“But how do we get up there?” Angus said, pointing back to the map and the high ceiling of the cavern. “It looks like quite a distance from the cavern floor, and I don’t see anything here in the temple that looks even remotely like a ladder.”
Zeno tapped the area at the bottom of the cavern. “We might find something useful in the bottom of the pit. Instead of hauling all of the unusable building material back up to the surface, we simply threw it down into the cavern. No one would ever see it there, and it saved us a lot of time and energy.”
Prince Henry stepped back and broke into a big smile. “Good work, gentlemen. I believe we have a plan.” He left the table and began pacing around the tiles near the entranceway. Slowly, he spiralled in on a section of glittering geometric tile that shimmered blue and gold.
“The location of the hidden grate is encoded in the tiles itself,” said Zeno, seeing the confusion on the faces of the young men. “He’s looking for where the similar-shaped tiles come together with multiple points of symmetry. That will be the hiding place of the grate handle.”
The boys looked at each other as if he were speaking a foreign language.
Zeno shrugged. “The masons who built this chamber love that sort of stuff.”
Prince Henry stopped, bent down and carefully removed two loose tiles from the floor. He hooked his fingers into the small openings, leaned back and heaved. With a slight scraping sound, the floor opened up, revealing a dark, square opening. Putting down the section of flooring, The prince picked up a nearby oil lamp.
“May I suggest that we implement our plan immediately? I feel it’s about time my blessed ancestor gets the silence and peace she so greatly deserves.”
Seventeen
Stop?” wailed Sarah, as the cold rain and wind whipped the bedraggled gathering. “You can’t stop! Clear out the debris and keep going!”
The filthy workers ceased their efforts and turned to face the shattered princess. Her long golden hair hung wet over her shivering shoulders. She ignored the steady sheets of rain and stared down with disbelief at the men in the deep pit below. A few leaned heavily against the ingenious makeshift pulley system that had, until this morning, helped the men miraculously dig a hundred feet down into the soggy dirt in less than seven days. Rings of wooden walkways spiralled into the darkness below until the shaft ended in a chaotic pile of rocks, mud and timber. Even at the lowest level, the eyes of workers looked up to the commotion on the surface. Some wiped their soiled brows with their arms and stood silently, ankle deep, in the muck. Only the slapping raindrops brought any sense of time to Oak Island’s darkest moment.
Black Douglas, standing on the opposite side of the pit, cleared his throat, keenly aware that all eyes were now shifting towards him. “You don’t understand, princess. It’s not that simple. The collapse of the earth around the pit last night has destabilized the walls of the shaft. And now the rain has turned the dirt into mud. If we continue, there will surely be another cave-in. You are risking the lives of many of the men who are facing you today if you ask them to continue.”
The princess held her open palms to the sombre crowd. Every man looked up to her in sympathy, seeing a face that radiated the anguish of a tortured angel.
“Who here would not lay down his life for Prince Henry?” she demanded. “Surely, you know he would do the same for everyone here today. Who here is willing to carry on, regardless of the odds, in this effort to rescue the Grand Master of the Templar Order and your friend? I will not, however, ask a single man to continue with this rescue without his full consent! So please, show me your hand of brotherhood!”
Without hesitation, every man in the work area raised his hand. Black Douglas felt daggers of envy and hatred twist in his gut. Ignoring the desire to laugh out loud at Prince Henry’s predicament, he held out his arms and pleaded dramatically with the princess.
“M . . . my lady, please, I, too, would willingly lay down my life for the good prince, but I must also think of what is good for our Templar brothers. Two shiploads of workers and engineers left for Scotland the day before this tragic mishap took place. These few remaining men have worked day and night to build a shaft in a brave attempt to rescue our prince. I dare say this was a miracle of determination that saw us get within forty feet of the temple in under a week’s time, but I’m afraid the collapse of the shaft changes everything.”
“We rebuild the coffer dam around the entrance and drain the passageway!”
“We can’t! The pump was damaged beyond repair in the windstorm, and it was the only one we had.”
“Then there is no choice,” she interrupted, her reddened eyes still full of fire. “We build another shaft, from a different direction!”
Black Douglas grinned ever so slightly. Her never-say-die attitude reminded him so much of her older brother. Inwardly, he relished the thought of trying to rein in her strong will. But that time would come soon enough. First, he had to deal with this delicate situation.
“A second rescue tunnel is impossible, my princess,” he explained. “If we go in from another direction, we will certainly trigger the hidden floodgates into and around the temple, killing both Prince Henry and his friends within seconds. And if we flood the temple, then future knights will have a much more difficult time reaching the underground vault and, at the proper time, opening it up for the whole world to see. Do you want to be responsible for destroying your brother’s lifetime ambition, his one true calling?”
Princess Sarah stared at him coldly. “Of course not!”
“All right then, assuming the prince is still alive in the library below, if he could communicate with us right now, what advice do you think he would give?”
Black Douglas was relieved to see Princess Sarah waver for the first time, but the moment was short. She looked away at the eastern horizon towards what was her former home.
“He would tell me not to attempt this rescue in order to keep his library intact. I know that and you know that! But that’s because he’s so unselfish. He deserves our efforts to rescue him. He would certainly do the same for any of us in a similar situation!”
“Aye,” agreed Black Douglas, “he would. He would try every available option possible. But even Prince Henry knows when he has been asked to achieve the impossible. We simply can’t dig another shaft without risking both him and the library.”
She shot him a defiant look. “I refuse to believe that the world’s greatest engineers gathered here in front of me cannot solve a problem of their own creation! If I have to, I’ll beg you good men on my knees to find another way to rescue my brother!”
She spied Sir Rudyard near the bottom of the collapsed shaft, barely recognizable under the layers of grime that covered his face and body. He had volunteered to do the most dangerous of the digging, below the level of the reinforced walls, and his eyes swelled with pain as he surveyed the devastation. He had been within a mere few feet of reaching his son.
“Sir Rudyard, join me on the upper level!”
Ignoring the wet earth, she kicked off her mud-caked shoes and in bare feet, slid down the side of the sloping pit to the first level of timber planks. She strode into the heart of the gathered workers. The filthy men bowed as she past, until she came to a tall rake of a man holding a waterproof skin covered in calculations. Sir Rudyard clambered up the final ladder and joined them on the walkway.
“Simon, you are my brother’s head engineer, and Sir Rudyard, your child is trapped with my brother. We need to talk.”
They marched into the protective cover of a small tent perched precariously on the side of the pit.
“The lassie just doesn’t know when to give up,” Black Douglas muttered.
Robertson stepped closer to Black Douglas, shaking his head. “It’s hard to believe how close she came to actually pulling off the rescue.”
Black Douglas nodded in agreement. “Another twenty feet, and they would have breached the temple roof. So sad though about the collapse.”
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br /> Robertson grinned. “Nature did her part by washing away any trace of my handiwork.”
Black Douglas shook his head in mock sadness. “And poor Prince Henry. If he had managed to stay alive down there, he probably could hear the rescue attempt approaching the temple. It must have been awful to have his hope built up, thinking he might find renewed life . . . only to have it dashed away once again.”
The workers remained standing in silent confusion, awaiting further orders. Black Douglas left Robertson, strode forward and surveyed the situation. The weary workers looked upwards to their new leader.
Black Douglas felt an exhilarating rush of power course through his veins. For the first time, a Douglas was in charge of the most famous knighthood in all of Europe. Stopping at the edge of the wooden platform, he gazed out to his men, his head held high, ignoring the rain dripping from his thick mustache.
“It is with a heavy heart that I must say this to you, my dear brothers. The collapse of the rescue shaft also collapsed any slim hope of reaching our beloved Grand Master, Prince Henry Sinclair. We did everything in our power to save the man and his trapped friends. This rescue attempt, however, must end now. Do not hang your heads, my brothers. You will be remembered by all future Templar Knights for this heroic effort, an engineering miracle that almost rescued a fallen Grand Master.
“But let us, at this time, also realize that hope for saving the prince’s life no longer exists, and that our friend will forever be entombed along with our beloved Mary Magdalene. We can move on knowing that we did all that we could during this time of profound grief. However, we must now look forward. Some of you will be sailing back home to loved ones in Europe, families that some of you have not seen in years. It will be up to you to carry on the Templar Code of Honour in our ancient homeland. Others have chosen to join me in continuing the building of Prince Henry’s second dream, New Jerusalem.”
“But what of a memorial?” shouted one.
A second raised his voice. “We must somehow honour the Sinclair name on this island!”
An unsettling murmur rippled through the crowd of workers. Douglas held up his hand for attention.
“It is not that simple, my brothers. You all know of Prince Henry’s wishes regarding this island. It is to remain a secret location to everyone outside of The Order. We must obey his final commands. The only sign of our work here will be the planted acorns which will, in time, tower over this island temple as mature oak trees. Everything else must be dismantled and concealed, including all breakwaters and excavations.”
Stepping into the muck, he waded through the parting crowd and stopped at the edge of the deep rescue pit. Nodding to a young, blue-eyed man with spade in hand, he took the tool and drove it into the mud. He lifted up the heaping mound of earth, brought it over the edge of the hole, tilted the spade and watched the earth tumble into the rescue shaft.
“It pains me to no end to say this, but as the provisional Grand Master, I order you to conceal this excavation shaft.”
Black Douglas closed his eyes and held up his shovel like a sword bloodied in battle. “Dear God, we used every bit of wisdom, every fibre of our beings in an attempt to accomplish the impossible. Forgive us for our mortal weakness and our inability to rescue our close friend and loyal leader. We ask that at some point in the future, when the world can finally accept the Templar truths, that you will glorify Prince Henry Sinclair’s inspired work here on Oak Island. May the Sinclair name never be forgotten!”
Eighteen
One hundred and twenty feet below the gathering of despondent workers, someone did hear the faint scrapes and thuds emanating from above. Connor MacDonald, trying to find an hour of rest on the floor between Mary Magdalene’s remains and a snoring Antonio Zeno, strained to make sense out of the strange sound. It reminded him of the scrapings mice used to make along the walls of Roslin Castle. Closing his eyes, his exhausted mind shrugged it off, thinking it was just a large rodent which lived somewhere between the chamber and the distant freedom of the outside world. But as he contemplated the noise further, he realized how deep the temple was within the earth. Suddenly, the impossibility of a rodent burrowing to this depth hit him like a bucket of ice water.
He sat bolt upright with excitement. Grabbing Zeno’s huge shoulders, he began to shake the sleeping man.
“Wha . . . what’s happening?” stammered the groggy Italian, shrugging off Connor’s hands.
“Antonio! Something is happening above our heads! I can hear rocks being scraped! Listen!”
Given the fatal plight of the small group, the men had quickly become close friends. Everyone was now on a first name basis. Still, Antonio looked at the young lad as if he were a sail short of a full rigging.
“You were probably hearing Henry beginning to attack the rocks below the flood channel,” he groaned, rolling away. “Nothing more.”
“It’s not Henry,” protested Connor. “It’s coming from above!”
With one eye open, both Antonio and Connor listened to the silence. Seconds passed. Antonio grumpily eyed Connor, and his mouth cracked open to speak when a slight scraping noise stole his words away. Both froze and looked up. The sound continued for almost a minute before stopping.
“It’s a rhythmic pattern,” said Antonio, fully awake. “That makes it very unlikely to be natural. It must be man-made.”
“What do you think it is?”
“I remember hearing the same type of sound in here when we were excavating the flood channels to the chamber.”
“Do you think someone is trying to tunnel down to us?”
Antonio smiled, his eyes sparkling. “Certainly sounds like it. Shall we go tell our fearless leader?”
They sprang to the open grate in the floor. Using an improvised rope ladder, they lowered themselves into the immense cavern. Connor had long stopped worrying that his hands and feet were soiling the beautiful tapestry portraying Mary Magdalene’s escape from the Holy Lands to the southern coast of France. In the back of his mind, he felt that this female saint was, in fact, assisting in their escape, and he had no doubt Mary would have approved of such use of her hand-stitched glorification.
Scattered oil lamps eerily illuminated the massive, egg-shaped grotto. Huge pointed stalactites rose up from the uneven floor like the poisonous fangs of a slumbering dragon. Connor knew that if he slipped on the ladder, he would likely become fatally impaled on those sharp fangs reaching up from the darkness. Planks, rope and other discarded building materials were scattered among the impressive formations which resembled the bones and sinews of a dragon’s last meal.
Antonio and Connor landed on the pile of building rubble, then quickly threaded their way through the cavern, ignoring the sloshing of the sea water around their feet. The floor of the cavern curved upward, and their feet finally stepped onto dry land. Even though he had helped it rise out of the floor like the legendary phoenix, Connor still shook his head in amazement at the structure that loomed before him.
If a five-year-old had been asked to create a pyramid out of a pile of sticks and string, it would have looked something like this rickety tower. An unwieldy assortment of boards, beams and logs struggled upwards into the natural cathedral ceiling of the cavern. Connor was amazed how it managed to hold together with nothing more than a series of sailors’ knots and a handful of discarded bent nails. The banging of metal against stone reverberated through the damp air. Dirt and small rocks fell to the ground in rhythmic showers, echoing like rain sizzling on the still surface of a pond.
Antonio cupped his hands and tilted his head back. “Prince Henry!”
The drizzle of dust and pebbles stopped. Three heads simultaneously materialized along the uppermost wooden ledge and peered down into the gloom below. Illuminated by a single oil lamp, Prince Henry, dishevelled and dirty, wiped the dirt from his brow with his filthy sleeve and propped himself up on an elbow.
“I thought you two were heading up to the temple for a rest.”
“I was asleep until Connor woke me up,” complained Antonio, pointing his thumb at his shorter companion.
Connor bounced excitedly. “We heard something above us! A scratching sound!”
“Most likely a groundhog,” muttered Antonio, straight-faced.
“Groundhog?” asked Angus, confused, looking to Na’gu’set on his right.
“A big burrowing rodent that is found in this area,” explained Na’gu’set. “But I do not think a groundhog could dig this deep.”
“It wasn’t a groundhog!” said Connor, giving Antonio an exasperated look.
“Could it be a rescue attempt?” shouted Angus, almost losing his balance in excitement.
Prince Henry steadied the boy with his arm. “Take it easy, lad. You fall from here, and it won’t be a pretty sight.” He looked down at Antonio. “What do ye make of it, Antonio?”
Antonio nudged Connor with his elbow and smiled. “Connor heard it first, and I told him it was his imagination, but then I heard the scrapings myself, and I’m pretty sure it sounds like someone coming down to get us. From the volume of sound, I would guess that they are at least forty feet away from the temple ceiling.”
Prince Henry pushed himself up and sat on his knees. “Well, that is a possibility worth checking out. We will be right down.”
The three workers carefully clambered down the wooden scaffolding, and the group made their way back to the rope ladder before climbing back up into the temple. There they collapsed onto the smooth floor, their chests heaving from exertion.
“I’m afraid our gourmet meals of bruised fruit and stale bread are beginning to take its toll,” Antonio gasped. He lifted the wineskin from the table and took a small sip of water.
“What I would do for even a bowl of cold porridge,” muttered Angus.
Betrayed Page 14
