‘Okay, Dad,’ she huffed.
‘Hey, I actually am going to be a dad, so I’m allowed to be overprotective.’
‘Point taken.’ They smiled at each other, then Nina set off, sidestepping across the bridge with both hands on the rope. A moment of worry as she reached the broken plank, but she picked her way over without incident. Once clear, she hurried to the doorway, standing on the step before detaching the harness.
‘You okay?’ Jared asked as he helped her through.
‘Fine, thanks.’ She panned her light around the new passage. It had the same rounded cross-section as on the other side of the shaft, but its decorations were far more elaborate, gold leaf and precious stones set around the paintings of religious scenes. The door was not merely a barrier; it also marked the boundary of an inner sanctum, a place of great importance to the ancient Israelites.
Eddie made his way across behind them. ‘All right, so what have we got?’
‘This must be the entrance to their temple,’ Nina said, pointing the flashlight along the tunnel. The ornate walls curved away out of sight. There was no sign here of the mushrooms growing around the cenote; the door had apparently acted as a seal, keeping the air inside dry. ‘Come on.’
‘Will there be any more traps?’ asked Jared, eyeing the paintings with suspicion as they started down the tunnel.
‘I don’t think so. This place was protected by a combination of obscurity and inaccessibility, and probably had people defending it too. Revelation said it had been “prepared”, so somebody had to be here to do that. That door was the final barrier, to make sure that only people who knew the true meaning of the Elders’ texts would be able to get in.’
‘All the same,’ said Eddie to Jared, ‘keep an eye out, will you? Just in case anything pops out of the walls.’ The younger man hurriedly redirected his flashlight beam to the sides of the passage.
No booby-traps interrupted their progress, however. Before long, something came into view ahead. ‘Ay up,’ said Eddie, surprised. ‘There’s a light in there.’ The tunnel opened out into a larger chamber, where they could clearly see the gleam of gold even without their torches.
‘It’s not daylight,’ Nina noted. There was an almost rainbow-like iridescence to the illumination. She entered the room — and stopped in astonishment. ‘Oh…’
Eddie moved up beside her, equally amazed. ‘Christ, that’s impressive. What is this place?’
She surveyed the wonders before her, almost unable to believe what she was seeing. ‘Based on the description in the Book of Revelation… I think we’ve just found God’s temple.’
The chamber was an expansive oval, an existing cave made much bigger by years, even decades of patient excavation. The walls were largely covered by drape-like hanging tapestries bearing Hebrew symbols. The dominant feature was a massive opal over two feet across embedded in the rock of the high ceiling. There was evidently a fissure in the mountain above that reached to the surface, letting in sunlight, which was then refracted by the great gemstone into a brilliant prismatic display.
The brightest spot was directly beneath the opal, a dazzling beam shining downwards like a laser. It landed upon a large golden throne, which stood on a patch of highly polished quartz set into the floor. More thrones, similar in design but somewhat smaller, encircled it. Nina started counting them, but already knew how many there would be. ‘Twenty-four,’ she said, confirming her belief. ‘These are the thrones of the twenty-four Elders.’
Eddie glanced at the central seat. ‘So whose is number twenty-five?’
‘God’s. He sits in the middle of everything, with his followers around him.’ Nina moved hesitantly into the ring. She was not religious by nature, but couldn’t help feeling a reverential awe. ‘Everything matches John’s description. The circle of thrones around God’s seat, the rainbow surrounding it…’ She indicated where the opal was casting a spectrum of light on the floor, catching the swathe of quartz. ‘Even this; John described it as a “sea of glass”, which considering that he was having a vision based on something he’d only read is pretty accurate. And then there’s the altar, the seven lamps…’ A large menorah stood before the throne, near a golden dais with a horn-like protrusion at each corner.
Jared nervously followed Nina and Eddie into the circle, having to force himself not to avert his eyes from the throne beneath the opal. ‘It feels like this is something I shouldn’t be allowed to see.’
Nina noticed something at the chamber’s far end. ‘If you’re worried about being struck down by God, then you really shouldn’t get any closer to that.’
Beyond the golden circle was something extremely incongruous in the splendour of their surroundings: a simple tent made from animal skins. It was rectangular, around fifteen feet wide and three times as long. Time had dried and decayed the hides in the stillness of the chamber, but they had clearly been exposed to the harsh elements of the desert beforehand. The entrance was draped in woven curtains, the faded remnants of once-vibrant colours still showing after uncounted centuries.
‘Okay, that doesn’t really go with the other furniture,’ Eddie said.
‘You don’t know what it is?’ she replied. ‘Oh, right; you always skipped Sunday school when you were a kid, didn’t you?’
‘I had better places to be. Like literally anywhere.’
‘I know what it is,’ gasped Jared. ‘It’s… it’s the Tabernacle, the communion tent!’
Eddie couldn’t hold back a smile. ‘So the Ark of the Covenant is actually here? In your face, Indiana Jones!’
Nina started towards the tent. ‘Wait, wait,’ said Jared, suddenly worried. ‘Should we go in there?’
She gave him an incredulous look. ‘Are you going to tell me that because we’re not Levites, we’ll be killed if we get too close?’
‘No, but… it’s a holy place. The most holy place.’
‘And this is why I didn’t go to Sunday school,’ said Eddie, joining his wife. ‘So this kind of thing doesn’t scare me off. If the angel’s here at all, it must be in there or we would have seen it by now. We’ve got to find it.’
The younger man nodded reluctantly. ‘Okay. But be careful. I don’t want to be the one who destroys the Tabernacle!’
‘You think I do?’ Nina hooted.
They approached the entrance. Nina shone her flashlight over the curtains, then removed her backpack before hesitantly moving them aside and slipping through. The two men followed.
The animal-skin walls were thick enough to block the glow from the crystal. Jared added his light to Nina’s. The space they had entered occupied two thirds of the tent’s total length, but was only sparsely furnished. A wooden table stood to one side, whatever offerings had been placed upon it long since turned to dust. Near it was a seven-branched menorah on a tall stand, dark smears of old oil upon the metal lamps. Beyond them, before a white curtain, was a golden altar, glinting in the torch beams.
‘Is that the Ark?’ Eddie asked.
Nina shook her head. ‘That must be the Altar of Incense. If the Ark’s in here, it’ll be beyond the veil.’ She indicated the curtain.
‘That’s where that saying comes from, is it? Huh. Learn something every day.’
‘Stick with me, kiddo,’ she told him with a smile, leading the way through the room. ‘On the other side of the veil is—’
‘The Holy of Holies,’ said Jared. ‘I learned all this at school,’ he added to Eddie, who grinned.