A Perilous Quest. A Deadly Legacy.
Italy, 1351. English knight Gerard Fox and the resourceful Willa have come through a death-defying journey across war-torn Europe. Now looking towards their future together, they must first find a way to reconcile with their difficult pasts.
In a small village between Florence and Siena, Fox and Willa are caught up in a deadly ambush. After rescuing the enigmatic woman who is the target of the attack, they take refuge in her opulent villa and learn her heartbreaking story – a tale of loss, deception... and a burning desire for freedom.
Soon, Fox and Willa are involved in a perilous quest to save her family's legacy... and to do so, they will have to solve a mystery that points the way to the fabled lost treasure of the Knights Templar.
Excerpt
The Last True Templar
March, 1314
Paris
It seemed as if the entire city had come for the execution. Massive crowds lined both banks of the Seine, straining to view the stake set into a pile of logs on the tiny island of Île aux Juifs. A man holding a flaming torch waited for the command to do his duty.
In the fading light of dusk, the four men tied back to back around the tall post looked unafraid, even serene. They knew the horror that was to come and that insufficient fuel was deliberately used to ensure a slow and agonizing death. But they seemed at peace with their decision to recant the false confessions that had been tortured out of them. For this reversal, they’d been branded lapsed heretics, the most heinous crime imaginable.
Domenico Ramberti stood on the southern bank of the river, forcing himself to control the shivering and coughing that had racked his body on and off for the last six months of his long journey. Although he had occasional bursts of energy, today he felt older than his forty-eight years. But if Jacques de Molay, Grand Master of the Order of the Knights Templar, could maintain his noble bearing while he met his fate, Ramberti could keep his composure as well.
Many of his fellow knights had been tortured over the past seven years, ever since that dark Friday the 13th in 1307 when King Philip had ordered the simultaneous arrest of all Templars across France. Ramberti had escaped only because he had been in Italy at the time. Since then, he’d done everything he could to preserve his beloved order, but now he was here to witness the coup de grâce.
After this day, Ramberti would be the last true Knight Templar.
Molay, in his seventies, balding with a rim of white hair and a long flowing beard, stood straight atop the pyre, maintaining the dignity for which he was renowned. The marshal’s cry to carry out the sentence was loud enough for all to hear. Molay didn’t debase himself to watch as the executioner dipped his torch to the kindling, setting the logs ablaze.
Above the growing flames, Molay shouted something. The crowd grew still, eager to hear his final words. His voice carried across the water, strong and clear.
“God knows that the hearts of the Templars are pure. He knows who is in the wrong and has sinned. God will avenge our deaths. Make no mistake, all who have borne false witness against us will suffer because of what has been done to us.”
The curse caused many of the spectators to gasp and whisper, but they kept listening. The flames grew, and black smoke belched forth. By now, Ramberti could feel the heat of the fire himself. To Molay the inferno must have been unbearable, and yet he continued to speak.
“I call for His Holiness Pope Clement to join me within a year and a day before God, where he will have to answer for his vile betrayal. I not only summon His Highness King Philip to the same fate, but his descendants likewise to fall and his family line to come to an inglorious end. At the last, the world will know the truth about our innocence. The brotherhood will be reborn, and no one will doubt the nobility and virtue of the Knights Templar.”
As his final words rang out, the thick smoke obscured the men who so bravely endured their torture, sparing Ramberti from watching his beloved grand master being burned alive.
He could only hope that Molay’s curse would come to pass. The king, who owed a fortune to the Templars, had concocted the false accusations that brought down the order so that he could wipe his debt clean and seize the vast holdings of the Templars for his own. The pope, a weakling and a fool, had succumbed to Philip’s threats and joined him in condemning the Templars, disbanding them completely two years ago and handing over what remained of their holdings to the rival Knights Hospitaller.
But Ramberti knew something they did not, the real reason that Molay had finally recanted his confessions to fabricated crimes such as denying Christ and desecrating the cross. Just days ago, he had informed Molay that the resources to restore the Templars to their past glory were now well hidden from the French king, waiting only for the right time and worthy champions to restore the order’s rightful place in the world.
Ramberti’s determination to safeguard the remaining Templar wealth had grown into an obsession that consumed his every waking minute. Despite the danger, he had braved terrible hardship and illness, and had even forsaken his own family to come back to Paris to deliver the news to the grand master that the treasure was safe, giving Molay and his men the peace of mind to at last deny their false admissions of guilt so that they could face death as faithful Knights Templar
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About the Author
Boyd Morrison is a #1 NY Times bestselling author, actor, engineer, and Jeopardy! champion. He started his career working on NASA's space station project at Johnson Space Center, where he got the opportunity to fly on the Vomit Comet, the same plane used to train astronauts for zero gravity. After earning a PhD in engineering from Virginia Tech, he used his training to develop sixteen US patents at Thomson/RCA. Boyd then managed a video game testing group in Microsoft's Xbox division before becoming a full-time writer. For non-fiction thrills, he enjoys white water rafting, skiing, scuba diving, and bungee jumping. Boyd is also a professional actor, appearing in films, commercials, and stage plays. In 2003 he fulfilled a lifelong dream and became a Jeopardy! champion. He currently lives in Seattle with his wife.
Elizabeth Morrison is Senior Curator of Manuscripts at the J. Paul Getty Museum. She received her PhD in the History of Art from Cornell University and began work at the Getty in 1996. During her twenty-five years there, she has curated numerous exhibitions, including Imagining the Past in France, 1250-1500 in 2010 and Book of Beasts: The Bestiary in the Medieval World in 2019. The accompanying publications for both shows were finalists for most prestigious honor in museum work, the College Arts Association award for outstanding exhibition catalogue. She has written or edited six books as well as a dozen articles in the specialized area of French and Flemish manuscript illumination. A leader in her field, she has served on the boards of the International Center of Medieval Art and the Medieval Academy of America, and is currently the Vice President of the Association of Art Museum Curators.
