I collected the parchment and charcoal and made my way painfully up to where my master stood, and there I saw the meaning of his words. The little gemstone had landed between the door and the stone frame, wedging itself there and effectively preventing it from closing. My master pointed to a spot on the edge of the door. ‘Look here, Christian, this is the mechanism.’ He showed me a metal device attached to the frame where it met the wall, pointing then to a hole in the wall in which this device resided when the door was closed. ‘You see? Because of this apparatus one is able to push the door open from the other side with ease. On our side, however, there are no handles, and one is unable to pull the door open because it is perfectly aligned with the wall. Had you walked through, allowing it to close behind you, we would not have been able to open it again! Now what Daniel told us about these tunnels becomes clear: there are many entrances, and only one exit.’
‘But master,’ I said, now thoroughly afraid, ‘these tunnels may continue infinitely, and we are bound to come across a trap that we shall not be able to anticipate.’
‘Infinite qua infinite,’ my master said because at that moment he chose to despise generalities. ‘This is impossible. This labyrinth cannot be indefinitely long, for what is infinite in multitude or size is unknowable in quantity, and what is infinite in variety of kind is unknowable in quality, and so on and so on . . . The earth itself is not infinite, on this all men of learning agree. And if the earth is finite, one of its components cannot be infinite, but must also, following this rule, be finite. It is a simple matter of logic . . . as is the fact that a thing cannot be knowable in all its parts and at the same time be unknowable in its whole.’
Eisik had been muttering prayers, but not one for ignoring a chance to refute my master, he responded, ‘The sages (men who have been known to hold infinity in their hands, and who create being from nonbeing) tell us that we may see the tail of a lion beneath some bushes and mistake it for a snake, Andre, or a snake mistaking it for a lion’s tail. Knowing a small part does not always lead to knowledge of the whole. To know a half circle we must know the circle.’
‘Yes, yes, but firstly, to hold infinity in one’s hand,’ my master said annoyed, ‘is to know its quality and its quantity, in which case it is no longer infinite, but finite. Moreover, dear Eisik, Aristotle tells us, everything that is manifest must arise either from what is, and as it is impossible for a thing to arise from what is not (on this all physicists agree),’ he said, ‘things must then come into being out of things that exist, that is out of things already present, but perhaps imperceptible to our senses.’
‘You see even your dear pagan believed in invisible things!’
‘Yes. But because we cannot see a thing, Eisik, does not make it invisible,’ my master corrected. ‘Perhaps if we had smaller eyes, or indeed larger ones, we might see the eternal element that underlies everything.’
‘You mean eyes that are able to perceive the spirit,’ Eisik ended, triumphant.
‘Yes that is what I mean, however I did not say that to know a part is to know the whole, I meant that it may be the sign that points to an idea which surfaces in one’s mind as an image which in its purest state may lead one to the full reality of a thing, whether it is something spiritual or material . . . but that is another matter, and we diverge further and further, as we are apt to do when discussing the blessed laws of physics . . . However, in this case when a whole consists of a substance divided into parts and we have learnt some of the parts we can then surmise the substance, ergo, one chamber of the labyrinth may help us to construct the rest. Now, let us proceed and have no more of this talk!’ my master ended the conversation abruptly. Perhaps he too had become confounded?
‘By God, I long for an apple,’ he said.
‘So if this tunnel is finite,’ I said, trying to use his logic, ‘it stands to reason that we must one day reach the end, and so find our way out, master, is that not so?’
He smiled, and I was heartened, ‘Just as surely as these tunnels have a quality,’ he said, ‘they also have a quantity. Just as they have a beginning, they have an end! Whether we find this end, or wander about until our death, is another matter. This unfortunately is the logic of labyrinths which is all together different from any other kind of logic.’
Eisik moaned. I was fast becoming suspicious of logic. However I must not dull your mind, dear reader, with the discourses that ensued as my master helped me to begin constructing a plan of the tunnel and chamber. I will continue, rather, by telling how some time later, after we retrieved my little gem, seeing that it had not broken, we left a rock in the way of the door, so that it could not close, and found ourselves back where I had so gracelessly landed.
Seeking the way in a downward slope, not knowing what lay before us, I began to feel exceedingly cold and tired and it was in this mood that I recalled the reading in the warming room the previous evening.
‘A man should keep himself in every hour from the sins of the heart, of the tongue, of the eyes, of the hands and of the feet! He should cast aside his own will and the desires of the flesh; he should think that God is looking down on him from heaven at all times, and that his acts are seen by God and reported to him hourly by his angels.’
Those words now pierced my heart profoundly, as though they had been somehow intended for me. But I knew that this was illogical. The service had been prior to my dream and how could Brother Setubar have foreseen my misfortune? It was impossible. And yet I also reminded myself that I had not as yet confessed my indiscretion. My master did not have the power to give me absolution as laid down in the rule by St Bernard. Only under extreme circumstances, such as in times of war, or the absence of a priest, could a Templar confess his sin to another. I wondered if my master considered this a time of war where secrecy must prevail? I felt a deep and powerful guilt seize me, and still I could not forget the beautiful girl in my dream whose voluptuous limbs entwined with mine in a sin most foul, and yet most sweet. Can a man take fire in his bosom and his clothes not be burnt? Reason, my master so often told me, is the natural revelation of truth, so I tried to use its power to release me from my sorrow. Is a monk deemed worthy if he abstains only from physical love I asked myself as we walked the long, narrow passage, or is love of the mind as sinful as its twin? If God was omnipotent, as the Apostles inform us, and resides in our every thought, He must also reside in our dreams! If this is so, I sighed dismally, He must not be well pleased with me. And yet, how can one be held responsible for the ruminations of one’s mind? Are not dreams independent of the will? And then I immediately concluded that if my dreams were truly prophetic, as they had been up until that moment, I would experience in my waking moments what I had dreamt, and so, as a result, I would commit my sin twice! I told myself perhaps one’s life of dreams is not prophetic at all, but merely the product of one’s waking life, in which case all I had to do to redeem myself was confess, but what a confession it would be! I shuddered, for the passage deep in the ground was a reflection of my own sad soul, and I wondered if even with numerous formulas handed down by the wise fathers a monk finds himself unable to control evil lusts, what other recourse is there left to him?
Eisik peered at me in the gloom, perhaps seeing on my face a sign that inside my belly there had been a fire (so like the infernal fires of hell) that a man feels when in waking life he is flushed with a lustful fever. I blushed immediately, and looked down, pretending to be consulting the compass. In reality I was thinking that if I did not at once admit my transgression I would soon expire from guilt.
It was while I was consumed by such considerations that I noticed we were coming upon another door. Once more we found ourselves inside a second antechamber, identical to the one we had just left. Three doors again were set at oblique angles marked with signs. This was the Pergamos chamber denoted by a crescent moon.
I noted everything that I saw down on our little map, with the small piece of charcoal.
‘What now?’ I asked pe
rplexed, trying to keep my mind from wandering.
‘And he that overcometh, and keepeth my works, unto the end, to him I’ll give power of the nations,’ Eisik said, pointing to the door on our left, ‘Thyatira’.
This aperture opened in the same manner, but this time there was no devilish device. It led directly to a deep tunnel whose pitch again descended down a slight slope. The light from our lamps reached up as far as the height of two men and after an oblique turn to our left we walked a little distance and my master pointed to an area in the wall of the cavern high above our heads.
‘The false door in the second chamber! Mon Dieu! ‘ my master exclaimed, his voice echoing in the dampness. ‘You see there!’ he pointed, and I could just make it out. ‘We have been ascending and descending, there have been steps and inclines, it appears that these interconnecting tunnels twist and wind their way beneath and above each other! Ingenious!’
Ingenious indeed! We continued ahead, in a south-easterly direction, the tunnel becoming quite narrow and low, we were walking beneath the chamber of the sun or Smyrna. I noted this down. We made another oblique turn then, and the compass read north-east as we came upon another chamber. Again we were faced with three doors. Above the one directly ahead of us, we could see the strange symbol for Mercury and the word ‘Sardes’. This was also above the door to our right. Behind us, as we expected, Pergamos. To our left Ephesus, so this meant that we had travelled in a kind of figure eight pattern, although on different levels. My master cupped his beard in his hand and viewed my plan of the labyrinth thus far.
‘Now, Christian,’ he said, looking around him, ‘if you look closely at your map, you will see a pattern emerge. The door through which we enter the chambers is always marked with the name of the preceding chamber. Above us we have the chamber we are presently in. There are always, to this point, two doors marked with the same symbol, in order to trick the unwary, but they may not be the same doors every time. In any case we must now take the door marked Mercury, and if I am not mistaken, it is the one facing east,’ he concluded.
‘But how do you know that, master?’
‘Have you not noticed that before each correct door the stone has been worn down from use?’ He showed me, and I was astounded, for he was right. The stone immediately in front of the door where one stepped before descending the stairs on the other side was indeed smooth and polished, a sign that the abbot had not been honest with us. These tunnels were in use quite often.
‘And here,’ he pointed to the other door, ‘we must conclude is another false exit. We have been climbing since the last diversion, and so this tunnel therefore passes over another, as did the first. Let us see if we are indeed right, shall we?’ Slowly he opened the aperture, but closed it almost immediately, before either of us could see anything.
‘They are there!’ he exclaimed in a harsh whisper.
‘They?’ I said, shivering a little as we opened the door very slightly. Below in the tunnel that ran beneath the present chamber I observed several white forms illuminated by lamps, floating, it seemed, in single file towards the tunnel below us.
‘Oh, burning bush of Moses! The spirits of the dead!’ Eisik moaned behind me. ‘Holy fathers preserve our wicked and curious souls!’ Then he thumped my master on the back as a form of remonstration.
‘The ghosts, master, the twelve ghosts!’ I whispered back, alarmed, because fear, like laughter, is contagious.
‘Nonsense, they are men, and no more ghosts than you or I. Did you not see their breath puffing out before them as they walked? Moreover, if they were ghosts, they should not need the use of lamps,’ he concluded, and I knew that he was right, for it was common knowledge that ghosts do not breathe, and that they prefer to roam in darkness, having no eyes.
‘Perhaps they are headed in our direction, master, along another route, in which case we should leave before we are discovered.’ I knew my logic to be flawed, but I wanted to flee to the relative safety of my cell. My master, however, would have nothing of it.
‘Do not be a goose, Christian,’ he said calmly, ‘they were headed south, and that is why we shall head north, and soon another chamber will have us travelling in their footsteps. Come!’
We left the chamber through the door marked ‘Mercury’, walking along another tunnel, and in my ears the sound of water, dripping, dripping, dripping, all around. I guessed that it must be the underground channel that operated the organ. I walked a little behind, feeling very much alone in my misery, despairing at ever being worthy to climb the ladder of which one side is our body, and the other our soul whereby a good monk ascends to heaven. I did not feel like a good obedient child, but rather, since our arrival here, I confess to having indeed attempted things too high for me, my heart had indeed been haughty, I did not go about my day quietly! It is only now with the passing of the years that I know how it is the misfortune of every young man to suffer so. Pity God does not bestow wisdom on a man, before he is too old for it be of any value!
Bur for now I must return to that moment, when my disturbed my inner misery and wrenched me back to the equally miserable present.
‘The sound of water . . .’ he said. ‘Somewhere close is the underground spring that supplies the abbey. We are close, very close.’
‘I could have told him that,’ thought I, sinfully.
We continued in silence, frozen to the bone. I could no longer feel my feet, I only knew that they must be there for I was walking. Above black shadows loomed and I wondered what good it would do to die in this deplorable labyrinth, even though death seemed a preferable alternative to a life of guilt. At that moment we came upon the Sardes–Mercury chamber with two doors again heading in separate directions to Jupiter, or Philadelphia. We paused to look at our map once more.
‘You see here,’ my master pointed to the map, to the second chamber of Pergamos, ‘this door reads ‘Jupiter’ also,’ he pointed to the north door, and also the east door. ‘See this, Eisik?’ We turned around to see the pale countenance of Eisik pointing to something behind what we guessed must be the false door.
‘Holy Jacob! Holy Abraham!’ he whispered, his face like that of a man who looks on death with mortal eyes. When we walked to him and followed the direction of his gaze, we saw what had caused his distress.
I closed my eyes, made the sign of the cross, and prayed, trembling violently.
18
Capitulum
Slumped to one side inside the small chamber we found the body of a young monk, his eyes open in a look of terror. There was a faintly sweet, sickly smell. My master reached down and touched the body.
‘Cold. Dead for . . . three days, maybe more. This must be our curious young Jerome who broke the interdict only to find himself trapped inside this chamber. At least the poor boy did not die alone.’ My master shone the light around the room and we could see the bones of other unfortunates scattered about. I looked away in pity and disgust.
‘Strange . . .’ Andre remarked after a short inspection of the body. ‘He, too, must have been poisoned.’
‘Why do you say that, master?’ I exclaimed. ‘Is it not more likely that he was trapped by the same mechanism we have encountered on the doors and expired?’
He gave me a look that was not altogether benevolent. ‘If you found yourself locked up in such a place, what would you do?’
‘Naturally I would try to find a way out.’
‘Naturally, now tell me, after a time of this with no result, would you become quite desperate?’
‘Almost certainly,’ I answered.
‘And as a last hopeless measure you would attempt to claw the door open, would you not?’
This thought made me feel deeply sympathetic for the poor wretched boy, and all I could do was nod.
‘Of course you would, it is quite natural, and perfectly obvious to anyone but stupid squires and yet, do you see any signs of this? Where his fingers should be bloodied and his nails torn, they are impeccable, as any good apprentice
physician’s hands should be. No, this poor monk died shortly after entering the chamber, before he reached such a stage of anxiety . . . and I believe holding onto something . . . something long and cylindrical in shape. Note his hands have contracted in position around whatever it was. Someone has removed it after he had been dead for some time. There are no other signs, no blood, no wound, only that terrible anguished face.’
He walked over to a lamp similar to ours lying discarded on the floor.
‘Short of wick and oil,’ he concluded. He looked troubled and then nodded his head slowly. ‘Sometimes there is a simple explanation . . .’ He lifted his lamp up to chest level to the wall opposite the door. Something glistened in our eyes, as though rays of the sun were escaping through a gap in the stone, but I knew that this was impossible, we were too deep in the earth for that.
‘Oh, Jacob! A terrible magic! Glittering like the eyes of Lucifer!’
‘No, Eisik, it is only a mineral within the rock that reflects the flame of the lamp. Jerome’s lamp must have caught their sparkle and he, perhaps curious, or dazzled, wandered in. It is a trap for the unwary.’
‘The body then?’ Eisik said. ‘Holy land of our fathers, we cannot leave it here.’
‘We shall touch nothing,’ my master replied in a matter-of-fact way. ‘Nothing can be done for him now, and if we move him where shall we take him? After all, it is impossible to take him back up. No, we shall simply close the door.’ He made the sign of the cross over the poor monk, saying a paternoster, and did just that.
After a solemn silence, my master showed Eisik the diagram. The old Jew peered myopically at it for a moment. ‘Holy Fathers!’ he exclaimed suddenly, ‘the star of David! The symbol of the heavenly union of man and God. The upper and lower triangles meet in the centre.’
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