‘That’s a good suggestion,’ she replied, ‘but it doesn’t really work with this text. This doesn’t read like a threat of eternal damnation or anything of that sort, it’s more a sort of lament, really. It’s as if it refers to a member of the Church — or of a particular religion, in this case — who has taken something and used it for his own purposes, though it doesn’t say what was taken or how it was used. But there is a reference right here’ — she pointed to a sentence towards the end of the translated inscription — ‘to an object, or rather objects, of some sort that the writer refers to as the “hoard” or “cluster”.
‘The problem is that almost every Latin word has a number of different but related meanings, and although it’s generally considered to be a precise language, there are obviously different ways of interpreting any piece of text, and especially one that’s at least half a millennium old. There may well have been different meanings ascribed to particular words at the time when it was written, meanings that may never have been recognized by scholars and researchers. We know, for example, that this word — acervus — had multiple meanings. It usually referred to a large quantity of something, hence the translation as a “cluster” or a “hoard”, but it could also mean a funeral pile or even a treasure of some sort.’
‘That sounds more interesting,’ Bronson said. ‘The idea of treasure always raises my interest level. So the short version is that the text might be referring to a cluster of something, or even a hidden treasure, but you have no idea what, although it is whatever this usurper stole.’
Angela shook her head. ‘Not exactly, no. The first part of the inscription refers to this thief or usurper, but unless I’m reading it wrongly the cluster or treasure is something different, something that justified the claims being made. A kind of positive proof that the unnamed man was a thief. Some object that would prove the case against him, if you see what I mean.’
‘But it doesn’t say what it was? Or who he was?’
‘No. Though it does give a hint that this cluster of objects had been secreted somewhere. As I said, each word has more than one possible meaning and interpretation but the relevant section reads something like “within the chamber under the lost temple where the objects were deeply hidden there the key will endure for eternity”. The phrase that’s least subject to different interpretations is “deeply hidden”, but the basic meaning seems clear enough. Something — something of considerable importance to the author of this text — was buried in some kind of underground chamber.’
‘But what about this key that’s being referred to? What do you think that is? A key for a chest or something like that?’
Again, Angela shook her head.
‘I think it’s simpler than that,’ she said. ‘An iron or bronze key intended to open a lock couldn’t really be described as something that would endure for eternity, because eventually it would rust or corrode. I think this piece of text is telling us that we need to find this chamber and that when we do there’ll be some kind of a carving or inscription that will act as a key to decipher the rest of the inscription, the bit that we haven’t cracked so far. That could easily be described as a key that would last for ever.’
‘So what you’re saying is that this somewhat bizarre inscription that was hidden in a temple buried under the sands of Iraq is actually trying to send us off on some kind of a treasure hunt? I’m assuming, obviously, that these objects, this anonymous cluster of things, will have some kind of a value even today, that it is treasure of a sort.’
‘You might be right,’ Angela said, ‘but equally these hidden objects could simply have been valuable documents of some sort, priceless half a millennium ago but essentially worthless now. On the other hand, I suppose it is just about possible that when — or rather if — we manage to follow this trail to the end we might find ourselves looking at something with very real value. The question, really, is whether or not the trail is worth following. Are we going to find ourselves in more danger if we do embark on this hunt than if we just walk away and try to hide?’
Bronson didn’t respond for a couple seconds, then he nodded.
‘Two things,’ he said. ‘First, I don’t think any document or something of that sort would be sufficiently valuable for the clues to its location to be carved on to the wall of an underground temple. To me, that just doesn’t make sense. I think whatever the inscription refers to has to be something of real tangible value.’
‘And the second thing?’
‘It’s pretty obvious that those men are on the hunt as well, and after what happened in Iraq and Milan I have no doubt at all that they will never give up. For whatever reason, the knowledge contained in that inscription is so important to them that they’ve decided that anyone who finds out about it has to die, and what they know has to die with them. I think that even if we walk away from all this, we’ll be in exactly the same danger as we would be if we carried on looking. In fact, it might even be more dangerous, because we’ll be more static targets if we go back to Britain. My vote is that we carry on, keep following the trail and try to stay one step ahead.’
‘Very inspiring,’ Angela said with a slight smile. ‘But the obvious problem is that right now I have no idea at all where we should start our search. Have you?’
‘No,’ Bronson admitted, and looked down again at the sheet of paper on which Angela had written the deciphered and translated text. ‘This chamber,’ he said after a few moments. ‘You’re sure it must be somewhere underground?’
Angela pointed at another part of the translated text.
‘As certain as I can be, yes. The Latin word used is hypogeum, and the Latin adjective hypogeus specifically means “underground”, so I think we’re looking for some sort of room that lies underneath a temple.’
When she said those last few words, a distant memory stirred somewhere in Bronson’s brain, and he leaned across to the keyboard of Angela’s laptop.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked.
‘I just had an idea.’
He input a four-word search string into the browser and pressed the enter key as they both stared at the screen. He clicked on the top entry.
‘There you are,’ he said when the page had loaded. ‘I think that’s probably somewhere near the place that the line in the inscription is talking about, the Minheret Hakotel, if that’s how you pronounce the Hebrew: the Western Wall Tunnel in Jerusalem that leads to the Hall of the Hasmoneans. That’s probably the most obvious location that could be referred to as the hall under the lost temple. It’s arguably the most famous temple that doesn’t actually exist any more anywhere in the world, and has been since about the start of the second millennium. If we’re going to keep following this trail, our next stop has to be Israel. And there’s something else,’ he added, scrolling down to look at the rest of the information.
‘What?’ Angela asked.
‘The other thing that might be relevant is that the most famous — or notorious — residents of that vanished temple weren’t the Jews who built it or the Muslims who’ve occupied the site for the last fifteen hundred years, but the Knights Templar. They took their name from the alleged location of the Temple of Solomon on the Temple Mount, and according to legend they spent the first few years they were in Jerusalem excavating the chambers and passageways that lay within the Mount. And of course the Templars were more or less contemporary with the inscription, if your dating of it is anything like accurate. So maybe what we’re looking for has got less to do with the Marsh Arabs of Iraq than with the best-known of all the Western Christian mediaeval military orders.