'If you think about the way the inscription was written,' Angela said, leading the way to the massive circular altar beside the temple ruins, 'it suggests that the Sicarii hid both the Silver Scroll and these tablets at the same location, the scroll in the cistern and the tablets in an altar. And when they were here at Har Megiddo, the only altar on the site was the one we're looking at right now.'
She stopped, reached into her pocket and pulled out the piece of paper she'd been studying that afternoon while Bronson slept beside her in the car. She shone the beam of the torch at the writing on it.
'Take another look at the inscription. It said "the tablets of ----- temple of Jerusalem", which logically translates as "the tablets of the temple of Jerusalem". The next relevant phrase is "----- ----- altar of ----- ----- describes a -----". There are several blanks in that, but I think it probably originally read something like "in the altar of stone that describes a circle". The next section is a bit easier to guess. We translated that as "----- four stones ----- the south side ----- a width of ----- ----- and height ----- ----- cubit to ----- ----- cavity within". I think that means "removing four stones from the south side of a width of some cubits and height of one cubit to expose the cavity within".'
' "Some cubits"?' Bronson asked. 'I can see why you think it's one cubit high, but the width is a bit bloody vague, isn't it?'
'Yes, but I don't think it matters. The important thing is that the inscription on the clay tablets claimed there's a cavity inside this altar, and they got access to it from the south side, by pulling out several stones. So that's what we're going to do.'
They stepped closer to the altar, using their torches to ensure they didn't trip over anything because the area was treacherous, criss-crossed by low walls and a succession of quite deep square pits whose purpose Bronson could only guess at.
Deciding which part of the altar lay on the 'south side' was easy. Bronson simply looked up at the sky, identified the Great Bear star formation and took Angela to the opposite side of the circular structure.
'That's north over there,' he said, pointing up at the night sky, 'so this is the south face of the altar.' He bent down and used his torch to look at the stones that formed the side of the structure. 'It doesn't look to me as if any of these have been touched for centuries.' He laughed shortly.
'Which they haven't, of course. So where do we start?'
'The only dimension the inscription provides for the height of the stones the Sicarii removed was one cubit, assuming that my translation of the Aramaic word was right and meant "cubit" rather than "cubits".'
'Remind me. How long was a cubit?' Bronson asked.
'Roughly eighteen inches,' Angela said. 'But they were removing stones to get access to a cavity inside this altar, and I think they would just have guessed at the size of the opening they created. From the look of these stones, taking out almost any two of them would leave an opening with a vertical height of about eighteen inches, so that's not much of a clue.'
Bronson looked again at the side of the ancient altar.
'Well, I suppose we could just start more or less in the middle and see where that gets us.'
'There's probably an easier way,' Angela said. 'There's no mortar between the stones, and one of the things I put in your rucksack was a wire coat-hanger. Untwist it and we've got a thin strong probe about three feet long. Slide it between the stones and see if you can locate the cavity that way.'
'Brilliant.' Bronson pulled out the hanger and a pair of pliers and began untwisting the steel. In a couple of minutes he'd got the whole thing straight apart from a 'T' shape at one end that he could use as a handle.
'Start here,' Angela said, gesturing to a large gap between two of the stones.
Bronson slid the probe into the space, but it penetrated for only about eight or ten inches before meeting a solid object, probably another course of stones behind the outermost ones. He pulled it out and tried again, but with the same result.
'This might take a while,' he said, forcing the probe into another gap, 'but it'll still be a lot quicker than pulling out stones at random.'
After almost ten minutes, he had found no sign of any cavity behind the stones. Then, with a suddenness that surprised him, the improvised probe vanished deeper, much deeper, into one space. He pulled it out and tried again, with the same result. Instead of stopping after perhaps ten inches, the steel rod was penetrating well over two feet.
'There's definitely a space behind here,' Bronson said. 'Come on – let's start looking.'
He opened his rucksack again and pulled out the steel crowbar. He slid the point of the tool between two of the stones and levered. Nothing happened, so he switched to the opposite side and heaved on the other end. This time, it moved a fraction. Bronson repeated the process on the top and bottom, and slowly the stone began to loosen. After a couple of minutes he'd freed it up enough to permit him to ram the jemmy deep into the gap at the top of the stone and lever it out of the wall. The stone crashed to the ground with a dull thud. Bronson moved it to one side and then he and Angela peered into the hole it had left.
Disappointingly, there was another stone directly behind the one Bronson had removed.
'I think that's the reason the probe went straight through,' he said, pointing into the hole. 'That corner of the stone I've just shifted lined up almost exactly with the one directly behind it. Everywhere else I tried to run the wire through, it must have been hitting the face of one of the stones in the row behind.'
'Try the probe again,' Angela suggested.
This time, when Bronson slid the thin length of steel into the gaps around the stones of the inner course, it met almost no resistance and clearly entered some kind of a void.
'I'll move another stone from the outer layer,' he said, 'just to give me room to work, then take out a couple from the second course.'
With one stone already removed, shifting a second one was easy. Bronson was concerned about the security of the stones above the hole he'd made in the side of the altar, but they showed no sign of falling out. The inner layers of stones were actually easier to move, because they were slightly smaller, and Bronson quickly pulled out three of them to reveal a small open space.
'Pass me that torch, please,' he muttered, crouching down on his hands and knees to peer into the cavity.
'What can you see?' Angela demanded, her voice quavering with excitement. 'What's in there?'
'It looks to me like it's empty. No, hang on – there's something lying flat on the floor of the cavity. Give me a hand. It looks as if it's quite heavy.'
Bronson eased the thick tablet of stone out of the hole he'd made and with Angela's help rested it against the side of the altar. They both stood back and for a few seconds just looked at it.
'What the hell is it?' Bronson asked. 'And there's another one in there, I think.'
In less than a minute, they'd lifted out the second tablet and placed it gently beside the first one.
'That's it,' he said, then looked back into the hole he'd made, using the beam of the torch to inspect it. 'There's nothing else in the cavity,' he reported, 'except rubble and a lot of dust.'
They both looked intently at the two stone tablets. They were roughly oblong with square bases and rounded tops, maybe an inch thick and perhaps fifteen inches high and nine or ten inches wide. Both surfaces of each slab had been carefully inscribed, and it looked to Bronson as if the two inscriptions were probably written in Aramaic – he'd seen enough of the language lately to be fairly certain he recognized it – and appeared to be identical.