The Last Gospel

18

T he woman stumbled as they dragged her out of the car and pushed her over the irregular rocky surface. She was blindfolded, but she knew where they were. The smell had hit her as soon as they had opened the car door, the acrid waft of sulphur that made the tip of her tongue burn. She could sense the yawning space ahead, the warm updraught from the furnace in the pit of the earth. She knew the score. They would either do it here, or take her down below. She had been here many times before, as a girl, when they had tried to toughen her up. She had seen the terror, the pleading, the incontinence, and sometimes the serene composure, the acceptance of the old ways as they always had been, the futility of resistance.

A hand steered her to the left, and pushed her on, down a rocky path. So it would be below. They were taking no chances. The hand pulled her to a halt, and roughly undid her blindfold. She blinked hard, and stared into darkness. She sensed the bulk of Vesuvius over the bay behind her, but knew that if she turned for one last look she would be slapped down, and the blindfold put back on. She knew they had only removed it to make it easier for them to get her down the rocky path to the floor of the crater, but she hoped they would keep it off to the end. It was her only fear, that she should experience that moment in darkness, unable to distinguish between blindness and death.

She kept her eyes ahead, only looking down when she stumbled, her hands duct taped behind her. They reached the bottom. One set of footsteps remained behind, guarding. It was the usual drill. Once, long ago, that had been her job, when they had tried to suck her deeper into the family, before they had found another way for her to serve them. She remembered the interview, the shadowy man from Rome, the man she never saw and never spoke to again. Afterwards, there had been occasional phone calls, instructions, threats she knew to be real, the order that she take the job in Naples. Nothing for years, and then the earthquake, and the nightmare returned, the calls in the night, hissing demands, threats to her daughter, her world of scholarship and archaeology crashing down. She thought of earlier times when she had seemed free of it. She thought of Jack, of the lost years since they had forced her to leave him, of seeing him again two days ago and their fleeting words in the villa. There was something else she had wanted to tell him, but now only her daughter would know, three years from now when she came of age and would read the truth. It was all too late now. Then the other pair of footsteps resonated in the crater, pushing her forward. The hand halted her again, and the blindfold was yanked tight over her eyes. ‘No,’ she said fiercely in Italian. ‘Not this. Do you remember how much it frightened me when we were children? When I looked after you. My little brother.’

There was no response. The hands paused, then relented. The blindfold caught on the superintendency ID card still dangling around her neck, and it was pulled violently off. Her neck felt as if it had been whipped. She kept her eyes resolutely ahead, but caught sight of the fresh plaster cast on his wrist. ‘What happened to you, mia caro ?’ she said. There was no reply, and she was pushed ahead, this time violently, the hand against the bun of her hair. She stumbled forward. Fifty paces. Another twenty paces. A hand grasped her hair again, and a foot kicked behind her right knee. She collapsed on to the floor of the crater, her knees hitting the lava with a crack. The pain was shocking. She kept her composure, remained upright. Her legs were kicked apart. Something cold was pushed against the nape of her neck, sending a tingle down her spine. ‘Wait,’ she said, her voice strong, unwavering. ‘Release my hands. I must make my peace with God. In nomine patris et filii et spiritus sancti.’

For a few moments nothing happened. The muzzle was still pressed against her neck. She wondered if that was it, if it had already happened, if this was death, if death meant being frozen in the moment of passing. Then the muzzle was removed, she heard a sloshing metal can clatter on the ground, smelled the petrol, and felt the hands fumbling at her wrists. Her heart was beginning to beat faster now, pounding, and her knees felt weak. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, savouring it, even the sickly smell of this place. She would not let herself down. She would not let her family down. The family. She knew she should be thinking of something else, of those she truly loved, of her daughter, but she could not. She opened her eyes, and looked in front of her. The crack was there, pitch black, solidified lava around the edges. She knew what would happen next. The bark of the silenced Beretta, the jet of blood and brains, strangely self-contained, like water from a hose, pulsing out with the final heartbeats. The body pushed into the crack, the fuel can emptied over it, the tossed cigarette. She wished the crack itself would take her, come alive as it had when the volcano had throbbed like a living heart under this place, the seething core of the underworld. She wanted to be embraced by it. She wanted it to burn.

There was a tearing sound as the tape on her wrists came free, a jolt of pain as it was ripped off. She let her left hand fall, shook it, feeling the circulation return. She slowly raised her right hand in front of her breasts, made the sign of the cross, and touched her forehead. Her hand was firm, unshaking. She was pleased. She let it drop. Her eyes were wide open, staring into the crack. She moved her hands together, felt the delicate ring Jack’s grandmother had given her, an ancient treasure of his seafaring ancestors. She felt the muzzle press against the nape of her neck. She bowed her head slightly. The angle would be better. Quicker. She heard a cell phone chirp, and then a voice behind her, a voice that brought back the warmth of childhood, a voice that she had loved hearing in the mornings when she had stroked his forehead, seeing him waken.

‘Eminence? Va bene. Your will be done.’

The click of the pistol cocking.

Then nothing.

Costas sneezed, as he made space for Jeremy, who had arrived in St Paul’s Cathedral five minutes before but had spotted a church official and gone straight off to talk to him. Jeremy came down the aisle carrying a dripping umbrella and briefcase and wearing a red Goretex jacket. Costas and Jack had only just returned to their seats below the dome a few moments before, having made a quick dash to a pharmacy outside on the Strand. Costas was noisily snorting a decongestant and peering at the label on a bottle. He popped a small handful of pills, took a swig of water and leaned back to let Jeremy by, making space on the chair between him and Jack. Jeremy took off his coat, sat down, sniffed the air, removed his glasses to wipe away the rainwater, then sniffed again. He leaned towards Costas, then recoiled slightly. ‘Something smells bad around here.’

‘Good morning to you too,’ Costas said nasally.

‘It’s kind of sickly,’ Jeremy said. ‘Really pretty disgusting.’

‘Ah,’ Jack said. ‘Body liqueur. Must have been when we took off the e-suits. Somehow it always stays with you.’

‘Ah,’ Jeremy replied forcibly. ‘I forgot where you’ve been. Dead bodies. That’s why I stick to libraries.’

‘Don’t say that word. Stick,’ Costas said, looking miserable.

‘Come on. This way,’ Jeremy said, gathering his things and getting up, pointedly keeping his distance from Costas. ‘I’ve arranged a private room.’

‘How do you know all these people?’ Costas said.

‘I’m a medieval manuscripts expert, remember?’ Jeremy replied. ‘A lot of the best documents are still held by the Church. It’s a small world.’ Jack quickly packed his laptop, then followed Jeremy down the nave towards a side chapel. Jeremy nodded at a cassocked man who was waiting discreetly nearby with a ring of heavy keys, and who came over and unlocked the grated steel door for them. Jack slipped in first, followed by the other two. They were in the Chapel of All Souls, dominated by an effigy of Lord Kitchener and also containing a pieta sculpture of the Virgin Mary holding the body of Christ. Jeremy led them behind the effigy out of earshot from the aisle outside and squatted down with his back to the statue. He took out a notebook from his bag and looked up at Jack, his face flushed with excitement. ‘Okay. You told me on the phone about your finds, about the tomb. Pretty incredible. Now it’s my turn.’

‘Fire away.’

‘I was in Oxford most of yesterday following that lead I told you about. The archivist at Balliol College is a friend of mine. We searched through all the unpublished papers related to the Church of St Lawrence Jewry, and found an accounts ledger from the 1670s’ reconstruction of the church by Sir Christopher Wren. Nobody had ever thought much of the ledger, as it seemed mostly to replicate Wren’s accounts books that have already been published. But something caught my eye, and we looked at it in more detail. It was an addendum, from 1685. An old burial chamber under the church had been cleared out, and Wren’s team returned to seal it up and check the foundations. They found a locked crypt beyond the chamber. They managed to break open the door, and one of them went in.’

Jack whistled. ‘Bingo. That’s our crypt. Do you know who it was?’

‘All of the master craftsmen were present in the burial chamber. It was five years after the church had been completed, and the 1685 visit was a tour of inspection to see how everything was standing up. Edward Pierce, mason and sculptor. Thomas Newman, bricklayer. John Longland, carpenter. Thomas Mead, plasterer. Christopher Wren himself was there, taking a breather from his work here at St Paul’s. And there was one other man, a new name to me. Johannes Deverette.’

‘French?’ Jack said.

‘Flemish. My friend the librarian had come across the name before, and we found enough to build up a sketch. He was a Huguenot refugee, a Calvinist Protestant who had fled the Low Countries for England earlier that year. Sixteen eighty-five was the year the French king revoked the Edict of Nantes, which had given Protestants protection.’

‘Nothing unusual in a Huguenot in the London building trade at that time,’ Jack murmured. ‘Some of Wren’s best-known woodworkers were Huguenots, the famous carver Grinling Gibbons for example. You can see his work all round us here in St Paul’s.’

‘What was unusual was Deverette’s occupation. I went over the road to the Bodleian Library and did a name search, came up with more biographical notes. He described himself as a Musick Meister, a master of music. Wren apparently employed him on a recommendation from Grinling Gibbons, to soothe Wren’s young son Billy, who was mentally handicapped. Deverette sang Gregorian chant.’

‘Gregorian music.’ Costas sneezed. ‘Isn’t that the traditional music of the Roman Catholic liturgy?’

‘It’s a really fascinating ingredient of this whole story,’ Jeremy said. ‘Like the Anglicans, the Huguenots rejected the rule of the Roman Church, but there were many who clung to the old traditions for purely aesthetic reasons. I discovered that Deverette came from a long line of Gregorian musicians who claimed descent from the time of St Gregory himself, the Pope who formalized the plainsong repertory in the sixth century. I was stunned to discover that Sir Christopher Wren also shared that aesthetic. But then I thought of his architecture. Just look at this place.’ Jeremy gestured up at the cathedral interior. ‘It’s hardly an austere Protestant meeting house, is it? It’s a match for the grandeur of St Peter’s in the Vatican.’ He pulled out a scrap of notepaper. ‘This quote is almost all we know about Wren’s religious views, but it’s extraordinarily revealing. As a young man he was much taken by the country house of a friend. He said it was a place where “the piety and devotion of another age, put to flight by the impiety and crime of ours, have found sanctuary, in which the virtues are all not merely observed but cherished”. Nobody has ever seriously thought of Wren as a secret Catholic, but he certainly regretted the killjoy aspects of the Protestant Reformation.’

‘Doesn’t plainchant originate much earlier than all that, in Jewish ritual?’ Jack said.

‘Unaccompanied singing almost certainly goes back before the foundation of the Roman Church, to the time of the apostles,’ Jeremy said. ‘It was probably responsorial chanting, verses sung by a soloist alternating with responds by a choir. It may have been one of the very earliest congregational rituals, sung in secret places where the first followers of Jesus came together. Singing is even mentioned in the Gospels.’ He looked at his notebook. ‘Matthew, 26:30. “And when they had sung a hymn, they went out unto the Mount of Olives.”’

‘So this guy Deverette was here in London during Wren’s rebuilding of St Paul’s Cathedral?’ Costas asked.

‘He was here from 1685, when he arrived in England. Wren’s men had finished the new structure of the Church of St Lawrence Jewry a few years earlier, but the ledger we found in the college library shows that 1685 was the year they broke through into the undercroft, the old crypt. That’s where it gets really fascinating. It turns out Deverette had another passion. He was a keen antiquarian, a collector of Roman and Christian relics. Wren was also interested in all the old stuff his men found during his building work in London. He gave Deverette another job, to rescue interesting artefacts. A kind of archaeological watching brief.’

‘He’s our man,’ Jack said excitedly. ‘We know somebody got into the tomb and found that cylinder. It must be him.’

‘Did he keep any records?’ Costas said, coughing.

‘I checked everywhere. I went back through all the published Wren papers, everything on the churches, all his personal papers. Nothing. Then I had a brainstorm. I went to the National Archives at Kew, got there just in time yesterday afternoon. I did a search of the records of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury.’

‘You found his will,’ Jack exclaimed.

Jeremy nodded, his face flushed. ‘Many of the ecclesiastical wills are now online, but his was in a newly discovered batch that had been filed wrongly and has only just been catalogued. My librarian friend told me about it. I was incredibly lucky.’

‘Let’s have it,’ Jack said.

Jeremy took out a scanned image from his sheaf of papers. It showed a yellowed page, with about twenty lines of neat handwriting. Below the handwriting was a red seal and a signature, with more signatures and a scrawled probate note at the bottom. Jeremy began to read: ‘“In the Name of God, Amen. I, Johannes Deverette, Musick Meister to Sir Christopher Wren, Knight, Surveyor General of her Majesty’s Works, doe make and ordain this my last Will and Testment as followeth. I desire that my body may be decently buried without pomp at the discretion of said Sir Christopher Wren, herein after named sole Executor and Trustee.” ’

‘My God,’ Jack murmured. ‘Wren was his executor. He must have known about any antiquities Deverette possessed, anything he’d found in London and been allowed to keep by Wren, anything he’d chosen to pass on at his death.’

Jeremy nodded. ‘Deverette died only a few months after making the will, when his son and heir was still a minor, so Wren would have safeguarded any bequeathed possessions. But wait for it. There’s the usual inscrutable verbiage about chattel and estates, but the final sentences are the crunch.’ He read aloud: ‘“All of my books, musick and musickal instruments, I give and bequeath unto my sone John Everett. To my said sone too I bequeath all of my antient rarities, my Cabinett of Curositys and Relicks from the divers excavations in Londone of said Sir Christopher Wren, including the Godspelle taken by me from the hand of the Antient priestess. This last mentioned to be kept in Security, in the most sacred Trust, and bequeathed by my said sone to his own sone and heire, and thereafter to his sone and heire, in perpetuity, in the Name of Christ, Jesu Domine. Signed and Sealed by the above named Johannes Deverette as and for his last Will and Testament in the presence of us who have subscribed our names as written in his presence, this sixth of Auguste 1711. Chris. Wren. Grinling Gibbons. Witnesses.”’

‘Godspelle,’ Costas said. ‘What on earth’s that?’

Jack’s heart was pounding. His voice was hoarse. ‘Jeremy said it a few moments ago. It’s Old English, meaning “good word”. And meaning Gospel.’ Jack paused, and swallowed hard. ‘It means that Deverette found the scroll in that cylinder, and must have read it.’

Costas attempted a whistle. ‘Game on again.’

‘It’s the only reason I can see why he would have called it that,’ Jeremy said.

‘It’s the first indication we’ve had of what Claudius’ document might have contained,’ Jack said, peering at Jeremy. ‘I hardly dare ask. Did you get any further?’

‘It was easy enough tracing Deverette’s descendants,’ Jeremy replied. ‘The Huguenots kept pretty good family records. Deverette himself anglicized the name, had his son named Everett. The musical tradition seems to have carried on, but they came to make their living as builders and architects. For generations they were worthies of the Carpenters’ Company, one of the most prominent London guilds. They settled in Lawrence Lane, overlooking the church, only yards from the crypt where Deverette had made his discovery.’

‘Guardians of the tomb,’ Costas murmured.

‘This is beginning to fit together,’ Jack said quietly. ‘The secret crypt, the burials of those women we found, the succession of names from Roman times to the Great Fire of 1666. I think they were a secret sect who knew about the tomb, knew about the treasure it held, were the original guardians. But then the Great Fire broke the succession, burned the church and buried the entrance to their crypt and the tomb.’

‘Maybe it was like the eruption of Vesuvius for the Sibyl at Cumae,’ Costas said. ‘Fire and ash foredooming, all that. The end of their time.’

‘And then by sheer chance the tomb was found again, the sacred gospel was removed, and the cycle of guardianship was renewed,’ Jack murmured.

‘The strong Huguenot family tradition counts in our favour again,’ Jeremy said. ‘There’s no reference to relics in any of the later wills, but the power of that original bequest in Deverette’s will would have held sway through the generations. And there’s something else, a real clincher. In the mid-nineteenth century, Deverette’s great-grandson John Everett was associated with a secretive Victorian society called the New Pelagians, who claimed to follow the teaching of the rebel British monk Pelagius. They believed they were the true inheritors of the earliest Christian tradition in Britain.’

‘Claudius?’ Jack murmured. ‘Can we really trace all this back to him?’

‘To one he met in Judaea,’ Costas murmured.

Jeremy carried on. ‘The Everetts continued to be prominent in the City of London in the nineteenth century, always living and working close to St Lawrence Jewry and the Guildhall. John Everett the Pelagian was a Councillor of the Corporation of London, and a freedman of the City. His son Samuel was master of the Carpenters’ Company. But then something odd happens. Samuel’s eldest son, Lawrence Everett, was an architect like his father. But almost immediately after his father died in 1912, he closed his business in Lawrence Lane, left his family and disappeared. You can read too much into it, but it’s as if Lawrence Everett was the last of the guardians and broke the succession, taking the treasure away to a new sanctuary before hell was unleashed again during the London Blitz.’

‘Any idea where he went?’ Jack said.

‘Immigration records, passenger manifests. A lot of stuff to research. I’ve got one promising lead, though.’

‘You always do,’ Jack said. ‘You’re becoming indispensable, you know.’

‘I might be able to make some headway back at the National Archives in Kew. It might take me another day.’

‘Let’s get on with it then.’

Five minutes later they stood under the entrance to St Paul’s Cathedral, looking out through the sweeping curtains of rain and seeking a break in the deluge. Jack felt as if he were on an island, and the solidity of the cathedral with the veiled miasma outside seemed to mirror his state of mind. The astonishing revelations of the last hours had taken the quest forward by leaps and bounds, made it seem as real as the structure above them, yet their goal still seemed like an unseen beacon somewhere out beyond the rain, down some dark alley they might never find. Jack had a sudden, surreal flashback to the lost library in Herculaneum, the image seeming to concertina into a succession of chambers, the doors open as far as he could see but the goal out of sight in the distance. He knew their only hope now lay with Jeremy, that some revelation in the archives would push them towards that last door, to the place Claudius had wanted them to find.

‘Don’t tell me we’re going on the Tube, Jack,’ Costas croaked. ‘You know I’m never going underground again.’

‘As it happens, I’ve always wanted to see the Great Conduit,’ Jack replied, winking at Jeremy. ‘An underground channel built in the thirteenth century to bring fresh water from the Tyburn stream, about three kilometres west of here. The stone cisterns sound impressive, but Roman aqueduct engineers a thousand years earlier would have been appalled. It leaked, and the gravity flow was all wrong. A great example of the march of progress, marching backwards. Well worth a visit.’

‘No,’ Costas said flatly. ‘No way. You go. And I’m only doing taxis from now on.’

Jack grinned, then saw a respite in the drizzle and stepped out from the cathedral entrance. At that moment a young man in a City suit disengaged himself from a group of people also sheltering under the entrance and walked in front of Jack, blocking his way. ‘Dr Howard?’ he said intently. Jack stepped back in alarm. The man handed him a slip of paper. ‘Tomorrow, eleven a.m. Your lives may depend on it.’ He moved off and quickly trotted down the steps, disappearing into the throng of morning commuters making their way into the City.

Jack quickly stepped back under the doorway and read the note, then passed it to Jeremy. ‘Did you recognize him?’ Jack asked.

‘I’m not sure.’ Jeremy anxiously scanned the other people on the steps. ‘It’s not good news if you’ve been tracked here, Jack.’

‘I know.’

Jeremy glanced at the piece of paper, read the typed words and pursed his lips. ‘Right in the heart of things.’ He passed it back to Jack. ‘You going?’

‘I don’t think we have any choice.’

‘I’d go with you, but I have to stay and find out what I can about Everett.’

‘I agree,’ Jack said quietly.

‘Take Costas with you. You might need a bodyguard.’

Jack looked at the form slumped miserably against the stone column beside them, dripping and sneezing. He walked over, took Costas by the shoulder and steered him towards the steps. The rain had begun again in earnest, and Costas looked as if he were about to dissolve. ‘Come on,’ Jack said, looking up for a moment and letting the rainwater stream over his face. ‘I think we might just be able to do something about that sniffle of yours.’