Eisik peered at me in the gloom, perhaps seeing on my face a sign that inside my belly there had been a fire (so like the infernal fires of hell) that a man feels when in waking life he is flushed with a lustful fever. I blushed immediately, and looked down, pretending to be consulting the compass. In reality I was thinking that if I did not at once admit my transgression I would soon expire from guilt.
It was while I was consumed by such considerations that I noticed we were coming upon another door. Once more we found ourselves inside a second antechamber, identical to the one we had just left. Three doors again were set at oblique angles marked with signs. This was the Pergamos chamber denoted by a crescent moon.
I noted everything that I saw down on our little map, with the small piece of charcoal.
‘What now?’ I asked perplexed, trying to keep my mind from wandering.
‘And he that overcometh, and keepeth my works, unto the end, to him I’ll give power of the nations,’ Eisik said, pointing to the door on our left, ‘Thyatira’.
This aperture opened in the same manner, but this time there was no devilish device. It led directly to a deep tunnel whose pitch again descended down a slight slope. The light from our lamps reached up as far as the height of two men and after an oblique turn to our left we walked a little distance and my master pointed to an area in the wall of the cavern high above our heads.
‘The false door in the second chamber! Mon Dieu! ‘ my master exclaimed, his voice echoing in the dampness. ‘You see there!’ he pointed, and I could just make it out. ‘We have been ascending and descending, there have been steps and inclines, it appears that these interconnecting tunnels twist and wind their way beneath and above each other! Ingenious!’
Ingenious indeed! We continued ahead, in a south-easterly direction, the tunnel becoming quite narrow and low, we were walking beneath the chamber of the sun or Smyrna. I noted this down. We made another oblique turn then, and the compass read north-east as we came upon another chamber. Again we were faced with three doors. Above the one directly ahead of us, we could see the strange symbol for Mercury and the word ‘Sardes’. This was also above the door to our right. Behind us, as we expected, Pergamos. To our left Ephesus, so this meant that we had travelled in a kind of figure eight pattern, although on different levels. My master cupped his beard in his hand and viewed my plan of the labyrinth thus far.
‘Now, Christian,’ he said, looking around him, ‘if you look closely at your map, you will see a pattern emerge. The door through which we enter the chambers is always marked with the name of the preceding chamber. Above us we have the chamber we are presently in. There are always, to this point, two doors marked with the same symbol, in order to trick the unwary, but they may not be the same doors every time. In any case we must now take the door marked Mercury, and if I am not mistaken, it is the one facing east,’ he concluded.
‘But how do you know that, master?’
‘Have you not noticed that before each correct door the stone has been worn down from use?’ He showed me, and I was astounded, for he was right. The stone immediately in front of the door where one stepped before descending the stairs on the other side was indeed smooth and polished, a sign that the abbot had not been honest with us. These tunnels were in use quite often.
‘And here,’ he pointed to the other door, ‘we must conclude is another false exit. We have been climbing since the last diversion, and so this tunnel therefore passes over another, as did the first. Let us see if we are indeed right, shall we?’ Slowly he opened the aperture, but closed it almost immediately, before either of us could see anything.
‘They are there!’ he exclaimed in a harsh whisper.
‘They?’ I said, shivering a little as we opened the door very slightly. Below in the tunnel that ran beneath the present chamber I observed several white forms illuminated by lamps, floating, it seemed, in single file towards the tunnel below us.
‘Oh, burning bush of Moses! The spirits of the dead!’ Eisik moaned behind me. ‘Holy fathers preserve our wicked and curious souls!’ Then he thumped my master on the back as a form of remonstration.
‘The ghosts, master, the twelve ghosts!’ I whispered back, alarmed, because fear, like laughter, is contagious.
‘Nonsense, they are men, and no more ghosts than you or I. Did you not see their breath puffing out before them as they walked? Moreover, if they were ghosts, they should not need the use of lamps,’ he concluded, and I knew that he was right, for it was common knowledge that ghosts do not breathe, and that they prefer to roam in darkness, having no eyes.