‘What the ancients called lacrymae papaveris, tears of the poppy, Papaver somniferum. The sticky, milky stuff that comes from the calyx of the black poppy. What we call opium.’
‘No kidding.’
‘The Roman writer Pliny the Elder writes about it, in his Natural History.’
‘The guy who died in the eruption of Vesuvius?’
‘Right. When Pliny wasn’t writing, he was in charge of the Roman fleet at Misenum, the big naval base on the Bay of Naples. He knew all about the products of the east from his sailors, and from Egyptian and Syrian merchants who put in there. They knew that the best opium came from the distant land of Bactria, high in the mountains beyond the eastern fringe of the empire, beyond Persia. That’s present-day Afghanistan.’
‘You’re kidding me.’ Costas was fully alert now, and looked incredulous. ‘Opium. From Afghanistan. Did I hear you right? We’re talking the first century AD here, not the twenty-first century, right?’
‘You’ve got it.’
‘An ancient drug-runner?’
Jack laughed. ‘Opium wasn’t illegal back then. Some ancient authorities condemned it for making users go blind, but they hadn’t refined it into heroin yet. It was probably mixed with alcohol to make a drink, similar to laudanum, the fashion drug of Europeans in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The seed was also pounded into tablets. Pliny tells us it could induce sleep and cure headaches, so they knew all about the pain-killing properties of morphine. It was also used for euthanasia. Pliny gives us what may be the first ever account of a deliberate Class A drugs overdose, a guy called Publius Licinius Caecina who was unbearably ill and died of opium poisoning.’
‘So what you found was really a medicine chest,’ Costas said.
‘That’s what we thought at the time. But a very odd find in the chest was a small bronze statue of Apollo.’
‘Apollo?’
Jack nodded. ‘I know. When you find medical equipment it’s more commonly with a statue of Asclepius, the Greek god of healing. A few years later I visited the cave of the Sibyl at Cumae, on the edge of the active volcanic zone a few miles north of Misenum, within sight of Vesuvius. Apollo was the god of oracles. Sulphur and herbs were used to ward off evil spirits and maybe opium was added to it. I began to wonder whether all those mystical rites were chemically assisted.’
‘It could have been smoked,’ Costas murmured. ‘Burned like incense. The fumes would have been quicker than a draught.’
‘People went to those places seeking cures, to the Sibyl and other prophets,’ Jack said. ‘Organized religion at the time didn’t provide much personal comfort, often excluding the common people and fixated on cults and rituals that were pretty remote from daily concerns. The Sibyl and her kind provided some kind of emotional reassurance, psychological relief. And the Sibyls must have known it, and played on it. All we hear about from ancient accounts is the message of the oracle, obscure verses written on leaves or issued as prophetic pronouncements, all sound and fury and signifying God knows what. But maybe there was more to it than that. Maybe some people really did find a cure of sorts, a palliative.’
‘And a highly addictive one. It could have kept the Sibyl in business. Cash offerings from grateful clients would have kept the supply rolling.’
‘So I began to think our little ship wasn’t carrying an apothecary or doctor, but a middleman travelling with his precious supply of opium for one of the oracles in Italy, maybe even procured for the Sibyl at Cumae herself.’
‘A Roman drug-dealer.’ Costas rubbed his stubble. ‘The godfather of all godfathers. The Naples Mafia would love it.’
‘Maybe if they found out, it would teach them a little respect for archaeology,’ Jack said. ‘Organized crime is a huge problem for our friends in the Naples archaeological superintendency.’
‘Doesn’t one of your old girlfriends work there?’ Costas grinned.
‘Elizabeth hasn’t been in contact with me for years. Last I heard she was still an inspector, pretty low down on the food chain. I never really worked out what happened. She finished her doctorate in England before I did and then had to go back, part of her contract with the Italian government. She swore to me that she’d never return to Naples, but then it happened and she completely shut down communication with me. I suppose I moved on too. That was almost fifteen years ago.’
‘Ours is not to reason why, Jack.’ Costas shifted. ‘Back to the opium. Procured from where?’
‘That’s what worried me.’ Jack rolled out a laminated small-scale Admiralty chart of the Mediterranean over the equipment on the floor of the boat, pinning its corners under loose diving weights. He jabbed his finger at the centre of the chart. ‘Here we are. The island of Sicily. Bang in the middle of the Mediterranean, the apex of ancient trade. Right?’
‘Go on.’
‘Our little Roman merchantman, wrecked against this cliff with its cargo of north African olive oil and fish sauce. It does the trip to Rome three, maybe four times a year, during the summer sailing season. Up and down, up and down. Almost always within sight of land, Tunisia, Malta, Sicily, Italy.’
‘Not a long-distance sailor.’
‘Right.’ Jack stabbed his finger at the far corner of the chart. ‘And here’s Egypt, the port of Alexandria. Fifteen hundred miles away to the east of us, across open sea. Everything points to the drug chest coming from there. The wood’s Egyptian acacia. Some of the phials had Coptic letters on them. And the opium was almost certainly shipped to the Mediterranean via the Red Sea ports of Egypt, a trade in exotic eastern spices and drugs that reached its height in the first century AD.’
‘The time of St Paul,’ Costas murmured. ‘Why we’re here.’
‘Right.’ Jack traced his finger along the coastline of north Africa from Egypt. ‘Now it’s possible, just possible, that the opium was shipped along the African coast from Alexandria to Carthage, and then went north to Sicily in our little merchantman.’
Costas shook his head. ‘I remember the navigational advice in the Mediterranean Pilot from my stint in the US Navy. Prevailing onshore winds. That desert coastline between Egypt and Tunisia has always been a death trap for sailors, avoided at all costs.’
‘Precisely. Ships leaving Alexandria for Rome sailed north to Turkey or Crete and then west across the Ionian Sea to Italy. The most likely scenario for our opium cargo is one of those ships, blown south-west from the Ionian Sea towards Sicily.’
Costas looked perplexed, then his eyes suddenly lit up. ‘I’ve got you! We’re looking at two overlapping shipwrecks!’
‘It wouldn’t be the first time. I’ve dived on ships’ graveyards with dozens of wrecks jumbled together, smashed against the same reef or headland. And once that idea clicked, I began to see other clues. Take a look at this.’ Jack reached down into a crate beside him and picked up a heavy item swaddled in a towel. He handed it across to Costas, who sat up on the pontoon and took the item on to his lap, then began carefully lifting the folds of towelling away.
‘Let me guess.’ He stopped and gave Jack a hopeful look. ‘A golden disc covered with ancient symbols, leading us to another fabulous lost city?’
Jack grinned. ‘Not quite, but just as precious in its own way.’
Costas raised the last fold and held the object up. It was about ten inches high, shaped like a truncated cone, and weighed heavily in his hands. The surface was mottled white with patches of dull metallic sheen, and at the top was a short extension with a hole through it like a retaining loop. He eyed Jack. ‘A sounding lead?’
‘You’ve got it. A lead weight tied to the end of a line for sounding depths. Check out the base.’
Costas carefully held the lead upside down. In the base was a depression about an inch deep, as if the lead had been partly hollowed out like a bell, and below that was a further depression in a distinctive shape. Costas raised his eyes again. ‘A cross?’
‘Don’t get too excited. That was filled with pitch or resin, and was used to pick up a sample of sea-bed sediment. If you were heading for a big river estuary, the first appearance of sand would act as a navigational aid.’
‘This came from the wreck below us?’
