Crusader Gold

by David Gibbins

  “Absolutely.” O’Connor paused, then looked piercingly at Jack and lowered his voice. “I must ask you again to keep what I say within these four walls. The answer is staring at us in that image of the Arch of Titus. In the 1970s a sonar survey by a conservation team revealed a hidden chamber in the attic, behind the dedicatory inscription.”

  Jack’s jaw dropped. “You’re not suggesting the menorah was hidden away inside the arch?”

  O’Connor hesitated again, then reached inside his cassock and pulled out a brown envelope. “Few realize that the Arch of Titus is under Vatican control, one of many ancient monuments in Rome consecrated by the Church in the Middle Ages as a way of stamping papal authority on everything pagan. My predecessor in the Vatican Antiquities Department tried endlessly to have the chamber opened, but each application was rebuffed by the cardinals. I believe his persistence was the main reason for his dismissal from the Vatican. I finally managed it last month during the current programme of restoration work on the arch. One evening the chief conservator and I were alone on the scaffold inspecting progress, and a stone abutting the chamber gave way. An accident of course, you understand.”

  Jack raised his eyebrows as O’Connor extracted a photograph from the envelope and slid it across the table, his hand remaining on it for a moment as he looked at Jack. “It’s not only my job that’s on the line here. It’s more, much more.”

  Maria and Jeremy craned their necks as Jack lifted the picture. It showed a flashlit image inside a small chamber, its smooth walls discoloured by streaks of brown and green. On the floor were mounds of decayed matter, peppered with fragments of wood and fabric. It looked like an Egyptian pharaoh’s tomb, opened for the first time after having been looted long ago in antiquity.

  “I managed to reach in and take a handful of that stuff, which I then had analysed in secret,” O’Connor said quietly. “The wood is shittim, acacia, the hardwood mentioned in the Old Testament. It was probably used for making a bier, something that required a lot of load-bearing strength. And the fabric’s silk, coloured with Tyrean purple, the prized dye derived from the murex shell found off the coast of Lebanon.”

  “My God,” Maria murmured. “The Temple Veil, the sacred curtain of the Holy of Holies, used to conceal the sanctuary from the rest of the Temple.”

  O’Connor nodded. “Probably used by the Romans to wrap up the menorah and the golden table.”

  “So they were inside the arch all that time, directly above the symbol of the menorah on the relief carving.” Jack shook his head in amazement. “The priests must have had them moved under cover of darkness from the Temple of Peace, only a stone’s throw away.”

  “And then hundreds of years later one of the custodians let the secret out, maybe using the treasure as a bargaining chip to save his own skin when the barbarians invaded,” O’Connor said. “Rome was devastated by the Goths under Alaric in AD 410 and then again by the Vandals in 455. According to Procopius, the Vandal king Giseric seized the Jewish treasures and took them to Carthage in North Africa, and after the Byzantine general Belisarius captured Carthage from the Vandals in 533 he had the treasures shipped to Constantinople. Procopius tells us that the Byzantine emperor Justinian was overcome by piety and had the treasures returned to Jerusalem, but I don’t believe a word of it. There’s no reliable record that the treasures of the Temple were ever again in the Holy Land.”

  “So the menorah really was in Constantinople.” Maria looked keenly at O’Connor.

  “Could the story of their return to Jerusalem have been a cover-up, a false trail?”

  “It’s very possible,” O’Connor replied. “Procopius became prefect of Constantinople, and was a member of Justinian’s inner court. The rituals and superstitions of pagan Rome continued well into the Christian period, and emperors of the Golden Age were revered. Perhaps Vespasian’s instructions to conceal the menorah still had potency through the centuries, and the story of the return of the treasures to Jerusalem was a way of keeping their presence in Constantinople secret. And just because the Byzantines were Christian doesn’t mean they were any more sympathetic to the Jews than the Romans of Vespasian’s day. I believe the menorah was locked away for another five hundred years, perhaps deep in the vaults of Justinian’s new cathedral of Hagia Sofia in Constantinople.”

  “There are some who believe the Jewish treasures never made it out of Rome at all, that they were secretly taken by the papal authorities and lie hidden to this day in the Vatican.” Jack looked penetratingly at O’Connor, uncertain how much the other man might reveal. “Even before the barbarian invasions, the Church had begun to appropriate temples in Rome and cleanse them of their artefacts, starting soon after Constantine’s conversion to Christianity in the fourth century.”

  O’Connor paused for a moment before replying, his voice hushed but deliberate.

  “It is true that the Vatican conceals untold treasures, priceless works of art unseen for generations. There are sealed passageways in the catacombs under St. Peter’s that even I haven’t seen.” He looked solemnly at Jack. “But I can assure you the menorah is not among them. If it was I wouldn’t be here now. I would have been sworn to secrecy by the papal authorities. Remember our history. The treasures of the Jewish Temple would represent the ultimate triumph of Christianity, retribution for the complicity of the Jews in Christ’s death. If we held them it would have to be the world’s best-kept secret. Any word and there would be war.”

  “War?” Jeremy said sceptically.

  “Total breakdown in relations between the Vatican and Israel. Age-old animosities between Jews and Christians reignited across the world, fuelling anti-Semitism and ultra-Zionism on a horrifying scale. And if the treasure was ever returned to Jerusalem, it would spark the final showdown in the Middle East we have long feared. Some orthodox Jews believe the restoration of the menorah to Jerusalem would be the first step in rebuilding the Temple, on the site now occupied by the Al-Aqsa mosque, one of the holiest sites of Islam. The menorah would give Israel total confidence in its destiny, empowering fundamentalists and persuading waverers. And the Arab world would know once and for all that their demands would never be achieved by negotiation.”

  “It’s curious that the Nazis never came looking for it in Rome,” Jack said.

  “The Second World War was a dark period for the Church,” O’Connor said grimly. “The Pope never gave Hitler an excuse to plunder the Vatican. But there have been plenty of others knocking on our doors since then. Zionist fantasists, conspiracy theorists, treasure-hunters who believe they’re halfway to finding the Holy Grail. I can assure you they have all been on a dead-end trail.”

  At that moment there was a bustle of activity outside and Costas burst into the room. “Sorry to interrupt,” he said breathlessly, “but I thought you should see this.” He hurried over and handed Jack a piece of paper. “Remember those timbers with the chain in the Golden Horn? You thought they looked a little odd.”

  “Overlapping strakes, attached with iron rivets.” Jack struggled to take his mind off the menorah and focus on their remarkable find of two days before. “More in the northwest European tradition of shipbuilding in the early medieval period.

  Odd for a Venetian galley of 1453.”

  “Well, there’s your answer.” Costas leaned forward excitedly, his hands on the table. “The sample we brought back’s just been analysed. It’s Scandinavian oak.

  And it’s from the prow of a longship, not a Mediterranean galley. It looks as if it broke off in the chain, probably without sinking the vessel. And check out the tree-ring date.”

  “Ten forty-two, plus or minus a year,” Jack read, his mind reeling with astonishment.

  Jeremy let out a whoop and stood up, unable to contain himself. “It fits perfectly! Harald Hardrada fled Constantinople in 1042. His ship could have been built the year before, on the shores of the Baltic. You haven’t found the chain from the Sack of Constantinople in 1204 at all. You’ve found the chain sunk by
a band of Viking mercenaries a century and a half earlier, as they powered their longship out of the Golden Horn.”

  Costas glanced at the image of the soldiers burdened with loot in the triumphal procession on the arch. “And now we know what could have given their ship the weight to smash that chain.”

  “The menorah.” Jack shook his head and then grinned broadly at Costas. “I’ve got to hand it to you. Another one for science.”

  5

  JACK PEERED OUT THE WINDOW AS THE AIRCRAFT banked to starboard and the full expanse of the ocean came dramatically into view. It had been a cloudless early morning, and the sun shimmered off the waves more than thirty thousand feet below. For half an hour since their refuelling stop at Reykjavik they had been out of sight of land, but after passing over the Arctic Circle the sea had become increasingly speckled with white. Some of the shapes were huge slabs of white surrounded by turquoise where each iceberg continued for hundreds of metres underwater. Now the bergs were joined by sea ice, a fractured mosaic of white that extended as far as the eye could see, and Jack could make out the first fingers of land ahead of them to the west. He leaned towards the occupant of the seat opposite him and pointed through the window.

  “You can see the Greenland ice cap.”

  “It’s breathtaking.”

  Maria’s face was ablaze with excitement, and Jack again felt certain he had been right to invite her along. After O’Connor had left for Rome three days before, Jack had put in a call to James Macleod to follow up on Costas’ account of a discovery in the ice. Macleod had revealed more, much more, an exciting development over the last few days that now made Jack’s visit imperative. The ice corer had turned up a sample that made the account of a ship buried in the ice far more than just a local legend. Jack had also learned of another extraordinary find that would call upon Maria and Jeremy’s expertise, and they had both leapt at the chance to join him for a few days on IMU’s premier research vessel in one of the most important projects they had ever undertaken.

  Now they all sat in the forward compartment of a customized Embraer EMB-145, the sleek regional jet IMU used for personnel transport around the world. Across the aisle Jeremy was hunched behind a sea of paper and books, tapping on a laptop. Jack closed the introduction to Old Norse he had been reading and stared out the window again. For the past few days he had absorbed himself in Harald Hardrada, reigniting a boyhood passion. On his mother’s side Jack’s family had come from coastal Yorkshire, tall, blond people whose accent even retained a Scandinavian lilt, and Jack had always felt a strong affinity with his Norse ancestors. Harald Hardrada was the greatest of all the Viking heroes, yet his was a life unfulfilled. A man who would be king, whose destiny seemed too great even for him to reach. At the flip of a coin Harald could have won the Battle of Stamford Bridge, and the history of England—of the whole world—

  would have been different. Jack had driven alone to the battle site near York the day before, had slogged around the muddy fields feeling for the spot where Harald had wielded his battle-axe for the last time. He had felt close, had almost felt a presence, yet had come away strangely unsatisfied. Something was not quite right.

  Opposite him in the aircraft Costas was slumped over in his seat, snoring fitfully, his head slowly descending to his chest and then jerking back up again. He had been up all night in the engineering lab perfecting the ice probe, and was still wearing his favourite tattered IMU overalls. With his stubble and tousled hair he looked more than ever like his grandfather, a Greek sponge fisherman who had made a fortune in shipping but had insisted that his family remain close to their roots. It was a legacy that Costas had unwittingly developed to a fine art in his appearance.

  Jack grinned across at Maria as Costas snorted and stirred, and the two of them returned their gaze to the window. The coastline of eastern Greenland appeared as an irregular line of rock between the sea and the ice cap, the bare outcrops of granite girding inlets filled with shattered slabs of white. Soon they were directly over the ice cap itself, a carpet of brilliant white that undulated to the horizon, its surface dotted with pockets of meltwater that shone like turquoise gems in the morning sunlight. It was one of the world’s most forbidding landscapes, yet it had a compelling beauty that drew out the explorer in Jack, that made him understand what drove the Norse adventurers who first sailed to these shores a thousand years ago.

  “There’s one thing I don’t understand.” Costas had suddenly jolted awake, as if there had been no hiatus in the conversation they had been having an hour before. “Harald Hardrada was killed in England, in 1066. Right? Then how come the map inscription suggests he died somewhere out here?”

  Jack gave Costas a bemused look and they both peered at Jeremy, who was ruffling a sheaf of papers and seemed completely preoccupied by his work.

  “Jeremy?” Maria said.

  “Huh?”

  “The Battle of Ragnarøk in the map inscription. How does that fit in with Harald’s death at Stamford Bridge?”

  “Oh, the wording was probably just figurative,” Jeremy said dismissively. “All Viking warriors slain in battle went to Valhalla, where they served Odin and awaited the final showdown against evil at Ragnarøk. Valhalla was perceived as being in the west, beyond the rim of the world. The inscription doesn’t necessarily imply that Harald and his men met their fate there.”

  “And the treasure of Michelgard?”

  “Can’t help you there, I’m afraid.”

  “Jeremy, do you have my copy of Sturluson?” There was an edge of irritation in Maria’s voice as Jeremy held out a book without looking at her, his attention concentrated on his computer. She took the book and held the cover towards Costas. It showed an image of a knight on horseback clad in chain mail, wearing a close-fitting open helmet with a nose-guard and carrying a large kite-shaped shield.

  “Looks like a Crusader,” Costas said.

  “Not far off,” Maria replied. “This is from a tapestry in Norway dating from the twelfth century, a hundred years or so after Harald died. But in the absence of any kind of portrait of him, it gives a pretty good idea of what Harald and his men would have looked like. The Varangian bodyguard in Constantinople were Vikings by birth and upbringing, and carried the dreaded war axe of the Norse.

  The axe was the stuff of legends, man-high, single-bitted, terrifying in battle.

  The Varangians cashed in on the reputation of their forebears, Vikings who had raped and pillaged their way around western Europe, and had even sailed into the Mediterranean to terrorise Italy and France. But the Varangians were also pretty cosmopolitan characters who had spent their adult lives in Constantinople, the most sophisticated city in the medieval world, serving the Byzantine emperors. Their armour and finery wouldn’t have looked out of place in the Crusades, and they would have spoken Greek as well as Norse. Harald Hardrada even campaigned in the Holy Land.”

  “In the Holy Land?” Costas sounded incredulous. “But I thought the Crusades didn’t begin until the end of the eleventh century. That’s a generation after Harald died!”

  “You could call Harald Hardrada the first Crusader,” Maria said, her eyes shining with enthusiasm. “He was born a pagan, and certainly wasn’t seeking redemption for his sins, but he did serve the interests of the Christian Church in the Holy Land. You have to understand, Costas. The Crusades as we know them were only part of the story, told from a western perspective. The Byzantine Church and its warriors had been trying to wrest control of the Holy Land from the Arabs for centuries. In the year 1036 the Byzantine emperor Michael concluded a treaty with the Arab caliph of Egypt to allow the restoration of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the shrine raised over the site of Christ’s grave in Jerusalem. A year later Harald Hardrada led the Varangian Guard to escort the Byzantine craftsmen to Jerusalem. The scene could have been straight from the Crusades, tall, blond horsemen weighed down with armour sweeping across the desert, except Harald was actually successful in pacifying the Holy Land. All of the to
wns and castles of Palestine surrendered to him without a fight, and he cleared the roads of robbers and brigands. He gave treasure to the shrine of the Holy Sepulcher, presumably on the instructions of the Byzantime emperor. He even bathed in the river Jordan, like any good pilgrim.”

  “You can shore up the case even further.” Jeremy had abandoned his work and was now fully focussed on Maria. “After Jerusalem, Harald Hardrada campaigned for three years on behalf of the Byzantine emperor in the central Mediterranean, in Sicily and Italy. At the time, Sicily was an Islamic emirate, captured by the Arabs in the great jihad which saw Muslim armies take the Holy Land and sweep as far west as Spain. Harald was leading an army under the banner of the Cross against the infidel, to reclaim lands for the Church. The Byzantines called their enemy Saracens, the same opponents the Crusaders would face a few generations later. Harald’s war was one of Christian against Muslim, the first major flaring of the conflict that ignited the Crusades and is still with us today.

  Hardrada was the most feared leader of all the Christian forces, even more so than Richard the Lionheart or Baldwin of Flanders in the Crusades. To the Arabs Hardrada was Ra’d Shamaal, the Thunderbolt of the North.”

  “This was some guy,” Costas murmured. “And you say he was from Norway originally?”

  Maria waved the book she had taken from Jeremy. “This is our main source, King Harald’s Saga, written by the Icelandic poet Snorri Sturluson in the early thirteenth century. It’s part of the Heimskringla, a history of the kings of Norway. It gives us our only description of what Harald looked like: immensely tall, fair-haired, with a fair beard and long moustaches, a classic Viking. It shows that he was born Harald Sigurdsson in the year 1015. Later he acquired the name Hardrada, literally ‘Hard Ruler,’ Harald the Ruthless. His indoctrination into the ways of war came early, at the age of fifteen, when he fought alongside his half-brother, King Olaf the Saint, at the Battle of Stiklestad against a rival Norwegian army. Olaf was killed and Harald fled east into exile, first to Sweden and then to Novgorod and Kiev to serve as a mercenary of King Yaroslav of Rus.”