‘But…?’
‘Alaric was the Visigoths’ great king, and he died. That much is undisputed. Cremation went out of fashion with their conversion to Christianity, so he’d have had to be buried somewhere. Germanic tribes often buried people beside rivers. Migrants often chose places reminiscent of their childhoods. Alaric was brought up on the Danube, so a river would have made perfect sense for him. They couldn’t afford to leave behind a guard to protect it – not forever, anyway. But as long as they restored the river to its previous course, then it would have been well protected against most tomb robbers. Particularly as people wouldn’t have known precisely where it was – not after the Visigoths had put to death all the slaves they’d forced to dig it out. Anyone who’d wanted to get at the tomb would have had to divert the river again to find it, which would have meant recruiting a slave army of their own. So yes, the basic story makes perfect sense to me. As for how much treasure they’d have buried him with, I suspect a very great deal indeed.’
‘Why so?’
‘Rome had been plundering gold from across its empire for eight hundred years. The city was filled with great buildings, each containing priceless treasures. Take the Basilica of St John as just one example. Constantine gave it a canopy made from a ton of hammered silver; a vault of solid gold, decorated with life-sized figures of Christ and his angels; fabulous jewels and crowns, golden goblets and fine chains. And those famous dolphins, of course, seventy of them, each made of gold and larger than the one from Vittorio’s money belt. And that was just one part of the wealth of just one church. Then there were the private houses, the public buildings, the treasury. The Visigoths spent three full days taking their pick of it. Can you imagine how many carts it would have taken just to carry away all that booty?’
‘A logistical nightmare.’
‘Exactly! Exactly! Not only would it have slowed them dreadfully, it would have attracted every bandit for a hundred kilometres. Sure, it would have been worth it if they could have made good on their original plan of crossing the Mediterranean to seize Carthage for their new home. But they came to grief on the Messina Straits and were forced into retreat. Winter was now coming. They needed food, not golden angels or canopies of hammered silver. Sure, theoretically they could have traded it. But everyone who heard that the Visigoths were coming would have taken their winter stores straight to the nearest walled town, leaving them helpless. Sieges, yes – they were okay at those. But storming a city was beyond them, unless they got help from within – as happened when they took Rome. So, then, by the time Alaric died, I’ll bet you anything that the Visigoths would have come to see all that plunder as a curse as much as a blessing. Besides, extravagant displays of generosity were how new Gothic kings established their authority. And Athaulf was famously open-handed anyway. Didn’t he give Galla Placidia some crazy gift on their wedding day?’
‘Fifty basins of gold coins,’ said Carmen. ‘Fifty basins of precious jewels.’
‘There you go. So put it all together and yes, I can easily believe that Alaric truly was buried beneath the Busento, and with a great deal more treasure than the savvy historians would have us think.’
‘And not discovered yet?’
He shook his head. ‘If he had been, we’d know about it. His tomb would have been looted, sure, but surely someone would still have found the shell.’
‘So where is it, then?’
He grinned at her. ‘And have you nick my place on the plaque? What kind of fool do you take me for?’ He set his laptop on the coffee table then pushed himself to his feet and padded over to the kitchen, where he held up a bottle of red for her approval before popping it. ‘Didn’t Giulia or Vittorio give you any kind of clue?’
She wandered over to join him. ‘Like I said, they were waiting for you. At least…’
‘At least?’ he asked, pouring them a glass each.
She took her wine from him and held it to her nose. It was dark and rich and had that slight grittiness to it that always seemed to end, for her, in a thumping hangover. ‘I asked Giulia what was going on. She said they couldn’t tell me yet, because they’d given someone their word. I asked her who. She glanced at her father. He got all tense. Then she said you and he relaxed again.’
Cesco frowned. ‘What are you suggesting? Are you suggesting it was actually someone else they promised?’
‘I guess. But I don’t know who. And I could have imagined it anyway.’
‘I doubt that. You strike me as pretty perceptive.’
‘And you strike me as pretty smooth.’
He laughed easily. ‘See. I told you that you were pretty perceptive.’ He put on a red-and-white apron hanging from a hook. It was far too small for him and made him look absurd, but he didn’t seem to care. He crouched to look through the selection of saucepans. ‘Are you hungry?’ he asked.
‘I could eat a horse.’
‘Then off to France with you. In this house, we eat pasta. Specifically, tonight, my grandmother’s scoglio. Assuming you like seafood, that is?’
‘I love it. How can I help?’
‘Take a chair. Drink your wine. Enchant me with your conversation.’
‘Please. I’d like to do something.’
‘Absolutely not.’ He opened the refrigerator and took out a red onion, a garlic bulb, a red chilli and pearly white bags of scallops, clams, mussels and prawns. ‘In all my time in Oxford, I learned only one thing of indisputable value. Never, ever let the English near the pasta.’
Carmen laughed. ‘I already told you. I’m American.’
‘As if there’s any difference when it comes to pasta. You want mashed potato, mash some fucking potato. Leave my spaghetti alone. Though if you must help, these clams and mussels need scrubbing. Not even the English can screw that up.’ He nodded at his laptop on the coffee table. ‘Better yet: take a look at that.’
She wandered over, revived the screen. Google Maps was still up, showing a satellite view of the Busento surrounded by patches of woodland, clusters of housing, an occasional farmhouse and barn. But mostly it was fields and meadowland. ‘What am I looking for?’ she asked.
‘Imagine you’re Athaulf,’ he said. ‘Your brother-in-law the great king has just died. You’ve decided to bury him beneath the river so that the locals won’t nick all his gold once you’re gone. How do you go about finding the right spot? In practical terms, I mean.’
‘Oh,’ she said. She gave it thought. ‘I’d choose somewhere secluded, I suppose, to make it hard for people to see what I was up to. Somewhere forested, if possible. And, if I’m diverting a river, then I’d guess on a plain of some kind.’
‘Exactly.’ He lit a gas burner beneath a pan then cut off and tossed in an obscene slab of butter. He crushed the garlic bulb into it then chopped up the pulp and added it too, then stirred in half a jar of tomatoes. His hands blurred like a restaurant chef when he sliced the onion and the red chilli, whose fierceness he tested by dabbing a fingertip into its juice then touching it to his tongue. ‘The Busento runs mostly between steep hills. It’s nearly impossible to divert it in such places. But there are several stretches where the terrain levels out. Surely you’d choose one of those.’ He binned half his chilli then swept the rest of the ingredients into the saucepan with the back of his knife. He added a splash of white wine and a sprinkling of sea salt, then stirred it with a wooden spoon. ‘Now we also know that the Suraces wanted to survey somewhere relatively dry. How can we reconcile this with him being beneath a river?’
‘Rivers change their course all the time,’ said Carmen. ‘Particularly on plains.’
‘Exactly.’ He rinsed his hands, wiped them dry on his apron. He filled a large saucepan with water, salted it then set it on a back burner. He ripped open the bags of clams and mussels, tipped them into a colander to rinse and scrub. ‘The original course silts up. There’s an earthquake or a landside. A bad freeze is followed by a sudden thaw. Farmers dig new channels to irrigate their land. It’s sixteen hu
ndred years since Alaric died. The Busento will have moved all over the place since then.’
‘That’s what you’re looking for? Its old course?’
He nodded. ‘The resolution on those satellite photos is for shit, but the idea still holds. So I thought maybe we could walk it in the morning? Look for traces of the old bed – or anything else that might have got the Suraces excited, for that matter.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘Unless you have a better idea?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘That sounds great. Let’s do it.’
‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘Then how about you come help me with these mussels? They’re not going to scrub themselves.’
II
There was a moment of extraordinary jubilation at the discovery of the Menorah. But it didn’t last. Not for Zara, at least. One look at Avram and Kaufman told her that greed and ambition had already gone to work on them, that she’d have to be the adult here. ‘We need to leave,’ she told them.
Avram stared at her as though she was crazy. ‘Leave?’
‘To put together a proper excavation plan.’
‘This place holds some of Israel’s most dangerous prisoners,’ he said tersely. ‘It’s outer wall is sitting above an escape tunnel that runs through weakened bedrock that for all we know might collapse at any moment, thanks to the jackhammer. So fuck your proper excavation. We’re grabbing these pieces and taking them with us.’
‘You can’t.’
‘Watch me.’ He shuffled around in the constricted space to put his feet against the ancient wall. Then he stamped hard enough that an already loosened brick fell free and thudded to the floor behind. He stamped again and down went another.
‘Stop!’ cried Zara, appalled, grabbing him by his arm. It violated every protocol, but she could see no alternative. She turned around herself and fed her feet through the small gap, slithering into the chamber, feeling for its floor. Then she took her torch and shone it around. And there it was, right in front of her. A touch smaller than she’d expected, yet her heart thrilled even so. She reached out slowly for it, almost fearful of the contact. She took its stem in her right hand, one of the branches in her left. She bent her knees and braced her back then made to tip it towards her. But she relaxed again almost at once. She let it go and turned to Avram and Kaufman with a rueful shake of her head.
Avram frowned. ‘What’s wrong? Too heavy?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Not heavy enough.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘It’s not gold. It’s gilt.’
‘Gilt? Are you saying it’s fake?’
Zara hesitated. Gilding didn’t by itself prove it fake. The Jews had been masters of the craft. Indeed, according to the Torah, several tabernacle vessels had been carved from acacia wood and then gilded. But the Torah was unequivocal about the Menorah. It had been made of pure gold. If this truly was it, then the temple priests had cheated. Announcing this find would make the Jews the butt of a million tedious jokes. But there was a more likely explanation – not least because the ancient Jews had typically gilded with gold leaf, which tended to wear through or peel off over time. The finish of this Menorah was too good for that, suggesting that it had instead been mercury-gilded – a technique in which a base object, typically of silver, had been coated with an amalgam of mercury and gold then heated in an oven until all the mercury had evaporated and only the gold remained. The fumes given off during this process had been so toxic that it had made it one of the most deadly of all professions, with life expectancy in the low thirties. But it had undeniably produced a richer and more durable finish. And it had been a Roman rather than a Jewish craft.
‘Why would Justinian build a whole church for a fake Menorah?’ demanded Avram, once she’d explained this. ‘And what about that chain of custody shit you gave me last night? Jerusalem to Rome. Carthage to Constantinople. All of that.’
Zara nodded. Excellent questions both. ‘The chain of custody was only to explain how the temple treasures might have ended up here,’ she said. ‘But the temple treasures had been gone nearly five hundred years by then. Anything could have happened to them along the way. As for Justinian, historians have long been sceptical of Procopius’s story. What kind of emperor would discard one of the world’s great treasures just because of some vague warning from a mystic Jew? So we’ve tended to dismiss his account. Except that makes no sense either. Procopius wasn’t writing about ancient history. He was recording a victory parade that had recently taken place. To claim that these treasures had been part of it, when he and everyone else knew they hadn’t, would have made him look ridiculous and brought the rest of his works into disrepute. And why bother, only to invent a second lie to excuse their absence? So there must be some other explanation. Maybe this is it. Justinian was highly sophisticated. He’d have known it for a fake the moment he picked it up. Which made it a potential humiliation, because he’d just paraded it through his streets as the real thing. So what was he to do?’
Avram nodded. ‘Invent a mystic Jew. Get it out of the city fast.’
‘Justinian was building churches all over the place anyway. What could be easier than to send this to one of them for safekeeping, and claim piety points for himself in the process?’
‘So who faked it? The Carthaginians?’
‘Maybe. But look at what we’ve got. A gilt candelabra and a pair of silver trumpets. Fine artefacts, but hardly unique. So why would Justinian have mistaken them for temple treasures unless that’s what the Carthaginians themselves had believed them to be? And why would they have believed that unless that’s what Geiseric had pillaged from Rome?’
‘Then…?’
‘There’s a weird anomaly in Procopius. He actually refers to two different sets of temple treasures: the one that Justinian paraded through Constantinople, and a separate set that had left Rome decades earlier.’
‘Two sets? And people still take him seriously?’
Zara nodded. Avram’s reaction was obvious, understandable and wrong. Such anomalies were actually reassuring to historians, for they suggested Procopius had faithfully recorded what he’d heard, even though it had made no sense. Because sometimes the explanation could take a millennium or more to emerge. ‘Geiseric wasn’t the first barbarian to sack Rome,’ she told him. ‘The Visigoths got there first. They’re the ones who apparently had this other set. Which is obvious when you think about it. The Menorah was one of Rome’s most famous treasures. Everyone knew it was made from solid gold and kept in the Temple of Peace. If you were a Visigoth, where would you go first? Sure, the temple guardians would have tried to hide it, but a sword to their throats would soon have got them talking. But once the Visigoths were gone again, those same guardians would have had some explaining to do. Not to mention a pressing need to replace their primary source of income.’
‘Income?’
‘Sacred relics were big business. Pilgrims flocked to Rome from all across the ancient world to have the locals fleece them. Animal bones sold as martyr relics; bits of wood from the True Cross. Private viewings of Old Testament treasures such as the Menorah would have been major money-spinners. So what were they to do? Well, the guardians at the Temple of Peace knew better than anyone exactly what it looked like. There was even a helpful picture of it on the Arch of Titus. So it would have been easy for them to commission a replica, except that – thanks to the Visigoths – there was no gold to be had anywhere in the city. So they made it out of silver instead, then mercury-gilded it and put it back on display as the real thing, which is where Geiseric and his Vandals found it forty-five years later. Hey presto. Two sets of temple treasures.’
‘Is there evidence for this?’ frowned Avram. ‘Or is it guesswork?’
‘It’s guesswork,’ admitted Zara. ‘But for sure it happened with other pieces. We know the emperor Valentinian replaced one looted treasure, Pope Celestine another. And we can find out easily enough. If this is the original, the gilding will have come from the Negev or somewhere else h
ereabouts. If it’s Roman, it will have come from one of their mines, probably in Spain or Wales. Professor Kaufman can run the tests.’
‘Professor?’
‘Of course, Minister.’
‘How long?’
‘I could have results for you in a matter of days.’
Avram fell silent, his brow furrowed. ‘A few days?’ he asked finally. ‘Surely a piece this important merits exceptional measures. A double-checking of your initial findings, at the very least. And by an independent, overseas lab, lest we’re accused of getting up to tricks.’
‘I’m not sure I—’
‘What the minister is asking, Professor,’ said Zara drily, ‘is whether you can delay any announcement until after the election. That way he can leak rumours of an astonishing find to boost his campaign, while deferring the disappointing truth until it no longer matters.’
‘Oh,’ said Kaufman. ‘Well, yes, Minister, you’re exactly right about the need for corroboration from an international—’
‘This is absurd,’ burst out Zara. ‘You don’t need a spectrometer to tell you it’s gilt. All you need to do is pick it up.’
‘You work for a public university,’ said Avram. ‘You’d be wise to remember that.’
‘And you’d be wise to remember that I have voicemails,’ retorted Zara, before she could stop herself. But she regretted it as soon as the words were out, so she held up her hand in apology. ‘It’s for your own good too. Honestly, if you try to get too clever with this, it could easily backfire horribly.’
The Sacred Spoils Page 12