The Last Gospel

CAESAR.

‘My God,’ he whispered. ‘So this was what he was writing. This was why he wanted to return to the life of a scholar. A History of Britain, by Claudius Caesar. Can you imagine what this contains?’

He scanned the lines of fine, precise writing and then looked back at the title. Underneath it were two words, in the same hand but smaller: NARCISSVS FECIT

‘Of course,’ Jack exclaimed, his voice hoarse with excitement. ‘ Narcissus did this. Narcissus wrote this.’ He looked back towards the doorway, where the outstretched arm of the skeleton was visible in his headlamp beam. ‘So it is you after all,’ he murmured to himself, then looked at the others, his face suffused with excitement. ‘You remember I said that Narcissus was Claudius’ freedman? Well, his official title was praepositus ab epistulis, letter-writer. This clinches it. We know who that skeleton was after all. He was Claudius’ amanuensis, his scribe. I know Pliny always had one, and Claudius must have had one too, especially with his palsy.’ Jack looked at the page again, then at some other pages scattered beside it on the table, with no writing but covered in dark red blotches like wine stains. ‘It’s amazing. I only hope we can find something in Claudius’ own hand.’

The sound of the drill at the entrance to the tunnel had stopped, and a woman’s voice was shouting, in heavily accented English. ‘Dr Hiebermeyer? Dr Hiebermeyer? We are closing the tunnel now. Please come out immediately.’

‘ Si, si, si,’ Hiebermeyer bellowed back. Maria immediately came over with her digital camera and began taking pictures, quickly moving through everything on the table, finishing with a close-up sequence of the page of writing before picking up the blank papyrus sheet and placing it on top to protect and conceal the writing.

‘We need to decide what to do, Jack,’ Hiebermeyer said in a low voice. ‘Pronto.’

‘As soon as we’re out of earshot beyond the villa site, I’m on the phone to my friend at Reuters,’ Jack said. ‘Maria should now have a disk full of images of everything we’ve seen here, and those can be e-mailed straight through. But we keep quiet until then. Leak any of this now, to the superintendency people, and we’ll never see the contents of this room again. You need to play the danger card, Maurice, big time. We found nothing of much interest, spent our time examining some masonry fragments sticking out of the wall. Far too dangerous for anyone to come beyond that grille again. Tell them their drill destabilized the tunnel even more, and there was a collapse. But by tomorrow morning, when these images are out, splashed across the headlines and TV news everywhere, they’ll have no choice but to open up this place. It’ll be one of the most sensational finds ever made in archaeology. And by the way, Maurice, and Maria. Many congratulations.’

‘Not just yet, Jack.’ Hiebermeyer murmured, making his way past the scrolls on the floor towards the extractor fan. ‘I’ve spent too long dealing with these people now to be so optimistic. Let’s stall the champagne until this place is more than just a figment of our imagination.’

‘Jack, there’s an open scroll here.’ Costas was standing beside the shelves, peering into the recess behind the marble jars.

‘There are scrolls everywhere,’ Jack said. ‘This place is an Aladdin’s cave. We’ll just have to leave it.’

‘You said you wanted to see Claudius’ handwriting. I’m not sure, but this one looks like it might be in two different hands, one of them a little spidery. Looks like someone’s jotted notes in the margin.’

‘Probably mad old Philodemus,’ Hiebermeyer said.

‘I doubt it. I think Claudius was having Philodemus cleared out,’ Jack said. ‘I think he was making room on the shelves for his own stuff.’ He walked over to Costas, who moved aside, and peered where he was pointing. The scroll was open, the two ends partly rolled back, with a few inches of writing visible in between. The scroll looked identical to those in the basket by the door, the volumes of Pliny’s Natural History, with the distinctive rounded finials on the handles. Someone must have been consulting it, then put it down opened at a page. The woman’s voice came up the tunnel again, shouting, insistent. ‘Dr Hiebermeyer! Jack! Please. Now!’ Jack looked up, suddenly distracted at hearing his name spoken by a voice from a past that had never been resolved, as if she were calling to him in a dream. For a second he felt an overwhelming need to leave everything and go back out of the tunnel, to find out what had gone wrong. Maria and Hiebermeyer were already out of the chamber, taking the extractor fan with them. Jack shook his head, looked at Costas and then back at the scroll, forced himself to concentrate for a moment longer, to read the words of the ancient script.

He froze.

He looked again. Two words. Two words that could change history. His mind was racing, his heart thumping.

Then, for the first time in his life, Jack did the unthinkable. He lifted the scroll, carefully rolled the two wound ends together, and slid it into his khaki bag. He flipped over the cover of the bag and buckled the straps. Costas watched him in silence.

‘You know why I’m doing this,’ Jack said quietly.

‘I’m good with it,’ Costas replied.

Jack turned to follow Hiebermeyer and Maria. ‘Right. Time to face the inquisition.’

Fifteen minutes later Jack stood with Costas and Maria in the open air outside the archaeological site, waiting for the guard to unlock the door that led back out into the alleyway through the modern town of Ercolano. They had been hit by the heat as they left the tunnel, but the blinding sunlight of their arrival on the site had given way to a lowering grey sky, with dark clouds forming over Vesuvius and blanketing the bay behind them. They had doffed their safety helmets outside the tunnel and made their way past the workmen and the guards in the main trench, leaving Hiebermeyer to make his report to Elizabeth and a male inspector who had been waiting beside the tunnel entrance, impatient to close up the site. The Egyptian statue of Anubis had already been drilled out of the volcanic rock and stood partly crated outside the entrance, a cluster of tungsten lamps to one side ready for the impending media event. A concrete-mixer had already been drawn up next to the tunnel entrance, and workmen were laying wooden formers ready to fill and block up the tunnel for good. Everything seemed to be happening exactly as Hiebermeyer had predicted.

The guard who had jostled Costas on their way into the site was ambling across the small courtyard towards them again, smoking, his sub-machine gun slung over his back. He came directly towards Costas, flicked away his cigarette and made an upwards gesture with both hands. Jack realized that he was planning to frisk him. Jack looked at Costas, then back at the guard, then at Costas again. This was not going to work. They had less to lose now that they had done what they came for, but the last thing Jack wanted was an incident that would lead to full body searches. He put his hand on his precious bag and tried to catch Costas’ attention, but Costas’ eyes were glued on the guard, expressionless, and Jack could see his hands slowly clenching and unclenching.

At that moment there was a clatter behind them and Hiebermeyer entered the courtyard, followed by Elizabeth and the male inspector. Elizabeth snapped at the guard in Italian and he sneered at her, standing his ground. The man with Elizabeth then said something and the guard backed off a few steps, passing over a bunch of keys. The man went straight to the door and unlocked it, ushering them out. Maria and Costas ducked through. Jack was about to follow, then looked at Elizabeth, catching her eye for the first time. She looked back at him, imploring, and suddenly reached out and grasped his arm, drawing him into the shadows, past the slit-eyed gaze of the guard. For a fleeting moment Jack was back where he had been all those years before, held by those dark eyes that still had the same allure, but in a face more worn and anguished than the passage of time could explain. He barely registered what she whispered to him, a few tense sentences, before she pushed him forcibly away and left quickly the way she had come, back round the corner towards the excavation trench, disappearing out of sight.

Jack was rooted to the spot, and then heard Costas calling him through the doorway. He stumbled past the guard who was now talking intently on a cell phone, his eyes following Jack, and past the inspector who nodded at him, and then through the entrance into the rubbish-strewn alley. The door clanged shut behind him and he heard the padlock being engaged. He looked up towards the dark cone of Vesuvius looming over the rooftops at the end of the alley, and began following the other three. He clutched his bag, feeling the shape inside, and felt his heart begin to pound. There was no turning back now.