Outside the Cave Entrance
‘There is nothing here,’ came Michael’s confirmation a second later. ‘The cave is barely four feet deep, not even that in width. The walls and the floors are sheer, smooth rock.’
Within moments both Michael and Chris had exited the cave, into which they had previously entered with such eagerness. Their expressions were frustrated and disappointed. At the same time, the sudden let-down had peaked their adrenaline levels, and the exhaustion they were feeling from the climb, offset till then by their excitement, was catching up with them rapidly.
‘It’s absolutely empty,’ Chris affirmed. ‘There’s not a bend or fold in the walls, behind which anything could be hidden. Whatever might have been there . . . it’s gone.’
As Chris spoke, Michael looked into the eyes of his wife, expecting to see her emotional tenderness transform into grief.
What he saw, instead, was determination.
‘This isn’t the cave,’ she said simply, surveying the scene before her.
‘Excuse me?’ Chris answered in disbelief. ‘It obviously is. It’s well concealed, hard to access, and it’s at the “X” on your ancient map.’ He transferred his gaze to Michael. Whether Emily was prepared to hear it or not, reality was reality. ‘Disappointment is sometimes hard to accept.’
‘I’m not disappointed,’ Emily interjected before Michael could absorb his friend’s meaning and the two strive to offer their mutual consolation. ‘I’m telling you, this isn’t the cave. This isn’t where the keystone is hidden.’
Chris threw up his arms in frustration and stepped aside to the outcrop’s edge. He was still uneasy from the climb and the unnerving sense of pursuit that he couldn’t shake. Finding the cave empty added a new layer of frustration, but the last thing he needed was his friend’s wife denying the reality right in front of her eyes.
‘What makes you say that?’ Michael asked, trying to keep his tone tender but feeling the same frustration as Chris.
‘This has been too easy,’ she answered, finally looking towards both men. ‘Yes, it required the map, yes the shadows hid it well, and yes it was a steep climb. But if you were trying to hide something for generations, for the truly long haul, this just doesn’t cut it.’
‘Have you forgotten that your husband almost died down there, on this “too easy” climb?’ Chris protested, turning back towards them.
Emily motioned to the small opening in the stone. ‘I’m not saying the cave isn’t difficult to get to, or hard to find. But hard to find is not the same thing as impossible to find. We’re looking for something impossible.’
‘Oh, well if it’s only impossible, then no problem!’ Chris didn’t try to hide his sarcasm. ‘Come on, it’s here, it’s at the spot, it’s empty. Somebody obviously got here before we did.’
Emily extracted the folded printout of their map from her pocket. She set the paper down on the ledge, and defiantly motioned the two men towards it.
‘No, there’s something we’re missing.’ She set her finger on the last panel, near the ‘X’ that marked, or didn’t mark, the spot. Michael drew close and gazed at the page with her, and Chris, despite himself, followed suit.
‘We’ve followed the instructions and made it here,’ he noted as he joined their huddle and saw Emily’s finger pressed to the page. ‘You can’t be telling me there’s any doubt we’re at the spot where that “X” is drawn.’
‘No, I agree,’ Emily affirmed. ‘But there’s got to be something more.’
‘Wait a moment,’ Michael interrupted. His eyes hadn’t left the map, and as Emily’s finger lingered on the ‘X’ in the midst of the drawings and text, Chris’s comment suddenly caught his attention.
‘Say that again,’ he said, turning to his friend, ‘your last comment. Repeat it.’ Chris, suddenly unsure of himself, repeated what seemed an innocuous remark.
‘We’ve followed the instructions and made it here,’ he began. Michael cut him off before he could go any further.
‘That’s just it,’ he said, his intensity growing. He leaned in closer to the copy of the document as he spoke. ‘We haven’t actually followed the instructions, have we?’
‘There’s more on this page than just an “X”.’ Michael reached down and lifted up Emily’s hand. With a gentle nudge he repositioned her finger, setting it back down not on the ‘X’, nor on the hand-drawn landscapes, but on the text that annotated the journey the map disclosed.
‘We didn’t need these step-by-step instructions to find our way to this spot,’ he added, looking up into Emily and Chris’s faces, ‘but we didn’t consider that perhaps that’s not all the instructions are for.’
Emily’s features glimmered. Her fingers continued to rest on the hand-written text, and then, as she looked more closely, she realized Michael had positioned them on one text in particular: the final phrase of the map, offset from the rest, written by itself. The phrase they had not been able to make sense of before.
All at once, Emily understood his meaning.
‘Mike, you’re brilliant!’ His face beamed back at her.
‘You think there’s something in those directions that will lead us somewhere else?’ Chris asked, still confused.
‘Not in the directions, generally speaking,’ Emily answered, her own mind now running with Michael’s observation. ‘It’s this phrase, the one that puzzled us earlier.’
She moved her thumb to reveal the strange line written in Latin script at the bottom of the final panel. The line that didn’t appear to be connected to any specific point in the journey.
REGULAE QUONDAM SPECTATAE
‘The directions formerly seen.’ Michael repeated his earlier translation of the cryptic phrase. ‘We still don’t know what it means.’ Even as he spoke the words, Michael felt his stomach tighten. ‘Oh God, what if it’s referring to the first page of the map?’
‘The first page?’ Chris asked.
‘The page the thieves stole from the house. We thought we had the upper hand by having the map’s final section, but what if it requires the first page to interpret?’
Chris didn’t answer. If Michael was right, there was nothing they could do. They would be stuck in the desert with no guidance at all.
A silence followed, the air static with three minds pondering the situation. When it was finally broken, Emily’s voice came as barely more than a whisper.
‘Formerly seen. Formerly . . .’ Her eyes rose to meet them. ‘I don’t think it refers to the other page. If a person had them together, he’d still see them both. The phrase “formerly seen” wouldn’t fit the situation. The wording is too awkward.’
‘It’s old. Maybe it didn’t sound as odd to Latin ears.’
‘Latin may be dead, but it’s not dysfunctional. It means what it says.’ Emily let her mind wander through the possibilities until at last a new idea started to take shape.
‘Maybe it refers to the original text, to the manuscript before the map beneath it was exposed? It’s what would have been “formerly seen” on this page, or at least on its original.’
‘The text about the Cathar community?’ Michael queried, his face doubtful. ‘Do I need to point out that we’re nowhere near Mont Louis?’
‘Forget the location, and forget the nature of the text’s contents. The point is that they were one document, written by the same hand. Maybe the text the map was written beneath wasn’t just a cover.’ As she spoke, details began to return to her. ‘And you remember that page: there was one phrase that drew your attention. One that was—’
‘Struck through.’ Michael remembered the single oddity on the otherwise flawlessly crafted manuscript.
‘That’s right. The mistake and its correction, which led us to believe the document was a draft or unofficial text. But maybe that error wasn’t an error. It might have been a signal. Maybe those words are precisely “the directions formerly seen” that are referred to here.’
‘Well, what were they?’ Chris asked, confused but anxious for the point.
Emily closed her eyes, thought, and spoke confidently. ‘“Thirty-two hands south-west.” The number was crossed out and replaced by thirty-five, but the original phrase had thirty-two.’
Another bout of silence descended, and this time it was Chris who broke it.
‘A hand is a basic unit of measurement, isn’t it?’