The Templar Succession by Mario Reading

Author:Mario Reading [Reading, Mario]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Corvus
Published: 2016-04-05T17:00:06+00:00

FIFTY

‘I’m sorry. I cannot help you.’ Maria was drinking a cup of tisane in the abbey kitchens. Her hands were red and hard, her fingers gnarled with arthritis. Her white hair was drawn back tightly on her head, outlining the shape of her skull. Her cheeks were sunken from a lifetime of smoking, with lines escaping from her eyes in every direction but upwards, as if God had decided at some point in her life that the sadness of her interior demeanour must be adequately reflected on her face.

The young novice who was doing the translating for Hart hunched his shoulders apologetically, as if he was somehow responsible for his charge’s intransigence.

Hart took a sip of his tea. He met Biljana’s eyes and lowered his own melodramatically, so that she would know not to intervene.

‘That’s fine. I never quite believed the abbot when he said you were a relation of the Captain’s. A woman such as you, serving the monastery for – I believe the abbot said forty-seven years, did he not? – well, it would be unthinkable for a person such as you to be related to a war criminal.’

The young novice havered for a moment, as if he didn’t quite approve of what he was being asked to transmit. But then, with a small sigh, he translated what Hart had said.

‘A war criminal?’ said the old woman.

‘Didn’t you know?’ Hart put his cup down with a shocked expression on his face. ‘Yes. The Captain killed and tortured and raped in the name of Greater Serbia over a period of close on six years. His victims are beyond counting. He even raped this young lady’s mother. That is why she is here, you see. To confront her father.’

‘To confront her father?’ Maria seemed entirely out of her depth.

The young monk was looking more uncomfortable by the minute, as if he had stumbled into an orgy peopled by individuals he had previously thought better of. At the very least, Hart comforted himself, the abbot must have spoken to the young man beforehand and given him some indication of what he was entering into. Either that, or the boy would be experiencing a vastly accelerated moral education.

In for a penny, in for a pound, Hart decided at last.

‘We quite appreciate,’ he continued, ‘that if you were related to such a man, you would not be keen to acknowledge the fact. It is for this reason that we will fully understand if you decide not to cooperate with us.’

Maria looked startled. Her eyes, widened in shock, made her face look briefly younger, as if the lines her life had marked her with had temporarily been scrubbed away. ‘The Captain raped your mother?’

‘Yes,’ said Biljana. ‘He kept her in a rape house for three weeks. He raped her every day. He wanted her to become pregnant. Wanted her to have a child. I am that child.’

‘You are a Christian then?’ The old woman’s expression was pained, as if the question had had to be forced out of her.

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