like the base for a statue or a display stand, but it was empty. The walls bore writing in an alphabet I’d never seen before, neither Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, nor Latin. It was different than what I’d seen in Egypt, too. Many characters were geometrical in shape, squares and triangles and circles, but others were twisting worms or tiny mazes. Wood and brass chests were heaped around the room’s periphery, dry and corroded from age.
And inside them there was . . .
Nothing.
Again, I was reminded of the Great Pyramid, where the book’s depository was empty. Cruelty upon cruelty. First the book gone, then Astiza, and now this joke. . . .
“Bloody hell!” It was Ned and Tom, kicking at the chests. Ned hurled one against the stone wall, a great crash turning it into a spray of splinters. “There’s nothing here! It’s all been robbed!” Robbed, retrieved, or removed. If there had ever been treasure here—and I suspected there had been—it was long gone: taken by the Templars to Europe, perhaps, or hidden elsewhere when their leaders went to the stake. Maybe it had gone missing since the Jews were enslaved by Nebuchadnezzar.
“Silence, you fools!” Farhi pleaded. “Do you have to break things t h e
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so Muslim guards can hear? This Temple Mount is a sieve of caves and passages!” He turned on Tentwhistle. “Are English sailors’
The lieutenant flushed.
“What do the walls say?” I asked, looking at the curious characters.
No one answered, because not even Farhi knew. But then Miriam, who’d been counting, pointed at a small ledge where walls and dome joined. There were sconces sculpted out of the stone, as if to hold candles or oil lamps.
“Farhi, count them,” she said.
The mutilated banker did so. “Seventy-two,” he said slowly. “Like the seventy-two names of God.”
Jericho went closer. “There’s oil dripping into them,” he said with wonder. “How could that be, after so many years?”
“It’s a mechanism triggered by the door,” Miriam suggested.
“We’re to light them,” I said with sudden conviction. “Light them to understand.” This was Templar magic, I guessed, some way to illuminate the mystery we’d discovered. And so Jericho lit a scrap of trunk wood with the wick of his lantern, and touched the oil in the nearest sconce. It lit, and then a tendril of flame moved along an oily channel to light the next one.
One by one they flared to life, igniting in a chain around the circle of the dome, until what had been dim was now a place pulsing with light and shadow. Nor was this all. The dome had stone ribs reaching upward to its apex, I saw, and in each rib was a groove. Now these grooves began to glow from the heat or light below, an eerie purple color similar to what I’d seen in electrical experiments with vacuumed tubes of glass.
“Lucifer’s den,” Little Tom breathed.
At the dome’s highest point, a sunlike orb I thought had been merely gilded began to glow as well. And from it issued a beam of purple light, like the gleam I’d conjured from electricity at Christmas, which fell straight back down to the pedestal in the room’s center.
Where a book or scroll might have been kept, to be read.
Jericho and Miriam were crossing themselves.
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There was a hole in the pedestal’s center, I saw, which would have been blocked had a book or scroll rested there. Without them, the light from above could shine through. . . .
And then there was a grinding squeal, like a rusted wheel turning.
The sailors stopped and listened. I looked at the ceiling for signs of collapse.
“It’s the Black Virgin!” Ensign Potts shouted from the stairs leading back into the Templar meeting room. “She’s turning!”
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We ran back upstairs to the statue as if to witness a miracle. The arm that had been immobile before was now pivoting, the Black Madonna turning with it, and a door similar to one behind the White Madonna was opening. When the statue stopped, she seemed to be pointing to the newly opened door.
“By the saints,” Ned declared. “It’s got to be the treasure!” Potts had his pistol out and ducked in first, climbing a steep, winding passageway.
“Wait!” I cried. If the weird display of light had somehow triggered this opening, it was only because the book was missing from the pedestal, allowing the beam to penetrate that hole. So was the pedestal hole some kind of key that led to more treasure—or a Templar alarm, set off when the book was gone? “We don’t know what this means!” But all four sailors were charging up the passageway, and Jericho and I reluctantly followed, Miriam and Farhi bringing up the rear.
The stairway’s rough-hewn walls reminded me of the workmanship of the water tunnel from the Pool of Siloam: it was old, far older than the Templars. Did it date from Solomon’s time, or even Abraham’s?
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The tunnel climbed, spiraling, and then it ended at a stone slab with a great iron ring in it. “Pull, Ned!” Tentwhistle commanded. “Pull like the devil and let’s finish this business! It’s almost dawn!” The sailor did so, and
