Chapter 40: The Selected (Part I)

Cesar looked at the candlestick on the altar. Most of the candles were still burning, but there wasn't much left. An ordinary candle could burn for four to five hours, but in such an important ceremony, the candles used were much thicker than ordinary candles, almost as long as an adult man's arm, requiring both hands to hold—this kind of candle could burn for at least a day and night...

He immediately discovered that he had also made a mistake. Although before holding the ceremony, he had also asked Heraclius about "Blessed" and "Bestowed," but as one of the few people in this era who was very bold in terms of faith, it was also very difficult for the chaplain to describe it clearly to him—and the facts also told him that it was indeed impossible to describe, and describing it might be incorrect, instead leading others astray.

At this moment, he couldn't help but want to curse. Heraclius should have at least told him that when they fell into that state, the time they lost consciousness would be much longer than he thought!

Past experience misled Cesar. He thought that in all mental activities, the flow of time should be faster than reality, but he didn't expect it to be the exact opposite here. He hadn't asked Heraclius about this, and Heraclius, out of trust in this new student, hadn't said anything either.

But those people who set this trap here knew. They knew Baldwin and Cesar would pray in front of the altar for a long time, and—if they could be selected, this time would be extended. They also knew that to increase the chance of being selected, Heraclius, who was proficient in medicine, would inevitably prepare special potions for these two children under the king's order.

How careful and cautious Heraclius was when preparing the potion, precisely because this kind of potion could trigger tragedies they didn't want to see if there was a little too much or a little too little.

Their enemies utilized this point. They put poppy ointment in the lamp bowls, perhaps covered with a thin layer of olive oil. Before Baldwin and Cesar entered the Temple, the Templars had checked every corner, even sending agile attendants up to the beams to look, but who would notice those shiny lamp bowls?

Even the heavy, sweet scent of the poppy ointment was masked by the scent of other spices, and at the beginning, the scent of the poppy ointment was very faint. It had to wait until the lamp wick burned out the olive oil and burned to the poppy ointment, and burned for several consecutive hours, before the poppy ointment component in the air could break the balance in their bodies.

Their previous vomiting, spasms, constricted pupils, and respiratory arrest were all obvious symptoms of drug overdose.

Baldwin also reacted. He raised his hand, wanting to insert his fingers into his throat to induce vomiting, but was immediately stopped by Cesar. Ten-plus hours, even that fish bladder must have been digested, and the drugs had already entered the blood circulation. Vomiting, besides consuming physical strength and injuring the throat, was useless—unless there was a large amount of water, they could drink it to at least dilute the drug content in their bodies.

But there was only lamp oil here.

Baldwin didn't know where he got the strength. He grabbed the altar and stood up, pulling Cesar toward the outside.

The number of lamp racks in the corridor and nave was much smaller, and the scent of poppy ointment was also much lighter, but Baldwin didn't stop there. He reached out directly toward that eye-catching black silk rope. Cesar grabbed him: "What do you want to do?!"

Pulling that rope would make the bell outside ring, and the door would open. Of course, the "Selection Ceremony" would also be declared a failure.

Baldwin turned around and looked at Cesar with a firm gaze. If he hadn't met Cesar, and he were the only one here, he would rather die than walk out of this door carrying humiliation and curses.

But Cesar, Cesar was a healthy boy with a beautiful appearance. Even if he wasn't selected, he was already Heraclius's student. Heraclius could easily obtain a holy office for him.

And in the Church, there were indeed people who were "selected" among the Popes, but there were more ordinary people. They drove chaplains and monks who were "Blessed" or "Bestowed" just as they drove hounds and horses—who knew if Cesar would have such a day?

"You cannot die here," Baldwin paused, realizing he had spoken his heart, and immediately emphasized: "We cannot die here!"

Cesar stared at him without speaking, just leaned over to hug his friend's shoulder. However, after a brief moment of warmth, he was hit by a bucket of ice water—he reached out his hand to let Baldwin see. Baldwin hadn't had time to look down before he smelled a strong bloody scent. He thought Cesar was injured. "It flowed in from the crack in the door." Cesar said in a low voice.

Do you guess that if you pull the silk rope and the door opens, what's waiting for you is guards or assassins?

"This is the Temple." Baldwin muttered somewhat distractedly.

"So what?" Do you still intend to reason with these despicable guys? Cesar stood up. "Follow me."

He walked toward the side aisle, where the saints in the small niches still maintained a solemn silence. Cesar looked and pulled the axe held by Saint Jude.

The sculptors of ancient Rome had once vividly "taken out" the knotted muscles, smooth skin, fluffy curls, and dense and rhythmic folds from the marble, but these exquisite skills seemed to have quietly disappeared with the collapse of that behemoth.

Nowadays, stone carvers couldn't even carve men into women, children into old men, or saints into demons, let alone being good craftsmen. Things like axes, long swords, and clothing, which people were familiar with and needed fine workmanship, they couldn't do at all.

If they couldn't do it, they had a way, which was to hang cloth on the stone statues (which could be sold as holy relics later) and directly place real things like long swords, axes, and skinning knives in the hands of the statues.

Baldwin thought Cesar was going to hold these weapons to fight with the people outside, but he didn't expect Cesar to walk toward the wooden plank wall located on one side of the corridor. There should be a long, narrow space behind the wooden plank wall. "You know a proverb of the Saracens—cleanliness is half of faith."

As the heir to the King of Jerusalem, Baldwin of course knew this sentence, because it was said by their greatest prophet, so every Saracen had to bathe before praying.

Cesar raised the axe and chopped it on the compassionate face of the Virgin Mary!

The blueprint he got from Damara, provided by the Gerard family, was not so much of the Temple, but rather of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, or more accurately, this gray-domed temple that had been transformed into a church by the Templars.

In the Saracen doctrine, there were no overly harsh requirements for the construction of temples, only that they must face east, have a pulpit and a prayer niche, and there must be a "water room."

From the outside, the gray-domed temple was a rectangular building, but the Saracen prayer hall was a square. So what was that small rectangle left over for?

Two water rooms, as well as a small courtyard and a water pool. After the Templars arrived, they demolished the walls of the prayer hall but sealed the water rooms so that the internal space looked like a "cross."

Saying it was sealed, it was just covering it up with cedar wood plank walls as mentioned above. The Grand Master of the Templar Order at that time thought for a long time and finally didn't completely destroy the water rooms. After all, the Temple Mount—as the name suggests—was a hill, and all water had to be introduced from outside the city and from underground.

The Templars' current water supply came from another water source, but wouldn't it be better to have an extra secret water room?

Cesar chopped while trying his best to recall the underground tunnel blueprint he had drawn after combining the descriptions in the scriptures after getting the blueprint.

Around 700 BC, the King of the Isaacites, Hezekiah, in order to resist the Assyrian invasion, filled in the water sources outside the city. So how were the residents of Jerusalem supposed to drink water? Before this, he secretly ordered craftsmen to build a tunnel deep underground. This tunnel, 1,600 feet long, went from the Gihon Spring outside the city to the foot of the Temple Mount, flowing into a square pool named "Siloam."

In ancient times, when the Isaacites worshipped at the First Temple, they had to wash their hands and faces in the Pool of Siloam. After the Savior descended into this world, because he once smeared saliva and mud on the eyes of a blind man and told him to go wash in the Pool of Siloam—after the blind man washed, his eyes were restored to sight, making this place a holy site.

But in the Gospel written by Saint Luke, he also clearly wrote that the Tower of Siloam fell and crushed eighteen people to death.

That is to say, before 62 AD, the Pool of Siloam had already collapsed and ceased to exist. But Hezekiah's tunnel and the shaft connected to it were still there, and the people of Jerusalem still took water from it. The Temple Mount was the same. When the Saracens built the temple here, in order to provide a continuous supply of clean water to the water room, they excavated a tunnel winding upward.

"The teacher said," Baldwin also "borrowed" a saw from Saint Simon and helped Cesar open the wooden plank wall, gasping for breath. The wooden plank wall had been there for decades. Even with maintenance, the interior had already rotted. Even if they were two weak children, it didn't take much effort to destroy it.

He had already smelled the cold air overflowing from the crack: "In the tunnel, the Saracens added Greek spiral water pumps to draw water up."

"But the spiral water pumps used black iron and copper parts, so the Templars dismantled them." Cesar went to "borrow" a long sword again. He inserted the long sword into the crack, leaned his body on the hilt, and amidst a burst of dizziness, the crack made a continuous "click" sound, followed by a very loud "crack!".

The plank wall broke, and Cesar's body lost its balance, smashing into Baldwin. Baldwin let out an "ouch" and his head hit a pillar on the side.

But that crack had become a vertical door.

"We can go in!" Baldwin shouted. Cesar held his arm back: "Wait!"

The tunnel might be connected to the outside, and there might be air coming in, but a room that had been sealed for decades—for the sake of safety, Cesar took down a few candles, put one into the room, and waited for a while. The flame didn't go out but grew from small to large, and only then did they drill in one by one.

The room was larger than they imagined, and the floor and walls were paved with smooth stone. By the candlelight, Cesar saw the black small holes left after the metal water spouts were dismantled—it seemed the Templars at that time were really short of money.

Baldwin held a Seljuk-style lidded oil lamp and walked to a raised foundation. He didn't know what this was for. "The rotor of the spiral water pump..." Cesar said. No need to say, this was a large metal accessory, probably already turned into the Templars' spears and shields...

They quickly found the tunnel entrance along the foundation of the rotor, but this tunnel entrance was filled with stones.

"Let's go see the other room." Baldwin said immediately.

Dismantling the wooden plank wall of the second room exhausted them. They even leaned against the plank wall and slept for a while before they had the strength to continue exploring.

This tunnel entrance was also piled with things, but not stones, but wood! Baldwin moved the oil lamp over to look and saw fine patterns, lines, and Saracen characters. Cesar stood further away and looked at it more comprehensively: "It's a Saracen pulpit."

The pulpit was special and conspicuous in style. Even if the characters on it were scraped off, it couldn't be placed in a Christian room. The Templars used it for waste, but it gave them an opportunity.

Cesar couldn't help but call out "God bless." He had made preparations, true, but the events of the past few days told him that preparations were far from as complete as accidents or conspiracies. This way, he could discard those more dangerous contingency plans.

Next, they pried and chopped again, and only then did they expose this tunnel entrance. Baldwin was originally blaming the Templars of that time for being too careless, but once he saw the tunnel entrance, he knew there was a reason—the diameter of this tunnel entrance was only about 1.5 feet, maybe even smaller.

A nine-year-old child could curl up his body and drill down, but an adult man, especially a knight who trained every day and ate meat except on fasting days, would be stuck inside if he didn't.

Don't believe those legends. A child crawling into or out of a hole to open a gate and introduce enemies was impossible. In a real battle, those who infiltrated would inevitably be a team of real warriors to pose a threat to the city or castle.

"I'll go down first." Cesar said. As a leper, Baldwin had been struggling to persist. He could see it. Baldwin didn't refuse—they borrowed some cloth from the saints again, cut it into ropes, and tied it around Cesar's waist.

"If we can get out, we'll probably have to buy a thousand years of indulgences." Baldwin whispered.

Cesar laughed. He slowly fell into the tunnel. This feeling was even worse than when he rescued Count Etienne before. This was simply a hard esophagus. Fortunately, below the esophagus was the distended stomach. Here, too, was a space that, although small, was enough for him to turn around.

Cesar lit a candle. He saw a square pool and some traces left after long-term friction. That was right. The length of the spiral water pump wasn't enough to connect directly from Hezekiah's shaft to the gray-domed temple. The Saracens must have made some improvements—he shook the candle upward, and Baldwin followed him down.

"We still have to walk about three hundred feet." Cesar said.

"Hmm." Baldwin said.

The next part of the journey was something Cesar and Baldwin would probably never forget for the rest of their lives. Darkness was a frequent visitor to people of this era, and crampedness wasn't that rare, and oppression was even more commonplace, but putting them together made it unbearable. Not to mention they weren't "walking," but slowly climbing downward, not knowing where each step would fall.

Baldwin's reaction was especially intense. There were a few times when he thought he had already died, had been buried in a tomb, and was bound in a lead coffin, perhaps with a stone coffin outside. Everything in the world left him and had nothing to do with him anymore...

As a result, when he woke up, he saw Cesar in the dim candlelight, weakly slapping his face, while whispering something in a very small voice.

He tried hard to listen, but found he couldn't understand it at all. This wasn't Greek, Latin, Saracen, or any language he had come into contact with. He could only barely recognize a few familiar syllables.

"... You're awake." Cesar said with a straight face, asking gently: "Are you better? Hold on a bit longer, we'll be there soon."

Baldwin wanted to let Cesar throw him here, but even if Cesar wasn't a good person, it was impossible for him to do so—unless he wanted to face the lion's fury. Amalric I would definitely see him as the murderer who killed the Prince.

Finally, the slope of the tunnel slowed down significantly. "There's wind." Cesar said hoarsely, but Baldwin could no longer move. He developed a high fever, so Cesar tied the rope under his elbows and tied the other end around his own waist, dragging him forward.

Cesar felt like he had been crawling for a hundred years—he felt so—when he suddenly fell downward again—he almost thought he had encountered a hallucination again, but no, he sank directly into the water!

Water, cold, but clean, sweet water!

Cesar drank several large mouthfuls without hesitation, then surfaced, found the tunnel entrance, pulled Baldwin over, splashed water on him, and woke him up. This time, without Cesar's instruction, Baldwin leaned down and drank water desperately.

"We... cough," the cold water lowered the temperature inside and outside his body, and only then did Baldwin recover a bit of sanity, starting to slowly gather his scattered vision: "... Is this... the shaft?"

"Yes." Cesar let Baldwin sit leaning against the tunnel. The water was freezing, and Baldwin wanted to pull him, but found he couldn't even lift his hands. He could only try his best to look at the sky above the shaft, and then saw the clearest new moon.

Baldwin revealed a smile, but the next moment, the smile froze.

The new moon was blocked, and he saw a human face smiling the same way.

————————

ps:

Let's tell a little joke.

A long time later.

Baldwin: Do you remember when we were nine years old, we were trapped in the Temple and had to escape through the Saracens' tunnel?

Cesar: I remember.

Baldwin: Then do you remember that you once said a few sentences—&*%￥￥ Amalric I, &*%... Heraclius, &%*%*&% Baldwin (relying on his excellent memory, Baldwin repeated it once). I have always kept it in my heart, but I have never found anyone who can translate it. What does this mean? Is it a blessing?

Cesar (again with a straight face): Yes, it's just that the scope of the blessing is a bit large, similar to blessing many generations, and many relatives.

Baldwin (sincerely): Then I also bless you, &*%￥￥, &*%... &%*%*&%.

Cesar:... Thank you.

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 41 =====