The moment I was out of the sun, it turned cold. The sounds of men and animals and of the breeze that had just been all around me now came from a single point overhead. I stepped from the bottom rung of the ladder on to a floor that was, as I’d already seen, of levelled granite. I looked round. Macarius and the Bishop were still fussing beyond the entrance with their lamps. Now light was coming through the hole again without blockage, I could see a little around me. I was in a high, circular chamber several dozen feet across. It might originally have been a natural bubble in the rock. If so, it had been heavily remodelled. With its level floor and its curved walls that tapered upwards to the opening, it had the appearance of a small water cistern. It certainly had nothing about it that suggested a tomb. Other than the rubble that had fallen in from above, it was empty. There was no coffin or funeral goods. The walls looked much the same as the floor. They had no paintings or reliefs of the sort I’d read were to be found in the tombs of the Egyptian great. It might have been a cistern. The doorway, four feet or so wide and seven high, that led into complete blackness might have been an access point for water.
I was still down there alone and without light. But my eyes were now adjusted, and the entrance above me shone with an intense, if not very effectual, brightness. Keeping a careful watch on the floor in front of me, and testing each step as I went, I moved towards the doorway. It had no door that I could see, and another loud cough told me that it went off in some direction without blockage. The cistern possibility was reducing by the moment. This was too obviously a doorway.
Now I was standing close to it, I could see that the wall wasn’t quite the same as the floor. It was painted all over with a kind of pitch. I ran my hands over the smooth surface. I could feel indentations that might have been consistent with reliefs that had, for some reason, been covered over. I turned my attention back to the doorway. But now Macarius and the Bishop were hurrying down the ladder, and faces looking in from above blocked the light.
‘Is all well, My Lord Alaric?’ Siroes called down in a voice that might have been satirical – though it was always hard to tell with him. As he set his hands around the edge of the opening, he managed to knock in some loose pebbles. The sound and echo of their fall was shockingly loud.
‘I’ve just been eaten by fucking monsters,’ I snarled back, ‘and this is my ghost calling out from Hell. What else do you bleeding suppose?’ Like the pebbles, my voice echoed loud in the chamber. No reply. Though perfect in Greek, Siroes hadn’t shown much taste for badinage. The lamps now with me showed more of the chamber, but revealed nothing more than I’d seen already or supposed to be there. If there had been anything on the wall under that coat of pitch, it wasn’t showing in the light from the lamps. Before the smell from the lamps could permeate the room, I breathed in slowly through my nose. Except for that smell of dried wood in the sun, the air about me was sweet though pretty still. I looked at the shaft of light now coming freely again down from the entrance. It was sharp and clear.
‘Unless you can suggest anything else,’ I said to Macarius, ‘we go that way.’ I pointed at the still complete blackness of the doorway. There was nowhere else to go.
He bowed silently and offered me the nicer of the two lamps he was holding.
‘Jesus God!’ the Bishop called softly. ‘Is this not indeed the entrance to Hell?’
Too late to worry about that now, I thought. I took the lamp from Macarius and stepped forward into the doorway. I shivered a little from the deepening cold – and perhaps a little from fear of what lay beyond.
I found myself in a corridor that sloped both downward and to the left with moderate sharpness. It kept about the same dimensions as the doorway, but was finished more roughly than the chamber by which we’d entered. The walls had no pitch covering on them, and I could see the reflection of our lamps on the chisel marks that showed how, with what must have been immense effort, the corridor had been carved through the solid granite. And there was little doubt that this was an artificial work. Without knowing yet how far it went, or if it deviated from what I could see, I had the impression of a spiral leading down into the earth.
‘We must be quick about this,’ I said to the Bishop, who seemed inclined to hang back. I explained about the air.
He nodded. The relic bag was beginning to shake in the tightness of his grip. I put an arm round his shoulder and quoted from Scripture in my reassuring voice. He thanked me in a voice that still shook. But he quickened his pace.
My earlier jitters now behind me, evil spirits were the last thing on my mind as I walked carefully ahead. I’ll not deny, though, I was worried. I was worried about how large this place was, about whether its layout became more complex the deeper we went into it, and – above all – about what, if anything, we’d find to take back and show to Siroes. But I could hear Macarius behind me with his usual firm step, and could hear his steady breathing. Except I’d keep a lookout for shafts or subsidence in the floor ahead of me, I didn’t plan to show the smallest concern.
That was until we reached what may have been a complete circuit on our downward path. Here, the smooth corridor came to an end. In its place was what looked a natural fissure in the rock. On the left side, it had been cut back to about the width of two men. On the right, it had been left as jagged as it must have been when found. From here, a flight of steps led sharply down into the earth. They may not have been that level when first cut. Now, they were much worn. In places, they had been chipped by the carrying of heavy objects into little more than a very steep incline. We paused. The air was still sweet, our lamps still bright. There might have been the smallest hint of a breeze coming up at us. I peered uncertainly down. The steps seemed to deviate to the left in another spiral. Or perhaps the course moved about to take advantage of the natural shape of the fissure.
‘We must press on,’ I said to no one in particular. These were the first words any of us had uttered since leaving the upper chamber. Apart from the scraping of our shoes, it was the first sound anyone had made. My words had a flat, echoless quality. I didn’t feel inclined to utter that many more of them.
‘The Lord Siroes will expect nothing else,’ Macarius said, the natural flatness of his voice emphasised by the surroundings.
He was right. Like it or not, we had to press on. If we came to a dead-end, we’d have to reconsider. But this was simply a matter of going down some steps that may already have been a quarter-mile from the entrance hole.
‘This is a place of ungodliness,’ the Bishop quavered. ‘Can you not feel the evil miasma that reaches up to embrace us?’
It was turning colder, I’d grant, and I didn’t at all like the shut-in feeling that increased with every step. But evil around us hadn’t been something I’d yet noticed. Regardless of the words, though, what I could hear was the voice of a man looking for some reason to put his lamp down and refuse to go a step further.
‘If you dissent from Chalcedon, Your Grace,’ I said in an attempt at the conversational, ‘I suppose direct relics of Christ are still more holy.’ I looked at the bag and pursed my lips. ‘It was, I think, the Patriarch Nestorius who asked: “How can Jesus Christ, being part man, not be partially a sinner as well, as man is by definition a sinner since the Fall?” Now, the answer that your side in the dispute gives is that His Humanity is wholly absorbed within His Divinity. This being so, the relic was possessed by an almost purely Divine Substance. For us, though they “undergo no confusion, no change, no division, no separation”, the Substance of Christ also partakes of the Human.’ I looked as far as the flickering light showed into the depths before us. If it weren’t for that bloody trio waiting far up in the sunshine for what I’d find down there, I’d have turned back myself. But we had to go further. If that meant rehearsing the debates at and after the Council of Chalcedon, it was a price to be paid.
‘That is, My Lord, a most just observation,’ came the reply in a suddenly firmer voice.
I took a step forward and asked him to explain. I knew he wouldn’t be able to resist.
‘Let us begin with a statement from the First Council of Ephesus,’ he said, taking a step to keep up with me, ‘that I think is accepted equally by both sides of the most unfortunate dispute that has sundered the garment of Holy Mother Church.’ He closed his eyes a moment to recall the exact wording, then quoted: ‘?“The Word in an unspeakable, inconceivable manner united to Himself hypostatically Flesh enlivened by a Rational Soul, and so became Man.”?’
I nodded reverently and, bowing to keep my head from knocking against the uncut granite, took another few steps. He followed. I kept going. So did he in both senses.
‘Now, My Lord,’ he said, oblivious to where he was, ‘the important question is the nature of this Union of God and Man. I do so regret the claim of the Greeks that both Natures remain distinct within the Single Personhood of Christ. This surely raises difficulties; in particular, it renders meaningless the title traditionally given to the Virgin of “God-Bearer”. For if Christ has a Double Nature, She can be so described only so far as She gave birth to the Human Nature.. .’ So he droned on and on and we continued down the steps. It was crude stuff. His Patriarch, Anastasius, could only have accepted this line of argument with endless reservations that brought him pretty close to the orthodox position of Chalcedon. Still, it was useful to hear what might be a fair sample of opinion outside Alexandria.
Of course, it kept us moving ever down those steps. And they did seem to go on and on – sometimes winding one way, now another; sometimes going down in a straight line. Once or twice, I slipped where the steps had been worn away, and my lamp nearly went out. More often, it was just a matter of keeping my head from knocking against the unsmoothed granite of the ceiling. At last, though, we stood again on level ground. I couldn’t say how far down we were, or which way we were now pointed. I gave the job up as useless. It was impossible to estimate anything. The air continued good, the breeze now more noticeable. I forced myself not to speculate on another entrance. Those bastards still had Martin.