The Mask of Troy

by David Gibbins

  He heard a rustle in the grass, and saw the silhouette of a man scurry up the slope of the trench and disappear over the top. It was Kemal, the site foreman, who had first shown Schliemann this place as a boy, whose ancestors had known Troy since time immemorial, descendants of Prince Hector himself. He could never tell Kemal to leave this place, nor did he wish to. Kemal was continuity, the future. And that was what this evening was about. The future. The future of the human race.

  Schliemann turned east over the trench, then came down on the path that led around the citadel, from the excavation house towards the entrance to the secret passageway. Sophia had left little candles in tin holders to mark the way, and they flickered in the breeze. Around the corner another man came into view. He was large, wearing a fur-lined overcoat and a trilby hat, carrying a walking stick and one of the lanterns that had been left at the entrance to the site. He stopped and raised the lantern, peering. Schliemann saw the features that had cowed so many, the heavyset face, the bags beneath the eyes, the hint of a scowl, but he also saw in those eyes what those close to the great man knew, the humour, the thirst for knowledge, the humanity. ‘Ah,’ the man said gruffly, moving closer. ‘Herr Doktor Schliemann.’ He spoke in German. ‘I was wondering where you were.’

  Schliemann’s heart raced. He replied in German also, holding out his hand. ‘Your Excellency. I trust you had a felicitous journey.’

  ‘Felicitous!’ the man grumbled. ‘Fortunately, the King of Greece lent me his yacht. The Ottomans would not let an Imperial German warship into the Dardanelles. I ask you. There will be a war, you know, and the Turks need an ally, what with the Russians on one side, and Gladstone and the English baying for their blood on the other. That infernal man. I hope I never meet him in person. I would not answer for the consequences.’

  ‘Ah,’ Schliemann said.

  ‘What do you mean, “Ah”? And what’s the meaning of all this subterfuge? For years I’ve been asking you for a tour of Troy. Now I’m here, and it’s too dark even to see it.’

  ‘My dear Otto.’ Schliemann took the man by the shoulder, and steered him on the path between the little candles. ‘We were both awarded freedmen of the city of Berlin, yes? We are a rare breed. A secret society. And like all secret societies, we must have our little rituals, our indulgences.’

  ‘Freedman of the city, yes, but I failed to convince those swine to make you a member of the Berlin Academy,’ the man muttered. ‘After all you’ve done for Germany. Donating your greatest finds to the Reichsmuseum. Even the unmentionable Gladstone had you made an honorary Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, and all you gave them was a few miserable pots.’

  Schliemann smiled. ‘My dear old friend. If I were the type of man on whom academic honours were showered, I would not be the type of man who would have found Troy. And I already have the greatest prize a man could ever ask for.’

  The man stopped. ‘Where is she? Your queen? I wish to kneel before her and kiss her hand.’

  ‘Sophia and the children await you with pleasure. The children remember your skill in woodwork, and I have promised them you will build them a model of the Trojan Horse. But that must wait. Now, we have momentous matters to discuss. And others to meet. Others who may surprise you. Others with whom I fervently hope you will find a common cause, a cause that surpasses all the affairs of state at which you have so excelled. A cause that is greater than any in the history of mankind.’

  ‘More subterfuge,’ the man grumbled, but his eyes twinkled. ‘Wherever you take me, Heinrich, there is sure to be excitement. I would not be anywhere else. Lead the way.’

  They followed the line of little candles around the eastern edge of the mound, past exposed sections of earth where the excavations had revealed the eroded remains of limestone walls and mud-brick revetments. They rounded a corner where the grassy slope of the mound rose steeply in front of them, and dropped down a series of makeshift wooden steps into a deep trench that led back towards the centre of the mound. Schliemann went down first, then turned to point out a pile of shovels and baskets on the floor of the trench. ‘Mind your step.’

  ‘This is where you work?’ the man asked, stepping stiffly down on to the earthen floor of the trench, leaning heavily on his stick.

  ‘Just Sophia and me. We don’t allow any of the other workers down here. My assistant Dörpfeld continues to work in the great trench, revealing the walls of the first citadel, early Bronze Age Troy. But this season, the Troy of King Priam, the Troy of Homer, is ours alone.’

  Beyond the tools, the candlelight revealed a section of the passageway about three metres wide where the excavation appeared to be complete, with dressed stone walls on either side that sloped slightly outwards, rising at least five metres to the edge of the grassy mound above. The man stopped, leaning on his stick, peering at the alignment. ‘Unless I am mistaken, these walls are of the same construction as the defensive walls I examined on the way in, just beyond the excavation house.’

  ‘The walls of Homeric Troy,’ Schliemann said excitedly. ‘You are correct. I am convinced of it. These walls date from the same phase of construction. But they are not defensive walls. They line an entranceway, converging ahead of us, deep beneath the citadel. It is the most astonishing discovery.’ He led the other man beyond the exposed masonry to a section where the sides of the trench were still not fully excavated, between rough earthen walls. He could see the final candle a few metres ahead, where the excavated trench came to an abrupt end. In the gloom he spied two other figures, both with canes, standing on either side of the floor, and his pulse quickened. They were all here. ‘Gentlemen,’ he called out. ‘Welcome. Welcome indeed.’

  He stooped down to where Sophia had left a gas lantern, quickly lit it and carried it forward, turning down the flame and placing it on the ground in front of the other two men. Then he stood back, and beamed at them. They were both old men, like the man who accompanied him, wearing dark overcoats with hats in their hands, both sporting the archaic long sideburns of an earlier age. One of them was taller, with craggy features and intense eyes. The smaller man was less forceful in appearance, wearing spectacles but with a determined stare. Schliemann sensed his companion stiffen at the sight of the taller man, and he quickly made the introductions. He gestured first to his companion. ‘Gentlemen. Allow me to introduce Count Otto von Bismarck, Chancellor of Germany.’ He spoke in English. His companion clicked his heels, and glared. Schliemann turned to the other two. ‘Chancellor, I give you my dear friend Senator Hoar, the most distinguished elder statesman of my adopted country, the United States of America.’ The two men bowed slightly, and shook hands. Schliemann turned to the taller man. ‘And of course you will recognize the Right Honourable William Gladstone, Prime Minister of Great Britain.’

  Bismarck glared, clicked his heels again, and shook hands. ‘We are acquainted,’ he said coldly in English. He turned to Schliemann, speaking quickly in German. ‘This is unfortunate. Most unfortunate. My pleasure is in danger of utter shipwreck. You have brought me into the eye of a storm, Herr Schliemann. Ein Tempest.’

  ‘Ever the Shakespearean, I see,’ said Gladstone loftily.

  Schliemann quickly stood between them and took both men by the arm. ‘I trust Mr Gladstone too had a felicitous journey?’

  ‘The Orient Express to Constantinople,’ Gladstone said. ‘A most extraordinary city. I touched with my own hand the column of Constantine the Great, and worshipped in Hagia Sophia. It is less desecrated by the infidel than I had feared.’

  ‘Mr Gladstone has spoken out with a passion against the Turk,’ Bismarck said in English. ‘I am surprised he has made it this far.’

  ‘I am travelling incognito. On Dr Schliemann’s instructions. I own that rhetoric in the heat of the moment, led me to write ill-advisedly against the Turkish people, whom I find to be both hospitable and delightful. For that I am contrite. But I remain as resolutely and strenuously opposed to the Ottoman campaign against the Bulgars as when I pu
blished that pamphlet.’

  ‘And Mr Bismarck?’ Senator Hoar asked. ‘You have had an agreeable voyage?’

  ‘I too was travelling incognito.’

  ‘What? Chancellor von Bismarck?’ Gladstone exclaimed theatrically. ‘Travelling incognito? As whom, pray?’

  ‘As the Duke of Lauenberg. It is to be my new title. I fear the new kaiser will shortly oust me. I am to be a sidelined elder statesman. He thinks I will retire to shoot grouse on my estate in Poland. He is, I can be frank, a bellicose and stupid man. I fear for the future. He will make Germany into a monster.’

  ‘A monster you nurtured,’ Gladstone said haughtily. ‘When you unified the country.’

  ‘I unified Germany to yoke in a hundred warring states. It was realpolitik. Something that Mr Gladstone, the idealist, does not understand.’

  ‘Unlike Herr von Bismarck, I would not aspire to be an Agamemnon.’

  ‘Gentlemen,’ Schliemann said. ‘Gentlemen. If you contine thus I shall insist, as Sophia does, that we speak entirely in ancient Greek. Then the affairs of this world will drop away, and we will inhabit solely the past. But it is a danger, Mr Gladstone, you have warned me against, of divorcing the two worlds entirely, ours and the ancient. And it is not my purpose here solely to present you with the marvels of archaeology. My purpose is indeed the present. Events will move fast in our remaining lifetimes, and those of our children. Time is short, and we must act now.’

  ‘You speak portentously, Mr Schliemann,’ Gladstone said, looking intently at him. ‘I trust we are not to hear a profound announcement, of a grave nature? Your health is well?’

  ‘Mr Gladstone, your concern for my health has always been gratefully received, and is more efficacious than any course of medicine. But you need not tax yourself.’

  ‘I am relieved.’

  Schliemann paused. ‘We are here today on common ground. Count von Bismarck is a man of the highest education and literary interests. Many times we have spoken together on ancient history. Mr Gladstone, in this regard as in all others, hardly needs an introduction. The author of three books on Homer, who did me the signal honour of writing the preface to my book on Mycenae. And Senator Hoar. Not just a statesman of the greatest esteem, but president of the American Antiquarian Society, regent of the Smithsonian Institution, trustee of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. You three have been my greatest supporters, and to bring you here in person is the least I can do. But there is more to this meeting than that. I bring you here with a higher purpose. You are all men of the utmost probity, of the greatest moral resolve. I have come to know you personally, and I am convinced of it. In your hearts I know you are peacemakers, not warmongers.’

  Gladstone snorted, peering at Bismarck. ‘A sentiment that can hardly be ascribed to one whose governance precipitated the greatest conflict of our times. I refer, of course, to the Franco-Prussian War of 1871. A war that upset the balance of power that had kept Europe peaceful since the fall of Napoleon.’

  ‘It was not the war that upset the balance of power,’ Bismarck replied coldly. ‘It was the peace treaty. As you know perfectly well, I strenuously opposed the secession of Alsace-Lorraine to Germany. I saw in it the seedbed of the future. Of an even more calamitous war to come.’

  ‘And then you took Germany on a colonial adventure in Africa. In deliberate and ostentatious antagonism towards the interests of my own government.’

  ‘It deflected the French focus on Alsace-Lorraine. I believe in so doing I prevented a terrible escalation in Europe. And colonial adventures? Under the premiership of Mr Gladstone? I have not enough fingers to count them. War in Zululand, 1879. Afghanistan, 1880. The Sudan, 1885. Brave soldiers, yes, but bungled wars, all of them. Dispatching General Gordon to Khartoum, then failing to rescue him. I give you the Right Honourable William Ewart Gladstone, peacemaker.’

  ‘Gentlemen.’ Hoar held up his hand. ‘We are not on the debating floor. And we all know that the morality of a man is not easily judged by the circumstances in which history envelops him, and for which history may yet hold him accountable.’

  Gladstone and Bismarck both snorted and shuffled for a moment, and then stood still. Hoar lowered his hand. Schliemann looked at them, a sudden flicker of doubt in his mind. Had he misjudged them? Had he himself been too much of an idealist, blinded to reality? Were they all too old, too much immured in the rhetoric of politics, their morality calcified? He needed to know. He spoke quietly, almost whispering. ‘What say you?’ he began. ‘What say you, gentlemen, on the subject of war?’

  Gladstone looked hard at him, then glanced down. ‘My detractors call me a pious pacifist,’ he said, his voice less theatrical. ‘And they are right. Herr Bismarck is right, too. I did let General Gordon down. It weighs heavily upon me. My Christian morality is at odds with war, and sits poorly when war is thrust upon me. I ask forgiveness from those dead warriors I did not have the courage to lead into battle like an Agamemnon.’

  Schliemann turned to Bismarck, who had been looking shrewdly at Gladstone. Bismarck leaned on his cane, and put his other hand on his hip. ‘I have proclaimed that the great questions of the time will not be resolved by speeches and majority decisions, but by iron and blood. To maintain the vote, I must appear to be a Prussian realist. But anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war.’

  Schliemann slowly nodded. ‘And Mr Hoar?’

  Hoar spoke carefully, deliberately, without the flourish of the other two but holding their attention completely. ‘I have never held the reins of supreme power, as have these two distinguished gentlemen, but I have made my voice heard over generations of presidents. I have seen the devastation of our own brush with Armageddon, the Civil War. I have watched with trepidation the hawks in our government who would bring America into the colonialist fray. Even where there is moral purpose in such adventure, we would slay thousands whom we would seek to benefit. We would bring home from war innumerable sick and wounded and insane to drag out miserable lives, wrecked in body and mind. We would make sullen and irreconcilable enemies the world over, possessed of a hatred that centuries will not eradicate. Our flag would become an emblem of sacrilege: of the burning of human dwellings, of the horror of torture. I do not like to think of America angry, snarling, clawing, but as an august and serene beauty. A beauty, gentlemen, perhaps a little pale in her cheeks, with a dangerous glint in her eyes, but inspired by a sentiment, even toward her enemies, not of hate, but of love. Gentlemen, I am implacably opposed to war.’

  ‘We are resolved, then,’ Schliemann said.

  ‘We are resolved,’ Hoar said, looking sharply at Bismarck and Gladstone. ‘But pray tell, my dear Schliemann. Resolved to what purpose?’

  Schliemann stared at the ground. Now was the time. He delved his hands into his pockets and held them out, his fists bunched as if concealing something. ‘Mr Gladstone. You have written to me about ancient copper metallurgy. You were fascinated when I discovered that the age of heroes was an age of bronze. Well, it will delight you to know that we have found many bronze arrowheads in the ruins of Homeric Troy. Arrowheads that I believe were fired into the citadel from the shoreline where the Greek ships of Agamemnon were beached. Arrowheads such as these.’ He opened his left fist to reveal two tanged leaf-shaped barbs, green with corrosion. He proffered them.

  ‘May I?’ Gladstone said. Schliemann nodded, and Gladstone dropped his cane, took the two arrowheads, then whipped out an eyeglass and examined them closely. ‘Native copper is found widely and abundantly, I believe,’ he murmured. ‘But tin? Do you know where the tin in this bronze came from?’

  ‘You will be astonished by my theory.’

  ‘Nothing you say can astonish us now.’

  Schliemann peered at him, his eyes burning with excitement. ‘Here it is. At the dawn of the classical era, the Greeks wrote of their forebears going west, exploring the very limits of the known world. I believe these incl
uded survivors of Troy, fleeing apocalypse. One of them we know well: Aeneas, legendary founder of Rome. But I believe they were not the first. I believe they were following in the wake of earlier explorers, of the Bronze Age before the fall of Troy, ancestors of the greatest seafarers of the ancient world. You may guess of whom I speak. You are a biblical scholar as well, Mr Gladstone. The Phoenicians. The Phoenicians who sailed out into the Atlantic and far to the north, where they found a fabled archipelago, a group of islands the Greeks called Cassiterides.’

  ‘The Tin Islands,’ Gladstone exclaimed, removing his eyepiece and staring at Schliemann. ‘I stand corrected. You do astonish me. Do you mean to assert that the Trojans, the Mycenaeans, acquired their tin from the Cassiterides?’

  ‘By which I refer, gentlemen, to the British Isles, to the tin mines of Cornwall. It cannot be proved at present, but I am certain of it.’

  Hoar put up a hand. ‘I beg your indulgence. You are suggesting that the Phoenicians, the traders of the Old Testament, were the metal-brokers of the Bronze Age? Those self-same Phoenicians who provided the Greeks with their alphabet?’