fumbling inexpertly with an umbrella. What had begun as a heavily overcast day had now settled into constant drizzle, interspersed with occasional heavy downpours. Costas sniffed noisily, then sneezed. ‘So this was where Claudius brought his precious secret. Seems an awful long way from Judaea.’
‘You’d be surprised,’ Jack said, raising his voice above the traffic. ‘The early Christians in Roman Britain thought they had a direct link to the Holy Land, undistorted by Rome. It caused them no end of trouble when the Roman Church tried to assert itself here.’
‘So we’re on the site of Roman London now.’
‘Just entered it. The City of London today, the financial district, is the old medieval city, and that was built on the ruins of the Roman city of Londinium. You can still see the line of the Roman walls in the street layout.’
‘This place must have seemed a backwater to the Romans,’ Costas said, splashing across the street behind Jack. ‘Who’d have wanted to come here?’
‘Look around you now, at the faces,’ Jack said, as they navigated through a crowd of people hurrying on the pavement. ‘London was just as cosmopolitan in the Roman period. It was founded for commerce, a magnet for traders from all corners of the empire.’ He veered left over the road and dodged through traffic which had almost crawled to a standstill, then led Costas up the alleyway opposite. ‘It’s true that the Celtic background gave Britain a particular stamp, something that made it seem very distant to some Romans, pretty frightening. But this place was no backwater for Roman entrepreneurs, for freedmen and retired soldiers on the make. It offered chances of a fortune and social status they never would have found in Rome.’
‘You mean guys like Narcissus, Claudius’ freedman?’ Costas said.
‘Precisely. He may never have lived here, but those British lead ingots with his name stamp we found on St Paul’s shipwreck show he was a pretty shrewd investor in the new province.’
‘So it was Claudius who invaded this place.’ Costas blinked up at the drizzle that was beginning to envelop them, and then pulled the hood of his jacket forward. ‘Left Italy for this.’
Jack wiped the sheen of water from his face, and then bounded across another street. They were in Lawrence Lane, heading towards the medieval Guildhall. ‘Claudius was on a mission,’ he said. ‘It was a matter of family pride, living up to his ancestors, taking up where they had left off. Almost a hundred years before, his great- great-uncle Julius Caesar had landed in Britain with his legions at the tail end of the conquest of Gaul. It was more a show of strength than an invasion, a bit of ancient gunboat diplomacy, to keep the Britons on their side of the Channel.’
Costas peered out gloomily from under his hood. ‘You mean Julius Caesar took one look at this place, thought better of it and left.’
Jack grinned. ‘He had other things on his mind. But he paved the way for traders. Even before Claudius invaded, there was a settlement of Romans at the tribal capital Camulodunum, about fifty miles north-east of here near modern Colchester. They imported cargoes of wine in pottery amphoras, exactly the same type we discovered in the shipwreck of St Paul and saw in Herculaneum. They discovered that the British loved alcohol.’
‘Glad to see that hasn’t changed.’ Costas’ muffled voice came from several paces behind, and Jack turned to see his friend’s hooded figure standing in front of a pub. Costas pulled down his hood and pointed suggestively. Jack shook his head and beckoned him. ‘We’re almost there. Time for that later.’
‘That’s what you always say,’ Costas grumbled, then splashed up behind Jack. They walked on for a few paces in silence, then Costas caught Jack’s arm and pulled him to a halt. ‘One thing been’s nagging at me since Rome, Jack.’
‘Fire away.’
‘It’s Elizabeth, your encounter with her at Herculaneum. You said she warned you, told you to be on your guard.’
‘It was only a few snatched words.’
‘I’m wondering about our assailant in the cave under Rome. Whoever he was, whoever they are, how could they have known we were there?’
‘I assume we were being followed. I only really put it together afterwards, but it wouldn’t have been difficult to trace us from Herculaneum to Seaquest II, then to Rome. A few tapped phone calls, even some hijacked satellite surveillance. We kept our movements low-key but it still wouldn’t have been difficult for the right people to know we were trucking IMU diving equipment into the centre of Rome, and going into the Cloaca Maxima.’
‘You’re suggesting some pretty sophisticated surveillance.’
‘That could be what we’re dealing with. No holds barred.’
‘They seemed to know specifically what we were after. That guy in the cave. The last thing he said. “Give it to me.” ’
‘Are you suggesting Elizabeth could have been part of this?’
‘I’m not suggesting anything.’
Jack looked troubled. ‘She did say something else. I thought it was personal, about us, but maybe I was wrong.’
‘Go on.’
‘She said she knew.’
‘Knew what?’
‘That was it. Just that she knew. It was the last thing she said to me.’
‘Do you think she knew what we’d found in Herculaneum? Do you think she’d been up the tunnel into the villa herself, before we arrived?’
‘Maurice was certain that nobody else had been through the crack in the wall before us, and he knows better than anyone the signs of modern interference, tomb-robbers. But Elizabeth could have gone up the tunnel in secret the night before we arrived, seen Narcissus and the carbonized scrolls, looked through the crack into the chamber. She could have known there were scrolls.’
‘Why not tell you?’
‘There was fear in her eyes. Real fear. And she’s one tough lady, brought up in the back streets of Naples. I’ve left repeated phone messages for her at the superintendency, but no reply. I think she told me everything she could in those few moments. I think she was taking a big risk.’
‘You think she’s on our side?’
‘I don’t know what to think, Costas. I haven’t known what to think about Elizabeth for a long time. But I do believe she’s not pulling the strings. There something very powerful behind all this, powerful enough to put the gag on her. And that frightens me too.’
Costas grunted, peered up at the drizzle again, then nodded slowly. ‘Okay. I guess we don’t have any choice. We carry on. But I still feel like bait.’
‘Ben and the other guy are just behind us.’
Costas nodded, and then walked on. ‘Okay. Back to Roman London. A lot of foreigners here, so a lot of foreign ideas too.’
‘Exactly.’ They came to the edge of Gresham Street, and Jack pointed to the building opposite. ‘That’s what we’ve come for.’ Costas gazed at the darkened masonry facade, clearly much older than the towering concrete and glass structures of Lawrence Lane they had just passed through. The facade was broken by five tall windows with a circular window at each end, and the east side in front of them had columns and a pediment embedded in it in a neoclassical style. ‘English baroque,’ Jack continued. ‘Not quite as grand as St Paul’s, but same period, same architect. One of the City churches rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren following the Great Fire of London in 1666.’
‘St Lawrence Jewry.’ Costas peered at a soggy tourist map he had pulled from his pocket.
‘The name says it all.’ Jack waited for a taxi to roar past. ‘This was the Jewish quarter of London until the Jews were expelled in the thirteenth century. St Lawrence Jewry is Church of England, Anglican, but just up the road there are Catholic churches, Nonconformist chapels, synagogues, mosques, you name it. That’s my point. It would have been similar in Roman London. Today most people worship one God, but in some ways it’s not that far from the polytheism that Romans such as Claudius would have known, with lots of different temples and forms of ritual.’
‘Wasn’t there a cult of the emperor too?’
Jack nodded and stepped back against a wall for a moment, out of the spray from the road. ‘The Romans built a temple to Claudius at Colchester, and maybe one here in London too. Privately, I don’t think Claudius would have bought into it, if he really did survive to see himself being worshipped. It would have smacked too much of his
