Three lion heads on a shield.
Crowned.
Then it hit him.
He’d been thinking in the wrong direction.
Pride crowned.
He’d thought pride an emotion or a reaction of some sort. Instead it was something much more tangible. A group of lions. Their social unit.
A pride.
He smiled.
That prior had been clever with words.
“It’s here,” he called out. “The grave of François de Mores Ventavon.”
He read out loud more of the Latin on the tomb as the others headed his way. “He was granted by his Religion the Commandery of Marseilles, the Priorship of the Venerable Tonge of Provence and, his last office, the Priory of Saint-Gilles. Three titles.” He pointed at the marble memorial. “Three lions crowned. Pride crowned.”
“You could be right,” Pollux Gallo said.
He thought of the next two words and said, “We need to find a lion on a shield.”
* * *
Kastor had never been fond of puzzles, much less one over two hundred years old. But he knew the Secreti. They’d not kept the Nostra Trinità safe for centuries by acting stupid. The threat from Napoleon would have been the greatest danger they’d ever faced. That damn Frenchman changed everything.
The knights were never the same after 1798.
While serving as head of the ecclesiastical court, he’d first heard the stories of Constantine’s Gift. The keeper of the Vatican archives had told him of how the 3rd century was a time of chaos. Plague ravaged towns, civil wars raged, corruption ran rampant, twenty-five different men sat on the Roman throne within fifty years. Finally, in 324, Constantine eliminated all contenders and assumed absolute control. Trying to change, or even influence, entrenched religious beliefs proved impossible, even for an emperor. So Constantine cultivated his own religion, one named for a Jew who’d supposedly died on a cross and left behind a group of disciples to spread a message of love and hope.
Christians.
He issued imperial decrees that allowed them to finally worship without oppression. He supported them financially, building basilicas, granting tax exemptions to clergy, and promoting Christians to high public office. He returned confiscated property, then built the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem and the first St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. To this day Constantine the Great held a special place within the Roman Catholic Church.
One he hoped to emulate as pope.
“Over here.”
They all hustled to where Malone stood, his finger pointed down at another of the marble tombs.
“Another lion shielded,” Malone said.
Kastor nearly smiled.
They were close.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Luke stepped outside, Laura right beside him, and glanced at his watch. 2:48 A.M. He should be somewhere in Eastern Europe, working his previous assignment. Instead he was on a rock in the Mediterranean doing God knows what. He still wore the shirt, shorts, and shoes from this morning, which didn’t make him look out of place, though he’d felt a little odd being inside the cathedral dressed that way. They stood in what was noted on a placard as St. John’s Square, maybe fifty people milling about beneath the glow of overhead lighting. The cathedral itself, lit to the night, was surrounded by streets on all sides. Plenty of opportunities for unfriendlies to make a move.
“Let’s check the perimeter,” he said. “All the way around.”
His Beretta was tucked at his waist beneath his shirt. Laura was likewise armed, having acquired a weapon from her people while they’d waited for Malone to arrive. He was actually glad to be outside. Malone was onto something and that was Pappy’s problem to solve. He had his own to deal with, and she was standing right beside him.
“I’ll go this way,” he said. “You take the opposite and we’ll meet on the far side of the building.”
She nodded and hustled off.
He walked through the cobbled square, but stopped beneath a stand of trees, using one of the trunks for cover. A quick glance back and he saw Laura heading for the building’s corner where she would shortly be out of sight, around to the other side.
His mind drifted back to when he was eleven years old. He, his father, and his three brothers were in the last few hours of the last day of his first hunting trip outside Tennessee. To Nebraska. In bone-chilling cold. They’d been at it for three days, chasing deer across the breaks just above the Republican River Valley. They’d sat in blinds for two mornings and an evening, and not a single deer had wandered by. His father and brothers had already taken their limit. Still nothing, though, for him. Frustrating since it was the first hunting trip where he could legally carry a gun and shoot on his own.
Just one chance, that’s all he wanted.
So his father decided to do what any self-respecting Tennessee hunter would do.
He took them into the hills for some stalking.
They chased deer for two more days, pushing them from one draw to the next. But no matter how clever his father seemed to be, the deer always stayed one step ahead. Eventually, his father began to understand how, when, and where the deer were moving.
And he got ahead of them.
Two shots came from the far ridge.
His father checked the wind and noted that it was still blowing straight down the draw. Perfect.
“Other hunters just pushed ’em,” his father had said. “In just a minute or so, those deer are going to come right down this draw. It’s your turn, son.”
He smiled recalling that first opportunity, bestowed upon him by the man he admired most in the world.
All five Daniels made their way toward the cedars at the edge of the draw. His father hiked uphill about twenty yards for a better view and gave them five fingers, representing the number of animals, and pointed from where they were coming. He could still feel his grip on the .30-30 Winchester 94 rifle. Tight. Almost a stranglehold. His brother Mark had shook his head and motioned for him to loosen up.
“Hold it like a baby.”
Laura rounded the corner, out of sight. He fled the cover of the trees and headed off in the direction she’d gone, lingering long enough to give her a head start.
More memories of that hunt flooded his mind.
The deer approached through dried leaves and leftover snow.
Their breathing, puffs of clouds with each exhale, strong and steady. The lack of their awareness as to the danger that awaited them. How they stopped just above the narrow draw, twenty yards away. The cocking of the rifle. Slow. Quiet. The stock nestled to his shoulder. Him sliding out from behind the cedar, trying to get a clear shot through the trees, fighting the cold that ate away at his face.
Then pulling the trigger.
The bang and retort.
Stronger than he imagined, tossing him back on his heels.
Two does and a yearling scattered, but his shot found the buck’s front shoulder, clipping the spine, dropping the big deer in its tracks.
Everything about that day had stuck in his mind.
His first kill.
Made even better by his father and brothers being with him.
And the lessons learned from that trip.
Lessons he never forgot.
Asking a dumb question is far better than doing something dumb. Watch and learn from other people. And never use everything offered to you. Instead, make that knowledge work for you, in your own way.