The Last Gospel

PAVLVS.

Could it be? Jack looked around, saw the widening of the passage, the other tombs crowding in on this spot but not built over it, as if their occupants had wanted to be close to it, in reverence. He saw Christian symbols everywhere, a dove on the wall beside him, a fish, the Christian formula in inscriptions again and again, in pace. And then as Costas moved his candle over the tile he saw it faintly scratched beside the name, the chi-rho symbol. The sign of Christ.

‘The tomb of St Paul,’ he whispered incredulously, laying his hand on a tile. ‘St Peter and St Paul, interred in the same place, ad catacumbus, just as tradition says.’

‘It is so.’

Jack drew back, startled. The voice came from a shadowy niche opposite them, in the wall beyond the head of the tomb. He could just make out a black cassock over legs, but not the upper body. The voice was authoritative, with an edge to it, the English slightly accented, possibly east European. ‘Do not attempt to approach me. Please extinguish your candles. Sit on the stone bench behind you.’ Jack paused for a second, then nodded at Costas, and they did as instructed. The only source of light now was the candle on the tomb, and everything else was reduced to flickering shadow and darkness. The other figure shifted slightly, and they could just make out a hooded head, hands placed on knees. ‘I have summoned you here today in the greatest secrecy. I wanted you to see what you have just seen.’

‘Who are you?’ Costas said.

‘You will not be told my name, nor who I am,’ the man repeated. ‘Do not ask again.’

‘This truly is the tomb of St Paul?’ Jack said.

‘It is so,’ the man repeated.

‘What about the church of San Paulo fuori le Mura?’ Jack said. ‘Isn’t he supposed to have been buried there, in a vineyard?’

‘He was indeed taken there after his death, but was brought back here secretly to be reunited with Peter, at the place of their martyrdom.’

‘It is true, then,’ Jack murmured.

‘They were martyred together by the emperor Nero, in the circus built at this spot by Caligula. Peter was crucified upside down, and Paul was beheaded. The Romans made martyrs of the two greatest fathers of the early Church, and in doing so the pagan emperors helped to bring the Holy See into being at this place. In nomine patris et filii et spiritus sancti, amen.’

‘You have brought us here to show us this?’ Jack said.

There was a pause, and the man shifted again. The candle on the tomb wavered, lengthening the shadow so that for a few moments he was obscured completely, then the flame burned upright again. ‘You will by now know that the Roman emperor Claudius faked his own poisoning, and survived in secret for many years beyond the end of his reign in AD