The Mask of Troy

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T he man stepped off the upper rung of the ladder on to the edge of the excavation pit, his shoes crunching on a pile of ancient potsherds the workmen had shovelled aside a few days before. In the moonlight the rough-hewn masonry around him glistened, as if the great citadel of the Bronze Age were new again. He swept his hand over his thinning hair, and pushed his pince-nez spectacles up his nose. He reached into his waistcoat pocket and pulled out his fob watch. Four a.m. He and Sophia had been here almost three hours, and it was now less than an hour before first light. Before the child of morning, rosy-fingered Dawn. He closed his eyes, thrilling at the epithet. Homer was never far from his thoughts here, when he was alone among the shadowy ruins with his wife, astonished at what they had found. Well-built Mycenae, rich in gold. It had been his dream since discovering Troy five years before, since he and Sophia had secretly made the find that would one day astonish the world, to come here to this other great bastion of the Bronze Age, this citadel of the king of kings, to find the key that would allow him to stand in front of the world and reveal the truth. Only then would people know it was not treasure that had driven him to search for the reality of the Trojan War, but the salvation of humanity. The key that could save the world from Armageddon.

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