brickwork looks hasty, and it’s definitely post-medieval. It looks like it hasn’t been disturbed since.’
Costas looked perplexed. ‘Okay. Drainage pipes. So where does that get us?’
Jack took out a photograph from his bag, and handed it to Costas. ‘Where it gets us,’ he said excitedly, ‘is back to the time of Boudica.’
‘Ah,’ Costas murmured. ‘Got you. Not drainage pipes. Roman amphoras.’
‘More than just amphoras,’ Jack said excitedly. ‘Much more. Intact amphoras by themselves would be a fantastic find, but it’s the context that counts. Think of where we are.’
‘The Roman amphitheatre?’ Costas said. ‘A bar, an ancient tavern like the one we saw at Herculaneum?’
‘Good guess,’ Jack said. ‘But that picture’s from a place called Sheepen. It shows the amphoras exactly as archaeologists found them. Intact wine amphoras, five of them in a row, along with drinking cups and other goods. They were in a grave.’
‘A Roman grave?’ Costas said.
Jack shook his head. ‘Not Roman. Remember what I said about the Celtic taste for wine? Imported wine had prestige value, a sign of wealth and status. No, the Sheepen amphoras were in the grave of a Celtic nobleman, a warrior.’ Jack suddenly felt exuberant. ‘All those years ago, when I was a boy, I knew I was on to something really big when I came to the Guildhall site. I just had a hunch. I thought it was the amphitheatre, when they found it years later. But now this, something else, maybe even more extraordinary. I wish my grandmother were here now. Wherever else this trail leads us, this could be another dream of mine realised.’
Costas looked at the photo, then at the bricked-up wall in front of them. He started to speak, but suddenly stopped, transfixed. He looked at the photo again, then at Jack. ‘Holy cow,’ he said weakly.
Jack looked at him, and nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘That goddess. Andraste,’ Costas whispered.
Jack nodded, wordlessly.
‘What do we do now?’ Jeremy said.
Jack looked at his watch. ‘If everything goes according to schedule, the van with the equipment should be outside in an hour. By then the concert upstairs will be over and we’ll be able to get all the gear in discreetly, if the church people agree.’
‘I’ve just got one more guy to talk to, but we’ll be good to go,’ Jeremy said, eyeing Costas, who gave a thumbs-up.
‘We’re not taking any chances,’ Jack said. ‘Full kit. We might be going below the water table, and who knows what else is down there. I’m not even going to tackle that wall until we’re ready. Meanwhile, I might just go up and listen to the music.’
‘No you don’t,’ Costas said. ‘I still need to get a few things straight. A few big things. Like how Christianity fits into all this warrior queen stuff.’
‘Okay,’ Jeremy said, pushing up his spectacles and peering at Costas. ‘If it’s early Christianity in Britain, it’s one of my areas of interest. Fire away.’
‘Before meeting you this morning we went to the British Library,’ Costas said. ‘Jack needed to check some source material on this church, and while he was busy I visited the display of ancient manuscripts. Incredible stuff. I saw one of the Bibles brought by St Augustine to Britain, in AD 597. That’s almost two hundred years after the Romans left Britain. That’s where I’m confused. I thought Augustine was the one who brought Christianity to Britain. I thought, hold on, how can there be Christians in Roman Britain?’
Jeremy leaned forward from where he was sitting against the wall. ‘That’s a common misconception. And it’s what the Anglo-Saxon Church historians would have liked you to believe, even the big names like Bede.’
‘I don’t get it.’
‘The Church of England, the Ecclesia Anglicana, was really the Church of the Anglo-Saxons. It traced its origins to the mission of Augustine, who supposedly brought Christianity to the pagan population of Britain well after the Romans had left. It was a political tool, intimately bound up with Anglo-Saxon kingship and with the power of Rome. But even the Anglo-Saxon historians knew there had been Christianity in Britain before that, when the Romans had ruled.’
‘The Ecclesia Britannorum,’ Jack murmured. ‘The Church of the Britons. The Celtic Church.’
‘To get a handle on it, you have to go to Gildas,’ Jeremy said. ‘A British monk who lived in the early sixth century, about a hundred years after the Romans left, a couple of generations before Augustine arrived. Gildas is just about the only Briton we know about who may have been alive at the time of King Arthur, probably a British warlord fighting the Anglo-Saxon invaders at that time.’
‘Sounds like the original Friar Tuck,’ Costas murmured.
‘His book’s called De Excidio Britonum, The Ruin of Britain. It was written in Latin, but I’ve got a translation.’ Jack delved into his bag, and brought out a scuffed blue and grey book with a chi-rho symbol on the front. ‘It’s a rant about how the kings who ruled Britain after the Romans had failed in their Christian duty. I’ve got it because Gildas mentions Boudica. It was a present from my grandmother when I was a boy.’
‘Gildas called Boudica a deceitful lioness,’ Jeremy said, grinning.
‘That’s all he says, but it suggests that the memory of her rebellion lingered on, even in a churchman who knew virtually nothing of Roman history, and little of Christian history for that matter.’
‘But he gives us the first ever account of the founding of the British Church, the Celtic Church in the time of the Romans,’ Jeremy said.
Jack nodded, and turned the page. ‘Here it is.’ He read it aloud: ‘ “Meanwhile, to an island numb with chill ice and far removed, as in a remote nook of the world, from the visible sun, Christ made a present of his rays, that is, his precepts, Christ the true sun, which shows its dazzling brilliance to the entire earth, not from the temporal firmament merely, but from the highest citadel of heaven, that goes beyond all time. This happened first, as we know, in the last years of the emperor Tiberius, at a time when Christ’s religion was being propagated without hindrance; for, against the wishes of the Senate, the emperor threatened the death penalty for informers against soldiers of God.” ’
‘At least he got the weather right,’ Costas grumbled. ‘So what’s he on about? The emperor Tiberius?’
‘The Roman emperor at the time of the crucifixion,’ Jeremy said.
Jack closed the book. ‘Tiberius was Claudius’ uncle, ruled Rome from AD 14 to 37. Gildas seems to think that Tiberius was himself a Christian, at odds with a pagan Senate. It’s all pretty garbled and probably an anachronism, referring to the problems the Christian emperors had with the pagan Senate in the fourth century AD, after Constantine the Great had made Christianity the state religion. There’s no other indication anywhere that Tiberius was a Christian. But what we’ve found in the last few days, in Herculaneum, in Rome, has set me thinking.’
‘About others in Rome who knew of Jesus of Nazareth,’ Jeremy murmured.
‘The British Church, the Celtic Church of the Roman period, has left no written records,’ Jack replied. ‘If there ever were any, they would almost certainly have been destroyed by the Anglo-Saxons. But was Gildas recounting a distant truth, a folk memory perhaps, a secret passed on by word of mouth among followers of the British Church for more than five centuries? Was he telling us that there had indeed been a Christian emperor very early on, or an emperor well disposed towards Christians? Not Tiberius, but another emperor who had been alive at the time of Christ?’
‘Claudius!’ Costas exclaimed.
‘It’s just possible.’ Jack was animated, and gesticulated as he spoke. ‘By the time of Gildas, centuries later, the true identity of the emperor could have been confused. Claudius would have been remembered as the invader of Britain, as the deified emperor worshipped in the temple at Colchester. A pretty unlikely Christian. But Gildas would have known of Tiberius from the Gospels, as the emperor who had presided over the death of Jesus. To Gildas, it might have seemed the ultimate triumph of Christianity to suggest that Tiberius himself was a convert. A pretty extravagant fiction, but Gildas lived at a time when many fanciful additions were being made to the story of events surrounding the life of Christ.’
‘And he’s talking about Britain,’ Costas said.
‘Gildas was implying that Christianity came to Britain very early on, in the first century AD,’ Jeremy said. ‘He’s even implying that the emperor himself brought it, in person. That’s what’s really fascinating. It’s only through being here ourselves, on the trail of an emperor, that those lines of Gildas suddenly take on a new significance, a real authority. His De Excidio Britonum was exclusively a book on Britain, not some wider history.’
