Addison Cooke and the Ring of Destiny Page 6

  Keeping low, they raced along the rampart to a crumbling turret and found stone steps spiraling down to the ground level. Before them lay a massive courtyard with a broken well, a rotting stable, and an unappealing assortment of crumbling wooden storehouses.

  “Some castle,” said Eddie.

  “It’s a fixer-upper,” Addison allowed.

  “Eddie, let’s leave you out in the rain for seven hundred years and see how good you look,” said Molly.

  They hustled through the pouring rain to reach the imposing oak doors of the main tower entrance. The massive doors were hung with round iron knockers the size of car tires, but Addison could see they weren’t going to need them. The padlock chained across the door was smashed and one of the oak doors splintered in. Addison furrowed his brows. “What do you make of it, Raj?”

  Raj knelt down to examine the sharp wooden splinters of the crushed door. “Fresh,” he said. “Whoever smashed open this door did it very, very recently.”

  Addison slowly nodded. “Let’s do this carefully.” As slowly and quietly as he could, he heaved the broken door open. With nothing but a flash of lightning to glimpse his path, Addison stepped into the dark castle.

  Chapter Twelve

  The Dungeon Tower

  ADDISON’S EYES ADJUSTED TO the gloom. Molly, Eddie, and Raj crept in after him. They were standing in a vast, high-ceilinged entrance hall. Sconces set high in the stone walls must have once held torches. Massive racks of elk antlers that had once formed an elaborate chandelier now lay shattered on the floor.

  “Mr. Fiddleton says the Fortress was the European headquarters of the Knights Templar back in the 1200s,” said Addison.

  “I think that’s the last time they decorated,” said Molly.

  Raj shut the splintered door behind them and set to work dragging several large wooden planks that looked like they had once belonged to a siege weapon.

  “Raj, what are you doing?” asked Addison.

  “Building an elephant trap.”

  “You’re expecting elephants?”

  “That’s just its name,” said Raj. “It’s a trap big enough to stop an elephant. We don’t want anyone sneaking in behind us.” Breaking a sweat, Raj dragged an old oak table in front of the door. On top of this he piled a broken chest of drawers and balanced three dining room chairs. It was all carefully rigged so that anyone pushing open the splintered door would be met with an avalanche. Addison hoped the mailman had already made his rounds for the day.

  Molly crossed the cavernous entrance hall, strewn with the rubbish of centuries. “Why would the Grand Master meet us here? This place is abandoned.”

  “There could be a caretaker,” Eddie offered.

  “If there is,” said Addison, stepping carefully over some pigeon droppings, “I hope they’re not paying him much.”

  “Look!” whispered Molly, reaching the far end of the hall. “Footprints!”

  At the word “footprints,” Raj zipped across the room as if pulled by a magnet. He dropped to all fours to study them. “Fresh! And lots of them. A whole crowd of men charged through here.”

  Addison gestured for Raj to lead the way. Quietly, he mouthed to the group. We don’t know who’s still inside the castle.

  As the rain drummed its fingers on the stone roof, the group crept deeper into the ruins. They crossed through the great hall, where hundreds of knights once dined on long oak benches. They passed an armory that still housed rusted pikes and jagged spears. Raj kept his nose bent to the footprints and led the team up the wide staircase that wound around the curve of the main tower.

  He guided them through a low stone archway and into a cold, damp tower room, the wind and rain sputtering in through cracks in the mortar. It was filled with strange iron equipment.

  “What is this place?” asked Eddie. His voice sounded hollow in the echoing darkness.

  “The dungeon,” replied Raj ecstatically. Chains and manacles hung from the walls. Sharp iron pokers sat in the fireplace. Addison, who desperately wanted to rest his weary feet, found that every chair in the room was covered in iron spikes.

  Raj inspected every torture device like a kid in a candy shop. “Wow, an iron vat! That’s for boiling people!” he cried. “Oooo—an iron maiden! That’s for crushing people.” He dashed around to a different corner. “Wow, an actual oubliette!”

  “Let me guess,” said Molly. “It burns people.”

  “Better,” said Raj.

  “It steams them?” asked Addison.

  “Better.”

  “It lightly braises them with olive oil?” asked Eddie.

  “It doesn’t do anything,” said Raj triumphantly. “You just lock a person in it and forget about them.”

  “So the Templars tortured people?” asked Molly.

  “I don’t think so,” said Addison, crossing to a row of cells on the far side of the tower. “I think they were the ones being tortured.” He pulled open the squeaky iron gate of the largest cell. Hundreds of names were scratched into the flaked and crumbling prison wall. Addison had scoured Uncle Jasper’s library for every book he could find on the Templars, and standing here in the Fortress, he felt the history coming alive. “King Philip IV of France was deeply in debt to the Knights Templar. So he had his army arrest the Templars on Friday, October thirteenth, 1307 . . .”

  Addison ran his fingers over the names that condemned men had clawed into the limestone seven hundred years earlier. “He locked the knights in this Fortress. He even captured the Templar Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, and his right-hand man, Geoffroy de Charnay. Thirty-six knights were tortured to death here. Another hundred were hanged. That’s the reason why Friday the thirteenth is considered unlucky.”

  “So what happened to the Templars?” asked Molly.

  “The king and the pope stole all of the knights’ money and property. This Fortress became a prison. It’s the actual site where King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were imprisoned before being guillotined by the French mob.”

  “Look!” cried Molly. “Jacques de Molay signed his name right here! And Geoffroy! They were really here.”

  Addison peered closely where Molly was pointing and saw that the men had also taken the time to scratch in their coats of arms. “Look at this one, Mo,” he gasped. “It’s our family crest!”

  Molly studied the twin dragons and the pyramid with the all-seeing Templar eye. “It’s identical to our crest except for the Latin motto.” She pointed to two words. “Tutor Thesauri. Any idea what that means?”

  Addison shook his head.

  “When I need help with a word,” said Eddie, “I use a tutor . . . or a thesaurus.”

  Addison read the name scrawled above the crest. “Adam de Cooke, 1307.” He scratched the short hairs at the back of his neck. “Mo, the Adam Cooke in our family plot built the Cooke manor in 1309 and was buried in 1310.”

  “Do you think he’s the same guy? How did he escape this prison?”

  Addison could only shake his head. He examined the coats of arms of Jacques de Molay and Geoffroy de Charnay. They were different from Adam’s, but all contained the same motto: Tutor Thesauri.

  His eye snagged on something at his feet: splatters of red on the cell floor. He squatted down to investigate. The puddle was still wet. “Raj,” he said, trying to steady his voice. “Please tell me this is just ketchup.”

  That was when a gut-wrenching cry of pain sounded from the attic above.

  * * *

  • • • • • •

  Raj took the lead as they dashed up the narrow stone steps to the top story of the tower. He followed the blood trail to a row of low-ceilinged stone cells. A bloody dagger lay on the floor.

  Only one of the cells was locked. Addison gripped the window bars of the thick oak door and peered inside. An old man, cloaked in shadows, was groaning in misery. He wor
e a groundskeeper’s outfit and a woolly beard. “The caretaker!” Addison cried. “Eddie, hurry!”

  Eddie knelt and pressed his ear to the cell door. He drew a set of delicate picks from his jacket pocket and fished them into the lock. Eyes shut tight in concentration, Eddie jimmied the lock in ten seconds flat.

  Addison and his team tumbled into the room. The old Frenchman, in workman’s coveralls, was tied to a medieval torture rack. His feet were chained to the bottom and his wrists roped to the top. A wheel crank had been tightened so that his body was stretched to its absolute limits.

  Raj loosened the crank. The old man gasped in relief. Molly and Addison set to work untying the man’s ropes while Eddie unlocked the iron chains.

  If the old man wasn’t on death’s doorstep, he was at least on the driveway. Addison helped ease the man into a sitting position. “Raj, find him some water so he can speak! Eddie, learn French!”

  Raj drew a canteen from his pack, unscrewed it, and tipped it to the man’s parched lips. The man sputtered and coughed, water dribbling from his beard. His weary eyes focused on Addison. When he spoke at last, his French accent was only very slight. “Addison, is that you?”

  “Who are you?” Addison whispered.

  “My name is Gaspard,” the old man gasped. He tried sitting up on the rack and was racked with coughs. “Gaspard Gagnon.”

  “Have we met?”

  “No,” said the old man, with a shake of his head. “But I have known about you and Molly for a long time.”

  “How?” asked Molly.

  “Because I,” said the man, pushing himself up to a full sitting position and setting his feet on the ground, “am the Grand Master of the Knights Templar.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Last Grand Master

  “YOU ARE TOO LATE,” Gaspard croaked, clutching the knife wound in his side. “The Collective is already in Paris. Addison, Molly, you must run.”

  “Not until we get answers,” said Addison. “Besides, we can’t just leave you here.”

  “We need to call an ambulance,” said Molly. “Gaspard, is there a phone in this dump? What are you doing all by yourself in this creepy, rotten building, anyway?”

  “I live here,” said Gaspard.

  “Oh,” said Molly. “Sorry.”

  “Someone must stick around here to safeguard our past, no? Come, there is a phone in my quarters.”

  Addison and Eddie gently helped Gaspard to his feet. Raj grabbed a spare T-shirt from his backpack and pressed it to Gaspard’s knife wound, stanching the bleeding. “We just have to keep pressure on it.”

  “Who did this to you?” asked Addison. “And why?”

  “They were looking for you, of course,” wheezed Gaspard.

  “Us?”

  “Your tablet. Luckily, T.D. will surely have made you hide it somewhere safe.”

  “She told us to bring it to you!” said Molly.

  “Mon Dieu. You have brought the tablet here? Into the wolf’s den? The Fortress is surrounded. The Collective is awaiting your arrival!” Gaspard frowned. “How did you get in here, anyway?”

  “We climbed the wall,” said Addison.

  “Clever,” said Gaspard.

  “We’re Templars,” said Molly.

  “No,” Gaspard coughed painfully. “Not yet. First you must—”

  “—come of age,” said Addison, finishing his sentence. “We know.”

  They eased him downstairs, step by careful step. They passed abandoned storerooms now home to nesting pigeons and empty larders with caved-in roofs, soaked by the drenching rain. Blood pooled out of Gaspard’s shirt and left a trail of droplets on the stone floor.

  * * *

  • • • • • •

  The old Templar directed them to his cozy, furnished quarters in a smaller tower of the castle. Eddie and Raj deposited him carefully on the sofa while Addison found a phone and dialed emergency services. Once a French voice answered, Addison handed the phone to Eddie.

  “Addison, I’ve told you I don’t speak French,” Eddie squawked. “Don’t you speak English?”

  Addison handed the phone to Gaspard, who rattled off his address before sinking into the couch, exhausted. “The ambulance is on its way.”

  Gaspard’s little room was decorated with the saddest, spindliest Christmas tree Addison had ever seen. The old man was shivering, so Molly wrapped him in a blanket.

  Raj blew on the embers in the fireplace and stacked on fresh wood. He quickly built up a crackling fire.

  “Well done, Raj,” said Addison. “Treating a wound, starting a fire . . . Someone might almost mistake you for a Boy Scout.”

  Raj sighed and dusted off his hands on his camouflage pants. “Those days are behind me.”

  Molly turned to the old man. “T.D. said you would have answers about our family’s past.”

  “You have not come of . . .” Gaspard was seized by a fit of rasping coughs that left him wheezing for breath.

  Molly had heard enough of this coming-of-age business. “We’ve been chased all over the world. We’ve been threatened, stabbed, tortured, and nearly burned at the stake. All because of some prophecy no one will even tell us! If we haven’t come of age yet, when will we?”

  Addison chimed in. “There are hardly any Templars left. If you don’t tell us what’s going on, Gaspard, who will?”

  Gaspard sighed, the cracks in his face showing every one of his years, like the rings of a tree. He leaned closer to the fire, the dancing light reflected in his eyes. “In the Crusades, European knights pillaged the tombs of Damascus and plundered the temples of Jerusalem. Knights robbed the cross of Josiah from Tripoli, only to have it stolen by highwaymen in Antioch. So many relics were lost or destroyed, the Templars decided to act.”

  He took a sip from Raj’s canteen. The team leaned close to hear the old man’s words. “Jacques de Molay, the Templar Grand Master, formed a secret order within the Templars—”

  “A secret order within a secret order?” Raj interrupted, eyes wide.

  Gaspard nodded. “A secret order to find and safeguard the treasures of history.”

  “Tutores Thesauri,” said Molly.

  “Yes,” said the Grand Master. “We protect the treasures of the world.” Gaspard clutched his blanket tighter; he was still shivering. “May I see the tablet?”

  Molly drew it from her satchel, the bronze gleaming in the firelight.

  Addison wondered at the strange glyph carved inside the circle emblazoned on the tablet. He again felt the strangest sensation that he had seen the design somewhere before.

  “It’s beautiful,” said Gaspard.

  “Can you tell us what it is?” asked Addison.

  “I have no idea. Each Templar family guards different relics. We don’t share information—it’s safer that way.” He ran a pale, bent finger over a flowery rune carved on the corner of the tablet. A sword in front of a scroll. “You know, I’ve seen this rune before. In Istanbul.”

  Addison leaned forward eagerly. “Where in Istanbul?”

  Gaspard gazed into the fire, lost in his memories. “The most beautiful mosque in the city.” The old man was shaken by another fit of coughs.

  “Which mosque?” asked Addison.

  Before Gaspard could answer, a terrific crash and scream erupted from the main hall of the fortress.

  It was the yelp of a man whose forehead was being rapidly acquainted with an old oak table, a chest of drawers, and a large siege weapon. This yelp was immediately followed by the sound of three carefully balanced dining room chairs cracking over a man’s back.

  “Mon Dieu!” Gaspard yelped.

  “It worked!” said Raj. “My elephant trap worked!”

  “It’s the Collective, right?” said Molly, leaping to her feet.

  “Well, if that’s
the ambulance people,” said Eddie, “that was awfully fast.”

  Addison’s eyes darted to the crackling fire. He smacked a hand to his forehead. “The Collective must have seen the smoke from the chimney. They know we’re in here.”

  “Time to go,” said Molly.

  “But,” said Raj, pointing to the doorway. “My elephant trap. It did work. Right, you guys?”

  * * *

  • • • • • •

  “Gaspard, we need to move you,” said Addison urgently.

  “Impossible. Just leave me.”

  “This is not a negotiation.” Addison was pretty sure it was his fault Gaspard had been tortured. If he hadn’t removed the tablet from the Blandfordshire Bank, none of the day’s events would have been set in motion. He couldn’t let Gaspard fall prey to the Collective.

  Raj’s first aid skills kicked in. “Everyone take a corner of his blanket—we can use it as a stretcher.”

  With four of them lifting, the withered old man was not hard to move. Shuffling together, they maneuvered Gaspard out of the little room, upsetting only a few piles of books, some antique candlesticks, and a large glass flower vase. They made it through the narrow doorway on the third try.

  “Listen!” Molly whispered.

  Shouts and pounding footsteps echoed in the corridors below.

  “Double time,” said Addison. They jogged Gaspard’s makeshift stretcher into the library. Addison nearly dropped his corner of the blanket in astonishment. This was clearly the one part of the castle that Gaspard had kept in perfect working order. The shelves were ornate wood paneling and heaped with parchment scrolls, gilt-painted manuscripts, and books so old that monks had copied them out by hand. Addison saw some of his favorite classics: You and Your Planets by Gail Andrews, The Body in the Library by Ariadne Oliver, and even Alchemy, Ancient Art and Science by Argo Pyrites. He could have happily spent a year in the library. But unfortunately, he got only seventeen seconds.