‘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, trying to keep his elbows from scraping on the rock. There was now no light at all visible from the entrance behind his feet. He paused, sweeping his headlamp around the walls. To his right was masonry, clearly a continuation of the first-century wall with the graffito, at right angles to it. To his left and above him was bedrock, scored and cut by quarry marks, so old that they seemed almost part of the natural geology, as if the ancient imprint of man had become just another process of erosion and transformation that had gone into shaping this place.
Ahead of him the tunnel ended abruptly where Helena had spotted the quarry wall, and he could see where it joined a space to the right. He pushed his bag into the corner and angled his body around, squeezing into the opening. It was tight, and the sharp edges of the rock ripped his shirt. He pulled himself through, wincing where the rock caught him. He was in a larger space now, enough to crouch on his hands and knees. To his right, the masonry wall of the entrance tunnel continued at right angles, at least five courses of large stone blocks. His face was only inches from it, and he saw that it was the same stone as the wall outside with the ship graffito, only here the surface was unworn, fresh. He realized that the crawlspace had taken him along the sides of a rectilinear structure built up against the quarry face, and that he was now behind it, inside a cavity that the structure concealed. He turned to the left, towards the quarry face. The rest of the stone was natural, bedrock. Above him were large rectilinear cuttings, where blocks had been chiselled out. Below that he saw a narrow opening into a rock-cut chamber, its ceiling and the upper few feet of the sides visible. Inside he could see that it was filled with water, a black pool that glistened in his headlamp. He crawled over to the edge and peered in. It looked bottomless, like the cistern he had seen beyond the railing on the way into the Chapel of St Vartan.
There was just enough room to maneouvre, and he struggled on to his back, kicking off his boots and stripping off his clothes. He crawled back to the edge of the pool, his headlamp still on, and slipped into the water. It was icy cold, but felt instantly cleansing. For a moment he floated motionless on the surface, face down, eyes shut. Then he looked. Without a mask the image was blurry, and his eyes smarted with the cold. But the water was crystal clear, and he could see the beam from his headlamp dancing off rock, revealing walls and corners. He was floating above a deep cutting, at least four metres deep, rectilinear. He twisted sideways for more air, then put his face under again. As the beam swept down he saw a wide opening in the side of the chamber, cut into the rock in the direction of the quarry face. The opening was arched above and flat below, forming a shelf, wide enough for two to lie side by side. He ducked his head down and stared into the cutting, but was blinded by a dazzling sheen of light that reflected off the polished surface of the shelf. He remained there, staring into the speckly radiance, registering nothing, his mind frozen.