Charlie Woods and the Lost Scabbard of King Arthur

Chapter 16 -Rich History, Shallow Hiding

The day was beautiful because it was sunny and calm with birds chattering from the Gernikako Arbola tree. It wasn't too warm and at the same time there was no chill in the air. There was only a slight breeze, just enough to make the leaves sigh from time to time on the tree. The area was very quiet too. It was almost like held respiration. Charlie and Sam were awed into silence for a short while just looking at how simple the courtyard appeared.

"Don't seem like much, does it?" asked Sam.

"No Sam, I supposed it doesn't." said Charlie.

They had picked up a few things from a little hardware and feed store a few blocks away, hardly anything. Two water canteens with straps, which they already filled. A little lighter, two small battery powered flashlights, and a curl of good rope which could be used for climbing. The store had a large variety of lanterns, but the only flashlights the store had were older models; fiber tubes affairs at least ten years old, maybe from the first war, with brass end caps and bulls-eye glass lenses at one end. But they were tough looking and the store owner promised they were water tight and that they had fresh battery cells installed and charged.

They looked upon the old oak Arbola tree, which didn't look old at all, enclosed in a smaller concrete tiled courtyard. Charlie said, "For generations, Sam, centuries... more than five hundred years, this place has been a meeting area for the surrounding political figures, chieftains, Kings, war generals, high priests, including King Arthur's decedents and other famous decedents. For much longer than that, elderly trees were chosen all over Europe as meeting places in the ancient European days. It was a very common thing."

The courtyard was on the side of a large imposing looking hall made for government meetings. It was open to tourists, and inside they had seen had all the usual trappings of an old and grand meeting hall with tiered seats, stained glass windows, a giant stained-glass greenhouse like ceiling, and ancient paintings revering previous people and meetings in front of the tree. Oddly there were very few live people around, nothing like the town center. They'd seen two monks were conversing on a bench in a courtyard on the other side of the hall. But Sam and Charlie were left alone to peruse through the old hall, completely unmolested as it was open to the public.

Old pictures of Spanish kings and knights adorned the high walls with clothing that slowly changed in style and protective measures depending on the history, and lessoning with time. Charlie could tell this place used to be a church both in its shape, and height, almost a mini-Notre-Dame in appearance and shape. Two tall columns are set to the side facing the courtyard of the Arbola tree to the foyer, and that foyer was so high ceilinged it looked almost like the entrance to an Egyptian tomb. The building is granite. The ground of the courtyard is similarly granite tiled with two sets of five iron grates in a square pattern to drain water when it rains.

There is an enclosure inside of a low iron fenced area, concrete in 1937, and the tree in it is towards a miniature side building with columns that looked very much like the Mason's building in Cardiff, Greek Revival or Roman style, like a little bank there with a long triangle shaped peak towards the low-pitched roof called a pediment. In between the columns on a front porch and facing the tree were stone seats with stone legs in the shape of little lions engraved upon them.

Charlie said to Sam, "The old original tree was four-hundred-fifty years old when it started to die. It was growing off to the side over where that big stone marker is. They took many saplings from its acorns to grow decedents. They took one and planted it here and it started to grow just like the older tree even after the older tree died. They named that older tree, The Old Man and the younger second tree here, The Son. The Viejo, or Old Man, or what's left of its trunk, is over there in that little meadow outside the gate there."

Sam could see the old Viejo was just a big dead stump with two cut stumps reaching up inside a protective gazebo like structure to protect it from rain and weather. This was beyond the arrow tipped, iron fence surrounding the courtyard they were in.

"Now this enclosure here, in front of that bank looking building, it used to be a fountain, this used to be filled with water. The trick is to go sit on the seats on the porch of that bank looking building, and you must sit next to me, and we have to turn the legs to face one another. But first I have to do this."

He reached down and pulled a little square grate up outside the smaller Arbola courtyard. It was one of the small drains. He turned it clockwise and put it back down. It was the middle of five grates and it was attached to some piece of metal under it that also turned with the grate with clicking. Water appeared to be moving under the outer grates, but not the center grates within the two square patterns. Then he did the same with the next little grate in the center of five a few feet closer towards the Arbola tree courtyard. And at the end of turning the second grate, a loud bang issued forth from somewhere deep underfoot. They were spooked by how loud it was and looked around, but no one came to investigate.

Then Charlie led Sam into the smaller Arbola enclosure courtyard around the tree, and they passed the tree to sit on one of the center seats on the bank structures porch, just behind the Guernikako Arbola. The tree had two large trunks reaching up that looked sick with the beginnings of a fungus, and with more foliage leaning to one side.

On the front porch of the little Greek building in front of the tree, Sam sat next to him and they reached down and each turned a leg of their stone seat to face each other. These stone chair legs were the ones that looked like lions sitting up for attention, and they were difficult to turn. Charlie had to use both of his hands on his chair legs. A square patch of concrete popped up in front of the tree, a little bit to one side. And there was a muffled flushing sound, almost just like the flush of a giant toilet.

"Man, someone will see that square and we'll be in for it."

"Yeah, lucky this place is so empty. Must be that everyone is further in town for the market set up. Come on Sam, we better hurry."

They went over to the square patch, and it turned out to be a hatch with a firm square of concrete on it that lifted up and revealed a spiral staircase leading downward. They took out their flashlights from pants pockets, and down they went.

"Sam, shut that hatch. We don't want anyone to know we're in here."

Here could only be described as a large round iron clad chamber with a hatch rising up in the middle of its floor about waist height and looking like a submarine hatch. Water was filling in from two gutters from the direction of the grates above ground. There was water already filling up around the hatch and flooding the bottom steps of the spiral staircase they just came down from. They were going by the light of their flashlights now.

Charlie set upon the iron circle at the top of the hatch. It had several levers in it and Charlie turned them until a design was obvious. It was the Stonemason's symbol of stylus and compass and right-angle ruler with a center "C" in the center between the elbow of the ruler and under the arch of the compass.

"Help me turn this, quickly," he said and they set upon turning the bigger iron circle, now unlocked. The light from their flashlights on top of the circle and rising water danced their shadows upon the walls as they struggled and grunted to turn it. "The way this chamber behaves is like a loo. The water fills up and prevents anyone from opening this iron hatch."

They opened the hatch and inside was an iron ladder and Charlie stepped in and climbed down, "Hurry Sam! Follow me in, close the hatch!"

Just as Sam came in, water had started to bridge the lip of the hatch, and he was very lucky to close it and tighten the underside wheel as the water began to spray in from the pressure of the hatch closing. He was dripping from the spray just afterward.

At the bottom of the ladder, they were now in an arched tunnel of some kind with brick walls with the tunnel blindly curving off to the right. It was very dark in there as their flashlights touched up and around to look at things.