Chapter XII: Mystery of Mecca
October 25, 1582
With both hands on the sides of that large wagon, Renault de Fronsac eased his upper frame past the threshold of the moving cart and cast his eyes upon the distant light of the coming dawn. The chilly Arabian night was soon to give way to the amorous heated kisses of the rising sun. He paused for a moment, imagining the bidding his masters in Japan through their Substitute in Madrid had given for him. It was in this deep contemplation of the changing darkness that the rushing of dirt against wagon wheel seemed to pass unnoticed into the ethereal light blueness of the morning.
The dust cloud that followed the large covered wagon reminded him of the urgency that he was put into. The particles moving up into the air and, being suspended there for a moment, returning again to the trail spoke of the nature of his visit to the Peninsula of the Arabs.
“We are almost there, Maestro!” called out trusty Amin from the front of the carriage.
The carriage itself was an interesting contraption. Designed by engineers employed by the Lions, it was larger than usual and they had nicknamed it “The Rook”. The entire mechanism was pulled by several horses at the front and driven by faithful Amin. Faithful, and now rich, Amin. Renault turned around casually away from the rear open portion and gave an acknowledgement to the driver in the front.
It was then that the 35 year old Lion turned his attention to the very center of that carriage. “How is Kit today?” asked the gentleman.
One would suppose that the large construction of the wagon itself was because of the passengers. Most notably that of Renault’s black Spanish Mustang chewing calmly on some hay on the bottom of the wagon without any mind to the jostling nature of their journey.
“Kit’s ready as ever,” a young lady responded. Another young lady gave a smile and nod in approval of her associate’s words as they both gently stroked the horse’s mane.
“With Bonnie and Avril taking care of him,” Amin yelled from behind the front curtain, “I don’t think that horse will ever get tired!”
Renault smiled back at the two young ladies. Kit had been their horse, from their noble haciendas in the New World. The young pony was transported over to Spain as part of a gift to Renault for helping to secure several French nobles’ estates in the Spaniard dominated Americas. As with the rest of Renault’s many possessions, Kit was utilized for the benefit of the Lions. He believed in the mission of his masters. Petty national differences would have to wait until at least the threat of Armageddon was dealt with.
Renault looked at his black stallion with affinity. They had been through many adventures together, this would be yet another.
“Sir, we’re approaching the battle lines now!” announced Amin.
Aside from the rumble and tumble of the rocks and dirt below them, Renault and the young girls heard a gentle rushing noise echoed by a trembling murmur. Their dust trail behind them now intermingled with a larger cloud attempting to blot out the slowly illuminating countryside. They had arrived at the Battle of Mecca.
“It’s time, ladies. I promise I’ll bring him back in one piece,” Renault said quietly as he donned his helmet.
In that flat area of the desert, a great noise began to emanate from the very ground and permeate through the dust in the wind. The twenty thousand troops of General Cardenas were clashing in full force against a horde of fifteen thousand Persians. The battle was already decided by sheer size.
After mounting his horse, Renault nodded to the young ladies and slowly moved Kit backwards with steady guidance. The other two in that chamber approached the rear and tapped on the edge of the long floor board. At that, two small wheels propped out from underneath the long wagon and the last ten feet of the floorboard descended to push those wheels to dirt.
With the crashing sound of wood against ground, Renault tapped against the sides of Kit’s belly and gave the signal for the horse to perform the exit that it had been so accustomed to. With an almost hopping start it backed away down the ramp and bucked its hind legs evenly as soon as they left stationary wood and met rapidly moving ground.
For a normal horse this would have been suicide, but with a quick hop of the front legs, the New World mustang managed to exit the moving wagon while running at full speed forward. As the two caretakers slowly raised the platform upward again to close the rear, “The Rook” swerved to the right. With the large object out of his field of vision, the battle lines up ahead became discernable despite the massive screen of dust. Kit and Renault approached the lines with amazing speed.
“Saint Jago!” came the battle cry, and the right flank of that column erupted in concordant upheaval. The battle was joined and the lone Knight would now begin his mission.
---
The Cardinal sat uncomfortably in that wooden chair. That particular piece of furniture was probably older than he was; without the refinement, of course. These chairs of the Silent Room were always the simplest affairs; they were not meant to be seen by casual courtesans.
“Your Eminence, all seventy thousand troops in the Levant are engaged in action,” one of the attendants noted as he approached the looming Master Map. He pointed to the various flags pinned onto the areas around Syria, the Jordan, and further south into the areas of the former Hedjaz.”
“Good, good,” replied the Cardinal, still trying to adjust his robust frame to the relatively small seats. He motioned for another page to approach him.
“News from Japan, your Eminence,” the page announced handing the Cardinal the sealed parchment. It had Antonio’s seal at the top.
When the letter was handed to Cardinal DeWitt, all other activity in the Silent Room stopped, and all eyes fell upon the parchment. News from the new Imperial Stronghold in Japan always came a few months lagged and were usually far between. In the stillness of the room, one almost heard an echo of the wax seal cracked open.
The Cardinal read the note carefully in the proximity of the candlelight and his eyes seemed to race from left to right anxiously.
“Assign General Montejo to the corps in Lebanon and order him to march to Astrakhan,” was the sudden command from the Cardinal as his eyes left the paper and looked upward toward the wall Map ahead of him.
A soldier from the edge of the table suddenly leaned in urgently stating, “sir, I’m sure you understand this, but if we leave Antioch open it breaks the—”
“I’m fully aware of this, Colonel,” was the cold response from the stern figure. The candlelight seemed to cast shadows around his grim expression, momentarily hiding and revealing those sky blues with a strange determination. The movement of the flame seemed to sway backward and forward in relation to the hot blood that flowed within that man.
“Nonetheless,” Cardinal DeWitt continued, “The Jerusalem corps will have to go on continuous march between the two areas… a patrol.”
This particular notion seemed to confuse the rest of the people in the room. The only ones who were not immediately quarrelsome were the silent ones jotting down orders, passing parchments, and moving the pinned flags on the World Map.
The idea itself was truly surprising to them. Up until now, the prescribed mode of fighting had always been to have corps of men stationed in ‘lanes’ of combat. That is to say that each corps was in charge of their quadrant of the front line and they would only push forward if the other corps around them had secured that no one could cut behind them. Now, it would seem that their master in Japan was ordering one corps to do the work of two by being a mobile army stretching over a large stretch of land.
“Obviously the fortresses at Antioch and Jerusalem will hold against invaders,” the Cardinal boomed over the crescendo of the room, “and they will hold long enough for the Army to return. The only way this new mode of combat can be beaten is if an enemy sends a large enough force to one side which we expect he will not.”
Despite these words, the discussion continued as was apt to happen amongst the merely initiated of the members of that Silent Room. The Cardinal’s orders were already being carried out. It was a dangerous gambit, that prelate thought. If it worked, however, Spain would control the trade all of the world’s hubs sans the ones in Novgorod, Beijing, Malacca, Constantinople, and Samarkand.
It would be a risky move, however. Astrakhan was deep in Persian territory and, like Bihar, would be impossible to reinforce from the outside. Apparently it was a gambit the gray eminence in Osaka wanted to pursue.
“Your Eminence, I have some recent news,” a new messenger reported as he arrived from one of the many portals to that chamber.
“Yes? What is it?” replied the Cardinal slightly weary and purposefully keeping himself closer to the warmth of the candles’ flames.
“Mecca is ours.”
---
Renault studied the edges of the most sacred site of Islam closely. Despite being a devout Christian, he kept a distant respect for the object. It was, after all, an object which incited hundreds of thousands of people around the world to worship. It was a central praying point, much like his own crucifix. But the stylistic similarities ended there for him. He would not be saddened when the object itself would be shipped to the Museum in Madrid. He would not be saddened when a church would be erected where he was now standing. The Masjid al-Haram would only continue to exist as documented history. If they were to complain, he thought to himself, he would point to Constantinople and Jerusalem and ask them, as an example, what those minarets were doing around the Church of Holy Wisdom.
Putting aside his meandering thoughts, he looked up at the beautiful embroidery on the covering of that brick structure known as the Kaaba. That tower cube loomed in front of him with the immensity of entire peoples. The intricate weaving of words from the Qur’an flowed sometimes like reeds on a field swaying in an afternoon breeze and other times like tall spears of a marching column of fierce warriors.
Renault approached the object slowly as if he could hear the voices of millions of people channeling prayers through it to heaven, to the al-Baytu l-Maˤmur supposedly directly above it in the sky. When he reached out to grasp at the brickwork, despite the constant rebuilding it felt as ancient as the earth. It was then that the silver band of the fourth corner of the structure took his attention.
That seasoned archeologist moved closer to it, that Black Stone which was worshipped in the pre-Islamic days and then venerated as stone from Heaven. How very appropriate, he thought to himself.
The massive silver encasing was like a sideways eye gazing with a black empty center into the colourful world around it. The opening to the casing was large enough to fit a human head. Renault did not care to satisfy his curiosity of its dimensions but merely inspected the inside and the black fragments of the once larger object.
“Is that what we are looking for, Maestro?” Amin suddenly asked from a few paces behind Renault. Amin, unlike his master, was keeping his distance from the holy site. Despite Amin’s conversion to the One True Faith, he still held some reverence for his former focus of worship.
Renault kept looking into the gaping hole when Amin asked, and he put his hand upon one side of the circular opening. For some reason it felt like a conch and if one were to simply put their ear to the opening they could hear a far off ocean, a distant wind, a howling, perhaps.
“I’m afraid not, Amin,” replied the Lion turning back to his companion and walked across the inner courtyard of that mosque.
Amin soured his face in surprise. “But Maestro, that is surely the same kind of rock we found in the Persian treasure holds on the Syrian border,” insisted Amin.
“Oh yes,” replied the Maestro, “that would be correct, but those are just the fragments recovered after the Qarmatians had broken the original nearly seven hundred years ago. The main chunk would have been hidden in Bahrain.”
Renault had kept walking into the various corridors of the large building and Amin ran a small distance to keep up with him, still reluctant to leave that precious stone behind thinking all this time their task had been completed.
“But, Maestro, it is still a long way to Bahrain…” protested the Arabian.
At one of the foundation walls of the building, Renault smiled to himself cautiously. His stomach, for some reason, started to get knots and he turned around almost dramatically to his shocked friend.
“Luckily,” Renault explained, “the Persians conquered Bahrain a few decades back, and intelligence sources have told me that it is here that they reunited the fragments.
As Amin looked at his master with only partial understanding, Renault gently leaned against a wall. To Amin’s surprise but not to Renault’s, the rock face gently folded backward illustrated by the sound of rock grinding against rock.
“A secret passage?” Amin asked excitedly. His master gave him a grinning nod.
“I’ll be going in alone from here. It will probably be too dangerous for anyone else to come,” instructed Renault as he began to pick up some supplies he had already stored near that entrance. He must have discovered it earlier.
“But master it’s—”
“Please, Amin, I’ll be alright,” was the insistent reply.
With a lit torch and hefty smile, that Lion of Meissen bid his companion farewell for now and closed the stone doorway back into place. When the fixture hit its resting groove, the entire chamber seemed to echo with its reverberation.
Renault had with him, aside from his espada on his hilt, a Celtic broadsword sheathed along his back, a skin of water, a knife, some parchment with charcoal, some bread wrapped in palm leaves, and his most potent weapon, his rosary. Naturally, it would be another decade before that popular tool of devotion would be called by that name.
The corridor he passed through was a relatively narrow affair and descending quite frequently through sets of stairs that seemed to flow downwards in a helical fashion. At times he would notice old inscriptions on the wall in Arabic; most likely verses from the Qur’an. Renault was fluent enough in Arabic from learning it as a transfer scholar at the University of Alexandria, but he was too excited to bother reading them. Unfortunately for him, the blocks of text seemed to become more and denser the further he descended. No matter, he thought, he had to get to the Timepiece.
After perhaps fifteen sets of stairs and hallways, the chamber opened into a large enclosure with three exiting hallways on the other end. Waving his torch back and forth, the first thing Renault noticed was the fact that at this point the stonework presented a strange contrast to the earthwork. That is to say that it seemed as if the portal he just walked through was more recent than this particular chamber. Perhaps this was a construction by the Pre-Islamist worshippers of the rock? He noticed that the Arabic added to the walls looked to be of recent configuration. Although it was at this time that he took the moment to read the writing, all it spoke of was danger and warning.
Circling himself around the room as he walked towards the other end, he looked about with his light source. The most peculiar aspect of the room that he noticed was that there was a square opening at the very top of the roof. However, it was obstructed by metal bars spanning the length of the opening like a sideways cage. Studying the work he deduced that the bars were added later.
He stood there for a minute or two glancing upward and then realizing that there was a faint light coming from that gap in the ceiling! From the perspective he could gain several feet below, it would appear that there was a whole floor above him; perhaps another chamber.
Even more intrigued, Renault turned back towards the three exits on the other side of the room. It was a rather large chamber, now that he thought about it as he stood there in the middle; perhaps the length of a small galley in length from entrance to exits. The ceiling, as mentioned before, was several feet high. The stonework was solid chiseling of bedrock while the carvings and etches seemed like they were added later. Aside from the square hole in the ceiling, strange demarcation lines seemed to segment the floor underneath him every few feet. Perhaps large foundational rocks were put in place? Nonetheless, the darkness was pervasive in this chamber and darker still were the exits where his eyes could not penetrate.
He would figure it out later, he said to himself as he took a step forward passing one of the segmented lines. His second step seemed slightly off balance and despite the dry silence he felt like something was grinding rock against rock. That’s when he realized the floor underneath him had depressed into the ground by a centimeter.
“What in the—”
His confusion was interrupted by a heavy sound coming from the three exits several feet ahead of him. He knew this sound many times over and even before he finished his turn back to the helical stairway, he saw the beginnings of rushing water entering from the three exits.
He nearly tripped. His weight had depressed that segment of the floor another three or so centimeters as he drew ground to gain at towards the way he came. It was that depression that must have set it off; the staircase had a slab of rock slam the route shut. So that’s why there was a metal grill above him, there would be no escape from the water.
He immediately turned around to face the onrushing current and he began running towards it. The slam of the water against his body was mediated by his last second dive into the onrushing wave. With contact of the liquid, the chamber was already halfway filled and Renault struggled angrily against the wave to the surface. His torch was already out, the only light now entering the deluged chamber was the dim yellow brightness from the metal grill. Renault swam as hard as he could to the center of the room luckily not being weighed down by a cuirass or other armor. As the chamber quickly began to fill higher and higher with water, his hands eagerly grasped at the metal bars.
With all his might he pulled and pushed and even hit at the metal. It was no good, the material was at least four inches thick and imbedded deep in the adjoining rock. The water underneath him naturally pushed him against the roof; the inside of that chamber would soon be nothing but water. Even if Renault could get his mouth near the metal bars, it would not protrude longer than the four inches necessary to get at open air on the other side. He would be a dead man.
With even breaths he watched as the water around him rose to his chin, to his nose as he gasped for air through the bar as best he could. The water would not stop; soon it would gush through the bars and completely immerse him. The flow of the water did not cease and with one last breath Renault allowed the water to finally cover his face and overflow onto the top chamber. The wet darkness of that chamber flowed into his eyes as he frantically searched for an exit way. The current was still too strong to swim to the three doors. He was facing certain death.
Two minutes left until his breath ran out and he looked upward at the strange light above him. Ave María, grátia plena, Dóminus tecum raced through his head as he watched the light above him radiate in the movement of flowing water. He closed his eyes for a moment attempting to gather his thoughts but in that dark abyss, the light still shone through his closed eyelids. Benedícta tu in muliéribus, et benedíctus fructus ventris tui, Jesus, passed through his mind but calmly. His heart seemed to slow and his body naturally floating upwards against the roof. He could still see the light above him through the blueing blood in his eyelid. Blue.. the Virgin.. she would help me…
It was in this calm delirium-like state that Renault’s last minute of air was spent unstrapping the claymore on his back. He unsheathed his sword and tied the leather string on one end of the sheath to the top of that blade. Then taking his knife from his pocket while floating in that watery upsurge, he cut the closed top off his sheath where it was tied to the edge of the blade.
Now raising his sword up to heaven and blowing into the other open end of the leather sheath covered fully with his mouth, his last breath cleared the inside of the sheath from water and blistering air was greedily inhaled through that makeshift leather snorkel.
It was at this small miracle of faith and ingenuity that he felt the water flow below him cease to move. It did not seem that more water would be filling into the two chambers.
Renault slowly breathed in and out of that leather tube raising it high with his sword to reach that acrid air above the water line. He would be able to swim through the exit doors now. If the water stopped that meant somewhere there was dry stone. At least, that’s the only other choice he would have aside from spending the next few days breathing through the grill. He would need to take a few deep breaths and swim in the dark towards the exits.
In the room above where the water had subdued the chamber only a few inches, and where the metal grill was squarely on the floor, a figure watched with wonderment at the strange scene of a sword with attached sheath coming through the square. Was that infidel still alive? The figure made sure that when he moved, his footsteps would not splash against the inches of water. It wouldn’t matter, he was only a few steps away from the square and his scimitar would finish the job. He took one step closer.
Despite the lack of water flow, Renault felt uneasy. The water did not seem to stay still as his legs slowly flapped up and down to keep him afloat and breathing. While he contemplated his escape, he worried heavily about the strange motions the water underneath him exhibited. Naturally, that poor Lion, with his face upward to breathe through his sheath, he did not notice that two crocodiles had slipped into the bottom chamber from the exit doors. In the minute that Renault was contemplating his escape, a man and two beasts approached their helpless victim.
The private Roman jet careened through the sky with an almost reckless pace. Fortunately for the passengers, it seemed like just another air trip. At this point, Father Francis was beginning to get sick of flying.
That humble priest was sitting on one of the leather armchairs near the center of the plane looking down through the window at the bustling cities and grids of the Europe and Africa below. Part of the reason was so that he could remind himself of the threat he was facing. All this that he saw, would be gone. The kind Duke had earlier offered him a drink but he had refused. Only some water, he had asked. He nearly drowned himself in the liquid in his thirst. The entire way from the office at the Papal palace to the airport he had forgotten nourishment—he had still been in shock.
The Duke now entered from the rear door. In the very back of that plane was the noble’s private office and he had gone in there a few minutes earlier at the request of his secretary. He returned now with a delighted smile on his face—a smile larger than just a few hours earlier.
“Good news, Father, it looks like all the people involved with your old friend the publisher are now in the safe keeping of the Lions of Meissen including my family,” announced the Duke as he sat himself down on the leather sofa opposite of the priest.
Father Francis nodded thankfully and let out a little sigh. At least there won’t be any more casualties of this battle.
“But as I was saying before I had to take the call,” the Duke began again, “the first war with Persia was a large ordeal for us. With significant portions of our troops still fighting rebels in North Africa, the New World, and a significant force in Osaka, it was hard to defend Alexandria and the Levant while going after Astrakhan and Mecca at the same time.
“I’m sure,” replied the priest as politely as he could, “though I had always imagined it would not be too difficult with the best army in the world at the time.”
“Pound per pound, they were the best, but it meant a rigid recruitment process. Manpower, especially when fighting a war of attrition in the desert, was a large concern.”
“But why Mecca?” Father Francis asked, his eyes trying to find the concern in the Duke’s own oculars, “I understand that this… exotic matter… or dark matter or whatever you call it could only have come from that meteorite, but we’ve had the fragments of the Black Stone of Mecca at the museum for a while now, why are we going back to the original site?”
The Duke’s gaze met the priest’s with sincerity. The smile slowly faded and the Duke took a sip of some nearby burgundy.
“Around 1582, we sent an archeologist to Mecca to find the Timepiece. Those fragments we have at the museum are only that, fragments. The real core of the meteorite was shipped from Bahrain to Mecca before it fell to Spanish troops. Our archeologist tried to find it there.”
“It’s hidden in the city you mean?”
“Under the city. In a complex that pre-Islamists made to worship the stone,” intoned the Duke with a deep emptiness suddenly capturing his eyes.
Father Francis merely looked at the Duke half in disbelief and half in wonderment, but mostly Father Francis would have fainted if he didn’t have stronger fortitude; all this complexity and yet for a relic so important.
“The archeologist’s friend described the complex as a Labyrinth: The Maze of Mecca.”
Chapter XIV: The Maze of Mecca (coming soon)
