The Tiger Warrior (6 page)

“He’s still flying at half-mast, I see,” Costas muttered to Jack.

“Don’t say anything. Remember, I gave him those shorts. They’re a hallowed part of our archaeological heritage. One day they’ll be in the Smithsonian.” He glanced at Costas’ own baggy shorts and luridly colored shirt. “Anyway, you can hardly talk, Hawaii-Five-Oh.”

“Just getting ready,” Costas said. “For where we’re going in the Pacific. You remember? Holiday time. Thought I may as well kit up now.”

“Yes. About that.” Jack cleared his throat just as Hiebermeyer came up and shook hands warmly with him, and then with Costas. “Come on,” he said, continuing down the hill without actually stopping.

“So much for small talk,” Costas said, swigging at a water bottle.

“He’s been wanting to show me this place for months,” Jack said, slinging his faded old khaki bag over his shoulder and following. “I can’t wait.”

“Okay, okay.” Costas tossed the bottle back into the helicopter and followed Jack down the hill, catching up with them about fifty meters from the water’s edge. Hiebermeyer took off his little round glasses and wiped them, and then opened his arms expansively. “Welcome to ancient Berenikê. The holiday resort at the end of the universe.” He pointed back up the slope. “Up there’s the Temple of Serapis, down here’s the main east-west road, the
decumanus
. The town was founded by Ptolemy II, son of Alexander the Great’s general, who ruled Egypt in the third century BC and named the place Berenikê after his mother. Flourished mainly under the Roman emperor Augustus, declined after that.”

“So where’s the amphitheater?” Costas looked around. “I don’t see anything at all.”

“Look down.”

Costas kicked at the ground. “Okay. A few potsherds.”

“Now come over here.” They followed Hiebermeyer a few meters farther toward the shore. He had led them to the edge of an excavated area the size of a large swimming pool. It was as if the skin had been peeled off the ground. They saw rough rubble walls of coral and sandstone, forming small rooms and alleyways. It was the foundations of an ancient town, not an immaculately laid out Roman town like Pompeii or Herculaneum but a place without any architectural pretension, where walls and rooms had clearly been added organically as they were needed. Hiebermeyer leapt down with surprising agility onto a duckboard that lay across the trench. He bounded over to the far side and pulled a large tarpaulin away, then gave a triumphant flourish. “There you go, Jack. I thought you’d like that.”

It was a row of Roman amphoras, just like the ones they had seen on the wreck that morning, only these were worn and many had broken rims. “All reused, as you can see,” Hiebermeyer said. “My guess is these went all the way to India filled with wine, then were brought back here empty and reused as water containers. Water’s a precious commodity here. The nearest spring’s on the edge of the mountains, miles away. We don’t even have electricity. We use solar panels to run our computers. And we have to bring our food in, just as they did in ancient times from the Nile Valley. It really makes you empathize with the past.”

“It sounds like a lunar colony,” Costas murmured.

Hiebermeyer replaced the tarpaulin and pulled up another one beside it, revealing a pile of dark stones about the size of soccer balls. “Ballast,” he said. “It’s basalt, volcanic, foreign to this area.”

“Ballast,” Costas repeated. “Why?”

“An outward-bound ship, filled with gold and wine, is going to sail along fine. A ship returning with peppercorns is going to bob around like a cork. You needed ballast. This stone’s been sourced to southern India.”

“Maurice!” Jack exclaimed, patting him on the back. “We’ll make a nautical archaeologist of you yet.”

“India,” Costas said. “Someone’s going to have to fill me in.”

Jack turned to him. “For millennia, the ancient Egyptians received goods from beyond the Red Sea, but always via middlemen. Then, after Alexander conquered Egypt and the first Greek merchants appeared along this coast, someone told the Egyptians and the Greeks how to sail across the Indian Ocean using the monsoon. They sailed out from Egypt with the northeasterly monsoon, came back with the southwesterly, achieving one round voyage a year. It was dangerous and terrifying, but the winds were as predictable as the seasons. It opened up an amazing era of maritime discovery. The first Greek sea merchants hit India soon after Berenikê was established. After the Romans took over Egypt in 31 BC, everything revved up. Under Augustus as many as three hundred ships left from here annually. It was big investment, big risk stuff, just like the European East Indies trade fifteen hundred years later. Gold, silver, wine went out; gems, spices, pepper came back.”

“And not just that,” Hiebermeyer said, leaping out of the trench and wiping the sweat from his forehead. “Now for what I really wanted you to see. Follow me up the hill.” A scorching gust of wind blew up, stinging their eyes. Costas crouched back against it, then trudged up behind the other two men.

“We’ve been talking about the Battle of Carrhae, Crassus’ lost legions,” Jack said.

“I’m always ready to hear about a Roman defeat,” Hiebermeyer replied, grinning at Jack.

“Come on. The Romans didn’t rule Egypt that badly. If it wasn’t for them, you wouldn’t be here, sunning yourself beside the Red Sea. This is basically a Roman site.”

“I’d rather be in the Valley of the Kings,” Hiebermeyer sniffed.

“Talking to Costas about Carrhae set me thinking about another Roman defeat,” Jack said. “One never forgotten by the emperors. The lost legions of Varus, destroyed in AD 9 in the Teutoberg Forest.”

Hiebermeyer stopped in his tracks. “That was my first real taste of archaeology as a boy, hunting for the site of the battle. My family owned a lodge nearby, outside Osnabruck in Lower Saxony.”

Jack shaded his eyes and looked at Costas. “The Romans were pushing into Germany. It was the glory days of Augustus. The possibilities seemed limitless. Then it all went horribly wrong. Varus was inexperienced, like Crassus, and took three legions into unknown territory. They were ambushed by the Germans and annihilated, twenty thousand men at least.”

“What’s your point?” Hiebermeyer said, walking slowly again up the hill.

“The decline of Berenikê, after Augustus. It’s bizarre, at the height of the empire when the Roman economy was booming. It’s as if the British government had suddenly pulled out of any interest in the East India Company in the late eighteenth century, when the biggest fortunes were being made.”

“The defeat stopped the Romans in their tracks,” Hiebermeyer said. “The Rhine became the frontier. Augustus nearly went insane over those lost legions.” Jack nodded. “I wonder if Augustus had second thoughts. He looked east, to Arabia, to India, the lands beyond this place, where everything was ripe for conquest. He looked, and he said no. The empire was big enough. They couldn’t afford another defeat. And the risk out here, the cost of failure, was huge.”

“And not just military,” Costas said.

“Go on.”

“Massive fortunes were involved, right? Shiploads of gold and silver. That means only the wealthiest investors, including the emperor himself What are the chances of shipwreck on a voyage out here, one in three, one in four? Let’s say it happens, and the emperor loses big-time. His own cash. A high-risk investment gone wrong, and then those legions wiped out. It’s all too much. He pulls the plug on India.”

Jack stopped. “That’s a hell of an idea.”

“I’ll sell you it for a cold beer,” Costas said, wiping his forehead.

“Find me a wreck out here full of mint issues of Imperial gold, and I might believe you,” Hiebermeyer said, trudging determinedly up the slope ahead of them. Costas looked questioningly at Jack, who grinned and followed Hiebermeyer.

“Speaking of shipwrecks, thanks for the hint, Maurice,” Jack said loudly, catching up.

“Huh?”

“That translation you emailed me. From the Coptos archive. The ancient shipwreck. The
elephantegos.
”

“Ah. Yes.”

“We found one.”

“Ah. Good.”

“We found an
elephantegos.
”

“Ah. Yes. Good.” Hiebermeyer stopped, clearly deep in some other train of thought, nodded sagely, then carried on walking. After a few moments he stopped again, dead in his tracks, and peered at Jack, his mouth open in astonishment. Jack caught Costas’ eye, and the two of them continued up the slope. Hiebermeyer followed them to the edge of another large excavation trench, where he was suddenly preoccupied by the busy scene in front of them. He gesticulated at a group of students and Egyptian workers under a tarpaulin in one corner. A dark-featured Egyptian woman quickly came over and climbed out of the trench in front of them, her hair tied back under a bush hat. She spoke quietly to Hiebermeyer in German. He nodded and turned to Jack. “You remember Aysha? She dug with me in the mummy necropolis in the Fayum. She’s in charge there now, but I got her down here as soon as we started finding what you’re about to see.”

“Congratulations on your doctorate.” Jack shook hands warmly with her.

“And on your assistant directorship of the Institute in Alexandria,” Costas said.

“Someone had to look after Maurice,” she said.

Jack smiled to himself. Two years ago Aysha had been Hiebermeyer’s top graduate student, a naturally gifted excavator who had more patience than Maurice did for the minutiae of a dig, able to spend hours dissecting a shred of mummy wrapping where Maurice would have quickly become flustered. She was never subservient to him, always quietly in control. She was his perfect foil, and he was never pompous with her. Jack looked at them together for a moment, and then banished the thought. It was impossible. Maurice would never allow the distraction.

“You must miss New York City,” Costas said. “I get back whenever I can.”

“When I finished at Columbia, I kept the apartment,” Aysha said. “When this dig’s over for the season, I’m back in NYC for a sabbatical. The apartment’s where we arranged with Rebecca’s guardians for her to meet up with Jack for the first time. They stayed there together in the spring.”

“Thanks again for that, Aysha,” Jack said, smiling at her. “You know she’s with us on
Seaquest
?
”

“Of course. She emailed me this morning. A running commentary on your friend’s appalling jokes.”

“When you’re back in Queens, say hello to my barber, Antonio,” Costas said wistfully. “Corner of Fourteenth and Twenty-second. For ten years he cut my hair. While I was at school. Five bucks a go. Gave me my first shave. Taught me everything I know.”

“Of course, Costas,” Aysha said, rolling her eyes. “Next time I make a hair appointment.”

“No appointment needed. You just show up.”

Jack laughed. Hiebermeyer stamped his foot impatiently, and Jack saw his expression. “Okay, Maurice, what have you got?” Hiebermeyer nodded at Aysha, who ushered them to the edge of the trench. “It’s a Roman villa,” she said. “Or I should say, what counts as a villa in this place. The owner’s used the best available materials and put some expense into it. The walls are made of blocks of fossil coral, the main building material here, but they’re veneered with slabs of gypsum that must have been hauled by camel caravan from the Nile. The little columns are Egyptian gray granite, quarried in the mountains to the west of here. The really fascinating thing is that he’s got a polished wooden floor, completely at odds with Roman tradition. The wood’s teak, from southern India. It’s reused ship’s timbers.”

“And I see some modern conveniences,” Jack said, pointing over to the corner where the workers were excavating.

“It’s a water cistern, dug into the rock, lined with impervious concrete. Alongside it there’s an economy version of a Roman bath. He’s built himself a frigidarium, lined with pottery tubes for insulation and an ingenious system for keeping the room damp.”

“He must have spent a lot of time in there,” Costas grumbled, wiping the sweat off his face. “I don’t know how anyone could stand this heat.”

“They didn’t, for half the year,” Aysha replied. “This place was pretty well abandoned for months on end, between ships leaving from here to catch the northeast monsoon and then arriving back with the southwest. I think this guy was a traveling merchant, on the move a lot. I think this was just his pad when he was in town. And I think he probably had another place, in India.”

“In India!” Costas exclaimed.

“Aysha, show them, will you?” Hiebermeyer said, clearly relishing the moment.

Aysha nodded, and led them under a tarpaulin shelter beside the trench. On a trestle table were trays full of finds, mainly fragments of pottery. “Some of this is Indian, Tamil style,” she said, passing Jack a sherd in a polythene bag. “That one has a Tamil graffito on it, possibly the word Ramaya. It could be the name of the merchant himself, but I think it’s the name for the Roman community in south India, the name the local people there gave it.”

“You think this guy was Indian?” Costas said.

“Or his wife,” Aysha said. “Take a look at this.” She pointed to a chunk of sandstone about thirty centimeters across, highly eroded but with a carving on the front. It showed a woman, with pronounced hips and breasts, in a swirling motion as if she were dancing, between pillars with spiral fluting surmounted by a decorative architrave. “When she was found, my British assistant called her the Venus of Berenikê,” Aysha said. “Typical western perspective. For my money, she’s Indian. The swirl, the decoration, are clearly south Indian. I think she’s not a classical goddess at all, but a
yaksi
, an Indian female spirit. You might expect to find this in a cave temple in Tamil Nadu, the farthest point we know Roman merchants visited along the coast of India, on the Bay of Bengal.”

“And look at this.” Hiebermeyer pointed at an airtight box with a thermostat alongside. “That’s silk.”

“Silk?” Costas said. “You mean from China?”

“We think so,” Aysha said excitedly. “We think this shows that silk wasn’t just coming overland via Persia to the Roman Empire. It was also arriving by sea, from the ports of India. It shows that traders were leaving the Silk Route somewhere in central Asia, and going south through Afghanistan and down the Indus and the Ganges to reach the ports where they met up with merchants like this one. And yes, Costas, it brings China one step closer to the Roman world.”