“That’s silly,” scoffed Peggy.
Wanounou shrugged. “We’re just as silly here-Israeli math textbooks don’t use a plus sign because it’s a Christian symbol, so they cut off the bottom bar, and you guys don’t put a Star of David on top of the Christmas tree even though Christ was born a Jew.”
“The whole world is silly,” sighed Holliday. “That’s why we have wars.”
“What about the ‘PG’?” asked Peggy. “Parental Guidance, maybe?”
“I have no idea.” Wanounou shrugged.
“I do,” said Holliday. The water was evaporating under the hot sun, and the design was fading. He poured on more water, and it reappeared.
“So give, why don’t you?” Peggy said.
“Pertransivit gladius,” said Holliday. “ ‘The sword is passed.’ ”
Wanounou knelt down beside the stone with a two-inch paintbrush and a trowel. He worked his way carefully around the eight sides of the central stone, first scraping then brushing out the accumulated accretions of dirt. Whether by accident or design or simply the passage of almost a thousand years, there was no sign of grout or mortar used to bond the central stone to its neighbors. Holliday poured water along the newly cleaned joint between the stones. The water drained away.
“Interesting,” he said quietly.
“Hand me the crowbar,” said Wanounou.
Peggy put it into his hand. The archaeologist worked the chisel end of the tempered steel bar into the very narrow crack between the stones and heaved. The stone lifted an inch. Wanounou pushed the bar in a little farther and heaved again. The stone came up another few inches, and Holliday slipped an old chunk of the foundation into the space, jamming it open.
“The Musgrave Ritual,” said Peggy, watching.
“Pardon?” Wanounou said.
“It’s a Sherlock Holmes story,” explained Holliday. “A man deciphers an old family code, and he and his girlfriend find a stone like this and lever it open. The girlfriend figures out the man is going to cheat her and traps him under the stone.”
“Never trust an Englishman,” said the archaeologist. He looked at Peggy. “You wouldn’t do that to me, would you?”
She smiled. “Not unless you tried to cheat me.”
“Let’s get on with it,” said Holliday. He and Wanounou went to the far side of the stone. “On three,” said Holliday, and counted. They heaved the stone up and back, then eased it down carefully, only dropping it the last few inches. They stood back, hands on knees, puffing from their exertions. Peggy peered into the hole the octagonal stone had covered.
“What do you see?” Holliday said.
“A staircase,” said Peggy. “A spiral staircase made of stone.”
20
“I hate this, I hate this, I hate this,” muttered Peggy as they descended. The staircase was impossibly narrow, the stone treads dangerously smooth. The only light was the narrow puddle of illumination from Wanounou’s flashlight. The air was close, heavy with the sharp scent of mold, mildew, and dissolving limestone. As they went downward step by step their shoulders brushed against the smooth rock walls.
The deeper they got the narrower the staircase seemed to get; Peggy could almost feel the enormous weight of the stone pressing in all around her. She was breathing quickly, trying to fill her lungs and failing. It felt as though she was suffocating.
“This was a really, really bad idea,” she said.
“You can always go back,” said Holliday from behind her, grinning in the near pitch dark. Wanounou led the way with the flashlight, crowbar in his other hand, while Holliday brought up the rear, carrying the geologist’s hammer and the second flashlight. Peggy was sandwiched between them, which made things even more claustrophobic.
“Go back? How am I supposed to do that? There’s no way to turn around, and anyway, you’re blocking the way. Besides, if I was up top I’d be worrying about you guys too much.”
“So nice to feel wanted,” laughed Wanounou.
“How far have we gone?” Peggy asked, her voice urgent.
“ A hundred and fifty-one steps,” said Holliday. “I’ve been counting.” He did a quick calculation. “About ten inches between the steps… I’d say about a hundred and twenty-five feet.”
“Thirty-eight meters, if it makes you feel any better,” said Wanounou, looking back over his shoulder and grinning.
“Shut up, both of you,” she snarled in the dark. “Or I’ll scream, I really will.”
“She gets aggressive when she’s scared,” commented Holliday to Wanounou.
“I picked up on that,” answered the professor.
“Shut. Up!” Peggy barked.
“Relax,” soothed Holliday. “It can’t be much farther.”
“Why do you say that?” Peggy argued. “For all you know this is the stairway to Hell. It could go on forever.” She was almost panting now, her throat constricted, the dank cobbled walls pressing in, entombing her. In another second she really was going to scream.
“I can see the bottom,” called Wanounou. Suddenly he disappeared, and Peggy could hear the damp gravel crunch of his footsteps. A few seconds later she reached the bottom of the stairs and stepped out into a narrow, barrel-vaulted tunnel. It was barely wider than the stairs. The floor was covered in a thick layer of rotted, broken limestone that felt like small, damp bones beneath her feet. She shuddered. In some ways it was worse than the stairway.
Holliday stepped out behind her. Wanounou shone the flashlight ahead, illuminating the way. Silently they made their way along the tunnel, the floor gently sloping downward.
“We’re going deeper,” commented Holliday.
“Thanks for mentioning it,” said Peggy acidly.
“I wonder what this place was. Some Middle Ages version of a priest hole?” Holliday asked.
“What’s a priest hole?” Peggy asked. “Or should I ask?”
“During Elizabethan times Catholic families and churches had priest holes, hiding places and tunnels they could escape to if pursuivants came after them-priest hunters,” explained Wanounou. “Sort of like the Nazis and the Jews.”
“You history types have far too much information crammed into your heads,” said Peggy. “Sometimes it’s scary.”
The beam of the flashlight suddenly widened as they came into a large chamber hewn out of the bare rock. The ceiling overhead was at least twenty feet high, dripping with frozen limestone “straws,” like delicate icicles. The walls were rough stone. Unlike the tunnel, the floor was set with large, quarried paving stones. There was a litter of what appeared to be broken pieces of old flowerpots that had been swept back against the walls. At the far end of the chamber was an immense doorway, the door constructed of studded iron, heavily encrusted with rust and dripping lime. An iron bar was fitted across it, held in iron brackets. Wanounou bent down and picked up a shard from the floor, examining it under the flashlight beam.
“Terra-cotta,” he said. “From the curve I’d say a five-liter container. Wine or olive oil. Even water perhaps, although five liters is a little small; the terra-cotta kept it cool.” He ran the flashlight beam around the room. “There’s nothing else here.”
“It’s chilly enough already,” said Peggy, her eyes traveling nervously around the cavernous room. She was right; it was cool, ten or fifteen degrees lower than it had been on the surface.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” said Holliday.
“What doesn’t?” Wanounou said, picking up another chunk of pottery.
“That staircase we came down was never used to transport jugs of wine or oil or anything else for that matter; the steps are far too narrow.”
“So?” Peggy said.
“So whatever was stored here wasn’t removed up the stairs and into the chapel,” said Wanounou, nodding his agreement. “Which means it had to have been brought in from somewhere else.”
“And that in turn means there has to be another entrance,” completed Holliday.
“Does that mean we have to go through that big door over there?” Peggy asked.
“Afraid so,” said Holliday.