The Last Gospel (17 page)

Hiebermeyer came through behind Jack and Maria, followed by Costas. ‘This room seems pretty austere,’ Costas said, standing up behind Jack and looking around. ‘I mean, not much here.’

‘That’s the Roman way,’ Jack said. ‘They often liked to have their floors and walls covered in colour and decoration, but usually had very few furnishings by our standards.’

‘No mosaics or wall paintings here,’ Maria murmured. ‘This room’s all stone, white marble by the look of it.’

Jack peered around again, absorbing everything he could, trying to get a sense of it all. To the right, on the south side, the wall was pierced by two entrances, both blocked up with solid volcanic material. He guessed they led to a balcony, overlooking the town of Herculaneum below. It would have been a spectacular view, with Vesuvius rearing up to the left and the broad sweep of the Bay of Naples to the right, the coastline visible as far out as Misenum and Cumae. Jack shifted, and his headlamp beam illuminated a long marble table, perhaps three metres long and a metre wide, with two stone chairs backing against the balcony. On the table were two pottery pitchers, three pottery cups, and what looked like ink pots. Just visible against one leg of the table was a small wine amphora. Jack looked at the tabletop again.
Ink pots
. His heart raced with excitement. He saw dusty shapes that could have been paper, papyrus. He narrowed his eyes. He was sure of it. He forced himself to remain rooted, to remain calm and detached for a few moments longer, and swept his beam to the left. He saw the shelves they had seen from the entrance, that Hiebermeyer had told him he had seen through the crack in the wall the day before. Bookshelves, piled high with scrolls. It was incredible. More scrolls were strewn on the floor, just as Weber had found elsewhere in the villa in the eighteenth century. Jack pivoted further left, to the place where they had come in. Beside the entrance were scrolls in some kind of wicker basket, different from the scrolls on the floor, wound round wooden sticks with distinctive smoothed finials poking out of the ends of each one, labels protruding. There was no doubt about it. Not just blank rolls of papyrus.
Finished books
.

He aimed his beam back to the left wall of the room, between the basket and the shelves, at something he had seen earlier but not properly registered. Now he realized what it was, and drew in his breath in excitement. It was two shadowy heads, portrait busts perched on a small shelf looking towards the table. He took a few careful steps towards them. He needed to find out who had been here, who had been the last person to sit at that desk, almost two thousand years ago. He stood in front of the busts, and saw that they were life-sized. For a moment they had a ghostly quality, as if the occupants of the villa that fateful day had walked out of the wall and were staring straight at him, with lifeless eyes. Jack forced himself to look dispassionately. Typical early imperial portrait busts, extraordinarily lifelike, as if they had been taken from wax death masks. Handsome, well-proportioned heads, slightly protuberant ears, clearly members of the imperial family. Jack peered down at the small pedestals below each bust.

‘Drusus and Germanicus,’ he whispered.

‘The two guys you mentioned just now? The guy on the coin?’ Costas said. ‘Father and brother of Claudius?’

‘Seems an incredible coincidence,’ Maria said.

Jack’s mind was racing. He still had the coin in his hand, and he held it up so the portrait was framed by the two busts. The similarity was truly remarkable.
Could it be?
‘There’s something about this coin,’ he murmured. ‘Something staring us in the face.’

‘But that one coin doesn’t necessarily mean much, surely,’ Maria said. ‘This villa was like an art gallery, a museum. The great villa owners of Italy in the Renaissance collected medallions, old coins. Why not Roman villa owners too?’

‘Possibly.’ Jack looked around the chamber pensively. ‘But I think we’re in the room of an old person, stripped to its essentials. This isn’t just Roman minimalism, it’s real austerity. Books, a writing table, a few revered portraits, wine. No wall paintings, no mosaics, nothing of the hedonism we associate with the Bay of Naples. The room of someone prepared for the next step, for the afterlife, already swept clean of the past. The twilight of a life.’

‘Seems pretty odd for a lavish villa,’ Costas said. ‘I mean, this room’s like a monk’s cell.’

Hiebermeyer had squatted down, and was peering closely at one of the scrolls on the floor. ‘This papyrus is fantastically well preserved,’ he murmured, carefully prising at it with his fingers. ‘It’s even pliable. I can read the Greek.’

‘Ah. Greek,’ Jack said, his voice neutral.

‘What’s wrong with that?’ Costas said.

‘Nothing,’ Jack said. ‘Nothing at all. We just want Latin.’

‘Bad news, Jack,’ Hiebermeyer said, peering closely at the script, then pushing up his glasses and looking at him. ‘I may have brought you here on a wild goose chase.’

‘Philodemus.’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘I thought Greek philosophers were highly esteemed,’ Costas said.

‘Not all of them,’ Jack said. ‘A lot of Romans, educated men like Claudius, like Pliny the Elder, thought many of these Greek philosophers around the Bay of Naples were quacks and charlatans, hangers-on in the villas of the wealthy. But there was a lot of this stuff around, and in a typical library here you were probably more likely to pick up a book by someone like Philodemus than one of the great names we revere today. Remember, the classical texts that have survived, that were saved and transcribed in the medieval period, represent the pinnacle of ancient achievement, and only a small part of that. It spoils us into thinking that all ancient thinkers were remarkable minds. Look at the academic world today. For every great scholar, there are dozens of mediocrities, more than a few charlatans. But they’re still all called professors. It was just bad luck for us that old Calpurnius Piso patronized one of the flaky ones.’

‘I hope to God we haven’t just stumbled into Philodemus’ study,’ Hiebermeyer muttered. ‘I hate to lead you on, Jack. Hardly worth calling you from your shipwreck.’

‘I wouldn’t miss being here for anything,’ Jack said fervently, ‘Philodemus or not. And we weren’t going anywhere with the wreck until all the equipment for a major excavation’s in place, a week at least.’

‘It’d be such a pity, though,’ Maria said, slumping slightly. ‘Some second-rate philosopher. It’s hard to believe someone was trying to save it all, when the eruption happened,’ she said, waving at the strewn scrolls all over the floor.

‘Maybe they weren’t,’ Costas said. ‘Maybe the clearance was already underway, and they were trying to get rid of it.’

‘Or searching for something. You said it before.’ Jack glanced back at the macabre form of the skeleton at the entrance, its hand seeming to grasp towards the scrolls inside the room. ‘But there’s something about this place. It doesn’t seem like the study of a Greek philosopher. Not at the end, anyway, not in AD 79. It’s just too Roman. It’s a very private room, a hidden sanctuary almost, a place where someone could live in their own world and forget about impressing others. And I just can’t imagine a Greek choosing to have two imperial Roman portrait busts as the only decoration in his study, the only things to look at from his desk.’

Hiebermeyer flipped on the extractor fan again, and it flashed red. ‘Let’s give it a few more minutes,’ he said. ‘I think we’re still okay to talk, with the noise. I don’t think they can hear us down there with that drill going.’

They backed up to the entrance again, clustering round it, and Jack held up the coin. He looked at the statues again, then back at the coin. He realized that the coin had been fingered a lot, in the same place on both sides. ‘Maybe this was the memento of an old soldier, an old man who lived here in AD 79,’ he murmured. ‘Perhaps one who had served under Claudius in the invasion of Britain, or even under Germanicus, sixty years before the eruption. An old man who revered his general, and that general’s brother and father.’ He paused, troubled. ‘But it’s still odd.’

‘Why?’ Costas said. ‘It’s a great find, but as Maria says, it’s just one coin.’

‘Well, it would still have been risking it,’ Jack said. ‘In the Roman period, you didn’t hang on to old coins, unless you were hoarding them. You just didn’t want to be seen with issues of a past emperor. Coins were hugely important propaganda tools. It was how a new emperor conveyed his image, asserted his power. And the coin reverse had commemorative images which celebrated the achievements of the emperor and his family.’

‘The Jewish triumph of Vespasian,’ Costas said. ‘
Judaea Capta
. The menorah.’

Jack grinned. ‘A great example. How could we forget. That issue was less than two years after the eruption of Vesuvius. Another famous example is the Britannia issues of Claudius, celebrating his conquest of Britain in AD 43.’

‘But this coin commemorates Claudius’ father.’ Costas took the coin from Jack, and looked at it closely with his headlamp. ‘It seems a selfless thing for an emperor to do, a little touching. I think I like this guy.’

‘It’s not quite what it seems,’ Jack said. ‘This coin probably dates to the first year of Claudius’ reign, before he had anything to brag about. Harking back to a glorious ancestor was a way of giving your claim to the throne some authority, reminding people of the virtues of your ancestors. In AD 41, when Claudius was proclaimed emperor, Rome had just suffered four years of insanity under Caligula, Claudius’ nephew. What people desperately wanted was a return to the hallowed old days. Personal honour, integrity, family continuity, living up to your ancestors, that was all very much the Roman way. At least in theory.’

‘In Italy,’ Costas murmured. ‘The family. Sounds familiar.’

‘Claudius was Rome’s most reluctant emperor,’ Jack continued. ‘Dragged from behind a curtain by the Praetorian Guard when he was already in middle age, looking forward to his remaining years as a scholar and historian. But he revered the memory of his father, and all his life he wished he’d been fit enough to join the army like his brother Germanicus, whom he adored. Being emperor gave him the chance. And the acclamation of every new emperor, even Caligula and Claudius’ successor Nero, was always accompanied by pious assertions of a return to the ways of the past, the end of debauchery and corruption and a reminder of the virtues of their ancestors.’

‘Did Claudius live up to it?’ Costas asked.

‘He might have done, if he hadn’t been ruled by his wives,’ Hiebermeyer muttered.

‘Britain was a great triumph,’ Jack said. ‘Claudius was doomed never to cover himself in personal glory, riding out from the waves of the English Channel rather absurdly on a war elephant, arriving in time to see the corpses of the British vanquished but not to lead his legions in battle. But he was a good strategist, a visionary of sorts who had spent his life studying empire and conquest and could see beyond the individual campaign, the triumph. The world would be a very different place today if Claudius hadn’t conquered Britain. And remember, for the men in the legions nothing could be worse than Caligula a few years earlier forcing them to line up on the French side of the English Channel and attack the sea god Neptune. With Claudius they didn’t mind having a cripple for an emperor, as long as he was sane. And Claudius chose very able field commanders, generals like Vespasian, middle-ranking officers like Pliny the Elder, and they were loyal to him. And the legionaries revered the memory of Claudius’ father and his brother.’ Jack paused, and looked up again at the portrait bust. ‘Just like the occupant of this room.’

‘Their loyalty didn’t prevent Claudius from being poisoned,’ Hiebermeyer said.

‘No,’ Jack murmured. ‘But for a first-century emperor, that was also the Roman way.’

‘Speaking of poison, what’s all this about opium?’ Hiebermeyer said. At that moment the light flashed green, and he reached over and deactivated the fan. ‘Sorry. It’ll have to wait.’

Jack crouched back into the ancient chamber and went straight over to the table, around to the far side between the chairs. He looked at what lay on the surface.
He had been right
. They were shrouded with grey matter, dust and fallen plaster, but there was no mistaking it. Sheets of papyrus, blank sheets. A pinned-out scroll, ready for writing. Ink pots, a metal stylus poised ready to dip into the ink, left where it had been abandoned for ever, the day when this place became hell on earth. Jack stared down, then glanced up again at the two portrait busts.
Drusus and Germanicus
. There were Romans alive in AD 79 who would still hark back to those glory days. The untimely deaths of two heroes meant that their memory lived on, for generations. Jack remembered something he had thought before. A Roman would have known the portraits of his ancestors intimately. And this was a private room. A room where a man kept his most precious heirlooms, the portraits of his ancestors.

Jack was beginning to think the impossible.

The portrait of his father. Of his brother
.

The pieces were suddenly falling together. Jack felt a heady rush of excitement. Something else sprang into his mind, from talking to Costas about Pliny the Elder the day before. He reached into his bag, his heart pounding, took out the little red book and placed it on the table, under his headlamp beam. He clipped on his dust mask, carefully picked up an ancient sheet of papyrus, shook it slightly, and shone his Maglite through it. He laughed quietly to himself. ‘Well I’ll be damned.’

‘What is it?’ Costas said.

Jack held the paper up to the light so the others could see. ‘Look, there’s a second layer of papyrus underneath, coarser than the upper layer. It means the surface is of the best quality, but underneath it the paper is strengthened, less transparent. And unless I’m mistaken, the sheet measures exactly one Roman foot across.’