The cobbles were daubed a streetlight yellow when they arrived at the cistern. Florence collared the janitor as he locked up for the night; as money changed hands Jake glimpsed a wedge of hundred-dollar bills in her purse. Still in thrall to the bank of mum and dad, then.
The lights were already off, so the janitor loaned them a torch. Then the pair descended into what felt like the stronghold of some dwarvish king. Lines of columns stretched before them, silent as pine trees. Arched ceilings were visible fifty feet above, and a whiskered catfish broke the surface of the subterranean reservoir before darting off into the murk.
“It was only rediscovered by Europeans in the sixteenth century,” whispered Jake. “Some French guy saw locals selling freshwater fish and asked where they caught them. He was taken here.”
It felt right to whisper; the only other sound was the distant drip of water echoing through the vaults. A gangway led to the south-west corner of the cistern and the shadows lurched forward as they walked across it, a forest of stone come to life.
The twin Gorgons stared into the underworld. One head was on its side and the other upside-down, reinforcing the strangeness of their presence here. Yet the nearest of the pair was not a classic representation of Medusa. There were no snakes for her hair and the face was too masculine. It looked more like …
“Alexander the Great.” Florence voiced Jake’s thoughts: the head before them could have been the great Macedonian, his tresses trailing in the wind of battle.
“But why?” she asked.
Jake fumbled in his backpack for Life of Constantine.
“There’s a passage about Alexander in here,” he said. “Book One, verse seven.”
Torchlight illuminated the page.
Alexander overthrew countless tribes of diverse nations. He waded through blood, a man like a thunderbolt. But Emperor Constantine began his reign at the time of life where the Macedonian ended it. He even pushed his conquests to the Ethiopians, illuminating the ends of the whole earth with beams of light of the true religion.
“A man like a thunderbolt,” Jake repeated. “Beams of light of the true religion. If there’s anything to be found then it has to be here. Eusebius mentions Medusa and Alexander the Great individually – and he alludes to the Book of Thunder both times. Then here they are, side by side.”
Splashes interrupted him as Florence entered the water up to her knees. Her torchlight danced off the coins cast in by tourists, and a goldfish zigzagged away in fright.
“Eusebius said the divine and secret power lies within the saving trophy,” she said. “Perhaps there’s some kind of compartment.”
Jake admired her at that moment – Florence might be tricky, but she wasn’t afraid of getting stuck in. Yet the Gorgon refused to yield. He crashed into the water alongside her, gasping at the cold.
“I don’t think there’s anything inside Alexander either,” he said, probing the head with his fingers. “Unless …”
He paused mid-sentence. There was an algae-filled groove below the waterline.
Jake kneaded it with the tip of his finger, clearing the indentation of slime until it joined another notch, then another.
“There’s some kind of mark down here.”
“There’s one here too,” said Florence, feeling below the surface of the Gorgon.
She swept the water from the base of the head; Jake glimpsed symbols on the rock before the waters closed.
“Shut your eyes, I’ve got an idea.” Florence grinned at him. “Just trust me.”
Jake couldn’t resist peeping; he copped a glimpse of bare back and screwed his eyelids shut again.
“Ok, you can look now,” said Florence.
She had her coat on again. But in her hand she held the shirt she’d been wearing – and in the other was a crayon they had made rubbings with in the Agya Sophia. Florence dunked the shirt under the surface, clamping it over the first character and thrashing the crayon backwards and forwards. Then she retrieved the dripping garment and dangled it in the torchlight.
“My God,” whispered Jake.
Even with his scant knowledge of the period there could be no doubt. The single character imprinted onto the shirt was not of the Roman alphabet. Nor was it Greek, nor Arabic, nor any of the other languages one might expect in that part of the world.
They were looking at ancient Etruscan.