Frustrated, he strode around the circular nave with its grotesque gargoyles. Here was a man screaming, with his ear being bitten by a creature. Why?
Nina was crouching beside a gravestone, reading quietly from her fathers book. Adam took some photos: of the delicate black marble pillars, then the elegant circular colonnading, then the effigy of William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke, laid out in full battle-kit, chainmailed, a sword in his hand. Ready to fight violently for Christ, even now.
This bit dates right back to 1200, said Nina, standing and gesturing at the clean golden arches, the chevrons of wood in the ceiling.
Still looks new, said Adam.
It did look new. Too new. As if it had been recently restored. Adam thought about the evil ambience of Temple Bruer. What linked these two places? Somewhere very old and dirty and pungent with atmosphere, and somewhere cleaned and spruce and empty.
Adam stepped to the side where there was a table stacked with helpful pamphlets, advertising opportunities for charity work in West Africa, and schedules of festive carols in the Wren Churches. He heard voices. Nina was talking to someone a gowned man, the verger, or the vicar maybe. Adam knew nothing about church hierarchies. The man had a fusty, middle-aged, churchly air and a black gown over his shoulders. Walking across, Adam extended a hand, just as Ninas conversation with the man dwindled to silence.
Adam Blackwood. The Guardian. It was a lie, hed been sacked; but he didnt care. He wanted information, and saying you were a professional seeker of information just sped things up.
The man had strange eyes, as if he was wearing tinted contact lenses. A hint of livid blue. The word restored was a continuous bass organ note in Adams mind, waiting for the treble, the tune, the harmony, as the man swivelled.
The man had strange eyes, as if he was wearing tinted contact lenses. A hint of livid blue. The word restored was a continuous bass organ note in Adams mind, waiting for the treble, the tune, the harmony, as the man swivelled.
Names Baldwin. Im the churchwarden. I was explaining to your friend that I never met her father. The name doesnt even ring a bell. Sorry. His accent was northern. Perhaps Yorkshire.
Restored?
She tells me he were a great expert on the Templars! But that he recently passed beyond?
Nina was trying again. Youre sure you never met him ever? He came here last year, two days in a row. They knew this because of receipts from Caffe Nero, on Holborn.
The churchwarden gazed at Nina as if she was mad.
Miss McLintock, I dont meet every tourist, even famous ones! We have so many visitors. Anyhow, I wasnt here last summer: no one was. We were restoring.
The lock yielded at last; Adam turned the mental key. Do you mean the whole church was closed?
Yes. Exactly. The mans smile was sincere and bored. The whole church were locked for, ooh, eighteen months. We allowed no visitors. Not a soul. It were the biggest restoration wed had since the Blitz. Cost millions, but the Corporation were very generous, the large legal companies, and so forth
All visitors?
Yes! We had an iron rule. Anyway, I must be getting on Tempus bloody fugit. If you want to make donation, the offertory box is near texit.
The gown swished and the churchwarden departed through an interior door. Nina looked with mystification at Adam.
I dont understand. So Dad didnt come here. Why come here, twice, if you cant get inside? Did he go somewhere else?
The exterior! Adam grabbed her hand. It must be. We know he came to the Temple, but if he couldnt get in that means he must have been looking at the exterior. And there is only one bit of the exterior left-
The excitement was mutual. Not pausing, they rushed outside to the West Porch: a large, dark door, filigreed with ironwork and iron studs; and surrounding it an intricate stone jamb, with a semicircular arch, semicircles within semicircles, like ripples of stone. Decorated with peculiar and significant sculptures.
The sculptures were all of Green Men. Dozens and dozens of Green Men, faces of the pagan past, wreathed in stone ivy and tendrils, grinning at him. Adam yelled with excitement. This is it. Must be it. This is it! This is what he came to see. This. Its our first real clue, Nina, this is it: Green Men, just like those at Rosslyn. So we know he was on to something, and we know it definitely is linked to Rosslyn. He wasnt mad, he wasnt joking; he really was unlocking a puzzle.
She smiled anxiously and worriedly but she smiled. Well done. Come on, lets go see my sister. Shes been doing her own research; we need to compare.
They ran through the alleys out on to High Holborn and Nina hailed a taxi. Thank you, she nodded at the taxi driver, as they climbed in. Thornhill Crescent. In Islington.
28
Mercado de las Brujas, Chiclayo, north Peru
The condor stared at her. It was dead, and hanging upside down. Next to it was the dried foetus of a llama, its eyeball poached and screaming in the skinless carcase.
Jess spat the taste of the rough nylon hood from her mouth. The hood now lay crumpled on the dirty floor; it had been whipped away by a lustrously dark, luridly tattooed man, with a necklace of sharks teeth and an Abercrombie amp; Fitch sweatshirt. The man was barefoot and muttering and smoking a spliff of dark jungle tobacco, and tightening the bonds that strapped Jess to the chair on which she had been forced to sit.
She knew immediately where she had been taken: because they hadnt gone far, and the environs were distinctive. Evidently, she had been dragged into the witches market, a corner of the town market where shamans and curanderos and brujas came from many miles around, to trade potions and spells and malevolent juju. Ironically, the Mercado de las Brujas was where she had been headed. But now she was here as a hostage.
Jess struggled. ? Que estoy haciendo aqui? What am I doing here?
The man ignored her, and just kept muttering. Nqupaykunaq yuyay champi
These words were Quechua. The man in the little stall, shielded from the rest of the market by plastic sheets and curtains, was speaking Quechua. Probably he didnt even understand Spanish. Nonetheless she tried again. ?Por que??Por que me has secuestrado? Why have you kidnapped me?
It was pointless. She heard a small voice behind her, in the gloom. Jess caught a glimpse of other dark faces in the background; staring at her and whispering.
The man in the sweatshirt smelled of condor. And dung. And rainforest. And sex. As if he hadnt washed in several weeks. It was a primal smell of jungle and mountain, Quechua and Inca. He was obviously a curandero, one of the mountain shamans, down from his Andean village to do his weekend business, hawking talismans and voodoo dolls to the local wizards.
Jess tried to pacify her terrors, to rationalize them. She knew these people: the real Peruvians, the country-folk and mountain-dwellers, the descendants of the Moche and the Chavin and the Cham Cham who believed and practised the ancient magic. They were not usually killers. If anything, they were all too inert and passive, ruefully resigned to the terrible forces of nature drought and El Nino, white men and dictatorships.
But her rationalizations only got her so far. And then they gave out entirely. Jess was terrified.
And now something was happening. The curandero in the Abercrombie sweats had reached into a smelly plastic tank to pull out a large wriggling lizard, almost a foot long.
The lizard writhed and yawned in his hand. With the air of someone who had done this many times before, the man took a lazy puff on his foul-smelling cigarette, shifted the butt in his mouth, exhaled pungent smoke through clenched yellow teeth, then stuck a knife in the animal. A pitiful, wheezing cry emanated from it. The curandero lifted up the lizard, which was now bleeding copiously from the half-gutted belly.
Hamuy kayman llank anaykita ruway!
The tone was abrupt: it sounded as if he was ordering someone into action. A boy stepped nervously from the shadows, and reached around Jess. She flinched at his touch. The feel of his grimy infant fingers on her tee shirt, under her denim jacket, was chillingly unpleasant. The boy lifted up her T-shirt, exposing her naked stomach.
The curandero hoisted the thrashing lizard over her stomach and dribbled copious warm blood from its riven gut so that the blood fell on her bare skin, like drops of melting red wax from a candle. The urge to clean it off immediately was unbearable.
Para, por favor.?Que estas haciendo? Stop. Stop. What are you doing?
No reply. The shaman had his eyes closed. He circled the dying, writhing lizard, sprinkling its hot reptilian blood on Jesss arms and thighs now. Then he vigorously squeezed and twisted the creature as if he was squeezing the last drops from a wet rag, flicking tiny drops of darker blood all over her breasts and her belly. At last he flung the dead reptile to the dirty floor.
Stop
Her voice was weak with fear. The curandero bent down and blew cigarette smoke over her chest and face, talking and muttering as he did, blowing more smoke on the lizard-blood pooled in her navel; then more hot smoke in her face, chanting and smoking, and blowing, his breath soiled with the smell of green soup.
Her attention was diverted to her own legs: Jess gazed down in horror.
The little boy was doing something down there. Rolling up her jeans, to expose her ankles. She gazed in urgent terror as he reached up and dipped his fingers in the blood on her stomach; then used it to draw lines around her ankles, like a surgeon marking the lines of incision.
Were they going to cut off her feet at the ankles?
Jessica screamed as loud as she was able.
The curandero sighed, took a fetid cloth and rammed it in her mouth. Jessica screamed, but silently now, muffled and helpless. The curanderos boy had finished drawing blood circles on both her ankles. Straining against her bonds, Jess tried to cough out the cloth, but it was no good. They really were going to do it: they were going to cut off her feet, like the mad and terrible Moche.