The Last Gospel

by David Gibbins

  ‘It was all I could find.’ Claudius took a gulp of wine and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘I’d used up all my own ink on the voyage out.’

  ‘You wrote this?’

  ‘I supplied the paper, and that concoction that passes as ink.’

  Pliny unrolled the papyrus and flattened it on a cloth he had laid over the sticky mess on the table. The papyrus was covered with fine writing, neither Greek nor Latin, lines of singular flowing artistry, composed with more care than would normally be the case for one accustomed to writing often. ‘The Nazarene?’

  Claudius twitched. ‘At the end of our meeting, on the lake shore that night. He wanted me to take this away and keep it safely until the time was right. You read Aramaic?’

  ‘Of course. You have expertly taught me the Phoenician language, and I believe they are similar.’

  Pliny scanned the writing. At the bottom was a name. He read the few lines directly above it, looked up, then read them again. For a moment there was silence, and utter stillness in the room. Claudius watched him intently, his lower lip trembling. A waft of warm air from outside the balcony brought with it a sharp reek of sulphur, and from somewhere inland came a distant sound like waves along the seashore. Claudius kept his eyes on Pliny, who put down the scroll and raised his hands together, pensively.

  ‘Well?’ Claudius said.

  Pliny looked at him, and spoke carefully. ‘I am a military man, and an encyclopedist. I record facts, things I have seen with my own eyes or had recounted to me on good authority. I can see that this document has the authority of the man who wrote it, and who signed his name on it.’

  ‘Put it away,’ Claudius said, reaching out and grasping Pliny’s wrist. ‘Keep it safely, the safest place you can find. But transcribe those final lines into your Natural History. Now is the time.’

  ‘You have made copies?’

  Claudius looked at Pliny, then at the scroll, and suddenly his hand began shaking. ‘Look at me. The palsy. I can’t even write my own name. And for this I don’t trust a copyist, not even Narcissus.’ He got up, picked up the scroll and went over to a dark recess beside the bookcase filled with papyrus sheets and old wax tablets, then knelt down awkwardly with his back to Pliny. He fumbled around for a few moments, got up again and turned round, a cylindrical stone container in his hands. ‘These jars came from Saïs in Egypt, you know,’ he said. ‘Calpurnius Piso stole them from the Temple of Neith when he looted the place. Apparently they were filled with ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic scrolls, but he burned them all. The old fool.’ He put the jar down, then picked up a bronze-handled dish filled with a black substance and held it over a candle, his hands unusually steady. The air filled with a rich aromatic smell, briefly disguising the sulphur. He put the dish down again, picked up a wooden spatula and smeared the resin around the lid of the container, let it cool for a moment, and then handed the cylinder to Pliny. ‘There you go. It is sealed, as I was instructed in the leaves, according to divine augury.’

  ‘This document,’ Pliny persisted. ‘Why so urgent?’

  ‘It is because what he predicted has come to pass.’ Claudius shuddered again, ostentatiously clutching his hand as if to stop it from shaking. He fixed Pliny with an intense stare. ‘The Nazarene knew the power of the written word. But he said he would never write again. He said that one day his word would come to be seen as a kind of holy utterance. He said that his followers would preach his word like a divine mantra, but that time would distort it and some would seek to use their version of it for their own ends, to further themselves in the world of men. He was surrounded by illiterates in Nazareth. He wanted a man of letters to have his written word.’

  ‘The written words of a prophet,’ Pliny murmured. ‘That’s the last thing a priesthood usually wants. It does them out of a job.’

  ‘It’s why the r-ridiculous Sibyl speaks in r-riddles,’ Claudius said, flustered. ‘Only the soothsayers can interpret it. What nonsense.’

  ‘But why me?’ Pliny insisted.

  ‘Because I can’t publish it. I’m supposed to have died a quarter of a century ago, remember? But now that your Natural History is nearly finished, it’s perfect. You have the authority. People will read you far and wide. Your work is one of the greatest ever written, and will far outlast Rome. Immortal fame will await those whose deeds are recorded by you.’

  ‘You flatter me, Princeps.’ Pliny bowed, visibly pleased. ‘But I still don’t fully understand.’

  ‘The Nazarene said that his word would first need others to preach it. But there would come a time when the people would be ready to receive his word directly, when there would be enough converts for the word to be spread from one to the other, when they could dispense with teachers. He said that time would come within my lifetime. He said I would know when.’

  ‘A concilium,’ Pliny murmured. ‘They are forming a concilium, a priesthood. That’s what he was warning about.’

  ‘In the Phlegraean Fields. They use that very word. Concilium. How do you know?’

  ‘Because I hear it among my sailors at Misenum.’

  ‘I told you about those in the Phlegraean Fields, the followers of Christos,’ Claudius continued. ‘More and more are going into the fold, the concilium. They are talking about a kyriakum, a house of the Lord. There is already dissent, there are already factions. Some say Jesus said this, some that. They are speaking in riddles. It is becoming sophistry, like Philodemus. And there are men who call themselves fathers, patres.’

  ‘Priests,’ Pliny murmured. ‘Men who would rather nobody knew what we now know.’

  ‘While I was still emperor in Rome, one came here, a Jewish apostolos from Tarsus named Paul. I was in disguise, making one of my visits to the Sibyl, and I heard him speak. He found followers in the Phlegraean Fields, many who are still there today. Yet none of these people knew the Nazarene, not even Paul, none of them touched him as I did. To them the man I knew was already some kind of god.’ Claudius paused, then looked intently at Pliny. ‘This scroll must be preserved. It will be your ultimate authority, for what you write in the Natural History.’

  ‘I will keep it safe.’

  ‘It’s worse.’ Claudius suddenly looked down in despair. ‘The poppy makes me talk, makes my mind wander, makes me say things I can never remember afterwards. They know who I am. Every time I go now they seem to appear out of the mist, reaching out for me.’

  ‘You should be more careful, Princeps,’ Pliny murmured.

  ‘They’ll come here. All my life’s work, all my manuscripts. They’ll destroy everything. That’s why I’ve got to give it to you. I don’t trust myself.’

  Pliny thought for a moment, then took the scroll of the Natural History he had been writing on and placed it on the bookshelf. ‘I will return for this tomorrow. It will be safe here for one night, and I will add more to it about Judaea, anything more you can tell me. I will return. There is someone else I must visit here tomorrow evening. Maybe even tonight. I have been starved of her for too long. You will join me?’

  ‘I sometimes avail myself. But these days I think more and more of my dear Calpurnia. Such pleasures are in the past for me, Pliny.’

  ‘Tonight I will take my fast galley straight to Rome, I’ll be back here by the morning. After I see you again, I will make the same additions into my master version, then send it to the scribes in Rome for copying,’ he muttered, half to himself. ‘The Natural History will be complete at last. The final edition. Unless you can tell me anything more about Britannia, that is.’ He thought for a moment, drumming his fingers on the table, then tapped the cylinder Claudius had given him. ‘And I think I know just the place for this.’ He tucked it in a pouch under his toga, then took down the Natural History scroll on Judaea from the shelf, placed it on the table, picked up the stylus and wrote a few lines, paused for a moment, smudged the lines out with his finger, then made a note in the margin. Claudius watched, and grunted his approval. Pliny let the two ends of the scroll r
oll loosely together and replaced it quickly on the shelf, suddenly remembering the time and his visit to the woman that night. At that moment there was a shuffling sound at the entranceway, something that might have been a knock, and a stooped old man appeared, dressed in a simple tunic and carrying two woollen cloaks.

  ‘Ah, Narcissus,’ Claudius said. ‘I am ready.’

  ‘You go to the Sibyl?’ Pliny asked.

  ‘One last time. I promise.’

  ‘Then one last thing, Princeps.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I do this for you as a friend, and as a fellow historian. It is my job to present the facts as I know them, and to hold nothing back.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘You? Why is this so important to you? This Nazarene?’

  ‘I too am loyal to my friends. You know that. And he was one of them.’

  ‘My sailors speak of a Kingdom of Heaven on earth, that people with goodness and compassion can find it. Do you believe in this thing?’

  Claudius started to speak, hesitated, then looked Pliny full in the face, his eyes moist and suddenly etched with his years. He reached out and touched his friend’s arm, then gave a small smile. ‘My dear Pliny. You forget yourself. I’m a god, remember? Gods have no need of heaven.’

  Pliny smiled back, and bowed. ‘Princeps.’

  4

  Present day

  Jack and Costas hung weightless in the water eight metres below the Zodiac boat off south-east Sicily, their equipment reflecting the sunlight that shone as far down as the cliff base thirty metres below. Jack was floating a few metres away from the shotline, maintaining perfect buoyancy with his breathing and watching the extraordinary scene overhead. The Lynx helicopter from Seaquest II had arrived a few minutes before, and its deflected propwash created a perfect halo around the silhouette of the boat. Through the tunnel of calm in the middle, Jack could see the wavering forms of the two replacement divers who had been winched down to provide safety backup should anything go wrong. He could feel the vibration, the drumming of the propwash on the water, but the roaring of the engines was muffled by his helmet and communication headset. He had been listening to Costas giving instructions to the departing divers, a complex checklist that seemed to run through the entire IMU equipment store.

  ‘Okay, Jack,’ Costas said. ‘Andy says we’re good to go. I just wanted to get the logistics people moving on Seaquest II in case it’s showtime.’

  His voice sounded oddly metallic through the intercom, a result of the modulator designed to counter the effects on the voice of helium in the gas mix. Jack tilted upright and finned back towards the shotline. The twin corrugated hoses of his regulator made him feel like a diver of Cousteau’s day, but the similarity ended there. As he approached Costas he cast a critical eye over the yellow console on his friend’s back, its contoured shell containing the closed-circuit rebreather with the cylinders of oxygen and trimix they needed for the dive. The corrugated hoses led to a helmet and full-face mask, allowing them to breathe and talk without the encumbrance of a mouthpiece.

  ‘Remember my briefing,’ Costas said. ‘Lights off, unless we find something.’

  Jack nodded. With their eyes accustomed to the gloom, he knew they would have a greater range of vision for spotting a wreck mound than with the limited cone of light from a headlamp. ‘Dive profile?’ he asked.

  ‘Maximum depth eighty metres, maximum bottom time twenty-five minutes. We can go deeper, but I don’t want to risk it until Seaquest II’s on station and the recompression chamber’s fired up. And remember your bailout.’ He pointed to the octopus regulator that could be fed into the helmet if the rebreather malfunctioned, bypassing the counterlung and tapping gas directly from the manifold on the cylinders.

  ‘Roger that. You’re the divemaster.’

  ‘I wish you’d remember that the next time you see treasure glinting at the bottom of the abyss. Or inside an iceberg.’ Costas pressed a control on his dive computer and then peered at Jack through his visor. ‘Just one thing before we go.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘You said anything that touches on the life of Jesus is like gold dust. People must have been searching for the shipwreck of St Paul since diving began, even before Cousteau. It’s one of the biggest prizes in archaeology. Why us?’

  ‘That’s what you said about Atlantis. A few lucky breaks and a little lateral thinking. That’s all I’ve ever needed.’

  ‘And a little help from your friends.’

  ‘And a little help from my friends.’ Jack grasped the dump valve on his buoyancy jacket. ‘Good to go?’

  ‘Good to go.’

  Seconds later, Costas was hurtling down into the depths, approaching the dive in his customary way as if he were going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. Jack followed more gracefully, his arms and legs outstretched like a skydiver, exhilarated by the weightlessness and the panorama that was opening out below them, listening to the sound of his own breathing. It was exactly as he remembered it, every gully and ridge of the cliff base etched on his mind from twenty years before, from hours spent measuring and recording, poring over the wreck plan and working out where to excavate next. Costas was right about the technology. Underwater archaeology had advanced leaps and bounds in the past two decades, as if physics had progressed from Marie Curie to particle accelerators in a mere generation. Back then, measurements had been taken painstakingly by hand; now it was laser rangefinders and digital photogrammetry, using remote-operated vehicles rather than divers. What had taken months could now be achieved in a matter of days. Even the discomforts of diving were greatly reduced, the E-suits insulating them from the temperature drop at the thermocline. Yet with new diving technology greater depths beckoned, depths that brought new boundaries, new thresholds of danger. The cost was still there, the risks even greater. Jack was drawn on, always pushing the limits of exploration, but before committing others to follow in his wake he needed to be certain that the prize was worth it.

  Directly below, he saw where Pete and Andy had anchored the shotline in the gully where he had found the sounding lead, and from there he saw a wavering line encrusted with algae extending down the slope into the depths. He stared at it, suddenly feeling in a time warp. It was the line he had paid out on his final dive all those years ago, still lying exactly where he had left it, as if the site had been waiting for him, unfinished. Costas had seen it too, and somehow brought himself to a halt before augering into the sea bed. He waited for Jack to reach him, then together they finned slowly side by side over the line until they reached the last plateau, fifty metres deep, the furthest point where amphoras had tumbled from the Roman shipwreck. As they swam over the plateau, a bar-like shape appeared below them in the silt, about two metres long with a rectangular aperture just visible in the centre.

  ‘My old friend.’ Jack tweaked the control on the side of his helmet to get his voice to sound normal. ‘It’s the lead Roman anchor shank I saw on my final dive, and there should be another identical one about fifty metres ahead, on the edge of the plateau. It’s exactly what you’d expect to see from a ship using two anchors to hold offshore, one paid out behind the other. We can use them to take a compass bearing.’

  ‘Roger that.’

  They swam on over the line and soon saw the second shank just as Jack remembered it, wedged in a cleft above a dropoff. From there he could see the line tapering off, its end hanging over a ridge, the deepest he had dared to go on his final dive twenty years before. It was like the end of divers’ safety lines he had followed inside caves, haunting relics of extraordinary human endeavour that beckoned others to surpass them. Without pausing they passed beyond, and dropped down to the base of the rocky cliff where the sea bed became a featureless desert of sand. On the edge Jack saw a belt of corroded machine-gun cartridges, draped over a clip of larger cannon rounds from an anti-aircraft gun. He remembered seeing them before, relics of the Second World War. Costas slowed down, and reached for the dump valve on his buoy
ancy compensator.

  ‘Don’t even think about it,’ Jack said.

  ‘Just looking,’ Costas said hopefully, then finned away. Beyond them the sand seemed to extend to infinity, a blue-grey desert with no visible horizon. About fifty metres on they swam over a small outcrop of rock, then saw an undulation where the sand rose in a low dune. As they approached it looked more and more unnatural, like some sea creature lurking beneath the sediment, the undulation extending ten metres or more in either direction from a central hump with another ridge running at ninety degrees through it. Costas gave an audible intake of breath. ‘My God, Jack. It’s an aircraft!’

  ‘I was wondering if we’d see one of these,’ Jack murmured. ‘It’s an assault glider, a British Horsa. Look, you can see where the high wings have collapsed over the fuselage. That night in 1943 when the SAS dropped in on the Italians, the British also sent in an airlanding brigade. It was the only major glitch in the whole Sicily invasion, and it was a pretty horrific one. The gliders were released too far offshore against a headwind, and dozens of them never made it. Hundreds of guys drowned. There are going to be bodies in there.’

  ‘That’s one place I definitely don’t want to go,’ Costas said quietly.

  ‘Topside you’d sometimes believe old wars never happened,’ Jack said. ‘Everything’s cleaned up and sanitized, but underwater it’s all here, just below the surface. It’s haunting.’

  ‘Depth seventy-five metres.’ Costas was concentrating hard on his computer, as they finned over the last of the shadowy form in the sand. ‘Not looking too good on the time front, Jack. Ten minutes max, unless we really want to stretch the envelope.’

  ‘Roger that.’

  ‘I take it we’re not looking for a giant cross sticking out of the sea bed.’