Will Adams - Newton’s Fire

‘What are you talking about?’ asked Rachel.

‘A lost tribe of Israel,’ said Jay. ‘London was their new Jerusalem, and this spot right here its most sacred site. The high point of the city, the focus of their worship. Did you know that St Paul himself reputedly came here and preached at this very spot? This very spot .’ The drilling and hammering grew so loud that Jay had almost to shout to make himself heard. ‘And what, in Wren’s day, did Jerusalem have on the Temple Mount, on its most sacred site?’

‘The Dome of the Rock?’ hazarded Rachel.

‘Yes!’ cried Jay. ‘The Dome of the Rock! Now do you see?’

Luke went a little numb. ‘An eight-sided building topped by a dome,’ he murmured.

‘An eight-sided building topped by a dome!’ Fervour flushed Jay’s face. ‘Have you ever seen Perugino’s painting of the Virgin? It shows the Temple of Solomon in the background, and it’s exactly like the Dome, eight walls topped by a dome. And Raphael too. The same thing. Eight walls topped by a dome. And yet you somehow think that Wren’s design for this place was a coincidence ? That it was just dumb luck that he settled on the exact same formula ? No. A thousand times no. He designed it like this precisely because-’

A great cracking and splintering noise came suddenly from below, like hell splitting open. ‘I guess that’s our cue,’ said Walters, herding them towards the steps. They went down together, turned left towards Nelson’s tomb. Even as they arrived, a great slab of floor began to rise, hoisted by a yellow workshop crane, steel cables creaking and groaning with the strain, so that the people nearest took an instinctive half step back. But everything held and the slab of mortar and hardcore inched upwards, bumping and scraping the sides as it came, throwing off a cascade of ancient dust that spread in a thick, low mist and set off a round of throat-clearing coughs.

The slab lifted clear of the floor. It was massive, not just fat but tall, a good foot taller than Luke himself. The operator swung it sideways above a makeshift mattress of blankets and dust sheets laid as a buffer on the mosaic, bumped it down. Everyone edged to the brink of the great black pit in the floor and stared seven or eight feet down to a pair of rotted wooden beams laid parallel across the shaft, then another eight feet or so of open space to a dusty flagstone floor at the head of a flight of stone steps that led into the darkness below Nelson’s tomb.

Jay turned to Luke again, his voice barely a whisper now. ‘London was the new Jerusalem,’ he said. ‘And Wren wanted his cathedral to do the same job as the Temple of Solomon did in the old Jerusalem. The same job that the Dome has been doing ever since.’

It was hard for Luke to concentrate on what Jay was saying, so mesmerized was he by the pit, by all the torches being shone down into it. ‘Protecting the rock?’ he asked.

‘No,’ said Jay impatiently. ‘Protecting the Holy of Holies. The place where it used to be, at least. The exact place.’

‘But why?’ asked Luke.

‘Why do you think?’ demanded Jay. ‘My God! What was the Holy of Holies for ? What was its purpose ? What was it designed to house ?’

Jay had Luke’s full attention now. He turned and stared at his old friend in disbelief. ‘You can’t be serious,’ he said.

Jay’s eyes glittered triumphantly. ‘Oh, but I am,’ he said. ‘And you’re about to see it for yourselves.’

No one seemed to be in charge. Morgenstern had headphones and a throat mike on, the better to describe what he was seeing to the Vice President and answer her questions. Everyone else was staring raptly down, forgetting that they had work to do. Croke therefore stepped up to the plate. He turned to an NCT man. ‘Get the ladder,’ he said.

The man nodded and fetched it, lowered it into the hole, twisting it sideways to feed it between two beams before setting it on the floor. The chamber was deeper than they’d anticipated; only the top rung protruded above the mouth, making descent somewhat precarious. ‘I’ll go first,’ said the NCT man. ‘I can hold it from the bottom.’

‘No,’ said Croke. ‘ I’m going first.’ He sat on the floor, felt for a rung with his foot, turned around and steadied himself before he began his descent. It grew dark more quickly than he’d expected. At the foot, all he could see was a few marble steps leading down into the blackness, and pale walls that glowed like ghosts around him. He was about to call up for a flashlight when he saw Morgenstern already on his way down with two of them, though both were turned off at present, presumably so that the Vice President could share the moment of revelation with them. And now the cameraman joined them at the foot, taking pains not to film their faces.

Morgenstern passed Croke the spare flashlight. ‘Ready?’ he grinned.

‘Ready,’ agreed Croke.

They turned on and raised their flashlights together. Their beams pierced the darkness, their flare making Croke blink. The marble steps fanned out as they led down to a large chamber directly beneath Nelson’s tomb, perhaps eight paces square and twelve feet tall, its walls inlaid with mosaics of a garden paradise, sunlit orchards heavy with fruit, streams cascading into lily-pad lakes while gorgeous birds thronged the cloudless skies. But that wasn’t what grabbed their attention. For there was a second, smaller chamber nested inside the larger. Its walls were of flawless white marble and it was fronted by a pair of tall ebony doors. Croke advanced, mesmerized, down the staircase towards it. He stepped up onto its dais, took hold of the twin golden handles, tried to pull the doors towards him. The hinges had stretched over the centuries, however, so that the doors dragged across the floor, screeching and scoring tiny marks in the marble. He took them one at a time instead, lifting the right-hand door then shuffling backwards before setting it down again. Christ, it was heavy. He still couldn’t see inside, for a white linen curtain was draped across the mouth. Rather than drawing it back straight away, he opened the left-hand door instead. Now he glanced at Morgenstern. Morgenstern nodded. Croke took a deep breath and swept the curtain aside. ‘My god,’ he muttered, when he saw what was inside. And it sounded, even to his own ears, like a prayer.

The walls, floor and ceiling of the inner sanctum gleamed with gold, dazzling as dawn in the sudden torchlight. And on a low marble central plinth, there it stood, the Ark of the Covenant itself, a chest of wood and gold, smaller than Croke had anticipated, smaller than the legends that surrounded it, but beautiful nonetheless, and extraordinarily potent, with its carved panels and the pair of golden cherubs kneeling in adoration on its lid, facing each other with their wings outspread and almost touching.

Something touched Croke’s heart then, a childlike awe he hadn’t expected to feel again. A sense that there was so much more to the universe than he understood; more to destiny and the divine. And he found himself, to his own surprise, crying out to the Lord and falling to his knees before it; and then Morgenstern and the cameraman did likewise, and the others behind, all falling to their knees and crying out to the Lord.

The tension in the Jerusalem basement had grown like closeness before a storm. Avram had hoped that a shared sense of purpose would overcome the manifold differences between Shlomo’s and Danel’s parties, but he’d quickly been disappointed. It had taken all his energy and diplomatic skills to keep them together. And then his architect friend Benyamin had arrived. One look at all the squabbling and sniping and he’d spun on his heel and had almost left before Avram had been able to stop him.