We located the rose cross, though it was somewhat different from the first. Beneath it was an inscription. The moment I finished reading the inscription I staggered back, and would have fallen had Maloney not caught me.
“What is it? What did you see?” they asked, in some alarm.
“It’s exactly what was in the book!” I cried out — in Hungarian — and was surprised they failed to understand me.
POST CXX ANNOS PATEBO
(After one hundred and twenty years, I shall open.)
The very words as on the entrance to the grave of Rosacrux.
Maloney had started to loosen my necktie.
“No, no, leave me alone, there’s nothing wrong with me,” I said, as I came to. “I’ve read about this place, I know all about it. There must be a door here. And behind it is something really amazing.”
A closer look at the wall revealed the faint outline of a door. Maloney manipulated the rose cross for a while, and it swung open. The three of us leapt back in fright, struck by the light that poured through the opening, brighter than any light bulb.
And then … it was just as in the book.
We entered a seven-sided room. The floor was engraved with mystical figures representing the nations of the world; the ceiling likewise, representing the heavenly spheres. And at the centre of the room floated the indefinable white glow of the luminous body, the other, the subterranean sun, that the old volumes had described.
As if I had been there before, I boldly led my companions deeper into the room, and pointed out to them the altar and the inscription:
ACRC HOC UNIVERSI COMPENDIUM VIVUS
MIHI SEPULCHRUM FECI
(Living, I built this tomb for myself
in the image of the universe)
We were standing over the grave of the legendary Rosacrux. The story that had been derided for centuries was in fact true. We had come to the House of the Holy Ghost. There stood the altar, inscribed exactly as the Fama had recorded it. And over it, the ever-burning flame.
But then … perhaps the rest was also true? If so, under the altar we would certainly find … the body of Rosacrux — or the man who had called himself Rosacrux — perfectly preserved despite the passing of centuries.
Could I possibly dare?
But intellectual curiosity, the strongest of all my passions, began to master my superstitious fears.
“Give me a hand,” I said to the others. “Let’s raise the altar and take a look at the grave itself.”
Maloney crossed himself and drew back. Osborne and I applied ourselves to the weight. But it moved as easily as if it had been expecting us. Beneath it lay a stone slab of the sort you see on tombs. Engraved on it was the Rose Cross of the Pendragons, and around it, the family motto:
I BELIEVE IN THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY
and, a little lower down, the inscription:
HERE LIETH ASAPH CHRISTIAN PENDRAGON
SIXTH EARL OF GWYNEDD
I stood there, deep in intense thought, over the tomb of the midnight rider. What could explain this mystery? It was the tomb of Rosacrux, as described in the ancient books, and it was also the tomb of Asaph Pendragon. There was only one possible explanation. Rosacrux and Asaph were one and the same person. The four letters of the inscription reinforced my conclusion. ACRC could only mean Asaph Christian Rosae Crucis.
This discovery was greater than any I could ever have made had I read my way through the entire Pendragon library. I had found the historical basis of the legend of the Rose Cross. For a brief moment I saw, in my mind’s eye, the volume unfolding in which I laid the foundations of my international reputation as a scholar.
Then I remembered the tomb and the body. The real wonder was still to come.
“What do you think: could we manage to lift this stone?”
“I don’t think we have the right,” said Osborne. “We can’t disturb my ancestor’s rest out of idle curiosity.”
“But, Osborne, you must understand. This isn’t idle curiosity; it’s curiosity of quite a different kind. If everything else is true to the description, under this stone slab we shall find the body of Asaph Pendragon, uncorrupted and intact.”
Maloney interposed:
“Let’s just get out of here. I don’t like any of this. A grave is a grave and the dead are dead. Better to let them be. The whole place is so creepy I just wish to God I’d never come.”
“Now listen, Doctor,” Osborne added. “We’ll either succeed in opening it, or not. If we do, we’ll have two alternatives. Either we’ll find a skeleton — which is the more probable — or else everything in your book is true and we’ll find Asaph Pendragon’s body … lying there, perfectly intact, with his arms folded on his breast and his finger bearing the magic rings described in the family tradition … Well, Doctor, forgive me, but I have no wish to see it. Something in me protests against prying into the secrets of the dead.”
He was deathly pale, staring at me with eyes of terror.
I realised nothing could be done. I had come up against the timidity, the discretion, the sheer lack of curiosity of this island race. Had I in any way insisted, they would have thought me utterly cynical, or something worse.
While I was locked in argument with Osborne, Maloney was studying the altar. A sudden movement caught my eye, as the slab covering the tomb began to move back, just as the two doors had done. Maloney had found another rose cross and, half-unconsciously, had been manipulating it in the same way that he had before.
The stone slab revealed an opening through which we could see a large, four-sided pit, in the centre of which stood a catafalque, like a bed pillowed with old damask cushions: a bed from which the sleeper had already risen. There was no trace of the body, no bones to be seen, no legendary rings.
“If nothing else, the rings at least ought to be there,” I stated. “But in an enclosed space like this bones should also have lasted three hundred years. As you see, the pillows are as new.”
“The tomb’s been robbed and the bones removed,” Maloney said.
“Or, his earthly remains were reinterred somewhere else, in some previous age,” Osborne conjectured. “We’ll have to ask my uncle: he’ll know.”
Once more, I took a good look at everything in the vault, closely examining the body of light. But I could form no idea of what it might consist. We turned to go.
We closed the door carefully behind us. I had a moment’s concern that I hadn’t put out the light as we went; then I reflected that this particular light had been burning for three hundred years, and continued on my way.
We passed through the crypt and laboured up the spiral stairs. Reaching the top, we noticed that the corridor along which we had first come to it led in two different directions. No one could remember whether the entrance lay to the left or the right. We eventually decided it must be to the right, and set off.
But in fact we should have gone to the left, as we discovered only after passing through several underground rooms. In the total darkness, barely penetrated by Maloney’s torch, it was hard to find any bearings at all. Finally, with considerable unease, we admitted to one another that we had no idea how to get back. From each of the pitch-black rooms several other rooms would open out, and they were all identical.
“Trust my instinct,” Maloney repeated. “Connemarans have good eyes for the dark. I don’t say this always applies to me, but I do have my days.”