“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.”
“There’s bloody nothing here,” Big Ned interjected, looking around.
“An astute observation,” Tentwhistle said. “It appears we’ve gone to a lot of labor for nothing, Mr. Gage.”
“Except the Crown’s business,” I shot back sourly.
8 4
w i l l i a m d i e t r i c h
“Aye, the American has given us the business all right,” Little Tom muttered.
“But look at this, then!” Ensign Potts called. He’d gone over to examine the White Madonna. “A servant’s door, maybe? Or a secret passageway!”
We clustered around. The ensign had pushed on the Madonna’s outstretched hand, raised as if in blessing, and she had pivoted. When she did so, stone had slid away behind her to reveal a winding circular stair, with an opening so narrow you had to squeeze sideways to enter it. It climbed steeply upward.
“That would go to the Temple platform above,” Farhi said. “Communication with the old Templar quarters, in El-Aqsa Mosque. It’s probably blocked, but we must be quieter than ever. Sound would carry up that like a chimney.”
“Who cares what they ’ear,” Ned said. “There’s nothing down here anyway.”
“You’re on Muslim holy ground, fool, and sacred Jewish soil as well. If either group hears us they’ll bind us, circumcise us, torture us for trespassing, and then tear us limb from limb.”
“Ah.”
“Let’s try the Black Madonna as well,” Miriam said.
So we went to the opposite side of the room, but this time no matter how hard Potts pushed on the arm, the statue didn’t move.
Miriam’s dualism didn’t seem in effect. We stood, frustrated.
“Where’s the Temple treasure, Farhi?” I asked.
“Did I not warn that the Templars got here before you?”
“But this chamber looks European, like something they built, not something they discovered. Why would they construct this? It’s a laborious way to get a dining hall.”
“No windows down here,” Potts observed.
“So this was for ceremonies,” Miriam reasoned. “But the real business, the research, must have been in another chamber. There must be another door.”
“The walls are blank and solid,” her brother said.
I remembered my experience at Dendara in Egypt and glanced at t h e
r o s e t t a k e y
8 5
the floor. The black-and-white tiles formed diagonals that radiated out from the altar. “I think Big Ned should push on this stone table here,” I said. “Hard!”
At first nothing happened. Then Jericho joined him, and finally Little Tom, Potts, and me, all of us grunting. Finally there was a scrape and the altar began to rotate on a pivot set at one corner. As it slid sideways across the floor, a hole was revealed underneath. Stairs led down into darkness.
“This is more like it, then,” Ned said, panting.
We descended, crowding into an anteroom below the main chamber. At its end was a great iron door, red and black with rust. It was marked by ten brass disks the size of dinner plates, green with age.
There was one disk at the top, then two rows of three each descending. Between them but lower was a vertical column of three more. In the center of each was a latch.
“Ten doorknobs?” Tentwhistle asked.
“Or ten locks,” Jericho said. “Each of these latches might turn a bar into this jamb of iron.” He tried one handle but it didn’t move. “We’ve no tools to dent
“Which means that maybe it ain’t been opened and ain’t been robbed,” Ned reasoned, more shrewdly than I would have given him credit for. “That’s good news, it seems to me. The guv’nor may have found something after all. What would you have that’s so precious that you’d put a door like this in front of it, eh, and down at the bottom of a rabbit hole to boot?”
“Ten locks? There are no keyholes,” I pointed out.
And as Jericho and Ned pulled and pushed on the massive door, it didn’t quiver. “It’s frozen in place,” the blacksmith said. “Maybe it’s not a door after all.”
“And time is growing short,” Farhi warned. “It will be dawn on the platform above, and Muslims will be coming to pray. If we start pounding on that iron, someone is bound to hear us.”
“Wait,” I said, remembering the mystery of the medallion in Egypt.
“It’s a pattern, don’t you think? Ten discs, shaped like the sun . . . ten is a sacred number. This meant something to the Templars, I’m guessing.” 8 6
