The Testimonium (16 page)

After the spider mummy was placed in storage, the archeologists crowded around the items on the table. Dr. Sforza photographed both sides of each item from multiple angles, and each was measured with calipers and its dimensions recorded in field notebooks and on film.

“Looks like two gold sesterces, a silver denarius, and a bronze drachma,” said Rossini. “All appear to date from the Augustan age, which is consistent with the time the chamber was sealed.”

“Excellent preservation of detail, too,” Josh said. “These may be the most well-preserved Roman coins I have ever seen.” Everyone nodded in agreement.

“What about this arrowhead?” he asked. “I am very familiar with the stone projectile points we find back home, but not so much with these Iron Age points.” The iron arrowhead was about two inches long, and nearly an inch wide at the barbs.

“It’s not Roman,” said Isabella. “It’s way too big, plus the Romans poured theirs into molds in a mass production process. This one appears to be hand forged and hammered.”

“Could it be Gallic?” said MacDonald. “Or German?”

“It does look like some Gallic points I have seen,” commented Rossini. “Is that something scratched into the metal on one side?”

Sforza plugged the camera into the computer and quickly downloaded the image, then pulled it up on one of the jumbo monitors. Rough Latin characters had been scratched into one side of the arrowhead’s wide blade. Although worn and faint, they appeared to read “
G I C Alesia.
”

“Gaius Julius Caesar—Alesia,” said Rossini. “That was his most important victory, the one that broke the back of the Gallic resistance and made him the most famous military man of his day. Sixty thousand Roman legionaries, besieging fifty thousand Gauls in a walled city while simultaneously fighting off a relief army numbering in the hundreds of thousands. I loved reading that section of Caesar’s
Gallic Wars
as a boy.”

“I remember that.” said Josh. “Although I’ll admit I read about it in Colleen McCullough’s novels first, and then Caesar’s own account later. He built a wall around the city, and another wall facing outward to protect his men—what did they call it? Double circumvallation?”

“That’s it,” said Isabella. “But why would he keep a single arrowhead? And why would it be passed down to Tiberius?”

“Just guessing,” said Josh. “But if he was wounded—or, more likely, if he suffered a near miss that should have wounded him or killed him and didn’t—he might have kept it as a reminder of his legendary luck.”

“Fortuna’s favorite, that’s what they called him,” said MacDonald.

Finally, they looked at the key. The barrel was just over an inch long, and the drooping metal end was distinctively notched. “Typical Roman effigy key from the first century,” noted Isabella. “I have seen a number of similar ones from Pompeii. We need to keep it handy, in case the reliquary is still locked.”

Each item from the purse was catalogued, assigned a number, and placed in a padded tray, then placed in a cabinet where they could be stored until the entire mobile lab was returned to the mainland. There they would be taken to the brand new laboratory recently built to supplement the aging facilities at the National Archeological Museum in Naples. All the finds from the chamber would be rigorously tested to tease out every bit of information they contained, and to check for any evidence that the artifacts were not authentic.

Once the examination table was cleared, Dr. Sforza looked at the team. “Are we ready to remove the sword from the chamber, or should we take a break?” she asked them.

The four archeologists looked at one another, and MacDonald spoke. “It’s not nearly noon yet,” he said. “All of us had a decent breakfast, and I am a bit concerned about that leather scabbard now that it has been exposed to the air. I want to get it into a controlled environment as soon as possible.”

“I guess that settles it, then,” said Isabella. “We carry it to the lab and begin the preservation process before we break for lunch.”

Dr. MacDonald began preparing a tray to transport the sword on. He chose one that was a full meter in length, more than long enough to lay the shortsword and scabbard across. Then he laid a layer of acid-free fabric across the tray, taping it down at the edges to keep the breeze from blowing it away, and prepared a cover that would come down over the whole thing and snap into place on the sides, thus eliminating any chance of exposing the delicate, ancient leather to the destructive UV rays of the sun. When he was done, the four scholars walked from the trailer to the chamber entrance.

“Josh,” he said, “I am going to stand here with the tray ready. I want you to don these gloves and very carefully lift the blade and scabbard onto the tray, and then snap the cover in place. Then you and I shall lift it through the opening and carry it straight to the lab.”

Isabella began filming and narrating as Josh pulled the gloves on and studied the sword carefully. The leather scabbard was rough and cracked with age, but did not look as if it were in imminent danger of crumbling apart. Nonetheless, he gripped the pommel of the sword itself with one hand and grabbed the metal sheathing at the point of the scabbard with the other, not touching the leather at all, as he gingerly lifted it and placed it onto the tray. Isabella handed him the lid, and he lowered it into place and locked the latches down on either side. Then he put his hands solidly under the tray and helped guide Father MacDonald as he backed through the chamber entrance and across the small courtyard to the mobile lab.

Within moments, the tray was placed on the examination table, and the archeologists gathered around. The scabbard was made of what was probably, at one time, some very expensive and durable leather—perhaps from Corinth? It was black with age, but the golden trim that the leather was decorated with was as bright as ever. There was some silver there, too, but it had tarnished and darkened over the centuries. The artifact was measured and photographed, and then Josh carefully flipped it over so the other side could be examined. This side looked identical with one exception—there was a flat silver plate, about two inches long and an inch wide, sewn into the leather. The silver was faintly engraved. Once more, Josh zoomed in with the camera, snapped away, and downloaded the pictures to the computer. In less than a minute, they were looking at a magnified image of the inscription on the oversize monitor.

“
Ad Romae mundissimo filius, gerunt cum honore—Aurelia Cotta Caesar
,” read Professor Rossini. “Roughly translated: ‘To Rome’s Finest Son, Wield It with Honor—Aurelia Cotta Caesar.’ Aurelia was one of the greatest matrons of the Roman Republic, and the mother of its greatest general. My friends, this removes all doubt. We are looking at the sword of Gaius Julius Caesar.”

“I don’t understand,” Josh said. “This chamber belonged to Tiberius. Why did he place his adopted grandfather’s items here?”

MacDonald replied, “Julius and Augustus were gods by the time Tiberius was an old man,” he said. “Not just in the sense of being deeply admired former rulers, either. They were genuinely worshipped by the people of Rome and by the many citizens of the larger empire. And Gaius Julius Caesar was in a league of his own. Many military men still regard him as the greatest general of all time. His sword, his lucky arrowhead, would have both been precious family heirlooms. Whatever his shortcomings as an emperor, Tiberius was a great general in his day. His conquest of Germany made him a hero to the people of Rome while his adoptive father Augustus was still alive. But at the time he wrote the letter we found, he was an old man, aware that his time was short. His only heir was a psychotic teenager who had never led men in battle—a spoiled brat, a ‘serpent’ as Tiberius called him. He probably thought that Gaius Caligula was unworthy to wield the sword of the
Divus Julius
, and so sealed it up in the chamber, along with the lucky arrowhead—and who knows what else?”

The Catholic scholar turned to the lab table and looked at the ancient weapon. “The rehydration tank will be an absolute necessity to preserve that scabbard,” he said. “But, unfortunately, it would be terribly detrimental to the metal blade inside it. We are going to have to unsheathe the sword and stabilize it and the scabbard separately.”

He turned to the tray and donned the protective gloves again. He carefully gripped the scabbard at its top, where the metal sheathing extended down over three inches. Then he took the pommel of the sword in his other hand, and firmly pulled the ancient weapon from its sheath. The blade had a few rust spots on it, but was remarkably well preserved, still gleaming for much of its length.

Rossini gasped. “That is the best-preserved example of a Roman
gladius
I have ever seen,” he said. “Perhaps the best ever found.”

“Think how many battlefields it saw, how much bloodshed, how much history!” said Josh. “I am in serious danger of losing my scientific objectivity and whooping like a crazy Cowboys fan, back when Cowboys fans still had something to go crazy over!”

Isabella laughed. Even those who knew nothing about American football still knew who the Cowboys were. “I think we all feel like that—maybe not the Cowboys part, but the excitement, yes! The sword of Julius Caesar! That is even better than finding Excalibur!”

MacDonald glared at them. “Could one of you quit mooning over this thing long enough to set another tray up here?” he asked.

Josh quickly put another tray on the table, and the
gladius
was placed upon it. Then the Catholic antiquarian opened another rehydration tank, set the controls, and slid the first tray with the scabbard still resting on it into the tank. “Now THAT was a good morning’s work!” he said. “Let’s take a break, eat a bite, and prepare to deal with the reliquary.”

Noble Caesar, anyone who has lived in Rome for any time has seen a Roman mob in action at some point or other. Our city is famous for its fickle masses. But I have never seen such raw hatred for any human being expressed so loudly and strongly as this crowd of Jews screamed its hate at Jesus. Ironic, since a few days before half the city had been ready to crown him as their king. Once more, they took up that awful cry: “CRUCIFY! CRUCIFY!”

“Why?” I shouted. “What evil has he done?”

One of the priests stepped forward—although not so far as to step past the threshold of the Praetorium. Hounding an innocent man to his death was apparently fine according to his religious convictions, but setting foot in the home of a pagan like me would have made him unclean! “We have a law,” he shouted. “And by that law he ought to die, for being a man, he made himself out to be a god!”

The situation was deteriorating, so I removed Jesus from their sight—as well as myself. They were determined to see blood, it seemed. Very well, I would give them blood. But not as much as they wanted. I turned to the Brutus Appius, the Centurion who led my household guard. “Take him and flog him,” I said. “But don’t kill him!”

The young Jew that had been brought in to interpret leaped to his feet in protest. I had forgotten he was there, but I looked at him now and saw his raw fear, barely held at bay in his concern for his master. “I am trying to save his life,” I said, as gently as I could, and retreated to my quarters until the deed was done.

The four archeologists stepped across the ancient flagstones to the entrance of the chamber. MacDonald looked askance at the narrow, uneven opening the earthquake had created. “One thing is certain,” he said. “We will have to widen that opening in order to remove the reliquary.”

Isabella replied, “From the inside the original outline of the ancient door is clearly visible. It appears that Tiberius’ steward actually added an entire layer of brick to the outside of this exterior wall from one end to the other to completely disguise the opening when he sealed up the chamber. We will restore the doorway to its original dimensions when we finish our excavations.”

They stepped inside and turned on the lights. The ancient cabinet sat in the rear of the chamber, just as it must have rested there the last time Tiberius Caesar opened it. Slowly they approached. This was the last untouched artifact from the ancient chamber. It could hold a priceless treasure trove of history, or it might be completely empty. Another moment would tell the tale! None of them wanted to step forward at first, but finally Isabella closed in, and Josh followed. She had her camera recording as she narrated.

“We are inside the Tiberius writing chamber of Villa Jovis,” she said. “It is 1300 hours local time. The cabinet, or reliquary, that you see before you has not been opened or moved since the initial discovery three days ago. It has two doors that appear to open outwards. The seam is snug but the two doors do not quite meet in the middle. Directly below the embossed Roman eagle there appears to be a small, conventional bronze latch or clasp. I am going to now ask my colleague, Dr. Parker, to very carefully see if the latch will still open.”

Josh put on his gloves and gently reached out to raise the top part of the latch. It was funny, he thought to himself, how some tool forms were so functional that they had not changed in 2,000 years. This latch was slightly more ornate but not that different in shape from the screen door latches on his grandfather’s old home in Oklahoma. The latch resisted very slightly, but then there was the tiniest pop as the corrosion that had started to fuse the hook and eye together gave way, and the hook rose up easily.

He looked at Isabella, who began speaking for the benefit of the camera once more. “Now we shall open the cabinet and begin our inventory of its contents,” she said, giving him the nod. He grasped the door firmly by its top edge and pulled outwards. There was a tortured creak as the ancient hinges moved for the first time in twenty centuries, and the door swung open with a puff of dust. The shock of discovery was followed by a tremendous crush of disappointment.

“RATS!” Josh exclaimed. “
Quod sugit!!!
”

The three Latin scholars stared at him, and as they saw what he had seen first, each reacted. Isabella let out a small sob, Duncan swore in Gaelic, and Rossini just shook his head.