The Testimonium (4 page)

“That lamp looks placed to illuminate this table pretty well,” he said. “That and the position of the table and chair make me think that this is a writing nook, not just a storage space.”

“You’re right!” she said. “It’s a bit cramped, but for someone who enjoys privacy and isn’t claustrophobic, it would not have been uncomfortable.”

Rossini turned from her and resumed dusting the objects on the tabletop, and collecting the fine powder in a series of the acid-free bags. Little by little the dust of centuries disappeared, and the objects became recognizable. “We have a red candle, laid down horizontally,” he said after a few moments. “And here is a golden candleholder. I wonder . . .” He looked at the two items for a moment.

“What?” asked Isabella.

“Sealing wax, perhaps?” he said. “We know that it was widely used in Roman times.”

“That is possible,” she replied. “Good God, Giuseppe, what have you found? These are the kind of things that are never preserved!” Her pulse was quickening as she thought of what this find might be. Calm down, girl, she thought. It could be so many things . . . the workspace of a servant, of a low-level clerk, a household steward. But here—in the Villa Jovis—just a few yards from where the Emperor had slept. Could it be . . . ?

Rossini sensed her excitement and smiled. “Let’s not get too excited, my dear,” he said. “It could just be the den of some medieval cleric who wanted to get away from the monastery while he wrote down the shopping list!” Then he turned back to the writing table and readied another bag. “But there’s only one way to find out. Let’s see. How about this one next?” He took his brush to a small round lump near the edge of the table and began whisking away at it. Seconds later he gave a low whistle of amazement. Isabella crowded in to see what he was staring at, and then grabbed his shoulder for support as her knees went weak.

“Oh, Giuseppe!” she gasped.

It was a ring—a man’s ring, from the look of it, large and heavy, and glimmering in the torchlight with the unmistakable sheen of gold. But it was not the precious metal that made her lose her breath—it was the shape and size. This was clearly a signet ring used for sealing documents. And the stamp on its wide, flat working surface was one she had seen before, on denarii and other Roman coins from the first century AD. But never had she seen an example this perfectly preserved, lacking the wear, scratches, and corrosion of the ages. Sealed in this chamber, the ring had sat on this table for twenty centuries, accumulating no damage and no wear—only dust. The letters on the ring were reversed, of course, so that they would be legible when stamped into the bright scarlet wax used to seal official documents. But the Roman eagle was unmistakable, and so were the Latin letters—TIB CAES PRINC IMPER—the abbreviation for “Tiberius Caesar,
Princeps Imperator.
” Tiberius Caesar, First Citizen and Emperor of Rome.

Rossini stared a long time at this unprecedented find. The personal sealing ring of a Roman Emperor—and not just any Roman Emperor, but only the second man to bear that title! The man who had conquered much of Germany as a general, the man who succeeded Augustus, the Emperor during whose reign Christianity had been born.

“Isabella,” he finally said. “We need to proceed very, very carefully. This may be the most important discovery in classical archeology since Heinrich Schliemann discovered the ruins of Troy! The site will have to be completely secured and guarded round the clock. We need to call Bernardo at the Bureau immediately and let him know what we have found, and have proper equipment delivered on-site for the preservation and removal of these artifacts.”

“Completely correct,” she said, glancing outside. “We have about three more hours of daylight left. I am going to suggest that we finish cleaning off the items on top of this writing table and photographing them, then begin securing the site and informing the authorities. I am a woman, after all—you know I can’t leave an item of furniture half dusted!” She laughed to cover her eagerness. The actual writing table used by an Emperor of Rome! Never in her wildest dreams had she thought that she might find something of this nature.

Rossini looked at her long and hard. He wasn’t sure he approved of her haste, but he shared her enthusiasm. “I will finish this last object,” he said. “I want to leave at least some of the dust undisturbed for later comparison.” He leaned over the table and began cleaning off an oblong lump near the center, whisking the dust into another baggie. In seconds the lump became a long, skinny cylinder with a few spiky filaments poking out of each side. “A quill!” he said. “By God, girl! He got up, put his pen down, and sealed the chamber!”

Isabella did not say a word. She was staring at the quill—no, not at the quill. Past it. At what it was lying on. “Giuseppe!” she said. “It’s not lying on the desk at all!”

“What?” He looked past the ring for the first time and saw what she was referring to. The top of the table was nearly black in the places he had uncovered it—it had obviously been richly lacquered at one time, probably being made of teakwood. But the ring was resting on a dirty, pale yellow surface that had no sheen or luster to it. It looked for all the world like a dirty piece of—“Papyrus!” he said. “Isabella! The quill is lying on top of—Mother of God, could it be?”

Completely forgetting the time, or the need to secure the site, he began quickly whisking, exercising great care as he slowly cleared away the centuries of dust. This time he took much longer, because of the wider surface area and the delicate nature of what he was uncovering. He was vaguely aware that Isabella had switched back from camera to video mode and was narrating in a low voice as he slowly uncovered the document lying on the desktop—a rectangular piece of parchment about the size of a yellow legal sheet. The parchment was not blank, either—as he very carefully whisked the brush back and forth, thin spidery letters began to swim up from the paper. Latin letters. Letters that were shaky and poorly formed; the writing of an old man with trembling hands. Rossini was too excited, and the letters too badly squiggled, to read in the glaring halogen light—till he uncovered the bottom of the page. There the hand was a bit bolder, a bit firmer, and the writing a bit larger. There could be no doubt about what it said. “Tiberius Julius Caesar Augustus” was scrawled boldly across the bottom of the ancient letter. They were looking at the signature of the second Emperor of Rome.

* * *

Bernardo Guioccini was stunned. “You’ve found WHAT?” he barked into the cell phone. In his three-year tenure as the Chief Archeologist of the Italian Bureau of Antiquities—indeed in his entire thirty-year career as a classical archeologist—this was the most outrageous claim he had ever heard. At the same time, he knew and respected Isabella Sforza as a consummate professional without a sensationalist bone in her body. For her to make a claim like this, it had to be legitimate. The half of him rooted in classical history was thrilled; the half of him that dealt with the public was wary of the media circus that was sure to ensue when word of this discovery became public.

“We have not moved anything except dust,” Sforza was saying. “Every step has been chronicled with digital photography and video, and is stored in encrypted files on my laptop. We need tents, a very small and select field crew, and a mobile lab on-site, and probably some security as well. This location is going to be very hard to keep secret. Dr. Rossini is collaborating with local authorities to close the mountain to tourism for the next few days. It may be . . .” She paused a moment.

“What are you thinking?” Guioccini asked. At the moment, he was open to any insight or ideas she might have.

“The chamber is very small, and it appears that there are only a very few items in it. Once we clean the dust away, it may be that we can simply relocate all the artifacts to a secure lab for study, and then carefully document the chamber itself. We could then potentially reseal it, or perhaps even open it to the public for tourism.”

“That is a bit unorthodox, but not unprecedented,” said the senior archeologist. “Indeed, given the very public nature of the site, that may well be the most practical solution. But we will have to wait and see exactly what the chamber contains, and how safely the artifacts can be relocated. For now, secure the site overnight and I will be there first thing in the morning.”

“Very well, Dr. Guioccini,” said Isabella. “We will be here waiting.”

Even as she was dialing the Bureau of Antiquities, Rossini had been talking to the chief of police in Capri village. Alfonse Rosario had come to the island about the same time he had, when the old police chief had been removed after being indicted in a corruption scandal. As the community’s two newcomers and outsiders, both had been regarded with a bit of suspicion at first. This resulted in each of them discovering a friend and kindred spirit in the other. Rossini had always been fascinated with police work, and Rosario had a strong layman’s interest in archeology. As each of them had gradually been accepted as part of the little island community, their circle of friends had widened—but never to the exclusion of each other. Rossini knew he could count on the police chief for discretion and logistical support.

“Alfonse? This is Giuseppe. Listen, I am going to need your help this evening,” he said as soon as they were connected.

“By all means,” said the chief. “What are you up to in those old ruins, that you need back-up?”

“I’m not at complete liberty to say,” replied Rossini. “But what we require at the moment is to be undisturbed for a few days. On a practical level, a more permanent roadblock at the base of the mountain, and some food and drink for the evening would do for starters. A couple of tents and sleeping bags, because I don’t think we will be coming down off this mountain tonight—and the fewer people that know something is going on, the better.”

“Hmm, I am guessing you must have found something important, my friend! Did the tremor shake something out of the mountainside?” asked the policeman.

“You are fishing, Chief Rosario!” laughed Rossini. “All I can say is, as soon as I am at liberty to divulge it; you will be the first person I tell. But for now, the quieter we keep it, the sooner I can tell you what we’ve found.”

“All right,” said the chief. “I’ll play by your rules, and I’ll have a couple of tents up there, along with some bedding and food, within the hour. Then we’ll barricade the old road and leave you alone with your infernal secrets!”

After he hung up, Rossini walked to the edge of the villa and looked to the west, with the length of the island of Capri stretched out toward the setting sun. He wondered how the view would have looked two thousand years before, as old Tiberius stood on the same marble floor, staring off across the body of water the Romans called
Mare Nostrum
—“Our Sea.” He had always been fascinated by the titans who had struggled for power during the last days of the Republic—Gaius Marius, the wealthy commoner who had become Rome’s greatest general and been elected consul seven times; Lucius Cornelius Sulla, the ruthless patrician who had purged the Senate of plebeian influence by a series of bloody proscriptions; and the one who surpassed them both—Gaius Julius Caesar, the soldier, writer, statesman, and reformer who had, depending on who you listened to, either destroyed the Republic in a mad fit of pride or been goaded into a needless war by his fanatical, idiotic enemies in the Senate. It had been Caesar’s great-nephew and adopted heir Augustus who built the Villa Jovis as a quiet retreat from Rome. He had, in turn, bequeathed it to his stepson and heir, the reclusive general Tiberius, who had turned it into his primary residence after leaving the city of Rome. And it was Tiberius that Rossini pondered now, the cruel, unpopular tyrant who had ruled a quarter of the earth’s population from this gem of an island off the coast of Italy. Was he the twisted monster Suetonius had portrayed in his histories, or was he a misunderstood old man who simply wanted to escape from the madness and noise of the imperial city?

Giuseppe was so caught up in his reverie that he did not hear Isabella come up behind him until she lightly placed one hand on his shoulder. “We did it,” she said softly. “Or, more truthfully, you did it. You made the discovery that will ensure that archeologists a hundred years from now will have to learn our names!”

Rossini laughed and kissed her young hand. For a moment, he wished he were thirty years old again. How beautiful she was! But his affection for her, for all of his banter, was more like the love of a doting father for a daughter who made him very proud. “Dear child,” he said. “There is no one on earth I would rather share this discovery with. To think that you and I were the first in two millennia to see the signature of the man who was the adopted child of Augustus himself! I’ve always wondered how Howard Carter felt when he poked his head through that hole into the tomb of Tutankhamen, or Heinrich Schliemann when he held the golden mask of Agamemnon for the first time. Now I know.” The two archeologists stood in silence and watched the sun drop into the Mediterranean.

In order to understand the choices that were thrust upon me during the Jewish festival of Passover this year, Caesar, I must acquaint you with the events over the last three years that led up to it. As I am sure you are aware, the Jews’ rather odd religion has for centuries prophesied about the coming of a savior they call the Messiah—Christos in Greek—who would redeem them from their slavery and restore the great kingdom that was theirs at one time. This belief makes them particularly vulnerable to the machinations of various charlatans and lunatics who pop up from time to time claiming to be this Messiah. Such men invariably spell trouble for whoever is currently holding the Jews on a leash—be it the Assyrians, the Greeks, or we Romans.

However, most of these men in the past were quickly exposed as the frauds that they were. For all their protestations of holiness and religious fervor, the House of Zadok which controls the high priesthood is quite comfortable with the mutual arrangement they enjoy with Rome. Indeed, since Pompey the Great added this troublesome province to the Empire nearly a hundred years ago, the Priests have been Rome’s staunchest allies, and an invaluable aid in keeping the peace. So when rumors began to circulate of a new would-be Messiah rising up in Galilee, I figured they would take care of him soon enough.