The Last Gospel

by David Gibbins

  ‘Maybe it was like the eruption of Vesuvius for the Sibyl at Cumae,’ Costas said. ‘Fire and ash foredooming, all that. The end of their time.’

  ‘And then by sheer chance the tomb was found again, the sacred gospel was removed, and the cycle of guardianship was renewed,’ Jack murmured.

  ‘The strong Huguenot family tradition counts in our favour again,’ Jeremy said. ‘There’s no reference to relics in any of the later wills, but the power of that original bequest in Deverette’s will would have held sway through the generations. And there’s something else, a real clincher. In the mid-nineteenth century, Deverette’s great-grandson John Everett was associated with a secretive Victorian society called the New Pelagians, who claimed to follow the teaching of the rebel British monk Pelagius. They believed they were the true inheritors of the earliest Christian tradition in Britain.’

  ‘Claudius?’ Jack murmured. ‘Can we really trace all this back to him?’

  ‘To one he met in Judaea,’ Costas murmured.

  Jeremy carried on. ‘The Everetts continued to be prominent in the City of London in the nineteenth century, always living and working close to St Lawrence Jewry and the Guildhall. John Everett the Pelagian was a Councillor of the Corporation of London, and a freedman of the City. His son Samuel was master of the Carpenters’ Company. But then something odd happens. Samuel’s eldest son, Lawrence Everett, was an architect like his father. But almost immediately after his father died in 1912, he closed his business in Lawrence Lane, left his family and disappeared. You can read too much into it, but it’s as if Lawrence Everett was the last of the guardians and broke the succession, taking the treasure away to a new sanctuary before hell was unleashed again during the London Blitz.’

  ‘Any idea where he went?’ Jack said.

  ‘Immigration records, passenger manifests. A lot of stuff to research. I’ve got one promising lead, though.’

  ‘You always do,’ Jack said. ‘You’re becoming indispensable, you know.’

  ‘I might be able to make some headway back at the National Archives in Kew. It might take me another day.’

  ‘Let’s get on with it then.’

  Five minutes later they stood under the entrance to St Paul’s Cathedral, looking out through the sweeping curtains of rain and seeking a break in the deluge. Jack felt as if he were on an island, and the solidity of the cathedral with the veiled miasma outside seemed to mirror his state of mind. The astonishing revelations of the last hours had taken the quest forward by leaps and bounds, made it seem as real as the structure above them, yet their goal still seemed like an unseen beacon somewhere out beyond the rain, down some dark alley they might never find. Jack had a sudden, surreal flashback to the lost library in Herculaneum, the image seeming to concertina into a succession of chambers, the doors open as far as he could see but the goal out of sight in the distance. He knew their only hope now lay with Jeremy, that some revelation in the archives would push them towards that last door, to the place Claudius had wanted them to find.

  ‘Don’t tell me we’re going on the Tube, Jack,’ Costas croaked. ‘You know I’m never going underground again.’

  ‘As it happens, I’ve always wanted to see the Great Conduit,’ Jack replied, winking at Jeremy. ‘An underground channel built in the thirteenth century to bring fresh water from the Tyburn stream, about three kilometres west of here. The stone cisterns sound impressive, but Roman aqueduct engineers a thousand years earlier would have been appalled. It leaked, and the gravity flow was all wrong. A great example of the march of progress, marching backwards. Well worth a visit.’

  ‘No,’ Costas said flatly. ‘No way. You go. And I’m only doing taxis from now on.’

  Jack grinned, then saw a respite in the drizzle and stepped out from the cathedral entrance. At that moment a young man in a City suit disengaged himself from a group of people also sheltering under the entrance and walked in front of Jack, blocking his way. ‘Dr Howard?’ he said intently. Jack stepped back in alarm. The man handed him a slip of paper. ‘Tomorrow, eleven a.m. Your lives may depend on it.’ He moved off and quickly trotted down the steps, disappearing into the throng of morning commuters making their way into the City.

  Jack quickly stepped back under the doorway and read the note, then passed it to Jeremy. ‘Did you recognize him?’ Jack asked.

  ‘I’m not sure.’ Jeremy anxiously scanned the other people on the steps. ‘It’s not good news if you’ve been tracked here, Jack.’

  ‘I know.’

  Jeremy glanced at the piece of paper, read the typed words and pursed his lips. ‘Right in the heart of things.’ He passed it back to Jack. ‘You going?’

  ‘I don’t think we have any choice.’

  ‘I’d go with you, but I have to stay and find out what I can about Everett.’

  ‘I agree,’ Jack said quietly.

  ‘Take Costas with you. You might need a bodyguard.’

  Jack looked at the form slumped miserably against the stone column beside them, dripping and sneezing. He walked over, took Costas by the shoulder and steered him towards the steps. The rain had begun again in earnest, and Costas looked as if he were about to dissolve. ‘Come on,’ Jack said, looking up for a moment and letting the rainwater stream over his face. ‘I think we might just be able to do something about that sniffle of yours.’

  19

  At five minutes to eleven the next morning Jack led Costas across the Piazza San Pietro in the Vatican, heading towards the Ufficio Scavi, the office of the archaeological excavations, on the south side of the basilica. They had flown in that morning from England on the IMU Embraer, arriving at Leonardo da Vinci airport away from public scrutiny, and Jack felt sure they were not being followed. The vast scale of the piazza and the surrounding colonnade seemed to dwarf the milling crowd of tourists and pilgrims, and they passed through as inconspicuously as they could. As they came closer to the Ufficio, Jack began to scan the faces around them, looking for some sign, some recognition. He had no idea what to expect. Then out of nowhere a young man was walking beside him, dressed casually in jeans and an open-necked shirt and wearing sunglasses. ‘Dr Howard?’ the man said. Jack looked at him, and nodded. ‘Please follow me.’ Jack glanced at Costas, and they followed the man as he strode ahead. After passing the Ufficio, he approached the Swiss Guard at the entrance to the Arco delle Campane, and flashed his identity card. ‘These are my two guests,’ he said in Italian. ‘A private tour.’ The guard nodded, and lifted up his automatic rifle to let them pass. They crossed a small piazza, then entered the south annex of the Grottoes beneath the Basilica. At the third room, the young man motioned for them to wait, and then walked over to a locked door. ‘We will not be disturbed,’ he said in English. ‘The Ufficio has closed this part of the Grottoes for more excavation work. Wait here.’ He produced a set of keys and opened the door, slipping through and leaving Jack and Costas alone, suddenly hemmed in by silence and the old walls.

  ‘Any idea what’s going on?’ Costas said quietly, his voice bunged up by his cold. ‘Any idea where we are?’

  ‘First question, your guess is as good as mine. Second, these walls are virtually all that’s left of the early basilica, the one built here by the emperor Constantine the Great after he’d converted to Christianity in the early fourth century. Before that, this was the site of a Roman circus, a racetrack. And where our guide has disappeared is the entrance to the necropolis, a street of rock-cut mausolea of the first century AD, discovered when archaeological excavations began here in the 1940s. Their big find was the tomb of St Peter, ahead of us under the high altar.’

  The door swung open and the young man reappeared. He handed Jack and Costas each an unlit candle, and flicked a lighter over the wicks. ‘Where you see the candle on the floor, go right, but extinguish it and take it with you,’ he said quietly. ‘There are twelve steps down, then you’ll see another candle through another door. Pass through that door, and then close it behind you. I’ll wait for you here
. Go.’

  Costas looked pained. ‘We’re going underground again, Jack.’

  ‘It’s just your kind of thing. A city of the dead.’

  ‘Great.’

  Jack paused, looked at the young man for a moment, decided not to speak, then nodded and walked towards the door, Costas following. They went through, and immediately the door was shut behind them. It was pitch dark except for the candles they were carrying and a faint glow somewhere ahead. It had been hot and dry outside, but the air was cool and damp as they descended, becoming musty. Jack led, carefully feeling his way down the steps until he reached a rough stone floor. They could see that the glow ahead of them was a candle on the floor. After reaching it Jack did as instructed, snuffing it out with his fingers and picking it up, then turning right and going down another flight of steps into a rock-cut chamber, evidently an ancient mausoleum long since cleared of its contents. At the bottom to the left was a stone door opened inwards in the rock, and through it they could see another distant pool of candlelight, just as before. They passed through, and Jack pushed the door back until it was shut, seamlessly fitting into the rock as if it were a secret entranceway.

  ‘Incredible,’ he murmured, looking around in the flickering candlelight, making out the niches and decorations on the walls. ‘It’s a catacomb. The mausolea we’ve just come through were originally above ground in the Roman period, a street of tombs. But this deeper part must always have been subterranean, cut into the living rock. The Vatican has never revealed this before.’

  ‘Makes you wonder what else they haven’t revealed,’ Costas murmured.

  Jack stepped forward, sensing images on either side of him, inscriptions, paintings. He stopped at one, and held the candle forward. ‘Amazing,’ he whispered. ‘It’s intact. The catacombs are intact, the burials are still here.’

  ‘Just what I wanted to know,’ Costas moaned.

  ‘They’re sealed up, plastered over. Look, this inscription’s legible. In Pace.’ Jack faltered. ‘It’s early Christian, very early. It dates well before the time of Constantine the Great. A secret burial place, used when the Christians in Rome were outlawed, persecuted. This is a fantastic find. I can’t see why they haven’t made it public.’

  ‘Maybe something to do with this.’ Costas was ahead now, not far from the candle on the floor, and Jack cautiously followed. ‘It’s a raised area, covered with pottery tiles,’ Costas said. He made his way along the left side of the passageway and squatted down beside the candle.

  ‘It’s a tomb,’ Jack said quietly. ‘You sometimes get them in the floor of catacombs, as well as along the sides. Sometimes the floor tombs were the more important ones.’

  ‘Jack, I might be hallucinating. That déjà vu thing you were on about under the Palatine Hill. Maybe a delayed nitrogen effect.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘That tile. Below the candle. There’s an inscription scratched on it. Either I’m seeing things, or it’s identical to a word we’ve come across before.’

  Jack edged up behind Costas. There were decorative scratchings around the edge of the tile, like a wreath of vine tendrils. In the centre he saw what had sent a tremor through Costas. It was a name, unmistakable, a name they had seen scratched on pottery like this before, on an ancient shipwreck hundreds of miles away, lost for almost two millennia beneath the Mediterranean Sea. The name of a man, written in Latin.

  PAVLVS.

  Could it be? Jack looked around, saw the widening of the passage, the other tombs crowding in on this spot but not built over it, as if their occupants had wanted to be close to it, in reverence. He saw Christian symbols everywhere, a dove on the wall beside him, a fish, the Christian formula in inscriptions again and again, in pace. And then as Costas moved his candle over the tile he saw it faintly scratched beside the name, the chi-rho symbol. The sign of Christ.

  ‘The tomb of St Paul,’ he whispered incredulously, laying his hand on a tile. ‘St Peter and St Paul, interred in the same place, ad catacumbus, just as tradition says.’

  ‘It is so.’

  Jack drew back, startled. The voice came from a shadowy niche opposite them, in the wall beyond the head of the tomb. He could just make out a black cassock over legs, but not the upper body. The voice was authoritative, with an edge to it, the English slightly accented, possibly east European. ‘Do not attempt to approach me. Please extinguish your candles. Sit on the stone bench behind you.’ Jack paused for a second, then nodded at Costas, and they did as instructed. The only source of light now was the candle on the tomb, and everything else was reduced to flickering shadow and darkness. The other figure shifted slightly, and they could just make out a hooded head, hands placed on knees. ‘I have summoned you here today in the greatest secrecy. I wanted you to see what you have just seen.’

  ‘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 wher
e 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.’