The Lost Tomb (The Last Gospel) by Gibbins David

Author:Gibbins, David [Gibbins, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical Adventure, Mystery & Suspense
Publisher: Little Brown
Published: 2010-03-25T23:00:00+00:00

A few minutes later they stood just inside the portico of the Guildhall Art Gallery, looking out over the yard with the elliptical line of the Roman amphitheatre arena marked across it. To their right was the medieval façade of the Guildhall itself, and to the left the solid, functional shape of St Lawrence Jewry, reconstructed after the Second World War to resemble as closely as possible the original design built by Sir Christopher Wren after the Great Fire of London in 1666.

‘This place seems pristine now, but it’s seen three circles of hell,’ Jack said quietly, peering out into the drizzle. ‘Boudica’s revolt in AD 60, the massacre, possibly human sacrifice. Then the Great Fire of 1666. Of the buildings here, only the Guildhall wasn’t completely destroyed, because its old oaks wouldn’t burn. An eyewitness said it looked like a bright shining coal, as if it had been a Palace of Gold or a great building of burnished brass. Then, almost three centuries later, the inferno visited again. This time from above.’

‘The twenty-ninth of December 1940,’ Jeremy said. ‘The Blitz.’

‘One night of many,’ Jack replied. ‘But that night the Luftwaffe targeted the square mile, the City of London. My grandmother was here, a despatch rider at the Air Ministry. She said the sound of dropping incendiaries was ominously gentle, like a rain shower, but the high-explosive bombs had been fitted with tubes so they screamed rather than whistled. Hundreds were killed and maimed, men, women, children. That famous picture of St Paul’s Cathedral, wreathed in flames but miraculously intact, comes from that night. St Lawrence Jewry wasn’t so lucky. It went up like a Roman candle, the flames leaping above the city. One of the men standing next to my grandmother on the roof of the Air Ministry watching the churches burn was Air Vice Marshal Arthur Harris, “Bomber” Harris. He said he saw total war that night. He was the architect of the British bomber offensive against Germany.’

‘Another circle of hell,’ Jeremy murmured.

‘My grandmother heard a terrible scream that night, like a banshee,’ Jack said quietly. ‘It haunted her for the rest of her life.’

‘Must have been a lot of horror,’ Costas said.

‘The scream came from the church,’ Jack continued. ‘The organ was on fire and the hot air rushing through the pipes made it shriek, as if the church was in a death agony.’

‘Shit.’

‘You couldn’t put that in a horror movie, could you? Nobody would believe you.’

‘I think I’m getting the jitters about this place, Jack.’

‘It’s all still there, under our feet,’ Jack said. ‘The Boudican destruction layer, charred earth and smashed pottery, human bone. Then masses of rubble from the old medieval church destroyed in 1666, cleared and buried to make way for Sir Christopher Wren’s new structures. And then another layer of destruction debris from the Blitz, with reconstruction work still going on.’

‘Any unexploded ordnance?’ Costas said hopefully. ‘That’d make me happy. You owe me one. That stuff you wouldn’t let me touch on the sea bed off Sicily.

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