“It made sense to seal it,” Tentwhistle offered. “This could be an entry point for enemy armies.”
“The ancient Jews built the arch,” Farhi guessed, “and Arabs, Crusaders, or Templars bricked it up. Some earthquake brought down the ceiling, and it’s been forgotten ever since, except for legend.” Jericho wearily hefted a bar. “Let’s get to it, then.” The first stone is always the hardest. We didn’t dare pound and break, so we chiseled out mortar and put Ned on one side and Jericho on the other to pry. Their muscles bulged, the block slid out like a stuck, stubborn drawer, and finally they caught its fall and set it quietly as a slipper. Farhi kept looking at the ceiling as if he could somehow see the reaction of Muslim guards far above us.
I bent to the puff of stale air that came out our hole. Blackness. So we worked on adjacent stones, cracking their mortar and leveraging them one by one. Finally the hole was big enough to crawl through.
“Jericho and I will scout,” I said. “You sailors stand guard. If there’s anything here, we’ll bring it to you.”
“Bloody ’ell with that!” Big Ned protested.
“I’m afraid I must agree with my subordinate,” Tentwhistle said crisply. “We are on a naval mission, gentlemen, and like it or not, we’re all agents of the Crown. By the same token, any property taken belongs to the Crown for later distribution under the prize laws. Your contributions will be fully taken into account, of course.”
“We’re not in your navy anymore,” Jericho objected.
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“But you’re in the pay of Sir Sidney Smith, are you not?” Tentwhistle said. “And Gage is his agent as well. Which means that we go through this hole together, in the name of king and country, or not at all.”
I put my hand on my rifle barrel, which I’d leaned against the cave wall. “You were sent as underground labor, not a prize crew,” I tried.
“And you, sir, were sent to Jerusalem as the Crown’s agent, not a private treasure hunter.” His hand went to his pistol, as did that of Ensign Potts. Ned and Tom grasped the hilt of their cutlasses. Jericho raised his pry bar like a spear.
We quivered like rival dogs in a butcher shop.
“Stop!” Farhi hissed. “Are you insane? Start a fight down here and we’ll have every Muslim in Jerusalem waiting for us! We can’t afford to quarrel.”
We hesitated, then lowered our hands. He was right. I sighed.
“So which of you wants to go first? There were snakes and crocodiles behind every hole in Egypt.”
Uneasy silence. “Sounds like you’re the one with experience, guv’nor.”
So I wriggled through the hole, waited a moment to make sure nothing was biting me, and then pulled through a lantern to lift.
I started. Skulls grinned back at me.
They weren’t real skulls, just sculpture. Still, it was disquieting to see a carved row of skulls and crossbones running like a molding around the junction of walls and ceiling. I’d seen nothing like that in Egypt. The others were crawling in behind me, and as they spied the morbid frieze the sailors’ exclamations ranged from “Jesus!” to a more anticipatory “Pirate treasure!”
Farhi had a more prosaic explanation. “Not pirates, gentlemen. A Templar style, that skeletal molding. You knew, Mr. Gage, that the skull and crossbones dates back at least to the Poor Knights?”
“I’ve seen it in connection with Masonic rites as well. And in church graveyards.”
“Mortality occupies us all, doesn’t it?” The skulls decorated a corridor, and we passed down it to a larger t h e
r o s e t t a k e y
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room. There I saw other decorations that I assumed had originated with Masons as well. The floor was paved with marble tile in the familiar black-and-white checkerboard of the Dionysian architects, except down the center was a curious pattern. Black tiles zigzagged against white to make a slashing symbol, like an enormous lightning bolt. Odd. Why lightning?
The entrance we’d come through was flanked on this side by two enormous pillars, one black and one white.
In alcoves on either side were two statues of what looked like the Virgin, one alabaster and the other ebony: The white and black Virgins. Mary the Mother and Mary Magdalene? Or the Virgin Mary and ancient Isis, goddess of the Sirian star?
“All things are dual,” Miriam murmured.
The roof was a vaulted barrel, rather plain, but sturdy enough to hold up the Herodian platform somewhere above. At the far end was a stone altar, with a dark alcove beyond. The rest of the room was barren. It had the scale of a dining hall, and perhaps the knights had feasted here when they weren’t busy tunneling into the earth in search of Solomon’s hoard. Other than that, it was disappointingly empty.
We walked across the room, fifty paces in length. Mounted on the face of the altar was a double plaque. On one side was a crude drawing of a domed church. On the other, two knights were mounted on a single horse.
“The Templar seal!” Farhi exclaimed. “This confirms they built this. See, there’s the Dome of the Rock, just like the mosque above us, symbolizing the site of Solomon’s Temple, origin of the Templar name. And two knights on a single horse? Some believe it was a sign of their voluntary poverty.”
“Others contend that it means the two are aspects of the one,” Miriam said. “Male and female. Forward and backward. Night and day.”
“There’s bloody nothing here,” Big Ned interjected, looking around.
“An astute observation,” Tentwhistle said. “It appears we’ve gone to a lot of labor for nothing, Mr. Gage.”
“Except the Crown’s business,” I shot back sourly.
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“Aye, the American has given us the business all right,” Little Tom muttered.
“But look at this, then!” Ensign Potts called. He’d gone over to examine the White Madonna. “A servant’s door, maybe? Or a secret passageway!”
We clustered around. The ensign had pushed on the Madonna’s outstretched hand, raised as if in blessing, and she had pivoted. When she did so, stone had slid away behind her to reveal a winding circular stair, with an opening so narrow you had to squeeze sideways to enter it. It climbed steeply upward.
“That would go to the Temple platform above,” Farhi said. “Communication with the old Templar quarters, in El-Aqsa Mosque. It’s probably blocked, but we must be quieter than ever. Sound would carry up that like a chimney.”
“Who cares what they ’ear,” Ned said. “There’s nothing down here anyway.”
“You’re on Muslim holy ground, fool, and sacred Jewish soil as well. If either group hears us they’ll bind us, circumcise us, torture us for trespassing, and then tear us limb from limb.”
“Ah.”
“Let’s try the Black Madonna as well,” Miriam said.
So we went to the opposite side of the room, but this time no matter how hard Potts pushed on the arm, the statue didn’t move.
Miriam’s dualism didn’t seem in effect. We stood, frustrated.
“Where’s the Temple treasure, Farhi?” I asked.
“Did I not warn that the Templars got here before you?”
“But this chamber looks European, like something they built, not something they discovered. Why would they construct this? It’s a laborious way to get a dining hall.”
“No windows down here,” Potts observed.
“So this was for ceremonies,” Miriam reasoned. “But the real business, the research, must have been in another chamber. There must be another door.”