Costas whistled. ‘So Herod Agrippa really could have crossed paths with Jesus.’
‘Herod Agrippa would probably have got to know everyone worth knowing in Tiberias, pretty quickly,’ Jack replied. ‘He was a gregarious man, boisterous and charismatic, and would have spoken the local Aramaic as well as Latin and Greek. He would have felt a real affinity with the people here, his own people who he would one day rule. Perhaps he heard tavern talk of some local healer, someone who really did seem a step above the rest. Perhaps he sent word to Rome, to his crippled friend Claudius, who might still have harboured a youthful hope that a cure could be found, maybe somewhere in the east.’
‘So we’ve got Herod Agrippa and Claudius and Jesus of Nazareth here in Galilee at the same time, in AD 23,’ Costas said slowly. ‘A meeting recorded nowhere else, only in the margin of an ancient scroll we found at the end of a lost tunnel three days ago in Herculaneum.’
‘Correct.’
‘Jesus was a carpenter,’ Costas said thoughtfully, stroking the edge of the timber in front of him. ‘That could mean boatbuilder, right?’
Jack nodded. ‘In ancient Greek, as well as in the Semitic languages of the time, Aramaic, old Phoenician, the word we translate as “carpenter” could have a whole range of meanings. Architect, worker in wood, even builder in stone or metal. There would have been plenty of work like that around here. Herod Antipas founded Tiberias in AD 20, and there was a palace to build, the city walls. But you’re right. The staple woodworking trade would have been boatbuilding. Later in the first century AD the historian Josephus wrote about the Sea of Galilee and said there were 230 boats on the lake, and that probably didn’t include the smaller ones. Boats here would have lasted longer than on the Mediterranean, with no saltwater woodworms. But even so there would have been all the usual repair work as well as construction of new vessels. The twenties AD could have been a boom time for this as well, with a lot of scrap wood coming off the building sites at Tiberias. The hull in front of us has some odd-shaped timbers.’
Costas nodded, and put his hand on the edge of the timber in front of him, then looked at Jack. ‘A lifetime ago, I think it was last Tuesday, we were diving on the shipwreck of St Paul, off Sicily. You told me then that the archaeology of early Christianity is incredibly elusive, that hardly anything is known with certainty.’ He paused. ‘Now tell me this. I am touching a boat made by Jesus?’
Jack put his hands on the boat as well, scanned the ancient timbers and then looked over at Costas. ‘In the New Testament, one problem is working out how Jesus regarded himself, whether or not he saw himself as the Christos, the Messiah. When he’s asked, when people wonder who he is, he sometimes replies with a particular turn of phrase. It’s in translation, of course, but I think this gets the gist of it. He says, “It is as you say.”’
‘What are you saying?’
‘It is as you say.’
Costas was silent for a moment, looked at Jack imploringly, then sighed and took his hand off the boat. ‘Archaeologists,’ he grumbled. ‘Can’t get a straight answer out of any of them.’
Jack gave a tired smile, then gently patted his khaki bag. ‘Come on. There’s one final place we need to go.’
Half an hour later they stood on the edge of the mudflats on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee. It was now early evening, and the shadows had begun to steal up behind them and advance across the flats. In the distance the water still sparkled, and Jack remembered the strange pixillation he had sensed in the sky off Sicily the week before, as if his eyes were being drawn to the parts rather than the whole, the view too blinding to comprehend. Now, clutching his bag, he felt the same thrill of anticipation he had felt then, the knowledge that he was on the cusp of another extraordinary revelation, a promise that had brought them to the place where the treasure in Jack’s hands had begun its journey almost two thousand years before. He knew with utter conviction that Claudius had stood at this spot, that he too had gazed at the distant shoreline of the Golan Heights, felt the allure of the east. He wondered whether Claudius had sensed the disquiet too, the lurking danger of this age-old faultline between east and west, known the calm of the sea was an illusion like the eye of a storm.
As Jack watched, the sun set lower behind them and the scene became coherent in his mind again, more like a painting by Turner than by Seurat, the sparkles smudging together into pastel hues of blue and orange. He took a deep breath, motioned to the others, and they began to pick their way on to the mudflats, through a tangle of twigs that had been blown up over the shoreline like tumbleweed.
‘ Ziziphus spina-crista, if I’m not mistaken,’ Jeremy said. ‘Christ-thorn. It has an excellent fruit. You should try it some time.’
‘You sound just like Pliny the Elder,’ Maria said.
They walked on, Jack in the lead, the rest forming a ragged line over the flats. Jeremy splashed through the puddles and caught up to Jack, out of earshot of the others. ‘About Elizabeth, Jack. There’s one thing I didn’t mention.’
Jack kept on walking, but glanced at Jeremy. ‘Go on.’
‘Did you know she had a daughter?’
‘A daughter?’
‘She’s at school in New York, and lives with two of Elizabeth’s old friends, both university professors. Elizabeth didn’t want her brought up in Naples, with her own family. She kept her daughter secret from almost everyone. One of the other superintendency people told me, a man who seems to have been close to Elizabeth. He was very emotional.’
‘Does she know? The daughter, I mean?’
‘Elizabeth’s only been missing for two days, and she kept her daughter completely out of the loop about her life in Naples. But she tried to speak on the phone every few days. She’ll soon know something’s wrong.’
‘Can you put me in touch with this man?’ Jack said. ‘Can I get the daughter’s contact details?’
‘I’m there already, Jack,’ Jeremy said quietly. He passed over a slip of paper. ‘He’ll do it, but he said you should be the one.’
‘Why would he suggest me?’
‘He and Elizabeth had talked about you.’
They walked on in silence. Jack felt as if he were on a treadmill, the ground below his feet moving but the world around him stock-still, as if everything, the play he was in, were suddenly frozen in time, and only the path he could see in front of him had any significance. He began to speak, but caught his breath. When the words came out they sounded as if they came from another person.
‘How old is she?’
‘She’s fifteen, Jack.’
Jack swallowed hard. ‘Thanks for telling me,’ he said quietly. Jeremy nodded, then stopped to join the others who were coming behind. Jack carried on walking, but his mind was fragmented, seeing images of Elizabeth over and over again, willing an anger that would not come, a rage against all the forces that had made this happen, against the man he had nearly killed the day before and all that he stood for. But instead all he could think about was the last fifteen years, and what he had done.
What he had missed.
After ten minutes skirting the shallow mudpools they came to a raised patch about a hundred yards in front of the shoreline. It was a fishermen’s hard, a temporary landing area used during the drought, and was suffused with the odour of fish and old nets. In the centre a large rock lay deeply buried where it had been used as a mooring stone, a frayed old rope emerging from the mud in front and trailing off towards the shore. Jack pulled away some decayed netting and sat down, and the others did the same on two old railway sleepers which had clearly been dragged out for this purpose. Jack laid his bag on his lap, and they all looked out to sea, caught by the utter tranquillity of the scene. They watched as a man and a woman wandered languidly along the shoreline, the sheen of water on the mud making it look as if they were walking on water, like a mirage. Far away they could make out the fishing boats on the lake, the lights on their masts dotting the scene like a carpet of candles.