The Secret Chapel (god's lions)

by John Lyman

  They paused at the main doorway to the sixteenth — century church, where Morelli left a hefty donation in a steel box mounted to the wall next to a hollowed-out piece of carved stone brimming with holy water. The three entered with a group of worshipers and fell back, stopping next to a small wooden door that led behind the altar. They waited impatiently, knowing they had to choose the right moment to pass unobserved through the doorway.

  Multicolored light from a row of stained glass windows above painted an elderly woman leading a slow-moving dog in their direction. She inched by the trio and smiled as the aging dog stopped to sniff John’s leg. This was the only church in Rome that welcomed animals, and people from all over the city brought their beloved pets here to be blessed. The woman and her dog rounded a pillar, and when it seemed like they were finally alone, the men opened the door and slipped into a dark hallway. Looking ahead in the faint light, they moved along through the tight space until they reached some circular metal stairs that descended below the church.

  The three circled down into the darkness on the rusty iron stairs, passing a small, long-forgotten medieval Christian chapel that had been excavated between the church above and the old Roman prison below. Reaching the bottom, they stepped out into a dank-smelling, dimly-lit passageway constructed sometime around 640 BC by Ancus Marcius, the fourth king of Rome.

  “Are we close to the area where Saint Peter was held, Father?” John asked.

  Morelli pointed to the wall behind John. “It’s on the other side of that wall. There’s a small dungeon-like cell there that once held Saint Peter and possibly even Saint John. It was said that Peter received several angelic visitations while he was imprisoned in that cold stone room and that he baptized his guards from a spring that miraculously appeared one day.”

  John breathed in the musty aroma. “It’s hard to believe actual miracles and angelic visions have occurred here, right where we’re standing now.” He touched the wall outside the cell and conjured images of what the scene inside must have been like then.

  Morelli took out a map and looked up and down the empty passageway. “Speaking of miracles, it will be a miracle if we can find that tunnel. It’s probably been sealed off somewhere behind the thick outside wall for hundreds of years, if not longer.”

  Many of Rome’s buildings had ancient ruins for basements. Restaurants and private homes used them for wine cellars, and many still had original Roman frescos covering the walls. The whole city was honeycombed beneath with interconnecting tunnels, most of which had been blocked off for security reasons.

  A voice punctuated the darkness behind them. “Can I help you, Fathers?”

  The three men froze in place before slowly turning to face a weathered-looking man holding a broom. The man had a kind face with wide eyes and a perpetual smile.

  “Yes,” Leo said. “We’re looking for a tunnel that runs west from here to the Vatican.”

  The other two turned and stared at Leo with their mouths gaping open. What was he thinking? He had just given away their plan, and it was only a matter of time before they would be escorted out of the building by security or, worse, arrested. Italian jailhouse cuisine was one step closer to becoming a reality.

  “Oh, the tunnel,” the man said. “Come with me, Fathers.”

  Morelli leaned over and whispered in Leo’s ear as they followed behind. “You’re either crazy, lucky, or brilliant. I haven’t made up my mind yet.”

  “Neither,” Leo whispered back. “I don’t think that janitor is part of some grand conspiracy to keep us from discovering an ancient chapel. He’s just a working class man who enjoys helping people, especially priests. Anyway, at this point, what have we got to lose?”

  The man led them down the brick hallway to a freshly excavated area cordoned off with yellow construction tape. Beyond the barrier, a seemingly endless dark tunnel stretched out before them.

  The man paused to light a cigarette. “The archaeologists who were here yesterday dug away this wall and found the tunnel.”

  A sudden chill ran down Morelli’s spine.

  The janitor took a deep puff and exhaled the smoke. “They didn’t want to go any further until they had a map of the catacombs. The priest in charge told me that some other priests from the Vatican would be coming back with a map. Are you the ones with the map? We weren’t expecting you until tomorrow.”

  “Did the archaeologists who found this tunnel mention who they were working for?” Morelli asked.

  “Yes, they were priests, just like you, Father. They work at the Vatican. Don’t you work for the Vatican?” The man’s perpetual smile was beginning to fade.

  Morelli took the man by the arm. “Yes, of course, my friend. We just have so many people working on so many projects, we can’t keep them all straight. We had some extra time today and wanted to see the tunnel for ourselves.” Morelli sighed with the knowledge that he would be admitting to these lies in his next confession.

  The man’s smile returned as Leo glanced in the direction of the tunnel and winked at Morelli. “We might as well check out the area while we’re here, Father.”

  “Yes, we have to be at another project tomorrow. We’ll just survey the tunnel right now to make sure it’s the right one and report our findings back to the Vatican.”

  The man looked bored. “Molto bene, Fathers. Mi scusi, but I must finish with my duties.” With his cigarette dangling from his lips, he hefted the broom across his shoulder and walked off down the hallway. As soon as he rounded the corner, the three began to breathe normally again.

  Stepping over the yellow tape, they noticed several lanterns and large flashlights in boxes and shovels and pickaxes stacked against the wall. Gathering up flashlights, a lantern, and a pickax, the men made a last check of the empty hallway before entering the tunnel.

  “What if he tells someone we’re down here?” John said, turning his head to look back over his shoulder.

  “I’m more worried about the people who uncovered this tunnel,” Morelli said. “As the chief of Vatican archaeology, I think I would have known about a group of ‘archaeologist priests’ from the Vatican doing an excavation under Mamertine Prison. Whoever they are, they aren’t from my department.”

  Morelli’s fear of an evil conspiracy now seemed closer to reality as Leo peered ahead into the darkness of the tunnel. “This just keeps getting stranger by the minute. Do you think they’re looking for the same thing we are, Anthony?”

  “Yes, and that makes me even more anxious to get into that deeper area and find the seal. There’s only one explanation for them using this tunnel to access the catacombs beneath the necropolis, and that’s secrecy.”

  Leo felt a twinge of fear as they began moving cautiously into the maze of catacombs that snaked beneath the city. All three men were well aware of the stories of people actually getting lost and dying in these ancient subterranean graveyards.

  The tunnel had obviously been sealed off for centuries. Debris littered the hard-packed earthen floor. It consisted mostly of plaster that had once been used to seal ancient tombs, rocks from minor cave-ins, and, disturbingly, human and animal bones. The animal bones were left over from feasts held long ago in the catacombs by family and friends who came to honor their dead, while the human bones were the result of grave robber activity over the years. The tunnel was otherwise in surprisingly good shape for its age, probably dating to around AD 100.

  “How far do you think it is to the area beneath the Basilica?” John asked.

  Morelli shined his light ahead. “About a mile. Of course, it seems farther when you’re underground.”

  The men trudged forward through the maze, coughing now and then in the fetid air saturated with carbon dioxide. For the next hour and a half, they trekked through the dark labyrinth, crossing intersecting tunnels and trying to stay on a straight course to the Vatican. Morelli produced a thick piece of yellow chalk and began to mark the walls with an arrow when they passed an intersecting tunnel. He wanted to provi
de them with a sign if they got lost or accidentally doubled back in the maze.

  John had tried in the past to use GPS to locate positions under the Vatican, but the device never seemed to work this far underground. The only way they would know when they had arrived at the area below the Basilica was their knowledge of the site.

  The men were becoming exhausted from the long walk in the stale air, but the prospect of discovery pushed them on. After climbing and descending a series of steps, they rounded a slight curve and entered a large open area that rose almost twenty feet above their heads.

  Morelli shined his light on a sloping pile of rubble that tumbled down from a newly constructed wall above. “There. That’s the wall Emilio had built to keep me out. We are now directly under the Basilica. This is the area we first entered a few months ago after a workman’s shovel pushed through into this section of the catacombs by accident. This site is definitely Christian, not pagan. The ancient Christians probably inhabited it when they were still being persecuted by the Romans. They hid from their persecutors down here and prayed together. This area must have been dug out around the time of Nero, the mad emperor who burned down half of Rome.”

  Leaning on his pickax, John shined his light around at the crumbling red-and-white-colored plaster that still covered several of the intact tombs. “We’ve already checked out most of this area, Father. Where do you want to start?”

  “Let’s look in the last section we mapped. We didn’t have a chance to examine the walls or all the little nooks and crannies. Pay careful attention to anything that looks like a tomb. Sometimes the ancients painted seals to indicate the location of something or someone of importance.”

  Leo craned his neck to gaze up at the ceiling. “Is there any way we can find out where the queen’s tomb above us is located?”

  Morelli and John looked like they had both been struck by lightning.

  “Of course!” John said. “Under the tomb of the queen!”

  “Brilliant, Leo.” Morelli retrieved the map case he always carried with him on excavations and removed three diagrams. The first was a modern blueprint of the grotto under the Basilica, the second was an archaeological diagram of the fully explored necropolis below that, and the third was a crude and hastily drawn map of the section of the catacombs they were standing in now.

  Placing the diagrams on top of each other and holding them over the light of the lantern to make the drawings transparent, Morelli could see exactly where the tomb of the queen was in relation to their present location. He circled the corresponding spot on the crude map of their current location, and voila, he knew exactly where to start looking.

  “You’re a genius, Leo,” Morelli said.

  “Not too shabby, sir,” John added.

  Morelli’s mood changed. He was seized by the fever of discovery and took off down a side tunnel that he had explored only briefly before the area was blocked off. Holding the lantern above his head, he slowed his pace and began scanning the walls. The other two followed his lead and bathed the walls with their lights.

  It took every ounce of the men’s strength to carry on in the oxygen deprived atmosphere of the catacombs. The high concentration of carbon dioxide made them feel sleepy and slightly disoriented. John was trying to stifle a yawn when he suddenly stopped next to a plain section of tunnel wall and stared above his head. He rubbed his eyes and looked closer.

  “Fathers, I think I found it!”

  The two priests aimed their lights at the spot. Above them, faded with age and grime, was undoubtedly a seal of some kind. Despite the stain of time, the border of the seal was more colorful than the surrounding walls and appeared to glimmer in the light, while in the center, the trio could see what looked like a painting under a layer of dust.

  “Did you bring a brush?” Morelli asked John.

  “Yes.” He reached into his backpack and pulled out a small house painter’s brush. “Here you go, Father.”

  Morelli began to gently sweep away centuries of caked-on dirt. As the colorful painting was slowly revealed, the three men let out a collective gasp. Encircled by a shining golden ring, the painted surface displayed the representation of an event that could not have occurred in ancient times. They were all staring at the unmistakable portrayal of a city engulfed in flames with the mushroom cloud of an atomic bomb rising above the surface.

  Chapter 7

  The men were clearly astonished as they continued to stare openmouthed at the seal.

  “Well, you were right about recognizing the seal when we found it, Anthony,” Leo finally said.

  John reached out and ran his hand over the raised surface. “Yeah. I don’t think we need the code to tell us this is what we’re looking for.”

  With eyes glistening like a father admiring his newborn baby, Morelli gazed up at the gold-ringed seal on the wall. “This is astounding. I believe Lev and his team will be able to verify it, but I’m almost certain this is the seal we’ve been searching for.”

  A blinding flash of light caused Father Morelli’s heart to skip a beat. He spun around to see Leo taking pictures of the seal with a small digital camera.

  “Good idea, Leo. We can e-mail those pictures to Lev in Israel tonight. Hand me that pickax, John.”

  “Why don’t you let me do the honors, Father? Remember your bad back.”

  “Be very careful, John. Try to keep the entrance hole as small as possible.”

  “What are you doing, Anthony?”

  “What we are doing, my dear Father Leo, is knocking loose those bricks beneath the seal. If I’m right, the ancient chapel is right behind that wall.”

  The two priests shined their lights on the spot as John began to swing the pickax. They noticed that the section of the tunnel wall they were looking at had a distinctly different look from any of the others they had seen in the catacombs. Unlike the rest of the tunnels, which were carved out of the soft, reddish, volcanic tufo rock that supported the city, this wall was constructed out of large, pinkish-colored limestone blocks. John brought the sharp end of the pickax against the stone, slowly chipping away at the mortar holding it in place until one of the solid blocks gave way and fell into an invisible space beyond. It was for moments like this that every archaeologist lived: the possibility of a sealed-off room, unseen for centuries, with untold treasures waiting on the other side.

  Knocking out two more large stones, the hole was now large enough for a man to poke his head through. John laid the pickax aside and peered into the void. “There’s definitely a hollow space here.”

  Father Morelli pushed in beside him and shined his light into the blackness. He backed away and let out a loud whoop while slapping John on the back.

  “It’s huge!” Morelli exclaimed. “It’s the size of a ballroom … it’s bigger than anything I’ve ever seen in any of the other catacombs under Rome.”

  John lifted up the pickax again and continued knocking away the stone blocks until a small two-foot by two-foot opening stood in a cloud of dust before them. Without a word, Father Morelli squeezed through the opening. John grinned at Leo and motioned him forward. Leo felt a sudden rush of excitement. “Go ahead, John. I’ll follow you.”

  Once inside, the men’s voices echoed in the space as they began shining their lights around, looking for evidence that this was the ancient hidden chapel they had been searching for. The immense room was totally empty except for a large, rough-hewn stone structure built atop a raised area at the far end. Morelli and the others noticed right away that the eerie and unusual space was constructed of the same stone blocks they had seen outside in the tunnel.

  “I’m beginning to wonder if the people who created this room transported their building material to Rome from somewhere else,” Morelli said. “It appears that this area was excavated just for this room and lined with this pinkish-colored stone for some specific reason.”

  “Why would they do that?” John asked.

  “That’s what we’re here to find out,” Morelli sa
id, eyeing the opposite end of the space. The scene had a dreamlike quality to it as he approached some steps leading to a raised area supporting a structure that resembled an altar. It consisted of a long, flat slab of gray stone supported by two massive four-foot-high carved blocks of stone, each several feet thick and placed six feet apart. Above the altar was the unmistakable image of a five-foot tall Christian cross carved into the wall.

  There was no doubt among the three men that they had just discovered a very different and ancient Christian place of worship. They paused to look up at the beautifully carved cross before resuming their exploration in silence, slowly walking back and forth, illuminating the walls, floor, and ceiling with their lights.

  “This is definitely not what I expected,” Father Morelli said, finally able to bring himself to speak. The other two were just as dumbstruck by the discovery.

  Looking for symbols or anything that looked like writing, Leo walked along one of the walls and shined his light up at the ceiling fifteen feet above their heads. “What do you think, Anthony? Is this the chapel?” The sound of his voice reverberated in the empty space.

  Morelli grinned at his friend. “This has to be it. The same reference in the Bible code that refers to a seal also mentions an ancient chapel, and there’s no doubt in my mind that the seal outside is the one we were looking for. Somewhere here, there’s a message, a message from the past that was meant for us now, in the present.”

  Father Morelli was barely able to contain his excitement as he walked from one side of the space to the other in triumphant glee.