Newton’s Fire

‘Granny and granddad,’ she agreed.

It was the most offhand of remarks, yet somehow it struck Luke with unexpected force, almost with the power of prophecy. For the blink of a moment, he pictured them together fifty years hence, fulfilled, happy, still in love. His disaster with Maria had numbed his appetite for romance ever since she’d made her choice, but suddenly he felt hungry again. Suddenly he felt ravenous. He looked hurriedly away before Rachel could read his face.

‘Is something wrong?’ she asked.

‘No,’ he said, clearing his throat for effect. ‘Just all this damned dust.’

They gave it another minute before heading back. The air was still ticklish, but their curiosity wouldn’t wait. There was indeed a door behind the false wall. A pair of them, in fact, with great brass rings for handles and rusted iron hinges that suggested they opened out towards them. Rachel snapped off photographs while Luke cleared space for the left-hand door. Its hinges had stretched over the centuries so that its bottom screeched across the stone, but he pulled it far enough open for Rachel to squeeze through, and for himself to follow. He had the lamp in his trailing hand so that they were both in darkness for a moment before he brought it inside. Then he held it up to reveal what they’d discovered.

‘My God,’ said Rachel. ‘I don’t believe it.’

II

‘Uncle,’ said Uri in bewilderment. ‘What are you doing? What’s going on?’

‘I took you into my home,’ said Avram. ‘I gave you shelter. I treated you like my son. What was mine was yours for the asking. And this is how you repay me? By going to the police? By telling them about my plans?’

‘No, Uncle. No. I’d never have-’

‘Yes.’

‘No! I swear.’

‘Did you really think that you could trust them?’ asked Avram. ‘Well, now you know better. They’ve been boasting to the Americans about infiltrating our group. Boasting about having an informer inside the ringleader’s house. Unfortunately for you, we have Americans on our side too. Unfortunately for you, we’ve known of your treachery for months.’

‘No,’ said Uri desperately. ‘You’ve got it all wrong. You have to believe me.’

‘We haven’t got it wrong, Uri. They even had your name.’

‘They’re trying to drive us apart. That’s all. It’s lies, misinformation. You know the games they play.’

‘It’s not lies, Uri. We both know it’s not lies. But you’re still my sister’s grandson. You’re still my blood. Come clean, tell me who they are, what they know and how you communicate with them and I give you my word that I’ll try to find a way to let you live.’

‘This is crazy, Uncle. I haven’t told anyone. I swear I haven’t.’ Uri began to weep. He got down onto his knees in the metal trunk and clasped his hands in prayer. ‘I swear it to the Lord.’

‘This is your last chance,’ said Avram.

‘Please, Uncle Avram. I beg you. Don’t do it. I don’t want to die.’ He looked around, as if in hope of miracle, but there was no chance of that. ‘They knew already,’ he sobbed. ‘I swear they did. I didn’t go to them. They came to me. And they knew everything. I never told them anything they didn’t already know.’

‘Go on.’

‘I made them promise they wouldn’t do anything to you, no gaol or anything like that. I made them sign an agreement. I was only thinking of you.’

‘Of me?’

‘You want to serve God. I know you do. But this has nothing to do with serving God. It’s not for people like you and me to-’

Avram was surprised to find himself pulling the trigger. He’d intended to squeeze Uri dry before he killed him. But his anger was too intense. The four shots tumbled Uri backwards, leaving him lying on his side, obscuring the entry and exit wounds. Avram stepped down into the trunk, pressed the silencer against his temple and fired once more. Then he climbed back out, wiped the gun clean of prints, tossed it inside, closed and locked the lid.

It looked like they’d be needing a new supply route …

The irreverence of the thought made him smile. He felt, indeed, something unsettlingly like euphoria. Until this very moment, he hadn’t known for certain that he’d have the strength of character to see this mission through. Now he did. Yet euphoria was an inappropriate reaction to such a solemn act, so he stamped down hard on it, picked up the shovel and almost in penance began the heavy work of burying his nephew and his makeshift coffin beneath the sand.

TWENTY I

The room was maybe twelve feet tall and eight-sided, its walls rich with sculptures that stretched and shrank as Luke turned the lamp this way and that, making them seem eerily alive. There was an altar of some kind in the centre, or maybe a plinth, for it looked roughly the shape and size to hold a small sarcophagus. There was no sarcophagus on it at that moment, however, nothing but dust.

He glanced at Rachel to share the moment with her. She was staring raptly upwards. He looked up too. A great hemispheric dome of blue-black loomed high above them, a wondrous night sky inset into it: a silver crescent moon, galaxies of tiny diamonds, constellations of emeralds, rubies and sapphires, and comets with outstretched tails of crushed crystal that pointed them towards the peak and centre, where a dazzling golden sun presided like God over creation.

‘Have you ever seen anything like it?’ murmured Rachel, holding her camera down low to capture as much of it as she could.

‘Never.’

But he tore his eyes from it all the same, for there was too much else to look at, and time was precious. The wall to the right of the door had been sculpted into some kind of mystical tableau. Between a pair of flame- topped pillars, four gowned men studied and discussed some kind of scroll unfurled on a table. Hammers, trowels, squares and compasses and other such tools decorated the walls, while in the far background tiny figures laid out the perimeter of a new city upon a distant hill.

‘It looks Masonic,’ murmured Rachel, taking a photograph.

‘It is Masonic,’ he agreed. Several letters and numbers had been chiselled along the foot of the wall. He crouched, the better to read them. ‘BE 22108 BF,’ he said. ‘Any ideas?’

‘Some kind of signature?’

‘With BE and BF being the initials of the sculptors? Could be. What about the numbers?’

‘The date, maybe?’ suggested Rachel. ‘The twenty-second of January, 1708?’

‘Or the twenty-second of October, 1698? Or even ’88?’

‘Maybe.’

They let it lie, went to the next wall. It was carved in relief, too, borders of cascading flowers framing a life-sized portrait of an elderly man in scholar’s robes. There were two lines inscribed at the foot of this one. The uppermost was simply the man’s name: Elias Ashmole. And directly beneath it: BE 10460 BF. Luke glanced back at the first panel. ‘Same initials,’ he said. ‘Different number.’

They moved together to the third wall. Another portrait, but this time shockingly familiar. Everything was there, from the intellectual high brow to the casually open collar and the exuberant cascades of curled hair. A direct copy from a Kneller portrait the great man had commissioned himself in celebration of the Principia.