He groped his way around the corner and was struck by a blast of cool air.
Jaysus again.
Where's Prester John?
Here for God's sake. Where's the bloody torch?
The wind blew it out. Just a minute.
Joe heard a rustling sound. Somewhere nearby Haj Harun cleared his throat. Suddenly an enormous mournful wail shook the blackness. Joe could feel it vibrating against his skin.
Jaysus Joseph and Mary, what's that?
The lighted torch reappeared. A few yards away stood Haj Harun smiling triumphantly, holding a ram's horn.
Did you like it? he asked.
Like it, you say. Like it? No I did not. It almost scared me to death.
That's what it's for. I keep it here to frighten the knights away just in case. They don't seem to know about this cellar anymore but it's best to be safe.
Safe, said Joe and choked, overwhelmed by the stench he had forgotten in the excitement. Haj Harun was tying a handkerchief over his face and Joe did the same. They were standing in a large vaulted room lined with shelves cut into the rock, the shelves piled high with rows of dusty bottles. Haj Harun took down a bottle and showed Joe the label, a peculiar white cross on a black background, the arms of the cross in the shape of arrowheads, their points not quite touching at the center. Beneath the cross was a date in Latin, A.D. 1122.
Recognize it?
No. But I'd say it must have belonged to a medieval tippler with a Christian bias.
Indeed it did, they all did. The Knights of St John, no less. Also known as the Knights of Jerusalem and the Knights of Rhodes and finally as the Knights of Malta, since that's where they ended up, but their proper name was the Knights Hospitalers. They became the most powerful of all the warring orders, but originally they were founded here to run a charitable hospital for pilgrims.
What's in the bottles?
Cognac.
True?
Yes, they brought it from France eight hundred years ago. They said it was for medicinal purposes. To ease the pains of pilgrims.
Joe whistled softly.
Ah yes, cognac brought to the Holy Land by the Crusaders to ease the pains of pilgrims. Well how's it taste then? Gone off a bit in eight hundred years?
I'm afraid it has, said Haj Harun. I know cognac is supposed to improve with age but that doesn't seem to have happened here. But it was delicious once, as I well know.
Had a nip or two, did you, over the eras?
Well not regularly. I haven't been able to do much real drinking since my liver gave out during Hellenistic times.
What did it then?
Bad shellfish. A Greek grocer said the mussels were fresh from Cyprus, which they might have been, they certainly made a delicious soup. But they were also polluted.
Oh I see, polluted muscles. Well I guess we all have to expect some toxins creeping in over time. As for me, if my liver had given out twenty-two hundred years ago, I think I'd be an unrecognized wreck by now.
But there was a period, mused Haj Harun, when this cognac saved my life. It was when I had tuberculosis.
Dastardly, that. When was it?
In the sixteenth century when the Turks arrived. Their breath was so appalling it weakened my lungs.
Bad breath can do that?
When it's as bad as theirs was, yes. I can't imagine the state of their stomachs in the sixteenth century.
Excited, I suppose, over all their victories. Anyway, I was employed by the Turks as a distributor of hashish and goats, and as a result of my customers breathing in my face I developed a severe case of tuberculosis.
Dreadful.
So I consulted my local physician and he prescribed plenty of rest and liquids and no heavy lifting.
Sound advice.
So I came down here and spent a year resting and drinking cognac and smoking cigars, catching up on my reading and lifting nothing heavier than a book and a bottle, and by the end of the year I was totally cured.
Does it every time.
And I haven't had a relapse since then. Not one.
It's true, you haven't. You know, there must be thousands of bottles in this Crusader wine cellar.
There are.
Yes, thought Joe, and the baking priest knows his Latin so what's to keep me from getting him to forge a letter from someone to someone, dated in A.D. 1122, proving the stuff is authentic Crusader cognac worth a fortune? There's money in that for sure, and we're talking about treasure even though I haven't found the map to it yet.
Who ran the Knights Hospitalers?
They had a grand master.
A letter from the grand master, thought Joe, that's the job. A formal yet tasty document to the king of France offering warm thanks for his Christmas contribution to the good works being done by the boys in Jerusalem, in keeping with the spirit of charity ten thousand pleasing bottles of much appreciated rare cognac for thirsty pilgrims in the Holy City.
Haj Harun slammed a bottle against the wall and broke off its neck.
Care for a sip?
The fumes rushed up at Joe. He gagged and doubled over, coughing at what might have been vinegar five or six centuries ago but was now a noxious gas unique in the world. He pulled Haj Harun out of the room and the old man followed, still clasping his ram's horn. After walking for another two or three minutes, Haj Harun stopped and whispered that it was just around the corner.
What is? asked Joe.
The great assembly hall of the Crusaders. And we have to be careful now, they carry all sorts of lances and swords and spiked maces. Just terrible to see, more frightening than the Babylonians.
Joe looked down at his shabby patched uniform. He fingered his Victoria Cross uneasily.
The VC was a cross all right and no mistaking it, which might help to establish his Christian piety. But the uniform? How could they know it belonged to an officer of light cavalry in the Crimean War? A hero who'd survived a famous suicidal charge launched on behalf of Christian righteousness? They wouldn't even have heard of that charge.
Are you ready? whispered Haj Harun.
Unarmed, muttered Joe. But as ready as I'll ever be against the combined might of the First Crusade.
Haj Harun got down on his hands and knees and gestured for Joe to do the same. The torch was extinguished. Joe peered down the tunnel and saw a faint light at the end.
The ceiling of the tunnel sloped down to meet them as they crawled quietly forward and squeezed through a hole, emerging on a smooth ledge flat on their stomachs. Joe noticed the rocks around them had been cut away in neat rectangular blocks. They peeked over the edge of the ledge.
Joe's eyes narrowed. They were facing a high square chamber, not a cave but man-made, carved out of the rock. Torches lined the walls and there no more than ten feet below them was an impressive crowd of several hundred men wearing brightly colored robes and a bewildering array of hats, most of them tall and peaked.
Flags and pennants were everywhere. At one end of the subterranean hall an elevated wooden platform had been erected. On it sat a half-dozen potentates in particularly ornate robes, listening attentively as one of their number addressed the assembly.
The new and enlarged College of Cardinals, thought Joe. Rome lost out after all. They've brought their business back here and that must be the new pope who's just been elected. Jerusalem wins in the end.
Haj Harun touched his arm.
The one who's speaking is Godfrey of Bouillon, he whispered.
Has the voice of an English drill sergeant, thought Joe.
And the man to his right, whispered Haj Harun, is his brother, Baldwin I, the first Latin king of Jerusalem.
The others on the dais are Raymond of Toulouse, Robert of Normandy, Robert II of Flanders, Bohemond and Tancred. In front of them are the two men who started it all, Peter the Hermit and Walter the Penniless.