“So I began to think our little ship wasn’t carrying an apothecary or doctor, but a middleman traveling with his precious supply of opium for one of the oracles in Italy, maybe even procured for the Sibyl at Cumae herself.”
“A Roman drug dealer.” Costas rubbed his stubble. “The godfather of all godfathers. The Naples mafia would love it.”
“Maybe teach them a little respect for archaeology,” Jack said.
“The opium. Procured from where?”
“That’s what worried me.” Jack rolled out a laminated small-scale Admiralty chart of the Mediterranean over the equipment on the floor of the boat, pinning its corners under loose diving weights. He jabbed his finger at the center of the chart. “Here we are. The island of Sicily. Bang in the middle of the Mediterranean, the apex of ancient trade. Right?”
“Go on.”
“Our little Roman merchantman, wrecked against this cliff with its cargo of north African olive oil and fishsauce. It does the trip to Rome three, maybe four times a year, during the summer sailing season. Up and down, up and down. Almost always within sight of land, Tunisia, Malta, Sicily, Italy.”
“Not a long-distance sailor.”
“Right.” Jack stabbed his finger at the far corner of the chart. “And here’s Egypt, the port of Alexandria. Fifteen hundred miles away across open sea. Everything points to the drug chest coming from there. The wood’s Egyptian acacia. Some of the phials had Coptic letters on them. And the opium was almost certainly shipped to the Mediterranean via the Red Sea ports of Egypt, a trade in exotic eastern spices and drugs that reached its height in the first century A.D.”
“The time of St. Paul,” Costas murmured. “Why we’re here.”
“Right.” Jack traced his finger along the coastline of north Africa, between Egypt and Tunisia. “Now it’s possible, just possible, that the opium chest reached Carthage or another Africa port direct from Egypt, and then was shipped out on our little merchantman.”
Costas shook his head. “I remember my Mediterranean Pilot from my stint in the navy. Prevailing onshore winds. That desert coastline has always been a deathtrap for sailors, avoided at all costs.”
“Precisely. The ships leaving Alexandria for Rome were generally large-grain carriers, and sailed north to Turkey or Crete and then west across the Ionian Sea to Sicily and the Strait of Messina. The most likely scenario for a cargo from Alexandria being wrecked at this spot where we are now would be one of these ships, blown southwest from the Ionian Sea towards eastern Sicily.”
Costas looked perplexed, then suddenly his eyes lit up. “I’ve got you! We’re looking at two overlapping shipwrecks!”
“It wouldn’t be the first time. I’ve dived on ship’s graveyards with dozens of wrecks jumbled together, smashed against the same reef or headland. And once that idea clicked, I began to see other clues. Take a look at this.” Jack reached down into a crate beside him and picked up a heavy item swaddled in a towel.
He handed it across to Costas, who sat up on the pontoon and took the item into his lap, then began carefully lifting the folds of toweling away. ‘Let me guess.’
He stopped and gave Jack a hopeful look. ‘A golden disk covered with ancient symbols, leading us to another fabulous lost ancient city?”
Jack grinned. “Not quite, but just as precious in its own way.”
Costas raised the last fold and held the object up. It was about ten inches high, shaped like a truncated cone, and weighed heavily in his hands. The surface was mottled white with patches of dull metallic sheen, and at the top was a short extension with a hole through it like a retaining loop. He eyed Jack. “A sounding lead?”
“You’ve got it. Check out the base.”
Costas carefully held the lead upside down. In the base was a depression about an inch deep, as if the lead had been partly hollowed out like a bell, and below that was a further depression in a distinctive shape. Costas raised his eyes again at Jack. “A cross?”
“Don’t get too excited. That was filled with pitch or resin, and was used to pick up a sample of seabed sediment. If you were heading for a big river estuary, the first appearance of sand would act as a navigational aid.”
“This came from the wreck below us?”
Jack reached across and took back the sounding lead, holding it with some reverence. “My first ever discovery of real significance from an ancient shipwreck. It came from one end of the site, nestled in the same gully where we later found the drug chest. At the time I was over the moon, thought this was a pretty amazing find, but I assumed sounding leads were probably standard equipment on an ancient merchantman.”
“And now?”
“Now I know it was truly exceptional. Hundreds of Roman wrecks have been discovered since then, but only a few sounding leads have ever been found. The truth is they would have been expensive items, and only really of much use for ships regularly approaching a large estuary, with a shallow seabed for miles offshore where alluvial sand could be picked up well before land was sighted.”
“You mean like the Nile.”
Jack nodded enthusiastically. “I have no doubt about it. What we’re looking at here is the equipment of a large Alexandrian grain ship, not a humble amphora carrier.” He carefully placed the lead back in the crate, then pulled out an old black-bound book from a plastic bag. “Now listen to this.” He opened the book to a marked page, scanned up and down for a moment and then began to read.
“But when the fourteenth night was come, as we were driven to and fro in the sea of Adria, about midnight the sailors surmised that they were drawing near to some country; and they sounded, and found twenty fathoms; and after a little space, they sounded again, and found fifteen fathoms. And fearing lest haply we should be cast ashore on rocky ground, they let go four anchors from the stern, and prayed for the day.”
Costas whistled. “The Gospels!”
“The Acts of St. Paul, chapter 27, to be precise.” Jack’s eyes were ablaze now.
“And it gets even better.”
ALSO BY DAVID GIBBINS
Atlantis
AND COMING SOON
The Last Gospel
CRUSADER GOLD
A Bantam Book / October 2007
Published by Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
Copyright © 2007 by David Gibbins
Map by TK
Bantam Books and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
eISBN: 978-0-440-33719-5
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