‘Go on.’
‘She said she knew.’
‘Knew what?’
‘That was it. Just that she knew. It was the last thing she said to me.’
‘Do you think she knew what we’d found in Herculaneum? Do you think she’d been up the tunnel into the villa herself, before we arrived?’
‘Maurice was certain that nobody else had been through the crack in the wall before us, and he knows better than anyone the signs of modern interference, tomb-robbers. But Elizabeth could have gone up the tunnel in secret the night before we arrived, seen Narcissus and the carbonized scrolls, looked through the crack into the chamber. She could have known there were scrolls.’
‘Why not tell you?’
‘There was fear in her eyes. Real fear. And she’s one tough lady, brought up in the back streets of Naples. I’ve left repeated phone messages for her at the superintendency, but no reply. I think she told me everything she could in those few moments. I think she was taking a big risk.’
‘You think she’s on our side?’
‘I don’t know what to think, Costas. I haven’t known what to think about Elizabeth for a long time. But I do believe she’s not pulling the strings. There something very powerful behind all this, powerful enough to put the gag on her. And that frightens me too.’
Costas grunted, peered up at the drizzle again, then nodded slowly. ‘Okay. I guess we don’t have any choice. We carry on. But I still feel like bait.’
‘Ben and the other guy are just behind us.’
Costas nodded, and then walked on. ‘Okay. Back to Roman London. A lot of foreigners here, so a lot of foreign ideas too.’
‘Exactly.’ They came to the edge of Gresham Street, and Jack pointed to the building opposite. ‘That’s what we’ve come for.’ Costas gazed at the darkened masonry facade, clearly much older than the towering concrete and glass structures of Lawrence Lane they had just passed through. The facade was broken by five tall windows with a circular window at each end, and the east side in front of them had columns and a pediment embedded in it in a neoclassical style. ‘English baroque,’ Jack continued. ‘Not quite as grand as St Paul’s, but same period, same architect. One of the City churches rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren following the Great Fire of London in 1666.’
‘St Lawrence Jewry.’ Costas peered at a soggy tourist map he had pulled from his pocket.
‘The name says it all.’ Jack waited for a taxi to roar past. ‘This was the Jewish quarter of London until the Jews were expelled in the thirteenth century. St Lawrence Jewry is Church of England, Anglican, but just up the road there are Catholic churches, Nonconformist chapels, synagogues, mosques, you name it. That’s my point. It would have been similar in Roman London. Today most people worship one God, but in some ways it’s not that far from the polytheism that Romans such as Claudius would have known, with lots of different temples and forms of ritual.’
‘Wasn’t there a cult of the emperor too?’
Jack nodded and stepped back against a wall for a moment, out of the spray from the road. ‘The Romans built a temple to Claudius at Colchester, and maybe one here in London too. Privately, I don’t think Claudius would have bought into it, if he really did survive to see himself being worshipped. It would have smacked too much of his deranged nephew Caligula, and of Claudius’ successor Nero. But here in the provinces, the imperial cult was a practical matter, a way of getting the natives to pay dues to Rome, as much as it was about idolizing the individual emperor himself.’
‘Didn’t the Romans try to stamp out rival religions?’
‘Not usually. That’s the beauty of polytheism, politically speaking. If you already have more than one god, then it’s easy enough to absorb a few more, less hassle than trying to eradicate them. And absorbing foreign gods stamps the authority of your own gods over them. That’s what happened in Roman Britain. The Celtic war god was absorbed into the cult of Mars, the Roman war god, who had earlier absorbed the Greek war god Ares. The Celtic goddess Andraste from our inscription was linked with Diana and Artemis. Even Christianity came to adapt pagan rites of worship, including temples and priests. Almost everything you see about that church over there would have been unfamiliar to the first Christians, even the idea of an organized religion with acts of worship. To some of them, it might have been anathema.’
‘Maybe even to their Messiah himself.’
‘Provocative thought, Costas.’
‘Remember, I was brought up Greek Orthodox. I can say these things. In Jerusalem, in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Greeks think they’re the closest to Christ, custodians of the Tomb. But then so do all the other denominations there, Armenian, Roman Catholic, you name it, all crowded up against it, competing. It’s a bit ridiculous, really. Not seeing the wood for the trees.’
Jack led Costas briskly over the road, past the church and into Guildhall Yard. A few metres behind them was the west wall of the church, and in front of them, set into the paving slabs of the courtyard, was a wide arc of dark stones, like part of a huge sundial extending under the surrounding buildings. Jack’s cell phone chirped and he spoke quickly into it, then began to walk towards the entrance to the Guildhall Art Gallery on the west side of the courtyard, following the alignment of the arc. ‘Jeremy’s there already,’ he said. ‘And remember this arc on the courtyard. It clarifies what we’re about to see.’
Ten minutes later they stood at almost exactly the same spot as on the courtyard but eight metres below ground. They were in a wide subterranean space, backlit around the edges, with brick and masonry ruins in front of them. They had taken off their coats, and Costas was reading a descriptive plaque. ‘The Roman amphitheatre,’ he murmured. ‘Fantastic. I had no idea.’
‘Nor did anyone else, until a few years ago,’ Jack said. ‘Much of the city above Roman London was destroyed by German bombing during the Second World War, and clearance and redevelopment has allowed a lot of archaeological excavation to take place since then. But the chance for a big dig in Guildhall Yard didn’t come up till the late 1980s. This was their most astonishing find.’
‘That elliptical arc in the pavement, above us,’ Costas murmured. ‘Now I’ve got you.’
‘That arc marks the outline of the arena, the central pit of the amphitheatre,’ Jack said.
‘What date are we looking at?’
‘You remember the Boudican revolt? That took place in AD 60, about the same time as St Paul’s shipwreck. Roman London had been founded about fifteen years before that, soon after Claudius’ invasion in 43. Boudica destroyed the first Roman settlement, but it soon recovered and there were big building projects underway within a few years. The amphitheatre was wooden, but the wall you see here around the arena was made of brick and stone, probably begun some time in the seventies.’
‘In time for Claudius’ second visit, incognito as an old man.’
‘That’s my working hypothesis, that he came here some time shortly before AD 79, on a secret mission.’ Jack pulled out his translation of the extraordinary riddle they had discovered on the wax tablet in Rome. ‘ Between two hills,’ he said in a low voice. ‘That’s what London looked like, with the Walbrook stream running down the middle. And then the gladiator’s oath. To be burned by fire, to be bound in chains, to be beaten, to die by the sword. This has to be the spot.’
‘Where Andraste lies,’ Costas murmured. ‘A temple? A shrine?’
‘Some kind of holy place, the home of a goddess.’
‘But where exactly?’
‘There’s one spot here that hasn’t been excavated, between the amphitheatre and the Church of St Lawrence Jewry,’ Jack said. ‘Just behind the wall over there.’ At that moment he heard footsteps coming up behind them and he swivelled round in alarm, then relaxed. ‘Here’s someone who might be able to tell us more.’