Bertie and the Hairdresser Who Ruled the World (18 page)

‘Let's start at the beginning,' she said. ‘This library is by far the oldest on earth. Its original home was in Patara in a building incorrectly identified by archaeologists nowadays as the Corinthian Temple. Patara was – and I suppose, technically, still is – a city in south-west Turkey and, although abandoned now, was once the main port of Lycia. Sisterhood policy has always been that the library should be distanced from centres of power since these proved too attractive to invaders and therefore susceptible to destruction. When Patara eventually fell into long decline through natural causes, the library was moved briefly to Rome, then to a country which at the time was on the very edge of the empire – Britain.

She swept her arms around in an all-encompassing gesture. ‘This wonderful place was built between AD 310 and 321. The order came from Rome itself, along with sufficient silver to pay for the work, eight master masons to oversee the construction and a team of fifty skilled stone carvers. The design is based on The Pantheon, but without the fancy interior, and its only function is to provide a cool and dry repository for the thousands of documents, books, scrolls and parchments that were about to make the long journey from Rome. The library lies at the heart of the Sisterhood's philosophy and would never have been established had we not taken our ancient pledge to protect knowledge for the benefit of mankind.

‘Yet, paradoxically, we cannot now reveal the existence of the Temple without compromising our secrecy and consequently destroying our political efficacy.
Non nobis solum
. You saw the inscription over the entrance. It reminds us of that conflict every day. How ironic that we, the sworn defenders of knowledge, now have to keep this astonishing source of information so secret in order to maintain our moderating influence on world leaders.

‘This library holds many treasures and contains a true historical record of the last three millennia, as written every day by generations of impartial librarians. Here is knowledge that would destabilise religions, astound scientists, amaze philosophers, yet all must remain forever hidden.'

‘But how was it built?' asked Celeste, still struggling to comprehend. ‘How can you build something so big and then hide it so easily?'

‘Simple. The long passage of time has done our work for us, obliterating all signs of the Temple. In the Apse of Arcturus I can even show you an account of the construction of the Temple itself. It's in Latin, of course, but I can translate if you wish,' she added mischievously.

‘No need to show off, young lady. A short description in English will suffice, thank you very much,' said Doreen with that particular trace of sternness which comes as second nature to any mother.

‘Sure, Gaia. At the time of its construction, this location was a remote and heavily forested area belonging to the estate of the Roman Villa whose ruins are now located in Spoonley Wood, south-east of Winchcombe. This precise location was chosen because it's on an intersection of many potent ley lines, the strongest running south-north from Carnac in Brittany, through Stonehenge, Temple Guiting and Holy Island on its way to the North Pole. This line is powerfully magnetic and has a wide-ranging influence, from impressive radio reception to annual migration patterns, and at this exact point intersects with a strong east-west line running from the Rollright Stones and out to Crug Hywel, a prehistoric fort in Wales.

‘Once the precise location had been carefully divined, the Imperial masons recruited local labour and the site was cleared of timber. The structure was built into a natural declivity in the side of a low hill well above the water table, allowing free drainage. This bowl was enlarged by excavation and the quarried stone that was extracted provided the necessary materials for the masonry. The stonework was laid with great skill and care. The drum walls of the rotunda are fifteen cubits thick, or about twenty-two feet, ample to support the vaulted and domed roof above. The six apses are identical and were later named after the great stars of the northern hemisphere by Isaac Newton: Betelgeuse, Arcturus, Rigel, Vega, Sirius and Aldebaran. Once completed, the whole Temple exterior was sealed in the brand new wonder material of the age, concrete, and then coated in pitch. It was then covered in earth. Buried. Totally. Being underground, the temperature and humidity remain constant, the air is always cool, and cool air is dry, making it a perfect environment for the storage of documents.

‘The columns around us were brought by ship from Rome herself, one per ship, and there are twenty-four in all. They're almost identical to the columns found in the entrance portico to the Pantheon. That building's original design was more flamboyant, but budget cuts made these two dozen superfluous to requirements and they were moved into storage. The Sisterhood acquired them at a very reasonable price, according to the accounts.

‘The lighting is natural and comes via polished copper tubes, lenses and mirrors which were imported from Memphis in Egypt. We clean the mirrors and dust the light tubes every two years. There are no moving parts and the system works as perfectly today as it did two thousand years ago. As long as the sun provides light, it will last indefinitely. As well as providing us with an inexhaustible source of illumination, the tubes also ventilate the entire Temple, but heat from the sunlight, ingeniously concentrated by the lenses, also drives off much of the moisture in the air filtering down here, making the atmosphere unnaturally dry. Now, isn't that clever!'

‘Seems fine to me,' ventured Celeste, sniffing cautiously.

‘Try spending a few hours down here and you'll understand exactly what I mean – you'll get a really rasping throat,' said Cutie. ‘The bronze Lycian oil lamps you can see at the base of each column were brought from Patara. We still light them every Midsummer's Eve to celebrate the founding of the Sisterhood. They've been lit over three thousand times in all, and nearly two thousand times in this building alone. We allow no other sources of flame down here, no fire or electricity – the library is lit entirely by natural sunlight falling on mirrors that direct beams through lenses and along the polished copper light tubes set in the walls and roof. The idea came originally from the Pharaohs and much impressed Isaac Newton. Obviously, we do not work at night.

‘The Roman masons were paid well and never revealed the Temple's existence, and the large numbers of local labourers were uneducated and could not read or write, so within a generation or two all knowledge of the Temple was lost. The roof of turf provided grazing for the Sisterhood's sheep and cattle and there remains to this day no evidence at all of the secret building below. The entrance was once inside the Oracle, disguised as a small Roman baptistry, but the Sisterhood accrued some considerable wealth through the woollen trade in the Middle Ages and the larger and more grandiose Temple Hall was built on the site in 1588, providing accommodation for the librarians, a new concealed entrance to the Temple itself and protection for the original baptistry which now lies beneath the Hall. The woodland was gradually cleared in the surrounding area and the village of Temple Guiting became established, growing very slowly over the centuries, however, the grounds of Temple Hall are extensive enough to prevent encroachment on the site, preserving our secret. The Hall now lies at the edge of the village, well above Saint Mary's church and the ponds.'

Cutie paused. Celeste began to understand exactly why Doreen had said what she had just before their descent into this astonishing building. The mere sight of the Temple, more than anything, made her realise the importance of the Sisterhood. She looked around again at the enormous structure and its priceless contents. Cutie eyed her speculatively. ‘You keeping up with all this?' she asked.

‘I think so.'

‘Good, because Mama will be asking questions at the end!'

‘You cheeky young thing!' scolded Martha. ‘Now don't you go listening to her, Celeste.'

‘Cheeky! Cheeky!' piped Bertie, latching on to a word he liked the sound of and repeating it to himself. He liked this place very much. It was light and airy and reminded him of vast spaces beneath the forest canopy back home in Brazil, but much quieter, of course.

‘Cutie!' warned Doreen.

‘Sorry, Gaia. Anyway, to return to my story.' Clearly impervious to admonishment, she resumed her explanation with impressive clarity. ‘The Temple was built on the orders of Prisca, wife of Diocletian, fifty-fourth Emperor of Rome, in the last spring of his reign. Sisterhood records were held for a short while in Rome, but she was a far-seeing Gaia and her Pythia had foretold the increasing decadence of Rome could only lead to its complete destruction. Prisca decided to move the records to the furthest point in the empire, which at that time happened to be the distant, chilly and wholly unattractive barbaric province of Britannia. The books were packed into four ships which sailed through the Pillars of Hercules, around Iberia and Gaul and up the Severn estuary to the busy outpost fort of Glevum, now Gloucester, docking at a quay still lying a dozen feet below the County Shire Hall in Westgate Street. From there, the books were taken to the villa at Spoonley Wood for temporary storage while the Temple was under construction nearby.

‘The library has remained at Temple Guiting ever since, with generations of librarians gathering, conserving and storing all this knowledge as an archive on behalf of our species. All work is done manually. Always has been, always will be. We regard every modern form of electronic data storage with great suspicion. It's far too temporary, too flighty. Our records need to withstand the test of time. However, collectively, the human race now has many diverse methods for the storing and retrieval of important information and so our prime function is no longer the protection of knowledge. The other great libraries, safely scattered across the world and too numerous to be destroyed all at once, have now taken on that mantle. The modern age of instant media has rendered much of our traditional work obsolete so we are now engaged in a programme of recording all the old and fragile scrolls onto thin slate sheets, engraving onto a medium that will last more or less indefinitely, rather than the hundreds of years for paper and mere few decades for digital documents.'

Cutie showed Celeste the workbench next to her desk. It was bathed in an aura of brilliant light. ‘This is where Mama and I work. These slates are from North Wales, and the language is Latin. The book we're currently engraving is the only surviving copy of the
Algamest
by Ptolemy. This dates from the second century AD and is a mathematical and astronomical treatise. We're on volume seven of thirteen, so plenty still to do. This is the original, signed by Ptolemy himself. This actual book was copied into Arabic before we took it into our care and scholars in the West were then only able to study the work again when the Arabic copies were retranslated back into Latin in the twelfth century. These volumes alone are – well, utterly and completely priceless. If they came on to the open market I'd be surprised at all if they didn't fetch at least a hundred million pounds! Like so many of our books, they are the sole examples and therefore totally irreplaceable.

‘Medieval Muslim scholars were easily amongst the finest that ever lived, and preserved much of the old knowledge at Cordoba and Toledo in Moorish Spain. Fearful of loss after the destruction of the library at Alexandria, they were avid collectors of knowledge from all over the known world and made huge advances in medicine, maths, physics and astronomy while the rest of Europe foundered in war and mud and squalor during the Dark Ages. I cannot stress enough the staggering impact of these early Islamic philosophers. They translated Egyptian hieroglyphs seven centuries before the Rosetta Stone was discovered, produced the first anatomical drawings and performed effective surgery a millennia ago. Even Isaac Newton admired them, and it took a lot to impress him!

‘Come with me. I'd like to show you a few more of our star exhibits.' Cutie showed no diffidence, no nervousness in the presence of her Gaia and guests. She was in charge down here, amongst her beloved books. They walked across the rotunda into another apse.
Aldebaran
was inscribed into the keystone above the arched entrance. Cutie placed her hand on each scroll and volume, strolling slowly along the stone shelves, reaching up for some, down for others as she spoke. ‘Here's the original notes on the discovery of Uranus and Neptune, and these are Galileo's first drawings of the moons of Jupiter. Down there are some sketches made by Leonardo da Vinci on the recurring theme of the spiral in nature, which led him to ponder on the possibility that the helix, or even an entwined double helix, capable of storing huge amounts of information in a compact area, may have an important part to play in the structure of life. He was a bit before his time, that one!

‘This volume here is the only surviving copy of the
Cypria
. It's part of the Epic Cycle – you can see we've all eight parts safely tucked away alongside each other, including the
Iliad
,
Odyssey
and even the
Aethiopsis
. That's a rare one – even our copy is a bit tatty!

‘Let's see now, all these copper scrolls come from the library of Rameses the Great. No cheap papyrus for the great Pharaoh. Oh, no, he was wealthy enough to be able to shell out for the high-end market!' They moved on into another apse. ‘Here we have all our Islamic volumes, including major works on astronomy and mathematics by al-Khwarizimi. He was brilliant, bringing Greek geometry and the Indian numerical system together to create the algebra we still use today. He was also the first to use algorithms and adopt the concept of zero as a number. Incidentally, any scientific name beginning with ‘al' almost invariably derives from one of these Muslim scholars. Now, that was one really clever man – I'll bet he was cracking at crosswords! What's wrong, you look puzzled?'