by J. R. Rain
“‘I believe Constantine held the Spear of Destiny,’” she read. “‘His tomb was never found, neither was the Lance. A theory has been suggested to me that later emperors held it, but if that was the case, then where is the Lance? I believe it can only be with Constantine. Surely, no Christian emperor would remove the Lance from the hand of the man who introduced Christianity to the civilized world? It would be utter madness to think so.
“‘I am therefore determined to locate the tomb of Constantine, as I am sure it will also contain the Holy Lance. To that end, I am going to request funding for a dig in Nicomedia, the place where Constantine died.
“‘Many sources state that Constantine was buried in the Church of the Holy Apostles, which he had built with that very purpose in mind, but though many have looked, the tomb has never been found. There have been extensive searches, both in modern times as in the times of the Crusades. Later, the tomb of Saint Justinian the Great—also in the Church of the Holy Apostles—was ransacked by Venetian Crusaders and all valuables were removed from the Church. The thugs even dug up the floor of the church in the hope of finding plunder hidden from them by their fellow followers in Christ of the East.’
“It, therefore, stands to reason that Constantine, born two centuries earlier—and due to the extensive ransacking of the Church of the Holy Apostles—was never buried there and can only be buried at Nicomedia; after all, it is there where his old villa used to be and I am positive I will find it...’”
Hannah sighed, shutting the journal. It was, she informed me, the last page her father had written in the journal. She encouraged me to sleep while she picked up a local newspaper. An English language bulletin had been made available for the guests of the hotel. To my aching body’s chagrin, she woke me some time later upon stumbling across a small article with a printed photograph on the back page.
“Allan?”
My initial response was a low growl.
“Allan, wake up. I’ve found him.”
“Found whom?” I grumbled, but opened my eyes.
“My father... this article says that Dr. Gibson is leading a new excavation outside Istanbul,” she said. “In Nicomedia, just as Father had said in his journal!”
I sat up, grimacing after momentarily forgetting my wounds. She brought the newspaper over to me, and I glanced at the headline. This was a lot to take in upon awakening from a not-so-surprisingly deep nap.
“It says Dr. Gibson,” I said, making out the words. Had Hannah lost her senses? “And that he’s a fellow at Cambridge. Last I checked, Dr. Gibson is not the same as Dr. Byrd.”
Hannah tapped the picture irritably. “It’s a fake name, dummy. The man they say is Dr. Gibson is, in fact, my father.”
Oh? I hadn’t been given a picture of her father, but the man in the photograph did bear a striking resemblance to the woman hovering before me. I yawned and lay back. “I guess we’ll have to go and break him out then.”
“Break him out? Why, let’s go help with his search!”
“Except your father is searching in the wrong spot, dear girl.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I am a military historian and your father is not.”
I sat up again, prepared for Hannah’s defensive look. And there it was, fierce as ever.
“Hear me out,” I said. “The city of Nicomedia was thoroughly destroyed in an earthquake and heavily rebuilt—this happened even before being renovated and expanded upon by Justinian, centuries later. Nicomedia then served as a military center for the Roman Empire and was later sacked by several Crusader armies—and even by the Turks.”
I paused to grab a painful breath before continuing. “I repeat: it served as a military center. No one, but no one, keeps anything of value near an army. Between the time of the Roman Republic and up through the Middle Ages, most common soldiers were the dregs of society, even if they were conscripted. They were the poor, the dispossessed, thieves, murderers, fortune seekers. If you gather armies in a place, you do not keep your most holy and most valuable relics there, unless it’s in a grand and safe building. And there are no such fortified buildings in Nicomedia.”
“Besides,” I added as an afterthought, “why keep such a powerful relic outside the city walls? Surely it would have been safer inside the heavily guarded walls of the greatest city on earth? Constantinople was such a city fifteen hundred years ago.”
“But why would my father think the Lance is in Nicomedia?” she asked.
I considered her question for a moment. “Because common theory suggests that the spear is not in the Church of the Holy Apostles, which is now the Fatih Mosque. Nicomedia is an obvious alternative, but, without a doubt, he’s wasting his time searching for it there.”
“Well, then,” she said, frowning, “let’s go get my father and you can explain to him how a lifetime of research has led him to the wrong place.”
“Not yet,” I replied. “First, I want to finish my nap.”
***
It was late afternoon, and, although I was stiff and sore, I accompanied Hannah into the city.
Although I’d known many Turks in my day, visiting the ancient city of Istanbul was a first for me, and it was an eye-opener. The streets smelled of spices and herbs and bustled with life. I breathed it all on in, soaked it in, too. Strange voices surrounded us everywhere, and seemed a pastiche of Turkish and Arabic, both spoken too fast for me to follow. Children were everywhere, and so were scarfed women and women in burqas. Cars flashed past, some very expensive. Domes of mosques reflected the sun, and minarets stabbed at the heavens. Apartments rose up on all corners, many only half-finished. Surely Istanbul was a booming city, as well as an ancient one.
Hannah seemed awestruck as well. For all her implied worldliness, she was still an English girl. Before our adventure, she’d told me the furthest she had ventured outside of England was Dublin, where she had attended lectures at Trinity College.
We walked through an old residential district that reminded me of Prague, and on through a garment district populated solely by precariously-leaning wooden buildings. We passed churches and mosques, but ever dominating the skyline was the Haya Sophia—the Church of the Holy Wisdom, which had long since been turned into a mosque. The call to prayer echoed around us just after the bells of a local mosque had struck five o’clock.
We found a small cafe and sat outside, where we shared a kumpir, a Turkish baked potato dish with couscous, and sipped on raisin wine that was strong enough for me to temporarily forget the pain my leg, which was saying something. Afterward, we walked deeper into the city, and when we reached the Fatih Mosque, the worshippers were just leaving the building after the final prayer of the day. I scanned the perimeter from the side of the gate, feeling vulnerable. When the last visitor disappeared into the streets, I took hold of Hannah’s hand and pulled her through the open gate, and into the shadows along the north side of the great mosque. There, we followed the line of the impressive building. Created in the style of the old Eastern Roman basilica, it was surrounded by prayer rooms and madrassas. Two minarets hovered above the grounds, and behind the mosque were small, domed, octagonal buildings. These were the small mausoleums of the Ottomans, if my memory served me.
It had better serve me well...
I was particularly interested in one türbe, or tomb, close to the actual mosque. I knew it to be the tomb of Mehmed the Second, the sultan who had finally breached the walls of Constantinople. It was on his orders that the Fatih Mosque was built over the ruins of Justinian’s church, which, in turn, had been built over Constantine’s Church of the Holy Apostles. If Mehmed had built a holy place on top of a holy place built on top of a holy place, then it stood to reason that his tomb would be built over the ransacked tomb of Justinian, and, further, it stood to reason that Justinian had built his own tomb over the lost tomb of Constantine.
Or so I hoped.
Unsurprisingly, the popular tomb of Mehmed the Second was locked. I had prepared for
this and removed a lock-pick kit from inside my jacket. I hadn’t used it much since my knockabout days, back when I couldn’t decide to be a man of honor, or a man of ill-gotten means. I am pleased to announce I’d chosen the former. Still, my old kit occasionally came in handy, as it did now. The old lock was stiff but uncomplicated. Within minutes, I felt the tumblers shift and the ancient door swung open.
I returned the lock-pick kit to my jacket and removed a small flashlight—a thief was always ready, after all—and nodded to Hannah and we went inside. The türbe was dusty amid a musty smell. And there, sitting in the very center of the octagonal building—and decorated with colorful Arabic inscriptions—sat the tomb of Mehmed.
My heart might have skipped a beat, and I discovered I was breathing faster than I should. Hannah gave me a curious glance, but I ignored her.
Indeed, it was a special moment for a military historian like me to run my fingers over the alabaster edges of the massive sarcophagus. Meanwhile, I kept my eyes open for clues.
“See anything?” Hannah asked curiously, coming to stand next to me. “And should I leave you two alone?”
I chuckled at the question. “I taught extensive Ottoman history lessons from long ago. Mehmed feels like an old friend.”
“Well, ask your friend to tell us where the damn spear is so we can get out of here. This place gives me the creeps.”
I grinned again... and suddenly felt something. My sweeping hands came across what appeared to be a loose panel in the side of the tomb. Instinctively, I pushed it and the panel swiveled inward.
Oh?
The gap was clearly big enough for someone to crawl through. I wanted to go down it myself, but even as I tried to fold myself into the gap, I soon discovered my bruised ribs and stitched stomach wouldn’t let me. I motioned with the flashlight toward the dark opening.
“You’ll have to go down,” I said to Hannah, who had been watching me curiously for some minutes now.
“I am a lady, not a looter.”
“Even if it’s to save your father? And possibly, all of the Western world?”
“You’re being melodramatic, Allan.”
“Am I? Someone is after this spear, and we both know who that someone is. Additionally, what if there is something about the power of the relic?”
“You don’t really believe that nonsense, do you, Allan?”
She had me there. “No, I don’t. But I know of someone who does, someone who faked his death and has, I suspect, still set his sights on ruling Europe, Russia and anywhere else he can get his grubby hands on.”
“Fine, I’ll go in. But you are to keep this to yourself. I am a—”
“Lady. Yes, yes, I know. Now, in you go!”
***
Hannah snatched my flashlight—perhaps a little more aggressively than I would have preferred. I gave her bottom a slight tap as she bent down to examine the dark entrance. She, in turn, spun around and pointed a surprisingly long finger at me.
“Don’t touch me, Allan Quatermain.”
“You didn’t mind me touching you a few nights ago...”
“A few nights ago, we were in a cozy train. Now, we’re in a bloody tomb, illegally, I might add.”
“Seems kind of cozy to me.”
“You are too much.”
“Let me help—”
“I don’t need your help. Don’t touch me. Don’t help me. Just stand back.”
“You’re afraid to go inside the hole—”
“Of course I am, you boor!”
“There’s nothing down there, except maybe some old bones, rats, spiders—”
“Jerk,” she said, and to her credit, she dropped down to her hands and knees, spun around, and slipped her feet in first, then her legs, and finally pushed the rest of her body in. She had set the flashlight down as she did so.
Now, a single pale hand reached back out of the hole, searching for the light. She was missing badly, and I couldn’t help but note her hand was increasingly shaking.
“Allan! Where’s the damn flashlight?”
“I thought you didn’t want my he—”
“Allan, so help me—”
I placed it in her hand. She gripped it tightly, and before turning it on, raised another finger, this one much longer than the others. She made sure I got a good look at it, before bringing it and the flashlight down into the hole with her.
***
She could fight it all she wanted, but she was obviously her father’s daughter. Despite the fiery look in her eyes, I also saw excitement. A hidden passageway in the tomb of a sultan? Yes, she was clearly intrigued, as was I.
“Be careful of booby traps, or any other hazards,” I called down into the hole.
“You tell me that now?” she asked.
“I didn’t want to scare you away.”
“Well, I am scared. And what do booby traps even look like?” she asked, her voice now coming from deep within the stone opening, although I knew she was no more than a few meters away.
“Ropes or chains, variations in the floor’s surface, anything that looks out of place.”
“That’s not a lot of help,” she said.
“You’ll be fine, the ancients almost never used booby traps.”
I heard her mumble something about “almost never” and she might have added a few unladylike curse words, which might have been directed at me. I laughed lightly, and was glad she didn’t see my own worried face. “Can you see anything?”
“Not yet.”
Through the opening, I saw her light flashing across walls and floors, revealing little more than cobwebs. Yes, it should have been me in there. Not her.
“There’s nothing in here.”
“Check the floor itself,” I advised. “Look for any discolorations.”
“And if I find them?”
“Don’t step on them,” I said.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said, her hollow voice reaching me from seemingly a great distance now.
With my stitches straining, I peered down into the chasm as best as I could—and spotted Hannah studying something on the floor. I eased to my hands and knees, and saw what had caught her attention. There, in the center of the chamber, was a marble slab.
“It has writing on it,” she said to me. “And it looks like your side is bleeding again.”
I glanced down at my side, and she was right. Blood stained my shirt. I ignored it. “The writing, is it Arabic or Greek?”
She shrugged. “I’m sorry. I can’t read either.”
I thought for a moment on how best to describe the difference. “Does the writing look like separate letters or, say, carefully joined calligraphy?”
She looked again. “Definitely lettering.”
“Do you know the Greek letters beta, alpha and sigma?” I asked. “Most college graduates did.”
“Yes. I see them here.” She sounded hopeful. “There’s a capitalized word and then another capitalized word starting beta, then alpha and then sigma and then more.”
I thought hard. “I think you’re seeing the word for Basileus, the Greek word for Emperor.”
“Emperor?”
It was nearly impossible to shrug in my current position, but that didn’t stop me from trying. Before answering, I asked, “Is there anything like a loose panel or a button... or anything that stands out?”
Hannah grew quiet, and I couldn’t help but notice my heartbeat had picked up its pace. Something was going on here. Something big. I could feel it. Boy, could I feel it. I watched her light of the flashlight shift and move inside the chamber. Granted, my view from the floor was limited, but I watched her work her way along the eastern side of the octagonal room.
“There’s a tile with a carved symbol. Seems sort of out-of-place. Should I try to push it?”
“Not yet—”
But it was too late. To my shock and delight—and great relief—a dark opening appeared in the floor beside the marble slab. As it did, a number of tiles fell i
nto the gap, clattering down and crashing. The tiles continued falling in even as Hannah swung the flashlight around and approached the widening hole.
“Careful...” I cautioned.
By the time she reached it, the last of the tiles fell away, and she nudged a hanging tile or two with the toe of her boot. They fell away and clattered with the others. Hannah squatted and peered into the hole.
“There’s something down there, Alan. And I’m not just talking about piles of tiles. Hey, that rhymed!”
Before I could remind her that we weren’t here to rhyme, she’d already begun easing down into the hole in the floor.
“Hey! Be care—”
“Careful. I know, I know. You are like a broken record.”
A heartbeat later, she disappeared from view, down into the hole.
***
Admittedly, I didn’t like losing sight of her, but there was nothing I could do, other than listen to her description of what she was seeing: A short stone hallway. An alabaster casket. I told her that it was, undoubtedly, a sarcophagus. She said, a sarcopha-what? I told her to never mind and to be careful. She mentioned the broken-record thing again. I mentioned booby traps again, and that finally shut her up.
At the sarcophagus, which had been elaborately carved, was a name inscribed in Latin. Like any good British schoolgirl, she knew her way around Latin.
“It says Constantinus Augustus!” she shouted, her voice only barely reaching my ears.
I opened my mouth to speak, but discovered I couldn’t. Could it be possible?
“Is there any way to open it?” I asked without hope. Of course, there wouldn’t be. Although alabaster was a porous stone, surely it would be too heavy for her—
Shockingly, I next heard, of all things, the clang of metal over stone.
“What was that?” I asked, irritated all over again that I was stuck up here.