She paused. “See what’s happening here? It is almost impossible for me to have strong religious beliefs while at the same time respecting members of other religions. They are, after all, misguided at best and idiots at worst.” She exhaled. “And don’t forget, they feel the same way about me. From there, it seems, conflict is almost inevitable.”
Cam weighed her argument as he drove. “Don’t you think you’re overstating things a bit?”
She chewed her lip. “Yes, I suppose I am. I agree, not everyone who is religious is so intolerant. But those that are the most intolerant often seem to be able to lead the herd. History has taught us that.”
“That doesn’t paint a very rosy picture for our future. Most people are religious in some way. Are we destined to always be at war with one another?”
“No. Perhaps your Masonic friends have the right idea. They essentially teach that all religions go back to the same place, to one deity, and as long as you believe in that, the other details don’t matter. That gives them a pretty large tent. And I don’t recall them starting many wars.”
“No,” Cam smiled. “But they do want to take over the world, according to the Church.”
“The Church fears anything it can’t control. As do all religions. Again, the rest of us are just idiots.”
Cam turned and smiled. “Well, this idiot feels a bit more educated than he did ten minutes ago.”
After stopping for a quick break in Connecticut, Amanda and Cam drove in silence, listening to music, while Amanda researched the Putnam County chambers on her phone.
“Listen to this,” she said, “from a New York Times article in 2001. Some geologist used something called a proton procession magnetometer to measure the magnetic fields at four stone chambers in Putnam County in the 1990s. He said he got, quote, ‘The strangest readings I ever got in this area. It was strong enough to reverse a compass. Each stone chamber had a significant magnetic pull right in front of the door.’”
“Wow.”
“Wait, it gets better. This is the geologist again: ‘This magnetic anomaly is a true clue that they are much older than the early colonists. Builders put metallic material below the chamber's doorstep plate either to aid in finding the chambers with early compasses or to help early religious leaders perform magnetic tricks during ritual ceremonies to convince people of their special powers.’” She smiled. “Just like you said.”
“All us pagans think alike.”
As they approached the Connecticut-New York border, Amanda pulled up a map on her phone. “Let’s head to the town of Kent. You can stay on 84; it’s just over the border. There’s a cluster of chambers there, over fifty by one count. And some bloke was kind enough to map them all out for us.”
A half hour later Cam pulled onto the shoulder of a winding country road fifty miles north of New York City. The rural setting only an hour away from the country’s largest metropolis surprised Amanda. “There,” Amanda said, “about fifty feet into the woods.” “Wow,” Cam replied as they approached. “Look at the size of some of those stones. A farmer could have moved those stones, but why bother? There are plenty of smaller stones that would have done the trick.”
“What’s the old expression? Most great architecture is meant to impress the gods.”
“Speaking of the gods, it’s fun to imagine which of these chambers might have housed John the Baptist’s head.”
“I’m guessing it was at Gungywamp, since that seems to be the main complex. But who knows? Apparently the Templars were looking around here.”
They ducked in, Cam pausing to test his compass. He smiled. “Unless the morning sun is in the north, we have ourselves a magnetic anomaly.”
They passed through a six-foot high entryway into a rectangular space the width of a single-car garage running over twenty-five feet deep into the hillside. Amanda did some quick math in her head. “It’s over two hundred square feet. Would a single farm need a root cellar so large?”
“Only if they were feeding an army. But if you were holding a religious ceremony, or building a shelter, this would be the perfect size.” He examined the way the stones fit together so tightly. “I’m getting a bit tired of the root cellar theory.”
“I don’t doubt some of these chambers were built as root cellars—the records are clear on that. But larger ones like this, with magnetic anomalies and dressed stones and massive lintels, seem older.”
She had found something in her research which she hadn’t shared yet with Cam. “Did you notice the orientation?”
He stepped outside and found the sun. “Looks like it opens to the southeast.”
“And?”
He grinned. “Winter solstice orientation.”
“Gold star for you.” A couple of weeks ago she would have kissed him on his forehead; today she tapped him lightly with her forefinger. “I found a picture someone took of the solstice illumination.” She showed him a picture of the same chamber they were standing in front of, taken at the winter solstice.
Kent Chamber, Winter Solstice
“That light box runs almost right down the middle of the entryway opening,” Cam said. “And with a chamber this deep, the sun probably only penetrates all the way to the back wall for a day or two on either side of the solstice.”
They hustled back to the car. Continuing their tour, they inspect four other chambers, at least two of which seemed not to be root cellars, before calling it a day.
“That was well worth it,” Cam said as they found their way back to the highway.
“We have time for one more quick stop,” Amanda said, checking her watch. “Something I think conclusively proves the ancient Celts were here.”
She directed him southwest, about ten miles as the crow flies, along a country highway to North Salem, New York. They parked next to an old barn and walked down a short path. An enormous gray boulder sat perched atop five smaller stones like a circus elephant balancing on a unicycle.
Balanced Rock, North Salem NY
Cam grinned. “That’s amazing.” He peered under. “It’s resting on all five stones.”
“Some people say a retreating glacier left it perched there.”
“No way,” he responded. “The weight is too evenly distributed. That doesn’t happen randomly. And it’s just a coincidence that it’s so close to all the chambers?”
She nodded. “That’s why other folks say it’s a dolmen, a ceremonial site erected by the Celts. It’s similar to other dolmens in the British Isles.”
He stared at the balance boulder and shook his head. “Unbelievable.”
They examined the marvel for a few more minutes before she led him back to the car. He looked back over his shoulder.
“Between the chambers and the dolmen, there’s a pretty compelling case the ancient Celts were here.” He began to navigate back to the highway. “I don’t know how anyone could subscribe to the root cellar theory with this dolmen so close by.”
Cam’s root cellar comment reminded Amanda of something else she wanted to share with him. She tapped at her phone as he started the engine. “I think we can put the root cellar theory to rest,” she said. “Take a look at this.” She showed him a picture of a squat, narrow stone chamber.
America’s Stonehenge Chamber
“What is it?” he asked.
“It’s one of the chambers up at America’s Stonehenge.” Many experts believed the America’s Stonehenge site in New Hampshire dated back 3,500-4,000 years ago, probably built by the ancient Phoenicians. Ironically, this dated the complex to around the time of Abraham—it was possible, therefore, that the complex’s chambers were as old as Cleopatra’s Needle. “This goes back before the Celts and the Druids,” she continued, “but to me it proves ancient explorers built chambers for ceremonial purposes. Look how small this chamber is—the only possible purpose is for a priest to crawl in there to observe an astronomical alignment. It has no other functional use—it’s too small for shelter and too open to the elements to stor
e food.” She put the phone away. “It simply must be ceremonial.”
“Just playing devil’s advocate, but who’s to say the Native Americans didn’t build it?”
She shook her head. “Again, for what reason? It’s clearly not a sweat lodge.” She had visited the site with a Native American chief a few years earlier, just before meeting Cam. “I think I told you what that tribal elder told me. He said, ‘This is an amazing place, but my people didn’t build it.’ He was certain of it.”
Cam nodded. “Okay then.”
Amanda unwrapped their sandwiches as Cam turned onto the interstate. “Whenever we visit sites like these, I’m left wondering why others don’t reach the same conclusions we do. Why is it so hard to imagine the Atlantic Ocean as a highway rather than some impenetrable barrier?”
Cam took a bite. “Other people have reached the same conclusions. Just not enough of them.” He told her about a book written in the 1970s by a Harvard professor named Barry Fell, called America B.C. “That book had a lot of people out in the woods looking for Ogham.”
She had seen examples of Celtic writing, called Ogham, in museums. It was comprised of a series of horizontal and vertical lines. Something connected in her head. “Wait one second.” She tapped at her phone again. “Here it is. I knew I had read this before. It says here that the Ogham script was invented by a Scythian king.”
“Scythia again? Really? That can’t be a coincidence.”
She continued. “And get this: It says here the Scythian king’s son married the daughter of an Egyptian pharaoh.” She lowered the phone into her lap and smiled. “Apparently her name was Scota.”
They rode in silence for a few seconds, each contemplating the meaning of yet another remarkably odd connection tying both the Druids and their American research back to the Scota legend.
Amanda broke the silence. “So what happened with Fell’s book?”
“Unfortunately he overreached—he got to the point where he believed every scratch on a stone was a message from the past. Eventually people stopped taking him seriously.”
“But that doesn’t mean the whole of his work should be discarded.”
“You’re right. I haven’t looked at his research in a while, but he was convinced the Druids were here. Can you find his book online?”
She did, and found her way to a section on the Druids. “Give me a few minutes to skim through this.”
Fifteen minutes later she leaned back in her seat and smiled. “Mr. Fell was not shy with his opinions. Like us, he was convinced the stone chambers were Celtic, probably Druidic. But he also found massive phallic stones—seven feet tall—near some chambers in Vermont that he believed were used during Beltane celebrations. Folks would dance around them as part of a fertility celebration.”
“Sort of like the maypoles today.”
“Not sort of, exactly. That’s what the maypole is, a giant phallus to dance around every May.”
“So where are these giant stones?”
“Most of them have fallen over, but he found a good number in Vermont, like I said. And they all had Ogham script on them.”
“What did the Ogham say?”
She found the passage. “One stone said, ‘Beltane Stone,’ another said, ‘Let it swell,’ and a third said, ‘To inseminate the birth passage.’”
“Not much room for doubt there.”
“And from the pictures in the book, the Ogham marks were clear.” She pulled an image up on her phone and showed Cam.
Vermont Beltane Stone
“I agree. These are much clearer than the faint scratches that he became famous—or infamous—for later.”
“So here’s the thing,” Amanda said. “If you’re going to have a Beltane celebration, dancing around the maypole and such, you need to have … dancers. Brendan brought three Druids with him. Not exactly a party.”
“I’ve been thinking about that. My guess is that some of them stayed, became part of the community, took wives, had children. Or maybe there was more than one voyage back and forth. Either way, eventually the custom took hold and was passed down. All cultures have fertility celebrations in the spring. To the Native Americans, this probably looked pretty normal.” Cam smiled. “The terminology may be unique, but I think the ‘Let it swell’ concept is fairly universal.”
She moved the conversation onto safer ground; the talk of fertility only served to remind both of them of the deep freeze in their sex lives. “So what’s the bottom line on all this?”
Cam chewed his lip. “I think there’s a lot of evidence the Druids came here sometime during the Dark Ages and built these chambers. And according to Randall Sid, they came to hide a skull—probably John the Baptist—which the Templars later came back to retrieve.”
She nodded. “Not to mention this all ties back to Scotland and the ancient Egyptians.”
Cam stared straight ahead at the highway. “It’s even bigger than that.” He paused. “I can’t put my finger on it, but I have a gut feeling that this also somehow ties back to the Isaac Question.”
Cam and Amanda made it back from New York in time to pick up Astarte from her after-school activity. Cam checked his emails in the parking lot while Amanda went into the school.
A message from Carrington Sinclair-Youssef caught his eye:
“Dear Cameron,” it began. “I hope you don’t think me impertinent for writing to you directly. I assure you that Zuberi has given his permission for me to do so.”
Shaking his head, Cam smiled. When they had first met and had dinner, Zuberi relayed Carrington’s food order to the waitress for her. And Amanda had noted how she seemed to wait for some kind of nonverbal permission from him before speaking. He read on:
“Zuberi tells me you and Amanda have been researching the Cult of the Head and how it might relate to the Sinclair family and Rosslyn Chapel. Did you know that the first Sinclair/St. Clair to take that name—a man by the name of Clare, in the late 9th century—met with an unfortunate death? Apparently he had chosen to live the life of a hermit, rejecting the overtures of a wealthy heiress. Eventually he became famous as a holy man and healer. The heiress, seeking revenge, sent agents out to kill him. They beheaded him, and the figure of a headless man carrying a skull in his arms became the symbol for the Sinclair family thenceforth. His bones are interred in a nearby church, but the head is missing.”
Cam smiled wryly. Another missing head. And more symbolism connecting the Sinclairs with holy skulls.
Rosslyn Chapel’s Apprentice Pillar was massive, he knew. Perhaps it needed to be in order to house all the missing heads.
“What the fuck is going on, Moshe?” Tamara had insisted on meeting outside. Nothing made sense, and everything was on the table. Including the possibility that their Brandeis offices were bugged.
Moshe huffed along beside her, his gray slacks and blue sweater vest standing out on the school’s outdoor track in the mid-afternoon sun. Tamara had changed into sneakers and sweats, looking forward to the opportunity to perspire away some of her frustration. They kept to the outer lanes to allow the runners to race by, and also to keep out of earshot. “You want the bad news, or the really bad news?”
She didn’t need him to make a list for her. First, Zuberi Youssef had met with the Jordanian militant, Khaled, which meant ISIS was that much closer to obtaining another shipment of weapons. Including, perhaps, a small nuclear device. Small, of course, being a relative term—a small nuke would only destroy a city, not an entire country. Second, the Freemason, Sid, had been murdered. The Masons had been working behind the scenes to neutralize ISIS, and his death could only be seen as an attack on these efforts. So another ally lost. Third, Thorne and the young girlfriend of Youssef’s son were continuing their inquiries into the Isaac Question, a line of research that Thorne either had shared with Youssef or likely soon would. And, fourth, they were no closer to figuring out who killed Raptor.
They walked in silence for a few seconds. “Moshe, what do you do when you’r
e playing chess and you are losing badly.”
He shrugged. “Maybe play for a draw. Or hope my opponent makes a mistake.”
“That’s bullshit, a loser’s mentality.” She slapped her palm against the side of an equipment shed, making a loud thwack sound. “If you’re losing that bad, you knock the fucking pieces off the board and start over.”
He scratched as his skull. “I’m not following you.”
“Look, we’re getting our asses kicked right now. We need to change the game.”
It was hard to rattle Moshe. “You’re speaking euphemistically,” he said calmly. “Please give specifics.”
“Okay. We need to stop watching and start acting. We need information, and since nobody seems to want to give it to us, we need to take it from them.” She resumed her walk, increasing the pace. “And it starts with Cameron Thorne.”
Amanda had plans to meet an old university friend for dinner in Boston, so Cam threw a few hot dogs on the grill while Astarte pulled the stems off a bowl of fresh pea pods. The meal had become a tradition for them when Amanda was out—Astarte called it their ‘peas-in-a-pod-with-a-dog’ dinner.
“Campadre, there’s no room on the kitchen table.” Cam had adopted the practice of printing out pictures of items he was researching in the hope that the visual montage would help him infer connections—dozens of photos of sites, artifacts and other images lay scattered across the table.
“I know. I need to hang them. We can eat in front of the TV if you want. Just don’t let Venus steal your food.”
Astarte mumbled an “okay,” her attention obviously elsewhere, as Cam went to check on the grill. When he returned a few minutes later, the girl was leaning over the table studying a group of photos.
“What’re you doing?”
She held up a photo of a skull and crossbones. “What’s this?” she asked.
Skull and Crossbones
“It’s one of the symbols for the Knights Templar. When they were in battle, if one of the Knights died and they couldn’t carry the entire body home, they would take just his head and thigh bones back for burial. Later, pirates started using it because they wanted their enemies to think they were good fighters like the Templars. It’s called the Jolly Roger when pirates use it.”
The Isaac Question: Templars and the Secret of the Old Testament (Templars in America Series Book 5) Page 22
