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 wrong-fully 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
“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.
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w i l l i a m d i e t r i c h
“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 t h e
r o s e t t a k e y
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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.
