The Secrets of Casanova (26 page)

Jacques craned his neck.

She lowered her candle beside her face. “Already I see that all of you have lost your bearings in this labyrinth of columns.”

“Which is why we hired you,” Jacques said. “The Templars?”

“You need not raise your voice, monsieur. The Christian
Templars. Yes. The story often told is that they excavated this entire rock floor. For years.”

“Why?”

Esther shook her head and marched in the direction of the
mangers.
She held her candle out into the darkness, revealing piles of
substantial boulders. “When Salah ad-Din retook Jerusalem, he piled these rocks over the supposed excavations in the stables so that the demons might not escape.”

I’ve not traveled all this way to be told that my treasure is rock or hardened horse dung
.

“If the Templars excavated here, what were they looking for, Esther?”

Esther stiffened. “Am I the sibyl?” She turned away, offered a terse “Follow me,” and headed farther into the darkness. The trio of adventurers quickly followed.

“Watch yourself. Watch your step.” The flame of Esther’s candle illuminated a series of hollow recesses along the pocked wall. “A
handful of tombs,” Esther said, “with no corpses.” She walked
straight to Jacques, held her candle at eye level, and spoke in his face. “What have men hoped to discover in the Stables of Solomon? I give you many answers. Choose what you will.” Esther’s flame cast an eerie shadow on her face and the high stone vault above. “Why not the Ark of the Covenant? Or holy anointing oils perhaps? Gold? Silver?” Esther thrust her fist toward the empty tombs. “Some say that the
Templar Crusaders dug these. Or removed contents from them.
What treasure might have been contained in a tomb?” Her voice strained. “Other parties speculate a particular Jewish document that was precious or sacred in some way was excavated here in the stables. Possibly a marriage certificate.”

Dominique began to speak, but Esther waved her hand in the air. “A Talmudic tradition holds that in this chamber a violated altar and a golden blade should be found and that these somehow contain the most secret name of the Eternal.”

“Are there stories of the philosopher’s stone,
Lapis
philosophorum
?” interrupted Jacques.

“To convert base metals into gold? Yes, tales,” snorted Esther as she trekked into the darkness toward the entrance. “Material reward. Is this what you seek?”

Her voice echoed through the darkness. “—You seek, you seek, you seek?”

Near the Single Gate in the east wall, Esther stopped and held
her ground. “I’m willing to bring you to this chamber for three
nights. That’s how long your money ensures my services. After that, you’ll know the subtleties of getting in and out of the stables, you’ll have all the history and knowledge I can supply. Then you may decide if you’ll return. But from that point on, without me.” She told the party
to snuff their candles. “Let’s move. We’ll find our way out in
moments.”

Jacques threaded his way over the rocky ground, tugging his
haversack tighter to his shoulder, wondering what they’d uncover in three nights’ time.

The night air parched the throats of the wary band as they
slipped through the ancient gate, watching the moon slide from behind the clouds, bunching the landscape with lean and fearsome shadows.

EACH NIGHT AT MIDNIGHT,
the group—bundling candles,
leather pouches of water, digging implements, various tools, and rations of food—entered the oppressively dark recesses of Solomon’s Stables.
Esther remained on guard near the Single Gate as the three
adventurers tested their mental and physical stamina.

After a night of exploration, the group had uncovered scant
evidence of treasure. If tribulations in Rome had not given them a
sober outlook, their failure to detect anything of substance in Solomon’s Stables certainly had.

Jacques contemplated digging a tunnel at a cant under Salah ad-Din’s boulders to see what might be found, but eventually he agreed that tunneling by hand was impossible, and as Dominique pointed out, the boulders would have been an obvious choice for previous treasure excavators. If Templar treasure of any sort existed deep under the boulders, it had most likely been retrieved during the past six centuries. Besides, constructing a tunnel for the current search required apparatus that could not clandestinely be moved to the area or easily employed once in place.

What of the tombs? These subterranean cemeteries should have contained corpses, but none remained. And of what interest would a corpse be to a treasure hunter unless it were gilded? Why take a corpse? What substantial reward could it bring?

These conjectures offered a theme for discussion, yet when all was said, there seemed no explanation as to what treasure might have been deposited or removed by the Templars—or others—from the Stables of Solomon.

Near the end of the second night, Jacques heard a loud summons from Dominique, who, with Petrine, was somewhere behind a distant pillar.

“Jacques, come quickly, I may have something,” came a scattering echo.

Jacques rose and, while picking his way, brushed away beads of sweat from his forehead. When he arrived next to Dominique, she held the candle flame chest high.

“This carved decoration, this intaglio, Jacques,” she said,
pointing
repeatedly at a column, “doesn’t this match the tiny circles on
Fragonard’s scroll? Have you seen others in the stables? Is there an intaglio on any other pillar?”

“Well, I don’t know. My valet will have to examine the other eighty-seven pillars and tell us.”

Petrine whipped his head toward Jacques.

Dominique grinned sideways at Jacques. “Before your valet makes a thorough examination, look at this.”

Petrine focused on the pillar. “Circles within circles. The biggest and outermost circle, the size of an apple.”

Jacques looked at the circles inscribed into the pillar, then dug
out the scroll from his caftan. “Yes, this matches the one on Fragonard’s scroll. Wait! Look! These pillar circles are not spaced evenly from the center point. I hadn’t noticed that on Fragonard’s scroll. Too minute.” Jacques traced the stone intaglio with his finger. “Circles—unevenly spaced with one another—is a mathematical abbreviation
for Plato’s Theorem,” he said. “Briefly, the Theorem dictates that
specific triangles and squares may be drawn within these circles. And these geometrical derivations may be repeated ad infinitum.” Jacques
scratched his shoulder. “I don’t know the significance of the
mathematics of the intaglios but it must not be coincidence that these circles are
cut into rock here in the stables and also drawn on Fragonard’s
scroll.”

Petrine eyed his master sheepishly. “I should show you
something.” He marched into the darkness, his candle guiding him. Jacques and
Dominique followed until the valet stopped and thrust his light
toward a pillar. “I hadn’t thought anything about this when I saw it
earlier.”

Dominique’s tone rose. “Yes! Someone cut only the two smallest circles and part of a third. It’s an intaglio only partially finished.”

“And unevenly spaced like the other.”

“Let’s dig,” Dominique said.

“What?”

“What might have happened,” Dominique said, “is that
chiseling,
incising, these stone pillars created rock chips, spall—as my father correctly termed it—that may have fallen to the dirt at the base of the column.”

“Meaning what?” asked Petrine.

“I’ll tell you if we find spall. Let’s start digging at the base of this
pillar.”

Petrine shrugged in disappointment, took a short spade from his haversack, and began.

And it was he who soon announced that, for civilized cultures, it was considered quitting time—nearly sunrise, by the valet’s guess.

This was spoken while Jacques uncovered, two feet below the general level of the ground, fragments of white stone matching the limestone of the pillar. There also was animal or human dung, an awl, a fishhook, a damaged bridle rosette, and adjacent to fragments of chipped stone—a coin.

Dominique spit on the coin to scrub the dirt from its surface. She held the coin to the candle and inspected it.

“Well worn from usage, but some points of the bronze can be deciphered.”

Jacques leaned closer.

“I can’t read the words, but the date is clear: 1181,” Dominique exclaimed, her voice fired with exuberance. “Material links! The fact that this coin is in close proximity to our limestone chips—well, this may possibly mean that whoever chiseled this intaglio did so around 1181, give or take a few years.”

“From 1100 on, the Crusaders occupied these stables,” came Esther’s voice.

The three spun around.

“The Crusaders occupied Jerusalem until 1187 Anno Domini, before Salah ad-Din and the Saracens drove them out.”

“The Crusaders? Here in the stables, that may mean the
Templars, is that not so?”

“Most probably,” Esther said.

“So I may suppose the Templars carved these intaglios into the
pillars before they were driven out?” Jacques asked. “Where does
that lead us, Dominique?”

“I’m thinking.”

“Think quicker, girl,” Esther chimed. “Outside, dawn is
breaking. We must withdraw from this chamber. Now.”

The three, tired and dirty, did as they were told.

They traipsed their way through Jerusalem’s backstreets back to the inn, to their room. Petrine and Dominique no sooner sat on the floor than they fell deep asleep.

But Jacques sat speculating, occupied by the puzzle at hand. His
mind glutted with circles within circles, and shortly, before
exhaustion overcame him and before he fell into the chasm of sleep, he thought on Fragonard’s advice, to remember the
good
name of the Templars.
What good
, Jacques wondered,
had the Templars done?

He keeled over in sleep.

***

Surveying the gloom of the underground stables, Jacques
shielded his candle’s flame before speaking to the Jewess sitting opposite him. It was Esther’s final night; after tonight’s search, the adventurers would have no guide.

“While we take our rest, Esther, I’ve more questions. In the late—”

Esther interrupted. “Why is your Spanish man not here to dig?”

“Petrine? He stayed home. Twisted back, he claimed.”

“What surprises me is that you choose to quarry through layers of Christian horse dung. For what?” cried the woman, pointing toward the hollowed trenches at the base of the nearest pillars.

“We have our reasons,” Dominique said firmly.

Jacques stroked his chin, thinking.
To sit in this dark and dirty place ringed by these half-dozen candles as if they were a campfire. And Esther, our oracle? No wonder the valet professes injury. To be rid of this
!

 “Help me understand, Esther,” he said. “In the late 1100s, the Crusaders, the Templars, were slowly losing their stronghold in the Holy Land to the Saracens, the desert Arabs. And the Templars retreated to avoid total defeat?”

“Yes. Many retreated to Acre, which fell to the Saracens four years later.”

“Did all these Crusaders die at Acre?”

“On the contrary,” Esther said, “my grandfather strongly
believed
a contingent of Templars departed the Holy Land on Portuguese ships.”

“Portuguese?” asked Dominique incredulously.

 “Yes. Years earlier, an army of Christian Crusaders had
defeated the Muslims—the Moors—and had liberated Lisboa. In 1147, I think.
Most naturally, Portuguese Christians would rescue brother
Crusaders
from the Holy Land—from the heathen Muslims—a scant thirty
years afterwards.”

Esther shifted her weight and passed her hand through a candle flame. Dominique grimaced at the sight.

“My grandfather believed the Portuguese extremely seaworthy. Three centuries later, their progeny were the most celebrated seamen
in the whole world. Prince Henry the Navigator, da Gama, Dias, Magellan.”

Jacques rested his chin in his hand and glanced in the direction of the catacombs. “If the Templars had managed to excavate some sort of wealth here in the stables, would transporting it have been
safe, even among other Crusaders? Or conversely, would the
Templars
leave their treasure here in the Holy Land if it were plain the
Saracens were on the verge of taking control?”

Esther turned to the candles and, with the tips of her fingers, extinguished one’s flame. “My grandfather wasted his life and what
family fortune we had to hunt treasure. My father followed his
footsteps. Ha! Thank the Creator, I realized the riches to be excavated were not from these grounds but from fools’ pockets.” She removed a coin from her purse, tossed it in the air, and caught it.

Esther redoubled her passion. “I’ve taken some of your money
but not all of it. Before greed perverts your remaining decency,
before you squander your fortune on treasure hunting or have your throat slit by other rapacious men, leave this land and give up your search. You will find nothing but calamity.” She looked up momentarily into Dominique’s face and smiled gracefully. “Find a worthier aim. Bring a child into the world. It’s true, I’ve none of my own. But as a woman, I say again, have a child. Have two.”

A fragile mist sparked Dominique’s eyes. The glistening looked to be the beginning of a dozen tears, but not a single one came.

Esther waited no longer but threw her coin to Jacques and
brushed her palms together. “I return a small portion of what you have paid
me. I trust our contract is fulfilled.” She quickly snatched a candle from the few remaining, stood, then took her leave. Before she disappeared near the east gate, she spoke, her voice without rancor.
“Say goodbye to your Spanish man for me. And may God grant you peace.”