Suddenly he pulled his hand back again. There was a regularity to the furrows. He felt around, his eyes shut, tracing the marks, trying to read what he was feeling. There was no doubt about it. ‘You’re right,’ he said excitedly. ‘I can feel the outline of another circle, an inner circle on the floor of the chamber. I think it’s a lid, a stone lid. I can feel markings on it.’
‘Is there a handle?’ Costas said.
‘Nothing. It’s flat across the top. I’ve no idea how we’re going to open this.’
‘And those markings?’
‘I can count twenty so far,’ Jack said. ‘Wait.’ He flinched in pain as he jammed his elbow against the crack, trying to feel every part of the lid surface. He worked his hand round. ‘No, twenty-three. They’re in a circle, around the edge of the lid. They’re letters, raised letters carved on little blocks, set slightly into the stone surface. It’s curious. I can actually press them down slightly.’
‘Can you read them?’
Jack traced his fingers around the letters. He suddenly realized what they were. ‘It’s the Latin alphabet, the alphabet of the later Roman Republic and the early empire. Twenty-three letters. Alpha to zeta.’
‘Jack, I think what you’ve got there is a combination lock, Roman style.’
‘Huh?’
‘We studied these things at MIT. Ancient technology. If there isn’t a handle, the lid must have some kind of spring opener, set underneath to push it up. My guess is a bronze spring, set around the edge of the inner chamber. The letters must be a combination lock, probably attached to stone or metal pivots that secure the lid into the rock. The combination might be adjustable, allowing the person using it to reset it each time with a new code. Press the right combination, and bingo, the lid springs up.’
‘Twenty-three letters,’ Jack murmured. ‘And no way of knowing how many we need to press. I don’t even want to begin to calculate the number of possibilities.’
‘Let’s start with the obvious,’ Costas said. ‘It was Pliny the Elder who put the scroll here, right? What was his full name?’
Jack thought for a moment. ‘Caius Plinius Secundus.’
‘Okay. Punch in the initials.’
Jack pictured the Latin alphabet in his mind’s eye, and traced his finger around the circle until he came to each letter. C, P, S. He pressed them in the correct order, and they depressed very slightly, but no more. He tried again, then in a different order. Still nothing.
‘No good,’ he said, his teeth gritted.
‘Then your guess is as good as mine,’ Costas said. ‘You may as well try random combinations. We shouldn’t be here for more than a week. We really need to get going, Jack. Our friend might not be the only one. We don’t know.’
‘Wait.’ Jack’s mind was racing. ‘You might have the right idea. Let’s think about this. Pliny gets the document from Claudius. He promises to hide it away. Pliny keeps his promises, and never puts anything off. He’s got too much else to do, managing the naval base, writing his books. He takes his fast galley up to Rome that night, 23 August AD 79, right up the Tiber, comes straight here to the Admiral’s safety deposit box, returns that same night to Misenum on the Bay of Naples, just in time for the eruption. Whose name is fresh in his mind?’
‘You mean Jesus? The Nazarene?’
‘Not enough there for a code, and it might be too obvious. No. I mean Claudius himself. His name before he became emperor. Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus.’ Jack shut his eyes again, moved his hand over the letters and pressed them in. T, C, D, N, G. Nothing. He repeated it. Again nothing. He exhaled forcibly. ‘No good.’
‘Maybe you’ve missed a letter. Emperor?’
‘ Caesar Augustus.’ Jack found the letters, then punched them. Still nothing. He slumped again, then suddenly drew his breath in sharply. ‘No. Not Caesar Augustus. Claudius was no longer emperor. He would have been at pains to tell Pliny that. Not an emperor. He’d become something else. Something that would have amused them both.’
‘Claudius the god,’ Costas murmured.
‘ Divus.’ Jack reached back around and found the letter D. He pressed it as hard as he could. Something gave way, and the letter depressed at least an inch. Suddenly the lid sprang up, and Jack quickly withdrew his hand to prevent it being trapped. ‘Bingo,’ he said excitedly. He put his hand back where the lid had been. He could feel the coil of a heavy bronze spring, now holding the lid a foot or more above the opening it had covered. He reached inside and felt a cylindrical shape, loose in the hole. His heart began to pound. He pulled it out, easing it between the metal coils of the spring. The cylinder was heavy for its size, made of stone, about ten inches long and six inches wide. ‘I’ve got it,’ he said, pulling the cylinder out of the chamber and into the fissure, then holding it under his headlamp. ‘It’s Egyptian, a hand-turned Egyptian stone vessel. We’ve hit paydirt, Costas. It’s identical in manufacture to those larger jars in Claudius’ library, the reused canopic jars, the ones holding the papyrus scrolls. The lid’s still sealed in resin. Looks like Pliny didn’t tamper with it. We might be in luck.’ He passed the cylinder down to Costas, who reached up from the tunnel below. Jack eased himself back down the fissure, and the two of them squatted over the cylinder in the darkness, their beams illuminating the mottled marble surface as Costas turned the object over in his hands.
‘What do we do now?’ he said.
‘We open it.’
‘So this could be it.’
Jack nodded silently, and looked at Costas. They had been here before, the knife-edge moment just before a new revelation, but each time the excitement seemed more intense.
‘Not exactly controlled laboratory conditions,’ Costas said.
‘My call.’ Jack took the cylinder, grasped the lid with one hand and the body of the jar with the other, and twisted. It gave way easily, the ancient resin around the sealing cracking off and falling on the tunnel floor. He prised the lid off and set it down, then peered inside. ‘No papyrus,’ he said, his voice flat. ‘But something else, wedged in.’ He reached inside with his other hand, and withdrew a flat stone object about six inches long and four inches wide, the size of a small cosmetic mirror. It was made up of two leaves joined together, with a hinge on one side and a metal latch on the other. Jack turned it over in his hands and then put his thumb against the latch. ‘It’s a writing tablet,’ he said excitedly. ‘A diptych, two leaves that open up like a book. The inside surface should be covered with wax.’
‘Any chance that could have survived?’ Costas said.
‘This could be another Agamemnon moment,’ Jack said. ‘It could still be there, but exposure to oxygen could degrade it immediately. I’m going for it. We can’t risk waiting.’
‘I’m with you.’ Costas pulled out a waterproof notebook and pencil, and knelt beside Jack, poised to write.
Jack pressed the latch and felt the stone leaves move. ‘Here goes,’ he whispered. He opened up the tablet. The interior surfaces were hard, glassy. They could see it was wax, smooth and perfectly preserved, but getting darker by the second. It had writing on it. ‘Quick,’ Jack said. He passed the tablet to Costas, and grabbed the notebook, feverishly writing down everything he saw. ‘Done,’ he said after less than a minute. The wax was still there, but the scratchings on the surface had virtually disappeared, gone like a phantasm.
Costas closed the tablet and immediately folded it in a sheet of bubblewrap and a waterproof bag, then slipped it into his chest pocket. He peered at Jack, who was staring at the notebook. ‘Well?’
‘It’s Latin.’ Jack paused, marshalling his thoughts. ‘Whoever wrote this, it wasn’t a Nazarene from Galilee. That could only have been Aramaic, Greek perhaps.’
‘So this is not Claudius’ precious document?’
‘It could have been written by Claudius, or it could have been Narcissus,’ Jack murmured, shifting his body in the cramped space. ‘Impossible to tell from scratchings on a wax tablet whether it was the same handwriting as that sheet by Narcissus in Claudius’ study. Especially when it disappears before your very eyes.’ He gazed at Costas. ‘No, this is not the document we’re after. But it’s not the end of the trail either.’ He ripped off the page of the notebook and transcribed his scribbled words neatly on to a fresh sheet, then held it in his beam so they could both see: Dies irae, dies illa
Solvet saeclum in favilla
