I, Huckleberry by Simon Chesterman

Author:Simon Chesterman
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Marshall Cavendish International

Mei looked over at the card as she finished another forkful of carbonara. “The Inner Temple,” she said. “Isn’t that the modern incarnation of the Knights Templar?”

Sir Michael smiled. “Oh goodness no. Any connection with the Templars is purely geographical. We are a mere professional association of lawyers—though I grant that we do occupy the same space that they vacated some seven hundred years ago.”

“Vacated?” Mei responded. “I thought they were rounded up and arrested or executed.”

“Alas, the rule of law was not then what it is now,” Sir Michael sighed.

“I suppose not,” Mei said. “Coincidentally, we were talking only this morning about the role of the Templars in drafting the Magna Carta. They seem to have helped lay the foundation for the rule of law a hundred years before ‘vacating’ the land. What a coincidence that your society occupies the same space today.”

“Why yes,” he conceded. “It is something of a coincidence.” His body remained still and his face calm, but as he was standing next to my chair I could feel the tapping of one of his feet. “Although virtually nothing remains of the Templar buildings. Our chambers may be old”—he permitted himself a little cough—“but they are not that old.”

“Except for the Temple Church, of course,” Professor Cholmondeley said. “One of the reasons it is so wonderful to have Sir Michael on the Board is his deep knowledge of Templar Churches—an architectural style linked to our own clock tower.”

“Indeed.” The corners of his mouth turned up, and then back down again.

“Anyway, Sir Michael, we should get on,” Professor Cholmondeley said. “The other trustees will be wondering what happened to us.”

“Quite,” he concurred, giving us a curt nod. “It was a pleasure.”

Looking at the expression on his face, the word “pleasure” was not the first that came to mind. Yet he forced his cheek muscles up for one last, brief smile. Professor Cholmondeley waddled off, Sir Michael following close behind. If her gait resembled a duck then he was a horse, languid steps frustrated by being held to a mere trot.

“Well that was weird,” I said, after they had gone. Privately, I wondered if he was the man Professor Cholmondeley had been speaking to on the night of the storm.

“I don’t buy his coincidence line for a second,” Mei said, finishing her carbonara. “But what’s the connection between the Templars and the clock tower?”

“The tower is the remains of an old Templar church,” I said. “Professor Cholmondeley has a diagram of it in her office.”

“Did she tell you why the church was demolished?” Kat asked, pulling up a website on her phone.

I shook my head.

“It was part of the purge—Friday the thirteenth and all that,” she said. “Their property was seized and either handed to their rivals, the Knights Hospitaller, or destroyed. Why they left the tower standing is a mystery.”

“On the architectural drawing in Cholmondeley’s office there’s a room below the tower, some kind of crypt,” I said.

“What could be down there?” Kat asked. “If the King’s men ransacked the church, it’s unlikely they would have left anything valuable.

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