“He means torture,” Isaac said. “Go on.”

Sally continued.

I inquired with him as to the precise nature of this supposedly secret sect. In my opinion, Egerton’s claims are fanciful, an attempt to explain away his crimes as innocent, or even beneficial. But I must also account to your lordship that Egerton insisted they were the truth, even until death.

He asserts:

The Templars exist, despite their supposed demise.

Their purpose is to work behind the scenes, to shape events, to keep countries stable, and to prevent society from descending into chaos.

Their structure is hierarchical. At the top is the Templar Grand Council, a body of twelve, consisting of eleven knights and one Grand Master.

The Templars work in chapters. Each chapter is responsible for a specific region, usually a major city. The head of each chapter is the Knight Captain.

Each chapter may contain up to a dozen knights, though most are much smaller. In some places, a chapter is a single knight, operating alone.

Each chapter is totally independent. Except for the Knight Captain, the members of one chapter have no knowledge of any in other chapters.

Though generally self-reliant, the Templars occasionally call on agents outside the Brotherhood. These allies can then call upon the Templars for help, if they know how to reach them. Egerton claims their agents can be identified through their possession of a gold coin: a florin, marked by the Templar cross and the name of their original patron, King Baldwin of Jerusalem.

Messages between chapters, knights, and their agents are always enciphered. It is the responsibility of the recipient of the message to know how to decipher the code. By using a cipher, even an intercepted message will offer no information to their enemies.

I asked Egerton how a society that has been extinct for three hundred years was supposed to have enemies. He stated that all who sought to bring chaos were an enemy.

Unfortunately, at this time, Egerton expired, so no more information could be obtained.

Your faithful servant,

J.

We sat in silence for a moment.

“What do you think?” Isaac said.

“I think that man was a Templar,” I said. “He knew about the florin. And the bit about the ciphers fits, too.” All three letters I’d got were nothing but riddles and codes.

The stuff about the Grand Council and the independent chapters was new to me, but nothing there contradicted anything we’d learned in Paris. Father Bernard had even hinted at it when he’d confessed he hadn’t known for sure where the Templar treasure was. It really did seem to fit together.

Tom was frowning.

“What’s wrong?” I said.

“The letter says the Templars send messages through codes.”

“Just like the letters I’ve received.”

“Yes, but so far we’ve just been running around in circles.”

“What do you mean?” Sally said.

“Well,” Tom said, “the first letter told Christopher to go to the Banqueting House, where we found a second letter. That one told him to go to Saint Paul’s, where we found a third letter. But none of the letters have actually told us anything. It’s just ‘go here, now go there.’ If it’s the Templars leaving those messages, why are they making us run around? They haven’t really been helping.”