Guido thought a moment. ‘His neck?’ he suggested.
‘Yes,’ said Tomas, looking away. ‘His neck.’
III
It was Zara’s tone more than her words that convinced Carmen they were in a fight for their lives. She glanced at Cesco, still pale and shivery from his near drowning, and he nodded to let her know he too understood. She took and pressed his hand. Dov gestured them to their feet and over to the tomb. The water was as cold as ever, yet Carmen was so exhausted that it had almost lost its power over her. Zara helped her and Cesco up onto the top step then they headed down in single file, followed by Dov and his men.
They reached a landing. Zara made the turn and carried on, but Carmen and Cesco stopped dead at the sight of what lay below – until Dov prodded them down to the chamber floor. A path of sorts had already been cleared through the gruesome windfall, allowing them no time to study it. They passed through an arched doorway into a burial chamber with fabulously sculpted walls and a sarcophagus of pink marble on a plinth.
The plinth was the obvious place to begin their search for any hidden chamber. The sarcophagus itself proved too heavy to lift, but they managed to twist it this way and that until they’d satisfied themselves that nothing lay beneath. Zara led Carmen and Cesco on a tour of the walls. They stopped by unspoken agreement before the largest and grandest of the tableaux – Alaric standing outside the gates of Rome, scene of his greatest triumph. His only triumph, in truth, for while he’d clearly been a charismatic and beloved leader, his battlefield record had been mixed at best. Even Rome hadn’t been the victory he’d sought. He’d wanted a homeland, not plunder. Respect and fair treatment. Yet the emperor had sacrificed the Eternal City and all its treasure rather than give him that.
The gates had been set back a little way into the bedrock, Carmen noticed, then covered by a wood veneer that had curled up in places. She crouched down to peel off a fat strip of it. The stone beneath was paler than elsewhere, smoother to the touch. There was a gap, too, thin as a razor blade, between the gates and its posts. One of the Israelis saw her running her fingernail down it and excitedly shoved her aside. He and his comrades then tried to push the gates back into the wall, to lift them or slide them sideways. But in vain. Carmen glanced at Cesco then at the doorway behind them. They edged towards it. But their gunman guard Yani stepped across their path.
‘We only want to look,’ said Carmen. ‘In case you guys missed something.’
‘Such as?’
‘How can we know until we’ve looked?’
Yani turned to Dov. Dov nodded. They went together out into the first chamber. Carmen borrowed a torch to light up the tree, then followed its roots as they slithered across the floor to the clusters of tortured figures hewn from the limestone. In Germanic lore, Yggdrasil had connected nine separate realms, one of which had indeed been called Hel. But the hell of their conception had been a dreary, ghostlike place, all wraiths and quiet misery. The hell of everlasting torment depicted here had been a very Christian concept. And Christianity had had only three realms to speak of. Hell, earth and heaven. Their hell had been a pit. It had existed beneath – just like the hell depicted here. Above that had come the earthly plain, the one in which they were standing right now, and which the sarcophagus chamber was in too. Then, above that, only heaven – which surely was where the Goths would have wanted Alaric.
She stared up at the ceiling. There surely wasn’t enough space between it and the river above to accommodate a burial chamber. But Yggdrasil’s branches spread out in all directions before being subsumed into the limestone. Unfortunately, she could see not a glimmer of heaven in the gaps between. Only one branch, indeed, made it as far as a wall at all, reaching it directly above the doorway into the sarcophagus chamber, perhaps implying that it was heaven after all, despite those worldly tableaux. Except that now she noticed that its ceiling was ribbed, as if to brace it. Yet it was hewn from the bedrock and therefore had no need of bracing. So perhaps that wasn’t a rib at all. Perhaps it was, instead, the continuation of the branch, passing across the ceiling of the second chamber before finally ending in the night sky above the gates of Rome.
In the chamber upstairs, gemstones had been pressed at random into existing clefts and fissures. Down here, by contrast, they’d been set to recreate real constellations. There was Orion, for example. There Ursa Major. There Andromeda and Taurus. She was no astronomer herself, but the ancients most certainly had been. They’d known their stars so well that she’d have bet good money that these constellations were in proper relation to each other, perhaps even how the sky had looked on the night they’d taken Rome. And then there was the moon itself, by which the tip of the branch finally stopped, almost as if touching it in benediction.
She found herself staring at it, transfixed both by its size and colour too, finished not with the silver leaf one might have expected, but rather with bronze or even copper, to give it a faintly pitted look as well as a distinctly reddish hue, the one it sometimes took on when near the horizon. It happened because light from a low hanging moon had to pass through so much more of the earth’s atmosphere to reach its surface that most photons of shorter wavelengths were deflected away by heavy molecules in the air, leaving the oranges and reds to arrive alone.
The ancients hadn’t known the physics behind this, of course, but they’d certainly have known the effect. Even the Visigoths. Perhaps even particularly the Visigoths. There was a tantalising clue from a fourth-century evangelical bishop called Ulfilas, who’d been so determined to bring Christianity to the Goths that he’d devised a script for them just so that he could then translate the Bible into it. Ulfilas had been almost completely faithful to the original text. So faithful, indeed, that his rare divergences had intrigued historians ever since. Why had he left out entirely the Book of Kings, for example? Was it because it was so bellicose, and he’d considered the Goths quite violent enough already, thank you? More pertinently, he’d also completely fabricated an admonition against moon worship that appeared nowhere in the original – suggesting strongly that it was a practice of the Goths that he’d wanted desperately to stop.
Cultures and traditions didn’t change overnight. The old ways always lingered – as evidenced by this tomb itself, with its mix of pagan and Christian iconography. Long after nominally converting to Christianity, Gothic generals like Alaric had consulted soothsayers who’d used lunar cycles to divine auspicious days for feasts, marriages and burials. He’d never have risked launching an assault on a city like Rome without assurances that the moon would smile upon the endeavour – the exact same moon that Carmen was gazing at right now. The way it bulged, the way it gleamed, and the colour of it too – for all the world like a great brass button hanging low over the city’s walls, just begging to be pushed.
Chapter Forty-Six
I
The helicopter gave wide berth to Sicilì, lest the noise of its approach alert the ’Ndrangheta to their arrival. They set down instead in the empty car park of a pizzeria on the Caselle road, where four unmarked police cars were arranged as promised in a square, their headlights marking out their landing area. Baldassare was first out, running hunched beneath the blades to where Giuseppe, the Sapri station chief, was waiting with his retired policeman Zeno, a grizzled, short, broad-shouldered man with a piercing eye and a crunching handshake.
They squeezed together into the back seat of the lead car. Zeno repeated the story he’d told Baldassare once already, for it had been largely drowned out by the relentless roar of the helicopter cabin. How he’d thought it prudent to survey the cottage first, so had hidden behind a cactus hedge to watch while his wife drove by with her headlights on full beam before turning around at the bottom of the hill and driving back past again. ‘There are at least two of them,’ he said. ‘One in the trees by the back door. The second on a bench by the pond. There may be more inside, but I didn’t see them.’
‘Outstanding work, officer. Truly outstanding. And you�
�ll thank your wife for me, if I don’t get the chance myself?’
Zeno flushed. ‘Of course, Judge. She’ll be honoured.’
The cottage lay the far side of Sicilì. They slowed as they approached, staggering their arrival to avoid the look of a convoy. The place was still and quiet, as befitted an Italian hill village in the small hours. Yet precisely because it was so still and quiet, their presence was likely to be spotted soon, however discreet they were.
If they were to take these people by surprise, they needed to go in now.
II
Zara stood back against the wall of the sarcophagus chamber, the better to film Dov and his men as they tried in vain to storm the Roman gates. She had no appetite for her assignment any more, yet she carried on with it all the same out of some vague hope that if she pretended that everything was normal, Avram and Dov would let her live. Perhaps. But, if not, it was just about possible that this footage might one day provide the evidence that locked them all up for life.
Brute force failed to budge the gates. No surprise there. They’d by now stripped them of their veneer, revealing the massive slab of granite behind. Yonatan and three others hurried off upstairs to fetch down the tools they’d brought to open the marble tomb. But that had been a completely different proposition to this. And once they’d emptied all their bags onto the floor, the only tools even worth trying were the sledgehammer and the spike – a brute to wield in the confined space, barely even chipping the granite. They needed some kind of jackhammer, that was the truth of it. A jackhammer and several hours. But they had neither.
Avram started checking his watch at regular intervals. As if he’d set himself a deadline, and they were almost at it. Hope began to desert Zara. Dread took its place. She looked around for Carmen and Cesco and saw them at the doorway. There was a brightness in Carmen’s eye as she gazed, not at the gates of Rome themselves, nor at the men attacking it, but at the skyscape above their heads. Zara turned to look at it herself, curious as to what Carmen had seen. And suddenly she had it too. She cried out so loudly in her excitement and relief that everyone turned to look. And now they all saw it too.
The moon was set too high in the wall for them to apply pressure from the chamber floor. They gathered around the sarcophagus instead, working it back and forth until they slid it from its plinth and over to the wall. It took all of them to lift its lid back on, to give themselves a platform on which to stand. Then they clambered up upon it and pressed the head of the sledgehammer against the moon’s pitted surface. They all took hold of its long handle and pushed together. And pushed. And pushed. A faint grating noise spurred them on. It ceded with painful slowness until it stopped and would go no further.
They looked around at each other, wondering what now. A faint scratching noise came from deep inside the wall, followed by the ghostly groan of wind in a ruined building. A moment of silence, then an eerie clanking of chains, as some antique system of counterweights was waking from its long slumber. A low thud made the whole chamber tremble, showering them with grit and dust and prompting them to jump down from the sarcophagus. Then the gates of Rome gave a little shiver and began, with painful slowness, to rise like a portcullis up into the ceiling.
Too much had happened for Avram to keep his promise of priority. But Zara meant to be first anyway. She went down onto her stomach and wriggled beneath its base, careless of her back and buttocks scraping against its crushing weight. Then she was through and standing up on the other side, at the foot of a dusty white marble staircase plenty tall enough to keep whatever lay at its head safe from the Bussento should the antechambers flood. Others now came crawling in behind her. Carmen and Cesco, Yani with his gun, Dov and Yonatan and Avram too, each pausing a moment to absorb what they saw.
The staircase was wide enough for two, but Zara had no intention of sharing this moment, not if she could avoid it, so she stuck resolutely to the middle, claiming priority for her camera. Her legs trembled as she ascended; her heart beat in wild and unfamiliar rhythms, hungry to discover what lay ahead, yet fearful of disappointment too, and what would follow.
Matching oyster-shell niches had been cut into the walls either side. Oil lamps of exquisite craftsmanship alternated with ivory statuettes of beautiful young women at daily tasks: with alabaster vases painted with scenes of love and hunting and war; with bowls of wrought silver filled with precious and semi-precious stones; with golden caskets of ancient coins, of brooches and belt buckles. And these were just the stairs! She heard something being unzipped behind her and glanced around to see Yonatan opening a pouch on his neoprene suit in order to tip a bowl of gemstones into it.
‘That’s not what we’re here for,’ Avram told him angrily.
‘It’s not what you’re here for,’ retorted Yonatan. And it was like a starting gun for Dov’s men, who now grabbed whatever came to hand. Only Yani kept his discipline, covering the three of them with his gun.
They reached the top step, followed closely by Avram carrying four of the yellow waterproof bags over his shoulder for his own sacred spoils. A short landing led to a wide arched doorway covered by a curtain of thick purple velvet so ancient that, when Zara tried to ease it gently to one side, it fell in a crumpled heap at her feet, throwing up a thick cloud of dust like a magician’s squib, making them all blink and cough before it cleared again to reveal the chamber behind in the confusion of beams from their torches and helmet lamps.
Zara stood there a moment to drink it in. Never in her most fevered dreams had she imagined such a place. Its ceiling first – tall and domed and gleaming like a Byzantine chapel with gold and turquoise, with ruby and with emerald. The walls next, decorated with extraordinary mosaics of pastoral beauty, of gentle woodland whose boughs were bent by ripened fruit, of docile wildlife and a cascading river by which a pair of golden-haired young women in bright white gowns stooped to fill golden amphorae. As for the floor, it was laid with tiles of black and white – though in truth she couldn’t see much of it from where she stood, so crowded was it with grave goods of astonishing richness and variety. But the heart of the chamber was different again, taken up as it was by a raised oval platform on which was arrayed the armour from the sculpture downstairs along with the skeletal remains of a pair of hunting dogs and a warhorse in ceremonial tack, arranged around a tall stepped plinth of pink marble upon which rested a golden anthropoid coffin of a size and grandeur to make Tutankhamun weep.
A nudge from behind. The others were pressing in. Zara had that numb, disembodied feeling as she walked, as if on a mattress of thick foam. Everywhere she turned her camera lay treasures more spectacular than the last. A long table to the right of the doorway was covered by a golden cloth laden with platters of desiccated meat, with crusted goblets and bowls of finely wrought silver containing the shrivelled husks of ancient fruit, with stoppered amphorae and jewelled caskets whose once exotic delights had long since been reduced to dust. Beyond that, a miser’s attic of wooden chests stacked one upon the other, packed to overflowing with gold and silver coins, with jewellery and precious stones that had overspilled their vessels and fallen to the floor where they lay like iridescent gravel. A giant silver font on a porphyry stand contained a basin with a tall golden candleholder and a golden lamb from whose mouth holy water would once have poured. A half-dozen painted marble statues of the apostles clustered together, as if in conference. A majestic silver throne, its back and arms inlaid with amber, corals and other stones. A piece whose purpose she couldn’t grasp, but seemingly made from solid gold, and decorated with enamelled bees and leaping dolphins with sapphires for their eyes.
Yet, despite all these and other wonders, she still hadn’t seen what they’d come here for. She continued her circuit of the chamber, therefore, picking her way between the pieces, and suddenly her hopes were lifted by the sight of a sturdy long table on which six silver trumpets stood upon their bells next to a tall wide object covered by a thick embroidered white cloth. She drew closer. The trumpets were in
scribed with antique Hebrew script. Her heart hammered like a woodpecker at a tree. Her left hand trembled wildly as she held her camera out to one side to capture the moment as she pulled the cloth off with her right. And there it was at last, glorious and unmistakeable, a massive, seven-branched candelabra that gleamed every bit as brightly as her dreams of it. She gave a low moan at the sight. She set down the camera on the table, angling it to catch what she was about to do next. She paused for a moment out of respect then took its stem and one of its branches in her hands, braced her legs and tried to lift. But it was too heavy for her. Far too heavy. She couldn’t even tip it towards her. There was no question of this one being anything other than gold. She began to laugh at the realisation of everything this meant, and her laughter had a manic tinge to it, and it spread like a hot fever amongst Avram, Dov and their men, who all now began laughing too, laughing drunkenly at this extraordinary triumph and their sudden obscene wealth, so that it seemed that nothing could taint the moment.
But life has a way of punishing hubris. There was a panicked scamper of footsteps from the stairs at that moment, and they all looked around to see Ezra arriving in the doorway, breathing hard and with a hand to his side. ‘The river,’ he panted, even as he gazed in awe around the chamber. ‘It’s started running.’
Chapter Forty-Seven
I
It had felt a little like sacrilege to Cesco, picking up the curtain of purple velvet from where it had fallen in a heap on the floor, then wrapping it around his shoulders like a ragged robe. But for the first time in half an hour or so, he was now able to think of something other than how cold he was – able, indeed, to appreciate the dusty treasures that lay everywhere he looked: the stacks of golden plates, the chests of gem-encrusted cutlery and goblets; an inscribed stone casket containing what appeared to be several scroll holders of carved ivory, with the tantalising promise of lost texts; a large basket in which crucifixes of all styles and materials had been crammed higgledy-piggledy.
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