‘The men don’t get along. If this place had been run by nuns, we might actually have been able to get somewhere.’
She led them forward to the edge of the rotunda. Jack looked up to where the circle of windows let in the dull light of day, and peered above that to the interior of the dome, restored in modern times to the same position as the dome of the first church built by Constantine the Great in the fourth century. He thought of the other great domes he had stood beneath in the last few days, St Paul’s in London, St Peter’s in Rome, places that suddenly seemed far removed from the reality of the life of Jesus. Even here the momentous significance of the site, the truths embedded in the rock beneath them, seemed obscured by the church itself, by the very structures meant to extol and sanctify the final acts in life of one who millions came here to worship.
‘I see what you mean about the encrustations of history,’ Costas murmured. He was staring at the gaudy structure in the centre of the rotunda. ‘Is that the tomb?’
‘That’s the Holy Sepulchre itself, the Aedicule,’ Helena replied. ‘What you see here was mostly built in the nineteenth century, in place of the structure destroyed in 1009 by the Fatamid caliph al’Hakim when the Muslims ruled Jerusalem. That destruction was the event that precipitated the Crusades, but even before the Crusaders arrived, the Viking Harald Hardrada and his Varangian bodyguard from Constantinople had come here on the orders of the Byzantine emperor, to oversee the rebuilding of the church. But I think you know all about that.’
‘I thought we’d left Harald behind in the Yucatan,’ Costas murmured. ‘Is there anywhere he didn’t go?’
‘The ancient rock-cut tomb inside the Aedicule was identified by Bishop Makarios in AD 326 as the tomb of Christ,’ Helena continued. ‘You have to imagine this whole scene in front of us as a rocky hillside, half as high as the rotunda is now. Just behind us was a small rise known as Golgotha, meaning the place of the skull, where most believe Jesus was crucified. The hill in front of us had been a quarry, dating maybe as early as the city of David and Solomon, but by the time of Jesus it was a place of burial and probably riddled with rock-cut tombs.’
‘How do we know the bishop got the right tomb?’ Costas said.
‘We don’t,’ Helena replied. ‘The Gospels only tell us the tomb was hewn out of the living rock, with a stone rolled in front of it. You had to stoop to look in. There was room inside for at least five people, sitting or squatting. The platform for the body was a raised stone burial couch, possibly an acrosolium, a shelf below a shallow arch.’
‘All of which could describe a typical tomb of the period,’ Jack said. ‘According to the Gospels, the tomb wasn’t custom-built for Jesus, but was donated by Joseph of Arimathea, a wealthy Jew and member of the Jerusalem council. It was apparently a fresh tomb, and there would have been no further burials, no added niches as you see in so many other rock-cut tombs. It was never used as a family tomb.’
‘Unless…’ Helena hesitated, then spoke very quietly, almost in a whisper. ‘Unless one other was put there.’
‘Who?’ Jack exclaimed.
‘A companion,’ she whispered. ‘A female companion.’
‘You believe that?’
Helena raised her hands and pressed the tips of her fingers together briefly, then gazed at the Aedicule. ‘It’s impossible to tell from what’s there now. Constantine the Great’s engineers hacked away most of the surrounding hill to reveal the tomb, to isolate it. By so doing, they actually destroyed much of the tomb itself, the rock-cut chamber, leaving only the burial shelf intact. It was almost as if Constantine’s bishops wanted to remove all possible reason for doubt, any cause for dispute. From then on, the Holy Sepulchre, the identification of the tomb, would be a matter of faith, unassailable. Remember the historical context, the fourth century. When the Church was first becoming formalized, some things that were inconvenient, contradictory, were concealed or destroyed. Other things were created, spirited out of nowhere. Holy relics were discovered. Behind it all lay Constantine the Great and his bishops. Everything had to be set in stone, a version of what went on here in the first century AD that suited the new order, the Church as a political tool. They were editing the past to make a stronger present.’
‘And behind Constantine lay a secret body of advisers, guardians of the earliest Church,’ Jack said. ‘That’s one thing we haven’t told you yet.’
‘I know,’ Helena replied quietly.
‘You know?’
‘As soon as you told me what you were seeking, I knew you would come up against them. The concilium.’
Jack looked at her in astonishment, then nodded slowly. ‘We had an audience with one of them, in Rome two days ago.’
‘At the tomb? The other tomb?’
Jack stared at her again, stunned, then nodded. ‘You know about that too?’
‘They’re tight, Jack. There are never any chinks. You need to be incredibly careful. Whoever you saw, he may have told you some truths, but he may not be who you think he was. The concilium has been stalled in the past, but never defeated. They’re like a bad dream, endlessly returning. We should know.’
‘We?’
‘The memory of that other tomb, the tomb of St Paul in the secret catacomb under St Peter’s in Rome, was not entirely lost. The truth was passed down by those who were there, and reached the kingdom of Aksum, Ethiopia. Remember, we Ethiopians are one of the earliest Christian communities, derived from the first followers of Jesus. There are others like us, on the periphery of the ancient world. The British Church, in existence since the first century AD, since the word of Jesus first reached the shores of Britain. We share the tradition of an emperor and Christ, the British story that an emperor brought Christianity to their shores, ours that an emperor and a king sought the Messiah in the Holy Land, during the time of the Gospels. And we have always been good at keeping secrets. You know we have the Ark of the Covenant, Jack.’
‘We were going there after we graduated, you remember, but Mengistu refused to lift the ban on your family. Have you actually seen it since then?’
‘Eyes on the prize, Jack,’ Costas murmured. ‘We can plan that one by the pool later.’
‘If there is a later,’ Jack said, peering at Helena. ‘The other thing you said. You’ve never told me that before. An emperor in the Holy Land.’ He thought for a moment. ‘The British tradition must be the one alluded to by Gildas, in the sixth century. Is there any ancient source for yours?’
‘Passed down through my family,’ Helena replied. ‘A tradition, no more, but a cherished one.’
‘So how did you survive the concilium?’ Costas asked.
Helena paused. ‘We were an inconvenience, one of those bits of untidiness that Constantine’s advisers wanted swept away. Ever since the fourth century we have been persecuted by the concilium, hunted down, just as our brethren in Britain were. Always we maintained our link with our sister churches, our strength. We women, followers of Jesus and of Mary Magdalene. In Britain they came to link her with the cult of their high priestess, the warrior queen Andraste.’
‘We’ve met her,’ Costas said.
‘What?’
‘The tomb in London,’ Jack added. ‘Where we found the empty cylinder, left there by Everett’s ancestor. I’ve got a lot more to tell you.’
‘Then it all falls into place,’ Helena whispered.
‘That plague you talked about, the extermination of the Ethiopian monks in 1838?’ Jack said. ‘The destruction of the libraries? Are you saying the concilium was behind all that?’
Helena looked behind her furtively, and whispered again. ‘I’m only just beginning to get to the bottom of it, and it terrifies me. Something sinister was behind all of the rivalries in this place, all the absurdities. Something that wanted us destroyed, and wanted this place kept in a state of virtual lockdown. Look at the tomb, the Holy Sepulchre. You can hardly see it for the encrustation. The little chapels of the rival denominations, crowding in on it, suffocating it. It’s almost as if they’ve devoured as much as they can of the tomb, right up to the burial platform, and are locked together in a permanent standoff. It’s madness.’
‘It’d serve them right if it wasn’t the actual tomb, wouldn’t it?’ Costas said.
‘Yet keeping you all there, keeping all the denominations in permanent standoff, might also serve the purpose of the concilium,’ Jack murmured. ‘Maybe there is something else here, something they don’t want revealed. Another inconvenience.’
Helena gave Jack a piercing look, and glanced at her watch. ‘Come on. My friend Yereva’s due to meet us any
