Sanctus

Chapter 127

Cornelius had never been in this part of the mountain before. The stone staircase rising steadily upwards was ancient, and narrow, and dusty from lack of use. The guard led the way, his flambeau sending orange light over the rough walls and the slump of the girl lying over his shoulder, her arms hanging down like the legs of a slaughtered deer. Cornelius could hear no hum of voices, no clatter and echo of distant activity — the usual trapped noise of the mountain. The only thing to disturb the silence was the sound of their own breathing and the steady tramp of their feet pressing onwards and up the relentless staircase.

It took them almost twenty minutes to reach the top and by the time he stepped into the small vaulted cave marking the end of their climb Cornelius was sweating through his new green robes. Candles set into the walls spilled enough light to reveal several tunnels leading away from the cave, each one narrow, and roughly cut. A dim light wavered at the end of the central tunnel and the Sanctus guard headed towards it, his stride still steady despite having carried the girl almost the entire height of the mountain. Cornelius followed, with the Abbot close behind, and had to stoop as he entered, the passage having been cut thousands of years previously by men who rarely grew higher than the wild grass that had once whispered on the great plains surrounding the mountain. He continued forward with his head bowed, fitting reverence for what he knew must lie ahead. It was the Capelli DeusSpecialis, the Chapel of God’s Holy Secret — the place where the Sacrament was kept.

As they got closer, the glow at the end of the tunnel increased, throwing more light across the walls and ceiling. It revealed that, far from being roughly chiselled as Cornelius had first thought, they were covered with hundreds of carved icons. His eyes picked out individual images as they slipped past: a serpent twisting round a tree that was heavy with fruit; another tree, this one in the shape of the Tau, with a man standing in the shade of its outstretched branches. There were also crude figures of what looked like women in various states of agony — one being broken on a rack, another screaming in fire, another being ripped apart by men with swords and axes. Each one looked the same to him. They looked like the woman he had imagined in the burkha and seeing their agony brought him a certain peace. It reminded him of a time, a few days before he lost his platoon, when they had stumbled across an ancient temple in the desert scrub off the main Kabul road. Its crumbling walls had been covered with similar hieroglyphics, simple lines worn down by time and weather, depicting ancient and brutal things long forgotten and rendered to dust.

As he continued down the tunnel the icons on the walls grew fainter, as if thousands of years of passage had worn them thin like ancient memories, until finally they melted back into the rock and the passage widened, opening out into a larger antechamber. Cornelius stood up as he emerged into it, squinting at the sudden brightness that glowed hot and red from a small forge built into the far wall. Arranged in a line in front of it, sketched by the Halloween light, were four round whetstones set on wooden frames, and behind them a large circular stone dominated the back wall. It was perhaps a little shorter than a grown man, and looked like an old-fashioned millstone with four wooden stakes jutting from its surface at even points round the edge. The sign of the Tau was carved into its centre. When Cornelius saw it he thought for a moment that this strange stone was the Sacrament and he wondered at its meaning. Then he noticed the deep, straight channels cut into the rock above and below it and saw how the wall behind was worn smooth.

It was a door.

The true Sacrament must lie beyond it.

Down through the dark tunnels, in the lower part of the mountain, the library began to flicker with the lights of returning scholars. One of them belonged to Athanasius. It had taken the guards nearly an hour of searching and checking before they had declared the incident a false alarm and finally re-opened the doors.

The entrance chamber seemed uncommonly bright as Athanasius passed back into it, illuminated as it was by the combined glow of all the monks who now congregated there to gossip and speculate. He saw Father Thomas emerge from the control room, a look of professional concern on his face, followed closely by Father Malachi pecking at his heels like a stressed goose. He looked away quickly, for fear their eyes might meet and their shared secret arc between them like electricity. Instead he clutched the files he was holding to his chest and stared resolutely ahead towards the darkness beyond the archway that led back into the main library and the forbidden knowledge he’d left hidden there.