a full-time feature writer for the Guardian, and it was on the mighty commerce of nonsense that was Rosslyn Chapel.
‘You OK?’
It was his friend, and long-time colleague, Jason the Photographer. With the usual sarcastic tilt in his south London accent.
Adam sighed.
‘No, I’m not OK. I just lost my job.’
‘Tchuh. We all lose our jobs.’ Jason glanced at his camera, adjusting a lens. ‘And you’re not dead, are you? You’re just thirty-four. Come on, let’s go back inside the chapel, this shop is full of nutters.’
‘The whole town is full of nutters. Especially the chapel.’ Adam pointed through the glass door at the medieval church. ‘Everyone in there is walking around clutching The Da Vinci Code, looking for the Holy Grail under the font.’
‘Then let’s hurry up! Maybe we’ll find it first.’
Adam dawdled. Jason sighed. ‘Go on then, Blackwood. Cough it up. I know you want to share.’
‘It’s just … Well I thought that at least this time, my very last assignment, I might get something serious again, just for the hell of it, a serious news story, as a parting gift.’
‘Because they like you so much? Adam – you got sacked. What did you expect? You punched the fucking features editor at the Guardian Christmas party.’
‘He was hassling that girl. She was crying.’
‘Sure.’ Jason shook his head. ‘The guy’s a wanker of the first water. I agree. So you’re a great Aussie hero, and I’m glad you decked him, but is it really so surprising they snapped? It’s not the first time you’ve lost it.’
‘But—’
‘Stop whingeing! You did a few decent news stories, amongst the dross. And they’re sacking journos all over the world. You’re not unique.’
This was a fair point. ‘Guess not.’
‘And you got a bloody pay-off. Now you can bog off to Afghanistan, get yourself killed. Come on. We still got work to do.’
They walked out of the shop into the forecourt. And stared once more at the squat stone jewel-box that was Rosslyn Chapel. A faint, mean-spirited drizzle was falling out of the cold Midlothian sky. They stepped aside to let a middle-aged lady tourist enter the ancient building. She was carrying a dog-eared copy of The Da Vinci Code.
‘It’s under the font!’ said Adam, loudly. Jason chuckled.
The two men followed the woman into the chapel. The Prentice Pillar loomed exotically at the end. A young couple with short blonde hair – German? – were peering at the pillar as if they expected the Holy Grail to materialize from within its luxuriously carved stone, like a kind of hologram.
Jason got to work. Tutting at his light meter, taking some shots. Adam interviewed a Belgian tourist in his forties, standing by the grave of the Earl of Caithness, asking what had brought him here. The Belgian mentioned the Holy Grail, The Da Vinci Code and the Knights Templar, in that order.
Adam got an initial glimpse of how he might write the piece. A light but sardonic tone, gently mocking all this lucrative naivety, this cottage industry of credulity that had grown up around Rosslyn Chapel. A feature that would explore how the entire town of Roslin, Midlothian, was living off the need of people in a secular age to believe, paradoxically, in deep religious conspiracies. No matter how absurd and embarrassing they might be.
He could start it with that GK Chesterton quote: ‘when people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing – they believe in anything’.
Adam turned as a baritone voice resonated down the nave: one of the more pompous guides, holding a fake plastic sword, was pointing at the ceiling, and reciting some history. Adam listened in to the guide’s well-practised spiel.
‘So who exactly were the Knights Templar? Their origins are simple enough.’ The guide levelled his plastic sword at a small stone carving, apparently of two men on a horse. ‘Sometime around 1119, two French knights, Hugues de Payens and Godfrey de Saint-Omer, veterans of the First Crusade, got together to discuss over a beaker of wine the safety of the many Christian pilgrims flocking to Jerusalem, since its brutal reconquest by the Crusaders of Pope Urban II.’ The guide’s sword wobbled as he continued. ‘The French knights proposed a new monastic order, a sect of chaste but muscular warrior monks, who would defend the pilgrims with their very lives against the depredations of bandits, and robbers, and hostile Muslims. This audacious idea was instantly popular: the new King Baldwin II of Jerusalem agreed to the knights’ request, and gifted them a headquarters on the Temple Mount, in the recently captured Al-Aqsa Mosque. Hence the full name of the Order: the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, or, in Latin, Pauperes Commilitones Christi Templique Solomonici. Ever since then, the question has been asked: was there also an esoteric reason for this significant choice of headquarters?’ He hesitated, with the air of a well-trained actor. ‘Naturally, we can never know. But the Temple Mount very definitely had a mystique: as it was located above what was believed to be the ruins of the first Temple of Solomon. Which,’ the guide smiled at his attentive audience, ‘is thought, in turn, to be a model for the church in which you stand today!’
He let the notion hang in the air like the fading vibrations of a tolling bell, then trotted through the rest of the story: the Templars’ rise and supremacy; the twenty thousand knightly members at the very peak of the Order’s strength; the great, Europe-wide power and wealth of the ‘world’s first multinational’. And then, of course, the dramatic downfall, after two proud centuries, when the French king, coveting the Templars’ money, and envying their lands and status, crushed them with a wave of violent arrests and ferocious torture, beginning on one fateful night.
The guide flashed a florid smile: ‘What was the date of that medieval Götterdämmerung, that Kristallnacht of kingly revenge? Friday the 13th, 1307. Yes, Friday the 13th!’
Adam repressed a laugh. The guide was a walking store of clichés. But entertaining, nonetheless. If he’d been here for the fun of it, he’d have been happy to sit here and listen some more. But he had just seen something pretty interesting.
‘Jason …’ He nudged his friend, who was trying to get a decent shot of the Prentice Pillar.
‘What?’
‘Isn’t that Archibald McLintock?’
‘What?’
‘The old guy, sitting in the pew by the Master Pillar. It’s Archibald McLintock.’
‘And he is?’
‘Maybe the most famous writer on the Knights Templar alive. Wrote a good book about Rosslyn too. Proper sceptic. You never heard of him?’
‘Dude, you do the research, you’re the hack. I have to worry about lenses.’
‘Very true. You lazy bastard. OK, I suggest we go and interview him. He might give me some good quotes, we could get a picture too.’
Advancing on the older man, Adam extended a hand. ‘Adam Blackwood. The Guardian? We’ve
