strikingly beautiful woman with long black hair and an elegant dark dress. Her lips, her nails and her shoes were all bright red; her eyes were shadowed a shimmering aquamarine. Abby had rarely felt so drab – a disgrace to every ideal of femininity.
‘Dr Yasemin Ipek,’ the woman introduced herself. And then, seeing the doubt in Abby’s face, ‘I am the Director of Tombs.’
It was hard to imagine her scrambling around in dank, ancient holes underground.
‘I understand you are interested in the tomb of Constantine the Great?’ She smiled. ‘I have many tombs in my directorate. Sadly, his has been lost for centuries.’
Abby pointed to the article and quoted the last line. ‘It says here there’s a Byzantine chamber right underneath the holiest point of the mosque.’
Dr Ipek nodded. ‘I have read about this excavation. One of the directors of this museum, Professor Firatli, conducted it after the war. In fact, if you go into the crypt underneath Mehmet’s mausoleum, you can still see the wooden boards they put up to close the passage.’
‘Have you ever opened it?’
‘Never.’
‘How about in the 1940s? Do you know if they found anything down there? Any kind of relic or artefact?’
Dr Ipek narrowed her eyes. ‘There is nothing in the records.’
‘Is it possible to open the chamber?’
Abby could see the warmth fading from Dr Ipek’s face; a discreet glance at the silver wristwatch.
‘It is closed for structural reasons. The chamber is directly under the wall of the mosque, and we have many earthquakes here. You would have to apply for a permit from the minister directly.’
She saw Abby’s disappointment and relented a little. ‘You were thinking perhaps you will find Constantine’s lost sarcophagus under there?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Sometimes I wonder the same. But Professor Firatli was a scholar. If he had discovered something, he would have reported it.’ She smiled to herself. ‘Poor Constantine. He should have kept to his original plan and been buried in Rome. Then his tomb would have survived, and today he would be safe in the Vatican Museum.’
Abby blinked.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Constantine did not always intend to be buried in Constantinople, not until very late in his life. He built a mausoleum in Rome, which still stands at Tor Pignattara. When he changed his plan, he had his mother, the Dowager Empress Helena, buried there instead. You can still see her sarcophagus in the Vatican Museum.’
She carried on speaking, but Abby didn’t hear it. Her mind was racing, trying to compute all the names and dates she’d heard in the last few days.
CONSTANTINUS INVICTUS IMP AUG XXI.
‘When did Constantine change his mind about where he wanted to be buried?’ she asked.
‘His mother died in 328. So far as we can tell, he did not start building the mausoleum in Constantinople until near his death. Nine years later.’
Abby’s mouth was dry. She knew she had to get this right.
‘So if someone was writing about Constantine’s tomb in the year 326 …’
Yasemin Ipek, Director of Tombs, finished the sentence for her.
‘… almost certainly, he meant the mausoleum in Rome.’
‘And you said it still survives.’
‘On the outskirts of Rome. It is just a ruin now.’ She smiled. ‘If you are interested in underground passages, I think this is the place for you. It stands above the catacomb of Saints Marcellus and Peter.’
‘Excuse me.’
Abby ran out of the library. Connie was waiting in the corridor, pretending to examine some Ottoman vases. She saw Abby coming and moved to cut her off, but Abby wasn’t trying to get past her.
‘We’re in the wrong place.’
XLIV
I SIT ALONE in my study, scratching at a roll of parchment. I woke before dawn and couldn’t get back to sleep; there’s a tightness in my chest that makes it hard to breathe, as if something is fighting to get out from inside my heart. Just when I started to drift off, the family of swallows who’ve made their home under the tiles of my colonnade started feeding their young and woke me all over again.
I’m trapped in a nightmare and there’s only one way it can end. In half an hour last night, Asterius tore up so many things I believed. Now I’m buried in the ruins of my own Chamber of Records, snatching at scraps that disintegrate in my hands.
The whole city’s in a daze. Baths and markets are shut, the hippodrome gates chained and locked. From my
