‘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 time now.’
She led them back the way they had come, and then past the entrance. A few moments later they stood at the top of a flight of steps that dropped down into total darkness. Jack had been here before, and knew that the steps led to the Chapel of St Helena, an ancient cave and quarry cutting five metres below the level of the church. It was a mysterious, labyrinthine place, filled with walled-off spaces and ancient water cisterns, dug deep into the rock. Jack stood alone as Helena and Costas went off to find candles. For a moment all he could hear was a sound like a distant exhalation, as if the echoes of two millennia of prayers were caught in this place, resonating through history. He thought of all the pilgrims, those who had survived uncharted roads fraught with peril and uncertainty, standing at last inside their holy of holies. He hoped that nothing would ever sour the sanctity of this place, where so many had found strength in the events of one extraordinary life two thousand years ago.
Helena and Costas returned, each carrying several lit candles, and they began to descend. On the damp walls Jack saw hundreds of small crosses, carved deep into the rock by medieval pilgrims. He knew that every inch of the bedrock around them had been shaped by human hands, but as the three of them went deeper he felt as if they were walking away from human fabrication, towards the truth of what had actually happened on this bare rock almost two thousand years ago. He stopped to listen, but heard nothing. He glanced at his watch and thought of Morgan. Less than two hours to go now. It was a gamble, but he knew he had to take it, that it could be their final line of defence. The written word. Now they must do all they could to reach their goal. He was only a few steps from the floor of the chapel, and all he could see ahead were deep shadows and pools of orange cast by the candles. Then they were on the stone floor, walking past columns towards a grated steel door on the far side, beside an altar.
‘Through this door is the Chapel of St Vartan,’ Helena murmured, placing two candles in holders on the wall. ‘The ancient quarry cuttings below us were only excavated in the 1970s, and part of the enclosed space was made into a little Armenian chapel. It’s not open to the public. We have to wait for my friend Yereva to bring the key.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘She’d hoped to be here by now, but she works for her patriarch and often has trouble getting away.’
There was a rustling from the stairway they had just come down and a figure came out of the gloom towards them, wearing a brown robe and the distinctive triangular hood of the Armenians. The hood was swept back to reveal a young woman with olive skin and curly dark hair. She held a candle in one hand, and a large black ring with a single key in the other. She went straight towards the steel door, nodding at Helena. ‘These are your friends?’ she asked quietly, her English heavily accented.
‘The ones I told you about. Jack Howard and Costas Kazantzakis.’
‘I had to tell the patriarch I was coming here.’ The woman spoke in a low voice.
‘You were allowed out in the curfew?’ Jack asked.
‘We have our own private passageway.’
‘Yereva is the unofficial custodian of the chapel,’ Helena said. ‘But being a lowly nun, she’s not even allowed to look after the keys. She has to apply for them every time from the patriarch.’
‘Officially, I’ve just come to light the candles and say a prayer,’ Yereva said. ‘But I’m going to return immediately, just in case there are any suspicions. If I’m back with the patriarch, then nobody will have cause to come looking for me. You should be undisturbed until the curfew is over, which will be at least a couple of hours.’
‘You said nothing else to him?’ Helena asked.
‘Nothing else. Nothing different from our usual routine.’
‘You two have met here before?’ Jack asked.
‘Helena will tell you,’ Yereva said. ‘I would love to go in there now with such a famous archaeologist, but I hope we will meet here again when times are easier.’ She turned the key in the lock, and swung the door open. ‘God be with you.’
‘God be with you too, Yereva,’ Helena murmured. ‘And be careful.’
Jack eyed Helena, and saw for the first time that she looked anxious. Yereva pulled up her hood and left quickly, pattering across the stone floor and up the steps. Helena turned to the doorway. ‘Come on. We may not have much time.’ She led them into a gloomy passageway, lighting candles on the wall with her own candle as she went. Jack could see the rough-hewn bedrock around them, the pickmarks of ancient quarrying. The surface seemed old, much older than the stone in the Chapel of St Helena, and it was pitted like corroded metal. Below a modern metal railing on one side was a dark space, the bottom invisible. Jack had a flashback to the cavern under the Palatine Hill, to the Phlegraean Fields and the Sibyl’s cave, other bottomless places where the underworld seemed visible. He cast the thought aside and followed Helena into a chamber to the right, stooping low through the entranceway. In front of them was a section of ancient wall, three courses high, the blocks thickly mortared together, with retouching that looked recently done. Helena lit more candles, and they could see another wall, different in style, with the rough surface of rock cuttings all round. She knelt down beside the wall and placed her candle in front. The farthest block to the left of the middle course was covered with a hanging blanket, and she lifted it and folded it above. Where the blanket had hung was a frame with a glass window covering the block, and behind that Jack could make out what was on the surface of the rock.