Temple of The Grail (30 page)

‘But how do you know that, master?’

‘Have you not noticed that before
each correct door the stone has been worn down from use?’ He showed me, and I
was astounded, for he was right. The stone immediately in front of the door
where one stepped before descending the stairs on the other side was indeed
smooth and polished, a sign that the abbot had not been honest with us. These tunnels
were in use quite often.

‘And here,’ he pointed to the other
door, ‘we must conclude is another false exit. We have been climbing since the
last diversion, and so this tunnel therefore passes over another, as did the
first. Let us see if we are indeed right, shall we?’ Slowly he opened the
aperture, but closed it almost immediately, before either of us could see
anything.

‘They are there!’ he exclaimed in a
harsh whisper.

‘They?’ I said, shivering a little as
we opened the door very slightly. Below in the tunnel that ran beneath the
present chamber I observed several white forms illuminated by lamps, floating,
it seemed, in single file towards the tunnel below us.

‘Oh, burning bush of Moses! The
spirits of the dead!’ Eisik moaned behind me. ‘Holy fathers preserve our wicked
and curious souls!’ Then he thumped my master on the back as a form of
remonstration.

‘The ghosts, master, the twelve
ghosts!’ I whispered back, alarmed, because fear, like laughter, is contagious.

‘Nonsense, they are men, and no more
ghosts than you or I. Did you not see their breath puffing out before them as
they walked? Moreover, if they were ghosts, they should not need the use of
lamps,’ he concluded, and I knew that he was right, for it was common knowledge
that ghosts do not breathe, and that they prefer to roam in darkness, having no
eyes.

‘Perhaps they are headed in our
direction, master, along another route, in which case we should leave before we
are discovered.’ I knew my logic to be flawed, but I wanted to flee to the
relative safety of my cell. My master, however, would have nothing of it.

‘Do not be a goose, Christian,’ he
said calmly, ‘they were headed south, and that is why we shall head north, and
soon another chamber will have us travelling in their footsteps. Come!’

We left the chamber through the door
marked ‘Mercury’, walking along another tunnel, and in my ears the sound of
water, dripping, dripping, dripping, all around. I guessed that it must be the
underground channel that operated the organ. I walked a little behind, feeling
very much alone in my misery, despairing at ever being worthy to climb the
ladder of which one side is our body, and the other our soul whereby a good
monk ascends to heaven. I did not feel like a good obedient child, but rather,
since our arrival here, I confess to having indeed attempted things too high
for me, my heart had indeed been haughty, I did not go about my day quietly! It
is only now with the passing of the years that I know how it is the misfortune
of every young man to suffer so. Pity God does not bestow wisdom on a man,
before he is too old for it be of any value!

Bur for now I must return to that
moment, when my disturbed my inner misery and wrenched me back to the equally
miserable present.

‘The sound of water . . .’ he said. ‘Somewhere
close is the underground spring that supplies the abbey. We are close, very
close.’

‘I could have told him that,’ thought
I, sinfully.

We continued in silence, frozen to
the bone. I could no longer feel my feet, I only knew that they must be there
for I was walking. Above black shadows loomed and I wondered what good it would
do to die in this deplorable labyrinth, even though death seemed a preferable
alternative to a life of guilt. At that moment we came upon the
Sardes–Mercury chamber with two doors again heading in separate
directions to Jupiter, or Philadelphia. We paused to look at our map once more.

‘You see here,’ my master pointed to
the map, to the second chamber of Pergamos, ‘this door reads ‘Jupiter’ also,’
he pointed to the north door, and also the east door. ‘See this, Eisik?’ We
turned around to see the pale countenance of Eisik pointing to something behind
what we guessed must be the false door.

‘Holy Jacob! Holy Abraham!’ he
whispered, his face like that of a man who looks on death with mortal eyes.
When we walked to him and followed the direction of his gaze, we saw what had
caused his distress.

I closed my eyes, made the sign of
the cross, and prayed, trembling violently.

S
lumped to one side inside the small chamber we found the body
of a young monk, his eyes open in a look of terror. There was a faintly sweet,
sickly smell. My master reached down and touched the body.

‘Cold. Dead for . . . three days, maybe
more. This must be our curious young Jerome who broke the interdict only to
find himself trapped inside this chamber. At least the poor boy did not die
alone.’ My master shone the light around the room and we could see the bones of
other unfortunates scattered about. I looked away in pity and disgust.

‘Strange . . .’ Andre remarked after
a short inspection of the body. ‘He, too, must have been poisoned.’

‘Why do you say that, master?’ I
exclaimed. ‘Is it not more likely that he was trapped by the same mechanism we
have encountered on the doors and expired?’

He gave me a look that was not
altogether benevolent. ‘If you found yourself locked up in such a place, what
would you do?’

‘Naturally I would try to find a way
out.’

‘Naturally, now tell me, after a time
of this with no result, would you become quite desperate?’

‘Almost certainly,’ I answered.

‘And as a last hopeless measure you
would attempt to claw the door open, would you not?’

This thought made me feel deeply
sympathetic for the poor wretched boy, and all I could do was nod.

‘Of course you would, it is quite
natural, and perfectly obvious to anyone but stupid squires and yet, do you see
any signs of this? Where his fingers should be bloodied and his nails torn,
they are impeccable, as any good apprentice physician’s hands should be. No,
this poor monk died shortly after entering the chamber, before he reached such
a stage of anxiety . . . and I believe holding onto something . . . something
long and cylindrical in shape. Note his hands have contracted in position
around whatever it was. Someone has removed it after he had been dead for some
time. There are no other signs, no blood, no wound, only that terrible
anguished face.’

He walked over to a lamp similar to
ours lying discarded on the floor.

‘Short of wick and oil,’ he
concluded. He looked troubled and then nodded his head slowly. ‘Sometimes there
is a simple explanation . . .’ He lifted his lamp up to chest level to the wall
opposite the door. Something glistened in our eyes, as though rays of the sun
were escaping through a gap in the stone, but I knew that this was impossible,
we were too deep in the earth for that.

‘Oh, Jacob! A terrible magic!
Glittering like the eyes of Lucifer!’

‘No, Eisik, it is only a mineral
within the rock that reflects the flame of the lamp. Jerome’s lamp must have
caught their sparkle and he, perhaps curious, or dazzled, wandered in. It is a
trap for the unwary.’

‘The body then?’ Eisik said. ‘Holy
land of our fathers, we cannot leave it here.’

‘We shall touch nothing,’ my master
replied in a matter-of-fact way. ‘Nothing can be done for him now, and if we
move him where shall we take him? After all, it is impossible to take him back
up. No, we shall simply close the door.’ He made the sign of the cross over the
poor monk, saying a paternoster, and did just that.

After a solemn silence, my master
showed Eisik the diagram. The old Jew peered myopically at it for a moment. ‘Holy
Fathers!’ he exclaimed suddenly, ‘the star of David! The symbol of the heavenly
union of man and God. The upper and lower triangles meet in the centre.’

My master had drawn, by calculating
the directions given by the doors, the remaining unknown portion of the tunnels
and the whole thing was indeed shaped in a star, the star of David.

Following my master’s calculations,
we emerged from the chamber, descending once more, entering another, only to
leave through the door facing east, above which I could just make out the mark
of the last letter, ‘Laodicea’. After making an abrupt turn to the right, we
were, as my master had earlier foretold, headed in a southerly direction.

‘Ohh . . .’ Eisik was muttering to
himself, ‘I am an old man, my feet hurt, and my bones ache with the damp! Must
I take with me to eternity the sight of dead monks and ghosts? Why must I
follow you, Andre, in your hungers and raptures, in your thirst after a
knowledge that has little to do with a righteousness that we can scarcely
formulate because we are covetous! May the God of our fathers forgive me. I
should have stayed safely in my bed, with the Torah, and the sounds of animals
to lull me to sleep.’

‘Firstly, Eisik, you are not so old,
and secondly, you came here because, like me, you are a curious man.’

‘May God forgive me.’ Eisik bowed his
head.

We entered a passage whose walls and
floors were lined with bones and skulls piled up, one over another in a
gruesome collection.

‘This must be the ossuary,’ my master
said, fascinated, picking up a skull and inspecting it before setting it down
casually and continuing on.

Just then, as if prompted by the
toothy grins of those long dead, Eisik’s lamp went out, having run out of
taper, and we were forced to proceed with only two lamps.

‘Soon the catacombs,’ my master
commented almost to himself and in a reassuring way to me said, ‘Do you know
that the first Christians worshipped below the ground in catacombs to hide from
the Romans? They buried the bones of their dead there too, and so the divine
services were held over graves. Now you see why there are the relics of the
bones of saints in our altars.’

‘I see,’ I said, wishing to talk of
anything but dead bones.

‘The Christian prays over the forces
of death and destruction,’ Eisik commented, ‘which is a fitting thing since
that is their foremost occupation.’

My master gave Eisik a black look. ‘Bones
cannot hurt you, Christian.’

‘As I believe in the rebuilding of
Zion so too do I believe,’ Eisik repudiated, looking around him with a grim
expression, ‘that deep in the earth lie spirits whose existence is tortured by
demons . . .’

‘Eisik!’ my master admonished.

‘Listen, if you will, to this old Jew
whose race is prepared for every effort of evil! We are told there are powerful
forces in the nether regions. Here forces of ancient ethers, frustrated in
their efforts to find the light, smoulder, calcified and crystallised. The
sages tell us of ground where the bodies of the dead, Andre, are rejected, and
one hears strange rumblings coming from the bowels of the earth when one
disturbs the soil, because in doing so one releases elemental creatures, whose
natures have been trapped for thousands of years. Evil is their function, and I
feel it in my bones, as I am sure they felt it in theirs.’ Eisik pointed to the
heaped skeletons.

I shuddered, uttering a formula
against the evil eye that annoyed my master.

‘This powerful force of which you
speak, Eisik, is merely the force of attraction, or magnetism. It is . . .
scientific,’ my master asserted.

‘Scientific or not, it is evil. One
does not change a thing by denominating it,’ Eisik said dismissively, as he
walked.

‘And yet,’ my master argued after him
because I suspect he always desired to have the last word (even as death loomed
above and below in the way of corpses and ghosts), ‘this science has been
useful to many, including mariners who have used it since the beginning of our
century to navigate to many countries of the far East and West by using the
compass. A force that attracts iron to it, enabling one to find the northerly
direction and therefore other directions as we have done. However, there must
not be much of this stone in the earth around us, or we would not be able to
use the compass as it would spin round and round . . .’

Near the forthcoming shallow tunnel,
there was the false door from which we had seen the twelve ghosts. We thus
followed in their footsteps, as my master had said, penetrating into the earth
before entering what we presumed was the last chamber.

This time, the door behind us was
marked ‘Aer’, to our right we read ‘Aqua’, to the left ‘Ignis’, straight ahead ‘Terra’,
that is, air, water, fire, earth. No Laodicea!

‘This is the last antechamber,’ my
master remarked. ‘This must lead us to what we are looking for, but which door?’

‘Behold I stand at the door and
knock,’ Eisik said, ‘if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come
in to him. Revelations Chapter 3, verse 20.’

‘Surely you are not suggesting that I
knock on the door?’ my master said, pulling at his beard.

Eisik smiled. He often showed the
greatest wit at the most awkward moments.

‘Let us think,’ Andre said, almost to
himself, ‘what did Daniel say that day? He who follows the seven letters in
number and order will enter the kingdom of heaven, remember the words of the
hymn for they will baptise you with the nine resonances of water . . . Water!’
He moved forward in an agitated fashion, and opened the door to our right,
which read ‘Aqua’. It was appropriately named, for now we could see the source
of the water that we had heard and had felt through some of the tunnels.

It sounded like an underground river,
but I believe it was the echo resonating from the walls in the narrow cavity
that gave one this impression. My master lifted the lamp that was, I noticed,
running out of taper. It illuminated a channel of fast-running water, lined
with stone on either side, effectively forming a kind of purpose-built conduit.
It continued into the darkness, barring our way to the door on the other side
of it that, as luck would have it, read ‘Laodicea’.

‘And he showed me a pure river of
water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the
Lamb,’ Eisik said.

‘How deep would it be?’ I asked.

‘I do not know,’ my master said,
vexed, ‘and, as I cannot swim I will not venture to find out. Brother Sacar
told us the builders redirected the stream to suit the purposes of the
monastery, flowing through channels diverted here and there. Let us not forget
that the organ is operated when the water is diverted,’ he said absently, ‘perhaps
when it is diverted further up the channel, one is able to pass over to the
other side.’

I was about to confess to knowing how
to swim when I was gratefully interrupted by a terrible sound whose thunderous
roar echoed through the narrow passage. We hastily withdrew into the
antechamber, not knowing what this sound would bring. Another sound, a
haunting, terrifying screeching, had us rushing out the door through which we
had only moments ago entered. Seized by panic, fearing the legions of hell, I
ran, holding the parchment to my breast with one hand, and the compass in the
other. I could hear Eisik panting behind me. My master carried the lamp ahead
of us. We turned sharply to our left, not knowing what we might find ahead of
us, and continued for quite some time past the tunnel lined with skulls, making
another left turn until we were back in the previous chamber. My master’s taper
was almost at its end, so with great agitation, lest we find ourselves without
light, we proceeded, according to my map.

When we finally returned to the
antechamber where we had left a rock in the way of the door, hoping to light
the torches we knew were hung upon the walls, my master’s taper ran out. Thus
we were in utter darkness with no possibility of light, and with the antichrist
at our heels.

We heard footsteps coming from the
direction of the tunnel behind us, but also (alas!), from that which led to the
north transept, namely, ahead of us. We were trapped. My first instinct was to
try another door, maybe there was a tunnel beyond it in which we could hide?
Images of the inquisitor followed by his archers danced before my eyes, and I
believe this prospect was infinitely more frightening than whatever might be
lurking behind any door. We stood together in the centre of the room. From
memory I knew that somewhere to our right lay the false door but that we had
not tried the door that must be to our left. I mentioned this to my master and
after a moment of deliberation, in which the sound of footsteps seemed closer
and indeed louder, he cautiously felt to the left and found the door.

A strange smell like that of putrid
eggs came from this entrance, but seeing that we had no other recourse, my
master once again felt with his hands and found, after a quick inspection, that
there was a flight of ascending steps.

With a stone once more in the way of
the mechanism, we crossed another tunnel. We seemed to be going up, and perhaps
would soon surface again at another point, but we made laborious progress in
the darkness, not knowing if we might come upon a chasm or a shaft. I tripped
several times, one such time dropping the compass, that – thank our Lord
– I was able to find before my master noticed. If the tunnel diverged it
was difficult to tell without light, for I could not see the compass, and so we
proceeded at the mercy of the passage. It would lead us wherever it desired.

We arrived at another, this time very
small aperture, measuring only three or four paces in height. My master felt
with his hands.

‘A skull marks its centre, with the
words, ‘
Procul este profani
’ carved below it. Keep far off you
uninitiated ones,’ my master said, ‘and
Aer,
or air. Now, to open the
aperture, as Archimedes has said, ‘Give me but one firm spot on which to stand,
and I can move the earth’.’