Death Among the Ruins (6 page)

“Look, Mr. Kendrick,” she cried. “Did you ever see anything so dashing?”

“Splendid, isn’t she?” said the captain, who happened to be passing by. “Our navy captured that one off the Barbary Coast, and re-christened her.” He chuckled in an avuncular manner, which grated on Belinda’s nerves. “Her original crew were as fierce a bunch of Corsair cutthroats as ever slaughtered gallant Christian seamen!”

“Do you mean she was a
pirate
ship?” Belinda asked.

“Aye, ma’m. Fastest thing afloat in her day. Would have got clean away from our lads, but she was badly outnumbered, and by the time her captain decided to make a run for it, we had her surrounded.”

“What . . . happened to the crew?” asked the girl, fearing the answer.

“Hanged! In chains, too, bedad! No need to worry your pretty head about
them
sea robbers, miss! They’re all in hell by now, turning round and round on the devil’s own roasting spits!”

The captain, who had shewn a marked partiality toward the younger Beaumont sister since the first day out, could not have known that she would take this information in anything other than a positive light. He had even entertained some vague hopes of winning her admiration of his narrative technique to the point of convincing her to come back to his cabin with him. But Belinda was, in fact, horror-stricken. Moreover, as the man himself presented a most reassuring and un-piratical appearance, she was not having any of
that,
thank you. Even so, she lingered a while in his company after Mr. Kendrick had gone below for his coat, because, despite the wind and the gathering storm, the captain had begun to tell her a story. It was a most curious tale, too, and Belinda lost no time afterward in relating it to her sister.

“Rubbish,” said Arabella flatly.

“But there was no reason for the captain to lie, Bell. He did not even realize that he was relating anything of which I was not already cognizant.”

“That Elliot requested the transfer
himself?
But why should he do that?”

“I don’t know. Do you suppose he could have got wind of an insurrection or an epidemic on shore, and wished to avoid it?”

“Before you told me this, I should have said that Mr. Elliot would never think of saving himself from danger and leaving the rest of us to face it, unprepared. But I should also have said that he would not lie to me about his actions. The fact that he has clearly done the one thing does not necessarily mean he has also done the other, but sadly, I cannot rule it out, either.”

Accordingly, she removed his card from her glove, tore it to fragments, and dropped them into the wastebasket next to her bunk. “Come, Bunny,” said she, “let us go out and catch our first glimpse of Naples.”

The
Perseverance
was just now on the point of docking, and Mr. Kendrick strolled ebulliently over to join the ladies.

“I believe I shall write a poem about that xebec!” he exclaimed.

“What xebec?”

“The one which has borne Elliot off. Such sleek lines! Such a trim little ship! She was a bonny little brig, was she not?”

But of course, Kendrick had liked her for quite another reason. A reason that was rather odd, when you came to look at it, for he had never been jealous of the men who actually slept with Arabella.

“O heavenly, harmonious ship!” he intoned, waxing ecstatic. “O vision of loveliness, most sublime!”

Arabella lowered her eyes to the dock, where a venerable old gentleman stood, waiting patiently and holding a sign that said
BOWMENT
.

“Quite,” she remarked. “And thus pass we, with scarcely a pause, from the sublime to the ridiculous.”

 

 

J
ohn Soane’s ancient friend had come to meet them himself, clad in scholar’s robes, which made it all the more preposterous that he should be standing on the dock and holding up his little sign amidst a sea of touts and riotous shills. From where she was standing, Arabella could see that the hair had melted away from the crown of his head, leaving the top as naked as a baby bird’s behind, but along the sides it fell almost to his shoulders in brittle, gray locks of differing lengths. Or would have done, had the wind not been whipping it across his face and straight up in the air. A hat would doubtless have been a great improvement. She could not quite picture him in a hat though, save, perhaps, the type worn by wizards.

Once the voyagers disembarked and had the chance to see him up close, the professor appeared to be in his seventies, with strong features and deep furrows extending from the sides of his nose to the corners of his mouth. But one could only notice these details later, owing to the immediate and horrific impression produced by his eyes. Professor Bergamini wore spectacles over them, tinted so dark a green that Arabella and Belinda could not see his actual eyes at all. On their approaching him, he had produced a hat from somewhere and clapped it on, when, of course, the usual thing when meeting ladies for the first, or any, time, was to take one’s hat
off
. Arabella had been quite wrong about the style of it. This hat was the very opposite of a wizard’s brimless cone, if anything as complex as a hat can be said to have an opposite. The crown was low, and a wide, loose brim cast the wearer’s face in perpetual shadow. Staring out from beneath this generous awning, the tinted spectacles looked spectral, indeed, like the ocular holes in a skull.

Still, except for donning his hat, the professor was cordial enough. He had even arranged to have three carriages waiting at the dock to convey the Beaumonts and their luggage to the hotel . . . and Mr. Kendrick, too, of course.

“Bell,” whispered Belinda. “He keeps . . . staring at me!”

“Does he? How can you tell?”

“I . . . I do not know! But I can! And I am all over gooseflesh! Look!” She drew back her glove, exposing the little, raised bumps on her forearm.

“Dear me!” said her sister. “Yet, I am not surprised.”

“I cannot share a carriage with that . . .
monster!
You must do something!”

“All right, darling. I shall tend to it.” Arabella detached herself from Belinda’s clutches and approached the others. “Gentlemen, you will greatly oblige us by riding together in the first coach, where you will be free to discuss your manly plans without our tiresome interference.”

Although they had no manly plans, so far as they were aware, Kendrick and Charles were happy enough to comply with her wishes—apparently tinted spectacles held no horrors for them—and so the party started off to everyone’s satisfaction. Five minutes after they left the docks, the heavens split open, and the rain poured forth like steely beads.

“He means me no good, I am sure of it!” cried Belinda, shouting to make herself heard above the clattering racket. “The old fellow must be evil, or mad!” The rain, on a sudden, lessened. “And his eyes,” she continued, in a normal tone of voice, “could we but see them, should betray him at once. He resembles a gigantic house fly, attempting to disguise itself as a professor.”

Her sister explained that tinted lenses were often used to correct vision problems, or sensitivity to the sun.

“But it is raining today,” said Belinda.

“Yes. Well, perhaps he is sensitive to any light whatsoever.”

“Or perhaps he suffers from syphilis . . .”

“Perhaps he does.”

“ . . . and perhaps,” Belinda persisted, “the ravages of the disease have left him looking older than his actual age, and he is really only a young man of five and twenty!”

They were laughing now. It was not really so amusing, but they had not got much sleep the previous night, and that, coupled with Arabella’s disappointment over Elliot’s departure, and Belinda’s terror of Bergamini, had rendered them both a trifle giddy. When their mirth subsided, they fell into a kind of reverie that resembled stupefaction.

“Bell,” said Belinda, rousing herself at last, “shall we have to keep company with that dreadful old man
all
the time?”

“Well, the poor fellow has taken the trouble to secure our comfort. He is certain to know a great deal about antiquities, and perhaps he will be able to advise me on how best to deal with the customs officers once I find my statue. But I can see him alone, if you do not wish to accompany me whilst you are here.”

Tired though she was, Belinda caught the import behind the words.

“No. I am the one who convinced you to undertake this journey,” she said. “It would be very bad of me to desert you now, and I won’t; I just wish that we might keep our contacts with . . . with dubious characters to a minimum.”

Arabella smiled, and took a small edition of Boccaccio—travel-sized, for convenience—out of her necessities bag. “I expect you will get used to him, darling,” she said. “He strikes me as the sort of man who grows on one.”

And she began, quietly, to read, while Belinda looked out of the window, and thought about tumors.

After a time, the little caravan reached Resina, the contemporary town constructed unawares above the ancient one, and pulled up before a comfortable-looking hotel there. The landlords ran out to the new arrivals with umbrellas and hurried them indoors, where they passed through a medieval reception hall and up a grand staircase to a cozy suite of rooms. They were to have a large salon, with four bedchambers opening off it on two sides, and a private parlor at the farther end.

“I trust you will find it comfortable here,” said the professor. “Signor and Signora Fiorello will see to your every need. There is even a doctor next door, should you require medical attention, though I sincerely hope that you will not.”

Belinda had to admit that the old man had a wonderful voice, with the merest hint of a thrilling continental accent. And she decided that she might be able to bear his company in the days to come, so long as she did not have to actually look him in the face.

“This is the best hotel in Resina,” he continued. “The owners are personal friends of mine. Here you can bathe, rest, and have dinner, and tomorrow I shall escort you to the scene of the murder.”

“But what if it should still be raining?” asked Arabella.

“It will not rain tomorrow,
signorina
. This is just a small storm. It will pass over quickly.”

He bowed, and Arabella barely had time to thank him before he was gone. Then she went down to supervise Mr. Kendrick’s supervision of the fellow who was supervising the disposition of their luggage.

“In which room should you like them to put your valise, Bunny?” she called over her shoulder. But there was no answer. Belinda had walked into the first bedroom she had come to, and fallen facedown upon the bed.

On her way back upstairs, Arabella met her brother coming down.

“Shouldn’t you like to have a nap, Charles?”

“Presently, presently,” he replied, and she guessed what was afoot, for prior to separating at the customs house, Arabella had given him money with which to pay for the carriages. And he had done; she had seen the lire pass hands. But not understanding the rate of exchange, she had probably given him too much, and Charles must now be looking for a way to lose the amount left over.

Mr. Kendrick would have liked very much to take a nap. But with impressive alacrity, he had grasped the true reason for his inclusion in the party, and now he followed in Charles’s wake without a murmur of complaint. Because he loved her.

When a sudden pang of remorse stabbed at Arabella like a stiletto on the staircase, she ignored it. Mr. Kendrick, she knew, would not want her to suffer on his account. He adored performing these services for her. They were what he lived for, and nothing was required of her in return save that she permit him to anticipate her slightest wish. At least, that was how she saw it.

On entering the room that would be hers, Arabella was aware of an odd, suffused brightness. Her mind, by this time, was somewhat dulled by fatigue, so it took her a moment to identify the source: a sunbeam, stealing through a crack in the shutters. Without so much as a glance at her inviting bed, she threw open the French doors and stepped out onto a small balcony. The sun was once again in possession of what little was left of the day, and now, by its mellow light, Arabella beheld the ruins, which lay cupped beneath her in a kind of crater, like a small-scale replica in a dish: columns, arches, partial walls with shrubs sprouting from their cracks or ivy dripping down their summits, fragments of streets, the remains of sunken gardens, and oddly shaped mounds that she guessed to be unexcavated buildings. Here and there, a cypress pointed a slim, accusatory finger at the sky, from whose impassive blue expanse the ancient gods had once beheld the destruction of the faithful.

All was quiet, save for an occasional bird note echoing in the stillness, and the air sparkled with the prisms of quivering raindrops, refracting the golden sunlight of late afternoon. The resurrected city appeared to be sleeping. Arabella had not realized that the hotel was so close to it. She hurried inside and quickly dressed to go out, her fatigue vanished upon the instant. When she came downstairs, she glimpsed Charles playing vingt-et-un in the parlor with a puffy-looking fellow who had seemingly just arrived, for a vast collection of trunks and travel cases was once again piled in the lobby. Kendrick stood behind Charles’s chair, looking exhausted. Arabella did not want to talk to them. She paused beside the parlor doorway, gathered herself together, and swiftly plunged past it, without being noticed.

The air outside proved chillier than she had expected or prepared for, but a path ran round the rim of the sunken city, gradually spiraling down to merge with one of the ancient streets, and by taking this at a brisk pace, she was quickly able to restore the warmth to her limbs. Like an explorer arriving on an undreamt-of continent, Arabella broached gardens, peered into windows, and paced through rooms that had once been studies and libraries and private kitchens. The spell of the past descended upon her consciousness like a gossamer scarf. A part of her mind was still grounded in the nineteenth century, but another part felt itself to be rooted in the distant past, as if she were somebody else, clinging to an existence that lay buried beneath the rubble, and seizing the chance to revisit its beloved city through the agency of a living body.

The sensation was a novel one, yet it did not distract Arabella from her purpose. Somewhere in this place, an exceptionally well-endowed Pan statue had lain unclaimed and undiscovered for seventeen centuries. Now it was here no longer, and a man lay dead because he had tried to procure it for her. Where had the murder occurred? From where had the bronze been taken? And more importantly, where was it now?

She walked through the silent streets as late-forming clouds returned to obscure the sun once again. There would be no sunset, now; just a gradual fading of light and color, reducing the world to a uniform gray before the darkness took over. Herculaneum was mostly gray, anyway. She shivered as shadows began to lengthen in the ancient doorways. A burst of cold air sprang up from nowhere, blowing her bonnet askew.

The certainty of knowing oneself to be the only living soul in an empty city is one that few will ever encounter, and thankfully so. But Arabella was enjoying the sensation. To be walking and thinking in a place uninhabited for a thousand years was a memory she would cherish for the rest of her life.

But then, she was
not
alone, after all.

Awareness of this fact broke upon her in subtle stages, building up so gradually that it was more like the subtle seepage of fluid through a porous membrane than a clear moment of certainty. But the instant she detected a slight movement out of the corner of her eye, an occurrence that coincided with the audible dislodgment of a pebble, her mind reacted immediately, and she turned to confront this intruder on her solitude, only to find the street empty.

She realized, with a jolt, that she might actually be in
danger
. But Arabella continued to saunter along the pavement, to all appearances unaware of the escort who stalked her just beyond that row of shops, because she was seeking the road by which she had come, and the way back to safety. There was not a soul down here excepting herself . . . and one other. Now and then, she thought she saw a partial face peeping at her from behind a date palm, or fingers emerging from a gap between the ancient bricks. In the waning light it was becoming harder to see. Where, oh, where was the exit road?

Arabella had completely lost her bearings. She could no longer recall which streets she had walked along, or where the hotel had stood in relation to them. Now she was aware of her own heart, thumping in her breast, and she began to walk a little faster. But only a
little
faster, lest her fright be perceived by the “other,” and the time judged ripe for pouncing on her. Was that just the wind soughing through the umbrella pines? No. It was someone whispering.

Dear God. There was more than one of them. Either that, or the only one there was . . . was insane. Arabella keenly felt her vulnerability now. She was alone and unprotected in a strange place, where she neither spoke the language, understood the customs, nor knew how to find her way back. John Soane had spoken truly: She had got herself embroiled in a mad scheme. Upon regaining the hotel precincts, the first thing she would do would be to get a map of this place. But . . . what if she never got back to the hotel? She must not think like that! She
must
not! Because then she would panic, and panic was a type of surrender, and she was not made that way.