by Jack Whyte
All that they knew, and the realization was a chastening and worrisome one, was that everything they dislodged beneath their feet fell away into nothingness, dropping silently into a black abyss for a long way before shattering against the rocks, or whatever else, lay directly underneath. Accordingly, after one single near-disaster when Montdidier almost fell into the pit, every man who worked at enlarging the cavity did so wearing a safety harness, with ropes securely attached to an overhead anchoring tripod. It was only after many hours of work by alternating two-man shifts that someone noticed—and no one could remember afterwards who had remarked upon it first—that the hole at their feet was distinctly triangular, converging in a deep V-shape, and that what were apparently walls stretched down and away on each side from what could only be a ceiling.
It soon became obvious that they were looking down into a man-made structure. They had tried several times to illuminate the space beneath, throwing half a score of lit torches down into the blackness, but only half of those had survived the fall, and they lay guttering on the surface below, revealing nothing, until they burned themselves out. Even those torches lowered on a rope showed nothing of what was beneath, and the men had grown bored with looking at them even before they guttered and died out. But the mere fact that they could feel the rush of clean air, and that the torches had burned out naturally, proved that the air down there was breathable, and once they had accepted that they were looking down into a chamber of some description, they agreed that someone ought to go down there and have a look at whatever there was to see. St. Clair, as the youngest among them, and also the one who had made the discovery, was the first to be lowered, in a large basket suspended from a hoist, clutching a newly lit torch in one hand and fingering the dagger at his waist with the other, while he gazed about him, dropping lower and lower into the blackness with an elbow hooked around one of the basket’s supporting ropes.
The first thing he discovered, mere moments after leaving the surface above, was that he was in fact in the corner of a room, for his basket swung into the juncture of the walls, and when he brought up his torch to look at them, he saw that they were a dull black, coated with a pitch-like substance so that they absorbed light and radiated none.
He shouted that information up to his companions, and then concentrated on looking about him, breathing deeply and trying not to give in to the feeling that he was being stifled and that the blackness surrounding him was growing ever heavier and more dense as they lowered him deeper and deeper. His mind focused suddenly on the fact that his sword, which was seldom far from his hand, now lay far above him, on the bed in his sleeping cell where he had thrown it before coming down into the tunnels, and although logic told him he would have no need of it here, he felt defenseless none the less, and aware of the puniness of the dagger at his waist.
He became aware, quite unexpectedly, that the basket had reached the floor of the enormous chamber, but so gently had it touched down that only the cessation of movement told him he was resting on a solid surface. He held the torch as high as he could above his head, peering into the surrounding gloom, but he could see nothing at all.
“I’m down,” he called to the watchers above. “Unloading now.” He reached down and grasped one of the dry torches piled about his legs, then swung his right leg carefully over the edge of the basket and stepped out. He lit the fresh torch from the one he was holding and stooped close to the ground, waving both lights back and forth to see what he could see.
The floor was level, and paved in square stone slabs, each a good long pace to a side, and there was a thin coating of dust on the stones, far less than one might have expected, he thought, until he remembered the steady current of cool air that had been blowing around him since the start of his descent. He stooped lower, looking for a hole in or between the flagstones, something into which he would be able to tuck one of the torches, but there was nothing to be seen, not the slightest crack or unevenness into which he might insert a dagger point. He straightened up again and turned slowly in a complete revolution, peering into the blackness all around and waving his torches widely in the hope of catching a reflection of some kind from whatever might be there beyond his sight.
Finally, he took a deep breath and stood with his back to the angle of the corner, taking his bearings as well as he was able. When he felt confident that he could maintain a course by following the edges of the flagstones under his feet, he began to walk slowly forward diagonally, stepping from corner to corner, stone by stone, into the chamber, holding one torch low to light his way across the floor and the other high to show him anything that might be seen, while he counted his steps aloud. Then he stopped and glanced up, his eye attracted by movement up there in the corner behind him, and he made out the shape of one of his companions being lowered to join him, another torch flickering in his hand as he sank downward. St. Clair had not been aware of the basket being raised again, his attention had been so tightly focused upon what he was doing. He turned back to his task and kept walking, the cadence of his counting unbroken.
He had reached thirty when he saw the first dim outline of a different shape on the floor ahead of him and he stopped, raising both torches high to give himself as much light as possible. As he did so, he heard a soft step at his back, and André de Montbard spoke into his ear.
“What is it? You see something?”
St. Clair made no attempt to answer, knowing Montbard could see for himself. Instead, he crouched slightly lower and took another step forward, and then another as Montbard drew abreast of him on his left.
“Something there.”
Again St. Clair offered no response other than to continue to advance until he could see what was in front of him. It appeared to be a jar, or an urn of some kind, and it was merely the closest of an entire array, all uniform in shape and size. He walked until he stood in a wide gap between two ranks of the things, and he could see files of them stretching away from him, disappearing into the gloom ahead. He counted eight on each side, and could see at least ten more parallel ranks of them, eight to a side, with a wide aisle stretching between them.
“They are jars, plain clay jars.” He went closer, until he could see the tops of them. “And they’re sealed, with some kind of wax, I think … They are all sealed. Sealed jars?” He looked at de Montbard and raised his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “Jars of what? What’s in them? And why so many of them?” He reached out a hand towards the nearest one, as though to grasp it and tilt it, but before he could touch it de Montbard caught his sleeve, restraining him gently.
“Careful, Stephen. They could be full of oil, or even wine, but if they are what I believe they might be, then we have found what we came looking for, my friend. We have found our treasure.”
“Treasure?” St. Clair’s voice was strained, his disappointment almost tangible. “This is the treasure we’ve been seeking for so long? In clay pots?”
“Clay pots, true, but ask yourself what they might contain, Stephen. Ask yourself, too, how long it might have been since anyone but we set foot in this chamber. And ask yourself then why these jars should have been laid out so carefully here on this floor and then left there. Now, if I am right, there should be an altar somewhere ahead of us.”
On the point of asking how de Montbard could possibly know that, St. Clair bit back his question and was bleakly unsurprised when they found the promised altar within twenty paces. Despite his lingering disappointment over the clay jars, however, this newest discovery immediately set his pulse hammering again, for it was hardly the kind of altar he had been expecting, and its sheer bulk humbled him. It was immense, unlike any altar he had seen before, larger by far than any altar in any Christian church or basilica that he had visited.
It came into view slowly, seeming to solidify out of the surrounding darkness as they came closer to it, and they heard the footsteps approaching from behind them as Hugh de Payens caught up to them, bringing new light to add to their own. He said nothi
ng to either of them, all his attention reserved for the altar that towered above them, and for a time the three men stood silent, their eyes scanning the planes and highlights of its cliff-like heights. They had approached it from the side, and it was clear from the outset that the top of its sacrificial table could be reached only by means of a broad, high flight of shallow steps that descended from its rear, the bottom-most steps only dimly visible from where they stood. Its frontal surface, stretching left of them, plain and unadorned as it seemed at first sight, revealed itself on closer inspection as being intricately carved and shaped, and covered with thousands upon thousands of tiny carved glyphs.
“And there it is,” Montbard whispered. “Exactly as our records described it. The Lore is accurate. The Order is founded on truth.”
“It’s …” St. Clair swallowed, the sounds as he tried to moisten his suddenly dry mouth clearly audible to the others. “This place is not Jewish at all. It cannot be. They abhor graven images.”
De Montbard tilted his head back to gaze upward. “It’s Egyptian.” A long pause ensued, and then he added, “Everything that is now Jewish came out of Egypt in the beginning, brought out by Moses and his Israelites after centuries of slavery. Our own Lore tells us that. The changes came later, as changes always do, but in the beginning, at the very start of it, it was all Egyptian. And we are looking at the proof of that. This place is ancient beyond imagining, my friends. Moses never returned here to their promised land, but his sons and grandchildren may have stood right here, where we are today, looking up there just like us. We have found the proof of our Order’s tenets.”
“You sound as though you doubted that until now.” St. Clair’s attempt at raillery fell flat, the challenge in his words lost in the fact that he, too, spoke in a hushed whisper.
“Not for a moment,” Montbard replied in the same tone. “What I meant to say was that our Order is founded upon demonstrable proof with this discovery.”
“So be it. I believe you. But what have we found?”
“Knowledge, Brother Stephen. And an altar that is not what it appears to be.”
“Someone else is coming,” Stephen said. They could see another light in the distance. “Is there anything we are not permitted to know? Any sacred secrets?”
It was de Payens who answered this time. “All of these things are secrets, Stephen, and all of them are sacred. Ah, Goff, I thought that might be you. Look at what we have found. André believes our search is at an end.”
“I confess, I am impressed. It is huge. What is it?” Godfrey St. Omer was craning his neck to look up at the altar.
“It’s an altar, Godfrey,” de Montbard answered. “The Lore said it would be here.”
“Did it, by God? Then it must be here for a purpose. Is it hollow? Can we get into it?”
De Montbard shrugged, although St. Omer did not see the gesture. “I don’t know. It is too soon to tell. We will explore it later.”
“Hmm. What about all those jars back there? What’s in them?”
“The treasure we have been looking for.”
That got St. Omer’s attention. He turned his head sharply to look at de Payens, making no attempt to hide his skepticism. “Those things hold the treasure?”
His friend nodded. “De Montbard thinks they do … But he also thinks his altar is not what it appears to be, and that has me curious. Come.”
He led them around to the left, to the front of the altar, until it reared vertically above them, the projecting shelf of its table forming a straight-edged ceiling above their flickering torches, and St. Clair leaned back on his heels to stare up at it.
“It must be the height of four tall men,” he said, then hesitated. “What’s that up there, that large pattern on the stone? Is it a cross? Here, step back and hold up your torches.”
The light from their combined torches revealed a shallow incision high in the stone, the shape of a cross with a loop at its upper end.
“It is a cross,” St. Omer said, his voice filled with surprise. “Is this then a Christian place?”
Again it was André de Montbard who provided the answer. “It is not a cross, my friend, it is an ankh.”
“A what?”
“An ankh.”
“Then I did hear you correctly. An ankh, is it? What’s an ankh, is it something Jewish, some Hebrew symbol of religious significance? I thought the Jews abhorred graven images.”
“That is true. Stephen made the same point, just before you arrived. They do.” De Montbard’s voice was reflective, almost musing, and his neck was still craned backward as he gazed up at the ankh above their heads. “The ankh is a symbol of religious significance, but it is not Jewish, Goff, it is Egyptian, a symbol of life and prosperity, not merely in this world but in the next, the afterworld.”
St. Omer was staring at Montbard, his brows creased in a frown. “But we are in King Solomon’s Temple here. Are you saying that the ancient Hebrews subscribed to Egyptian beliefs?”
“Well, first of all, we are not in the Temple of Solomon. We must be close by it, perhaps even beneath it, but we are not in it. This place is far too large to be the temple. We know that was very small.” He flicked a sideways glance at de Payens, and then his eyes dropped to scan the ground at their feet. “And why should the ancient Hebrews not have subscribed to Egyptian beliefs? They lived there for hundreds of years. It is more than possible that they admired elements, at least, of what the Egyptians believed. But that is no concern of ours for the moment. What concerns us is this other ankh.”
He held his torch low now, pointing at the floor, and they looked down to see a second ankh, not quite as large as the one above them but far more deeply incised into the stone on which Montbard was standing. Before any of them could say anything, he dropped to one knee and waved to St. Clair to do the same, facing him. “Here,” he said, “feel what’s in here.” He dug the fingers of one hand into his end of the cross-arm of the ankh and tried to pry out the dust and dirt that had filled the gap between the outline of the carved figure and the surrounding flagstone, but although some of the material came away, the remainder was too tightly packed. Montbard stopped and looked at St. Clair, who had achieved the same result on his side.
“Would you be surprised to know that what you are holding is a handle?”
St. Clair shrugged. “I would not have thought it, but if you say it is, then I believe you.”
De Montbard nodded, then looked around him at the torches they were holding. “How are these torches doing? How many fresh ones have we left?”
St. Omer did a quick tally. “Six that I can see. The others are in various stages of strength.”
“Damn! Damnation and perdition. I should have anticipated this.”
No one knew what he was talking about, and they all looked blankly at one another until St. Clair asked, “Anticipated what?”
“We are losing the light … the torches. We are about to be plunged back into darkness, and we need far more illumination than we have if we are to complete this task and uncover the remaining treasures.”
“But we have more torches up above, plenty of them.”
“No, we have some, but nowhere near close to as many as we will need. That’s why I think it better to stop now and lay in supplies before we find something exciting and are forced to abandon it in darkness.” He looked at his three listeners, his eyes shifting from face to face, and he could barely contain his glee.
“This is a great day, my friends. We have found what we sought, what our Lore told us was here, and if we find no more than the jars, we will have found enough to justify the existence of our ancient Order. But I would suggest we need to return to the surface and tell the others what we have found. They deserve to know, as much as we do. After that, we will need to gather as much fuel as we can find, for banishing this darkness, and while we are doing that, we should also be purchasing oil lamps, as many as we can obtain, and large, fat candles that can burn for hours on end. If we are to
work down here for the length of time I am beginning to think might be necessary, then we are going to need as much light as we can manufacture by any and all means. So we had better climb back out of here and set to work, for the sooner we gather what we need, the sooner we can come back and finish our task.”
NINE
It took a full week of hard work, collecting wagonloads of wood—always in scarce supply in Palestine—before the monks, impatient with what they saw as yet another frustrating impediment to their success, had assembled enough fuel and torches to enable them to go back to work exploring the chamber, but it could have taken much longer had not Montdidier remembered hearing a report, several months earlier, of a wildfire that had destroyed a large olive grove a few days’ journey to the southeast. A train of five rented wagons, accompanied by a strong escort of sergeants, was sent out in search of the grove and, by one means or another, they managed to bring back four complete wagonloads of heavy, charred tree trunks, suitable for splitting and making into torches. Every candle maker in Jerusalem had been bought out of stock by then, and an entire barrel of pitch, purchased from one of the Arab traders, had been set in place below ground, and the monks began immediately making torches that would burn long and cleanly.
St. Clair was happy enough to find himself uninvolved in the search for fuel that week; de Payens, mindful that the younger knight had returned from patrol and gone straight to work on the underground explorations, granted him a three-day rest period, completely free of duties. St. Clair spent much of the first day simply lying around in slothful bliss, enjoying the sheer simplicity of doing nothing, but it was not in his nature to remain idle for long, and the following morning, after attending to the few allocated chores he had, he set out with the package that he had promised to deliver to Hassan the horse trader from his cousin and namesake, Hassan the Shi’a warrior. He had felt no urgency about the task until then, and undertook it when he did simply for diversion, because he knew that the trader would not yet have returned to the city.