‘Who are you?’ Costas said.
‘You will not be told my name, nor who I am,’ the man repeated. ‘Do not ask again.’
‘This truly is the tomb of St Paul?’ Jack said.
‘It is so,’ the man repeated.
‘What about the church of San Paulo fuori le Mura?’ Jack said. ‘Isn’t he supposed to have been buried there, in a vineyard?’
‘He was indeed taken there after his death, but was brought back here secretly to be reunited with Peter, at the place of their martyrdom.’
‘It is true, then,’ Jack murmured.
‘They were martyred together by the emperor Nero, in the circus built at this spot by Caligula. Peter was crucified upside down, and Paul was beheaded. The Romans made martyrs of the two greatest fathers of the early Church, and in doing so the pagan emperors helped to bring the Holy See into being at this place. In nomine patris et filii et spiritus sancti, amen.’
‘You have brought us here to show us this?’ Jack said.
There was a pause, and the man shifted again. The candle on the tomb wavered, lengthening the shadow so that for a few moments he was obscured completely, then the flame burned upright again. ‘You will by now know that the Roman emperor Claudius faked his own poisoning, and survived in secret for many years beyond the end of his reign in AD
54.’
Jack peered into the shadows, unsure how much to reveal. ‘How do you know this?’
‘By telling you what I am about to tell, I test my bond with the sanctity of the Church. But it will be so.’ The man paused, and then reached into the shadows beside him and lifted an ancient leatherbound volume on to his lap. Jack could now see his hands, strong, long-fingered hands that had seen physical toil, but he could still not see his face. ‘In AD 58, St Paul came to Italy from the east, surviving the famous shipwreck on the way. It was as it is told in the Acts of the Apostles, except that the shipwreck was off Sicily, not Malta.’
Costas glanced questioningly at Jack, who flashed an exultant look back at him. Neither of them spoke.
‘St Paul came first to the Bay of Naples, to Misenum, and met with the Christian brethren he found there, as recounted in Acts,’ the man continued quietly, almost whispering. ‘After the crucifixion, it was the single most important event in the early history of Christianity. Paul was the first to take the word of Jesus beyond the Holy Land, the first true missionary. When he left Misenum for Rome, those whom he first instructed called themselves a concilium, the concilium ecclesiasticum Sancta Paula.’
‘The council of the church of St Paul,’ Jack translated.
‘They were three in number, and they remain three today.’
‘Today?’ Jack said, astonished. ‘This concilium still exists?’
‘For generations, for almost three centuries, the concilium was a secret organization, a pillar of strength for the early Church when it was fighting for its very survival, when Christianity was still an underground religion. At first they met in the Phlegraean Fields, and then they took over the Sibyl’s cave at Cumae, after the last of the Sibyls had disappeared. Later, as Christianity took hold, the concilium moved to Rome, to these catacombs where we sit now, to the place where the martyred body of St Paul was buried in secret by his followers after his beheading, near the hallowed tomb of St Peter.’
‘And this concilium has been meeting here ever since?’ Costas said.
‘By the time of the conversion of the Roman Empire under Constantine the Great, the leaders of the concilium saw its purpose over and disbanded it, sealing up the catacomb of St Paul. Its location was lost, and was only rediscovered during the necropolis excavation following the Second World War. Only since then has this chamber again become the meeting place.’
‘The concilium was re-created in modern times?’ Jack said.
‘It was called forth again by Constantine the Great, near the end of his reign. He reconstituted the concilium in its original number, three, and in the greatest secrecy. He had invested much in converting the state to Christianity. As a statesman, as a soldier, he saw the need to defend the Church, to create a council of war which would send out soldiers to fight in the name of Christ, who would show no mercy in the face of the devil, who would follow no rules of engagement. Over the centuries, the concilium fought off the most pernicious of heresies, the ones the Inquisition of the Holy See were unable to defeat. In Britain they fought the Pelagians, sending Pelagius himself to the fires of hell. They fought the Protestants after the Reformation, a secret war of terror and murder that nearly destroyed Europe. After the New World was discovered, the concilium ordered the destruction of the Maya and the Aztec and the Inca, fearing a prophecy of the ancient Sibyl that foretold a coming darkness from the west.’
‘And these were men of God,’ Costas murmured.
‘They were believers in the sanctity and power of the Church, in the Roman Church as the only route to salvation and the kingdom of heaven,’ the man said. ‘Constantine the Great was an astute statesman. He knew that the survival of the Church depended on unswerving loyalty, on the faith of his holy warriors in the Church as the only route to God. In his revived concilium, he created his perfect enforcers.’
‘Can you prove all this?’ Costas said.
The man lifted the book slightly into the candlelight. ‘The records of the Consilium Ecclesiasticum Sancta Paula. One day the world will know. History will be rewritten.’
‘What does this have to do with Claudius?’ Jack said.
The man leaned forward slightly, and the candelight flickered off the shadowy outline of his face. ‘It is the greatest threat the concilium has ever faced, and their greatest fear. It is the reason why I have brought you here. You and your team are in the gravest danger, far more so than you may realize.’
‘We realize what it’s like to look down the business end of a Beretta 93,’ Costas said. ‘Inside a cavern under the Palatine Hill.’
‘He had instructions not to shoot,’ the man said quietly.
‘Then maybe the concilium should employ more obedient henchmen,’ Costas said.
‘How did you know?’ Jack said. ‘How did the concilium know we’d be diving under Rome?’ The man was silent, and Jack persisted. ‘Was there someone listening in the tunnel at Herculaneum? Was it the inspector, Dr Elizabeth d’Agostino?’
‘We know she spoke to you outside the Villa.’
‘How do you know?’ Jack felt a sudden chill run through him. What if it was more than fear that had prevented her from returning his calls? ‘Where is she now?’
‘There are spies everywhere.’
‘Even on board Seaquest II?’ Costas said.
‘You need to do everything you can to find what you are looking for and to reveal it to the world before they get to you,’ the man said intently. ‘Once they know where it is, they will do everything in their power to destroy you. I have done all that I can, but I cannot restrain them any more.’
‘Dr d’Agostino?’ Jack persisted.
‘As I said, I have done all that I can.’
‘Why should you want to help us?’ Costas said.
The man paused. ‘Let me tell you about Claudius.’ He opened the book at the beginning. They could just see the ancient writing in the dim candlelight, extensively annotated in the margins and clearly in several different hands, reminiscent of the page from Pliny’s Natural History they had found at Herculaneum, but more ragged and stained, as if it had been pored over many times. ‘This page recounts the founding of the original concilium, in the first century AD,’ the man said, shutting the book again and putting his hands over it. ‘One of the first three members was a man named Narcissus, a freedman of the emperor Claudius.’