Secrets of Casanova

by Michaels, Greg

  Through the thin haze, Dominique raised herself to sit, then leaned toward Jacques. “My lover, I sigh warm desire into your ear,” she murmured. “And this gentle wish makes its presence known. In the service of the queen.” Dominique laid back, a curl of smoke swirling round her.

  “In the service of the queen,” mused Jacques as he studied her green eyes, so much like emeralds. He smiled at Dominique, then artfully lay down between her legs, the back of his head upon her stomach.

  “Ahh,” she whispered.

  “You are the sweetest of pillows, Fragoletta.”

  Feeling the ebb and flow of her breathing Jacques paused to consider this essential of life—the breath. In and out it came and went, having a resolve of its own and yet always obeying the body wherein it resided.

  Jacques measured his breaths to coincide with Dominique’s. He reached his hand above his head and placed it against her side, feeling her ribs expand—ever in unison with her inhalations. The unhurried thumps of Dominique’s heartbeat seemed to inform Maimonides’ melody. All was in time with the inhalations and exhalations.

  Hark, a concerto. Wondrous and strange.

  Jacques observed his thoughts encompassed in a colorful soap bubble. In the service of the queen, he pondered. This woman is the queen. I serve her. And yet I breathe the same as the queen, I breathe with the queen. Maimonides breathes with the queen. Maimonides breathes and warbles and plays the lute. Jacques lay rapt in awe at his fleecy soap bubbles and the myriad of thoughts they contained. Dominique, Maimonides, and I—we are flesh and blood, yet breath and nothingness. This is profound. This is paradox. This is absurdity!

  Jacques’ fingers grazed Dominique’s ribcage. Her breath halted. Her stomach stiffened—jostling Jacques’ head, bursting all the colored soap bubbles. He laughed. And tickled her ribs.

  She let out a hollow laugh. “No!”

  “But tonight your quivering belly encourages me.” Jacques rolled over and with both hands pressed Dominique, touching and tickling. Struggling to escape, her shrill mirth increased the tempo of Maimonides’ tune.

  Jacques’ eye caught the bird bobbing and weaving, now in time to Dominique’s gasps of laughter. He stopped his amusements and lay next to her face-to-face, too contented to move. They positioned their hands together. Their lips touched in a melting kiss. A simple hello from mouth to mouth.

  They kissed again. Without passion but with desire. A desire to connect, to be joined together, commingled. A desire to beget sublimity, tranquility, grace. A desire to discover a berth where two souls might greet in endless ethereal elopement. A desire for deliciousness to dissolve expectation. For shared ecstasy to become eternal.

  This lovers’ kiss—utter feeling. A kiss, an effortless kiss, becomes anew to me. I who claim pleasure as my game am now unfolded, unfettered. This is what we mortals seek. This especial kiss, this kiss of kisses. Oh, heavens. It’s this exalted kiss to which the world accords infinite compliment.

  Now, beneath the caprices of seduction, I feel a weighty need: oh, let this be she. The she who takes me, connects me, fills me. Let her embrace be the one to raise my hopes, keep me sure, stay my shame, renew our flesh, release our dance, gift us time, ensure our glow. Let her caresses be those which prove the two of us endless.

  In an instant, Jacques’ lips left hers, and he invaded her eyes, Dominique’s eyes. Behold this helpless lamb. She who feels my secrets.

  He plunged toward the crook of her neck, her vulnerable neck, and grunted his scalding breath on her flesh. He, stung to his marrow with a grim, cruel impulse, seized her suppleness with his sharp teeth and prepared to consume her, to devour her.

  As a fragile leaf yields to a potent wind, she offered herself up, freely, bravely.

  His hot breath cooled. He loosened his bite. He knew: in her surrender, she becalms my vilest passion.

  Now frightened, Jacques nestled into Dominique’s side and sensed his heart reeling with questions long unasked, with answers never dared.

  ***

  A loud whistle broke the still morning air.

  Jacques woke midsnore and wondered where he was. He pulled his hands from between his knees and shaded his eyes from the sliver of light spilling under the door. Rolling to his back, he looked up to find Esther the Israelite, tousled and towering, above him.

  “Good morning,” Esther said.

  A cold drip smacked Jacques squarely on the forehead. It fell from the fruit upon which Esther champed. She moved to the far side of the room.

  Rousing himself, Jacques turned and saw Dominique behind him, sleeping on the mattress, hardly a wrinkle in her clothes or on her face. His arms felt shod in lead. He wondered at the things he’d experienced in the darkness of the long night.

  “Pssst.”

  Jacques turned toward Esther, who motioned him to table. He rose and, sweeping dried flowers from his shirt, approached. “As I don’t see Petrine, I suppose he, too, has been purified to exhaustion.”

  Esther ignored the remark.

  “You and the other two must gad about Jerusalem today,” said Esther in half voice. “Purchase the necessaries—small shovels and so forth—the things we discussed last night. Be prudent.”

  “Yes.”

  “You will meet me here at noon. We must spend the remainder of the day touring the city. I want us to be seen by the Ottoman authorities.” Esther slopped the last bit of fruit into her mouth and wiped her fingers. “Now, wake up your friends, take this veil for the woman, and haste you.” She tossed a bundle at Jacques and headed to the archway before squeezing past Petrine, who groped his way into the room.

  “A pathetic entrance for a practiced actor,” laughed Jacques. “You shame Thespis.”

  “Water,” choked Petrine. “Some water.”

  “The same, please.”

  Soon the three were ready. Maimonides, preening and strutting, bid them adieu in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew just before they glided onto the ancient street into the early morning.

  ***

  The white-hot sun stood at the top of the sky before Jacques again knocked on Esther’s door.

  Standing next to his master, the valet voiced his complaint. “Esther the Israelite, I bake in this noonday heat.”

  “Then you’ll be well cooked and ready to be eaten by supper,” said the woman as she opened the door and invited her guests inside.

  “There is hardly a breath in all Jerusalem,” added Dominique, waving her hand in front of her face.

  “And it will grow hotter,” Jacques said.

  Esther spoke. “We’ll find cool comfort, especially in the Temple Mount.”

  Esther dragged the trio through Jerusalem the entire afternoon, a full tour, replete with rambling talk on local legends, politics, philosophy, history.

  The day proved trying, but at Esther’s, after a meager dinner, the real tour began. Jacques felt that his shrewd intelligence, coupled with Fragonard’s scroll, would unlock the secret of the stables and that a startling treasure would be his.

  By midnight, the group was silently picking their way through the rubble of the city’s east wall, using the sparse moonlight to funnel them to the mouth of the underground chamber, the Stables of Solomon.

  Jacques patted his pockets to make certain his pistols were at hand. He felt for his dagger, glancing back every so often to make certain they had not been followed.

  At the entrance, Esther handed them candles, then lit them. “We can be reasonably confident of solitude from this spot on,” she reassured them. “At this late hour, no self-respecting Muslim would chance meeting a demon here.”

  “Demon?” asked Jacques.

  “Yes, Muslims believe that evil jinn—demons—lurk among the dark pillars here.”

  Jacques felt the hairs on his arm stand tall and straight. He twisted his head in each direction, then joined his companions hurrying onward in the demidark.

  A short time later, Esther lifted her candle overhead. The adventurers mimicked their guide�
�s action.

  Dominique gasped. “A forest of pillars. I’ve never seen such a huge place that’s so overwhelmingly brown.”

  Esther chuckled. “Animals might have been tethered to these eighty-eight pillars, which are divided into twelve rows.” Esther made her way around a massive column of stone. “Over the years, there have been numerous men who searched here. Dirt, rock, and the fetor of centuries are all anyone’s ever found. But perhaps you have unique wisdom or superior revelation.”

  Jacques’ jaw clenched. “Perhaps.”

  “A thousand years after Solomon,” Esther continued, “Herod built this grand vault to support the Temple esplanade that sits above us. What you see here below is mistakenly called Solomon’s Stables, but a Jewish monarch would never desecrate his Temple above by stabling horses and camels so near. But then came a contingent of Christian Crusaders who proceeded to use the chamber for just that. A stable. Those mangers over there,” she pointed, “belonged to the Templars. Twelfth century.”

  Jacques craned his neck.

  She lowered her candle beside her face. “Already I see that all of you have lost your bearings in this labyrinth of columns.”

  “Which is why we hired you,” Jacques said. “The Templars?”

  “You need not raise your voice, monsieur. The Christian Templars. Yes. The story often told is that they excavated this entire rock floor. For years.”

  “Why?”

  Esther shook her head and marched in the direction of the mangers. She held her candle out into the darkness, revealing piles of substantial boulders. “When Salah ad-Din retook Jerusalem, he piled these rocks over the supposed excavations in the stables so that the demons might not escape.”

  I’ve not traveled all this way to be told that my treasure is rock or hardened horse dung.

  “If the Templars excavated here, what were they looking for, Esther?”

  Esther stiffened. “Am I the sibyl?” She turned away, offered a terse “Follow me,” and headed farther into the darkness. The trio of adventurers quickly followed.

  “Watch yourself. Watch your step.” The flame of Esther’s candle illuminated a series of hollow recesses along the pocked wall. “A handful of tombs,” Esther said, “with no corpses.” She walked straight to Jacques, held her candle at eye level, and spoke in his face. “What have men hoped to discover in the Stables of Solomon? I give you many answers. Choose what you will.” Esther’s flame cast an eerie shadow on her face and the high stone vault above. “Why not the Ark of the Covenant? Or holy anointing oils perhaps? Gold? Silver?” Esther thrust her fist toward the empty tombs. “Some say that the Templar Crusaders dug these. Or removed contents from them. What treasure might have been contained in a tomb?” Her voice strained. “Other parties speculate a particular Jewish document that was precious or sacred in some way was excavated here in the stables. Possibly a marriage certificate.”

  Dominique began to speak, but Esther waved her hand in the air. “A Talmudic tradition holds that in this chamber a violated altar and a golden blade should be found and that these somehow contain the most secret name of the Eternal.”

  “Are there stories of the philosopher’s stone, Lapis philosophorum?” interrupted Jacques.

  “To convert base metals into gold? Yes, tales,” snorted Esther as she trekked into the darkness toward the entrance. “Material reward. Is this what you seek?”

  Her voice echoed through the darkness. “—You seek, you seek, you seek?”

  Near the Single Gate in the east wall, Esther stopped and held her ground. “I’m willing to bring you to this chamber for three nights. That’s how long your money ensures my services. After that, you’ll know the subtleties of getting in and out of the stables, you’ll have all the history and knowledge I can supply. Then you may decide if you’ll return. But from that point on, without me.” She told the party to snuff their candles. “Let’s move. We’ll find our way out in moments.”

  Jacques threaded his way over the rocky ground, tugging his haversack tighter to his shoulder, wondering what they’d uncover in three nights’ time.

  The night air parched the throats of the wary band as they slipped through the ancient gate, watching the moon slide from behind the clouds, bunching the landscape with lean and fearsome shadows.

  - 26 -

  EACH NIGHT AT MIDNIGHT, the group—bundling candles, leather pouches of water, digging implements, various tools, and rations of food—entered the oppressively dark recesses of Solomon’s Stables. Esther remained on guard near the Single Gate as the three adventurers tested their mental and physical stamina.

  After a night of exploration, the group had uncovered scant evidence of treasure. If tribulations in Rome had not given them a sober outlook, their failure to detect anything of substance in Solomon’s Stables certainly had.

  Jacques contemplated digging a tunnel at a cant under Salah ad-Din’s boulders to see what might be found, but eventually he agreed that tunneling by hand was impossible, and as Dominique pointed out, the boulders would have been an obvious choice for previous treasure excavators. If Templar treasure of any sort existed deep under the boulders, it had most likely been retrieved during the past six centuries. Besides, constructing a tunnel for the current search required apparatus that could not clandestinely be moved to the area or easily employed once in place.

  What of the tombs? These subterranean cemeteries should have contained corpses, but none remained. And of what interest would a corpse be to a treasure hunter unless it were gilded? Why take a corpse? What substantial reward could it bring?

  These conjectures offered a theme for discussion, yet when all was said, there seemed no explanation as to what treasure might have been deposited or removed by the Templars—or others—from the Stables of Solomon.

  Near the end of the second night, Jacques heard a loud summons from Dominique, who, with Petrine, was somewhere behind a distant pillar.

  “Jacques, come quickly, I may have something,” came a scattering echo.

  Jacques rose and, while picking his way, brushed away beads of sweat from his forehead. When he arrived next to Dominique, she held the candle flame chest high.

  “This carved decoration, this intaglio, Jacques,” she said, pointing repeatedly at a column, “doesn’t this match the tiny circles on Fragonard’s scroll? Have you seen others in the stables? Is there an intaglio on any other pillar?”

  “Well, I don’t know. My valet will have to examine the other eighty-seven pillars and tell us.”

  Petrine whipped his head toward Jacques.

  Dominique grinned sideways at Jacques. “Before your valet makes a thorough examination, look at this.”

  Petrine focused on the pillar. “Circles within circles. The biggest and outermost circle, the size of an apple.”

  Jacques looked at the circles inscribed into the pillar, then dug out the scroll from his caftan. “Yes, this matches the one on Fragonard’s scroll. Wait! Look! These pillar circles are not spaced evenly from the center point. I hadn’t noticed that on Fragonard’s scroll. Too minute.” Jacques traced the stone intaglio with his finger. “Circles—unevenly spaced with one another—is a mathematical abbreviation for Plato’s Theorem,” he said. “Briefly, the Theorem dictates that specific triangles and squares may be drawn within these circles. And these geometrical derivations may be repeated ad infinitum.” Jacques scratched his shoulder. “I don’t know the significance of the mathematics of the intaglios but it must not be coincidence that these circles are cut into rock here in the stables and also drawn on Fragonard’s scroll.”

  Petrine eyed his master sheepishly. “I should show you something.” He marched into the darkness, his candle guiding him. Jacques and Dominique followed until the valet stopped and thrust his light toward a pillar. “I hadn’t thought anything about this when I saw it earlier.”

  Dominique’s tone rose. “Yes! Someone cut only the two smallest circles and part of a third. It’s an intaglio only partially finished.”


  “And unevenly spaced like the other.”

  “Let’s dig,” Dominique said.

  “What?”

  “What might have happened,” Dominique said, “is that chiseling, incising, these stone pillars created rock chips, spall—as my father correctly termed it—that may have fallen to the dirt at the base of the column.”

  “Meaning what?” asked Petrine.

  “I’ll tell you if we find spall. Let’s start digging at the base of this pillar.”

  Petrine shrugged in disappointment, took a short spade from his haversack, and began.

  And it was he who soon announced that, for civilized cultures, it was considered quitting time—nearly sunrise, by the valet’s guess.

  This was spoken while Jacques uncovered, two feet below the general level of the ground, fragments of white stone matching the limestone of the pillar. There also was animal or human dung, an awl, a fishhook, a damaged bridle rosette, and adjacent to fragments of chipped stone—a coin.

  Dominique spit on the coin to scrub the dirt from its surface. She held the coin to the candle and inspected it.

  “Well worn from usage, but some points of the bronze can be deciphered.”

  Jacques leaned closer.

  “I can’t read the words, but the date is clear: 1181,” Dominique exclaimed, her voice fired with exuberance. “Material links! The fact that this coin is in close proximity to our limestone chips—well, this may possibly mean that whoever chiseled this intaglio did so around 1181, give or take a few years.”

  “From 1100 on, the Crusaders occupied these stables,” came Esther’s voice.

  The three spun around.

  “The Crusaders occupied Jerusalem until 1187 Anno Domini, before Salah ad-Din and the Saracens drove them out.”

  “The Crusaders? Here in the stables, that may mean the Templars, is that not so?”

  “Most probably,” Esther said.

  “So I may suppose the Templars carved these intaglios into the pillars before they were driven out?” Jacques asked. “Where does that lead us, Dominique?”