Newton’s Fire

Jay shook his head and turned more towards Rachel. ‘You have to understand,’ he said. ‘Not every page that Newton ever wrote has been checked and translated and understood. Not properly. Not by a Newton expert. Not by someone who knows Greek, Latin, Hebrew and French as well as English. Not by someone familiar with his handwriting and abbreviations, who understands his natural philosophy, theology and alchemy. That’s my project: to study everything he ever wrote. Every page, every sentence, every word.’

‘Out of my way, kid,’ said Walters. He uncuffed Luke and Rachel from the radiators, allowing them to stand, stretch, flex their fingers. ‘No games,’ he warned.

‘No games,’ agreed Luke.

Jay walked alongside them to the door, eager to finish telling them about his self-appointed mission. ‘Every word that Newton ever wrote,’ he said. ‘Mostly, it’s easy. The papers have all been photographed and put online. I never even have to leave my flat. But not everything’s like that.’ They reached the steps, began heading down. ‘Not all the Yahuda Archive is available online, for example. That’s why I had to go to Jerusalem, to see the rest for myself. I hate going to new places. But I have family there, so I got in touch with them. That’s when Uncle Avram offered me a room. He even arranged a special pass for me at the National Library of Israel. And that’s where I found them, on the reverse of a pair of pages about the ancient cubit: faint traces of ancient texts and sketches that Newton had himself rubbed out, but not perfectly-’

‘Shut it,’ said Walters, as they neared the foot of the steps. ‘I want silence.’

They emerged onto the empty cathedral floor a few moments later, went over to the crypt stairs. They could hear hammering and drilling below. It wasn’t yet time. They milled around as they waited, looking at the altar, the pillars, upwards at the great cupola.

‘So have you worked it out, then?’ asked Jay.

‘Worked what out?’ asked Luke.

‘What this is all about. What we’re about to find.’

‘No,’ said Luke. ‘What are we about to find?’

Jay gave a reproving cluck of the tongue. ‘Come on, Luke. Haven’t you even noticed the geometry of this place?’

‘Eight sides topped by a Dome,’ said Luke. ‘What about it?

‘Oh.’ He looked downcast for a moment. But then he cheered up. ‘But I bet you don’t know where Wren got the idea from, do you?’

‘You mean the tomb of Christian Rosencreutz?’ said Luke.

‘No!’

‘That Bourbon chapel in Paris, then?’

‘St-Denis?’ exclaimed Jay excitedly. ‘Of course not St-Denis. How can you be so obtuse? Don’t you know what the English believed back then? They believed themselves descended from a lost tribe of Israel. It was almost an article of faith.’

‘What are you talking about?’ asked Rachel.

‘A lost tribe of Israel,’ said Jay. ‘London was their new Jerusalem, and this spot right here its most sacred site. The high point of the city, the focus of their worship. Did you know that St Paul himself reputedly came here and preached at this very spot? This very spot.’ The drilling and hammering grew so loud that Jay had almost to shout to make himself heard. ‘And what, in Wren’s day, did Jerusalem have on the Temple Mount, on its most sacred site?’

‘The Dome of the Rock?’ hazarded Rachel.

‘Yes!’ cried Jay. ‘The Dome of the Rock! Now do you see?’

Luke went a little numb. ‘An eight-sided building topped by a dome,’ he murmured.

‘An eight-sided building topped by a dome!’ Fervour flushed Jay’s face. ‘Have you ever seen Perugino’s painting of the Virgin? It shows the Temple of Solomon in the background, and it’s exactly like the Dome, eight walls topped by a dome. And Raphael too. The same thing. Eight walls topped by a dome. And yet you somehow think that Wren’s design for this place was a coincidence? That it was just dumb luck that he settled on the exact same formula? No. A thousand times no. He designed it like this precisely because-’

A great cracking and splintering noise came suddenly from below, like hell splitting open. ‘I guess that’s our cue,’ said Walters, herding them towards the steps. They went down together, turned left towards Nelson’s tomb. Even as they arrived, a great slab of floor began to rise, hoisted by a yellow workshop crane, steel cables creaking and groaning with the strain, so that the people nearest took an instinctive half step back. But everything held and the slab of mortar and hardcore inched upwards, bumping and scraping the sides as it came, throwing off a cascade of ancient dust that spread in a thick, low mist and set off a round of throat-clearing coughs.

The slab lifted clear of the floor. It was massive, not just fat but tall, a good foot taller than Luke himself. The operator swung it sideways above a makeshift mattress of blankets and dust sheets laid as a buffer on the mosaic, bumped it down. Everyone edged to the brink of the great black pit in the floor and stared seven or eight feet down to a pair of rotted wooden beams laid parallel across the shaft, then another eight feet or so of open space to a dusty flagstone floor at the head of a flight of stone steps that led into the darkness below Nelson’s tomb.

Jay turned to Luke again, his voice barely a whisper now. ‘London was the new Jerusalem,’ he said. ‘And Wren wanted his cathedral to do the same job as the Temple of Solomon did in the old Jerusalem. The same job that the Dome has been doing ever since.’

It was hard for Luke to concentrate on what Jay was saying, so mesmerized was he by the pit, by all the torches being shone down into it. ‘Protecting the rock?’ he asked.

‘No,’ said Jay impatiently. ‘Protecting the Holy of Holies. The place where it used to be, at least. The exact place.’

‘But why?’ asked Luke.

‘Why do you think?’ demanded Jay. ‘My God! What was the Holy of Holies for? What was its purpose? What was it designed to house?’

Jay had Luke’s full attention now. He turned and stared at his old friend in disbelief. ‘You can’t be serious,’ he said.

Jay’s eyes glittered triumphantly. ‘Oh, but I am,’ he said. ‘And you’re about to see it for yourselves.’

II

No one seemed to be in charge. Morgenstern had headphones and a throat mike on, the better to describe what he was seeing to the Vice President and answer her questions. Everyone else was staring raptly down, forgetting that they had work to do. Croke therefore stepped up to the plate. He turned to an NCT man. ‘Get the ladder,’ he said.

The man nodded and fetched it, lowered it into the hole, twisting it sideways to feed it between two beams before setting it on the floor. The chamber was deeper than they’d anticipated; only the top rung protruded above the mouth, making descent somewhat precarious. ‘I’ll go first,’ said the NCT man. ‘I can hold it from the bottom.’

‘No,’ said Croke. ‘I’m going first.’ He sat on the floor, felt for a rung with his foot, turned around and steadied himself before he began his descent. It grew dark more quickly than he’d expected. At the foot, all he could see was a few marble steps leading down into the blackness, and pale walls that glowed like ghosts around him. He was about to call up for a flashlight when he saw Morgenstern already on his way down with two of them, though both were turned off at present, presumably so that the Vice President could share the moment of revelation with them. And now the cameraman joined them at the foot, taking pains not to film their faces.

Morgenstern passed Croke the spare flashlight. ‘Ready?’ he grinned.

‘Ready,’ agreed Croke.

They turned on and raised their flashlights together. Their beams pierced the darkness, their flare making