The base of the block was now revealed, with a dark crack beneath where the mortar had been. She knelt down and blew at the lower face of the block, pulling back quickly to avoid a small cloud of dust. ‘There it is,’ she said, moving back further.
Jack and Costas knelt down where she had been. Jack could see more markings, inscriptions. There was a chi-rho symbol, crudely incised into the rock. Beside it was another inscription, a painted word, clearly by the same hand as the ship graffito and the Domine Iumius inscription, the same-shaped letters and stroke of the brush. Costas was closest, and peered down further to get a better angle. He sat back, and looked at Jack. They both stared back at the rock, speechless for a moment.
‘Jack, I’m getting that strange sense of deja vu again.’
Jack felt faint. He suddenly realized where he had seen that style of letter before. The serifs on the V, the square-sided S.
The ancient shipwreck off Sicily.
The shipwreck of St Paul.
‘My God,’ he whispered. ‘ Paulus.’ He swallowed hard, and slumped back. St Paul the Apostle. St Paul, whose name they had seen only a week before, a hundred metres beneath the sea, scratched on an amphora in an ancient shipwreck. Impossible. Jack closed his eyes for a moment, then stared again. No. Not impossible. It made perfect sense. He sat back, and stared at Helena.
‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ she said quietly.
‘You asked for an objective assessment,’ Jack replied. ‘And here it is. That graffito was carved by St Paul. That’s his ship. Domine Iumius. Lord we go. Costas, you were right. The man who drew this was going, not coming. He came here to tell his Lord that he was about to set out on his great mission, to spread the word beyond Judaea. Paul was here, sitting on the hillside at the very spot where we are now, beside the wall built by Herod Agrippa only a few years before.’
‘At the place of pilgrimage,’ Helena murmured. ‘At the tomb of Christ.’
‘At the tomb of Christ,’ Jack repeated.
Helena pointed at the space under the block. ‘Jack, take a look in there. Is hasn’t been mortared. You remember I told you I knew of some areas of masonry down here with spaces behind them? Most of the mortar you can see around the block is modern, dating from after the 1970s excavations when the graffito was revealed. But there’s another sealing layer beneath that that’s also relatively recent, dating within the last hundred years or so.’
‘Let me guess,’ Jack murmured. ‘Nineteen eighteen?’
‘I’m convinced of it.’
‘You’re talking about Everett,’ Costas exclaimed. ‘You’re saying he found this, and removed the block. Can we do it too?’
‘That’s why I needed both of you here,’ Helena said. ‘When Yereva and I first found the Paul inscription, we realized there was a space beyond. You can see it through the crack. It could just be a dead space beyond the wall, or another water cistern. There are at least eleven cisterns under the Holy Sepulchre for collecting rainwater, most of them disused and sealed over. Or it could be something else. There was no way we could move this block, and if we’d been caught trying there would have been a couple more crucifixions at this spot.’
‘Have you told anyone else about the Paul inscription?’ Jack asked.
‘You’re the first. But we’re certain others know, and have kept it secret. The mortar over the inscription was recent, from the 1970s excavation. They found it, then concealed it.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Costas said. ‘Surely a discovery like that would give the Armenians huge extra clout, really put them on the map?’
‘It’s all about keeping the status quo in this place,’ Helena murmured. ‘Whoever made the decision might have feared jealousy from the other denominations in the Holy Sepulchre. It could have pulled the rug out from all the checks and balances, threatened rights and privileges they’d worked so hard to maintain over the centuries. Better to keep a discovery like this as their own secret, to bolster their own private sense of superiority, to save as ammunition should it be needed in the future.’
‘And there could have been other factors at play,’ Jack added.
‘The concilium?’ Costas said.
‘A fear of bringing dark forces down upon themselves, forces that would do anything to suppress them simply for what they knew, just as so nearly happened to the Ethiopians.’
‘Come on,’ Helena said, her voice suddenly urgent. ‘Let’s get going.’ She began to prise away more sections of ancient mortar around the block with her fingers. It came away surprisingly easily, in chunks which had clearly been removed before and then sealed back into place. After a few minutes the entire block was clear, leaving a crack around the edge a few centimetres wide, enough to slot in a hand to palm depth. Jack rummaged in his bag and took out a climber’s headlamp, flicking it on and pushing it through the crack at the widest point on the right- hand side. ‘I see what you mean,’ he murmured, his face close to the crack. ‘With the block removed we’d be looking at a space about a metre by half a metre wide, just big enough for a crawlway.’
‘Do you think you can do it?’ Helena said. ‘Move it, I mean? Yereva and I couldn’t.’
‘Only one way to find out.’ Jack passed her the headlamp, then motioned to Costas. They each put their hands under a corner of the block. ‘We’ll have to try to rock it out,’ Jack said. ‘Gently does it. Towards you first.’ They heaved, and the block budged. Costas yelped in pain. ‘You okay?’ Jack said. Costas drew out one hand, shaking and blowing on it, and grimaced. He slid it back in under the block, which was now a few centimetres out of the wall. ‘Again,’ he said. They pushed back and forth another half a dozen times, each time pulling it out further. It came surprisingly easily. They shifted position so they were facing each other, both hands under the stone. ‘Heave,’ Jack said. With one hand under the outer edge of the block they each moved their other hand back fractionally every time the stone came forward, keeping close to the wall. Helena pulled up a pair of short wooden planks she had found beside the railing outside the chapel, positioning them under the stone. ‘Okay. This is it,’ Jack said. ‘Let’s try to take it out a good metre. Careful of your back.’ They both straightened up as much as they could, looking each other in the eye, and nodded. In one swift movement they heaved the block out from the wall and placed it on the planks. They withdrew their hands, shaking them and exhaling forcefully. ‘Right,’ Jack panted, looking at the hole where the block had been. ‘What have we got?’
Helena was already peering into the space, holding Jack’s headlamp as far in as she could reach. ‘It goes in about five metres, then there’s another wall, rock-cut by the look of it,’ she said. ‘Then the tunnel seems to veer down, to the right.’ She knelt back up, and passed the light to Jack. ‘If it’s a cistern in there, it could be underwater,’ she said. ‘We’re in the deepest accessible place under the Holy Sepulchre, and it’s been raining a lot over the past few days. What now?’
Jack looked at Costas, who looked back at him, his face expressionless.
‘Jack, we had a deal,’ Costas said. ‘No more underground places.’
‘You’re off the hook this time. Too narrow for you.’
‘Are you okay with this?’ Costas said, looking hard at Jack. ‘I mean, going in alone?’
Jack peered into the space. ‘I don’t think I’m walking away from this one.’
‘No, you’re not.’
Jack opened the straps on the lamp and slipped it over his head, then picked up his khaki bag and pushed it as far ahead as he could into the hole.
‘His lucky bag,’ Costas said to Helena. ‘He never goes anywhere without it.’
Helena glanced back nervously at the entrance to the chapel. ‘Make it quick,’ she said. ‘We need to get out of here soon.’ She looked at Jack, then touched his arm. ‘ Domine iumius,’ she murmured. ‘Godspeed.’
Moments later Jack was inside the space where the stone block had been, inching his way forward on his stomach, stretched out with his bag ahead of him. The entrance into the wall lay only a few metres back, but already he felt completely isolated, away from the chapel behind him, part of another space he could see ahead in the beam from his headlamp. He remembered Herculaneum, the extraordinary feeling of stepping back in time as they entered the lost library. He felt it here too, part of the same continuum, as if he had edged back further, close to the beginning of the story that had led Claudius to be in that villa. He felt strangely comforted by the old stone, cocooned by it, his usual anxieties gone. Helena’s last words kept running through his head, the two words of Latin, and he found himself murmuring them, a low chant that helped to keep him focused. He pulled himself forward,
