stayed between projects when he needed to carry out research in one of London’s libraries or museums. After the exhilaration of the ancient tomb and then the empty cylinder they had been too tired to talk, and too numb to feel disappointed. Jack leaned back, stretched, and closed his eyes. He still felt drained from their extraordinary exploration the day before, and his morning coffee was only just kicking in. He felt strangely discomfited, unsure whether their quest had gone as far as it could, whether he should look back on what they had discovered, begin to relish the extraordinary finds of the past few days for what they were and not see them as clues to something even bigger. He opened his eyes, and peered up at the magnificent dome far above him, so similar to the dome of St Peter’s in the Vatican, to the dome of the Pantheon in Rome built over fifteen hundred years earlier. Yet here Jack felt he was looking not at replication or continuity but at the unique brilliance of one man, the architect Sir Christopher Wren. The interior dome was set below the ovoid dome of the exterior, a way of elevating the cathedral externally yet ensuring that the view of the dome from inside was pleasing to the eye. Jack narrowed his vision. As so often in the best works of human creation, the view was not quite what it seemed.
‘Morning, Jack.’ Costas came sliding along the seats from the central aisle, and Jack eyed him with some concern. He was wearing one of Jack’s fisherman’s guernseys from the IMU flat, slightly too small for him around the middle but about two sizes too long, the sleeves pushed up to reveal his muscular forearms. He looked a little pale and red around the nose, and his eyes were watery. ‘Don’t ask,’ he said, slumping down on the seat beside Jack and looking miserable, sniffing and digging in his pocket for a tissue. ‘Every decongestant I could find. I’m beginning to float. I don’t know how you can breathe when the air’s so damp. And cold.’ He sneezed, sniffed noisily and groaned.
‘I gather the all-clear’s been given in the City,’ Jack said.
‘They’re removing the barriers now. The disposal team dug straight down through the Guildhall pavement, craned out the bomb and choppered it away in the middle of the night for a controlled explosion. It was quite a commotion. I made sure they dug in from the east, so I don’t think there was any damage to the tomb.’
‘I’ve just been speaking to my friends at the London archaeological service,’ Jack said, pointing to his cell phone. ‘They’ve got a real challenge on their hands. They need to make some kind of protective bubble over the site to maintain the atmospheric conditions in the tomb, to keep it from decaying. They’ve got the best conservation people on standby. It’s probably going to take months to excavate, but it should be amazing when it’s revealed. I’ve suggested they leave the tomb in situ, make a museum on the spot. It could be completely underground, entered from the amphitheatre.’
‘They don’t want to be disturbing her.’ Costas sniffed. ‘No way.’
‘Did they let you in on the act?’ Jack enquired. ‘The disposal team?’
‘The CO of the Dive Unit turned out to be an old buddy of mine, a Royal Engineers officer from the Defence Diving School. We met when I did the Mine and Explosive Ordnance Disposal course at Devonport two years ago. I told him the second fuse on the bomb was too corroded to drill into, that they’d have to fill it with chemicals to neutralize it. But he couldn’t let me in to help. Health and safety regulations, you know.’ Costas sniffed again. ‘That’s the trouble with this country. Over regulated.’
‘You’d rather we were based in Italy, let’s say?’
Costas’ eyes lit up. ‘Speaking of which, when are we getting back to the shipwreck of St Paul? A couple of weeks in the Mediterranean would suit me just fine. Might even kill this cold.’
‘ Seaquest II ’s still on station, and the Embraer jet’s on standby,’ Jack replied. ‘I’ve just been on the phone to Maurice about timing the press release on the Herculaneum library. Unless Jeremy’s got something new for us, I don’t see where we go from here with the Claudius connection. It’s already a fabulous addition to history, with the extraordinary finds we’ve made in Rome, and here in London. But the whereabouts of the manuscript might just have to remain one of the great unsolved mysteries of all time.’ Jack heaved a sigh, then peered up at the dome again. ‘Not my style, but a dead end’s a dead end.’
Costas gestured at the laptop on Jack’s knees. ‘I see you’ve been scrolling through Maria’s images of the Herculaneum library.’ He pointed a soggy tissue at the page of thumbnail images. Jack nodded, then peered back at him with an expectant expression. ‘I know that look,’ Costas said.
‘I was just going through the pictures for the press release, then I suddenly remembered something,’ Jack said. ‘That page of papyrus I found in Herculaneum, lying on the table under the blank sheets. Historia Britannorum. Narcissus Fecit.’ Jack clicked on a thumbnail, and a page of ancient writing appeared on the screen. ‘Thank God Maria took plenty of pictures.’
Costas blew his nose. ‘I knew you’d found something.’
‘I’d put that page from my mind because I’d guessed it was probably part of a treatise on military strategy, the kind of thing Claudius the armchair general would have relished, to show he really knew his stuff and was worthy of his father and brother. Maybe something on the lead-up to the invasion of Britain, on his planning sessions with his legionary commanders, all painstakingly recorded. But then I put myself back into Herculaneum, into that room. I began to think about the last things Claudius would have had on his mind, what he would have been writing. In the weeks leading up to the eruption of Vesuvius, we know Pliny the Elder was visiting him in the villa. Pliny was a military historian too, an experienced veteran himself, but he’d been there, done that, and what really fired him up in his final years was his Natural History, collecting any facts and trivia he could stick in it.’
‘Like that page on Judaea, you mean, his additional notes, that we found on the shelf in the room,’ Costas said.
‘Precisely. And what really would have excited Pliny about Claudius was the Britannia connection. Not the military campaign, the invasion, but anything Claudius could tell him about the natural history, the geography, the people, anything unusual, garish. Pliny would have badgered him about it. I can see him sitting with Claudius in that room, constantly questioning, steering him away from the triumph, the strategy, mining him for any trivia he might have learned about Britain, with wily old Narcissus at the table patiently transcribing everything Claudius said. After all, we know Claudius had seen the place with his own eyes, had visited Britain not just once, for his triumph, but twice, when he came in secret to the tomb as an old man, not long before the eruption. Britain was his great achievement, and he would have loved telling Pliny all about it, playing the old general reminiscing on his conquest for the glory of Rome and his family honour.’
‘Go on.’ Costas sneezed violently.
‘I’ve now read the entire text preserved on that page from the table, Claudius’ History of Britain. It’s clearly part of a preamble, an introductory chapter, setting the stage.’ Jack pointed at the fine handwriting on the screen. ‘The Latin’s easy, clearly written. We have to thank Narcissus for that. It’s about religion and rituals, just the kind of thing Pliny would have loved.’
‘And just what we need.’ Costas sniffed. ‘All that discussion yesterday about the Iron Age, about Boudica, Andraste. There are still some pretty big black holes.’
Jack nodded. ‘The first part really staggered me. It’s the end of the description of a great stone circle Claudius had visited. “I have seen these things with my own eyes,” he says.’
‘A stone circle? Stonehenge?’
‘He tells us that the stones were set up by the British people in honour of a race of giants who came from the east, escaping a great flood,’ Jack said. ‘The stones represent each of the priest-kings and priest-queens, who afterwards ruled the island.’
‘The Black Sea exodus!’ Costas exclaimed. ‘The priests of Atlantis. That shows Claudius wasn’t being fed a pack of lies.’
‘“These giants brought with them a Mother Goddess, who afterwards was worshipped in Britain,”’ Jack translated. ‘“The descendants of these priest-kings and priest-queens were the Druids.”’ He reverted to the original Latin: ‘“ Praesidium posthac inpositum victis excisique luci saevis superstitionibus sacri: nam cruore captivo adolere aras et hominum fibris consulere deos fas habebant.” ’ He paused, then translated. ‘ “Who consider it their sacred duty to cover their altars with the blood of their victims. I myself have watched them at the stone circle, the place they call druidaeque circum, the circle of the Druids.” ’
‘In our last few expeditions, we’ve had Toltecs, Carthaginians and now ancient Britons,’ Costas grumbled. ‘Human sacrifice everywhere.’
‘The early antiquarians of Sir Christopher Wren’s day actually thought Stonehenge had been a druid circle, and they were right after all,’ Jack said. ‘It’s amazing. But this is the clincher. Listen to this. “They choose the high priestess from among the noble families of the Britons. I myself have met the chosen one, the girl they call Andraste, who also calls herself Boudica, princess of the tribe of the Iceni, who was brought before me as a slave
