The Fabric of Sin

1985 that reckoned the name “Jahbulon” constituted the single biggest barrier to a true Christian being a Mason.’

‘Personally, I’d’ve thought that threatening to saw open somebody’s skull …’

‘That’s just the Masonic Templars. Your bog-standard Craft Mason merely accepts that if he gives owt away his tongue will be ripped out by the root and buried in the sand of the sea at low-water mark.’

‘Oh well, that’s OK, then.’

Merrily thought of the Templar who claimed he’d been brought before Jacques de Molay at Garway and ordered to deny Him whom the image represents or get himself put in a sack and dumped somewhere less than congenial.

Huw was looking at her over his glasses.

‘The skull bit — it’s quite likely the original Templars swore a similar oath. Fighting-men in brutal times. The idea of Jahbulon is a total composite god. Three syllables, note, a trinity. Again, in line with what many scholars accept as Templar belief, which was a cobbling together of Christianity, paganism, Judaism and Islam. I believe some of the Templars were Gnostics. I think it’s likely that some did support the bloodline-of-Christ theory. And I think some of them were devoted to undermining Christianity from within.’

Mrs Morningwood got out her cigarettes.

‘Mind if I …?’

‘Aye, please yourself,’ Huw said.

‘Mr Owen … how many of these Knights Templar Masons are there?’

‘Thousands in this country. A proportion of them higher clergy.’

‘And they’re here? In Herefordshire?’

‘You could say that.’

‘OK.’ Merrily sat up. ‘Where’s this leading, Huw?’

‘All roads lead to the cathedral. But you knew that. You had it from Callaghan-Clarke.’

‘She said the Archdeacon was a Mason.’

‘Mervyn Neale is Grand Commander, I’m told.’

‘Of the Templar Masons?’

‘On an Archdeacon’s screw, you can afford the kit,’ Huw said.

48 Oddball

Think about it, Huw said. The oldest cult in the West.

He talked. He was persuasive. Clouds had closed the sky’s one sunny opening, like a cut healed over, and the kitchen had gone grey. Merrily left the lamp off.

Occult: it meant hidden. Freemasonry was occult in every sense, Huw said. A template for all the nineteenth and early twentieth century magical orders — notably the Golden Dawn, where Crowley started, and W.B. Yeats. The symbols, the ceremonial, all there.

‘But how much of basic Masonry,’ Merrily asked him, ‘is actually based on the Templars?’

‘Some Masonic scholars would say the lot. The Temple of Solomon, all the architectural jargon? God with a set square and protractors?’

‘Where did you find all this out?’

‘General knowledge, lass.’

‘I mean about Mervyn Neale.’

Huw said that was fairly widely known, too. Not as secretive as they used to be, the Masons. Not in much of a position to be, now they’d been outed in popular books and most of the rituals were online. Taken Huw all of twenty minutes to find and download the Templar initiation ritual, with the sword and the skull and the threat of sunburned brains.

‘The Archdeacon,’ Merrily recalled, ‘was with the Bishop at the Duchy reception in Hereford, where Adam Eastgate first mentioned the problem with the Master House.’

‘Merv’s ears pricking up. Always been fascinated by Garway, the Masons. Funny you’ve not run into the bugger up there.’ Huw looked at Mrs Morningwood. ‘Where do you come into this, lass?’

‘Lass.’ Mrs Morningwood smiled wistfully. ‘How kind.’

‘This Sycharth Gwilym on the square, you reckon?’

‘Ticks all the right boxes, I should’ve thought, Mr Owen. His particular business, in a city like Hereford …’

‘Still a lout of clout in Hereford, the Masons,’ Huw said. ‘So I’m told. Cathedral. Tory council. You going to see Gwilym today, Merrily?’

‘I’ll call The Centurion again. Go this afternoon, if he’s free.’

‘We’ll have a quick chat before you go. Just go over them family names again — Sycharth … Gruffydd … Fychan …?’

‘Madog.’

‘Aye, that’s a good one.’

‘And …’ Merrily glanced at Mrs Morningwood. ‘Cynllaith?’

‘Cynllaith,’ Huw said. ‘Lovely. People round there really don’t know where all these names come from, Mrs M?’

‘We’re inclined to suspect Wales,’ Mrs Morningwood said, and Huw smiled.

‘I’ll do a last check. Use your computer, lass?’

He stumped off into the scullery, shutting the door, and Merrily turned to Mrs Morningwood.

‘People certainly seem to know about Jacques de Molay. Or they did.’

‘Naomi Newton.’ Mrs Morningwood took off her sunglasses and applied a tissue to an eye. ‘I suppose Roxanne related that episode in all its gory detail.’

‘Well, you certainly didn’t.’

‘Better you heard it from them. Not my family’s finest hour. Haunted my poor grandmother to her own dying day.’

‘Anything else you’re keeping to yourself that might be relevant?’

‘Darling, I have over half a century’s worth of knowledge. Who knows what’s relevant?’

Huw was back within a few minutes, nodding, satisfied.

‘If you were worrying about the Duchy of Cornwall, no need. You’re looking at the first generation of male Royals not tied up with Masonry. Duke of Edinburgh, he were one — lasped now, mind. Queen’s not eligible, of course, but her old man, George VI, he was well in. And so it goes.’

‘If Charles broke the chain,’ Merrily said, ‘how does the Masonic hierarchy feel about that?’

‘Aye, well, you might’ve put your finger on summat there, lass.’

‘Erm …’ Merrily shook out a Silk Cut. ‘In your message on the machine last night, you talked about …’

‘The feller who advised the Duchy of Cornwall that you wouldn’t blab.’

‘I think I’ve managed to contain my curiosity quite well.’

Huw looked at Mrs Morningwood, who gathered up her cigarettes and matches.

‘I need to go and bathe my eyes.’ She stood up, Roscoe stretching at her feet. ‘Perhaps apply something foul-smelling to other abused areas.’

‘Nice dog,’ Huw said.

‘Interesting woman,’ he said when she’d gone. ‘Always been attracted to strong ladies. When you get past a certain age, mind, almost all womankind develops a strange and sorrowful allure.’

Merrily sat back, arms folded, gazing at the ceiling.

‘All right,’ Huw said. ‘Sorry for the anticlimax. You were right first time. Well, I couldn’t say owt on the phone, could I?’