The Last Gospel

CLAVDIVS. DRVSI.F. CAISAR. AVGVSTVS. GERMANICVS

‘This is authentic, no doubt about it,’ Jack murmured. ‘It has the characteristically archaic spelling of the word Caesar, harking back to the glory days of Julius Caesar, the Roman Republic. The wall’s like that too, carved as if it’s made of blocks in a rusticated style, the surfaces left rough with almost an exaggerated lack of finish. Absolutely characteristic of Claudius, of buildings where he had a personal involvement. And typical of Claudius to get the epigraphic details right, the archaic reference.’

‘You’re talking about our Claudius? The emperor? This was his doing?’

Jack translated the inscription: ‘ “Tiberius Claudius, son of Drusus, Caesar, Augustus, Germanicus, Chief Priest, with Tribunician power for the twelfth time, five times Consul, twenty-seven times Imperator, Father of his Country, saw to the construction at his own expense of the Sacred Vestal Water.” ’

‘That’s going to make Massimo very happy,’ Costas said. ‘It’s all we need to tell him. His tunnel rats can have a party down here when they see this. Their hero.’

‘The formula’s similar to Claudius’ inscription on the Aqua Claudia, at the Porta Maggiore where the aqueduct entered Rome,’ Jack said. ‘But the fascinating thing here, the unique thing, is those three words. Aquas Vestiam Sacra. The sacred waters of the Vestals. It means Massimo may well have been right about that too, that this tunnel connects with the House of the Vestals on the other side of the Palatine, with the channel that joins the branch off the Cloaca Maxima he explored under the old forum.’

‘The strange thing is, this isn’t a drain from the Cloaca,’ Costas murmured. ‘It’s exactly the opposite. The fact that the water’s crystal clear on this side suggests it must be on the other side too, flowing down back towards the forum. There must be a pretty big spring smack in the middle of all this, right under the Palatine.’

‘Perhaps a sacred spring,’ Jack murmured. ‘Maybe the Vestals were the guardians.’

Costas eyed his navigation computer again. ‘Judging by the direction of this tunnel and the likely angle of the tunnel Massimo explored under the forum, the point of confluence should be almost exactly under where we were sitting by the House of Augustus this morning. Maybe that cave, the Lupercale, was actually an entranceway down to the spring, a secret passage from the palace. Maybe all that myth stuff, Romulus and Remus, could actually have some fact behind it.’

‘The Romans never doubted it,’ Jack murmured.

‘Right,’ Costas said. ‘The myth could even underline the importance of the spring. The earliest settlement of Rome was on the Palatine Hill, right? Well, control of a spring could have been crucial to their success. Maybe we’re about to find the real reason why Rome became great. Water.’

‘You never cease to amaze me,’ Jack said. ‘And it makes sense that the Vestals were involved, an ancient priesthood dating from the foundation of Rome, probably from way before. By sanctifying this place, by keeping it secret and pure, they would also have been safeguarding Rome. No wonder they were feared and revered. Down here under the Palatine they may literally have been the powerhouse of ancient Rome.’

‘Time to find out.’ Costas pushed off from the rock and vented air from his buoyancy system, dropping under the rock face between the two columns. Jack lingered for a moment, staring at the inscription, his excitement pushing against a feeling of apprehension which had not yet fully grown, but was there. He dropped down and followed Costas, finning into the tunnel, completely submerged again with the tufa vault above him.

‘Waterproof concrete,’ Costas said. Jack could see the cone of light from his headlamp a few metres ahead, aimed at a section of the conduit wall which had partly cracked and crumbled.

‘Another Claudius speciality,’ Jack replied, coming up behind him. ‘It’s how they built the underwater moles of his great harbour at Ostia, and what they used to line aqueducts. In here it was probably used to keep groundwater from leeching down into the conduit, contaminating the springwater. The key ingredient of hydraulic concrete was a dust called pozzolana, from ancient Pozzuola. That’s Puteoli on the Bay of Naples, beside the Phlegraean Fields.’

‘Small world,’ Costas murmured as he pressed ahead.

Jack passed the damaged section, and then came under Costas’ legs where he had stopped, about fifteen metres beyond the columns that had marked the entrance to the conduit.

‘It’s all choked up,’ Costas said. ‘It looks as if there’s been a collapse.’

‘A dead end?’ Jack said.

Costas bent over and delved into the tool pocket on his e-suit. He produced a device about the size of a spoon, activated it and held it out in front of him. Jack watched the flashing red light turn to green. ‘The water current meter shows we’ve still got flow. Wherever the spring is, it’s still ahead of us.’ Costas pocketed the meter, then looked at the gauge on his wrist. ‘And we’re still going up at a slight angle, about ten degrees. At this rate we’ll break surface about twenty metres ahead, if the tunnel continues at the same angle beyond this rubble.’

Jack edged under Costas, and peered at the jumble of tufa fragments on the floor of the tunnel. He reached down and shifted one, then moved several more. ‘Take a look at this,’ he said. ‘There’s a crack underneath us, a fissure in the base of the tunnel. It must have split open when the quake brought down the ceiling. We might be able to get through.’

Costas dropped alongside Jack, and looked into the hole, angling his head so that the beam shone deep inside. ‘You may be right,’ he said. ‘It widens ahead of us, maybe body width, and goes on as far as I can see. The rubble seems to have compacted at the top of the fissure, and not fallen into it. If we can clear the first couple of metres or so, we might reach the point where the fissure’s wide enough to fin through.’

‘My turn to take the lead,’ Jack said. Costas dropped back and peered at him closely, his visor almost touching Jack’s, and made the okay sign. The two men knew each other too well, and words were unnecessary. It was always the second sump that did it for Jack, the realization that escape was no longer straightforward, that he would need to go back through several submerged spaces before reaching the final passage to freedom. He had survived a near-death experience as a boy diving a sunken mine shaft, when his air had cut off and his buddy had saved him, and the memory rose up again every time he confronted similar circumstances, every time his mind began to lock into that sense of deja vu. He had already felt the icy grip of claustrophobia before he saw the inscription, and now he needed all his reserves to fight it, his own secret battle that only Costas knew about. Taking the lead helped him to focus, to concentrate, to see the objective ahead as his own personal quest, to feel responsibility for one who now came behind him.

‘We’re still at about six metres water depth,’ Costas said. ‘By my reckoning, we’re only about thirty metres from the point directly below the House of Augustus and that temple, where we were sitting on top of the Palatine.’

‘Okay. Here goes,’ Jack muttered. He angled down and pulled himself through the crack. He finned hard, but got nowhere. He was beginning to hyperventilate. He closed his eyes, then felt a jostle from behind. ‘Your coil of rope caught on a rock,’ Costas said. Jack felt a hard push, and then was floating free inside the fissure, which had quickly widened to about two metres. He realized that he was dropping, and dropping fast. He looked at his gauge. Fifteen metres depth already. He must have deactivated the automated buoyancy control as he squeezed into the fissure, and he fumbled with the controls on the side of his helmet. There was a hiss of gas into the suit and he slowed down, reaching neutral buoyancy at eighteen metres. For the first time he looked along the length of the fissure ahead of him. The water was still crystal clear, and he could see horizontally at least thirty metres, to a point where the rough volcanic tufa walls on either side seemed to join together again. He looked down. There was nothing, a yawning blackness, an abyss like he had never seen before, deep below the heart of one of the world’s most ancient cities.

He heard grunting and cursing through his intercom, and looked up to see Costas part-way into the fissure. He began to swim back up to help him, and then Costas was through, dropping down until they both came level at twelve metres depth. ‘This place is phenomenal.’ Costas was still panting from his exertion, but was peering down. ‘The crack of doom.’

‘I can’t see the bottom,’ Jack said. ‘It must be at least fifty metres below us, maybe more.’

‘I didn’t wager for a decompression dive under Rome,’ Costas said. ‘We haven’t got the gas for that.’ They both checked the readout inside their helmets, which showed the gas mixture from their rebreathers adjusting for depth. ‘I’d say half an hour, no more, with a twenty-five-metre maximum. Any deeper than that and it’s a bounce dive, then we’re out of here.’

‘We may be lucky,’ Jack said. ‘Look along the top of the fissure.’ He panned his headlamp beam along, and Costas followed it. They could see the glistening reflection of the water surface at their entry point, then nothing but rock for about ten metres, then another wavering patch of white, this one at least three metres long. ‘Looks like it breaks surface again,’ Jack said. ‘Let’s go up.’

They began to swim in the direction of Jack’s beam. Costas rolled on his back, peering up and down the fissure, then looking hard at the rock directly above them. ‘This fissure’s clearly a seismic cleft, tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of years old. It looks as if it’s always been filled with water, spring-fed. Then right above it there’s that tunnel built by Claudius, buckled by a more recent earthquake. You can see sections of the Roman rock-cut ceiling from the tunnel above us. My guess is, the tunnel was never intended to break into the fissure, but extended above it to that pool we’re heading towards. The tunnel must be a kind of outlet, an overflow conduit for when the water here got too high.’

‘Look at that,’ Jack exclaimed, pointing to the side of the fissure. ‘There’s a flight of four, five rock-cut steps, leading up to the pool.’

‘It looks like a wellhead,’ Costas said. ‘Maybe this was where they accessed the spring. We’re coming up almost directly under the place where those prehistoric huts were found, the House of Romulus on top of the Palatine, about sixty metres above us.’

Jack broke surface first, then cautiously walked up the steps, craning his neck round to ensure there was ample headspace. He looked back to check that Costas was behind him, then reached down and pulled his fins up behind his calves before walking up out of the water on to a flat rock surface. He was inside another tunnel, but it was spectacularly different from the one they had come through. Jack turned around, looking. To the north, about ten metres from him, the tunnel came to an end at what looked like a small chamber, slightly larger than the dimensions of the tunnel. At the other end, about the same distance away, it opened into a rocky cavern, obscured in shadows. The tunnel itself was hewn out of the living rock, about three metres wide and five metres high, with a trapezoidal cross-section like a truncated pyramid. Jack swivelled around and scanned the whole length again, then looked closely at one wall, inspecting the ancient pick-marks. This was old, far older than anything else they had seen. He looked again. It suddenly clicked. ‘My God,’ he whispered.

‘Another tunnel,’ Costas said, his dripping form appearing beside Jack.

‘Not just another tunnel,’ Jack murmured. ‘ A dromos.’

‘A what?’

‘Where have you seen this shape before?’

Costas gazed along the tunnel, the rectilinear profile of the walls framed by his beam. ‘Bronze Age,’ he suddenly said, sounding triumphant. ‘The Greek Bronze Age. Those tombs you showed me at Mycenae, in Greece. A dromos was a sacred corridor. The time of the Trojan Wars, Aeneas, all that.’

‘And this may finally pin down the origin of Rome, once and for all,’ Jack said, his voice hushed. ‘We’re on the edge of the age of myth again, Costas, just like Atlantis, myth made real. But I’m thinking of somewhere closer to home. This is almost identical to the dromos in the cave of the Sibyl at Cumae.’

‘The Sibyl,’ Costas murmured. ‘So she had an apartment in Rome, too.’

‘This is all beginning to make sense,’ Jack said. ‘The Lupercale, the sacred cave of Rome’s origin. I’ll bet that’s what lies ahead of us, that cavern. And we’ve just emerged from the spring, vital for the survival of Rome. A sacred place, sanctified and protected. We know the ritual at Cumae involved lustral waters, rites of purification. The Vestals probably did that too. And then there’s the dark side.’

‘The crack of doom,’ Costas said.

‘The entrance to the underworld.’

‘Just like Cumae, the Phlegraean Fields,’ Costas said.

‘And on top of it all sits a Sibyl.’

‘I wonder if she was here when they arrived, the first Romans, or whether they brought her with them?’ Costas mused. ‘And I wonder how the Vestal Virgins figure in all this?’

‘Maybe there are answers here. We need to get to that cave. Come on.’

‘Before you do that, Jack, you might want to take a look at the other end of this tunnel. There’s something in the middle of that chamber.’

Jack swivelled round to follow Costas’ gaze. With their two beams concentrated together the chamber was more clearly illuminated. They walked along the passageway towards it. The ancient walls were streaked with accretion, calcite deposits that covered the tufa like dirty whitewash. They reached the edge of the chamber. It was a perfect dome, about eight metres in circumference, with small rectangular openings in the ceiling that might once have been air vents, evidently clogged up. On the far side was what looked like the decayed remains of a statue, on a plinth. In front of it was a circular depression in the floor about three metres wide, surrounded by a rock-cut rim and filled with a dark mass, what looked like a black resinous material sealed under calcite accretion. Jack stared at it, and then at the decayed figure behind it. ‘Of course,’ he whispered.

‘What is it?’

‘That statue, it looks as if it might once have been female,’ he said. ‘A seated woman. A cult statue. And this is a hearth, a sacred hearth.’ He was suddenly elated. ‘That’s why the shrines of Vesta in the forum and on the Palatine were never inaugurated, never made into temples. It’s because they were outliers, just the public face of the cult. This chamber was the real Temple of Vesta.’

‘Jack, the statue. It’s got an inscription.’

Jack stepped around the hearth and followed Costas’ beam. At the base of the statue was a thin slab of marble veneer, about thirty centimetres across. Jack squatted down and peered at it. ‘Odd,’ he said. ‘It’s not a dedicatory inscription, not part of the plinth. It’s propped up here loose, or at least was until the calcite glued it in place.’ He bent down as far as he could, then got down on the floor. The Latin was clear in his beam, and he read it out: COELIA CONCORDIA