‘I thought the Latin was reasonably clear,’ she said.
‘It is, but “clear” doesn’t necessarily mean we’re interpreting it correctly. There’s a persistent legend that when the Knights Templar arrived in Jerusalem, they spent a long time — most reports say that it was as long as nine years — digging down into the lower levels of the Temple Mount, presumably looking for something. They were accommodated, not in what is now the Dome of the Rock, which is believed to have been the site of both the first and second Jewish temples, but in the present Al Aqsa Mosque. Obviously, nobody knows what they were looking for or whether or not they found it, but roughly nine years after they started digging, they stopped, and then began asking noblemen from around Europe to join the order. And as we know, they were very successful in their recruitment drive.
‘Now, the Temple Mount is quite a large area, and despite the fact that the Templars must have been excavating under the Al Aqsa Mosque rather than the Dome of the Rock, in that nine-year period I have no doubt that they could have dug vertical shafts down to the bedrock and then tunnelled sideways to reach the area under the so-called Lost Temple. After all, that was pretty much exactly what Charles Warren did in his excavations. He couldn’t get permission to dig on the Mount itself, so he began excavating near it, and when he’d dug down a reasonable distance he told his men to change direction and tunnel horizontally. He managed to get inside the chambers and produce a fairly detailed map of what lay underneath the platform on which the two Islamic shrines now stand.’
‘What do you think they were looking for? The Templars, I mean,’ Angela asked.
Bronson smiled in the darkness and squeezed her hand.
‘That depends entirely upon which particular legend or conspiracy theory you subscribe to,’ he replied. ‘The suggestions I’ve read about include the Ark of the Covenant, obviously, because that’s the biggie, and it features in just about every story that’s even vaguely connected to Jerusalem. Other contenders include the Jewish Menorah, and the True Cross, or at least bits of it, the body of Jesus Christ, and a whole raft of other not particularly believable relics from the earliest days of civilization.
‘Obviously these days there’s no way of telling what the Templars were digging for, or even if they were digging at all, but they must have been doing something. Those original nine knights arrived in Jerusalem ostensibly to provide protection for pilgrims on the dangerous roads around the city. That was their remit, if you like. But there’s no evidence at all that they actually did this, or at least, not as you might have expected. Logically, a force of only nine men, even nine heavily armed and mounted knights, couldn’t do much more than provide a token force on the roads. If that really was their objective, you would have expected them to immediately begin recruiting more knights to join them in their mission.
‘But they didn’t do that. As far as we can tell, they occupied the Al Aqsa Mosque for nine years and apparently did nothing about their principal task. So the idea that they were digging under the building does make a kind of logical sense. And, using the same argument, the suggestion that they then found whatever they were looking for after nine years also has merit, because then everything changed. The order started its recruitment drive, it was recognized suspiciously quickly by the Pope, and immediately began to expand. That could mean that the Templars had found something that gave them considerable religious power, something that could either have impressed the Vatican or — perhaps more likely — have frightened the Pope into recognizing the order so quickly.
‘If they had discovered the Ark of the Covenant, to pick the most popular but perhaps the least likely relic, I think the Pope would have run scared. If the Ark really did function as it was supposed to do — basically, to act as a machine for talking to God — then that would have been pretty definitive proof that the Jews were the chosen people, because God would be communicating with the Jews through the Ark and not using it to discuss anything with the leader of the Roman Catholic Church. I think if the Templars had told the Vatican that they’d found the relic and made the implications clear, the Pope would probably have been forced to do more or less whatever they wanted him to. But of course, all of this really is just speculation.’
‘But what do you think personally?’ Angela asked, sounding sleepy.
Bronson gave a short laugh.
‘Me? I have no idea.’
What seemed only minutes later, Bronson’s alarm sounded and they both climbed somewhat wearily out of bed.
Breakfast was a kind of buffet affair, and Bronson made a second visit to the main table, returning with another collection of pastries. Angela looked askance at his choice of food.
‘What?’ he demanded.
‘Full of sugar and empty calories,’ she said, pointing.
‘I know, but I’m hungry. They’re not even particularly nice pastries, but at least the coffee’s good.’
Angela watched him take a bite out of the local equivalent of a Danish pastry, then took another sip of her own drink.
‘We didn’t get to it last night, because I fell asleep,’ she said, ‘but you said no one had found anything in that place, and you gave the impression that that was a good thing, which I don’t understand.’
Bronson glanced round the dining room, and although he didn’t think anybody was close enough to overhear their conversation, he was still going to be circumspect in what he said.
‘I didn’t mean that it was good I couldn’t find anything, but it occurred to me while I was down there that it also wasn’t entirely bad,’ he replied. ‘I told you last night that when I was reasonably sure the other two men had gone, I went into the area that they’d opened up and had a very quick look around, maybe only for thirty seconds or perhaps a minute.’
‘Not what you might call a comprehensive or exhaustive search, then.’
‘No, but I think it was informative. I looked at the inner walls and went across to some of the other structures in there. The one thing I noticed immediately was that, unlike the stones in the Western Wall Tunnel, there were no marks on any of the stones, apart from those that had very obviously been made by masons. No graffiti, no names, no messages. And that makes sense, bearing in mind what you told me about the way Herod had constructed the Temple Mount. It would all have been a new build, probably done fairly quickly, and once the platform had been erected over the top of the bedrock, most of the chambers would have been effectively sealed.’
‘But doesn’t that kind of give the lie to the idea of the Knights Templars digging there and finding something in one of those chambers?’ Angela pointed out.
Bronson shook his head.
‘Not necessarily, because if Herod, or more likely the Jewish priesthood, wanted to keep some object or objects safe and securely hidden for all time, concealing them in a chamber that would effectively become part of the foundations of the new Jewish Temple might have seemed like a very good idea. As you’ve already told me, that was a turbulent time in the history of the city, and perhaps they were worried that some new invader might appear and that would result in the temple being sacked, as it had been in the past. Maybe they looked at their treasures and decided to keep them as close as possible to the new temple, buried in the mount directly beneath it, where their spiritual influence or whatever you want to call it would hopefully be felt by the worshippers, but at the same time they would be completely safe, even if the temple itself were to be totally destroyed. Which is, of course, exactly what happened a few decades later.’