Knights Templar.' Laura gave a weary sigh and made a hand motion for him to continue.
But it was Marshall who carried on: 'The Knights Templar were the warrior priests of Christianity, established to protect pilgrims travelling to the Holy Land. Experts at fighting, but also intellectually superior. As well as armourers and knights, their number contained cartographers, navigators, doctors and learned clerics. But the Church became jealous of their growing power and turned on them in 1307. They were accused of taking part in blasphemous rituals-'
'That sounds interesting.' Laura's smile was a challenge Marshall chose to ignore.
'The penalty for helping them was excommunication. That is an example of how seriously the Church attempted to eradicate them. It is rumoured that an entire fleet of Templars fled to Scotland, where they went into hiding. There is a village near here called Temple which owes its name to their presence.'
'There was much more to it than that, though, was there not?' Shavi said.
Marshall nodded. 'It was rumoured the Templars had learned great secret knowledge in the Holy Land which terrified the Church, which threatened belief in the entire religion. And they were supposed to have brought that knowledge back here to Rosslyn and secreted it somewhere within the chapel.' He paused. 'And some even say what they brought back was the preserved head of Jesus Christ himself.'
'Oh, gross!' Laura made a face.
'And the Templars were linked to the Rosicrucians and the Masons. And the St. Clair family had close links with the Masons,' Shavi noted.
'This is all rumour and hearsay,' Marshall stressed. 'Writers have built an edifice of proof by linking disparate and fragmentary evidence.'
'We have learned there is truth in all legends, and the constant truth here is that the chapel hides something of great importance. I feel we have come to the right place,' Shavi said.
'Is there any way I can help?' Marshall asked excitedly.
'Yeah, a coffee would be nice.' Laura nodded towards the door.
Marshall's brow furrowed for a moment, but if he felt her antagonism, he suppressed it. He nodded and slipped out.
'You should not treat people so harshly,' Shavi cautioned. 'There is no malice in him.'
'The way I see it, anybody who stands up for the Church is some kind of hypocritical bastard, so that makes them fair game.'
She wandered away from him, not wishing to discuss it further. When he caught up with her she was staring at the stained-glass windows above the altar which depicted the Resurrection. The one on the left showed three women arriving at the sepulchre; in the right window two angels sat, one holding a scroll which read: 'He is not here but is risen.' She shivered.
'It's true what he said about secret societies,' she noted thoughtfully. 'Not just the ones that you said, but the Watchmen, that freakish geek the Bone Inspector's people, all this shit going on behind the scenes. You can't get any thing straight any more. They teach you one history at school like that's all there is and then you find out there's a whole 'nother load of crap going on.' She shook her head, the thoughts suddenly coming fast and furious. 'You know, you can't even trust your eyes any more. Everybody sees the so-called gods differently, all those magical items we found-it's like nothing is real. So what can you believe in?' She turned to him. 'How can you go on when you can't trust anything at face value? When you don't have any idea what's real or not? What's important or not?'
He shrugged. 'Faith.'
'In what?'
'That is the question, is it not?' He slipped an arm around her shoulders and she rested against him briefly before pulling away.
Marshall walked in with two steaming cups of coffee. 'There's a little cafe section in the visitors' centre,' he said. 'But there's no fresh milk at the moment, unfortunately.'
Laura thanked him, a little curtly, but with no real sharpness.
'Can you show us some of the things of interest?' Shavi asked the cleric.
'Certainly.' He took them over to the south door and pointed to the top of a pillar. 'See there. A lion and what appears to be a unicorn. The lion's often linked to the Resurrection. The unicorn is symbolic of Christ. Yet the two are fighting. What do you think that means?'
'I do not know,' Shavi replied thoughtfully.
'It seems like a warning,' Laura noted. 'Fighting, you know. Not a good thing. Christ fighting against the Resurrection.'
'That doesn't make any sense,' Marshall said.
He led them around to the north aisle and pointed out the burial stone of William St. Clair, which contained both a Templar insignia and the carved outline of the Grail; Laura glanced at Shavi, but he gave no sign that it was important. Two more dragons; an angel with a scroll. 'There are carved images of open books everywhere,' Marshall explained. 'One line of thought is this is supposed to refer to the Book of Revelation and the Day of Judgment. I could see the dead, great and small, standing before the throne: and books were opened.'
'So, you have an ambiguous reference to the Resurrection and constant reference to the Apocalypse.'
'Christians of that time were obsessed with these issues,' Marshall said.
Laura snorted. 'They still are.'
'Up here.' Shavi pointed to a carving of angels rolling away the stone from Christ's tomb. And on the pillar to the right, three figures, one without a head, observing the crucifixion scene.
'No one knows who the three figures are,' Marshall said. 'Here's one I've always admired.' He indicated sixteen figures dancing up and down a ribbed arch; next to each one was a skeleton. 'It's the danse macabre, the dance of death, showing death's supremacy over mankind.'
'Hey, Happy Jack.' Laura wandered away, wishing she was with Church, the two of them on some beach miles away from everyone else. Suddenly she felt a cold flood wash over her, pinpricks dancing up and down her spine. It was as if her subconscious had seen something she wasn't aware of, something exciting, stimulating or important. She looked around, saw nothing. Then, slowly she raised her head and there it was; but there was no way she could even have glimpsed it.
Looking down at her was the biggest, finest example of the Green Man she had yet seen in the chapel. Branches protruded from his mouth like tusks, curling back in an abundance of leaves across his head. The face was darkly grinning, the eyes black slits beneath plunging eyebrows. She couldn't tell if it was supposed to be evil, mischievous or threatening.
