The Matrix by Jonathan Aycliffe

his head.
    ‘No, before that. Before the Carthaginians, before the Phoenicians. It may be as old as the second millennium BC. The first inhabitants of Tangier built a temple here. There are still some remains – I will show them to you before you leave. But you must promise to speak of it to no one. Its existence has only ever been revealed to a few people. The archaeologists would go crazy if they knew of it; there would be compulsory purchase orders, God knows what. I would certainly lose this house.’
    ‘Is that why you bought it? To have the temple.’
    He nodded once.
    ‘Of course. Houses are very ordinary things, even ones as beautiful as this. But such temples are a rarity. They are an opportunity to touch the past, to come face to face with ancient wisdom, not as we would like it to have been, but as it truly was. Duncan tells me you have spent time with the Fraternity of the Old Path. What do you think of them? You may be frank with me.’
    I told him what I thought, and he listened, smiling, but without condescension.
    ‘Yes,’ he said when I came to an end. ‘You are perfectly right. They understand the need for ancient wisdom, but they do not know how to come by it. And if they found real knowledge, they would have no idea what to do with it. You are extremely fortunate to have met Duncan. He is not like them, he belongs in a different league entirely. I hope you understand that.’
    ‘Yes, I do,’ I said, meaning it. ‘I owe everything to him.’
    ‘By the time he has finished, you will owe him much more than you can possibly imagine. I knew his father. And my father and his grandfather were close friends. Did he tell you that?’
    I shook my head. Three generations, on one side at least. It was quite remarkable.
    ‘He tells me many things,’ d’Hervilly continued. ‘For example, he says that you are unhappy here.’
    I shifted in my chair, embarrassed, not knowing what exactly Duncan had told him. I repeated a little of what I had said to Duncan, somewhat watered down.
    ‘You are not entirely wrong. Some of Villiers’s friends are quite superficial. But we endure them for reasons you could not yet understand. Nonetheless, I advise you to stay with Duncan at all costs. His journey here has just begun. You will be changed by the time it finishes. I assure you. I know he has great plans for you. Very great plans.’
    We talked after that of what I had read and what I planned still to read, and to Duncan’s advice d’Hervilly added some suggestions of his own. He had spent time with Jewish rabbis in nearby Chechaouene, a Rifian town some one hundred kilometres south-east of Tangier. The Jews there – now all vanished, mostly to Israel – had been the descendants of refugees from the Spanish Inquisition and spoke an early form of Castilian long extinct in Spain itself. From them, d’Hervilly had acquired information long thought lost, the key to innumerable Kabbalistic texts.
    ‘When you are ready,’ he said, ‘Duncan will send you back to me. I shall introduce you to matters of which even he is ignorant. It will not be next year, it may not be for another ten. But rest assured that the time will come. Now,’ he glanced at a small clock near the door, ‘let me show you our little temple.’
    It was no more than a tiny, low-ceilinged chamber, cut from solid rock, and located beneath the floor of d’Hervilly’s cellar. Although the house itself was cool, the moment I stepped down the ladder into the temple, I felt as if a very ancient and inhuman cold had entered me.
    D’Hervilly switched on an overhead lamp that shed a cheerless yellow light on the bare rock. The cold seemed to deepen, to penetrate more sharply beneath the skin. On one wall, a tall figure had been carved in the rock, a ram bearing a solar disc between its horns. At its feet, a man stood over the prostrate figure of a victim. On the floor, directly underneath the carving, stood a rough block of stone, perhaps a piece of