Treasure of the Knight Templar

Treasure of the Knight Templar is a stand-alone historical fiction novel from the ‘Death Cart’ series. It weaves together incidents taking place in the German town of Saint Stephen at two different times in the turbulent 13th and 14th century.
A Knight Templar has returned from the Holy Land with a ‘secret history’ he took from a burning library in Constantinople. Known to history as a ‘crime against humanity,’ the sack of Constantinople was carried out by the failed fourth crusade in 1204 AD.
Twenty-six years later, in 1230, the knight consults a monk copyist near the town of Saint Stephen, to have him translate the ancient piece. They are so shocked at the contents of the ‘Secret History’, written by the historian, Procopius of Caesarea in the 6th century AD, that they hide the book in Saint Stephen’s old church.
The Black Death survivors in the town of Saint Stephen, are caught up in the search for this scandalous book in the year 1353.
An ambitious bishop, a cruel inquisitor, and a deadly assassin believe that someone in the small town has come into possession of the ‘Secret History.’ Since the book threatens to scandalize the Holy Roman Church, they seek to find it, and silence those who know of its existence.
The dramatic climax involves a duel with a ‘miracle sword’ that has been buried for over a hundred years.
Moving back and forth through time, the reader finds that not all chronicles can be trusted. From the Procopius book to the legendary ‘miracle’ attributed to the first pastor of Saint Stephen’s church, belief and evidence often rival each other.
As ‘The Death Cart’ reminds the reader of the tenuous thread that binds the living to the dead, ‘Treasure of the Knight Templar’ unravels the assurance that events of the past, written or oral, can be taken as absolute truth.