The Last Gospel (18 page)

‘So?’

Jack put down the sheet and picked up the book, his copy of the
Natural History
. ‘Listen to what Pliny has to say about paper. Book 13, Chapter 79, on papyrus:

‘ “The Emperor Claudius imposed modifications on the best quality because the thinness of the paper in Augustus’ time was not able to withstand the pressure of pens. In addition it allowed the writing to show through, and this brought fear of blots caused by writing on the back of the paper. Moreover, the excessive transparency of the paper looked unsightly in other ways. So the bottom layer of the paper was made from leaves of the second quality, and the cross-strips from papyrus of the first quality. Claudius also increased the width of the sheet to a foot.” ’

Hiebermeyer leaned over the table and peered at the sheet closely with a small eyeglass. ‘And unless I’m mistaken, this is the best-quality ink available at the time,’ he said excitedly. ‘Gall ink, in all probability, made from the desert beetle. I’m a bit of an expert, you know, having studied ink types when we found papyrus documents reused as mummy wrappings in Egypt. Pliny writes about that too.’

‘Then I’m about to make an extraordinary suggestion,’ Jack said, replacing the sheet carefully on the table and looking intently at the others. ‘I think it’s possible, just possible, that we’re standing in the study of a man who should never have been here, who history tells us died a quarter of century before the eruption of Vesuvius.’

‘A man who once ruled an empire,’ Maria said softly.

Hiebermeyer was nodding slowly, and whispered the words, almost to himself. ‘Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus.’

Jack held up the coin, allowing the light to pick out the portrait. ‘Not the emperor Claudius, not the god Claudius, but Claudius the scholar. Claudius who may have somehow faked his own poisoning and survived for all those years after his disappearance from Rome, hidden away in this villa. Claudius who must have finally perished just as Pliny the Elder did, in the cataclysm of AD 79.’

There was a stunned silence, and Costas looked keenly at Jack. ‘Well,’ he said quietly. ‘That’s another little bit of history you’re going to have to rewrite.’

‘And not the only bit.’ Maria had her back to them, and was hunched over the lower shelf in the corner of the room. ‘There’s more here, Jack. Much more. Books and books of it.’

Jack came round the table and they all crouched beside her. There was a collective gasp of astonishment. In front of them, below the shelves they had seen from the entrance, were two further shelves packed with several dozen cylindrical boxes, each about eighteen inches high. ‘They’re lidded, sealed with some kind of mortar,’ Hiebermeyer murmured. ‘Hollowedout stone, Egyptian marble by the look of it. They look like reused canopic jars. No expense spared here.’

‘This one’s open.’ Maria took out her Maglite, twisted it on and shone it at the top of the cylinder on the right side of the lower shelf. The hollowed-out interior was about a foot wide, and inside it they could see further narrow cylindrical shapes, with a space where one appeared to have been removed.

‘Eureka,’ Hiebermeyer said, his voice tight with emotion.

‘What is it?’ Costas asked.

‘Papyrus scrolls,’ Hiebermeyer said. ‘Tightly wound papyrus scrolls.’

‘Jack, they’re not carbonized,’ Maria whispered. ‘It’s a miracle.’ She reached out, then held back, as if she wanted the spell to remain unbroken, to preserve that moment of realization before their action changed history.

‘Any idea what they are?’ Costas said.

‘There should be
sillyboi
, labels describing each book,’ Jack said. ‘Scrolls don’t have spines, so books were identified with pasted labels, usually hanging out over the shelf. I don’t see any here.’

‘Wait a second.’ Maria peered closely at the top of the sealed cylinder next to the one with the displaced lid. ‘There are markings. Engravings in the stone. Words, in Latin. I can read it.
Historiae Carthaginienses Antiquae
.’

‘
The History of the Ancient Carthaginians
,’ Jack whispered. ‘Claudius’ lost
History of Carthage
. It’s mentioned in other ancient sources, but not a word of it survived. Or so we thought. There may only ever have been one copy, too controversial to publish. The only dispassionate account of Rome’s greatest rival. Who else but Claudius himself would have had that, in his own private library? These jars must contain his other works.’

‘Wait for it, Jack.’ Hiebermeyer had sidled over to the basket of scrolls by the door, and was holding up a flap of papyrus attached to one of the decorative handles. ‘
Naturalis Historia, G. Plinius Secundus
. My God. Looks like we’ve got a complete edition of Pliny’s
Natural History
.’

‘Looks like you’ve found that Latin library after all,’ Costas said.

Jack felt an overwhelming sense of certainty. He looked at the scroll, remembered his sense of the room when he first saw it, those two portraits. There had been another here, another presence, as if the old man so covetous of his private space had allowed in one other, a man whose imprint was still here, around them. ‘There’s something else that’s niggling me about this place,’ Jack said. ‘About who was here.’

‘What is it?’

‘Well, we’ve got what looks like an entire copy of Pliny’s
Natural History
, hot out of the scriptorium. How does Claudius get hold of that?’

Costas jerked his head towards the skeleton at the door. ‘Maybe he sent the eunuch to buy books for him.’

‘Let’s just think about it,’ Jack said. ‘Let’s say we’re right, that Claudius was living here in secret up to the time of the eruption, in AD 79. That’s hypothesis, but one of the most famous facts of ancient history is that Pliny the Elder was here, on the Bay of Naples, based at Misenum only a few miles away, admiral of the Roman fleet, and that he died in the eruption.’

‘You’re saying they may have met each other, here,’ Costas said.

Jack flipped open the index pages of his copy of the
Natural History
. ‘This is what sparked me off. Pliny the Elder mentions Claudius a number of times throughout the book, always studiously, always lauding his achievements. He owed Claudius his career, when Claudius was emperor and Pliny was a young man, but the passages in the
Natural History
are almost too laudatory, for an emperor who had supposedly been dead for a quarter of a century. Just an example. Listen to this. He talks of Claudius’ achievement in having a tunnel dug to drain the Fucine Lake near Rome, taking thirty thousand men and eleven years, an immense operation “beyond the power of words to describe”. That final phrase is odd, by itself. For Pliny the Elder, absolutely nothing was beyond the power of words. And another thing. He should have referred to Claudius as
Divus
Claudius, the divine Claudius, in keeping with his status as a deified emperor, years after his death and supposed apotheosis. But instead, Pliny refers to him as Claudius Caesar. It’s almost too familiar, almost as if Claudius is still alive when Pliny is writing this. The clues are all here.’

‘It makes sense,’ Hiebermeyer murmured.

‘From what we know of him, Claudius seems to have been a gregarious man, as was Pliny,’ Jack said. ‘Claudius may have been forced to live as a recluse, but he had always enjoyed company. He may even have summoned Pliny in secret to this room when he heard that the other man had arrived to take up his naval post at Misenum. And Pliny would constantly have been searching for informants, people who could help with his
Natural History
. He was a practical, straightforward Roman, and Claudius may have been a breath of fresh air for him in this place which would have seemed infested with Greek-loving hedonists, Romans with more money than sense under the spell of weak-minded philosophers like Philodemus.’

‘And vice versa,’ Maria said. ‘Claudius probably felt the same about Pliny.’

‘Claudius would have greatly admired Pliny,’ Jack said. ‘Soldier, scholar, fantastically industrious, a decent man. Pliny claimed he once had a vision of Claudius’ father Drusus, telling him to write a history of the German wars. With his bust of his beloved father in front of him here, Claudius would have loved to hear that anecdote from Pliny himself, perhaps over a few pitchers of wine.’

‘Claudius would also have been extremely knowledgeable, hugely well read,’ Hiebermeyer added, pointing at the shelves. ‘It would have been a real meeting of minds. Claudius would have been a great source for Pliny on Britain, though I don’t remember much on Britannia in the
Natural History
.’

‘Possibly because Pliny died before he could incorporate it,’ Jack murmured. ‘He had only been based at Naples for a year before the eruption, and he probably hadn’t found time. He was too sociable for his own good, constantly doing the rounds of friends, the ladies too. But Claudius would have been a fantastic discovery for him, a tremendous secret. I believe Pliny was here, in this room. I can feel it. I think he came to visit Claudius often, and they had begun to work together. Pliny had given Claudius the latest copy of his
Natural History
, but he was probably poised to make additions, once he realized what a gold mine he’d found.’

‘Maybe this is where Pliny was really coming when he sailed towards Vesuvius during the eruption,’ Costas said. ‘That letter you read me, from his nephew Pliny the Younger. Maybe he only told his nephew he was coming here for a woman. Maybe it was really a secret mission. Maybe he was coming to rescue Claudius, this fabulous library.’

‘But he was too late,’ Maria murmured.

‘I wonder what did happen to old Claudius, if he really was here,’ Costas said.

‘He was here,’ Jack said fervently. ‘I can almost smell it. Stale wine, spilt by a shaking hand. A whiff of sulphur, maybe brought back from nocturnal visits to Cumae to see the Sibyl, who we know he consulted when he was emperor. The smell of old gall ink. He was here, all right. I know it in my bones.’

Jack walked back to the desk as he spoke. He suddenly saw that words were visible where there had been none before. He realized that the sheet of papyrus below the blank one he had picked up was covered in writing, perfectly preserved for almost two thousand years. He peered down, and read across the top:

‘My God,’ he whispered. ‘So this was what he was writing. This was why he wanted to return to the life of a scholar.
A History of Britain, by Claudius Caesar
. Can you imagine what this contains?’

He scanned the lines of fine, precise writing and then looked back at the title. Underneath it were two words, in the same hand but smaller:

‘Of course,’ Jack exclaimed, his voice hoarse with excitement. ‘
Narcissus did this. Narcissus wrote this
.’ He looked back towards the doorway, where the outstretched arm of the skeleton was visible in his headlamp beam. ‘So it is you after all,’ he murmured to himself, then looked at the others, his face suffused with excitement. ‘You remember I said that Narcissus was Claudius’ freedman? Well, his official title was
praepositus ab epistulis
, letter-writer. This clinches it. We know who that skeleton was after all. He was Claudius’ amanuensis, his scribe. I know Pliny always had one, and Claudius must have had one too, especially with his palsy.’ Jack looked at the page again, then at some other pages scattered beside it on the table, with no writing but covered in dark red blotches like wine stains. ‘It’s amazing. I only hope we can find something in Claudius’ own hand.’

The sound of the drill at the entrance to the tunnel had stopped, and a woman’s voice was shouting, in heavily accented English. ‘Dr Hiebermeyer? Dr Hiebermeyer? We are closing the tunnel now. Please come out immediately.’

‘
Si, si, si
,’ Hiebermeyer bellowed back. Maria immediately came over with her digital camera and began taking pictures, quickly moving through everything on the table, finishing with a close-up sequence of the page of writing before picking up the blank papyrus sheet and placing it on top to protect and conceal the writing.

‘We need to decide what to do, Jack,’ Hiebermeyer said in a low voice. ‘Pronto.’

‘As soon as we’re out of earshot beyond the villa site, I’m on the phone to my friend at Reuters,’ Jack said. ‘Maria should now have a disk full of images of everything we’ve seen here, and those can be e-mailed straight through. But we keep quiet until then. Leak any of this now, to the superintendency people, and we’ll never see the contents of this room again. You need to play the danger card, Maurice, big time. We found nothing of much interest, spent our time examining some masonry fragments sticking out of the wall. Far too dangerous for anyone to come beyond that grille again. Tell them their drill destabilized the tunnel even more, and there was a collapse. But by tomorrow morning, when these images are out, splashed across the headlines and TV news everywhere, they’ll have no choice but to open up this place. It’ll be one of the most sensational finds ever made in archaeology. And by the way, Maurice, and Maria. Many congratulations.’

‘Not just yet, Jack.’ Hiebermeyer murmured, making his way past the scrolls on the floor towards the extractor fan. ‘I’ve spent too long dealing with these people now to be so optimistic. Let’s stall the champagne until this place is more than just a figment of our imagination.’

‘Jack, there’s an open scroll here.’ Costas was standing beside the shelves, peering into the recess behind the marble jars.

‘There are scrolls everywhere,’ Jack said. ‘This place is an Aladdin’s cave. We’ll just have to leave it.’

‘You said you wanted to see Claudius’ handwriting. I’m not sure, but this one looks like it might be in two different hands, one of them a little spidery. Looks like someone’s jotted notes in the margin.’

‘Probably mad old Philodemus,’ Hiebermeyer said.