The Last Gospel

by David Gibbins

  ‘I see what you mean about the encrustations of history,’ Costas murmured. He was staring at the gaudy structure in the centre of the rotunda. ‘Is that the tomb?’

  ‘That’s the Holy Sepulchre itself, the Aedicule,’ Helena replied. ‘What you see here was mostly built in the nineteenth century, in place of the structure destroyed in 1009 by the Fatamid caliph al’Hakim when the Muslims ruled Jerusalem. That destruction was the event that precipitated the Crusades, but even before the Crusaders arrived, the Viking Harald Hardrada and his Varangian bodyguard from Constantinople had come here on the orders of the Byzantine emperor, to oversee the rebuilding of the church. But I think you know all about that.’

  ‘I thought we’d left Harald behind in the Yucatán,’ Costas murmured. ‘Is there anywhere he didn’t go?’

  ‘The ancient rock-cut tomb inside the Aedicule was identified by Bishop Makarios in AD 326 as the tomb of Christ,’ Helena continued. ‘You have to imagine this whole scene in front of us as a rocky hillside, half as high as the rotunda is now. Just behind us was a small rise known as Golgotha, meaning the place of the skull, where most believe Jesus was crucified. The hill in front of us had been a quarry, dating maybe as early as the city of David and Solomon, but by the time of Jesus it was a place of burial and probably riddled with rock-cut tombs.’

  ‘How do we know the bishop got the right tomb?’ Costas said.

  ‘We don’t,’ Helena replied. ‘The Gospels only tell us the tomb was hewn out of the living rock, with a stone rolled in front of it. You had to stoop to look in. There was room inside for at least five people, sitting or squatting. The platform for the body was a raised stone burial couch, possibly an acrosolium, a shelf below a shallow arch.’

  ‘All of which could describe a typical tomb of the period,’ Jack said. ‘According to the Gospels, the tomb wasn’t custom-built for Jesus, but was donated by Joseph of Arimathea, a wealthy Jew and member of the Jerusalem council. It was apparently a fresh tomb, and there would have been no further burials, no added niches as you see in so many other rock-cut tombs. It was never used as a family tomb.’

  ‘Unless . . .’ Helena hesitated, then spoke very quietly, almost in a whisper. ‘Unless one other was put there.’

  ‘Who?’ Jack exclaimed.

  ‘A companion,’ she whispered. ‘A female companion.’

  ‘You believe that?’

  Helena raised her hands and pressed the tips of her fingers together briefly, then gazed at the Aedicule. ‘It’s impossible to tell from what’s there now. Constantine the Great’s engineers hacked away most of the surrounding hill to reveal the tomb, to isolate it. By so doing, they actually destroyed much of the tomb itself, the rock-cut chamber, leaving only the burial shelf intact. It was almost as if Constantine’s bishops wanted to remove all possible reason for doubt, any cause for dispute. From then on, the Holy Sepulchre, the identification of the tomb, would be a matter of faith, unassailable. Remember the historical context, the fourth century. When the Church was first becoming formalized, some things that were inconvenient, contradictory, were concealed or destroyed. Other things were created, spirited out of nowhere. Holy relics were discovered. Behind it all lay Constantine the Great and his bishops. Everything had to be set in stone, a version of what went on here in the first century AD that suited the new order, the Church as a political tool. They were editing the past to make a stronger present.’

  ‘And behind Constantine lay a secret body of advisers, guardians of the earliest Church,’ Jack said. ‘That’s one thing we haven’t told you yet.’

  ‘I know,’ Helena replied quietly.

  ‘You know?’

  ‘As soon as you told me what you were seeking, I knew you would come up against them. The concilium.’

  Jack looked at her in astonishment, then nodded slowly. ‘We had an audience with one of them, in Rome two days ago.’

  ‘At the tomb? The other tomb?’

  Jack stared at her again, stunned, then nodded. ‘You know about that too?’

  ‘They’re tight, Jack. There are never any chinks. You need to be incredibly careful. Whoever you saw, he may have told you some truths, but he may not be who you think he was. The concilium has been stalled in the past, but never defeated. They’re like a bad dream, endlessly returning. We should know.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘The memory of that other tomb, the tomb of St Paul in the secret catacomb under St Peter’s in Rome, was not entirely lost. The truth was passed down by those who were there, and reached the kingdom of Aksum, Ethiopia. Remember, we Ethiopians are one of the earliest Christian communities, derived from the first followers of Jesus. There are others like us, on the periphery of the ancient world. The British Church, in existence since the first century AD, since the word of Jesus first reached the shores of Britain. We share the tradition of an emperor and Christ, the British story that an emperor brought Christianity to their shores, ours that an emperor and a king sought the Messiah in the Holy Land, during the time of the Gospels. And we have always been good at keeping secrets. You know we have the Ark of the Covenant, Jack.’

  ‘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 bef
ore, 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.

  He knew what he was looking at even before she raised the blanket. It was the most extraordinary find made when the quarry was excavated. The St Vartan chapel ship graffito. It was a drawing of a ship, an ancient Roman merchantman, with words below. He knelt down, Costas beside him. He could see the lines of the drawing clearly now, crude but bold, the confident strokes of someone who knew what they were depicting, who got the details right even in this place so far from the sea. An experienced seafarer, a pilgrim, one of the first. Jack’s eyes strayed down from the drawing to the words below. Then he remembered. Suddenly his heart began to pound. He slowly read them out:

  ‘Of course,’ he whispered.

  ‘What is it?’ Costas asked.

  ‘It’s the same words as the inscription from California, from Everett’s painting.’ He glanced excitedly at Helena. ‘This is what you recognized in the photograph.’

  ‘That’s when I knew,’ she said. ‘It just had to be from here.’

  ‘Everett must have found this chamber, more than half a century before it was opened up and made into a chapel,’ Jack exclaimed, keeping his voice low. ‘He was here, right here where we are now. These words are the clue in his painting. Somehow, this stone’s the key to the whole thing.’

  ‘What’s your take on that ship, Jack?’ Helena said.

  ‘It’s Roman, certainly,’ Jack murmured, trying to control his excitement, narrowing his eyes. ‘High curving stern, reinforced gunwale, distinctive prow. A sailing ship, not an oared galley. The mast has been stepped down, which was done in harbours. It’s got double steering oars, and what looks like an artemon, a raking mast at the bow. All of that suggests a large ship. My guess is we’re looking at the kind of vessel that would have been seen in the harbour of Caesarea Maritima on the coast of Judaea, one of the grain carriers that stopped off there on the way north from Alexandria in Egypt before heading west for Rome. The kind of ship a Christian pilgrim from Rome might have taken back on its return voyage.’

  ‘Can you date it?’

  ‘I’d have said early Roman rather than late. If I’d seen this anywhere else, I’d have said first century AD. But in this place, the Holy Sepulchre, there’s hardly anything that’s been dated that early.’

  ‘The inscription was clearly done at the same time as the ship, the same width and style of line,’ Helena said. ‘But you’re the expert.’

  ‘Well, it’s Latin, which in this neck of the woods means no earlier than the first century AD, when the Romans arrived in Judaea. Beyond that it’s hard to say. The lettering style certainly could be first century.’

  ‘It’s usually translated as “Lord we shall go”, or “Let us go to the Lord”,’ Helena said. ‘Some scholars have associated it with the first
verse of Psalm 122, one of the Songs of Degrees sung by pilgrims approaching Jerusalem. “I was glad when they said unto me, let us go unto the House of the Lord.”’

  ‘That doesn’t really help us pin the date down,’ Jack murmured. ‘The Psalms were originally Hebrew, and were probably chanted by the earliest Christians, here at the tomb and in other places where they gathered in the first years after the crucifixion. So they could date to any time from the first century onwards.’

  ‘I’ve checked, and these two words domine iumius don’t actually appear together in the Latin of the Vulgate, the Roman Bible of the early medieval period,’ Helena said. ‘If they are a translation of Psalm 122, they could be very early, before the Latin translation that appears in the Vulgate was formalized. They could be a translation done by a very early Christian pilgrim, maybe from Rome.’

  ‘Ships come and go, don’t they?’ Costas said. ‘I mean, it doesn’t have to be a pilgrim arriving here. It could be someone going, leaving Jerusalem. Your first translation, “Lord we shall go”. Maybe it was one of the apostles, practising a bit of Latin before heading out into the big wide world, telling his Lord he was heading off to spread the word.’

  Helena remained silent, but her expression was brimming with anticipation. Jack peered at her. ‘What aren’t you telling us?’ he asked.

  She reached into her robe, and took out a small plastic coin case. She handed it to Jack. ‘Yereva and I found this bronze coin a few days ago. We did a bit of unofficial excavation. There was some loose plaster under the graffito. The coin was embedded in the base of that stone, in a cavity made for it. It’s like those coins I remember you telling me about that the Romans put in the mast steps of ships, to ward off misfortune. A good luck token.’