‘I’m hearing you,’ Jack said.
‘While we wait, what’s this about opium, anyway?’
‘You’ll never believe what we found in the shipwreck.’
At that moment there was a grunt and a curse. ‘I think we’ve got something here.’ Costas had been edging ahead of the others, and now framed the ragged hole at the end of the tunnel. ‘I think it might be another statue.’ The others quickly came up behind him, their beams converging on the place where the seismic shock had just caused a section of wall to cave in beside the crack. Inside the cavity was a human form, life sized, lying on its front, one arm outstretched and the other folded under its chest, the legs extending back towards the entrance. It seemed to be naked, but the surface was obscured by a darkened carbonized layer that made the material underneath difficult to ascertain.
‘My God,’ Maria whispered.
‘This must have just been revealed,’ Hiebermeyer said quietly. ‘That tremor just now. It wasn’t visible yesterday.’
Jack knelt down and examined the head, then tried to peer through a small hole just below one ear. He could see that the form was hollow, like a bronze statue, but there was no metal visible, not even a corrosion layer. He thought for a moment, then looked again. ‘Well I’ll be damned,’ he murmured.
‘What is it?’ Costas said.
‘You remember I told you about the bodies at Pompeii, shapes preserved as hollow casts in the solidified ash?’
Costas looked aghast. ‘You’re not telling me this is one.’ He edged back.
‘Only it’s not preserved in ash,’ Hiebermeyer said. He had come up beside Jack and taken out his worn old trowel, using it to pick up a small sample of blackened material from beside the body. ‘It’s bizarre. It’s preserved in some kind of carbonized material, something fibrous.’
‘My God,’ Jack said. ‘You’re right. I can see the crossed fibres. Clothing, maybe.’ He peered at Hiebermeyer, who looked back at him suggestively. Jack thought again, and felt his jaw drop. ‘Not clothing,’ he whispered. ‘ Papyrus.’
‘Wait till you see what’s in there,’ Hiebermeyer whispered back, aiming his trowel at the crack in the wall ahead of them.
‘These were scrolls?’ Maria whispered. ‘This man was covered in papyrus scrolls?’
‘They were spilling out of the place that lies ahead of us,’ Hiebermeyer replied. ‘It’s as if this man fell into a bed of scrolls, and they were all blown over him when the blast came. When they found Philodemus’ library in the eighteenth century, a lot of the scrolls were strewn around, as if someone were trying to escape with them.’
‘Or was searching through them, frantically looking for something precious to salvage before fleeing,’ Maria said.
‘Let’s hope these books were just more of Philodemus’ Greek scrolls,’ Jack muttered, ‘and not the lost Latin library.’
Costas put out his hand and gingerly touched the shoulder of the body. Instantly the entire form shimmered and disappeared in a puff of carbon. His finger was left suspended in mid-air, and for a moment there was silence.
‘Whoops,’ he said.
Hiebermeyer groaned.
‘Not to worry,’ Jack sighed. ‘An Agamemnon moment.’
‘Huh?’
‘When Heinrich Schliemann excavated the Bronze Age site of Mycenae, he lifted a golden death mask from a royal grave and claimed to have gazed on the face of King Agamemnon. Maybe he really did see something, some fleeting impression under the mask. You remember Atlantis, the spectral form of the bull on the altar? Sometimes you really do see ghosts.’
‘I think it’s time for photographs from now on, Jack,’ Maria said, pulling out a compact digital camera.
‘Absolutely,’ Jack said. ‘Take everything, several times, different settings. It could end up being the only record we have.’
‘Look what’s underneath,’ Hiebermeyer said, suddenly excited. ‘Far more interesting, forensically speaking.’ He hunched down close over the place where the head had been and took out a photographer’s lens cleaner, gently blowing at the dust. Another form was emerging underneath, grey and blackened. ‘It’s the skull,’ he whispered, his voice tight with emotion. ‘It’s partially carbonized too, but looks as if it’ll hold up. And I can see the vertebrae, the ribs.’ He put his finger into a dark sticky mass under the skull, then sniffed it, first cautiously, then deeply. He suddenly gagged, then swallowed hard. ‘Amazing,’ he said hoarsely, wiping his finger against the wall. ‘Never even come across that in a mummy, and I’ve stuck my fingers in a few.’
‘What is it?’ Costas said. ‘Some kind of resin, pitch?’
‘Not exactly.’ Hiebermeyer’s glasses had slipped down his nose, and he pushed them up with the same finger, leaving a dark streak between his eyes. He looked at Costas, beaming with excitement. ‘When the inferno hit this place, the scrolls must have instantly carbonized, but there must have been something in them, a resinous preservative material, that caused the carbonized mass to form the cast around the body. That sealed off the flesh from oxygen, so it couldn’t incinerate. Instead, it cooked.’
‘Cooked alive,’ Maria said.
‘He means, this guy melted,’ Jack added, peering at Costas.
‘Oh no.’ Costas swayed back against the opposite wall of the tunnel. ‘And you put your finger into it.’
Hiebermeyer held up his finger again, and peered at it with some reverence. ‘It’s fantastic. Probably some brain in that. Should be perfect for DNA analysis.’
Maria had edged back to where the man’s feet had been, looking closely, and then sidled up to Hiebermeyer and peered into the ribcage. ‘Look! He’s wearing a gold ring!’ she exclaimed. Hiebermeyer followed her gaze, tracing the finger bones which were contorted under the ribcage as if the man had been clutching at his chest in his death throes. He took out a mini Maglite, and put his face right up to the bones. ‘It’s a signet ring, for impressing into wax sealings on documents. It’s partly melted into the bone, but I can see the design. It’s an eagle impression.’
‘An imperial signet ring,’ Jack said. ‘This guy must have been in the service of the emperor.’
‘I’m not sure if this was a guy, exactly,’ Hiebermeyer murmured, kneeling up with his hands on his hips. ‘There’s something odd about this skeleton. Distinctly odd. Rounding of the face, areas of bone structure you’d expect to be more developed in a male, unusual widening of the pelvic area. It’s not a woman, exactly, but it’s not far off. Very odd.’
‘Didn’t they have eunuchs?’ Costas said.
‘An interesting thought,’ Jack murmured. He stared at the skeleton, thinking hard. In the early fourth century AD, the emperor Constantine the Great surrounded himself with eunuchs, and so did the later Byzantine emperors. Eunuchs were thought to be a safer bet as secretaries and state officials, less likely to be hard driven and ambitious. Earlier emperors had them, too. He looked up. ‘Some scholars think that Claudius’ freedman Narcissus was a eunuch.’ He paused for a moment, then spoke again, almost to himself. ‘But it couldn’t be. Narcissus was murdered when Claudius was poisoned, in AD 54. That’s a quarter of a century before Vesuvius erupted. There would have been other eunuchs around. This whole area attracted oddities, freaks who came here for the amusement of the wealthy, as well as cripples and other unfortunates who sought cures in the sulphur vents of the Phlegraean Fields. That’s the other side of life here in the Roman period, not exactly the tourist image.’
‘Whoever and whatever this was, he may have ended up as an imperial freedman, but he certainly started off life as a slave.’ Hiebermeyer had shifted to the feet end of the skeleton, and then came back up beside the extractor fan just inside the entranceway ahead of them. ‘His ankles have the characteristic contusions caused by shackles, healed over years before. I think he was an old man when he died, very old for this period, maybe in his eighties or even his nineties. But he’d had a pretty rough time of it a long time before, as a boy.’