The Last Gospel

11

T he next morning Jack and Costas stood beside the Via del Fori Imperiali in the heart of ancient Rome. They had flown the Lynx helicopter from Seaquest II to Rome’s Fiumicino airport, on the site of the great harbour built by the emperor Claudius, and had taken the train along the course of the river Tiber into the city. Despite the heat, Jack had insisted that they leave the train at Ostiense station and walk through the ancient city walls and over the Aventine Hill, and then down past the Circus Maximus towards the Colosseum and the Roman Forum. As they neared their destination, the assurance and solidity of the modern city gave way to the fractured landscape of antiquity, desolate and empty in places, in others resplendent with structures more awesome than anything built since. It was as if those ruins and the shades of monuments long gone had the power to repel any attempt to better them, an aura which preserved the heart of ancient Rome from being submerged by history. Jack knew that the impression was partly an illusion, as much of the area of the imperial fora had been cleared of medieval buildings in the 1930s under the orders of Mussolini, but even so the Palatine Hill with the remains of the palaces of the emperors remained much as it had been since the end of antiquity, ruinous and overgrown in the many places where archaeologists had still done little more than scrape the surface.

Jack had been talking intently in Italian on his cell phone, and now snapped it shut. A van carrying their gear would rendezvous with them in two hours’ time at the foot of the Palatine Hill. He nodded at Costas, and they joined a small throng of tourists lining up behind the ticket desk outside the site of the old forum.

‘Doesn’t seem right,’ Costas grumbled, wiping the sweat from his face and swigging some water. ‘I mean, a celebrity archaeologist and his sidekick. They should be paying you.’

Jack pushed his cell phone into his khaki bag and pulled out a Nikon D80 camera, slinging it round his neck. ‘I often find it’s best to be anonymous at archaeological sites. You’re less likely to be watched. Anyway, I’d never convince them with you looking like that.’ Jack was dressed in desert boots, chinos and a loose shirt, but Costas wore a garish Hawaiian outfit, complete with a straw hat and his beloved new designer sunglasses.

‘They must be used to it,’ Costas said. ‘Archaeologists’ dress sense, I mean. Look at Hiebermeyer.’

Jack grinned, paid for the tickets and steered Costas into the archaeological site, down a ramp and towards the ruin of a small circular building, with fragmentary columns still standing. ‘The Temple of Vesta,’ he said. ‘Shrine, really, as it was never formally consecrated as a temple, for some reason. Where the sacred fire was guarded by the Vestal Virgins. They lived next door, in that big structure nestled into the foot of the Palatine, a bit like a nunnery.’

‘A pretty extravagant nunnery,’ Costas murmured. ‘So all that stuff’s really true? About the Vestal Virgins?’

Jack nodded. ‘Even the stuff about being buried alive. There’s no more sober witness than our friend the younger Pliny, who wrote the famous letters about the eruption of Vesuvius. In another letter he described how the emperor Domitian ordered the chief Vestal Virgin to be buried alive, for violating her vows of chastity. Domitian was a nasty piece of goods at the best of times, and the charge was concocted. But being walled up underground was the traditional punishment for straying Vestals, and she was taken to the appointed place and immured alive.’

‘Sounds like a male domination thing, gone badly wrong.’

‘Probably right. After the first emperor Augustus became Pontifex Maximus, the supreme priest, the emperor and the chief Vestal were on a collision course. The goddess Vesta was very powerful, guardian of the hearth. The eternal fire, the ignis inextinctus, symbolized the eternity of the state, and the future of Rome was therefore in the hands of the Virgins. They called her Vesta Mater, Vesta the Mother. She was like the Sibyl.’

‘In what way?’

‘Well, some of the similarities are pretty remarkable. Vesta was probably an amalgam of an ancient local deity of Italian origin with a Greek import, supposedly brought by Aeneas from Troy. The Sibyl at Cumae has the same kind of history. And the Vestals were chosen as girls from among the aristocracy of Rome, just as I believe the Cumaean Sibyls were. We might find out more here. Come on.’

Jack led Costas up the Sacred Way past the Arch of Titus, where they paused and looked silently up at the sculpture of the Roman soldiers in triumphal procession, carrying the Jewish menorah. They then carried on up the Palatine Hill into the Farnese Gardens, and then to the vast ruins of the imperial palace on the west side of the hill overlooking the Circus Maximus. They were met by a refreshing breeze as they came over the top, but even so the heat was searing and Jack led them to a shaded spot beside a wall.

‘So this was Claudius’ stomping ground,’ Costas said, taking off his sunglasses and wiping the sweat from his face. ‘Before he did his Bilbo Baggins disappearing act. It seems a far cry from that monk’s cell in Herculaneum.’

‘This was where he grew up, then where he spent most of his time as emperor apart from his visit to Britain,’ Jack replied. ‘But the image we have of this place at that time, the Hollywood image, you can forget a lot of that. Our view of the past is so often conditioned by later accretions, anachronisms. The Colosseum wasn’t built yet, was only inaugurated in AD 80, the year after Vesuvius erupted. The imperial palace, the huge sprawl in front of us, was only begun a few years after that by Domitian, the emperor who had the showdown with the Vestals. That was when megalomania really took hold, when the emperors really did begin living like gods. But for Claudius, like his grandfather Augustus, it was crucial to maintain the pretence of the republic, the idea that they were simply caretakers. They lived in a modest house, actually smaller than the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum.’

‘Where was it?’

‘You’re leaning against it now.’

‘Ah.’ Costas put his hand against the worn brick facing. ‘So Claudius was here,’ he murmured.

‘And Pliny the Elder, in AD 79,’ Jack said.

‘I was wondering when you were coming to that.’

‘Right here we’re smack in between the House of Augustus and Domitian’s palace, and the building in front of us is the Temple of Apollo,’ Jack said. ‘Hardly anything’s left of the temple now, but you have to imagine an awesome structure in white marble. It was embellished with some of the most famous sculptures of classical Greece, taken by the Romans when they conquered the east. Right where we’re sitting now was the portico, a colonnaded structure that surrounded the temple. Augustus had an enclave constructed within the portico next to his house, and it contained a library, apparently large enough to hold Senate meetings. The enclave may have had particular administrative functions, including a Rome office for the fleet admirals.’

‘Got you,’ Costas said. ‘Pliny the Elder. Admiral at Misenum.’

Jack nodded. ‘Pliny would have known this place well. Augustus also built a new shrine to Vesta at this spot, probably meant to supplant the one in the forum.’

‘Right under his bedroom window,’ Costas said. ‘Talk about control.’

‘The Vestal Virgins seem to have resisted the idea of moving their sacred shrine, and continued to patronize the old one. And here’s the really fascinating thing, the reason we’re here. The shrine to Vesta in the forum contained an adytum, an inner sanctum, a hidden place where various sacred items were stored. Its contents were pretty mystical, sacred objects to do with the foundation of Rome. The fascinum, the erect phallus that averted evil, the pignora imperii, mysterious pledges for the eternal duration of Rome, the palladium, a statue of the goddess Pallas Athena supposedly brought by Aeneas from Troy. Only the Vestals and the Pontifex Maximus were ever allowed in, and these items were never shown in public.’

‘A secret chamber,’ Costas mused. ‘So if Augustus was planning this new shrine as a replica of the old, he would have had a chamber built into this one too?’

‘My thinking exactly.’

‘But if the sacred items remained in the forum shrine, this new one would have been empty.’

‘Or not quite empty.’

‘Are you saying what I think you’re saying?’

Jack opened his bag and pulled out a clipboard with a blown-up photograph of a Roman coin on the front. ‘This is the only known depiction of the new shrine, the Palatine Shrine of Vesta. It’s from a coin of the emperor Tiberius, of AD 22 or 23. You can see a circular colonnaded building very similar to the old shrine in the forum, clearly emulating it. The circular shape was meant to copy the hut form of the earliest Roman dwelling, the so-called House of Romulus, which was carefully preserved as a sacred antiquity on the other side of the House of Augustus. You can still see the postholes in the rock. What else can you see on that coin?’

Costas took the clipboard. ‘Well, the letters S and C above the shrine. Senatus Consultum. Even I know that. And the shrine’s got a column on either side, a plinth with a statue on it. They’re animals, possibly horses.’ He paused, then spoke excitedly. ‘I’ve got you. Not horses. Bulls.’

‘That’s what clinches it,’ Jack said excitedly. ‘We know from the ancient sources that two statues stood in front of the Palatine Shrine of Vesta. Statues of sacrificial animals, sacred to the rites of the Vestals. Both statues were originally Greek, by the famous sculptor Myron of the fifth century BC. Statues of cows.’

‘Of course.’

‘Remember our clue,’ Jack enthused. ‘ Subduo sacra bos. Beneath the sacred cows. These two statues were a unique pair. There was nothing else like them in Rome. This can only be what Pliny meant. He hid the scroll here, in the empty chamber under the Palatine Shrine of Vesta.’

‘Where exactly?’ Costas had taken out a GPS receiver and was looking round, eyeing the featureless ground and dusty walls dubiously.

‘My best guess is where we are now, give or take ten metres either way,’ Jack said. ‘All trace of the shrine is gone, but it seems clear that it would have been on this side of the temple portico, right beside Augustus’ house.’

‘Ground-penetrating radar?’

‘Too much else going on here. The place is honeycombed, building built on building. Even the bedrock’s full of cracks and fissures.’

‘So what do we do now? Get a shovel?’

‘We’ll never find it that way. At least not without a lot of money, a lot of bureaucracy, and about a year for the permit to come through. No, we’re not going to dig down.’

‘So what can we do?’

‘We might be able to go up.’

‘Huh?’

Jack took back the clipboard, closed his bag and jumped to his feet. He checked his watch. ‘I’ll explain on the way. Come on.’

Twenty minutes later they stood on a terrace on the north side of the Roman Forum archaeological precinct, with a magnificent view of the heart of ancient Rome stretching out in front of them and the vast bulk of the Colosseum in the background. ‘This is the best place to get a sense of the topography, ’ Jack said. ‘At its height this was a huge conglomeration of buildings, temples, law courts, monuments, all crowding in on each other. Strip all that away and you can see how the forum was built in a valley, with the Palatine Hill on the west side. Now look to our right, below the north slope of the Palatine, and see how the valley sweeps round towards the river Tiber. Where we’re standing now is the Capitoline Hill, the apex of ancient Rome, the place where the triumphal processions reached their climax. Just to the right of us is the Tarpeian Rock, where criminals were flung to their deaths over a precipice.’

‘The miscreant Vestals?’

‘Traditionally their place of execution is thought to have been outside the city walls, but Pliny the Younger only mentions an underground chamber. It could have been close by.’

‘So tell me about underground Rome,’ Costas said. ‘Not that I want to go there. Three thousand years of accumulated sludge.’

Jack grinned, opened his bag and pulled out the clipboard again, folding back the sheet with the image of the coin to reveal a copy of an old engraving, the word ROMA in large letters at the top. The centre of the map showed topographical features, valleys, hills and watercourses, and around the edge were building plans. ‘This is my favourite map of Rome,’ he said. ‘Drawn by Giovanni Battista Piranesi in the eighteenth century, about the same time that the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum was first being explored. The fragmentary plans of buildings around the edge are drawings of chunks of the famous Marble Plan, a huge mural originally displayed in Vespasian’s Temple of Peace. Only about ten per cent of the Marble Plan survives, in fragments like this.’ To Jack, Piranesi’s map was like a metaphor for knowledge of ancient Rome, like an incomplete jigsaw puzzle with some areas known in great detail, others hardly at all, even building layouts recorded exactly but their actual location lost to history.

‘It shows the topography very clearly,’ Costas said.

‘That’s why I love it,’ Jack replied. ‘Piranesi kept the pieces of the jigsaw to the edges, swept aside the buildings, and focused on the hills and valleys. That’s what I wanted you to see.’ He angled the map so it had the same orientation as the view in front of them, and traced his finger over the centre. ‘In prehistoric times, when Aeneas supposedly arrived here, the forum area was a marshy valley on the edge of a flood plain. As the first settlements spread down the slopes of the hills into the wetland, the stream was canalized and eventually covered over. It became the Cloaca Maxima, the Great Drain, extending beyond where you can see the Colosseum now, then right under the forum, then sweeping round in front of us and flowing into the Tiber. There were tributaries, streams running into it, as well as artificial underground constructions, the channels of aqueducts. It’s all still there, a vast underground labyrinth, and only a fraction of it has ever been explored.’

‘Where’s the nearest access point?’

‘We’re heading towards it now. Follow me.’ Jack led Costas off the terrace and down into Via di San Teodoro, the ruins on the Palatine rearing up to the left and the buildings of the medieval city to the right. They veered right again into a narrow street which opened out into a V-shaped courtyard, with traffic thundering beyond. In the foreground was a massive squat ruin, a four-way arch with thick piers at each corner. ‘The Arch of Janus,’ Jack said. ‘Not the most glorious of Rome’s ruins, pretty well denuded of anything interesting. But it stands astride the Cloaca Maxima. The place where the drain disgorges into the river is only about two hundred metres away, beyond the main road.’ They went through an opening in the iron railing surrounding the arch and walked under the bleached stone. On the forecourt on the other side a van was drawn up and two clusters of diving equipment were laid out on the cobbles, with two IMU technicians running checks on one of the closed-circuit rebreathers.

‘This looks like a setup,’ Costas grumbled.

‘I thought I’d spring this on you now after giving you a sense of purpose. It’s fantastically exciting, the chance to explore completely unknown sites in the heart of ancient Rome.’

‘Jack, don’t tell me we’re going diving in a sewer.’

A man came towards them from where he had been squatting beside the arch. He had a wiry physique and fine Italian features, though he seemed unusually pale for a Roman. ‘Massimo!’ Jack said. ‘ Va bene? ’

‘ Va bene.’ The voice sounded shaky, and close up the man looked slightly grey. ‘You remember Costas?’ Jack said. The two men nodded, and shook hands. ‘It seems only yesterday that we met at that conference in London.’

‘It was my greatest pleasure,’ Massimo said in perfect English, only slightly accented. ‘We work here under the auspices of the archaeological superintendency, but we’re all amateurs. It was a privilege to spend time with professionals.’

‘This time, the tables are turned,’ Jack said, smiling. ‘This will be my first venture into urban underwater archaeology.’

‘It’s the archaeology of the future, Jack,’ Massimo said with passion. ‘We come on ancient sites from below, leaving the surface intact. It’s perfect in a place like Rome. It beats hanging on the shirttails of developers, waiting for a fleeting chance to find something in a building site before the bulldozers destroy it.’

‘You’re beginning to talk like a professional, Massimo.’

‘It’s a pleasure to help. We’ve been desperate to explore where you’re planning to go. We’ve been waiting for the right diving equipment.’

‘What do you call yourselves?’ Costas said.

‘Urban speleologists.’

‘Tunnel rats,’ Jack grinned.

‘Be careful of that word, Jack,’ Massimo said. ‘Where you’re about to go, it might come back to haunt you.’

‘Ah. Point taken.’ Jack gave a wry grin. ‘You have a map?’

‘It’s inside the arch. Your people will bring over the equipment. Follow me.’ Jack and Costas waved at the two IMU technicians, and went towards a door in one of the stone piers. ‘This leads up to a complex of small chambers and corridors inside the arch, used when it was converted into a medieval fortress,’ Massimo said. ‘What nobody knew was that the stairway extends below as well, into the Cloaca Maxima. We assumed there must have been an access point somewhere under the arch, and came looking for it a few months ago. The superintendency allowed us to remove the stones.’ He pointed to a new-looking manhole cover about a metre and a half round on the floor just inside the door. ‘But first, some orientation. The map.’ He reached behind the door and pulled out a long cardboard tube, then extracted a rolled-up sheet and held it open against the side of the pier. ‘This is a plan of everything we know about what’s underground in this part of Rome, from the entrance into the Cloaca Maxima under the Colosseum to the river Tiber just beyond us here.’

‘This is what I’m really interested in,’ Jack said, using both hands to point to branches leading off the main line of the Cloaca Maxima, then drawing his hands together into the blank space in between.

‘Absolutely. That’s one of our most exciting finds,’ Massimo said. ‘We think those branches are either end of an artificial tunnel running right under the Palatine. We think it was built by the emperor Claudius.’

‘Claudius?’ Jack said, startled.

‘He’s our hero. A posthumous honorary tunnel rat. His biggest projects were underground, underwater. Digging the tunnel to drain the Fucine Lake. Building the great harbour at Ostia. His aqueduct into Rome, the Aqua Claudia. We think a drainage tunnel under the Palatine would have been right up his street. And he was an historian, would have been fascinated by anything they came across, any vestiges of the earliest Romans, his ancestors. He might even have gone down there himself. One of us.’

‘Small world,’ Costas murmured.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well,’ he began, then Jack shot him a warning look. ‘Well, Jack was just telling me about Claudius, the harbour, when we were flying into Fiumicino. Fascinating guy.’

‘I think we can leave Claudius aside until we actually find something that identifies his involvement,’ Jack said sternly. ‘Remember, what we’re after dates hundreds of years before Claudius’ time. What we talked about on the phone, Massimo. The Lupercale cave.’

‘The Lupercale,’ Massimo repeated reverently, then looked furtively around. ‘If you can find a way into that from underground, then we’ve made history.’

Costas peered enquiringly at Jack, who turned to him stony faced. ‘My apologies, Costas. I was waiting till now to fill you in on what we’re really after. I didn’t want anyone overhearing, any word leaking out,’ he said forcibly, looking at Massimo. ‘It’s an amazing find. Archaeologists drilling into the ground below the House of Augustus on the Palatine broke through into an underground chamber, a cavity at least fifteen metres deep. They sent in a probe, and saw walls encrusted with mosaics and seashells, like a grotto. It could be the Lupercale, the sacred cave of Rome’s ancestors, where the she-wolf nursed Romulus and Remus. A place revered in antiquity but lost to history. It could be one of the most sensational finds ever made in Roman archaeology. We’re here to see if we can find an underground entrance. Massimo’s even kept the superintendency in the dark. His team are worried about looters getting in, and want to explore the place fully before going public.’

‘The Palatine’s riddled with caves and fissures,’ Massimo enthused. ‘God only knows what else lies under there. The Lupercale cave could just be the tip.’

‘You’re sure this is the best entrance, here under the arch?’ Jack asked.

‘On the other side of the Palatine, the tunnel runs from the Cloaca Maxima somewhere near the Atrium Vestae, the House of the Vestal Virgins,’ Massimo replied. ‘We haven’t got any further than that. This side is definitely your best bet. The branch going from here into the Palatine is on the line of the Velabrum, an ancient stream that was once part of another marshy area, canalized and arched over about 200 BC. We’ve explored as far as the edge of the Palatine, but then the tunnel drops down and becomes completely submerged. We’re not cave divers, not yet. From our farthest point we think it’s only about two hundred metres to the site of the Lupercale, and about thirty metres up.’

‘What’s the geology?’ Costas said.

‘Tufa, volcanic stone. Easily worked but strong, a good load-bearer. And you sometimes see calcite formations as well, even stalactites and stalagmites, where calcium-rich groundwater has dripped into the Roman conduits.’

‘Can we take a peek down that hole?’ Jack said, jerking his head towards the open doorway in the arch. ‘I want some idea of what we’re dealing with.’

Massimo nodded, walked inside and stooped down, then swallowed hard, as if he were about to retch. He glanced back at them. ‘You might want to take a few deep breaths. It’s a little high down there.’ He lifted the manhole cover, and they glimpsed the dark beginnings of a spiral staircase. An indescribable smell wafted up. He closed the lid hurriedly, and dived back outside, clutching his mouth.

‘Okay. I see what you mean. We’ll kit up here, outside,’ Jack said.

Massimo swallowed hard, and his voice was hoarse. ‘You’ll see a fluorescent orange line running along the edge of the Cloaca Maxima, then into the Velabrum as far as we reached,’ he said. ‘Beyond that, you’re on your own.’

‘You’re not coming with us?’ Jack said.

‘I’d love to, but I’d be a liability. I had a bad experience yesterday, just below the Forum of Nerva. A conduit suddenly disgorged a gob of yellow liquid into the Cloaca, and it aerosolized into a mist. No idea what it was, don’t want to know. I didn’t have my respirator on. Stupid. I’ve been throwing up every half-hour or so ever since. It’s happened to me before, I just need a little time. Occupational hazard.’

‘You guys take risks,’ Jack murmured. ‘So what is down there? Liquid, I mean.’

‘You want the full menu?’

‘A la carte,’ Jack said.

‘Well, it’s a mixture of runoff from the streets, the things that actually live down there, and leakage.’

‘Leakage,’ Costas muttered. ‘Great.’

‘Mud, diesel, urine. Rotting rat carcasses. And the stringy grey stuff, well, it shouldn’t be there, but the sewage outlets aren’t exactly all they’re piped up to be.’ Massimo gave them a slightly macabre grin, and coughed. ‘But it’s an old city. There’s always going to be a bit of give and take.’

‘Give and take?’ Costas said.

‘Well, one conduit provides clear, life-giving water, the other takes away putrid effluent. Or, to put it another way, the sewage pipes give to the drains, the drains take it away, the river flows to the sea. Here, it’s the natural order of things.’

‘Sheer poetry,’ Costas muttered. ‘No wonder the river Tiber looks green. It’s how I’m beginning to feel.’

‘We’ll be fine in the IMU e-suits.’ Jack said. ‘Completely sealed in, no skin exposed. Tried and tested in all the most extreme conditions, right, Costas? If this goes well, Massimo, we’ll donate you all of our equipment.’

‘That would be excellent, Jack. Perfetto.’ He swayed, and looked as if he were about to throw up. ‘You’d better get going. They’re forecasting heavy rain this afternoon, and the Cloaca can become a torrent. You don’t want to get flushed out into the river.’

‘I don’t like that word, flush,’ Costas muttered.

‘The good news is, once you turn the corner from the main drain into the Velabrum, the water becomes clear,’ Massimo said. ‘Under the Palatine it comes from natural springs, and because nobody lives there any more there’s hardly any pollution. Right under the hill it should be crystal clear.’

Jack took off his old khaki bag, and slung it over Massimo’s head. ‘Guard this bag with your life, Massimo, and I’ll see that our board of directors award Costas a special secondment here as your technical adviser.’

‘What?’ Costas looked aghast.

‘Another honorary tunnel rat.’ Massimo gave Costas a feverish grin, and slapped him on the shoulder. ‘It’s a deal. And now it’s my turn to donate some equipment.’ He went back into the chamber inside the stone pier and came out with two compact climbers’ harnesses, with metal carabiners, a hammer and pitons and a coil of rope. ‘It’s not exactly what you’d imagine needing under Rome, but trust me, this can be a lifesaver.’

Jack nodded. ‘Much appreciated.’ He laid the harness down beside the rest of his kit, and waved appreciatively to the two IMU technicians who had gone back to wait by the van. He looked back at the cover over the hole into the Cloaca Maxima, the place where they would soon be going, and took a few deep breaths. Their banter had kept his anxieties at bay, but now he had to face it: this dive was going to force him to confront his worst fear, the one thing that could truly unsettle him. Costas knew it too, and Jack sensed that he was being watched very closely. He pulled the e-suit towards him, and squatted down to take off his boots. He would remain focused. An extraordinary prize could await them. And underwater tunnels always had exits.

Costas peered at him. ‘Good to go?’

‘Good to go.’