The Jerusalem Parchment

by Tuvia Fogel

  They tried counting 395 steps eastward from the Rock under the dome, but after 300 they reached the eastern wall, beyond which was a sheer drop to the cemetery below. After that, copies of the parchment discreetly clutched in their hands, they wandered the esplanade from one end to the other, Yehezkel occasionally looking at the map, scratching his head under his turban, Galatea at his side, and raising a thumb to line up a spot on the Haram with something behind it. The two tall mystics were taking long, purposeful strides, when suddenly a voice shouted out to them in Arabic, “Don’t pray! Hey, you two, you’re not allowed to pray to your false gods up here!”

  Three ulema, dressed in long black robes and prestigious white turbans, were running toward them, shouting. Yehezkel had expected something like this. They were from the Waqf, the religious foundation established by Salah ad-Din to govern the holy places on the Mount. Much stricter than mamluks, these clerics’ understanding of the Holy Qu’ran was that making the lives of infidels miserable gives Allah more pleasure than all the charity in the world. Yehezkel faced them without a trace of apprehension. “We are not praying. And we have permission to be here. From Sultan al-Kamil.”

  “Careful, Jew. If what you say is not true, you won’t leave the Haram al-Sharif alive.”

  Yehezkel pulled out the letter and handed it to the cleric, who examined it with growing surprise. “Now I’ve seen everything!” said the alim, aghast. “We fight Christian unbelievers for 120 years over these stones, and now a Jew is the only one with permission to search them? Puah!” He spat on the holy ground and walked off, disgusted, with his underlings in tow.

  They spent another hour climbing up and down the few steps between the levels of the plaza. Then Yehezkel, passing in front of the Golden Gate, suddenly realized that the workers there were not restoring the double portal, but walling it up. He ran closer to make sure and then told Galatea he would have to ask Rav Shimshon why al-Mu’azzam gave such a peculiar order.

  An hour later they reluctantly left, no closer to solving Elisha’s riddle. But the spirit of the place penetrated their souls like a vapor. Babylonians, Persians, Maccabees, Romans, Greeks, Saracens—who hadn’t fought over that tiny Mount? Galatea told him she could feel presences in the place, as when one smells a fragrance for an instant, and then it’s gone.

  Yehezkel didn’t possess her gifts but knew the history of his people enough to feel overwhelmed.

  JERUSALEM, SUNDAY, 15TH MARCH 1220

  The pilgrim Albacara met in the Holy Sepulchre was a Venetian, and he courted her for weeks.

  He was a mild man named Marco, who made money, lost his wife, and decided to spend the rest of his days in Jerusalem. He and the widow were in their early fifties, and Albacara fought hard not to give in to the dangerous dream of not growing old alone. She knew she was a plain woman and refused to live through the loss of another man.

  But he told her his love was real and that the light in her eyes was the same that had been in his wife’s. One day, he told her his love was a locked door that kept out the passage of time, making her look to him as she looked when she was sixteen. Albacara consulted Galatea on his sincerity, spent sleepless nights, and in the end agreed to marry him. Perhaps the will to do something with what was left of her life, in case it shouldn’t be that long, had something to do with it.

  A clandestine Christian wedding ceremony was not easy to arrange. A monk of the Holy Sepulchre agreed to officiate, and they chose a secluded but meaningful spot by the church of Saint Anne, in the northeastern corner of the city. This was the site of the Bethesda pools, where Jesus had healed a cripple. The Greeks built an enormous basilica over the pools, supported by seven incredibly tall arches, but it had been destroyed two hundred years earlier. The Latins, finding it in ruins, built a small chapel perched on one of the arches. Salah ad-Din had contemptuously knocked down the ceiling of the chapel, but now the Ayubbid vizier pretended not to notice that Christians were again praying in the roofless structure.

  On the day of the wedding, in mid-March, the sky had the color and weight of lead. A few pilgrims converged inconspicuously on the ruin-filled pools, passing by an ancient, immense laurel tree in front of Saint Anne’s. During the ceremony, Galatea was so moved by the eyes of the kneeling couple, twenty years older than she was, that she stepped across the derelict chapel to hide her tears from Gudrun.

  Meanwhile, Yehezkel stood outside, thinking, “She met Aillil in Torcello, and he’s happily married to his Yasmine. Then she met Albacara in Crete, and she’s happily marrying her Marco. I bet Gudrun ends up marrying Garietto, too, and she and I will be the only ones left to nurse our love in secret, like lepers hiding their wounds.”

  Halfway though the ritual, a cold rain started pouring down, as it often does in Jerusalem in March. The chapel offered little protection, and the pilgrims knew that mamluk guards would soon arrive, urchins having surely reported the unusual assembly of infidels. But the Nuptial Mass had started, and everyone, though soaked and scared, went on singing. Galatea thought the pouring rain added something sublime to the sound of the choir. Yehezkel later agreed.

  At the start of the Passover month of Nissan, a rumor spread that a shofar*61 had been blown on the Mount of Olives. Many rabbis taught—based on a verse in Zechariah—that this was how the arrival of the Messiah would be announced. Within an hour, Jerusalem’s Mohammedans, whose fear of the Day of Judgment is genuine and intense, were gripped by apocalyptic terror, while Jews were in a state of joyous frenzy, as if those were the last minutes before redemption would be upon them.

  Yehezkel was studying in the house of Rav Shimshon ben Abraham, the oldest of the four rabbis he’d become friends with, when two students burst into the room, excitedly bringing the news that a shofar on Har Ha-Zeitim had just announced the arrival of the Messiah.

  Rav Shimshon was seventy years old and considered a sage by all Jerusalem rabbis. He got up, went to the window, opened it wide and stood there for two minutes, looking out. Then he gave his verdict. “No, I don’t see a renewal of any kind out there. Go back to your studies!”

  VITERBO, 15TH MARCH 1220

  On the same day in the middle of March, Domingo visited Honorius III’s court in exile in Viterbo.

  When Innocent died right there in Viterbo four years earlier, the conclave—which for the first time was literally locked up until it produced a new pontiff—elected Cencio Savelli, already sixty-eight at the time. Since Innocent had become pope at the unripe age of thirty-six, Romans cynically remarked on the Holy Spirit’s frequent reappraisals of what was best for the church.

  Honorius would be back in the Lateran before long, having convinced his erstwhile pupil, Frederick II, to threaten the Romans with a military visit should they keep harassing their pope. It cost him the promise to crown Frederick emperor the following month but took much pressure off him. Things in Egypt weren’t going well, and he still hadn’t prevailed on his unruly protegé to do his Christian duty and go there. In short, Domingo couldn’t get the pope to take the threat posed by the confession as seriously as it deserved.

  Honorius was seventy-two now and a wise, saintly pope. Domingo thought that his red stole over flowing white beard and soft, white kidskin gloves looked like blood on the snow.

  “Your Holiness, Your Beatitude, Your Serenity . . .” he began, grinning.

  “Oh, don’t mock an old man, Domingo. I could be your father . . .”

  Domingo’s chiseled features became deadly serious, his blue eyes stormy. “I received more news from Brother Roberto, Holy Father. It’s worse than I thought; the Jew met the Old Man at Château Pélerin at the end of January and then went to Jerusalem with the renegade abbess. I fear they may be a step from finding the confession—and we can’t let that happen!”

  The prospect seemed to worry Honorius more than usual. “Pedro de Montaigue promised to send me the Old Man in chains. I’ll have him do it at once!”

  “It’s too late for that, Holy Father, I fear they’ve al
ready deciphered the Parchment of Circles! The Jew is going to find the confession, and we can’t very well invade Jerusalem to stop him! I suppose Robert could chase him there dressed as a pilgrim, but it will take a month just to get the order to him, and by then the cursed parchment will be in their hands . . .”

  Honorius looked even older than his years. “What do you think they’ll do with it, Domingo?”

  “Good question, Your Holiness. I’ve asked myself what I would do in the Jew’s place,” he smiled, “though I doubt I could ever really think as they do—and came to the conclusion that he’ll try to take it to the sultan’s brother, in Damascus.”

  “Then tell Brother Roberto to take a squadron of Templar knights and surreptitiously patrol the roads to Damascus! Pedro cannot deny me this emergency measure!”

  “Good idea, Holy Father; I’ll send a message to him immediately! I hope it reaches him in time. And what should I tell him to do if he finds them?”

  “Whatever he needs to do,” said the pope curtly. “That parchment must not see the light of day. The Templars’ claim that they already found what the Jew is looking for gave me little sleep in the last four years; you know that. What do you think I should do about them, Domingo?”

  “Ideally, Holy Father, we should just find the confession and destroy it,” said the Spaniard. “But if we fail in that, the only thing for it will be to destroy the Order of the Temple . . . however long it takes.”

  The Map Courtesy of Carta, Jerusalem

  CHAPTER 28

  VAYEVARECH OTAM

  And He Blessed Them

  JERUSALEM, MARCH 1220

  As Passover approached, Galatea gleaned clues about the map in increasingly unlikely places. Yehezkel decided it was high time he introduced the nun to the Jewish luminaries probing the map and told them of her irreplaceable role in the quest. These, after all, weren’t superstitious, provincial rabbis who found frequenting Christians reprehensible. Rav Shimshon, before making aliyah,*62 was the head of a Jewish school in Sens and met regularly with Christian clerics in the French town.

  Galatea agreed to go to Rav Shimshon’s the coming Friday, despite being a little apprehensive at the thought of Jewish sages examining her spiritual credentials—including, she feared, the origin of her visions. It was her second time in a Jewish home, this time on Shabbat eve. She was touched by details that spoke of a homely, unceremonial holiness—from the prayer the rabbi’s wife pronounced over the candles to the family’s joyous singing before the meal. As they sat down to eat, Yehezkel told her that the blessings Rav Shimshon pronounced—first over wine and then over bread—were the Jewish root of the Eucharist, though the Apostle Paul changed their order.

  Rav Shimshon spoke fluent Latin and French, and the conversation was less intimidating than Galatea had feared. At first, inevitably, it concerned the war. Damietta had been in Christian hands since November, so why didn’t the Franks press their advantage? Wasn’t the sultan going to give them al-Quds to stop them marching on al-Kahira? And if he’d refused to give up Jerusalem, then why weren’t the Franks marching on al-Kahira? In Rav Shimshon’s view, all this could only be explained by the imminent arrival of the Messiah. Would God’s Prince show up in Jerusalem while she was in Christian hands? Unthinkable.

  Jerusalemites knew more than Christians in Damietta on the nature of the threat to Baghdad from the East. Rav Shimshon said that Samarkand, on the caliphate’s eastern frontier, had fallen to the Monguls.

  At one point Yehezkel told Rav Shimshon of the workers he’d seen walling up the Golden Gate.

  “Yes, I heard of it!” The old rabbi laughed gleefully. “There’s yet more proof, if any were needed,” he said. “Mohammedans know that both our Scriptures and those of the Christians say the Messiah will enter the Temple from the east, so his ulema told al-Mu’azzam to block the only opening on that side!” He laughed again. “I find their behavior at once blasphemous and pathetic!”

  Yehezkel smiled, but something about the Golden Gate still bothered him. “Another thing I saw up there, Rav,” he said, “was a small dome on eight slender columns, some three hundred feet north of the big one, that looked brand new. Is it part of al-Mu’azzam’s restorations? And if it is, do you know why his ulema prescribed a new dome just there?”

  “Ah, yes,” said Rav Shimshon. “A peculiar story. It happened in . . . when was it? The end of July, I think.” He shifted on his chair. “The workers fixing the pavement there repeatedly fell sick; in fact, one of them died. The vizier consulted his ulema and was told to build a small dome there, because the Prophet must have chased out a ruah in that spot.”

  “Surely you mean a jinn?” asked Yehezkel.

  “Qubat Ru’aheen is what they called the little dome, though I agree; it must have been a jinn.”

  “If it ever happened,” said Yehezkel, adding, “that is, if their Prophet was ever here at all.” Yehezkel chuckled, as if only now understanding Rav Shimshon’s mirth on the closing of the gate.

  Something that wasn’t yet an idea was sneaking its way into Yehezkel’s mind, and on their third visit to the esplanade, he stood under the Dome of the Spirits, turning slowly and staring into the distance, one direction at a time. For a while, Galatea listened to him mumble phrases from the map, and then she went to sit on a low wall by the wide steps leading down to the lower level just west of the small dome.

  She wasn’t wearing her white cap that day. The men of the Waqf, having heard of the sultan’s letter, stopped following them around the plaza, so she was less discreet, but it was her constant dreamlike state that caused her to forget the cap. The north wind whipped her hair, which had grown to her shoulders again since she’d cut it to become a squire.

  Yehezkel was looking at the lead tiles covering the dome, thinking how ridiculous it seemed to even suppose that the Holy Temples could have stood anywhere else.

  “Everyone knows,” he said to himself, “that Omar cleared the rubbish Christians threw on the esplanade and then went up with an erudite Jewish convert, Ka’b el-Akhbar, to determine where the Temple once stood. That was where, fifty years later, Abd el-Malik built the Qubbat al-Shakhra. Everyone has always taken for granted that the dome is where the Temple was.”

  He turned to the Golden Gate. The workers had walled up half the space under the arches. Soon, the olive grove in the Valley of Jehosaphat he could see through the remaining gap would vanish. And those ruins next to it. Suddenly he froze, gripped by something he’d only experienced during storms at sea. Time seemed to stop, and the contours of things were intolerably sharp. His eye discerned the details of a leaf hanging from the column in front of him as clearly and effortlessly as the towers on mountains several leagues north of Jerusalem. He rubbed his knuckles into his eyes and took a deep breath.

  “What did I just say? Which word gave me that sense of touching something in the dark? I’m almost there; the mosaic’s tesserae are all in front of me. Keep calm, Yehezkel, and ‘think of it from tomorrow,’ as Rav Moshe used to say. Your soul already grasps what your mind can’t yet see.”

  He looked around as he sifted through his previous thoughts. Galatea sat on the wall smiling at him, her hair now tied in a tail. He turned to the Golden Gate again, the wind in his beard, and found it.

  “That was it! I thought that in a week’s time the olive grove I can still see under the gate’s arches will no longer be visible. Why did that thought strike me so? What is that garden?”

  He turned around again, a familiar tingling in his nape.

  “Galatea! Galatea!” She felt the urgency and rushed to his side. “Galatea, what is that patch of olive trees I can just see through the bit of gate they haven’t yet walled up? Are those the ruins of a church just beside it? Has that place meaning or holiness for Christians?”

  “I should say so, Yehezkel! That’s the Garden of Gethsemane, where Christ prayed the night of the Last Supper and was arrested by the guards of the Sanhedrin,” she said. “I prayed there last week.�
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  “Yes, now I remember the scene in the night, when Judas tells the guards which one is Jesus.”

  “Pilgrims there are moved to tears,” she said gently, “but not at the thought of his arrest, rather because of his prayer to his Father while the apostles slept. It was there that he accepted his fate.”

  Yehezkel felt the tingling again. “Do you remember that prayer?”

  “I may get a word wrong, but in Mark’s Gospel, he prayed, Abba, Father, all things are possible for You. Take this cup away from me. Nevertheless, not what I will, but what You will.”

  “I like that!” smiled Yehezkel. “His admission of weakness before God reminds me of Moses. True prophets are weak, like all humans.” He repeated her last words, “Not what I will, but what You will,” and it came to him. “Wait a minute, you could call that a ‘sacrifice of the heart,’ couldn’t you? But then, what would be on the other side?”

  He turned around and looked for something as far to the west as the Gethsemane was to the east. He saw the domes of the Holy Sepulchre. His head spun back and forth twice, followed by Galatea’s. There was no doubt: a straight line from the garden to the tomb went right through the spot where they stood.

  “Oh, my God . . .” murmured Galatea. “If the Gethsemane is the Sacrifice of the Heart and the Holy Sepulchre is the Heart of the Messiah, then . . . then the Heavens . . . is right under our feet!”

  “Trampling on the Heavens will get us into trouble yet, you’ll see . . .” said Yehezkel, a wide grin spreading on his face. “Come, my friend, let’s count 395 steps east from here!”