The Rosetta Key

I had ample opportunity to interrogate my host.

“Are there any underground places in this city where something valuable might be hidden for a long time?” Jericho barked a laugh. “Underground places in Jerusalem? Every cellar leads to a maze of abandoned tunnels and forgotten streets.

Don’t forget that this city has been sacked by half the world’s nations, including your own Crusaders. So many throats have been cut that the groundwater should be blood. It is ruin built atop ruin atop ruin, not to mention a honeycomb of caves and quarries. Underground?

There may be more Jerusalem down there than up here!”

“This thing I’m looking for was brought by the ancient Israelites.” He groaned. “Don’t tell me you’re looking for the Ark of the Covenant! That’s a lunatic’s myth. It may have been in Solomon’s Temple once, but there’s been no mention of it since Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem and carried the Jews into exile in 586 b.c .”

“No, no, I don’t mean that. ” But I did mean it, or at least hope that the ark could lead me to the Book, or that they were one and the same.

“Ark” means “box,” and the Ark of the Covenant was supposedly the gold-plated acacia wood box where the Hebrews who escaped from Egypt kept the Ten Commandments. By reputation it had mysterious powers and was a help in defeating their enemies. Naturally I wondered if the Book of Thoth was in the container as well, since Astiza believed Moses had taken it. But I said none of this, yet.

“Good. It would take you all of eternity to dig up Jerusalem, and 4 4

w i l l i a m d i e t r i c h

I suspect in the end you’d have no more than when you started.

Crawl down holes if you will, but all you’ll find are pot shards and rat bones.”

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Miriam was a quiet woman, but gradually I realized that this quiet was a veil over a keen intelligence, with intense curiosity about the past. As different as she and Astiza were in personality, in intellect they were twins. In the early days of my stay she cooked and served our meals but ate apart. It wasn’t until I’d worked awhile with Jericho at his forge, winning some small measure of trust, that I was able to cajole the two of them into letting her join us at the table. We weren’t Muslims bound to segregate the sexes, after all, and their reluctance was curious. At first she spoke only when spoken to—she was again the opposite of Astiza in that way—and seemed to have little in need of saying. As I’d suspected, she was truly lovely—a beauty that always put me in mind of fruit and cream—but only with reluctance did she shed her scarf at table. When she did, her hair was a golden waterfall, as light as Astiza’s was dark, her neck high, her cheeks lovely. I continued to pride myself on my chastity (since trying to find an adventuress in Jerusalem was like trying to find a virgin in the card cozies of Paris, I might as well take satisfaction in my enforced virtue) but I was astonished that this beauty hadn’t already been swept off by some persistent swain. At night I could hear the sounds of her splashing as she carefully bathed while standing in a wooden tub, and I couldn’t help but wonder about her breasts and belly, the roundness of her rump, and the slim strong legs that my all-too-frustrated brain imagined, runnels of soapy water cascading down the perfect topography of her thighs and calves and ankles. And then I’d groan, try to think about electricity, and finally resort to my fist.

At supper Miriam enjoyed our talk, her eyes quick and lively.

Brother and sister were people who’d seen some of the world, and so they enjoyed my own stories of life in Paris, growing up in America, my early fur-trading forays on the Great Lakes, and my journeys t h e

r o s e t t a k e y

4 5

down the Mississippi to New Orleans and to the Caribbean Sugar Isles. They were curious about Egypt as well. I didn’t tell them about the secrets of the Great Pyramid, but I described the Nile, the great land and sea battles of the year before, and the Temple of Dendara that I’d visited far to the south. Jericho told me more of Palestine, of Galilee where Jesus walked, and of the Christian sites I might visit on the Mount of Olives. After some hesitation, Miriam began to make shy suggestions as well, hinting that she knew a great deal more about historic Jerusalem than I would have guessed—more, in fact, than her brother. Not only could she read—rare enough for a woman in Muslim lands—but she did read, avidly, and spent much of her quiet days, shielded from men and free from children, in study of books she bought in the market or borrowed from the nunneries.

“What are you reading?” I’d ask her.

“The past.”

Jerusalem was a place pregnant with the past. I roamed the hills outside the walls in chilly winter, when the light cast long shadows across anonymous ruins. Once the bitter wind brought light snow, the white coverlet followed by pale blue skies, and a sun as heatless as a kite. It lit the landscape into sugar.