David Gibbins - The Crusader's gold

I think we’ve hit pay dirt!”

Jack Howard looked up from the chart table to the minarets dotting the Istanbul skyline, then down to where the excited shout had come from the foredeck below. He quickly replaced the nautical dividers he had been using and swung out of the bridge door for a better view. He had been on edge all morning, hoping against hope that today would be the day, and now his heart was racing with excitement. When he saw what was happening he turned and slid down the metal handrails three flights to the walkway on the port side of the ship. Seconds later he was mingling with the crew on the foredeck, his dark blue fisherman’s jersey conspicuous among the overalls bearing the logo of IMU, the International Maritime University.

“Right. What have we got?”

Before the crew chief could reply, one of the divers surfaced in a tumult of white water off the port bow. Jack leaned over the bulwark railing to watch as the diver spat out his regulator mouthpiece and injected a blast of air into his stabiliser jacket.

“It’s Venetian,” he called up breathlessly. “I’m sure of it. I saw the markings.”

The diver vented his jacket and disappeared back beneath the waves. Jack watched the slew of bubbles that rose from his exhaust and that of the three other divers who were guiding the lifting platform to the surface. It was a potentially treacherous operation, with Sea Venture maintaining position against a five-knot surface current. A slight wobble in the current and the divers and their precious cargo would be swept off into one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world.

Jack narrowed his eyes as the sunlight glinted off the waves, his rugged, tanned features creasing as he kept his attention glued on the spot where the diver had disappeared. Behind him the machinery on the foredeck clunked and whirred into action and the crane dipped with the weight of its load. Slowly, inexorably, the cable rose from the seabed a hundred feet below, groaning alarmingly as the current took hold. The crew lining the railing seemed to hold their breath as the cable creaked upwards inch by inch. At last the spread of chains holding each corner of the platform appeared and Jack knew they were safe. Sea Venture had been positioned with her port side in the lee of the current, facing the shoreline of the old city, and the lifting platform would now be protected by the deep draught of the vessel.

From the murky depths an oblong form began to take shape. Jack felt the familiar tug of excitement, the burst of adrenaline he always felt at this moment. Despite being present at some of the greatest archaeological finds ever made, he had never lost the thrill that came with every new discovery. Even the most mundane object could open a whole new window on the past, give reality to momentous events only obscurely remembered in myth and history. As he watched intently, his hands gripping the rails, the four divers emerged at the corners and the platform was winched clear of the waves. When they saw what lay in the middle, the crew erupted in a ragged cheer. Months of planning and days of round-the-clock effort had paid off.

“Bingo.” The crew chief grinned at Jack. “You were right again.”

“Couldn’t have happened without your hard work.”

It was a great gun, a gleaming bronze cannon at least two metres long, its upper surface washed clean of the accumulated grime of centuries and shining like gold. Jack could immediately see it was an early type, its ornate cylindrical breech tapering to an octagonal fore end. He had seen similar guns, dating from the sixteenth century, from King Henry VIII’s flagship Mary Rose in Portsmouth and from shipwrecks of the Spanish Armada. But this one looked older, much older. After the crane had slowly swung its load over the railing and deposited it on the foredeck, Jack strode over for a closer look, the crew crowding eagerly behind. He ignored the spatter of mud from the cleaning hose as he crouched down and stretched his hand reverently towards the gun.

“The Lion of St. Mark’s,” he said. “It’s Venetian all right.”

He pointed to a raised casting near the breech end of the gun. The image was unmistakable, a winged, forward-facing lion wreathed in a leafy garland, one of the most potent symbols of medieval Europe. He traced his fingers over the emblem and trailed them towards the rear of the breech. Suddenly he raised his other hand to order the crewman holding the hose to avert the flow.

“There’s a foundry mark,” he said excitedly. “In front of the touch hole.”

“It’s a date.” The crew chief leaned over Jack, shielding his eyes from the glare. “Anno domini. Then Roman numerals. I can barely make it out. M, C, D…”

“Fourteen fifty-three,” one of the others exclaimed.

“My God,” Jack said quietly. “The Great Siege.” He had no need to explain that date; its significance had been drummed into the crew during his many briefing lectures. 1453. The year of the greatest-ever showdown between East and West, a clash of titans at this crossroads between Europe and Asia. The year of the last dying gasp of the Roman Empire, its domain shrunk to this one defiant promontory from its heyday fifteen hundred years before, when Rome had ruled the greater part of the known world. For a moment Jack felt a frisson of energy as he pressed his hand against the cold metal of the gun. He glanced along the line of the barrel towards the city of Istanbul, its minarets and domes rising like a studded jewel from a mirage. He was touching history itself, drawn into the past with an immediacy no textbook could ever convey.

After a moment he stood and arched his back, his tall, lean frame towering over most of the crew. “It’s a field piece, a siege gun, much bigger than the antipersonnel breech-loaders carried on ships of this period. My guess is we’re looking at one of the guns used by Sultan Mehmet II and the Ottoman Turks to pound the city defences.” He gestured towards the shoreline where the fractured remains of the Byzantine sea walls were just visible, their impressive stature further reduced by earthquake and modern development. “The Ottomans would have used any gun they could lay their hands on. This one was cast in Venice earlier that year, then maybe captured in battle or by pirates, then used against the massed forces of Byzantium behind those walls, including the Venetians themselves. The Turkish media are going to love this.”

As the crew dispersed back to their jobs, Jack looked again at that emblem on the gun. Like his own forebears in England, sea captains and explorers who had touched the farthest reaches of the globe, the Venetians were maritime adventurers who had spread their tentacles across the Mediterranean world, even installing a colony of merchants here in Constantinople. Theirs was a world of trade and profiteering, not imperialism and conquest. Yet they had been responsible for one of the greatest crimes in the history of civilisation, a crime which had drawn Jack to this spot and which he was determined to fathom before the expedition was out.

Back on the bridge, Jack resumed his seat behind the chart table and rolled up his sleeves. It had been a cool early summer morning but the sun was beginning to bear down as the sea mist burnt off. He looked over at Tom York, IMU’s senior captain, a neatly attired, white-haired man who was conferring over the main radar screen with the ship’s second officer, a newly appointed Estonian who had come with impeccable credentials from the Russian merchant marine academy. York glanced keenly at Jack and inclined his head towards the window from which he had been watching the scene on the foredeck below.

“I’d say mid-fifteenth century, from a distance.” York had begun a distinguished career in the Royal Navy as a gunnery officer and since then had developed an expertise in early naval ordnance which had proved indispensable on IMU projects. “I can’t wait to take a closer look. Right at the dawn of naval gunnery. But too late for us.”