I have never liked confined spaces. It is one of my top phobias, along with the fear of heights, dentists (see my recent post), and snakes and spiders (the latter two being perhaps part of my Australian heritage). I have a childhood recollection of visiting an abandoned goldmine somewhere in the mountains. It is a very vague and hazy memory, and I wonder if it is a real or a created one, or perhaps a dream. In any case, in it I am walking with my schoolmates along a narrow, dank, and dripping mineshaft in almost complete darkness, broken only by the jerking beam of a flashlight. There is water on the ground and a chill in the air. The stone walls seem to be constantly pressing closer, and the ceiling seems to be sinking lower - like something out of a James Bond or Indiana Jones movie.
But one must confront one’s fears, come face to face with them, and thereby hopefully, overcome them - so at least the therapists say. I have no intention of seeking out spiders and snakes, but I will, on occasion, pluck up my courage and climb what I regard as a high place, or even go into an underground tunnel, as long as it is reasonably well illuminated, and I am not on my own. Many years ago, I combined these two anxieties, and accepted a friend’s invitation to participate in an excavation in a very deep cave in the Judean Desert. Had I known in advance that the descent to the cave mouth was over the edge of a precipitous cliff, and that it was to be achieved by use of what appeared to me to be a very dodgy and alarmingly elastic rope, I would never have agreed. But my friend had not thought it necessary to mention these details, and it was only the fact that several people were waiting impatiently in line for me to pluck up my courage and go over the edge that induced me to do so, thereby avoiding embarrassment, but intensifying rather than alleviating my apprehensions.
It is so much safer to deal with such phobias in writing. That perhaps is what induced me to invent in my novel The Sulphur Priest, a secret passage under Montfort Castle that played a central role in the story's two plots. Sadly, it is only an invention. To the best of my knowledge there is no such passage. However, there is a myth about the existence of a subterranean passage leading from the castle to the medieval guesthouse and mill in the valley 200 metres below. Until quite recently this notion was still current among some of the nearby villagers. It probably originated in the fact that within the ruins of the guesthouse there is a door that seems to be leading into the mountainside. It was presumed to give access to a hidden passageway up the mountain to the castle. In actuality, it was merely the entrance to a staircase ascending a tower that has not survived on the western end of the guesthouse.
Among those who in the past wrote about this supposed secret passage was Abbe Giovani Mariti, an eighteenth-century Florentine traveller. He referred to it in his book, Travels Through Cyprus, Syria, and Palestine (1792):
The Arabs call this fortress of Montfort, the Enchanted Castle; and they told me that, in the interior part of the church [sic], which is situated at the bottom of the mountain, there was a subterranean passage that conducted to the highest part of the edifice. To be convinced of the truth, I took a view of it; but I found it almost entirely filed up by the falling in of the earth.
Secret passages are known in other crusader castles. One such passage led from the citadel of Tiberias out towards the lake to the east. It has been suggested that it was via this passage that Eschiva, the Lady of Tiberias, attempted to make her escape when Saladin besieged the city on the eve of the Battle of Hattin (1187).
There appears to have been a secret passage at Safed Castle leading beneath the moat and outer defences. My colleague and friend, Yaron Perry recalls that when researching the British hospital in Safed, he received from Dr. Gordon Stokes of Australia, grandson of Dr. Walter Henry Anderson, head physician and founder of the hospital, a section from the diary of Anderson's daughter in which she records that T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) had shown her the entrance to this passage behind the British mission house. Here is an excerpt from the diary:
There were two holes in the ground inside the ruins. Lawrence was roped and let down into these... He was also shown an underground secret entrance to the castle, which had evidently gone under the moat into the castle. The entrance to this had been discovered by Mr. Maas whose house was near the old moat. He was excavating for a new pig-sty when he found it.
In a letter that Lawrence wrote to his mother in 1909, he also refers to this passage: "I had great sport in an underground passage that is being excavated: xiii century work I think." (David Garnett, The Letters of T.E. Lawrence, London and Toronto 1938, p. 73)
There were passages under the citadel at Arsur (Arsuf/Apollonia), beneath the Hospitaller compound in Acre, and of course the so-called 'Templar Tunnel' that led across the city from the Templar palace to the port on the east. There are, no doubt, others yet to be found.
There is something exhilarating in the notion of a secret passage leading to an unknown destination. In my novel (spoiler alert) I augmented this with the discovery of alchemic activities, and with treachery of course (one cannot help oneself), and the discovery of a body. Secrecy, mysticism and crime – what more could one ask for?
Here is a short section from the novel, in which I endowed one of my characters, John Riley, director of excavations in the castle, with some of my own anxieties. Riley is not, I should point out, based on William Calver, the actual director of an expedition sent to Montfort Castle by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1926, who may have suffered no such debilities:
Riley had admitted to Robert his fear of being in the narrow confines of the passage but had not told him the extent of his phobia. This was partly out of embarrassment. He knew his limitations, and that he was not a brave man, and he accepted this as part of his character, but he did not always find it easy to admit the fact to others. There were three fears that he had experienced during the excavation: the first was a mild vertigo that had overcome him on the first day when he climbed up to the top of the high wall dividing the two sides of the castle’s central building. His purpose had been to see the site from this vantage point, but also to test himself, to see if he could overcome a mild fear of heights.
His second fear was of snakes. Once, when they had first begun to excavate in the middle chamber of the castle, he had climbed up onto the thick outer wall on the southern side, intending to jump down to a level area a few feet below. He stopped and froze at the very edge. Directly below were two long, pale-coloured vipers, entwined in a carnal act. He leapt back, overcome with terror, and had not had the courage to return to that spot since.
His third fear was one that had plagued him as a child when he heard stories about people who had been buried alive. An overactive imagination had allowed this last fear to reach extreme proportions. In adulthood he had managed to put this behind him, but on the few occasions when he did find himself closed in, the old panic returned. This had happened twice during the work in the chamber. The excitement of their discovery at first enabled him to overcome his anxiety, but he was greatly relieved when they had come out, and it was something of a relief to admit his problem to Robert.
Judging the distance that they had advanced from the keep and the extent to which the passage descended and turned west, Robert estimated that they must now be working more-or-less below where the outer ward had been, against the outer fortifications in the area that lay under the rubble of the castle’s northern side. He estimated that the part of the outer ward they were under would be buried below collapsed stones and debris several yards deep.
They came now to a place where the passage appeared to level off. Taking a compass out of his pocket, Robert noted in the light of a lamp that it continued due west, which meant that it was running along the contour of the hill. They were entering a series of small, narrow chambers, each ending in two or three steps down to the next. There was nothing very remarkable in these chambers other than the fine quality of their construction and the fact that the first two were almost entirely clear of debris, even of dust. The floor of the third chamber, however, was covered with a thin layer of soil. It was groin-vaulted and a circular opening on the ridge of the vault was blocked with fallen stones and soil. A fine network of hair-like roots hung down in the centre of the room, reaching almost to the floor. On the paving below the opening was a pile of soil that had fallen through, and a slow drip of water was seeping down from the stones. The plaster of the walls had long ago peeled away and disintegrated. They moved ahead, more quickly in this section because there was little need for clearing. They had additional lamps brought in, and some of these were left in the passage and chambers to increase the spread of the light. When they looked back, they could see part of the passage before it turned away and rose too high to be observed. After the third chamber, the passage narrowed again, still advancing west, evidently still under the outer ward. A short way further along they found that it was again partly blocked. They could hear water dripping in a dark open flue on the inner wall, which seemed to indicate a water source above, another cistern perhaps. Robert wondered whether the flue extended to another passage further down within the mountain. A pervading dankness filled the chamber, but the air was still breathable. They reached the end of this section on their knees because of the buildup of soil on the floor. When they had cleared enough to get through, they found that the passage then took a ninety-degree turn and began to descend once again, now to the north and down the mountain slope. From here it took the form of a narrow and steep staircase.
They had advanced only a short way before it was again necessary to remove the accumulated debris. This was becoming more difficult because of the considerable distance they had come and the narrowness of the passage. The human chain was no longer effective, and every so often they were compelled to stop work altogether and carry the collection of full baskets all the way back to the entrance of the passage in order to empty them. In places the passage was only just wide enough for one person to work in or pass through. Robert had one of the workers remain at the lowest point they had reached. The others were organised to carry the full baskets back. This resulted in a very slow pace in clearing of the passage. It could perhaps have been alleviated by bringing in more workers, but Robert thought that conditions in the passage would become too difficult. In spite of the fact that the construction appeared to be sound, and in no place they had passed through did there appear serious damage, they could not be certain that part of the structure might not collapse.
Kommentare