The Mask of Troy

18

H einrich Schliemann embraced his wife and left her standing on the grassy knoll at the highest point of the ancient citadel, staring out across the plain of Troy towards the distant waters of the Dardanelles. He took out his fob watch, scratched and battered after almost twenty years of excavating, in Greece, in Egypt, in Italy, here within the walls of fabled Troy, relentlessly searching. He slid it back into his waistcoat pocket. A quarter to seven. It was almost time . The delegates to the conference would be gone by now, departed for Canakkale and Constantinople and their home countries, and the archaeological site would be barred to all comers except the three he had specially invited to join him this evening.

His pulse quickened, and he took a deep breath. The terrible pain in his head, the sickening earache that had assailed him for months now, the ringing that had tormented him day and night like a thousand mosquitoes swarming round his head, all of that seemed to disappear the moment he stepped back into the citadel. Nobody knew whether it was real or imagined, none of the physicians he had consulted, whether the product of a fevered imagination or some dormant affliction he had released from an ancient tomb. All he knew was that the ache had begun when he knew the time was right to return to Troy, to bring back what he and Sophia had found that night in the royal grave at Mycenae, to return it to the vault of its founders where it might once again serve as a bulwark for the world against darkness and evil war.

He took a few steps along the rickety plank that served as a walkway over the open excavation, then glanced back towards the knoll. It was the last place on the upper citadel left to excavate, beside the great trench they had cleaved through the mound of Troy twenty years before. He had felt close to Homer on that knoll, closer than anywhere else at Troy. It would be the site of their final excavation, once the great task that lay ahead of them was finished, the excavation of the passageway that would now begin in earnest beneath the citadel. One day he would sit where Sophia was now standing, where he believed there was an excavated room of the great palace: a place where Priam might once have sat and looked out over the walls, where marauding Agamemnon had found him. Like Priam, he would not see the ravages of war but instead would soak in the bounteous richness of the land; not hear the battle cries and shrieks, but instead hear soft music of the lyre, soothing his ears, lulling him into a paradise where Troy was the city of heaven, a city of joy and love, and not a crucible of war.

‘Heinrich,’ Sophia whispered after him in Greek, her voice like sweet music on the wind. ‘You must go now. Do you remember what you said at Mycenae, when we lifted the mask? For the sake of our children .’

Schliemann looked up at her, and smiled. ‘For all the children.’ He blew her a kiss. As she turned away, the gold that bedecked her shimmered, gold they had found here that night in the darkness seventeen years before, digging secretly at the bottom of the great trench. He turned and carried on along the walkway, passing that very spot, peering down. He had told the world they had found the treasure of Priam, but in truth he knew it was a thousand years too old, the treasure of a nameless ancient king who had ruled Troy when the citadel was still young, when bronze was still a modern marvel. He had wanted to divert attention from the truth, from the discovery they would reveal once all the pieces were in place. He remembered the other citadel where he and Sophia had dug secretly, when he had lifted the golden mask of the great king. Now he felt as if he were about to lift a mask off Troy itself. He felt the bulge beneath his coat, where Sophia had swathed the object in silk inside his satchel bag. He felt a rush of excitement, yet a tinge of apprehension. What if it were all to no avail? He thought of those he was about to meet. All that he had done, all that he had found, everything he had put his soul and his energy into, all of that was at stake. This was the most important day of his life. There was no turning back now.

He heard a rustle in the grass, and saw the silhouette of a man scurry up the slope of the trench and disappear over the top. It was Kemal, the site foreman, who had first shown Schliemann this place as a boy, whose ancestors had known Troy since time immemorial, descendants of Prince Hector himself. He could never tell Kemal to leave this place, nor did he wish to. Kemal was continuity, the future. And that was what this evening was about. The future. The future of the human race.

Schliemann turned east over the trench, then came down on the path that led around the citadel, from the excavation house towards the entrance to the secret passageway. Sophia had left little candles in tin holders to mark the way, and they flickered in the breeze. Around the corner another man came into view. He was large, wearing a fur-lined overcoat and a trilby hat, carrying a walking stick and one of the lanterns that had been left at the entrance to the site. He stopped and raised the lantern, peering. Schliemann saw the features that had cowed so many, the heavyset face, the bags beneath the eyes, the hint of a scowl, but he also saw in those eyes what those close to the great man knew, the humour, the thirst for knowledge, the humanity. ‘Ah,’ the man said gruffly, moving closer. ‘Herr Doktor Schliemann.’ He spoke in German. ‘I was wondering where you were.’

Schliemann’s heart raced. He replied in German also, holding out his hand. ‘Your Excellency. I trust you had a felicitous journey.’

‘Felicitous!’ the man grumbled. ‘Fortunately, the King of Greece lent me his yacht. The Ottomans would not let an Imperial German warship into the Dardanelles. I ask you. There will be a war, you know, and the Turks need an ally, what with the Russians on one side, and Gladstone and the English baying for their blood on the other. That infernal man. I hope I never meet him in person. I would not answer for the consequences.’

‘Ah,’ Schliemann said.

‘What do you mean, “Ah”? And what’s the meaning of all this subterfuge? For years I’ve been asking you for a tour of Troy. Now I’m here, and it’s too dark even to see it.’

‘My dear Otto.’ Schliemann took the man by the shoulder, and steered him on the path between the little candles. ‘We were both awarded freedmen of the city of Berlin, yes? We are a rare breed. A secret society. And like all secret societies, we must have our little rituals, our indulgences.’

‘Freedman of the city, yes, but I failed to convince those swine to make you a member of the Berlin Academy,’ the man muttered. ‘After all you’ve done for Germany. Donating your greatest finds to the Reichsmuseum. Even the unmentionable Gladstone had you made an honorary Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, and all you gave them was a few miserable pots.’

Schliemann smiled. ‘My dear old friend. If I were the type of man on whom academic honours were showered, I would not be the type of man who would have found Troy. And I already have the greatest prize a man could ever ask for.’

The man stopped. ‘Where is she? Your queen? I wish to kneel before her and kiss her hand.’

‘Sophia and the children await you with pleasure. The children remember your skill in woodwork, and I have promised them you will build them a model of the Trojan Horse. But that must wait. Now, we have momentous matters to discuss. And others to meet. Others who may surprise you. Others with whom I fervently hope you will find a common cause, a cause that surpasses all the affairs of state at which you have so excelled. A cause that is greater than any in the history of mankind.’

‘More subterfuge,’ the man grumbled, but his eyes twinkled. ‘Wherever you take me, Heinrich, there is sure to be excitement. I would not be anywhere else. Lead the way.’

They followed the line of little candles around the eastern edge of the mound, past exposed sections of earth where the excavations had revealed the eroded remains of limestone walls and mud-brick revetments. They rounded a corner where the grassy slope of the mound rose steeply in front of them, and dropped down a series of makeshift wooden steps into a deep trench that led back towards the centre of the mound. Schliemann went down first, then turned to point out a pile of shovels and baskets on the floor of the trench. ‘Mind your step.’

‘This is where you work?’ the man asked, stepping stiffly down on to the earthen floor of the trench, leaning heavily on his stick.

‘Just Sophia and me. We don’t allow any of the other workers down here. My assistant Dorpfeld continues to work in the great trench, revealing the walls of the first citadel, early Bronze Age Troy. But this season, the Troy of King Priam, the Troy of Homer, is ours alone.’

Beyond the tools, the candlelight revealed a section of the passageway about three metres wide where the excavation appeared to be complete, with dressed stone walls on either side that sloped slightly outwards, rising at least five metres to the edge of the grassy mound above. The man stopped, leaning on his stick, peering at the alignment. ‘Unless I am mistaken, these walls are of the same construction as the defensive walls I examined on the way in, just beyond the excavation house.’

‘The walls of Homeric Troy,’ Schliemann said excitedly. ‘You are correct. I am convinced of it. These walls date from the same phase of construction. But they are not defensive walls. They line an entranceway, converging ahead of us, deep beneath the citadel. It is the most astonishing discovery.’ He led the other man beyond the exposed masonry to a section where the sides of the trench were still not fully excavated, between rough earthen walls. He could see the final candle a few metres ahead, where the excavated trench came to an abrupt end. In the gloom he spied two other figures, both with canes, standing on either side of the floor, and his pulse quickened. They were all here. ‘Gentlemen,’ he called out. ‘Welcome. Welcome indeed.’

He stooped down to where Sophia had left a gas lantern, quickly lit it and carried it forward, turning down the flame and placing it on the ground in front of the other two men. Then he stood back, and beamed at them. They were both old men, like the man who accompanied him, wearing dark overcoats with hats in their hands, both sporting the archaic long sideburns of an earlier age. One of them was taller, with craggy features and intense eyes. The smaller man was less forceful in appearance, wearing spectacles but with a determined stare. Schliemann sensed his companion stiffen at the sight of the taller man, and he quickly made the introductions. He gestured first to his companion. ‘Gentlemen. Allow me to introduce Count Otto von Bismarck, Chancellor of Germany.’ He spoke in English. His companion clicked his heels, and glared. Schliemann turned to the other two. ‘Chancellor, I give you my dear friend Senator Hoar, the most distinguished elder statesman of my adopted country, the United States of America.’ The two men bowed slightly, and shook hands. Schliemann turned to the taller man. ‘And of course you will recognize the Right Honourable William Gladstone, Prime Minister of Great Britain.’

Bismarck glared, clicked his heels again, and shook hands. ‘We are acquainted,’ he said coldly in English. He turned to Schliemann, speaking quickly in German. ‘This is unfortunate. Most unfortunate. My pleasure is in danger of utter shipwreck. You have brought me into the eye of a storm, Herr Schliemann. Ein Tempest.’

‘Ever the Shakespearean, I see,’ said Gladstone loftily.

Schliemann quickly stood between them and took both men by the arm. ‘I trust Mr Gladstone too had a felicitous journey?’

‘The Orient Express to Constantinople,’ Gladstone said. ‘A most extraordinary city. I touched with my own hand the column of Constantine the Great, and worshipped in Hagia Sophia. It is less desecrated by the infidel than I had feared.’

‘Mr Gladstone has spoken out with a passion against the Turk,’ Bismarck said in English. ‘I am surprised he has made it this far.’

‘I am travelling incognito. On Dr Schliemann’s instructions. I own that rhetoric in the heat of the moment, led me to write ill-advisedly against the Turkish people, whom I find to be both hospitable and delightful. For that I am contrite. But I remain as resolutely and strenuously opposed to the Ottoman campaign against the Bulgars as when I published that pamphlet.’

‘And Mr Bismarck?’ Senator Hoar asked. ‘You have had an agreeable voyage?’

‘I too was travelling incognito.’

‘What? Chancellor von Bismarck?’ Gladstone exclaimed theatrically. ‘ Travelling incognito? As whom, pray?’

‘As the Duke of Lauenberg. It is to be my new title. I fear the new kaiser will shortly oust me. I am to be a sidelined elder statesman. He thinks I will retire to shoot grouse on my estate in Poland. He is, I can be frank, a bellicose and stupid man. I fear for the future. He will make Germany into a monster.’

‘A monster you nurtured,’ Gladstone said haughtily. ‘When you unified the country.’

‘I unified Germany to yoke in a hundred warring states. It was realpolitik. Something that Mr Gladstone, the idealist, does not understand.’

‘Unlike Herr von Bismarck, I would not aspire to be an Agamemnon.’

‘Gentlemen,’ Schliemann said. ‘ Gentlemen. If you contine thus I shall insist, as Sophia does, that we speak entirely in ancient Greek. Then the affairs of this world will drop away, and we will inhabit solely the past. But it is a danger, Mr Gladstone, you have warned me against, of divorcing the two worlds entirely, ours and the ancient. And it is not my purpose here solely to present you with the marvels of archaeology. My purpose is indeed the present. Events will move fast in our remaining lifetimes, and those of our children. Time is short, and we must act now.’

‘You speak portentously, Mr Schliemann,’ Gladstone said, looking intently at him. ‘I trust we are not to hear a profound announcement, of a grave nature? Your health is well?’

‘Mr Gladstone, your concern for my health has always been gratefully received, and is more efficacious than any course of medicine. But you need not tax yourself.’

‘I am relieved.’

Schliemann paused. ‘We are here today on common ground. Count von Bismarck is a man of the highest education and literary interests. Many times we have spoken together on ancient history. Mr Gladstone, in this regard as in all others, hardly needs an introduction. The author of three books on Homer, who did me the signal honour of writing the preface to my book on Mycenae. And Senator Hoar. Not just a statesman of the greatest esteem, but president of the American Antiquarian Society, regent of the Smithsonian Institution, trustee of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. You three have been my greatest supporters, and to bring you here in person is the least I can do. But there is more to this meeting than that. I bring you here with a higher purpose. You are all men of the utmost probity, of the greatest moral resolve. I have come to know you personally, and I am convinced of it. In your hearts I know you are peacemakers, not warmongers.’

Gladstone snorted, peering at Bismarck. ‘A sentiment that can hardly be ascribed to one whose governance precipitated the greatest conflict of our times. I refer, of course, to the Franco-Prussian War of 1871. A war that upset the balance of power that had kept Europe peaceful since the fall of Napoleon.’

‘It was not the war that upset the balance of power,’ Bismarck replied coldly. ‘It was the peace treaty. As you know perfectly well, I strenuously opposed the secession of Alsace-Lorraine to Germany. I saw in it the seedbed of the future. Of an even more calamitous war to come.’

‘And then you took Germany on a colonial adventure in Africa. In deliberate and ostentatious antagonism towards the interests of my own government.’

‘It deflected the French focus on Alsace-Lorraine. I believe in so doing I prevented a terrible escalation in Europe. And colonial adventures? Under the premiership of Mr Gladstone? I have not enough fingers to count them. War in Zululand, 1879. Afghanistan, 1880. The Sudan, 1885. Brave soldiers, yes, but bungled wars, all of them. Dispatching General Gordon to Khartoum, then failing to rescue him. I give you the Right Honourable William Ewart Gladstone, peacemaker.’

‘Gentlemen.’ Hoar held up his hand. ‘We are not on the debating floor. And we all know that the morality of a man is not easily judged by the circumstances in which history envelops him, and for which history may yet hold him accountable.’

Gladstone and Bismarck both snorted and shuffled for a moment, and then stood still. Hoar lowered his hand. Schliemann looked at them, a sudden flicker of doubt in his mind. Had he misjudged them? Had he himself been too much of an idealist, blinded to reality? Were they all too old, too much immured in the rhetoric of politics, their morality calcified? He needed to know. He spoke quietly, almost whispering. ‘What say you?’ he began. ‘What say you, gentlemen, on the subject of war?’

Gladstone looked hard at him, then glanced down. ‘My detractors call me a pious pacifist,’ he said, his voice less theatrical. ‘And they are right. Herr Bismarck is right, too. I did let General Gordon down. It weighs heavily upon me. My Christian morality is at odds with war, and sits poorly when war is thrust upon me. I ask forgiveness from those dead warriors I did not have the courage to lead into battle like an Agamemnon.’

Schliemann turned to Bismarck, who had been looking shrewdly at Gladstone. Bismarck leaned on his cane, and put his other hand on his hip. ‘I have proclaimed that the great questions of the time will not be resolved by speeches and majority decisions, but by iron and blood. To maintain the vote, I must appear to be a Prussian realist. But anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war.’

Schliemann slowly nodded. ‘And Mr Hoar?’

Hoar spoke carefully, deliberately, without the flourish of the other two but holding their attention completely. ‘I have never held the reins of supreme power, as have these two distinguished gentlemen, but I have made my voice heard over generations of presidents. I have seen the devastation of our own brush with Armageddon, the Civil War. I have watched with trepidation the hawks in our government who would bring America into the colonialist fray. Even where there is moral purpose in such adventure, we would slay thousands whom we would seek to benefit. We would bring home from war innumerable sick and wounded and insane to drag out miserable lives, wrecked in body and mind. We would make sullen and irreconcilable enemies the world over, possessed of a hatred that centuries will not eradicate. Our flag would become an emblem of sacrilege: of the burning of human dwellings, of the horror of torture. I do not like to think of America angry, snarling, clawing, but as an august and serene beauty. A beauty, gentlemen, perhaps a little pale in her cheeks, with a dangerous glint in her eyes, but inspired by a sentiment, even toward her enemies, not of hate, but of love. Gentlemen, I am implacably opposed to war.’

‘We are resolved, then,’ Schliemann said.

‘We are resolved,’ Hoar said, looking sharply at Bismarck and Gladstone. ‘But pray tell, my dear Schliemann. Resolved to what purpose?’

Schliemann stared at the ground. Now was the time. He delved his hands into his pockets and held them out, his fists bunched as if concealing something. ‘Mr Gladstone. You have written to me about ancient copper metallurgy. You were fascinated when I discovered that the age of heroes was an age of bronze. Well, it will delight you to know that we have found many bronze arrowheads in the ruins of Homeric Troy. Arrowheads that I believe were fired into the citadel from the shoreline where the Greek ships of Agamemnon were beached. Arrowheads such as these.’ He opened his left fist to reveal two tanged leaf-shaped barbs, green with corrosion. He proffered them.

‘May I?’ Gladstone said. Schliemann nodded, and Gladstone dropped his cane, took the two arrowheads, then whipped out an eyeglass and examined them closely. ‘Native copper is found widely and abundantly, I believe,’ he murmured. ‘But tin? Do you know where the tin in this bronze came from?’

‘You will be astonished by my theory.’

‘Nothing you say can astonish us now.’

Schliemann peered at him, his eyes burning with excitement. ‘Here it is. At the dawn of the classical era, the Greeks wrote of their forebears going west, exploring the very limits of the known world. I believe these included survivors of Troy, fleeing apocalypse. One of them we know well: Aeneas, legendary founder of Rome. But I believe they were not the first. I believe they were following in the wake of earlier explorers, of the Bronze Age before the fall of Troy, ancestors of the greatest seafarers of the ancient world. You may guess of whom I speak. You are a biblical scholar as well, Mr Gladstone. The Phoenicians. The Phoenicians who sailed out into the Atlantic and far to the north, where they found a fabled archipelago, a group of islands the Greeks called Cassiterides.’

‘The Tin Islands,’ Gladstone exclaimed, removing his eyepiece and staring at Schliemann. ‘I stand corrected. You do astonish me. Do you mean to assert that the Trojans, the Mycenaeans, acquired their tin from the Cassiterides?’

‘By which I refer, gentlemen, to the British Isles, to the tin mines of Cornwall. It cannot be proved at present, but I am certain of it.’

Hoar put up a hand. ‘I beg your indulgence. You are suggesting that the Phoenicians, the traders of the Old Testament, were the metal-brokers of the Bronze Age? Those self-same Phoenicians who provided the Greeks with their alphabet?’

Schliemann nodded. ‘Brokers in a commodity far more precious than gold. You are correct, Mr Gladstone. The question of the tin is a vexing one. It was the rarest of commodities, and its sources were few. And I perceive that your thoughts, Mr Hoar, bend on a convergent path to mine. The Phoenicians did provide the Greeks with their alphabet, but much earlier than we had thought. I believe it was traders of the Bronze Age who first brought the alphabet to these shores. I believe the scribes of Agamemnon were the first to use the alphabet to write Greek.’

‘You believe they spoke Greek?’ Gladstone exclaimed. ‘You truly believe the Mycenaeans spoke Greek?’

‘I believe that the language of Homer was the language of Agamemnon.’

‘Mr Schliemann, I stand corrected again. My mind is in a perfect hurricane of astonishment.’

‘Scholars will ridicule me for the idea, those same scholars who mocked my quest for Troy. But I am sure of it.’

Bismarck pointed at Schliemann’s right fist. ‘And your other hand? What treasure have you concealed there?’

Schliemann held out the hand, then hesitated. ‘This, gentlemen, is truly why you are here.’ His voice was tense with excitement. ‘I knew I had to return to Troy. I believe, Mr Gladstone, that urgency, that feverish urgency, to have been the cause of my past illness. A mounting anxiety, with physical symptoms. Now that I am back here again, those symptoms have lifted. Two months ago, when we returned, we found this. To be precise, Sophia found it. She picked it from the spoil heap left beside the great trench we had dug through the site in 1871. I remembered seeing many of these, dozens, hundreds, but ignoring them in my thirst to dig deeper. I had been driven by a lust for gold, yes, but more than that, by a passion to prove that I was right, to find the Troy of Priam. And I was right. Yet in my enthusiasm I failed to see a greater truth that was staring at me. A truth that became my obsession in the years that followed, that vexed me day and night, that nearly overwhelmed me. Not whether Troy fell, but how. How mankind was toppled so quickly from brilliant civilization to the deepest well of barbarism. I talk not of Helen of Troy, not of the sophistry of poets, not of war caused by love and jealousy and rage, but of hard truth, the truth of power and bloodlust and the force of arms. A truth revealed not in gold and bronze, but in this.’

He opened his hand to reveal a shapeless lump about two inches across, discoloured with red and brown oxidation. Gladstone peered closely at it, bringing up his monocle again. ‘Mmm. Ferrous concretion, unless I am mistaken.’

Schliemann nodded, then held the lump between his thumb and forefinger. ‘This, gentlemen, is another arrowhead. But not an arrowhead made of bronze. An arrowhead made of iron.’

‘Of the age that followed the fall of Troy, you mean?’ Hoar murmured. ‘Some great battle of the Dark Ages, unknown to history, fought in the ruins of Troy?’

Schliemann shook his head emphatically. ‘These arrowheads were all found in the destruction layer of the seventh citadel. Homeric Troy. They were found intermingled with bronze arrowheads. After Sophia recognized this lump for what it was, we re-examined a section of the rampart we had exposed all those years ago. We found two bronze arrowheads and three of these iron ones, embedded at different places in the outer wall.’

‘Arrows fired by an attacker,’ Gladstone murmured.

‘You follow my train of thought, Mr Gladstone.’

Bismarck thumped his stick down. ‘Superior technology,’ he exclaimed. ‘That is what you have discovered, Herr Schliemann, yes? Superior technology.’

‘He who possessed iron in the age of bronze possessed the advantage,’ Gladstone said.

‘As he who possesses the Maxim gun in the age of the musket is tempted to war,’ Hoar murmured.

‘An advantage not in the quality of weapons, but in their quantity ,’ Schliemann continued. ‘We are speaking of the very cusp of the age of iron, when the technology was in its infancy. The quality of this iron, the edge, the strength, may not have been greater than the best bronze. But that is not the point, gentlemen. The point was made by Mr Gladstone. Tin is exceedingly rare. It was worth its weight in gold. But iron ore is found virtually everywhere. Once you have mastered the technology, you have an unlimited raw material. And if you are the first to master the technology, before it becomes widespread, then for a few years, for a few decades perhaps, you reign supreme. You are king of kings. You are god.’

‘Agamemnon,’ Gladstone breathed. ‘You speak of Agamemnon.’

‘Troy was felled not by a trick of Odysseus, not by a wooden horse,’ Hoar murmured. ‘But by another kind of cunning. By the cunning of Hephaestus. By the cunning of the forge.’

‘Perfectly put, Mr Hoar,’ Schliemann said.

‘Herr Schliemann? You have a theory?’ Bismarck asked, stomping his cane again. The three men looked at Schliemann expectantly. He pocketed the arrowheads, and took a deep breath. ‘The twenty years since I first set foot on the mound of Troy have been a whirlwind for me. Some would say that I have been restless, unable to concentrate. Within two years of arriving here I announced the discovery of the treasure of King Priam. Then I went to Mycenae, and found the Mask of Agamemnon. Then I travelled around Greece, searching for the other great Bronze Age palaces, at Tiryns, at Ithaka, at Orchomenos. I went to Sicily, on the path of those western Phoenicians, the tin traders. Then I went to Egypt. I told them I was searching for the tomb of Alexander the Great, in Alexandria. The world thought I was on the hunt for yet more gold. Heinrich Schliemann, self-made millionaire, who made his fortune on the back of the California gold rush, had seen the lustre of gold at Troy and Mycenae and had fallen bewitched again, lured by Mammon. My critics shouted with glee. They were vindicated. I was no archaeologist, I was a treasure-hunter. But they were wrong.’

‘They were wrong,’ Gladstone murmured, ‘because you were not in search of gold. You were in search of bronze and iron.’

Schliemann clapped his hands. ‘Mr Gladstone!’ he declared. ‘You do understand me.’ He stared at them intensely, then pointed down the passageway. ‘The very last place where Sophia and I dug all those years ago was right here, where we stand now. We found something extraordinary, something we knew would take weeks more, months more, to dig out. We sealed it up, intending to return. I went to Mycenae seeking confirmation, and seeking a key. And I found it, gentlemen. I found it. We uncovered the shaft graves, the Mask of Agamemnon. But we also found another tomb, the great beehive-shaped structure I called the Treasury of Atreus. I was elated. I went to the other palaces, and I found more of them, more so-called tombs. And then to Egypt. Beneath Alexandria I found not the steps down to the tomb of Alexander, but something infinitely older. And then in a blinding flash I knew what the pyramids were for. Tombs, gentlemen, royal tombs to be sure, like the tombs of the Mycenaeans, but something else. The pyramids were erected at the beginning of the Bronze Age, with the explosion of power and wealth that bronze created. The Bronze Age, gentlemen. Structures meant to safeguard the treasures not just of the dead, but of the living as well.’

‘The Treasury of Atreus,’ Hoar murmured, the shadow of a smile on his face. ‘I believe, Mr Schliemann, you have surpassed yourself. You have kept this trail you are on a secret, yet like any good explorer you have left clues, a safeguard, perhaps, against calamity, that some future-day archaeologist might follow. Clues in the names.’

‘You chose not to call it the Tomb of Atreus,’ Bismarck exclaimed. ‘You chose to call it the Treasury of Atreus.’

‘And not a treasury of gold,’ Gladstone rejoined. ‘But a treasury of bronze.’

‘Herr Bismarck asked if I had a theory,’ Schliemann said. ‘So here it is. The advent of bronze technology, two thousand years before the fall of Troy, was the most revolutionary advance in human history. For the first time, people had good agricultural tools, ploughshares and sickles. They had tools for carpentry, and for masonry. And they had superior weapons.’ He delved in his pockets, and produced a clear flint arrowhead in one hand, and a leaf-shaped metal one in the other. ‘Stone points, like this one we found in the oldest Troy layer, little different from chipped tools made by their ancestors of the Stone Age, gave way to bronze weapons like this one. But there was a rub. The tin needed to make bronze was always in short supply. It was hugely prized. The power of chieftains rested on it. The smiths – the bronze-workers – were kept within the walls of palaces, of citadels. Supplies of tin and bronze were closely guarded. Great vaults were built, places that doubled as the burial ground of kings. Vaults such as the Treasury of Atreus at Mycenae. Vaults such as the one that I believe lies before you down this passageway, gentlemen, dug into the limestone deep beneath the citadel of Troy.’

‘You have brought us to see the treasury!’ Gladstone exclaimed.

Schliemann held up his hand. ‘There is another rub. A most extraordinary one. Bronze tools, carefully controlled, doled out by the king, their use supervised, allowed the city-states of the Aegean to flourish. A brilliant civilization emerged. But I know the question you are asking yourselves, gentlemen. You are politicians. You have seen what men will do. At Gettysburg, at Sedan. Give them weapons, and they will make war. And in the Bronze Age Aegean, men did fight. We know about it from Homer. The clashes of arms, the bellows and taunts of the victor, the cries of the vanquished. But these are individual combats, not pitched battles. Why? Because there was never enough bronze to equip a city-state with an army large enough to take on another city, to lay siege to it and conquer it. And sheer force of numbers was never possible, huge numbers like the sweeping tides of men we know fought battles in the ancient Near East. The mountain-girt valleys of the Aegean did not have the population, the surplus manpower. Homer reveals it: individual kings in the Greek forces contributed all they had, but it was often merely a few ships, a few hundred men. He gives us a blood-soaked stage, true, but we watch his heroes just as Romans watched gladiators, or as the masses of our industrial age might view a sporting fixture. This was a world of peace, gentlemen, of peace that spawned a brilliant civilization, a civilization that grew so fast and so strong that it outstripped the ability of men to destroy it with the technology at their disposal.’

‘There is a weakness in your theory,’ Bismarck rumbled. ‘A weakness we all know from our own age. Men hungry for power will form alliances, often to prosecute war, not to prevent it. And surely that is what we see in Homer. Agamemnon leads a huge alliance of all the Greeks.’

Schliemann paused. ‘When I studied at the Sorbonne before embarking on my great quest for Troy, I had a thirst to know what the living world might tell about my long-dead heroes. I travelled to the islands of the Pacific, and observed the native peoples. Where their own limitation of technology and manpower prevented them from defeating each other, they ritualized their standoffs, in an entente cordiale. They exchanged gifts, women, cemented friendships. They held secret ceremonies in which the chieftains would confer, at one place recognized by all as a paramount meeting place. And whenever power was unbalanced, when a new technology was introduced, gunpowder, for example, when one chieftain had a brief ascendancy before the others had the technology as well, his first objective would be to conquer that paramount place where power had always been maintained, a balance of power that had kept the peace.’

‘You speak in metaphor of Troy, I believe,’ Gladstone murmured. ‘You speak of Troy, and you speak of this chamber before us. Am I correct?’

Schliemann stared hard at them. ‘Herr Bismarck spoke of an alliance. What of this? Agamemnon, already power-hungry in his own land, straining at the leashes that keep him in his citadel of Mycenae, learns of a new technology: the technology of iron. It is not yet perfected, but he sets his smiths to work. He knows he has no time to lose before others have it too. He gambles, and embarks on his path to war before the weapons are ready. He uses all his kinship ties and his strength and he summons an alliance, one that casts its net across the Mycenaean world. They are going to the place Agamemnon has gone to before in peace, as a broker of power, as a member of a council that kept war at bay. Yes, Mr Gladstone: they go to Troy. The alliance provides the manpower to lay siege to the citadel, but not yet the weapons. On the island of Tenedos, Agamemnon’s smiths work day and night, experimenting, testing. For nine years, if we are to believe Homer, his army fought in the traditional way, individual duels below the walls of Troy, Achilles and Hector, Patroclus and Diomedes. For nine years Agamemnon bided his time, while the forges hissed and burned, while the technology he had secretly acquired was honed and perfected. One day, let us surmise, in that ninth year, some master smith discovered a way to forge a metal that was no longer brittle, iron that could be stronger than bronze. Suddenly the stage was set. The world groaned. Agamemnon unleashed hell. A thousand iron arrows flew into the walls of Troy. Then ten thousand arrows. Then ten thousand more. Forges, gentlemen, forges on the island of Tenedos, forges that once had wrought the finery of heroes, helmets and breastplates and spears of the finest bronze, burned and blasted day and night to produce these new weapons, weapons that overwhelmed Troy like a tidal wave, that unleashed the bonds on what men could do.’

‘And all of this because a young Trojan prince kidnapped a Greek queen named Helen?’ Hoar said.

‘The spark of war,’ Schliemann said. ‘A spark created by Agamemnon, perhaps. A subterfuge. In a world where high-status women were part of the web of alliances, it could have been enough.’

‘Some damned foolish thing in the Balkans,’ Bismarck grumbled.

‘What did you say?’ Gladstone demanded.

‘What I have said to the new kaiser, seemingly to no avail. I said to him that one day the great European war will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans. That will be our Helen of Troy.’

‘You see?’ Schliemann exclaimed. ‘We speak of a coming war as if it is inevitable. That is why I have brought you here tonight, gentlemen.’

‘What would you have us do?’ Hoar asked.

Schliemann pulled a little white book from his pocket. ‘In Homer, the gods appear to shape destiny, and men are mere pawns. But that is because, before Agamemnon, the world is presented as an unchanging one, and thus one in which men appear to have no power. I believe the truth was very different. Just as it was an individual, Agamemnon, who brought calamitous war, so it was individuals before him, generation after generation of kings, who kept the balance of power, kept the peace. They were not pawns. It was their free will to shape history. We know some of their names. Atreus, father of Agamemnon. Minos, King of Knossos. Priam, King of Troy, an old king at the time of the siege, who, let us surmise, had seen Agamemnon as a young prince, had nurtured him perhaps, but then had seen something in his eyes, that smouldering fire that makes a prince an Alexander or a Genghis Khan, that only needs an extra spark to ignite and raze all before it.’ He held up the book. ‘Thomas Carlyle, our great political theorist, on how history is shaped by individuals. I have been reading him this very day. I look to our world, gentlemen, and I see a world where the power of the individual is under threat, with calamitous consequences. It is the individual who has morality, not the crowd.’

Hoar put up his hand. ‘I speak as a citizen of the United States of America, where individual freedom, the rights of the individual, is enshrined in the Constitution. I look to Europe, and I fear greatly for the future. Mass movements, volk movements, begin on a high ideal, on ideals of social justice, but they submerge the individual, and thus the voice of common morality.’

Schliemann nodded. ‘We live at a time when the voice of the individual is needed as at no other time in history. We stand, gentlemen, we four, in front of history, able to shape it, able to throw off inevitability, to shake off those who would have us believe that fate is not ours to control, to show that men left to their own devices are not foredoomed to destruction and war.’

‘And we stand at a time of changing technology,’ Gladstone said. ‘That is your point. That is why that iron arrowhead is so important.’

‘The age of bronze ended with Agamemnon. The age of iron is about to end for us. We live in terrifying times. Contemplate the changes in our own lifespans, gentlemen. From muskets to machine guns. From black powder to nitroglycerine. From ships of the line to ironclads. From muzzle-loading cannon to giant breech-loading guns, capable of lobbing a shell fifteen miles. Veritable doomsday weapons. And men will fly, gentlemen. With my own eyes I have seen the “monoplane” of Monsieur Felix du Temple. Powered flight is a certainty. Men will fly. There are fearsome possibilities, gentlemen. Fearsome possibilities. The modern alchemy of science will produce wonders, but also horrors. Human guile may reawaken the oldest nightmare of them all. I speak of the plague. The plague. It may be the black death, or cholera, or a new deadly smallpox, or some frightful dormant virulence. If some necromancer can harness disease as a weapon, then truly, Mr Gladstone, the Christian God will have forsaken us, all of the gods will have forsaken us, and we will find no redemption.’

‘Does anything give you hope?’ Hoar asked.

‘You three give me hope. In the Bronze Age, in the world of Homer, we are to believe it was the champions who were the heroes, Achilles and Hector and the others. But they were not the true heroes. The heroes were the kings, those who came before Agamemnon. Let us be modern-day kings. Let us be modern-day heroes. Let us ride above the tide of history. Let us prevent another rape of Troy.’

‘You spoke, Mr Schliemann, of finding a key,’ Hoar said. ‘You spoke metaphorically, I surmise?’

Schliemann let out a shuddering sigh, suddenly exhausted. He had said it. He felt an indescribable sense of relief, but also huge urgency. The wheels were now truly in motion. He gave Hoar a tired smile. ‘My dear senator. I am an archaeologist, remember? When I speak of a key, I mean a key.’ He reached into his inside pocket, to the heavy object he had been carrying in the satchel, wrapped up by Sophia. He hesitated, then pointed with his other hand down the passageway. ‘When Sophia and I dug here in secret all those years ago, I found a way through to the end, inside a natural tunnel created where blocks had fallen down from the top of the walls, forming air spaces. I saw inscriptions along the sides of the walls. Inscriptions . I could not make them out, but they seemed to be Bronze Age, pictograms, linear symbols unrecognizable to me, even hieroglyphics. And at the end, far ahead of my reach, I shoved my lantern forward and saw it. A great bronze door, the door to the chamber that must lie beyond. In the centre of the door above a metal crossbar was an angular shaped depression in a circle. A keyhole, gentlemen. And this is the key.’

He took out the package, and unwrapped it. They all gasped as he let the cloth fall away. It was a metal cross, about twenty centimetres wide, equilateral, with bars extending at right angles from each arm. It was gold, lustrous and dazzling in the flickering gaslight, with a silvery metal as the core.

Gladstone reached out and touched it. ‘Of course,’ he murmured. ‘ Of course. The symbol you write about with such passion in your books. The symbol you found incised on pots at Troy. The symbol, as I recall, you had painted into the decoration of your house in Athens.’

‘Schliemann the treasure-hunter, again,’ Hoar said. ‘Leaving clues for posterity.’

‘This is the shape of the keyhole in the bronze door ahead of us?’ Gladstone asked.

Schliemann nodded, flushed with excitement. ‘I give you the hakenkreuz, gentlemen. The hook-cross. What in Sanskrit is called the swastika. The symbol of the Aryan peoples, the first Indo-Europeans who came from the east, over the Black Sea, the people I believe were the first settlers at Troy. This was their symbol. The symbol of the first civilization. The symbol of Troy. And this metal is not just gold, but meteoritic. Some ancient sacred discovery, shaped in this way for the kings of Troy.’

Bismarck reached out, then let his hand drop. ‘I know this symbol,’ he growled. ‘The hakenkreuz has new meaning for the nationalists in Germany, the volk -movement. There are secret societies, those who hark back to an Aryan past. It seems,’ he said, looking at it uneasily, ‘to stand for all the possibilities of the past, and all the dangers of the future. Coming events cast their shadows before.’

‘Where did you find this?’ Gladstone asked.

‘It was Sophia, not me,’ Schliemann said. ‘I lifted the mask, but Sophia led me there.’

‘The mask?’ Gladstone said incredulously. ‘You mean the Mask of Agamemnon? At Mycenae? ’

‘Have no fear, my dear Gladstone,’ Schliemann said, touching the other man’s arm. ‘Your eloquent argument in the preface to my book Mycenae still holds truth. I too am convinced that the shaft graves contain Agamemnon and his family. But when I raised the golden mask, it was not a skeleton I saw beneath. In my mind’s eye I saw Agamemnon, yes, a spectral image that flashed before me, so when I told the world I had gazed upon the face of Agamemnon I was telling the truth. But what I found beneath the mask was this. The hakenkreuz, the swastika. I give you the most astonishing find I have ever made. I give you the palladion, gentlemen.’

‘The palladion?’ Gladstone breathed, staring at the cross. ‘But the palladion was a wooden statue, surely, in the temple at Troy? The statue of the goddess Pallas, stolen by Odysseus?’

‘That story may well have been true. There are those who believe that statue found its way to Rome, and then to Constantinople, where it remains concealed to this day. The story would have suited Agamemnon. To steal the statue of the protecting deity was to steal the soul of a city. It meant Troy was doomed. But it would also have suited him that the story concealed the truth, that the palladion was not a wooden statue but this cross, the key to that chamber ahead of us. It may well have been concealed in the temple, in some underground repository, perhaps, a holy of holies, its whereabouts known only to the great kings who came to convene in that chamber to keep the peace.’

‘Agamemnon had been one of those kings,’ Hoar murmured.

Schliemann nodded. ‘Yet years later, he stood here, at this very spot, that fateful night of fire and death, dripping with other men’s blood, slamming down his great sceptre, his bloody sword hanging from his other hand, staring at that door ahead, remembering. All he wanted was that chamber shut for ever, and this entranceway buried. Shutting the door would close off the chamber of power that had thwarted his own ambitions, had prevented his ascendancy above all the others. He had killed Priam, and now he would seal off the chamber that had counselled peace, not war. Those fallen blocks of masonry ahead of us were not the result of some natural convulsion, but were deliberately caused. And having buried the chamber, he would find the key, take it from this place, and conceal it for all time. He stormed up to the temple ahead of his men, the fires raging around him, the cries of women filling the air, and found the palladion, then took it back with him to his citadel at Mycenae. And where better to conceal it than in the hallowed burial ground of his ancestors, behind a mask that showed his own face, the ultimate act of power. Then, standing over the grave of his forefathers, Agamemnon could feel as mighty as a god, could raise his staff to Mount Olympus and shake it with contempt. The age of gods had ended. The age of men had begun. And he is there somewhere, his own burial, I am sure of it. What matters is that we have found the palladion. What matters is that we can turn back history, stand in front of those doors as all those kings before Agamemnon did, and reach up again with this key.’

‘What would we find?’ Hoar asked quietly.

Schliemann paused. ‘I do not know what we will find. I do not know . It may be an empty chamber, a place where treasures of metal were once stored, a council chamber with empty seats. But even that could be enough to prove my theory, so that we may go forth with confidence and proclaim it to the world.’

‘What would you have us do?’ Bismarck said.

‘A year from now, a year to the day, we will reconvene at this spot. The arrangements will be made with the utmost secrecy, and we must not speak a word of this until we are agreed to do so, when the time is right. We must have something to show. I must be believed, not mocked. A grand opening. The press gathered, as they were at Mycenae when I revealed the Mask of Agamemnon. God willing, by a year from now Sophia and I will have dug through to that door, and created a passage wide enough to open it. It will be the greatest moment of all our lives. An incalculable treasure, far richer than all the gold in the world. The key, gentlemen, to the abatement of war. Proof, somewhere, indeed in the very existence of that chamber, that men could once control the urge to self-destruction.’

‘Do we few, so few, old men all of us, have the strength and morality to rise above the tide of technology, the monster of self-destruction humanity has created?’ Hoar asked.

‘The monster is within ourselves,’ Bismarck murmured, still staring at the swastika.

‘The world needs heroes,’ Schliemann said. ‘Not lords of war, not champions like Achilles, but heroes like Atreus, Minos, Priam of Troy, men willing to stand against the stream.’

‘We need more treaties,’ Gladstone murmured, tapping his fingers against his cane. ‘Treaties, with redoubled effort. I will be prime minster once again. This has convinced me of it. I will stand for re-election.’

‘We need a balance of power,’ Hoar said. ‘We will never prevent nations from having weapons, but if we maintain our strength we may prevent war through deterrence.’

‘Much can be set in motion in a year,’ Gladstone said. ‘And then, if we can show to the world that it has worked in the past, there may be the vigour and strength of purpose to get it done.’ He turned to Bismarck. ‘Chancellor, you have famously said that history is more than mere written words. We are old men, but we need to make history, not write it.’

‘It seems that after all we speak from the same page, Herr Gladstone.’

‘Gentlemen,’ Schliemann said, turning to them. ‘There is an ancient expression of the Hittites. I give you a tablet of war; I give you a tablet of peace.’ He held out his hands as he spoke, palm up, left hand then right. ‘Which is it to be?’

Silently the others came up, first Gladstone, then Bismarck, then Hoar, and placed their hands one on top of the other, on his right hand. They remained still for a moment, and then Bismarck and Hoar withdrew, leaving Gladstone alone, staring into Schliemann’s eyes, a look of concern on his face. ‘My dear Heinrich,’ he said softly. ‘You have left your mark upon this age. An undying name. A name that I trust will be with us for many a year. You do not need to push so hard as to be injurious to your health, as is your wont.’

Schliemann squeezed his hand. ‘Your solicitation is most gratefully acknowledged. But have no fear. My health is redoubled by this meeting. My energy is undiminished. Great days lie ahead.’

Gladstone withdrew, and stood beside Bismarck in the shadows. Hoar raised his right hand and pulled a golden signet ring off his finger. ‘Gentlemen, I am humbled to be here. I feel a mere mortal among giants. This ring bears the crest of my forefathers, who signed the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America, the greatest affirmations of peace and liberty ever devised. Those documents, gentlemen, give us hope that the will of the individual can triumph. I give you this ring in solemn affirmation that I have spent and will spend my days in the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness for all mankind, and in observance of our pledge here today.’ He knelt down stiffly and pressed the ring as far as it would go into the earth on the side of the tunnel, then pushed a potsherd over the top of it. He got back up, tottering slightly. ‘And to you, Mr Schliemann, in your great endeavour to finish this excavation, I wish Godspeed.’

‘And Godspeed to you too, Mr Hoar.’ Schliemann turned to go, took a few steps and then turned back. The three men were still there, standing, but had receded into the gloom. For a split second he saw them for what they were, three old men already half into shadowland, looming like wraiths of long-dead kings, like the kings Schliemann imagined still pacing the halls and battlements above. He felt a chill wind, and wrapped his coat around him. Could these men still make history? Or had he deceived himself? Had his passion, his yearning for more and more discoveries, his endless delay in returning to Troy, year after year, made him push this day too far ahead? Had he left it too late? He shook away the thought, and raised his hand. ‘Godspeed to you all. Until we meet again here, a year from now.’

Schliemann returned on the path past the point where he had met Bismarck, following the line of little candles, now spluttering and dying. Night winds at Troy were always disturbing, and he half imagined the rustling he heard was not the wind in the grass but the advancing Greeks parting their way through wheat on the plain below, and the sound of bare feet pattering over the smooth adobe of the streets and walls, the trembling sounds of that final night before the storm, a night when each breath could be heard. He reached the ramp up the western wall of the citadel, on the edge of the great trench they had dug through the site. He looked up at the stars and saw Orion, the hunter, his favourite. Far above him, close below Orion, he saw black birds flying silently, heading north.

He looked towards the grassy knoll on the northern edge of the citadel, and felt a rush of warmth. Sophia was still there, framed by the night sky, the wind blowing back her veil and revealing the golden belt, the bracelets, the headband, glistening in the starlight. But was it Sophia, or was he imagining another, Helen of Troy? Schliemann closed his eyes for a moment, feeling dizzy, a sound like the sea coming and going in his head. He opened his eyes and saw that Sophia had lifted up a tallow torch and lit it, sending wisps of smoke curling in the wind towards him. The flames suddenly erupted, illuminating her red dress, and for a moment it looked as though they would devour her, as if she herself would become a torch, a leaping, twisting beacon of fire, a signal into the night. Was that how it had all begun? And was the Trojan Horse real, or was it some dark force of the sea, raging, tossing its mane, turning to fire and bloody murder as it swept death towards the citadel, breaking over the beacon, carrying all before it?

He knew Homer off by heart. He thought he knew about the Trojan War. A war fought for beauteous Helen, and the wealth she brought. But had it been? He closed his eyes, and tried to conjure it, melding fragmentary images as they came to him. The sea, the colour of widow’s tears, steel-blue. Grooms beside beached ships, whispering to tethered horses not to fear the sea, then kissing and releasing them. Harpies flying overhead, bronze and iron messengers of death. He looked at his hand, calloused as he imagined Agamemnon’s might have been: the hand of Agamemnon, people-devouring king, battle-wise, lion-maned, he who knew war in all its bloody ways. The ringing in his ears became shouts, bellows, roars. Blood was everywhere, pounding in his head, cloying in his nostrils, its iron taste filling his mouth. Dark blood spurting from wounds cleaved by champions. Blood swept up from the plain and falling like a rainstorm, staining the ground black. Blood lapping against Scamander’s shore, drenching the beach, drowning the plain below the battlements, seeping up over them. Sophia, blood-red beacon, dripping fire.

Schliemann gasped as if coming up for air, leaning against the stone ramp. Perhaps Gladstone had been right. He was letting the past consume him. He looked up and saw Sophia turn and walk towards him, holding the burning torch. He pushed himself back up, and waved at her. He remembered how close he had felt to her that night years before, in the shaft grave in the far-off citadel of Agamemnon. He remembered the thrill of that moment, but also the fear, a tremulous, paralysing fear, just before he had lifted the golden mask. A fear that had been his greatest weakness, the fear of making a discovery that would cap his career but dim the light of his passion and infect the memory of all that had gone before, the exhilaration that had fuelled him. He feared a discovery that might diminish his yearning for more, and diminish the supreme fulfilment he had found with Sophia.

And there had been the other, deeper fear, a fear of what he might reveal, an awful truth about the human condition, about war. Those terrible images of blood, those dreams that always came to him up here, were more than just a vivid imagining of Homer. He remembered what Bismarck had said. Coming events cast their shadows before. Schliemann had finally realized why those images so unnerved him. It was as if the tide of the future were rolling back, and he was seeing the river Scamander not drenched in ancient blood, in the blood of heroes, but in fresh, red blood, in the blood of the children of today. It was not the past he was seeing. It was the future.

Sophia reached him, and they embraced. He held her tight, taking the torch and holding it away from them, the flame flickering in the breeze. All grim thoughts left him, and he experienced a supreme contentment. Their children were waiting. He felt a burst of the familiar adrenalin. Tomorrow he and Sophia would be here again, in the tunnel, at the crack of dawn, alone in secret with their trowels and shovels, just as they had been so many times before, knowing they were on the cusp of another discovery that they would one day reveal to an astonished world. What they found here could change history. He could hardly wait. There was no time to lose.