The Rosetta Key

“He incurred the ire of Djezzar the Butcher,” the smith replied quietly. “Do not express pity. He carries his survival like a badge of honor. He’s one of the most powerful bankers in Palestine and has Djezzar’s trust, having remained loyal after torture.”

“People use him for their savings and loans?”

“It was his face that was damaged, not his mind.”

“Rabbi Farhi is one of the province’s foremost historians,” Miriam said more loudly as they came toward us, both guessing the reason for 6 4

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our whispers. “He’s also a student of Jewish mysteries. Anyone delv-ing into the past is wise to seek his counsel.”

“So I appreciate his help,” I said diplomatically, trying not to stare.

“As I appreciate your tolerance of my misfortune,” Farhi replied in a serene voice. “I know my effect on people. I see my disfigure-ment mirrored in the look of every frightened child. But mutilation’s isolation gives me time for this city’s legends. Jericho tells me you’re searching for lost secrets of strategic significance, yes?”

“Possibly.”

“Possibly? Come, if we’re to make progress we must trust each other, must we not?”

I was learning not to trust much of anyone, but didn’t say that, or anything else.

“And these items may have some connection with the Ark of the Covenant,” Farhi persisted. “Is this not so as well?”

“It is.” Obviously he knew what I’d told Jericho.

“I can understand why you’ve journeyed so far, with such excitement. Yet it is my sad responsibility to warn that you may be seven hundred years too late. Men have come to Jerusalem before, seeking the same powers you have.”

“And you’re going to tell me they tried their best and didn’t find them.”

“On the contrary, I am going to tell you they possibly found exactly what you are looking for. Or, that if they didn’t, it’s unlikely you could succeed either. They searched for years. Jericho tells me you have days, at most.”

What did this mutilated man know? “Found what, exactly?”

“Curiously, scholars still argue about that. A group of Christian knights came away from Jerusalem with inexplicable powers, and yet they proved powerless when they were betrayed. So did they find something? Or not?”

“A fairy story,” Jericho scoffed.

“But one grounded in history, brother,” Miriam said quietly.

“Those stories of tunnels are musty legends,” Jericho insisted to Miriam.

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“And what is legend but an echo of truth?” his sister answered.

I looked among the three of them. They’d argued this before.

“What legends?”

“Of our ancestors, the Knights Templar,” Miriam said. “Their full name was the Poor Knights of Christ on the Temple of Solomon.

Not all the warrior monks were celibate, and tradition holds that our blood descends from theirs. They sought what you seek, and some think they found it.”

“Do they now?”

“It’s a curious story,” Farhi said. “I understand you have lived in Paris, Mr. Gage? Are you familiar with the Champagne region of France, southeast of Paris and north of Troyes?”

“I’ve passed through, and enjoyed its products.”

“More than thirteen hundred years ago, one of the most terrible battles in all history was fought there. The last of the Romans defeated Attila, the great Hun.”

“The Battle of Chalons,” I said, grateful that Franklin had mentioned this ancient scrape once or twice. He was a fount of oddball information, and read history books thick enough for three doorstops, written by some Englishman named Gibbon.

“At this battle Attila had a mysterious ancient sword with mystical powers, dating far, far back in time. Legends of such enchantments, and the idea that there are greater powers in this world than mere muscle and steel, carried down to the generations of Franks who came to inhabit Champagne. These were people who thought there might be more to the world than what we easily see and touch. The great saint and teacher Saint Bernard of Clairvaux was one who heard these stories.”

That name struck a bell too. I remembered the French savant Jomard evoking him when we first climbed the Great Pyramid.

“Wait, I’ve heard of him. He said something about God being height and breadth—being dimensions. That you could incorporate divine dimensions into holy buildings.”

“Yes. ‘What is God? He is length, width, height and depth,’ the saint said. And the powerful knight André de Montbard, Bernard’s 6 6

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uncle, shared the idea that ancients who knew such things might have buried powerful secrets in the East. Buried, perhaps, beneath Solomon’s Temple, which occupied the Temple Mount a short distance from where we sit.”

“Freemasons believe that to this day,” I said, remembering my dead journalist friend, Antoine Talma, and his enthusiastic theories.

“In 1119,” Farhi went on, “Bernard’s uncle, Montbard, was one of nine knights who journeyed to the Holy Land on a special mission.