Newton’s Fire

THIRTY-SIX
I

The afternoon was brutal for Luke. The floor of their makeshift prison was cold and hard, the cuffs chafed his wrists raw, and every time either he or Rachel said anything to Jay or to each other, the bruiser would threaten them with his taser. And then there was the fear. It had been one thing coping with occasional spikes of it over the past day or so, but now it was a constant, crippling dread. And not just for himself. The thought that something terrible might happen to Rachel because of him was a special kind of torment.

Shadows on the facing wall marked the slow passage of time. Day ceded to evening. The room grew gloomy enough for the bruiser to turn on lights. Others came and went, murmuring by the door. They didn’t realize that the room’s acoustics made snatches of their discussions sufficiently audible for Luke to learn their names. The bruiser was Pete, Blackbeard was Kieran, and their fair-haired boss was Walters. The three of them seemed to work for the American called Croke, who now appeared at the door and beckoned to Jay. ‘We’re almost through,’ he said. ‘Time to come with me.’

‘I’m not leaving my friends,’ Jay told him.

‘You have to. Your uncle insists.’

‘I’m not leaving them.’

Croke sighed. ‘Don’t make me use force.’

‘Force may get me downstairs,’ Jay said prissily. ‘It can’t make me talk to my uncle.’

Croke nodded to Pete. Pete grabbed Jay by his wrist. Jay began to wail and shriek like a spoiled toddler. Pete shrugged and looked to Croke for permission to teach him manners. Croke shook his head. Rather to Luke’s surprise, Jay did indeed have real leverage. That was a limited consolation, however, so long as he and Rachel were held up here, far from safety. He spoke without really thinking. ‘Take us down with you,’ he said. ‘We won’t cause any trouble. We give you our word.’

‘Your word!’ scoffed Croke.

‘Yes,’ said Luke. ‘Our word.’

Croke walked over, crouched down in front of him. ‘I want you to remember something,’ he said. ‘We’re still holding your two friends from Oxford. Fuck with me and it won’t just be your own neck you’ll forfeit. Understand?’

‘We understand,’ said Rachel.

Croke stood up again, turned around to Walters. ‘Can you handle them?’

‘As long as they’re all friendlies downstairs,’ said Walters.

‘They’re all friendlies,’ Croke assured him. ‘But they might not exactly welcome spectators.’ He bit his lower lip. ‘Take them to the cathedral floor; only bring them down to the crypt once we’ve broken through. That way we’ll present them with a fait accompli.’

‘How will we know when you break through?’ asked Walters.

Croke laughed. ‘We’re taking up half the floor. I imagine you’ll hear us.’

Jay came across once he was gone. ‘I told you they needed me,’ he said.

‘Your uncle, more like,’ said Luke. ‘Who the hell is he?’

‘A great man, Luke. A great man.’ He sounded exuberant now that the skirmish had been won. ‘You’ll like him. You’ll both really like him. He’s not a scientist or a historian, but he knows his Newton, honestly he does.’

‘You never mentioned him before.’

‘I didn’t know him until recently. He’s not really my uncle. My third cousin twice removed. He just likes us to call him Uncle.’

‘Us?’

Jay shook his head and turned more towards Rachel. ‘You have to understand,’ he said. ‘Not every page that Newton ever wrote has been checked and translated and understood. Not properly. Not by a Newton expert. Not by someone who knows Greek, Latin, Hebrew and French as well as English. Not by someone familiar with his handwriting and abbreviations, who understands his natural philosophy, theology and alchemy. That’s my project: to study everything he ever wrote. Every page, every sentence, every word.’

‘Out of my way, kid,’ said Walters. He uncuffed Luke and Rachel from the radiators, allowing them to stand, stretch, flex their fingers. ‘No games,’ he warned.

‘No games,’ agreed Luke.

Jay walked alongside them to the door, eager to finish telling them about his self-appointed mission. ‘Every word that Newton ever wrote,’ he said. ‘Mostly, it’s easy. The papers have all been photographed and put online. I never even have to leave my flat. But not everything’s like that.’ They reached the steps, began heading down. ‘Not all the Yahuda Archive is available online, for example. That’s why I had to go to Jerusalem, to see the rest for myself. I hate going to new places. But I have family there, so I got in touch with them. That’s when Uncle Avram offered me a room. He even arranged a special pass for me at the National Library of Israel. And that’s where I found them, on the reverse of a pair of pages about the ancient cubit: faint traces of ancient texts and sketches that Newton had himself rubbed out, but not perfectly-’

‘Shut it,’ said Walters, as they neared the foot of the steps. ‘I want silence.’

They emerged onto the empty cathedral floor a few moments later, went over to the crypt stairs. They could hear hammering and drilling below. It wasn’t yet time. They milled around as they waited, looking at the altar, the pillars, upwards at the great cupola.

‘So have you worked it out, then?’ asked Jay.

‘Worked what out?’ asked Luke.

‘What this is all about. What we’re about to find.’

‘No,’ said Luke. ‘What are we about to find?’

Jay gave a reproving cluck of the tongue. ‘Come on, Luke. Haven’t you even noticed the geometry of this place?’

‘Eight sides topped by a Dome,’ said Luke. ‘What about it?

‘Oh.’ He looked downcast for a moment. But then he cheered up. ‘But I bet you don’t know where Wren got the idea from, do you?’

‘You mean the tomb of Christian Rosencreutz?’ said Luke.

‘No!’

‘That Bourbon chapel in Paris, then?’

‘St-Denis?’ exclaimed Jay excitedly. ‘Of course not St-Denis. How can you be so obtuse? Don’t you know what the English believed back then? They believed themselves descended from a lost tribe of Israel. It was almost an article of faith.’

‘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.’