The Rosetta Key (11 page)

“My sister,” Jericho growled.

“Sister!” Tom stepped back as if he’d been given a jolt of electricity.

“You take your
sister
on a treasure hunt? What the devil for?”

“She sees things,” I said.

“The hell she does,” Ned said. “And who’s that back there?”

“Our Jewish guide.”

“A Jew, too?”

“Molls are bad luck,” Tom said.

“Nor are we carrying her,” his companion added.

“As if I’d let you,” Miriam snapped.

“Be careful, Ned,” I warned. “Her knee knows where your cockles are.”

“Does it now?” He looked at her with more interest.

By the lawns of Lexington, wasn’t this a fine mess? I couldn’t have made a worse stew if I’d invited anarchists to draw up a constitution. So, thoroughly unsettled, we stepped into the shallow pool and waded knee-deep water to its end. Current issued from a cavelike opening secured by an iron grate.

“Built to keep out children and animals,” Jericho said, hefting his iron pry bar. “Not us.” He applied muscle and leverage and there was a snap, the rusty grill swinging inward with a screech. Once inside, our ironmonger closed the gate behind us, securing it with his own new padlock. “For this one I have a key.”

I looked behind at the well’s long rim. Had someone ducked out of sight? “Did you see anything?” I whispered to Farhi.

“I haven’t been able to see since we left Jericho’s house,” the old banker grumbled. “This is not my habit, splashing in the dark.”

Soon the water was thigh-deep, cool but not cold. The tunnel passage we were wading into was as wide as my outstretched arms and from ten to fifteen feet high, bearing the texture of ancient picks. This was a man-made tube built to bring natural spring water into King David’s old city, Farhi told us. Its bottom was uneven, making us stumble. When we were far enough into the tunnel for Jericho to risk lighting the first lantern, I splashed up to Tentwhistle. “There’s no chance you were followed down here, was there?” I asked.

“We paid our guides to keep their mouths shut,” the lieutenant said.

“Aye, and didn’t breathe a word in Jerusalem, neither,” Ned put in.

“Wait. The four of you English sailors went
inside
the city?”

“Just to get some tack.”

“I told you to lie low until dark!” Jericho hissed with exasperation.

“We were in Arab sheets, and kept to ourselves,” Tentwhistle said defensively. “By the pulpit, I’m not getting all the way to Jerusalem and not have a look around. Famous town, it is.”

“Arab sheets!” I exclaimed. “All of you look as Arab as Father Christmas! Your beet-red faces couldn’t be any more obvious if you’d marched in with the Union Jack!”

“So we was s’posed to starve ourselves until nightfall and then dig
you
a hole?” Big Ned countered. “Meet us with some tucker if you’re so determined to keep us out of your precious city.”

Well, what could we do about it now? I turned to Jericho, his face gloomy in the amber lantern light. “I think we’d better hurry.”

“I left a strong padlock at the grate. But you’re our rear guard, with your rifle.”

Suddenly Miriam yelped from the shadows. “Don’t touch me!”

“Sorry, did I brush against?” Little Tom said salaciously.

“Here, doll, I’ll keep you safe,” Ned added.

Jericho started to raise his pick, but I stayed his hand. “I’ll handle this.” As I pushed my way back to the rear of the file, I let the barrel of my new rifle drive into Ned’s groin. “Bloody hell!” he gasped.

“My clumsiness,” I said, swinging the stock away so abruptly that it nicely clipped the side of Little Tom’s face.

“Bastard!”

“I’m sure if we all keep our distance, we won’t bump.”

“I’ll stand where I bloody well…” Then Tom yelped and jumped.

“That bitch snuck up behind!”

“Sorry, did I brush against?” Miriam was holding a pry bar.

“I warned you, gentlemen. Keep distant if you value your manhood.”

“I’ll geld you myself if you touch my sister again,” Jericho added.

“And I’ll give you both a dance with the lash,” Tentwhistle said.

“Ensign Potts! Keep discipline!”

“Yes sir! You two — behave!”

“Ah, we was just playing… Lord on high! What happened to
him
?” Farhi had passed through the lantern light, and the startled sailors had their first look at his mutilated face: the cratered eye, the snoutlike nose, the butchered ear.

“I touched his sister,” the Jew said slyly.

The sailors went white and kept as far from Miriam as they could.

I
f there was any advantage to the long slog through thigh-deep water, it was that it took some starch out of the panting sailors. They weren’t used to close places or land work, and only their assumption of ancient coin kept them from balking entirely. To keep them wheezing, I suggested to Tentwhistle that Ned and Tom help carry Jericho’s bag of mortar.

“Why don’t we all just carry a hod of bloody bricks while we’re at it?” Ned complained. But he plodded on like a mule, all of us wading in a cocoon of lantern light. I paused once to listen while the others pushed ahead, darkness growing as they receded. There — was that the echo of a clang, of a padlock being broken far behind? Yet at such a distance it was hardly more audible than the drop of a pin, and I heard nothing else. At length I gave up and hurried to catch the others.

Finally there was the sound of running water and the tunnel began lowering toward the water surface. Soon we’d be crawling.

“We are nearing the natural spring,” Farhi said. “Legend says that somewhere above is the navel of Jerusalem.”

“I think we’re in the bloody arse, meself,” Little Tom muttered.

We hunted with our lanterns until we indeed found a dark slit overhead, tight as a purser’s pocket. I wouldn’t have guessed it led anywhere, but once we’d boosted each other up it opened and a passage angled back toward the main city, dry this time. We crawled over boulders fallen from the ceiling, Miriam more agile than any of us. There was another mouse hole and the woman led the way, Big Ned cursing as he barely squeezed through, pushing the sack of mortar. He was covered in a sweaty sheen. Then the tunnel became regular again, man-made. It led upward at a steady slope, its ceiling only a foot above our heads and its diameter too narrow for two men to easily pass. Ned kept bumping his crown and cursing.

“Legend has it that this passage was built just wide enough for a shield,” Farhi said. “A single man could hold it against an army of invaders. We’re on the right path.”

As we advanced the air grew stale and the lanterns dimmer. I had no idea how far we’d come or what time it was. I wouldn’t have been surprised to have been told we’d walked, waded and crawled back to Paris. Finally we came to dressed stone, not cave walls. “Herod’s wall,” Jericho murmured. “We’re passing under it, and thus under the Temple Mount platform itself, far above.”

We pressed on, and once more I heard water ahead. Suddenly our passageway ended in a large cave barely bridged by our feeble light. Jericho had me hold his lantern while he cautiously lowered himself into a pool below. “It’s all right, only chest deep and clean,” he announced. “We’ve found the cisterns. Be as quiet as you can.”

At the other side the tunnel went on. We came to a second cistern and then a third, each about ten yards across. “In a wetter season all these passages would be underwater,” Jericho said.

Finally the passageway led upward again to a dry cavern, and at last our path abruptly ended. The ceiling was higher because of a cave-in of stone that half-filled the chamber, raising its floor as well. Beyond, we could see the top of an arched doorway made of stone. Trouble was, its door was gone and the opening had been entirely filled with mortared stone blocks, our way plugged.

“Bloody hell, it’s all for nothing then,” Ned wheezed.

“Is it?” Jericho said. “What’s behind this wall that its builders didn’t want us to get to?”

“Or let out,” Miriam added.

“We needs a keg of powder,” the sailor said, throwing down the mortar.

“No, quiet is the key,” said Farhi. “You must dig through before dawn prayers.”

“And seal it back up,” Miriam put in.

“Bollocks,” said Ned.

I tried to focus the oaf. “Lost time is never found again, old Ben would say.”

“And men that cheats at cards should give back what they wrongfully took, Big Ned says.” He squinted at me. “There better be something on the other side of that wall, guv’nor, or I’ll empty you by shaking from the ankles.” But despite his bluster he and Little Tom finally pitched in, the eight of us forming a chain, passing loose rock to make a trench to the base of the blocked arch. It took two hours of backbreaking work to push enough rubble aside to see the entrance whole. A broad underground gate was stoppered like a bottle by different-colored limestone.

“It made sense to seal it,” Tentwhistle offered. “This could be an entry point for enemy armies.”

“The ancient Jews built the arch,” Farhi guessed, “and Arabs, Crusaders, or Templars bricked it up. Some earthquake brought down the ceiling, and it’s been forgotten ever since, except for legend.”

Jericho wearily hefted a bar. “Let’s get to it, then.”

The first stone is always the hardest. We didn’t dare pound and break, so we chiseled out mortar and put Ned on one side and Jericho on the other to pry. Their muscles bulged, the block slid out like a stuck, stubborn drawer, and finally they caught its fall and set it quietly as a slipper. Farhi kept looking at the ceiling as if he could somehow see the reaction of Muslim guards far above us.

I bent to the puff of stale air that came out our hole. Blackness. So we worked on adjacent stones, cracking their mortar and leveraging them one by one. Finally the hole was big enough to crawl through.

“Jericho and I will scout,” I said. “You sailors stand guard. If there’s anything here, we’ll bring it to you.”

“Bloody ’ell with
that
!” Big Ned protested.

“I’m afraid I must agree with my subordinate,” Tentwhistle said crisply. “We are on a naval mission, gentlemen, and like it or not, we’re all agents of the Crown. By the same token, any property taken belongs to the Crown for later distribution under the prize laws. Your contributions will be fully taken into account, of course.”

“We’re not in your navy anymore,” Jericho objected.

“But you’re in the pay of Sir Sidney Smith, are you not?” Tentwhistle said. “And Gage is his agent as well. Which means that we go through this hole together, in the name of king and country, or not at all.”

I put my hand on my rifle barrel, which I’d leaned against the cave wall. “You were sent as underground labor, not a prize crew,” I tried.

“And you, sir, were sent to Jerusalem as the Crown’s agent, not a private treasure hunter.” His hand went to his pistol, as did that of Ensign Potts. Ned and Tom grasped the hilt of their cutlasses. Jericho raised his pry bar like a spear.

We quivered like rival dogs in a butcher shop.

“Stop!” Farhi hissed. “Are you insane? Start a fight down here and we’ll have every Muslim in Jerusalem waiting for us! We can’t afford to quarrel.”

We hesitated, then lowered our hands. He was right. I sighed. “So which of you wants to go first? There were snakes and crocodiles behind every hole in Egypt.”

Uneasy silence. “Sounds like you’re the one with experience, guv’nor.”

So I wriggled through the hole, waited a moment to make sure nothing was biting me, and then pulled through a lantern to lift.

I started. Skulls grinned back at me.

They weren’t real skulls, just sculpture. Still, it was disquieting to see a carved row of skulls and crossbones running like a molding around the junction of walls and ceiling. I’d seen nothing like that in Egypt. The others were crawling in behind me, and as they spied the morbid frieze the sailors’ exclamations ranged from “Jesus!” to a more anticipatory “Pirate treasure!”

Farhi had a more prosaic explanation. “Not pirates, gentlemen. A Templar style, that skeletal molding. You knew, Mr. Gage, that the skull and crossbones dates back at least to the Poor Knights?”

“I’ve seen it in connection with Masonic rites as well. And in church graveyards.”

“Mortality occupies us all, doesn’t it?”

The skulls decorated a corridor, and we passed down it to a larger room. There I saw other decorations that I assumed had originated with Masons as well. The floor was paved with marble tile in the familiar black-and-white checkerboard of the Dionysian architects, except down the center was a curious pattern. Black tiles zigzagged against white to make a slashing symbol, like an enormous lightning bolt. Odd. Why lightning?

The entrance we’d come through was flanked on this side by two enormous pillars, one black and one white.

In alcoves on either side were two statues of what looked like the Virgin, one alabaster and the other ebony: The white and black Virgins. Mary the Mother and Mary Magdalene? Or the Virgin Mary and ancient Isis, goddess of the Sirian star?

“All things are dual,” Miriam murmured.

The roof was a vaulted barrel, rather plain, but sturdy enough to hold up the Herodian platform somewhere above. At the far end was a stone altar, with a dark alcove beyond. The rest of the room was barren. It had the scale of a dining hall, and perhaps the knights had feasted here when they weren’t busy tunneling into the earth in search of Solomon’s hoard. Other than that, it was disappointingly empty.

We walked across the room, fifty paces in length. Mounted on the face of the altar was a double plaque. On one side was a crude drawing of a domed church. On the other, two knights were mounted on a single horse.

“The Templar seal!” Farhi exclaimed. “This confirms they built this. See, there’s the Dome of the Rock, just like the mosque above us, symbolizing the site of Solomon’s Temple, origin of the Templar name. And two knights on a single horse? Some believe it was a sign of their voluntary poverty.”

“Others contend that it means the two are aspects of the one,” Miriam said. “Male and female. Forward and backward. Night and day.”