Authors: Matilde Asensi
“What now? Didn’t you say that we were going the right way?” Jonas asked the witch.
“And we were going the right away, I assure you. I don’t understand this either.”
With one quick movement, she took the torch from me and began to examine the curved walls, tapping them with the palm of her hand and kicking up the dirt with her feet.
“There’s something over here!” She joyously exclaimed after a while. “Look!”
The boy and I leaned over the clearing that Sara had made on the floor with her sandals. A small engraving, barely the size of my palm, and very well made, displayed the figure of a rooster with its neck outstretched and its beak open as if it were crowing. I recognized it straight away and remembered where I had recently seen an identical image.
“What could it mean?” Jonas asked me, arching his eyebrows.
“The rooster can symbolize many things,” I explained, letting my bag fall to the floor and quickly pulled out my pouch of remedies which I had brought in case we needed medicine during our journey and which, so far, I had only used to make the purgative I had prepared back in Najera to get rid of old Nobody. “Because of its relationship with dawn,” I continued, “it symbolizes the victory of light over darkness. Amongst the ancient Greeks and Romans, and still today in some Eastern areas, the rooster represents combat, fighting and value. However, for Christians, it is a symbol of the Resurrection and the return of Christ.”
As I spoke, I pulled fistfuls of sachets containing the healing herbs from the pouch and, when they were all on the floor, I began to undo the strings that held them together and roughly threw the contents into the air, Sara and Jonas watched me open-mouthed.
“What on earth are you doing, micer?” the witch finally managed to ask.
“Jonas, do you remember that in the crypt of St. John of Ortega we found a parchment of leather with the Templar seal?
“Yes. You grabbed it as we were escaping.”
“Well, the day I was on my own in the Hospital of the King in Burgos, waiting to hear from you, I remembered that I hadn’t examined it, so I broke the seal and opened it. It was a piece of leather, about half a yard long and half a yard wide, and it was covered in secretive drawings accompanied by short Latin texts written in Visigoth writing. The heading was a verse from the Gospel of Matthew: Nihil enim est opertum quod non revelabitur, aut occultum quod non scietur
(48)
, ‘There is nothing hidden that will not be revealed, and nothing secret that will not be made known’. At that moment, of course, I didn’t understand it but there was no doubt in my mind that it was something important that I should hold onto and seeing as I didn’t trust Joffroi of Le Mans, I began to think about a safe way to hide it, one that would not arouse suspicions, so I cut the leather up into pieces, more or less of the same size and shape as the ones I had used to keep the herbs in, and replaced the old pouches for the new ones.”
“And …?” Sara urged when she saw that I had stopped to take a breath.
“And …? Isn’t it already clear enough? Well, take a good look, witch, and tell me whether or not that rooster is identical to the rooster drawn on this piece of sheepskin.”
I held out one of the pieces which she took from my hand and illuminated it with the torch, taking a good look at it.
“It’s the same sign!” she exclaimed, showing it to Jonas who, as he was almost a head taller than her, leaned over her shoulder.
“There’s something here,” said the boy, taking the fragment from Sara’s hands. “Can you see? It’s got a stamp on it. It’s very blurred but it’s definitely connected to the symbol of the rooster.”
It was then my turn to grab the leather. The boy was right, there was something else there: I could make out the image of a slender tree rising above a reclining figure, crowned by a spherical Chi-Rho. It was clearly a shortened representation of the Tree of Jesse, with the prophet Isaiah sleeping at the base and Jesus Christ on the top.
“Et egredietur virga de radice Iesse
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,” Jonas recited, who seemed to have reached the same conclusion I had.
“I see that you haven’t forgotten your years of puer oblatus,” I said, pleased.
He blushed to the tips of his ears and his mouth curved into a satisfied smile which he tried to hide to no avail.
“Because I’ve got a very good memory I was always chosen to help with the Services at the monastery and I learned them from start to finish,” he said proudly. “I can’t remember it very well now but before I could recite the whole thing, without making any mistakes. The part I liked the most was the Dies Irae.”
“So it won’t be difficult for you to explain this enigma.”
“All I know is that this tree is the Tree of Jesse that describes the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the forty-two kings of Judah, based on the prophecy of Isaiah, whose first verse I recited.”
“Since you know the Divine Services so well, tell me: which of them recites the names of the forty-two Kings of Judah?”
Jonas thought for a minute.
“On Christmas Eve, during the first Service after midnight which is held to commemorate the birth of Jesus.”
“Haven’t you figured it out yet …?” I asked, watching his surprised face. “Well, tell me how that first Mass held after the birth of Jesus is popularly known.”
His face lit up with a big smile.
“Ah, O.K.! Mass of the Rooster!”
“Of the Rooster?” inquired Sara, looking in turn at the animal drawn on the floor and the one drawn on the leather.
“You’re starting to get it.”
“Not really,” she snorted. “I don’t understand a thing.”
“Really? Well, look.”
I stood in the middle of the chamber and lifted my head up into the darkness above me, stretching ut my neck like the rooster in the pictures.
“
Liber generationis Iesu Christi, filii David, filii Abraham
,” I began to recite loudly. I was really hoping that I didn’t forget any of the names, as it had been many years since I had recited the genealogy of Jesus, one of the common memory exercises in boy’s studies. “
Abraham genuit Isaac, Isaac autem genuit Iacob, Iacob autem genuit Iudam et fratres eius, Iudas autem genuit Pha-res et Zara de Thamar, Phares autem genuit Esrom, Esrom autem genuit Aram, Aram autem genuit Aminadab, Aminadab autem ge-nuit Naasson, Naasson autem genuit Salmon, Salmon autem genuit Booz de Rachab, Booz autem genuit Obed ex Ruth, Obed autem genuit Iesse, Iesse autem genuit David regem.”
I completed the first group of fourteen kings — the genealogy of Christ is always listed in three groups of fourteen, as St. Matthew relates in his Gospel —, and I stopped to calm my pulse and my breathing. Nothing out of the ordinary happened.
“Have you finished already?” asked Sara with a touch of irony.
“He’s still got two groups of kings,” explained Jonas. I carried on.
“
David autem rex genuit Salomonem ex ea quae fuit Uriae, Salomon autem genuit Roboam, Roboam autem genuit Abiam, Abia autem genuit Asa, Asa autem genuit Iosaphat, Iosaphat autem genuit Ioram, Ioram autem genuit Oziam, Ozias autem genuit Ioa-tham, Ioatham autem genuit Achaz, Achaz autem genuit Ezechiam, Ezechias autem genuit Manassen, Manasses autem genuit Amon, Amon autem genuit Iosiam, Iosias autem genuit Iechoniam et fratres eius in transmigratione Babylonis.”
I paused again after completing the second group, between the generations born before and after the Babylonian captivity. But I still couldn’t hear anything in particular.
“
Et post transmigrationem Babylonis
,” I continued rather disheartened, “
Iechonias genuit Salathihel, Salathihel autem genuit Zorobabel, Zorobabel autem genuit Abiud, Abiud autem genuit Eliachim, Eliachim autem genuit Azor, Azor autem genuit Saddoc, Saddoc autem genuit Achim, Achim autem genuit Eliud, Eliud autem genuit Eleazar, Eleazar autem genuit Matthan, Mat-than autem genuit Iacob, Iacob autem genuit Ioseph, virum Mariae, de qua natus est Iesus qui vocatur Christus
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.”
A thud, like a mechanism slowly starting up, could be heard over our heads when I said the name of Mary. However high I held the torch, the light didn’t reach the ceiling, so we couldn’t see what was happening up there until an iron chain, as thick as a man’s arm, entered the reduced circle of light. It slowly descended, lazily unwinding from somewhere high up in the arched ceiling.
When it was within my reach I grabbed hold of it, and once it had stopped, pulled down hard. Another strange noise, like cogs clicking around each other, could be heard from somewhere behind the rock wall in front of us. Sara took an awkward step back, and stood next to me.
“How can words start up a mechanism?” She asked in awe.
“All I can tell you is that in certain places of the world, where giant slabs and huge stones, mysteriously transported by humans in the distant past and balanced on sometimes implausible plinths, vibrate and roar to certain sounds or when specific words are said before them. Nobody knows how, who or why but the point is that they exist. In your country they’re called rouleurs, and here, oscillating stones. I’ve heard of two places where they can be found, one in Rennes-les-Bains, in Languedoc, and the other in Galicia, in Cabio.
The rock wall gently slid down, without any other sound other than the clicking of the devices that moved it. The passageway was free at last. On the other side we saw a chamber identical to the one in which we were standing, with the only difference being some steps that went up to a higher level.
“Jonas, do you remember the second scene from the chapel in Eunate?” I said suddenly, evoking the image of that Navarran column.
“That one where blind Bartimaeus was calling Jesus?”
“Exactly. Do you remember the message on the tablet that had the words of Bartimaeus?”
“Hmm!.. Fili David miserere mei.”
“Fili David miserere mei! ‘Son of David, have mercy on me’. Don’t you get it?”
“Get what?” he asked, surprised.
“Fili David, Fili David …,” I exclaimed. “Bartimaeus shouted ‘Son of David’, which is the term used to assert the royal descent of the Messiah, his genealogy. And the verse from the Gospel of Matthew begins
Liber generationis Iesu Christi, filii David
… Don’t you see? I still don’t know why it started the mechanism that opened this rock but I don’t doubt that they are related.”
We started walking again along the endless tunnels and endless passageways. Our sandals had turned a reddish color from the earth and our eyes had sharpened to enable us to see in the dark. We didn’t need to bend down anymore to make out the markings at the entrances to the tunnels; a glance as we were going past was enough to get a good look at them.
I was starting to get very worried about the fact that there weren’t any Templar patrols anywhere. I had left the dungeon convinced that sooner or later we would have to hide or confront the freires, and the fact that we had been on the run for over an hour without coming across a soul was beginning to make me nervous. No footsteps, no shadows, no human sounds ….
“What’s that noise in the distance?” Sara suddenly asked.
“I can’t hear anything,” I said.
“It’s a murmur, like a droning sound.”
Jonas and I listened carefully but we couldn’t hear anything. The only sound was the faint crackling of the torch and the echo of our footsteps. Sara, however, insisted again a little while later:
“Can you really not hear that?”
“No, I really can’t.”
“Well, it keeps getting louder, as if we were approaching something that makes a humming sound.”
“I can hear it!” said Jonas happily.
“Thank goodness for that!”
“It’s a chant!” the boy explained. “A psalmody, a kind of hum. Can’t you hear it, sire?”
“No,” I grumbled.
We carried on, and after passing the opening to a mine marked with a triple sign, I could finally make out the noise. It was indeed a monotonous chant, a De profundis sung by a formidable chorus of male voices. That was the reason, I told myself, why we hadn’t come across a single Templar since we had escaped from the dungeon: They had all gathered at the end of the passageway we had just entered, and were holding a Divine Service. Never, in my whole life, had I had the opportunity to listen to such a large group of men singing in unison and the feeling that it was awaking in me was one of deep exaltation, of intense rapture, as if the revelry was plucking at my nerves like harp strings. The noise got loader and loader the closer we got and after turning a bend in the tunnel, we also caught a glimpse of a bright glow. Jonas covered his ears, deafened by the noise of the chant which was considerably enhanced by the acoustics of the curved ceilings but just then, at the end of a slight rise in tone, the voices suddenly fell silent. A faint rumbling sound hung in the warm humid air.
With an imperious wave of my hand, I ordered maximum stealth. I had just seen a shadow in the darkness, a slight movement in the light at the end of the tunnel. Sara and Jonas pinned themselves to the rock with a look of horror. There was no doubt that there was someone up there, and he couldn’t find out that we were there. I signaled for them to stay still and I continued silently, with gentle footsteps, holding my breath. The passageway narrowed like a funnel until it was human size and at the very end, in front of a balustrade overlooking the emptiness, I saw the back of a Templar with a helmet on his head and shrouded by the long white cloak with the large bright red cross with wide ends. He seemed to be on duty and was very attentive to what was going on beyond the railing. Trying not to be discovered, I cautiously retreated, walking backwards without losing him from my sight but that day Lady Luck was not on my side, and a damn pebble, small as a mouse’s tooth, embedded itself between the straps of my sandals, digging into my flesh and throwing me off balance. I swung out my arms and turned around as quietly as I could but the palm of my hand sought balance on the rock, making a sharp cracking sound. The Templar turned around; I assume that he wasn’t expecting to find anything, because when he saw me, his eyes nearly popped out of their sockets. Unbelievably, he took a few very vital seconds to react, to decide what he should do, and although he composed himself quickly, the thrust of my arm throwing the scalpru was much quicker and it cleanly embedded itself in his throat, under his Adam’s apple, preventing him from making any noise and cutting his life short. His eyes became glassy and he began, absurdly, to try to lower his head to look at the end of the weapon sticking out of his throat but he couldn’t: A river of blood started to gush from the wound and his large body staggered. He would have fallen like a bottle of wine had I not been holding him by the waist.