Prologue
Copyright © 2016 by Oscar Luis Rigiroli. All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
"Dieu le Veut" (Deus vult in Latin,) was the battle cry of the Knights Templar and in general of all the members of the Crusades to the Holy Land.
It is based on a sermon by the then Pope Urban II to the nobles in November 1095 at the Clermont Council where he launched the First Crusade. One of the versions of this address is approximately the following.
“Let this be your war cry in the fighting, because this word was given to you by God. When you carry out an armed attack on the enemy, may this cry rise from all the soldiers of God. It is the desire of God! It is the desire of God! ”
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Prologue
Chapter 1 Non nobis, domine
Chapter 2 Bariloche
Chapter 3 The shaman
Chapter 4 Ten Ten Mahuida
Chapter 5 Dieu le veut
Chapter 6 Fraternitas sancta
Chapter 7The Hartmann Network
Chapter 8 La Chasse
Chapter 9 Bellum
Chapter 10 Locus ignotus
Chapter 11 Thesaurus
Chapter 12. The assembly
Chapter 13 Return
Chapter 14 Tijuca
Chapter 15 The Commander
Chapter 16 Haute trahison
Chapter 17 Secretum Templii
Chapter 18 Conflict
Chapter 19 Triumphus
Epilogue Bonheur
From the Author
About the Author
Works By C.Daurio
Coordinates of the Author
About the Publisher
PROLOGUE
The child hurriedly took off his shirt and sandals and began running on the sand. His parents observed him for a while but convinced that there was no danger in the desolate beach, nearly empty at that early hour, took care of other things. The mother began to spread sunscreen throughout her body and the father installed the beach umbrella in the sand and opened the newspaper under its shadow.
The boy approached the umbrella and picked up a shovel and a bucket to make castles in the sand and walked away again. That day there was a very remarkable low tide, result of a spatial coincidence of the Sun and the Moon superimposing their attraction and repulsion and thus exaggerating the tidal magnitude.
The child was attracted by large snails that the sea had left exposed in its retreat and collected several of them and placed them in a row like soldiers on parade, as he usually did with his toys; then he sought other attractive objects on the sand until he found a black stone in the form of an almost perfectly circular disc bulging in the center. He then placed it in the snail’s row and began digging in the wet sand around it. Suddenly something caught his eye, he left the shovel on the ground and picked the dark stone watching it carefully. He stood up and went to his parent’s umbrella always with the stone in his hand.
“ Look Dad, this stone has some rare marks.”
The father took the object in his hands and clearly distinguished a few deep incisions apparently made with a sharp tool.
“ It looks like a Maltese Cross or part of it, because it´s broken.”
The mother approached with curiosity, took the stone from the hands of her husband and added.
“ No doubt that these marks were done by human hands. Listen, you can take advantage of Uncle Marcelo and his wife´s visit next week.”
“ I did not know they were coming. Will they stay at your parents' home in Pigüé or at ours in Bariloche? ”Asked the father, and added ironically. “What an honor! His wife is the beautiful Mexican woman?”
“ They will first go to Pigüé and then will visit us in Bariloche. And yes, the wife is a Mexican archaeologist and I know she has participated in expeditions and found important pieces, that is why I think we should show her this stone. Maybe she can say something about those marks.”
“ I'll make a sketch of the place where Matías found it. Matu, take me to the place where you found this stone.
Delighted by the importance given to his finding the boy took his father's hand and walked with him to the snail’s parade saying.
“ The stone is mine, I found it. You are going to tell that to Uncle Marcelo, right? And to that lady.”
Father and son walked through the vast expanse of sand that the sea had uncovered in the remote beach south of San Antonio Oeste where the differences between high and low tides are among the biggest in the world, and where tourists that in summer populate the Las Grutas resort rarely arrive.
Arriving at the precise point the father busily set to scan the ground, where the low tide was exposing new beach stripes.
“ Look Matu, there is another dark stone as the one you found, only bigger.”
The boy took the object with both hands, and as he found it too heavy he handed it back to his father. The latter examined it and said.
“ Here there is part of an inscription, but almost worn out.” The new find excited the curiosity of father and son, who redoubled their efforts to cover a larger portion of beach, but no additional findings were made.
Matías was somewhat disappointed that his parents, who regularly answered all his doubts, in this case could not explain what was found, but the prospect of a specialist coming in a few days calmed his anxieties.