Crusader Gold

4

Moments later a spectacular vision of ancient Rome appeared on the screen at the far end of the table. In the foreground a perfectly proportioned marble arch towered several stories high, its eroded surface embellished with relief carvings. Jack, Costas, Maria and Jeremy could make out trophies, banners, laurel wreaths and winged victories standing on globes. In the background loomed the vast tiered facade of the Colosseum.

“The most enduring legacy of the Flavian dynasty of emperors, Vespasian and his sons, Titus and Domitian,” Father O’Connor said. “The Arch of Titus straddles the Sacred Way in the centre of Rome. The Colosseum was financed on the spoils of the Jewish War and inaugurated by Titus in AD 80. It was built next to the Colossus of Nero, a monstrous gilt-bronze statue that gave the amphitheatre its name.”

“But not until the medieval period,” Jeremy interjected. “The name Colosseum first appears in the Venerable Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum in the eighth century AD.” He looked sheepishly at the group. “Another of our finds from the Hereford library.”

“The Jewish War,” Costas said. “Another excuse for rape and pillage on a colossal scale?”

“It was pretty ghastly, even by Roman standards,” O’Connor replied. “Probably a greater proportion of the Jewish population was annihilated in the war of AD 66 to 70 than during the Nazi Holocaust, either killed in battle or put to the sword in an orgy of retribution that lasted for another three years. But the story’s more complex than you might think. The Jewish state had enjoyed an unusual degree of autonomy under Rome, and there were close links with the emperors. King Herod Agrippa of Judaea was educated in Rome and was a friend of the emperor Claudius. A generation later the Jewish historian Josephus became a confidant of Vespasian, having switched sides to Rome during the rebellion. He has a bad reputation because the Jews never forgave him, but his writings are invaluable as the only eyewitness account of the war and the triumph in Rome in AD 71.”

“And the arch?” asked Costas.

“Built on the site of an earlier arch, exactly the spot where the triumphal procession would have first become visible to the huge crowd waiting in the Forum.” O’Connor tapped a key and zoomed in to an inscription on the attic of the arch. “Senatus Populusque Romanus,” he read. “The Senate and the People of Rome, to Divine Titus, son of the Divine Vespasian, Vespasian Augustus. This shows that the arch was dedicated by the emperor Domitian, who succeeded his brother Titus in AD 81. With a few notorious exceptions, like Nero, the title Divine was bestowed on emperors only after they’d died. The sculpture on the ceiling of the passageway even shows the apotheosis of Titus, riding heavenwards on the back of a great eagle.”

“The triumph was a family affair,” Jack added, his composure now close to normal again after the shock of seeing the menorah symbol. “According to tradition, Vespasian was the main celebrant as emperor at the time, but the Roman Senate voted a double triumph to acknowledge Titus as victorious general. Domitian was enhancing his own prestige by honouring the glorious achievements of his brother and father.”

O’Connor scrolled though a succession of views, each one bringing them closer to the arch as if he were walking them along the Sacred Way from the Colosseum. Through the passageway under the arch they could make out the heart of ancient Rome, the jumble of ruins in the old Forum with its shattered columns, vestiges of law courts and temples and the stark brick walls of the Senate House. Beyond the Forum lay the Capitoline Hill, where the foundations of the Temple of Jupiter lay buried under the medieval palace built by Michelangelo and the extravagant Vittorio Emanuele Monument which dominated Rome’s modern skyline.

“And now the incredible part,” O’Connor enthused. “This is where ancient history really comes alive for me, even more than in the arena of the Colosseum. Standing under the arch it’s as if those few moments at dawn two thousand years ago are endlessly re-enacted, imprinted in the marble. You can sense the exaltation of the victors, the pent-up frenzy of the crowd, the terror of the condemned. You can hear the drum beat, feel the pounding vibration of the procession. It never fails to send a shiver up my spine.”

He stopped at an image of an eroded relief panel. “On the wall of the passageway through the arch on the right-hand side, facing the Forum,” he explained, “you can see Titus in a quadriga, a four-horse chariot, led by the goddess Roma. The priests behind him are carrying long axes, fasces, which they’ll use to sacrifice bullocks on the steps of the Temple of Jupiter.”

He tapped the key again. “And this is on the left-hand side.”

O’Connor sat back as they absorbed the scene. It was fragmentary and worn, but the central portion was clear enough. It was one of the masterpieces of Roman relief sculpture. On the right-hand side was a triumphal arch in three-quarters view, with two quadrigas on top. In the background were placards borne aloft like standards, with blank spaces where there had once been painted inscriptions naming cities and peoples defeated in the war. Below them was the image which for almost two thousand years had fuelled the ardour of a people determined to rebuild their holiest temple, and of their enemies sworn to do all in their power to prevent that happening. It showed a procession of tunic-clad soldiers crowned with victory wreaths carrying two biers, each supporting an ornate object hefted high for all to see. On the right heading towards the arch was a table decorated with trumpets, the great altar of the Jewish Temple. On the left in the foreground was an extraordinary but unmistakable shape, a tapering column with three arms on each side curving upwards in concentric semicircles, each arm terminating at the same level and capped with an elaborate finial shaped like a lamp.

Costas let out a low whistle. “That’s some candlestick.”

“The menorah.” O’Connor spoke with barely suppressed excitement. “The most revered symbol of Judaism, placed immediately in front of the sanctuary in the Temple. The menorah represents the light of God, and harks back to the ancient symbol of the seven-branched Tree of Life. The Temple menorah was one of the most sacred treasures of the Jewish people, second only to the Ark of the Covenant.”

“How old was it?” Costas asked.

“There are those who believe the Temple menorah was the Tabernacle menorah itself, divinely ordained when God instructed Moses on the Mount,” O’Connor said. “Rabbinic tradition has it that God showed Moses the menorah drawn in fire and that divine light was radiated in pure gold. The earliest mention of the menorah is in the Pentateuch, in the Jewish Old Testament. In the Book of Exodus God instructs the Israelites on the form of their wilderness sanctuary, their Tabernacle, the basis for the Holy of Holies in the Temple built by King Solomon in Jerusalem a thousand years before the Romans arrived.” He closed his eyes and recited from memory.

“And thou shalt make a candlestick of pure gold… And there shall be six branches going out of the sides thereof; three branches of the candlestick out of the one side thereof, and three branches of the candlestick out of the other side thereof… And thou shalt make the lamps thereof, seven; and they shall light the lamps thereof, to give light over against it. Of a talent of pure gold shall it be made.”

“A talent.” Costas stroked his chin thoughtfully. “How much was that?”

“The biblical talent was about thirty-four kilograms, seventy-five pounds,” O’Connor replied. “But don’t take it at face value. A talent was the biggest unit of weight in common use and was probably used in the Old Testament figuratively, to represent the largest weight that people could readily quantify.”

“It took at least ten Roman soldiers to heave the menorah, five on either side.” Costas was peering at the image on the screen. “The base looks at least a metre across, and I’m assuming that was gold too. If the arch was carved only a decade after the triumph, then many people in Rome would have seen the original, so the sculpture’s probably not an exaggeration. With the base, my guess is we’re looking at three hundred, maybe three hundred and fifty pounds of gold, four or five talents at least. That’s millions of dollars at today’s bullion rates.”

“It’s priceless.” O’Connor said tersely. “A symbol of nationhood, of a whole people. Nobody would ever value the menorah solely in monetary terms.”

“But that’s surely the point.” Jeremy turned and looked at O’Connor, his voice nervous but persistent. “The Vikings couldn’t care less about symbols of nationhood. Costas is right to see it in cash terms. In the Viking homeland, silver was the main bullion, and gold was at a huge premium. You hardly ever find it in Viking hoards. Three hundred pounds of gold would have assured Harald Hardrada’s place as the most powerful man in all of Scandinavia. So given the chance for a quick loot, he and his companions opted for the largest gold object they could lay their hands on. Substitute Vikings for Romans carrying the menorah and you’ve got a snapshot from one stormy night on the Golden Horn almost a thousand years later.”

Jack nodded as Jeremy spoke, his respect for the younger man’s knowledge increasing. “An extraordinary image. But before we get to the Vikings, let’s work out how on earth the menorah found its way to Constantinople.”

Half an hour later Jack stood with Maria and Jeremy in front of a building the size of an aircraft hangar, a stone’s throw from the edge of the estuary. O’Connor had asked for a break to search the IMU database for some key references, and Jack had taken the opportunity to give the other two a brief tour of the campus. They had reached the engineering complex just in time to see the door of the main loading bay roll open and a strange contraption appear on a flatbed truck.

“My latest baby,” a voice yelled out. “Come over and let me show you.”

They looked into the cavernous interior and saw Costas directing a team of workmen behind the truck, his overalls smeared with a fresh layer of oil and grime. He had excused himself from the meeting at the same time as O’Connor and was now fully engrossed in his work. The hangar was a fantastic jumble of technical projects, some on the drawing board and others clearly at the experimental stage. Through the flash of a welding torch Jack could make out the battered form of the ADSA, the Advanced Deep Sea Anthropod, which had saved him from the wreckage of Seaquest only six months before. Ranged on either side were the Aquapods, the one-man submersibles in which he and Costas had first seen the silt-shrouded walls of Atlantis, their metal carapaces still streaked yellow from the sulphurous waters of the Black Sea.

“We’re nearly ready to roll,” Costas called out. “A final systems check and that’s it.”

Jack and Maria wove their way towards him through piles of hardware and semi-finished projects, Jeremy bringing up the rear. Costas put up his hand to order a generator switched off and the unearthly din subsided. He beckoned them over to the contraption on the truck, his face beaming with excitement. “You may have seen something like this in our pictures from the Golden Horn,” he said to Maria and Jeremy. “The ferret, the sub-bottom borer we’re using to dig through the seabed to the medieval layers. I haven’t got a name for this one yet, but it does a similar job. Spot the difference?”

“Let me take a look.” Jeremy craned forward, peering intently at the forward end of the contraption. He grunted, stooped down to look under the cradle and then straightened up, ignoring the streak of grease he had acquired on his tweed jacket. He pushed his glasses up and squinted at Costas. “It cuts through ice.”

“Very good.” Costas raised his eyebrows and winked at Jack. “Go on.”

“It has an electrical element around the rim,” Jeremy said. “I’d guess a superheated element using semiconductor materials, probably in a ceramic matrix. And that box behind looks like a high-energy laser device.”

“I’m impressed. Pretty good for a medieval historian. You’re in the wrong line of work.”

“When I applied for my Rhodes fellowship it was either engineering or Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic. My school was very conservative.”

“You drew the short end of the straw.”

“I disagree,” Maria said. They all laughed and Jeremy looked ruefully at the contraption. Costas slapped an oily hand on Jeremy’s back and turned to Jack.

“We’re air-freighting it out this evening,” he said, his demeanour now serious. “I had a call from James Macleod a few minutes ago and he said the ice conditions are perfect. Another day or two and the summer melt could make it too risky. I’m flying out to Greenland tomorrow morning to oversee the setup. And there’s something else. He mentioned a local, some old guy, who claimed to have seen some old ship’s timbers in the ice. Something to do with a European expedition way back, before the Second World War. Macleod was adamant that you should see the guy, and soon. Apparently he’s on his last legs. I know it’s a bit of a diversion on the trip back to Istanbul, but you might just want to tag along.”

Back in the office, Jack clicked off his cellphone and swivelled his chair back to face the conference table. After a conversation with Maurice Hiebermeyer and Tom York on Sea Venture, he felt reassured that the excavation in the Golden Horn could carry on for another forty-eight hours without him. The greatest prize, he now knew, might lie elsewhere, in a place they could never have imagined, but the Golden Horn could still contain treasures of inestimable historical value. The team were riding on a wave of euphoria after the cannon and chain discoveries and had already begun to use Costas’ probe to penetrate the harbour sediments, but it was hit and miss and could be days before they came up trumps.

“Right,” he said. “What have you got?”

O’Connor sat with a small green-backed book pressed open in front of him, Greek text visible on one side and English on the other. Costas had excused himself and returned to the engineering complex, but Maria and Jeremy sat expectantly at the table with Jack.

“In his book The Jewish Wars, Josephus tells us that Vespasian had the treasures locked away in the Temple of Jupiter,” O’Connor began. “But we know they were transferred to the Temple of Peace when that was completed a few years into Vespasian’s reign. After that there’s no mention of the menorah for hundreds of years.”

“But surely the emperor would have wanted to display his loot at every opportunity, at parades and festivals in the city,” Maria protested.

“Vespasian was the supreme embodiment of the Roman imperial virtues,” Jack interjected. “Conquest, stability, building. As a young man he commanded a legion in the conquest of Britain, and as emperor he oversaw the conquest of Judaea. Then he stabilised the empire following the disastrous reign of Nero. Now his focus was entirely on building. The Temple of Peace, the monuments in the Forum damaged by the Great Fire of AD 64 under Nero, above all the Colosseum. He didn’t need to shout about his triumphs anymore.”

“There may be more to it than that,” O’Connor said cautiously. “You know, it’s an odd feature of Josephus’ account of the triumph that he only mentions the execution of Simon, the charismatic Jewish leader who’d been brought in chains to Rome. There’s nothing on the fate of the hundreds of other Jewish captives, men, women and children. Some of us now believe there was an orgy of murder at the end of the procession, a scene so appalling Josephus couldn’t bring himself to describe it. After all, these were his people, and he never forsook his Jewish faith. When Vespasian saw it, he too was repulsed. The emperor was a tough old soldier, as ruthless as any Roman to his enemies, but was well known for his hatred of gratuitous bloodshed. Perhaps he contrived an ill omen as an excuse never to celebrate the Jewish triumph again, secretly instructing his priests to keep the menorah under lock and key for all time.”

“And then the trail goes cold,” Maria said.

“All we have to go on is Procopius.” O’Connor gestured at the book in front of him. “He was an eyewitness to the last great attempt to reunite the Roman Empire, when the Byzantine general Belisarius recaptured Rome from the Vandals and Goths who had overrun the western provinces in the fifth century AD.”

“It amazes me that the menorah survived for so long in Rome without being looted,” Jack said. “Those weren’t exactly centuries of peace and harmony. Think of Commodus, the demented son of Marcus Aurelius. He thought he was the god Hercules, and melted down most of the imperial treasure to pay for gladiatorial contests. Or the anarchy of the third century, when there were more than thirty emperors in fifty years. The Temple of Peace was a well-known repository for the spoils of war, and its treasuries would surely have been thrown open to find gold to pay for the mercenary armies of each new claimant to the throne.”

“Absolutely.” O’Connor paused, then looked piercingly at Jack and lowered his voice. “I must ask you again to keep what I say within these four walls. The answer is staring at us in that image of the Arch of Titus. In the 1970s a sonar survey by a conservation team revealed a hidden chamber in the attic, behind the dedicatory inscription.”

Jack’s jaw dropped. “You’re not suggesting the menorah was hidden away inside the arch?”

O’Connor hesitated again, then reached inside his cassock and pulled out a brown envelope. “Few realize that the Arch of Titus is under Vatican control, one of many ancient monuments in Rome consecrated by the Church in the Middle Ages as a way of stamping papal authority on everything pagan. My predecessor in the Vatican Antiquities Department tried endlessly to have the chamber opened, but each application was rebuffed by the cardinals. I believe his persistence was the main reason for his dismissal from the Vatican. I finally managed it last month during the current programme of restoration work on the arch. One evening the chief conservator and I were alone on the scaffold inspecting progress, and a stone abutting the chamber gave way. An accident of course, you understand.”

Jack raised his eyebrows as O’Connor extracted a photograph from the envelope and slid it across the table, his hand remaining on it for a moment as he looked at Jack. “It’s not only my job that’s on the line here. It’s more, much more.”

Maria and Jeremy craned their necks as Jack lifted the picture. It showed a flashlit image inside a small chamber, its smooth walls discoloured by streaks of brown and green. On the floor were mounds of decayed matter, peppered with fragments of wood and fabric. It looked like an Egyptian pharaoh’s tomb, opened for the first time after having been looted long ago in antiquity.

“I managed to reach in and take a handful of that stuff, which I then had analysed in secret,” O’Connor said quietly. “The wood is shittim, acacia, the hardwood mentioned in the Old Testament. It was probably used for making a bier, something that required a lot of load-bearing strength. And the fabric’s silk, coloured with Tyrean purple, the prized dye derived from the murex shell found off the coast of Lebanon.”

“My God,” Maria murmured. “The Temple Veil, the sacred curtain of the Holy of Holies, used to conceal the sanctuary from the rest of the Temple.”

O’Connor nodded. “Probably used by the Romans to wrap up the menorah and the golden table.”

“So they were inside the arch all that time, directly above the symbol of the menorah on the relief carving.” Jack shook his head in amazement. “The priests must have had them moved under cover of darkness from the Temple of Peace, only a stone’s throw away.”

“And then hundreds of years later one of the custodians let the secret out, maybe using the treasure as a bargaining chip to save his own skin when the barbarians invaded,” O’Connor said. “Rome was devastated by the Goths under Alaric in AD 410 and then again by the Vandals in 455. According to Procopius, the Vandal king Giseric seized the Jewish treasures and took them to Carthage in North Africa, and after the Byzantine general Belisarius captured Carthage from the Vandals in 533 he had the treasures shipped to Constantinople. Procopius tells us that the Byzantine emperor Justinian was overcome by piety and had the treasures returned to Jerusalem, but I don’t believe a word of it. There’s no reliable record that the treasures of the Temple were ever again in the Holy Land.”

“So the menorah really was in Constantinople.” Maria looked keenly at O’Connor. “Could the story of their return to Jerusalem have been a cover-up, a false trail?”

“It’s very possible,” O’Connor replied. “Procopius became prefect of Constantinople, and was a member of Justinian’s inner court. The rituals and superstitions of pagan Rome continued well into the Christian period, and emperors of the Golden Age were revered. Perhaps Vespasian’s instructions to conceal the menorah still had potency through the centuries, and the story of the return of the treasures to Jerusalem was a way of keeping their presence in Constantinople secret. And just because the Byzantines were Christian doesn’t mean they were any more sympathetic to the Jews than the Romans of Vespasian’s day. I believe the menorah was locked away for another five hundred years, perhaps deep in the vaults of Justinian’s new cathedral of Hagia Sofia in Constantinople.”

“There are some who believe the Jewish treasures never made it out of Rome at all, that they were secretly taken by the papal authorities and lie hidden to this day in the Vatican.” Jack looked penetratingly at O’Connor, uncertain how much the other man might reveal. “Even before the barbarian invasions, the Church had begun to appropriate temples in Rome and cleanse them of their artefacts, starting soon after Constantine’s conversion to Christianity in the fourth century.”

O’Connor paused for a moment before replying, his voice hushed but deliberate. “It is true that the Vatican conceals untold treasures, priceless works of art unseen for generations. There are sealed passageways in the catacombs under St. Peter’s that even I haven’t seen.” He looked solemnly at Jack. “But I can assure you the menorah is not among them. If it was I wouldn’t be here now. I would have been sworn to secrecy by the papal authorities. Remember our history. The treasures of the Jewish Temple would represent the ultimate triumph of Christianity, retribution for the complicity of the Jews in Christ’s death. If we held them it would have to be the world’s best-kept secret. Any word and there would be war.”

“War?” Jeremy said sceptically.

“Total breakdown in relations between the Vatican and Israel. Age-old animosities between Jews and Christians reignited across the world, fuelling anti-Semitism and ultra-Zionism on a horrifying scale. And if the treasure was ever returned to Jerusalem, it would spark the final showdown in the Middle East we have long feared. Some orthodox Jews believe the restoration of the menorah to Jerusalem would be the first step in rebuilding the Temple, on the site now occupied by the Al-Aqsa mosque, one of the holiest sites of Islam. The menorah would give Israel total confidence in its destiny, empowering fundamentalists and persuading waverers. And the Arab world would know once and for all that their demands would never be achieved by negotiation.”

“It’s curious that the Nazis never came looking for it in Rome,” Jack said.

“The Second World War was a dark period for the Church,” O’Connor said grimly. “The Pope never gave Hitler an excuse to plunder the Vatican. But there have been plenty of others knocking on our doors since then. Zionist fantasists, conspiracy theorists, treasure-hunters who believe they’re halfway to finding the Holy Grail. I can assure you they have all been on a dead-end trail.”

At that moment there was a bustle of activity outside and Costas burst into the room. “Sorry to interrupt,” he said breathlessly, “but I thought you should see this.” He hurried over and handed Jack a piece of paper. “Remember those timbers with the chain in the Golden Horn? You thought they looked a little odd.”

“Overlapping strakes, attached with iron rivets.” Jack struggled to take his mind off the menorah and focus on their remarkable find of two days before. “More in the northwest European tradition of shipbuilding in the early medieval period. Odd for a Venetian galley of 1453.”

“Well, there’s your answer.” Costas leaned forward excitedly, his hands on the table. “The sample we brought back’s just been analysed. It’s Scandinavian oak. And it’s from the prow of a longship, not a Mediterranean galley. It looks as if it broke off in the chain, probably without sinking the vessel. And check out the tree-ring date.”

“Ten forty-two, plus or minus a year,” Jack read, his mind reeling with astonishment.

Jeremy let out a whoop and stood up, unable to contain himself. “It fits perfectly! Harald Hardrada fled Constantinople in 1042. His ship could have been built the year before, on the shores of the Baltic. You haven’t found the chain from the Sack of Constantinople in 1204 at all. You’ve found the chain sunk by a band of Viking mercenaries a century and a half earlier, as they powered their longship out of the Golden Horn.”

Costas glanced at the image of the soldiers burdened with loot in the triumphal procession on the arch. “And now we know what could have given their ship the weight to smash that chain.”

“The menorah.” Jack shook his head and then grinned broadly at Costas. “I’ve got to hand it to you. Another one for science.”