David Gibbins - The Mask of Troy

‘Horses,’ Lanowski said, chuckling to himself. ‘Horses.’

‘What?’ Jack asked hesitantly. Costas gave him an alarmed look.

‘Horses.’ Lanowski had a mad glint in his eyes. He shook his head, laughed out loud, then murmured to himself, ‘ Horses.’

‘Okay.’ Jack took him firmly by the shoulders and steered him back to his seat, sitting him down. He looked at everyone else. ‘I think that about does it. I’d like to thank you all very much. That’s been fantastically interesting. It’s time to get cracking.’ He kept his hands firmly on Lanowski’s shoulders. ‘And I’d especially like to thank Dr Lanowski. He’s killed two birds with one stone. He’s explained how there could be an ancient galley wreck out here, how the weather could have caused a ship to drive into the sea bed, as in the poem. And he’s explained how the Greeks may have reached the walls of Troy. Ours is a joint project, at sea and on land, and we’ve just seen how hard science can knit it all beautifully together. Brilliant. Thank you.’

‘Hear hear,’ Macalister said. Everyone rose from their chairs and filed out. Jack looked down at Lanowski. ‘You all right?’

‘I’m not mad, you know.’ Lanowski spoke quietly, his face now pale. ‘I studied ancient Greek at school. That’s what I was on about. Horses. Ippoi. That’s what the Greeks called waves, whitecaps. And it’s what they called ships. Horses.’

‘Horses,’ Jack repeated quietly, nodding slowly. Horses.

‘Horses, being driven towards the walls of Troy.’ Lanowski began muttering to himself again. Costas passed over the pile of overhead sheets and placed them firmly in Lanowski’s hands, raising him up and steering him towards the door. They watched him shuffle out, still muttering and chuckling to himself.

Costas shook his head. ‘A genius, but crazy. You handled that well.’

‘Maybe not so crazy,’ Jack replied quietly. Horses. There was something there, but he couldn’t quite pin it down. Something about Homer. Something probably glaringly obvious. He put it away in his mind and looked at Costas, shaking his head. ‘And imagine him rowing.’

Costas put a hand on Jack’s shoulder. ‘Never second-guess anyone around here. I’ll just barge my way through the queue waiting to hear his detailed lecture. I’ll be back in a moment. We’ve got twenty minutes before kitting up. There’re a few things you need to explain to me.’

J ack watched Costas go, then took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. That had been a hell of a prep talk. He hoped to God he was right. Every time he led his crew on a chase like this it was a gamble. He Every time he led his crew on a chase like this it was a gamble. He was glad Professor Dillen had not been in the audience. Dillen might have taken him down a notch or two. But then he remembered the thrill in the professor’s voice when he had spoken over the phone of the Ilioupersis discovery, as if his entire career had found its culmination. And he remembered Dillen taking him aside at the end of his first year as an undergraduate, telling him that he had seen a few others with the same passion as Jack, but none with the ability to seek out and empathize with individuals in the past, to understand what motivated them, to ally his own quest with theirs. Jack had seen something in Dillen too, in the countless hours he had spent watching him translate and analyse Homer, something more than just declaiming words from the past. It was as if Dillen inhabited the imagination of the poet, and knew Homer emotionally, not just intellectually. Jack had promised Dillen that one day they would combine to investigate a moment in history that drew on both of their talents, somewhere at a critical juncture where myth and history met. He was sure of one thing. Flying Dillen from retirement to join the excavation team at Troy had been one of the best things he had ever done.

He stared through the open doorway at the salt-streaked window and the Turkish shoreline beyond, a hazy outline of low sandy cliffs flecked with spray. They were over there, Dillen, Hiebermeyer, the others, at fabled Troy, where the tendrils of fact and legend seemed forever to dance around each other, sometimes drawn close by a new discovery, by a fresh wave of belief, but then as quickly blown apart by doubt and uncertainty. Jack knew that history was sometimes best left that way, where the reality of events was unclear even to those who witnessed them. But Troy seemed to demand more than that. There had been a darkness here, a truth about the human condition that had lured people for generations, since archaeology was in its infancy. Jack remembered one of the first things Dillen had taught him. History was about individuals, about individual people making decisions. The cold facts of history, the artefacts that Jack cherished, were his key to getting into their minds. And he knew it was not gods who had set the Trojan War in motion, it was men. One man above all others.

For weeks now Jack had been putting himself in the mind of Heinrich Schliemann, poring over his publications, visiting his home in Athens, exploring the ruins of Mycenae, the site of Schliemann’s other great triumph. But always he had felt the presence of another, a towering, shadowy figure whose steps Schliemann had tried to follow, a giant among men from the age of heroes. It was at Mycenae that Jack had first tried to go there, standing alone in the ruins of the Bronze Age palace, on the edge of the grave circle where Schliemann had found the famous mask, staring out towards the sea where the king of kings had set off at the head of a thousand ships. Broad-shouldered Agamemnon, cattle-stealer, earth-smiter, sacker of cities, who knows war in all its bloody ways. What had Agamemnon seen? What had he done? What had made him come here, to Troy, to set in motion the war to end all wars, the war that would obliterate civilization, that would reduce men to their most base condition?

Sunlight streamed through the door as the ship changed position, obscuring his view of the shoreline. If Dillen had been there and not taken him down a notch, Rebecca would have done. She was out there too, learning the tricks of the trade from Hiebermeyer. Jack had missed seeing her at the briefing. It was now nearly two years since her mother had died, since he had taken over responsibility for her, but already those years when she had been brought up apart from him were receding into the background. He tried to keep her mother close in their memory, and there was much that reminded him of Elizabeth too, the dark eyes, the vivacity, the determination. But there was a Howard in Rebecca as well. Dillen said he had seen the same light in her eyes, the same drive. Jack hoped she had a dose of the Howard luck. Maybe together they could crack this place.

‘Okay, Jack.’ Costas reappeared at the door, and shut it behind him. ‘We’ve got fifteen minutes before the divemaster wants us in the equipment bay.’ He walked back to the front row of seats and sat down, a glint in his eye, then jerked his thumb towards the picture on the screen. ‘So what’s this really all about? You can tell me. Your old buddy Costas. Everyone else has gone. What’s the scoop, man? What’s the treasure?’

Jack pretended to look affronted. ‘The treasure’s in the ideas. In the revelations about the past. The lessons for the future.’

‘As if.’

‘Where did you learn to say that?’

‘Your cool daughter. It’s what she says when I tell her that one day you’re going to put up your fins, and pass all this on to her.’

‘She’s only seventeen, you know. And our greatest discoveries lie ahead of us.’

‘Let’s talk about the here and now, Jack. Come on. The treasure.’

‘Okay.’ Jack paused. ‘You remember those lumps of charcoal – as you called them – we found all those years ago on the beach near Troy? The ancient ship’s timbers? Well, I’ve always wanted to find more, to prove that Bronze Age galleys were built using the same edge-joined mortice-and-tenon technique as the galleys of the Greeks and Romans. That would help prove the reliability of Homer, too. If we can push the technology of Homer’s age, about the eighth century BC, back four centuries or so to the likely date of the Trojan War, then that makes it all the more likely that the history of the war was real too, that it wasn’t being made up by the bard. The more threads we have like that, the more the truth is locked down. So that’s what I want. A wreck with enough hull to prove it’s a galley, not a merchantman, and a nice big section of joined planking. And some keel, too. Icing on the cake.’