by Brad Ricca
When the medic realized what had happened, he had a fit. Cyril was right that he had hoped to stay on board the queasy Water Lily as short a time as possible.
“You can recall your launch by signal at any given moment,” said Cyril. He looked over at Monty.
The medic was getting greener by the moment. He glared at them through a fully developed flopsweat.
“And I would point out,” said Cyril, slyly, “that the signing of our landing permit would synchronize with the hoisting of the aforementioned signal.”
The medic was nearly spasming, so he gave the signal and signed the papers. When his pilot returned with the boat, the medic didn’t even speak to him. Cyril imagined that he was planning on saying quite a bit more on the way back.
“No shaking hands?” asked Cyril, as they sailed off.
They were not yet on Palestinian soil and already they were breaking the rules. Cyril felt as if this was going to be the beginning of a grand adventure indeed. Jesus had calmed a storm in this very sea with the power of God; this lot had used good old-fashioned blackmail.
They rolled up the anchor and set off for the port. As they got closer, Cyril grabbed Walsh and pointed to a massive crag of stone that was pushing out of the sea.
“See those rocks?” he said. “That is the place where Andromeda was rescued by Perseus from being sacrificed to the Kraken. The Kraken! And here”—he pointed to the city itself—“the Egyptians once took this city by hiding in sacks that were carried in by donkeys! Two hundred years before the Trojan Horse!” Walsh regarded Cyril with a cool eye that seemed to project equal parts incredulity and fear that this sort of exchange might become a regular occurrence.
“I went to Cambridge!” said Cyril.
When they landed, Cyril found Jaffa to be beyond compare. It was a very Eastern town, which was the best word he could come up with for it. He loved how absurdly narrow the angled streets were. Cyril was admiring a particular shop window full of rugs when he turned the corner to find an enormous camel standing directly in his face. Cyril ducked out of the way, only to see the camel open its long mouth and chase poor Clarence Wilson for two hundred yards. Cyril laughed. He thought it brilliant that these great beasts could knock you down, bite you, or lick you, depending on their mood, all while carrying some stupendous burden.
The party purchased donkeys and rode into Jerusalem on a long and tedious journey. When they arrived that same day, at six o’clock at night, Cyril was so tired that he noticed very little of the Holy City itself. The last thing he remembered before falling asleep was that their particularly dirty hotel was most likely the cleanest in Jerusalem.
PART TWO
UNDERGROUND
Nine
Bertha Vester
JERUSALEM, 1909
Mrs. Bertha Vester was in her kitchen, standing over the grated oven that was set into the counter, making upside-down mutton. She took the copper pan and tipped it to and fro over the flame. The chopped meat inside was roasting in the pooling yellow butter. Bubbles formed on the grease before disappearing with tiny pops.
“So, Mr. Tarsha! What are those Englishmen on the hill up to?” Bertha asked the exhausted bearded man at her kitchen table. He was eating bread and drinking water and looked washed-out from a long day in the sun. Next to him was a toddler, a girl with blond hair, playing with the remains of a crust.
“Mrs. Vester!” said the man. “I should be cooking for you!”
“No, no, you have been cooking all day. Sit.”
The mutton was sizzling, its grassy smell filling the small kitchen. Bertha added a layer of sliced eggplant that proceeded to fry. With the American Colony’s ranks growing, Bertha and her husband had rented a larger house and sublet the old one to Mr. Tarsha, who was cooking for the group that was conducting archaeological excavations on the side of Mount Ophel. Not much was known of them, so Bertha was naturally curious. She needed to know if there was any way the Colony could help them. Or if they posed a threat.
When the eggplant was nice and crispy, Bertha added the cooked rice. She then seasoned it with salt, pepper, a bit of cinnamon and allspice, and some saffron for color. Her fingers brushed together in a quick and practiced motion. The smell changed, instantly and almost imperceptibly, becoming something heavenly.
Bertha pushed her shawl back and turned toward the table. She was thirty, but still had her long hair pinned up like a girl’s. She was wearing mostly white and crossed her arms to regard Mr. Tarsha.
“They’re not building hospitals,” she said.
“Oh no,” said Mr. Tarsha.
Bertha had lived in Jerusalem nearly her whole life and had enough friends that she heard things almost as soon as they happened. The rumors around the Englishmen were many. They seemed to care little of the history of the place they were digging in. Apparently not one of their number was even an archaeologist. As Bertha placed the dish onto the table, steaming and framed with slices of lime and onion, she gave a look to Mr. Tarsha that she needed more information.
“They are digging. And with some care. But the parties! So many!” said Mr. Tarsha. He was staring at the upside-down mutton. “The Turkish pasha was at the last one! I had to cook it all! And speaking of food, guess what they use for target practice when they are bored? Oranges! Full, ripe oranges! They use their guns and”—he made a gesture with his two worn hands—“blow them to smithereens! I saw the children scrambling to gather the bits!” He gestured at the little girl, who gave him a wide-eyed look.
Bertha sat down, held their hands, and led them in Christian grace, which was the only cost of sharing her table. Once it was over, Bertha began doling out the food.
“They have hired a great many workers from Silwan,” said Mr. Tarsha, “but overall, they are very nice men. Though,” he said, with a humongous gulp, followed by a pause where he closed his own eyes. “Ah, excellent.” He took another forkful. “Your brother will not like them!”
“No, he will not,” said Bertha.
“One other curious thing I saw. They ride to the dig on donkeyback. Once, I saw that they all switched places! The English were running alongside the donkeys, whooping and yelling, while the boys rode on the donkeys!” He swallowed again. “Madness!”
“They are certainly the oddest archaeologists I have ever heard of,” said Bertha. “Well, I am sure we shall meet them before long.”
Sure enough, a week or so later, Bertha and her husband, Frederick, with his long horizon of a mustache that Bertha found to be very handsome, were at a reception—they went to so many—when the Englishmen walked in, confident and straight. They looked sharp, though perhaps a fraction out of place. Bertha slowly made her way over to their party, moving from one conversation to the next as if they were rungs on a ladder. Once she reached their party and was introduced, their leader gave a measured, if slight, bow.
“Captain Monty Parker,” said the tall one with the hat.
“Mrs. Bertha Vester,” she replied.
Monty narrowed an eye at her accent.
“American?”
“Yes. My father and mother came here from Chicago when I was three.”
“Ah,” said Monty.
“So, I hear you are digging. Have you found anything yet? In the Pool of Siloam? Or in Hezekiah’s Tunnel?”
Monty looked greatly reduced by Bertha’s salvo, which gave her a small amount of glee that she was not altogether proud of. When she asked about the work of Charles Warren, it was clear to her that this man Parker had little to no knowledge on the subject. He was no archaeologist. What then were they doing? As was her nature, Bertha didn’t question to be cruel. She wanted to help.
“You should talk to my brother,” said Bertha.
The next day, when Bertha told her brother Jacob about the exchange, he was, as predicted, quite upset.
“They have the privilege of excavating there, and they go to parties? And ride donkeys?” He sulked. “I have to talk to them.” Bertha understood. Her brother’s
favorite hobby was archaeology, and he took great pride in it, as many locals did.
Soon after, the mayor of Jerusalem, Faidie Effendi al-Alami, hosted a picnic. Jacob went as a representative of the Colony and, as planned, saw the British men, this time congregating under a shady tree. They were watching the mayor’s young son and daughter playing with some other children. He walked to them with haste.
“Hello,” he said. “You met my sister the other day. I am Jacob.”
“Captain Parker,” said Monty.
“I wanted to tell you,” Jacob said, with some difficulty. “You are digging on the most historical spot in Palestine.”
Monty looked like he was bracing himself for another barrage. The others inched closer, but he held them back with a slight raise of his finger.
“And if you would carry on excavations there,” flashed Jacob, as he pointed at Monty, which drew some eyes, “without leaving any record … well, it would be a great harm to the whole archaeological world!”
Finished, Jacob caught his breath. Monty seemed almost to smile but stayed serious.
“Those caves are holy,” said Jacob. “Trust me.” Jacob pushed his hand into his pocket and gave a piece of paper to Monty. “Promise me you will talk to this man. His name is Père Vincent. He belongs to the Dominican fathers and is the head of the École Biblique et Archéologique in Jerusalem. He is an archaeologist.”
When Jacob returned home and told his sister what he had done, she was proud of him indeed.
Ten
Father Vincent
JERUSALEM, AUGUST 1909
Father! They’re back!”
Father Louis-Hugues Vincent gave a sudden twitch from his chair. He was not sleeping, but merely deeply involved in his book, though at this very moment he failed to recall its exact title.
“They’re digging on the hill again! Come look!”
Father Vincent marked his page, set his book on the table, and gathered up his white habit around his thin frame. He stood up, grabbed his large, circular hat, and walked out onto the little white courtyard of St. Stephen’s Basilica. His bald head was surrounded by a halo of black hair, the unmistakable mark of his Dominican order. Father Vincent pulled his glasses over his long nose and placed his hat on his head, adjusting its tilt to where he liked it. He pointed his bearded chin toward the boy and smiled. The hat made his face look like the sun.
“Come on!”
They made their steps outside the city gates and toward the Kidron Valley, southeast of Jerusalem. As they took the road down on the eastern slope of Mount Ophel, Father Vincent could see the men his young friend was referring to. They were swinging pickaxes and hauling out dirt. They had set up a wooden platform with a pulley and rope. They were digging again. Watching over the operations was the familiar silhouette of a man in a captain’s hat with a pipe in his hand. Father Vincent had been watching them for days now. He knew exactly where they were.
“Let’s get closer,” Father Vincent said.
Mount Ophel was more of a slow swell than an actual mountain, rising out of the valley in the shadow of Mount Olive. Everything was slow and rolling there, bleached by the flat sun with thatches of bush and low trees. The land was alive with heat and insects, but Father Vincent was interested in its other attributes, the old and dusty things that people had left behind a long time ago.
“Are they from the Palestine Exploration Fund?” asked the boy.
“No.” Father Vincent was studying them through squinted eyes. It was a good guess, as the leaders were obviously English in dress, but they did not look very official.
“They are on their own, I think.”
“Who are they?”
The question went unanswered as Father Vincent studied his subjects, these hazy people with their shovels and picks. They carried long ladders and planks. Whoever they were, they were well acquainted with the archaeological history of the spot to have started here. Either that or they were incredibly, preternaturally lucky. This was where Charles Warren, the Englishman, had uncovered an underground shaft into the mountain almost forty years ago. It seemed as if these new men were trying to open it up again. Perhaps, Father Vincent thought, it was time to answer the question of who “they” were.
As Father Vincent slid closer, he realized there was an official perimeter to the dig site. Signs in various languages warned that all visitors would be turned away. At this distance, he could see that he had mistook two of the figures from afar. The fezzes gave them away: Turks. They stood along the back, with their broad mustaches and uniforms. In fact, Father Vincent noticed a fair number of other foreign men, marked by dress or habit, gathered all around the mouth of the dig. The Turks were obviously there in an official capacity, but these others? Father Vincent was unsure.
Father Vincent took off his hat and wiped his head with a handkerchief. Since the men had arrived, people from nearby villages and even the city had tried to get a peek, though they were mostly unsuccessful, which only further added to the mystery. The whispers scampered through the crowd like little mice. Hushed voices said that the men from England were unholy treasure hunters. Pilferers.
Raiders.
Father Vincent knew this accusation well. It was, most unfortunately, not without its own eternal truth in Palestine. There had been grave robbers and thieves all throughout the region for centuries, stealing from churches and tombs. They came from all over, looking for gold and treasure. This happened even under the Turkish rule. Some were thieves in the night; others came during the daytime, with permits and uniforms. Father Vincent shook his head. All those discoveries scattered away. All that history lost. The true story of the region was lost on such men. The tragedy, Father Vincent knew, was that it was then lost to all.
He watched the Arab workers, locals from the small village of Silwan, haul debris from the tunnel without complaint. Father Vincent circled around one of the signs and snuck a closer look at their leader. He was dressed in khaki and had a mustache and a pipe. His white hat was getting dusty, and he kept beating it clean with an annoyed look on his face. Father Vincent saw a spark there, among all the swagger. He could not say if it was faith. One thing was clear: the man in charge was no archaeologist. In fact, he did not see any of their ilk, with their telltale instruments of tape and paper.
“Interesting,” said Father Vincent.
The next day, Father Vincent returned to the digging site with a letter of introduction on official letterhead from the École Biblique, the French archaeological school next to St. Stephen’s, where he had worked since 1891. He showed it to someone who called over the man in the captain’s hat. The leader of the expedition walked up, gave Father Vincent a quick but direct look, and took his papers. He took a moment to read them, with a few carefully punctuated “hmms” and “mms.” Father Vincent shifted his feet on the dry rock as his qualifications were being read. At age thirty-six, he was no ordinary priest. Called the petit saint by his brothers, he studied archaeology and languages and was even a writer. Because of his frailty, he was sometimes excused from some of the more rigorous aspects of his order, but he embraced his calling with such passion, with such natural curiosity, that his brothers could not deter him even if they wanted to. The man simply loved the study of archaeology, especially here, where tunnels and catacombs were said to somehow reach all the way to the center of Mecca itself. Vast distances shrank to almost nothing in the face of the tunnels of Palestine. The Bible even told of a smoky passage that led straight to Gehenna itself.
The man in the hat finished and handed the letter back. The look on his face was almost stern. Father Vincent’s heart seemed to disappear.
“I’m Captain Monty Parker,” said the man, stretching out his hand. “Your reputation precedes you, Father. Welcome aboard.” Father Vincent smiled, and shook Parker’s hand as vigorously as he could.
As he did so, a thin man with a slight beard came up to show a map to Monty. This man had dark, hollow eyes.
“You’ll
have to excuse me,” said Monty. “My attention is needed elsewhere. I am leaving on some business for a few weeks. By the time I come back, we should have cleared the opening somewhat on the other side and we can go down together.” He smiled. The thin man kept his eyes on the ground.
As Monty walked off, Father Vincent felt relieved. He had tried not to allow himself the want of jealousy, but he had been unsuccessful. As he walked away, Father Vincent felt the spark of a dance at his feet, like King David himself. More sacrilege, he knew, but he let it take him, if just for a moment. In the end, he was overjoyed to be going back to his favorite place in all of Jerusalem.
He was going underground again.
Eleven
Cyril Foley
JERUSALEM, AUGUST 1909
Cyril Foley wiped the back of his neck with a handkerchief. It had now been well over forty-eight hours—weeks, in fact—since they had arrived in Palestine. They had not found the Ark, and he was definitely not on an island, or any richer, not even by a halfpenny. If anything, he was only dirtier and greatly baked from the heat. For the last two weeks they had been working at clearing out the Gihon Spring, or the Fontaine de la Vierge, or the Ain al-Adra, depending on who was asking. There were so many languages here. Cyril put his handkerchief back and returned to observing his man Walsh, who was marking out a wooden post.
Walsh, it turned out, knew his stuff. One of the first things they did when they arrived was to sink a shaft into Warren’s old site to make things easier to clear out. So accurate was Walsh in his overhead estimate that at sixty feet down they hit it right on the nose. The ground then gave way rather easily, ending in what looked to be a pile of small boulders. Cyril thought it a great performance. It had been the height of their excitement. Mostly, they just stood around and watched the local workers clear out the dirt.
“Where’s Juvelius?” asked Walsh, in his flat manner.