Iacobus (32 page)

After making sure that the excommunicate was really dead, I quickly removed his cloak, letting it fall over my shoulders, and covered my head with the cylindrical helmet, occupying his place at the balustrade.

My disbelief and my desire to stay alive kept me standing. Below me, the most beautiful basilica, sparkling light and splendor, shone like one of those lady’s mirrors exquisitely set with precious stones. The whole temple was made of pure gold and an intense aroma of incense and other perfumes wafted around it. The dimensions of that great octagonal nave carved into the rock far exceeded those of Notre Dame in Paris, and none of the most magnificent mosques in the East, not even the great mosque of Damascus, was as ornate or opulent: Marble finishings, velvet draperies, beautiful cabinets, long panels of splendid mosaics with motifs from the Old Testament, frescoes with scenes of the Virgin Mary, bronze lamps, gold and silver chandeliers, jewelery, and in the center, on a floor covered with rugs, was a sumptuous altar (about ten palms high by fifteen or more wide), covered in filigree and a shrine next to which a chaplain freire stood preaching. Surrounding the altar, hundreds of Templar Knights, wearing their white robes and with their heads uncovered and bent in respect, were on bent knees and totally subjugated by the words of the priest, who was holding forth on the values necessary to affront the bad times and the spiritual forces that must feed the Order to carry out its eternal mission.

From my observation post on the narrow pithead converted into a surveillance balcony, the vision before me was that of a magical place full of mystery, and I felt so confused that it took me a while to discover that the altar in the center was nothing more than an elegant casing whose sole function was to guard something much more valuable and important. I listened to another chant — during which Sara and Jonas stood silently behind me —, before realizing that the thing inspiring such devotion from those ecstatic and fascinated Templar Knights (who, like stone statues, remained kneeling without moving even a fold of their cloaks), was no less than the Ark of the Covenant.

I can’t begin to describe the emotion I felt upon discovering that right there, right before my astonished eyes, was the most desired object in the history of mankind, the throne of God, the receptacle of His might and His power. Although I wished it with all my heart — for the sake of moderation —, there was no doubt in my mind about what I was seeing.

‘You shall make an ark of acacia wood,’ Yahweh said to Moses, ‘two and a half cubits long, a cubit and a half wide and a cubit and a half high. Overlay it with pure gold, both inside and out, and make a gold molding around it. Cast four gold rings for it and fasten them to its four feet, with two rings on one side and two rings on the other. Then make poles of acacia wood and overlay them with gold. Insert the poles into the rings on the sides of the ark to carry it. The poles are to remain in the rings of this ark; they are not to be removed.

Then put in the ark the tablets of the covenant law, which I will give you.

Make an atonement cover of pure gold — two and a half cubits long and a cubit and a half wide. And make two cherubim out of hammered gold at the ends of the cover. Make one cherub on one end and the second cherub on the other; make the cherubim of one piece with the cover, at the two ends. The cherubim are to have their wings spread upward, overshadowing the cover with them. The cherubim are to face each other, looking toward the cover. Place the cover on top of the ark and put in the ark the Testimony, which I will give you. There, above the cover between the two cherubim that are over the ark of the Testimony, I will meet with you and give you all my commands for the Israelites’
(51)
.

So it was true that the Templars had found the Ark of the Covenant! Those nine knights who founded the Order in Jerusalem managed to fulfill the mission entrusted to them by St. Bernard. It’s more than likely that a large group of freires milites secretly escorted it out many years before from the stables of the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem to those underground tunnels in Bierzo and it had been in that unknown place ever since.

I could feel the emotion running down my spine and shaking my whole body from top to toe. If the words of the Bible were true that Ark contained the Tables of the Law but not the Law understood as a cluster of childish bans unbecoming of a God, but that of the Logos, of the Word, of the sacred architectural measurements, the geometric, musical and mathematical relationships of the Universe, of the destructive power that ended the lives of the Philistines, filling them with tumors
(52)
, and of a huge column of fire capable of ascending to heaven
(53)
.

No other power, destructor or creator, was comparable to that Ark and nothing about its peaceful appearance, of the artificial serenity, of the gold cherubs or of its beauty, betrayed it. So the attitude of the Solomonic freires was not strange, kneeling with genuine reverence. If I could have, I would have also bowed down. There was no doubt that the network of Templar fortresses and houses in the surrounding areas, those that Nobody had mentioned during his visit to the dungeon, were destined to protect the Ark of the Covenant.

The echo of a cry of alarm suddenly shook the walls of the basilica. A thousand heads were raised and a low rumble began to move like a whirlwind around the area. Before the last rumble had finished, another cry made all the Templars stand up and move their hands to their swords. The clamor grew, and one by one, all eyes turned to me. The dulling of my senses paralyzed me but there was too much commotion to ignore the fact that I had been discovered. How the hell had they known …?

Jonas’ lanky body remained motionless at my side, with his eyes fixed on the Ark. Neither the noise caused by his appearance on the balcony nor Sara’s pulling on his doublet managed to rouse him from the fascinated contemplation in which he was immersed.

“Run!” I shouted, pulling the helmet from my head and pulling Jonas by his arm.

We rushed down the tunnel, hoping to reach the exit before the Templars had time to get there. I picked up the torch from where Sara had left it, and with Jonas running after us like a hare, we pounced on the corners of the tunnels to look at the markings. We were running blind, without knowing where we were going, haunted by the sound of shouting and the murmur of footsteps and running. We ran through countless tunnels, passageways and chambers, we climbed steps and slopes (which made us assume that we were going up to the surface), certain that they were going to catch up with us at any moment. On more than one occasion we heard the threatening barks of hounds and horses’ hooves galloping through the tunnels. Luckily, we managed to make a narrow escape, crossing fragile rope bridges and wooden walkways that hung over mind-boggling chasms. Finally, with aching legs and out of breath, desperate and sweaty, we reached a huge cave which unfortunately had no possible way of escape. Small holes, distributed like a border or edging about ten fathoms off the ground, allowed marvelous rays of natural light to filter through.

“We’re at the exit!” shouted Sara, pointing to the strands of sunlight.

“What exit?” asked Jonas, disheartened.

“That exit …,” I muttered, pointing my chin towards a strange silhouette on the rock. But no sooner had I finished pointing, we heard a distant roar, a kind of roar that came from inside the earth, a roar that came accompanied by a slight trembling of the floor and walls.

“What the hell is that?” I said annoyed.

“I don’t know, sire,” murmured Jonas looking back towards the tunnel, “but I don’t like how it sounds.”

“Let’s not waste time,” urged Sara. “The exit, sire Galceran.”

“Ah, yes, the exit!

A strip of rocky wall in front of us was artificially constructed with large blocks fitted together, and at ground level, like a door, with the height and the width of a person, was a block with a circle with a dot in the middle chiseled into it.

For alchemy, the Qabalah and the Zodiac, that symbol represented the Sun — the One —, and it was obvious that its presence was not a mere coincidence or a decorative whim. The fact that it was the last obstacle before reaching the exit — that light peeking through the border of holes —, clearly indicated that the solar symbol had a lot to do with the way to get out of that underground labyrinth. Did it by any chance fit in with the rule described by the clues we had found along the Way of the Apostle? Yes, well, for now we had a slab to move, a rock to push to reach the objective, like at the churches of Jaca, St. Millan and St. John of Ortega, although here, instead of the Taus, there was the symbol of the sun. What could it mean? I wondered.

“Something’s not right,” whispered Jonas, taking a few steps towards the tunnel to better hear the horrific noise coming from the depths of the earth. The trembling floor could be clearly felt underfoot and increased in proportion to the noise.

“The exit, sire, the exit …,” urged Sara with a distressed look on her face.

The exit … The block marked with the symbol looked like it was holding the whole ashlar together, which meant a deadly trap because if we pushed it out the heavy pieces of rock would collapse over our heads. In a best case scenario that would close off the exit forever. Ego sum lux, prayed the capital at Eunate. Solar door, door of the sun, door of the light, holes where light shone through … But we could have reached there at night, like at the Church of St. John of Ortega, for example, in which case the light wouldn’t have entered … The light, the ray of light that illuminated the capital of the Annunciation at St. John of Ortega … Why was it always the light?

“God help us!” shouted Jonas, turning his desperate face towards me. “They’re flooding the tunnels!”

“What?”

“They’ve released the water from some ancient Roman reservoir to flood this part of the tunnels and drown us! Can’t you hear it? Ruina Montium … That noise is the water, the water that’s coming this way!”

All of a sudden the roar seemed very sinister. We were inside a mousetrap!

“The exit, sire Galceran, the exit!” screamed Sara.

“The exit, father!” screamed Jonas, coming over to me in search of protection.

Why were my thoughts wandering to a distant past instead of seeking the solution to the riddle of the solar door? Why, as I was putting my arm around my son’s shoulders, my mind was bringing back images of my youth, where I saw myself walking through the countryside, under the warm rays of the sun, with Isabel of Mendoza? As if I were accepting death, my heart returned to the sunny mornings of my past, when I still had the rest of my life before me, when the heat made my blood and the blood of Isabel’s young body boil.

And then I figured it out. I figured out the solution as Sara’s warm hand held mine searching for heat before the cold of death.

“Push!” I shouted, trying to make myself heard over thedeafening roar of the water which, judging by the noise, must have been just about to reach our chamber,

“The rocks will crush us, father!” cried Jonas in my ear.

“Both of you, push as hard as you can! Push that rock, God damn it, or we’ll all die in here like worms.”

The three of us leaned against the stone marked with the solar sign and pushed with all our might. But the rock didn’t move. I don’t know how it came to me to push directly on the symbol but as I did, the stone door slid outwards, although not without difficulty, and not a single one of the ashlars that were held in the air above our heads moved even an inch. We rushed outside and ran like souls running from the devil, climbing one of the nearby slopes to get out of reach of the torrent of water that, like an enraged snake, had knocked down the border of rocks in its rush to get out which were miraculously held above us as we crossed the doorway.

“How did you know that we could get out of there without the risk of being crushed to death?” asked Sara shortly after, as we were watching how the water flowed between the peaks of the strange landscape of Las Medulas.

“Because of the sun,” I explained, smiling. “If it had have been night, we would have died an inevitable death. The stones would have fallen on us when we pushed the slab trying to get out. But the heat, the heat from the sun in this case, produces a strange phenomenon in our body: it dilates it, makes it swell, while cold makes it shrink. Sine lumine pereo, without light I die, as the saying goes. When the ashlars of the rocky wall heated up, they expanded, keeping the structure intact, even though we removed the door with the solar symbol. At night however, everything is kept in place thanks to the door,” I paused and thought for a moment. “Something like that must have happened at the Church of St. John of Ortega, there’s no doubt about it but I didn’t understand it at the time. Most likely, if we had had all the keys, the crypt wouldn’t have fallen down.”

“And where do we go now?” asked Sara.

“In search of my people,” I replied. “We are an easy target for the milites Templi: a tall man, a Jewish woman with white hair and a lanky boy. How long do you think it will take them to catch up with us if we don’t find safe refuge? And seeing as my mission has obviously ended, the best thing to do is find the first house of St. John in these parts to request protection and await instructions.”

“We should leave soon, father,” said Jonas, worried. “It won’t be long before the Templars go in search of our bodies.”

“You’re right, boy,” I agreed, standing up and offering Sara my hand to help her up.

Her hand altered my heart rate, as if it wasn’t already altered enough following recent events. The sunlight (from that sun that had saved our lives) lit up her black eyes, causing them to give off magical, and certainly bewitching, reflections.

It took us two days and two nights to reach Villafranca del Bierzo, the first town where we finally found Hospitaller presence. The stretch was uncomfortable and tiring because in addition to traveling from sunset to sunrise (sleeping during the day in makeshift hiding places), the night cold and damp gave Jonas a painful ear infection, and he writhed in pain like a prisoner being tortured. Trying to staunch the flow of pus, I quickly applied very hot compresses that helped a bit, knowing that they would have been much more effective if the boy could have been able to rest on a comfortable straw mattress instead of walking over the night’s dew under the light of a cold, early October moon.