Edward Whittemore - Jerusalem Poker

Dastardly, that. When was it?

In the sixteenth century when the Turks arrived. Their breath was so appalling it weakened my lungs.

Bad breath can do that?

When it's as bad as theirs was, yes. I can't imagine the state of their stomachs in the sixteenth century.

Excited, I suppose, over all their victories. Anyway, I was employed by the Turks as a distributor of hashish and goats, and as a result of my customers breathing in my face I developed a severe case of tuberculosis.

Dreadful.

So I consulted my local physician and he prescribed plenty of rest and liquids and no heavy lifting.

Sound advice.

So I came down here and spent a year resting and drinking cognac and smoking cigars, catching up on my reading and lifting nothing heavier than a book and a bottle, and by the end of the year I was totally cured.

Does it every time.

And I haven't had a relapse since then. Not one.

It's true, you haven't. You know, there must be thousands of bottles in this Crusader wine cellar.

There are.

Yes, thought Joe, and the baking priest knows his Latin so what's to keep me from getting him to forge a letter from someone to someone, dated in A.D. 1122, proving the stuff is authentic Crusader cognac worth a fortune? There's money in that for sure, and we're talking about treasure even though I haven't found the map to it yet.

Who ran the Knights Hospitalers?

They had a grand master.

A letter from the grand master, thought Joe, that's the job. A formal yet tasty document to the king of France offering warm thanks for his Christmas contribution to the good works being done by the boys in Jerusalem, in keeping with the spirit of charity ten thousand pleasing bottles of much appreciated rare cognac for thirsty pilgrims in the Holy City.

Haj Harun slammed a bottle against the wall and broke off its neck.

Care for a sip?

The fumes rushed up at Joe. He gagged and doubled over, coughing at what might have been vinegar five or six centuries ago but was now a noxious gas unique in the world. He pulled Haj Harun out of the room and the old man followed, still clasping his ram's horn. After walking for another two or three minutes, Haj Harun stopped and whispered that it was just around the corner.

What is? asked Joe.

The great assembly hall of the Crusaders. And we have to be careful now, they carry all sorts of lances and swords and spiked maces. Just terrible to see, more frightening than the Babylonians.

Joe looked down at his shabby patched uniform. He fingered his Victoria Cross uneasily.

The VC was a cross all right and no mistaking it, which might help to establish his Christian piety. But the uniform? How could they know it belonged to an officer of light cavalry in the Crimean War? A hero who'd survived a famous suicidal charge launched on behalf of Christian righteousness? They wouldn't even have heard of that charge.

Are you ready? whispered Haj Harun.

Unarmed, muttered Joe. But as ready as I'll ever be against the combined might of the First Crusade.

Haj Harun got down on his hands and knees and gestured for Joe to do the same. The torch was extinguished. Joe peered down the tunnel and saw a faint light at the end.

The ceiling of the tunnel sloped down to meet them as they crawled quietly forward and squeezed through a hole, emerging on a smooth ledge flat on their stomachs. Joe noticed the rocks around them had been cut away in neat rectangular blocks. They peeked over the edge of the ledge.

Joe's eyes narrowed. They were facing a high square chamber, not a cave but man-made, carved out of the rock. Torches lined the walls and there no more than ten feet below them was an impressive crowd of several hundred men wearing brightly colored robes and a bewildering array of hats, most of them tall and peaked.

Flags and pennants were everywhere. At one end of the subterranean hall an elevated wooden platform had been erected. On it sat a half-dozen potentates in particularly ornate robes, listening attentively as one of their number addressed the assembly.

The new and enlarged College of Cardinals, thought Joe. Rome lost out after all. They've brought their business back here and that must be the new pope who's just been elected. Jerusalem wins in the end.

Haj Harun touched his arm.

The one who's speaking is Godfrey of Bouillon, he whispered.

Has the voice of an English drill sergeant, thought Joe.

And the man to his right, whispered Haj Harun, is his brother, Baldwin I, the first Latin king of Jerusalem.

The others on the dais are Raymond of Toulouse, Robert of Normandy, Robert II of Flanders, Bohemond and Tancred. In front of them are the two men who started it all, Peter the Hermit and Walter the Penniless.

A scruffy lot, muttered Joe, trying to read the slogans on the flags and pennants.

From what he could make out between the cryptic symbols, the assembly was a gathering of a group called the Order of the Mystic Shrine, a society of Freemasons made up of men with high Masonic degrees. The speaker was saying that Masons from many lodges in many countries had made the long journey to Jerusalem to take part in this international conclave of the Order, the first ever held in the rock chambers beneath the western ramparts of the Old City that had long been popularly known as Solomon's Quarries, the spot where stonemasons in antiquity are said to have cut and dressed the stone blocks used by Solomon to build his temple.

And since we trace the origins of Freemasonry back to those very stonemasons, continued the speaker of the platform, it is truly a momentous event in history, albeit a secret one the world will never know about, for us to gather here and perform the mystical rites of our fraternal Order in the lofty chamber where Solomon's temple was hewed from the earth, a chamber which can honestly be said to be Solomon's temple in eternity, this spacious area where we now stand, once carved out and emptied by our brothers, being nothing less than the material form of the spiritual shrine we carry within us and treasure in common.

Flags fluttered and pennants waved. There were cries of here here, yes yes, more more, true true. The speaker smiled beneficently and raised his hand for silence.

By God that's cute, thought Joe, the complicated cant of stones. Cant as can and emptied quarries for heads. Mystical all right, at least to me. What's it all mean?

Haj Harun was urgently tugging him by the sleeve, so distraught Joe couldn't understand his frantic whispering.

What did you say?

I said we have to stop them now before it's too late, before they have a chance to return to their armies.

There may never be another opportunity like this, all of them in one room together, to be dealt with in a single blow. Come on. We have to go down there.

We'd be surrounded, whispered Joe. Black and Tans all over us.

When you're defending Jerusalem you're always surrounded.

But the odds are disastrous. Only two of us against two hundred of them.

When you're defending Jerusalem the odds are always like that, whispered Haj Harun hurriedly. They never get better and sometimes they get worse. Come on.

No, I still think we ought to wait for developments. Maybe they'll set fire to themselves or something.

Those peaked hats will be a definite fire hazard when the torches burn down a bit.

Haj Harun groaned softly.

But they killed a hundred thousand of us the last time. We simply can't let that happen again. The thought of it is making me hear noises in my head.

Steady man, whispered Joe, easy does it. No unwanted noises in the head at this critical juncture in history.

Noises, repeated Haj Harun desperately, I can hear them coming. Clanging their swords on the cobblestones and slaughtering the innocent until the streets are running with blood, oh it was horrible. The streets were knee-deep with bodies.