on second-hand sources.’
‘At least with Claudius he would have had a reliable informant, ’ Maria said. ‘A pretty sound scholar, by all accounts.’
‘Here we go,’ Jack said. ‘This is just before the gap in the scroll text, before the writing style changes. ‘ “ Iordanes amnis oritur e fonte Paniade. The source of the river Jordan is the spring of Panias.” Then there’s a longer description: “ In lacum se fundit quem plures Genesaram vocant, xvi p. longitudinis, vi latitudinis, amoenis circumsaeptum oppidis, ab oriente Iuliade et Hippo, a meridie Tarichea, quo nomine aliqui et lacum appellant, ab occidente Tiberiade aquis calidis salubri. It widens out into a lake usually called the Sea of Gennesareth, 16 miles long and 6 broad, skirted by the agreeable towns of Iulias and Hippo on the east, Tarichae on the south, the name of which place some people also give to the lake, and Tiberias with its salubrious hot springs on the west.” ’
Jack pointed at a map he had laid on the other side of the light table. ‘This time he’s not writing about the Dead Sea but the Sea of Galilee, some eighty miles north at the head of the Jordan Valley. Gennesareth was the Roman name for it, the same as the modern Hebrew name Kinnereth. Tiberias is the main town today on the Sea of Galilee, a popular resort. Tarichae he got wrong, it’s not south but west, a few miles north of Tiberias. Tarichae was the Roman name for Migdal, home of Mary Magdalene.’
‘The place where the Gospels say Jesus began his ministry,’ Maria said.
Jack nodded. ‘Along the western shore of the Sea of Galilee.’ He paused, and sat back. ‘Now we come to the gap in the scroll text. This is where it gets really intriguing. There’s no gap at all in the modern printed text, based on the medieval transcription, which goes straight on to a discussion of bitumen and the Dead Sea.’
‘So our scroll must be a later version, the basis for a new edition that was never published,’ Costas murmured. ‘Maybe it was one he was working on when he died, with updates and changes.’
‘He may have asked his scribe to do him a working copy, leaving gaps where he thought he was likely to make additions,’ Maria said. ‘And that could be the copy he brought with him to Claudius.’
‘Writing the Natural History must have been an organic process, and it’s hard to believe a magpie mind like Pliny’s would ever have been able to leave it alone,’ Jack said. ‘And remember, more places were being conquered and explored by the Romans every year, so there was always plenty to add. Claudius would have been able to tell him much that was new about Britain, especially as we now know that Britain was foremost in Claudius’ mind at the time of the eruption of Vesuvius, with his own history of Britannia in progress. And if Pliny had survived Vesuvius, my guess is we’d have had a whole new chapter on vulcanology.’
‘Can you read what’s in the gap?’ Costas said.
‘I can, just,’ Jack said. ‘It’s in a completely different hand to the main text in the scroll – spidery, precise. I’ve no doubt this is the actual hand of Pliny the Elder.’ As he said the words Jack suddenly felt himself transported back to that hidden room in the villa almost two thousand years ago, beneath the lowering volcano, the ink still freshly blotted and the wine stains still reeking of grapes and alcohol, as if the figures on either side of him were not Maria and Costas but Pliny the Elder and Claudius, urging him to join them in exploring the revelations of their world.
‘Well, fire away,’ Costas said, peering at him quizzically.
Jack snapped back and leaned over the text. ‘Okay. Here goes. This is where those words appear, the ones I saw when we found this scroll in the villa. The reason for all this secrecy.’ He glanced at Costas, then paused, scanning the text to pinpoint the beginning and end of the sentences and to put the Latin into coherent English word order. ‘Here’s the first sentence: “Claudius Caesar visited this place with Herod Agrippa, where they met the fisherman Joshua of Nazareth, he whom the Greeks called Jesus, who my sailors in Misenum now call the Christos.” ’
Jack felt as if he had delivered a thunderbolt. There was a stunned silence, broken by Costas. ‘Claudius Caesar? Claudius the emperor? You mean our Claudius? He met Jesus Christ?’
‘With Herod Agrippa,’ Maria whispered. ‘Herod Agrippa, King of the Jews?’
‘So it would appear,’ Jack replied hoarsely, trying to keep his voice under control. ‘Herod Agrippa, grandson of Herod the Great. And there’s more.’ He read slowly: ‘ “The Nazarene gave Claudius his written word.” ’
‘His written word,’ Costas repeated slowly. ‘A pledge, some kind of promise?’
‘I’ve translated it literally,’ Jack said. ‘It’s more than that. I’m sure it means he gave him something written.’
‘His word,’ Maria murmured. ‘His gospel.’
‘The gospel of Jesus? The written word of Christ?’ Costas suddenly sat back, his jaw dropping in amazement. ‘Holy Mother of God. I see what you mean. The secrecy at Herculaneum. The Church. This is exactly what they have most feared.’
‘And yet it is something that many have hoped against hope would one day be found,’ Maria said, almost whispering. ‘The written word of Jesus of Nazareth, in his own hand.’
‘Does Pliny say what happened to it?’ Costas asked.
Jack finished sorting out the next sentences in his mind, and read out his translation: ‘ “Gennesareth, that is Kinnereth in the local language, is said to derive from the word for the stringed instrument or lyre, kinnor, or from the kinnara, the sweet and edible fruit produced by a thorn tree that grows in the vicinity. And at Tiberias, there are springs that are remarkably health-restoring. Claudius Caesar says that to drink the waters is to clear and calm the mind, which sounds to me like ingesting the morpheum.” ’
‘Ha!’ Costas exclaimed. ‘Morpheum. I want Hiebermeyer to see that.’
Jack paused, and muttered under his breath, ‘Come on, Pliny. Get on with it.’ He read what came next to himself, grunted impatiently and then repeated it out loud. ‘ “And the Sea of Gennesareth, really a lake, lies far below the level of the Middle Sea, the Mediterranean. And whereas the Sea of Gennesareth is fresh water, my friend Claudius reminds me that the Dead Sea is remarkably briny, and part of it is not water but bitumen.” ’
‘My friend Claudius,’ Costas repeated, weighing the words. ‘That’s a bit of a slip, isn’t it? I mean, I thought Claudius’ survival was meant to be a secret.’
‘That proves it,’ Jack said. ‘I think this particular scroll was Pliny’s own annotated version, one that he eventually intended to take away with him. It got left in Claudius’ study, probably deliberately. And I think some of this addition was for Claudius’ benefit, too. You have to imagine Claudius sitting beside Pliny as he’s writing this, sipping and spilling his wine, keenly reading over the other man’s shoulder. Of course, as we know from the published text, Pliny was already perfectly well aware that the Dead Sea was briny and produced bitumen.’
‘He was flattering Claudius,’ Maria said.
‘Classic interrogation technique,’ Costas said. ‘Never let on what you already know, then people will tell you more.’
‘Is there anything else?’ Maria said. ‘I mean, about Jesus? Pliny seems to have lost himself in a digression.’
‘There may be,’ Jack said. ‘But there’s a problem.’
‘What?’
‘Look at this.’ Jack pointed at the bottom of the gap in the scroll text, then at the right-hand margin. ‘I’ve read everything I can make out in the gap. But you can see at the bottom that a few lines have been smudged, wiped out. Then he’s written something in the margin beside it, much smaller. He hasn’t replenished his ink, maybe even deliberately, so it’s barely legible. It’s almost as if he wrote at the bottom of the gap something he wanted in the published edition, then thought better of it and erased it, then thought again and put a note in the margin, perhaps a note to himself that he didn’t want anyone else to read.’
‘But you can read it,’ Costas said.
‘Not exactly.’ Jack swivelled the light table until the scroll was at ninety degrees, then pulled a magnifying glass on a retractable arm over the miniature lines of writing just visible in the margin. He pushed his chair back so Maria and Costas could take a look. ‘Tell me what you think.’
They both craned over, and Costas spoke immediately. ‘It’s not Latin, is it? Is that what you mean? But some of those letters look familiar to me. There’s a lambda, a delta. It’s ancient Greek?’
‘Greek letters, but not Greek language,’ Maria murmured. ‘It looks like the precursor Greek alphabet, the one they adopted from the near east.’ She glanced back at Jack. ‘Do you remember Professor Dillen’s course at Cambridge on the early history of Greek language? It’s a while ago now, but I’m sure I recognize some of those letters. Is this Semitic?’
‘You were the star linguist, Maria, not me,’ Jack said. ‘He’d have been proud of you for remembering. In fact, he already sends his congratulations for the discovery, as we e-mailed from the Lynx when we flew in. When I took
