Another flashlight beam joined Lourds’ as he walked along the passageway. He barely took any notice of Joachim who was overcome by everything that he saw around him. Olympia came next, followed by Cleena, then the other monks. There was scarcely room for all of them within the passageway.
‘Oh my God,’ Olympia whispered. Her voice, trapped in the small enclosure, sounded loud. ‘These are beautiful.’
‘More than that,’ Lourds told her, ‘they’re history.’ He reached out and touched a mosaic depicting Noah’s ark surging across a storm-tossed sea.
‘These are from God’s holy Word,’ Joachim said. ‘Not just history.’
Lourds didn’t bother to argue the point. He was consumed by what he saw.
‘You could spend years studying everything in this passageway,’ Olympia said. ‘The subject matter. The artists involved. The media and techniques used.’
‘Not exactly what we’re here for,’ Cleena said. She didn’t seem to be awed by the history surrounding her.
‘She’s right,’ Joachim said. ‘Where’s the Joy Scroll?’
Lourds pressed on. ‘The scroll didn’t mention the actual location, but it did say the answers were here.’
The tunnel ended only a short distance ahead. Lourds shone his light over the small room and saw more mosaics on the walls.
‘There are candles.’ Olympia picked out the iron sconces on either side of the entrance with her flashlight beam.
Forcibly, Lourds tore his attention from the mosaics on the other side of the room and pulled out his lighter. The conditions inside the passage had remained relatively constant for the hundreds and possibly thousands of years the candles had sat in the sconces. For a moment, as Lourds held the flame to a wick, he didn’t think it would light. Then slowly, the twisted fibres accepted the flames and swelled into a golden nimbus that chased darkness from the room. Olympia lit the candle on the other side of the entranceway. Joachim and the monks entered the room and lit still more candles. When they were finished, the mosaics gleamed on the wall and the scent of burning animal fat tickled Lourds’ nostrils.
The four mosaics showed different images but were framed with similar white borders that stood out starkly against the stone walls. The first mosaic showed a cistern where an upside down Medusa head was submerged in blue water.
‘That’s the Basilica Cistern,’ Olympia said.
Lourds nodded in agreement. With the Medusa head in the mosaic, it could be no other place. An inscription, done in tiny bright stones, threaded through the bottom of the mosaic.
‘What does it say?’ Joachim asked.
‘ “ When the monster’s head rights itself, you will see the first sign of the approaching apocalypse. Only the Joy Scroll may prevent the Great Deceiver’s lies. Your journey begins here.” ’
Lourds opened his backpack and took out his digital camera. He quickly took several images of the mosaics in turn. He also wrote the information down in his journal. Then he moved on to the second mosaic which showed a picture of a church with a domed top. Inside the building, the unmistakable figure of Jesus, his head surrounded by a halo, lay at rest.
‘What place is that?’ Cleena asked.
‘Golgotha,’ Lourds answered.
‘Where Jesus was crucified and laid to rest,’ Joachim explained. ‘It’s in Jerusalem’s Old City.’
‘It’s also where the True Cross was kept for a time,’ Olympia added. ‘Constantine’s mother, Helena, ordered the Bishop of Jerusalem to build the church there. As soon as it was built, Christian pilgrimages to it began. Unfortunately the church was a centre of unrest for a long time. The fragments of the True Cross were lost to Muslim invaders at the end of the tenth century. Tariq al-Hakim, one of the caliphs, destroyed the church all the way down to the bedrock as a protest against Easter pilgrimages.’
‘The downside of tourism,’ Lourds commented. ‘Al-Hakim’s son Ali az-Zahir agreed to let Constantine the Eighth rebuild the church, but it wasn’t until the arrival of the Crusaders that the church was once more made whole. Since that time, it’s been damaged on a number of occasions.’
‘This inscription looks different to the first,’ Olympia observed.
‘It is.’ Lourds wrote in his journal as he translated. ‘ “Two Brothers will make war on each other, believers both in a new prophet yet to be born of the Word, and they will fight over the return of my Son.” ’
‘The only new prophet born after Jesus is Mohammed,’ Olympia said.
‘If you choose to believe the Quran,’ Joachim said sourly.
‘Also a valuable document of history,’ Lourds said. ‘But if I had to guess, I’d guess that the prophet this is referring to was Mohammed.’ He nodded at the mosaic. ‘There’s more. It says, “When the shadow of the True Cross returns to the temple of our Saviour, you will know that the End of Days is near.” ’
‘How is the shadow of the True Cross supposed to return to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre?’ Olympia asked. ‘The True Cross was destroyed and lost for ever.’
‘I don’t know,’ Lourds answered. ‘I’m only reading what’s here.’ He moved on to a third mosaic.
‘This looks like another picture of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre,’ Cleena said, ‘except this one has a weeping woman.’
‘Not a woman,’ Joachim said. ‘Mary, the mother of Jesus.’ Mary’s head was also surrounded by a glowing halo.
‘New Jerusalem Church,’ Lourds said. ‘I’ve been there. They have a fantastic collection of Greek and Slavonic manuscripts. Patriarch Nikon, Nikita Minin, belonged to the Russian Orthodox Church. As its seventh patriarch, he instigated a number of reforms. Unfortunately, they ended up splitting the church and incurring disfavour with Tsar Alexius, who until that point had been his best friend and a source of financing.’
‘New Jerusalem Church has been returned to a monastery,’ Joachim said.
Lourds nodded. ‘That happened back in 1990. For a while it was completely shut down. Many of the church’s treasures and icons were lost, but they retain the statue of the Virgin Mary.’
‘What does this inscription say?’ Olympia asked.
‘ “A great friend of the Church will fall, but not before he rises up an echo of the final resting place of our blessed Saviour. When the statue of his blessed Mother weeps, you will know the end of the world is near.” ’
‘Doesn’t exactly sound hopeful, does it?’ Cleena asked.
‘We wouldn’t have been sent here if there was nothing we could do,’ Joachim stated. ‘We all have a purpose in this place.’
The fourth mosaic showed orange trees round a fountain. A church was in the background, but had Islamic architecture instead of Byzantine or Gothic. Lourds knew the church’s long and interesting history because he’d studied there for a time.
‘This church, I’m supposing it’s a church, doesn’t look like the other two,’ Cleena commented.
‘It’s a church,’ Olympia replied. ‘This is the Great Mosque of Cordoba. Also known as the Mezquita.’
‘A mosque isn’t a place where I’d expect to find Christian artefacts.’
‘The two cultures have regularly tramped the same grounds,’ Olympia said. ‘Just as the Hagia Sophia, for a time, became an Islamic church, so did the Great Mosque of Cordoba in Spain.’
‘It looks like it’s always been a mosque.’
‘No, it began as a Visigoth church.’
‘I’m not going to pretend I know what that is.’
‘They were the East Germanic tribe of the Goths. Not the vampire wannabes.’
‘That, I had figured.’
‘Just checking. I don’t want to go too fast for you.’
‘I’ll let you know if you do.’
‘Anyway,’ Olympia continued, ‘the Visigoths began the church there in 600 AD. Then the Muslims arrived. Emir Abd ar-Rahman I annexed it and named it in honour of his wife. He began the reconstruction, which lasted for two hundred years.’