Furthermore, there was another aqueduct, coming not from Bethlehem but from the Mamilla Pool to the west of the city. It ran under the Jaffa Gate, pausing to replenish the Patriarch’s Pool near the Church of the Holy Sepulchre before continuing east in the vicinity of David Street towards the Haram. It too split, the northern half joining up with the upper arm of the Bethlehem aqueduct on its way to the Birkat Yisrael, the southern half crossing the Souk el-Qattanin and debouching into a bath just below the souk, the Hamman es-Shifa. This too was noted as a possible candidate for the Pool of Bethesda, in Father Demetrius’ neat, tiny writing.
While I was gloating over all these riches, Holmes had whipped out his map of Palestine, which included a detailed street map of the city on the back, and was carefully duplicating the priest’s marks, the lines for the aqueducts, the slope of the valleys, square cisterns and round fountains and shaded-in patches for built-over vaults. The Cotton Grotto, looking like a patch of spilt grey ink, reached down farther than I had imagined, half again the distance Jacob had suggested. It undermined the Moslem Quarter nearly halfway to the northernmost corner of the Haram, where lay Herod’s fortress Antonia and the infamous Old Serai prison of the Turks, where the relatives of impoverished Arab diggers were beaten and Karim Bey had reigned supreme. The Old Serai, I saw from the notes Father Demetrius had made, was now being turned into a school.
I studied the jumble of signs and notations surrounding the Souk el-Qattanin, and tried to recall the details of past reading. Wilson’s Arch was at the next Haram entrance down, but surely there was a shaft here somewhere? And wasn’t there something odd about that bath? My knowledge of the city was quite good for the earlier periods, but anything more recent than the Crusades was a blank page.
“We need a Baedeker’s guide, Holmes,” I whispered. He grunted, and continued with his copying.
It took an hour before, cramped and cold, we rose, rolled the maps, and prepared to leave the cubicle. Holmes switched off the torch, and we stood in the utter darkness for several minutes to let our eyes adjust before going back out into the study.
“How did you know this place was here?” I asked him while we waited.
“Demetrius showed me it. At the time it was a bit of a joke—he used to store good wine in here, the stuff that he did not wish to share with his parishioners. No doubt since then more valuable contraband has been hidden here. Ready?”
The hidden door clicked and we stepped back out into the room of books. Holmes walked through the blackness and I heard the roll of maps hit the shelf as I patted my way slowly towards the door. I reached it without mishap, but something seemed to have delayed Holmes, and I heard a faint, drawn-out rustling sound, as of fingertips running across an uneven surface.
“Close your eyes,” he ordered. I turned away, and my lids were briefly lit by a flash of light, instantly extinguished. When he joined me at the door, he found my arm and then I felt something being pressed into my hand: a little book, heavy for its size. I smiled, for I knew that on the red spine I should see the name Baedeker.
“Won’t he miss it?”
“He has dozens. He hands them out to visitors, probably doesn’t even know how many there are. Let us go.”
I thrust the guide-book inside my robe and we went out into the garden, ghostly in the light of the waning moon. I waited while Holmes locked the door, and we slipped out of the garden gate as silently as we had come. It was now about half past two, and my skin crawled with tiredness. I had forgotten to ask where we were going, but on the street he turned to the right, back in the direction of the inn, and I allowed myself a faint hope that the night might be over. I was not to know what Holmes had intended, however, because a few paces down the street a dark figure moved out from the edge of a building, and an instant later my ears registered a footfall behind us. I whirled, and saw another shape that nonetheless seemed familiar.
“You were surely not thinking of any interesting outings without us,” said Ali. The threat in his voice did nothing towards making me relax from the stance I had taken. Holmes, however, stood briskly upright and continued on his way, brushing past Ali, who stood belligerently in the centre of the alley. Mahmoud moved up from behind us.
“Of course not.” Holmes’ voice trailed down the narrow way.
We had no option but to follow him.
Most Orientals regard the European traveller as a Croesus, and sometimes a madman.
The traveller should be on his guard against the thievish propensities of beggars.
—BAEDEKER’S Palestine and Syria,
1912 EDITION
e were let in by the owner of the inn himself, and went to Ali and Mahmoud’s room, where we lit lamps, drank the coffee the innkeeper brought up scarcely two minutes after we had come in, and settled to business. Ali was simmering with suspicion and aggression, Mahmoud was so stony I felt I could strike a spark from him, and Holmes gave the impression that he saw nothing out of the ordinary. In the face of all this masculine antagonism, I sat back against the wall with my new Baedeker’s and opened it to the index.
Holmes tossed down three tiny cups of coffee in quick succession, reached into his robe, and brought out pipe, tobacco pouch, and map. He filled his pipe and put a match to it, allowing the other two to eye the worn, folded square, and when he had his pipe going and his audience seething, he thrust the stem between his teeth and leant forward to unfold the map onto the boards. When they had looked for a minute or two at his modifications to the printed sheet, he took the pipe stem from his teeth and tapped the paper with it.
“The good Father, all unknowing, has contributed to our knowledge of the city beneath our feet. Russell, would you be so good …?”
I closed my little book and scooted forward, and explained the various lines, squiggles, and marks. Ali grew increasingly bewildered, Mahmoud increasingly interested. I then told them what I had learnt while working in the Souk el-Qattanin. I was amused at their expressions when I described my job. When I had finished, Ali protested.
“There are no roads beneath the city. This is not London.”
“Roads, no, but caves and tunnels, tombs and cisterns that may be connected up to form a virtual road.”
“These aqueducts,” Mahmoud spoke up. “Are they not tunnels?”
“For a man the size of a cat, perhaps. But they can be enlarged, particularly in the sections north of the Dome where the pools they once filled are obsolete.”
“And this?” Ali asked, pointing to the grey ink stain.
“Solomon’s Quarries. Also known as the Cotton Grotto.”
“They go nowhere,” said Ali dismissively.
“They go nearly a thousand feet under the city.”
“Wa! So far!”
“Have either of you been inside them?” asked Holmes.
Ali looked uncomfortable, but Mahmoud fingered his prayer beads thoughtfully. “There were rumours,” he said, “in the last days of the war, of a plan to destroy what your map calls the Antonia from underground. As I heard it, the British forbade the plot. They are sentimental about Jerusalem. However, I never paid the story much thought, since it was told me by Colonel Meinertzhagen. Do you know him? A complete madman, but a great warrior.”
“It is possible there has been a secret passage for millennia,” I said. “It is said of King Zedekiah that he and all his soldiers fled by night ‘by the way of the gate between the two walls, by the king’s garden.’ No-one knows just where they got out, although the king’s garden was at the southern part of the city. And Josephus says something about one of the sons of John Hyrcanus being killed in an underground passageway near the Temple.”
Holmes tapped the pipe stem carefully against his teeth a few times, then reached into his robe for another piece of paper, laying it on top of the map. “General Allenby’s itinerary for the coming weekend,” he said. “Meetings at Government House tomorrow; a ride into the desert in the afternoon, weather permitting; an intimate dinner with the troops foll
owed by army amateur dramatics—the general is a brave man. But look at Sunday.”
We looked at Sunday, Holmes’ scrawl of the information given him no doubt by the general himself on their way to the American Colony: breakfast with Governor Storrs; church services with the Anglicans; then at one o’clock in the afternoon, as a public appearance of good-will, the walk through the Haram es-Sherîf with Governor Storrs and an impressive list of high-ranking officers and high-ranking officials among the Christian, Jewish, and Moslem communities. No rabbis, of course, not in the Moslem compound, but a handful of secular Jews had been included, and it was possible one or two rabbis would appear at tea in Government House afterwards. Two dozen names, virtually every shred of authority in Palestine, in one place, on Sunday afternoon, in the holiest site common to three religions.
The reminder was chilling: those people, in that place, with two hundred fifty pounds of explosive in the hands of a man like Karim Bey.
“‘I will wipe Jerusalem as one wipes a dish,’” I murmured, “‘wiping it and turning it upside down.’”
Mahmoud’s lips moved soundlessly as his fingers continued to manipulate the beads, but Ali said forcefully, “They must not go. Allenby must be made to cancel the meeting.”
“Karim Bey must be caught.” To my surprise it was Mahmoud who said it. “Too, even if the men are not there, Bey will detonate the explosives regardless. The site is of greatest importance; taking the lives for him would be an extra.”
“I agree,” Holmes said.
“The Jews will be blamed,” I said slowly. “If they lose no leaders, many will hold them responsible.” And another bloodbath would begin.
“No doubt Bey’s intention,” said Holmes. His pipe had gone out; he struck another match and held it to the bowl, speaking around the stem. “It is unlikely that Bey and his men are coming and going through the streets; at night, discovery is too dangerous, and during the day there are gossiping neighbours throughout the city. Either they come and go during daylight hours in a normally busy area or they come in a way that is unseen. In either case, we need to look at the cave.”
Alis wince was minute, but perceptible, and unexpectedly endearing.
“Looking at it will not take all four of us,” Mahmoud said.
“I had the impression you did not wish to be left out of any little part of this investigation.” Holmes’ face was smooth and without guile, although I knew he could not have missed Ali’s apprehension at the thought of descending into the earth.
“We desire to be consulted. Ali and I will arrange the surveillance in the streets, while you and Amir go below. You do not intend to enter the grotto tonight, do you?”
“I should like to look at the entrance.”
I abandoned any hope of sleep that night.
Holmes and I had two scares crossing the bazaar in the small hours of Saturday morning. On the second we were forced to take to the roofs, but when we eventually reached the Damascus Gate, a pair of loud Yorkshiremen were standing guard. We retreated east to Herod’s Gate and, finding that conveniently deserted, we slipped out of the city and worked our way back outside of the walls. However, uncovering the grotto proved hopeless at night with the moon into its final quarter and no chance to use lights: one tangle of brush growing over stone was much like another, and further complicated by an accumulation of rock fall and debris left during the years since the last tourist had entered Solomon’s Quarries. We tried. For half an hour we beat the bushes (silently) for the iron-gated entrance to the grotto, but even Holmes had to admit defeat. Back at Herod’s Gate we discovered that the two jovial Yorkshiremen had moved there. Breathing curses in various tongues we retreated to the Damascus Gate, found it unguarded, and entered the city—only to be spotted by a patrol and forced to take to the rooftops again. Trying hard to look on the positive side of this harassment, I decided it proved, at any rate, that anyone bent on criminous activity would have a difficult time moving men and equipment about the city at night.
It was five in the morning before we passed back through the gates of the inn, which was already beginning its day, the breakfast fires going strong. We were heavy of foot, our clothes and skin were torn from the bushes, and we both felt gaunt with hunger—Holmes looked positively grey in the light of the cook’s paraffin lamp. We ate something hot, and fell into our beds just as the rest of the city was coming to life.
By light of day, on the other hand, the Damascus Gate proved quite a pleasant place. The afternoon sun sloped benevolently down on the graceful women with loads on their heads and illuminated the fiendish brambles that had done us such violence the night before. For the past two hours we had been sitting on our heels across from the city walls with a bag of pistachios on the ground between us, cracking nuts with our teeth and watching, with mingled amusement and apprehension, the activity in those bushes.
We had seen it immediately we came out of the gate: half a dozen Arabs swinging long knives, under the supervision of Jacob the archaeological adoptive son of the American Colony. He had since left, upon which the workmen promptly stopped work for a smoke. Eventually they had set again to hacking at the bushes, although with noticeably less energy than they had shown before.
Still, the top portion of the gate slowly appeared, and some of the men casually tossed their brush-knives away and took up spades. It was quite apparent that no-one had gone this way in some long time; however, we intended to, when darkness fell.
Jacob came back after a couple of hours, when the gate was almost clear. With his presence the rate of digging picked up again, and the iron door soon stood revealed. Jacob had a key, which he tried in the door. He tried it for so long that the Arabs’ anticipation waned and they wandered away to smoke and gossip, keeping one eye on this man in European clothing bent over a keyhole, patiently twisting and wiggling. Every so often he would take up an oilcan and squeeze some oil into the keyhole, and wiggle it again, but finally, at about five in the afternoon, he gave up. Squeezing the oil liberally over hinges and hole, he gathered up his workmen and departed. As he walked his way along the busy road towards the American Colony, he passed three feet from where his dinner companions of the previous night sat, pistachio shells scattered around their feet, faces bent to the ground. Jacob paused; my heart stopped. A small coin landed in the lap of my robes; he passed on.
The mound of cut shrubbery Jacob’s team had left made a good place for us to stash the spelunking equipment we had brought in our bags, just after dusk.
And the oil had worked a treat by the time Holmes got to work with the sturdiest of his picklocks, six hours later.
One quality of the human soul is the wish to know what is to come, be it life or death, good or evil.
—THE Muqaddimah OF IBN KHALDÛN
he utter absence of light or sound pressed upon us as if we had been immersed in a great black lake. I felt the pressure of it on my eardrums, against my eyes, and it was difficult to breathe. It smelt … dead. Cold and stale and smelling of nothing more alive than raw stone. Not even bats made their way in here. I nearly leapt out of my boots when Holmes spoke.
“I don’t hear a thing. I believe we may risk a light.”
My heart skittered about in my chest for a few beats, and then it settled again. I cleared my throat and quoted in Arabic, “‘Take refuge in the cave, and Allah will have mercy on you and bring about a kindly solution to your affairs.’” It was a poor attempt at whistling in the dark: The cavern swallowed the orotund phrases, giving them all the power and reverberation of a dried pea rattling about in a bottle. I continued more prosaically and in a smaller voice, “I think going forward with no light would be the larger risk.”
The truth of this was demonstrated immediately he had the lamp going: The floor was pitted with holes, some of them both deep and abrupt. It was not a place to explore unprepared.
The cave we stood in was vast. Our lamps made small patches of light as we picked our way forward, only rarely reaching as far as the
perimeter walls. Massive pillars had been left by the cautious stone-cutters millennia before, to support the immense weight of the cave roof and the city on top of that, although in one place the fallen litter was considerable, and the roof seemed to sag. Niches had been cut into the walls for the lamps of the quarrymen. The floor sloped continuously, in some places rapidly, towards what the brass compass I carried said was the southern end. We walked at a distance from one another, so as to examine the widest possible expanse of ground, but we reached the end having seen nothing other than stone and trickling water and a few Crusader crosses carved into the walls.
The cave ended in a chamber perhaps twenty feet square which demonstrated clearly the method used for extracting blocks of stone: chisel marks on the walls, several ledges left when the stone above had been cut away, one half-cut block, abandoned to eternity. One could not help speculating why it had been left. Interrupted by some invasion or other? Made unnecessary by peace? One stone more than was needed for the job at hand? Or was it just deemed unsuitable, the stone too soft and permeable, and the quarrymen gone elsewhere?
I sat on a stone ledge trying to distract my mind with these thoughts so as not to think about where I was, about the huge expanse of stone hanging over my head, yearning for the pull of gravity to re-unite it with its lower half, with me in the middle, about the continuous tremble of lorries and feet that contributed to the inevitable—
“Russell, I trust you are not about to succumb to an attack of the vapours.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” I stood and forced my eyes to focus. A thin layer of dust lay over everything (raised by falling stones, my brain whispered at me), including the shelf I had used as a seat. Holmes looked closely at the top of a free-standing block, poked once or twice at the surface, then turned to look at a hole in the wall behind him. I went over and examined the block. There was wax on it, the wax of numerous candles, but it was all covered with dust.
O Jerusalem Page 28