Devil's Lair (20 page)

Giovanni led the company
south along the crater’s edge. The lake was not as bleak as the tapman had
imagined. Nadja saw no birds, but dragonflies thrummed the air. Some of the
trees still lived. The grass was dry but plentiful, a testament to the
fertility of the former season.

Not dead,
she thought,
merely dying.

Giovanni stood with Nadja in
the Temple of Apollo, looking at the columns and the ancient stone walls,
thinking,
The old gods have fled and left behind their shells.

Nadja’s voice behind him: “I
saw you in the Devil’s lair.”

“A false dream,” he said.
“I’m going to Naples.”

“In my vision, you went with
us. You talked to a dead man. He had a bag of gold around his neck.”

A usurer.
Giovanni had not read her that canto.

“If you want to leave,” she
said, “leave now.”

“Tonight?”

“Now.”

Not without William.
“I’ll stay and see what happens.”

“Give William the book.
If he has it, we won’t need another guide. You’ll be free
to go.”

“Is that what you want?”

Nadja hesitated. “You have
another life, Giovanni. You have children. Go home.”

Giovanni studied the temple
walls. “There used to be engravings. Images carved in gold.” He passed his hand
over the rough surface. “They would have been here and here. And maybe over
there. Now they’re all gone. Stolen.”

“What images?”

“A father’s tribute to his
fallen son. Icarus.”

“The boy who tried to fly?”

“This is the place.” He
stepped outside. Nadja followed. The temple was built on a crest of the crater,
with a view of the bay and the open sea beyond. “Here,” he said. “Right where
you’re standing. They flew from Crete, father and son, carving the air with
waxen wings. The boy fell into the sea. This is where the father landed.”

“How do you know?”

“Virgil wrote it down in the
Aeneid.
”

Nadja thought a moment.
“That other man in my dream. With the bag of gold. I think maybe he was your
father.”

Giovanni nodded. “All I ever
wanted was to be a poet. My father never understood what that meant.”

“What does it mean?”

“It means giving up the
present for the future. A future my father couldn’t see.”

Nadja said, “Sometimes it’s
better not to know the future. Isn’t that what gives us hope?”

“The souls of the damned
have no hope, but they can see the future. Aeneas’s father saw the future of
his son. My father never saw my future when he was alive. If he’s down among
the demons, maybe he knows me now.”

Within the ancient temple,
William prayed alone while the others slept. When his regular orisons were done
he meditated on a single word.

Hope.

The dark in his mind
diminished. He felt his soul rise up through a veil of scintillating light,
passing through and beyond the cloud of unknowing. As the supernal mist parted
he saw not the beatific vision but a vision of the underworld, of demons and
monsters, and in that blessed light he saw the moment of his death. The vision
overwhelmed him. He was filled with a sweet and sudden ecstasy, for he
understood now, beyond all understanding, that in three more days his soul
would be returned to God.

In the morning Giovanni led
them to the dromos of the Sibyl’s cave, a trapezoidal slit that looked like a
keyhole in the crater. Nervous, he tied the donkey to a tree.
Nothing in the
cave,
he reminded himself
as the pilgrims repacked their belongings to take only what they could carry.

Marco was fully armored
except for his helmet, which he wore slung at his hip.

“You will not need that
armor,” the friar said. “It will only slow you down. The Holy Lance is our
protection.”

“If I am a knight, I will go
as a knight.”

William asked Giovanni, “How
long did it take Dante to get through Hell?”

“Three days.”

To the others William said,
“Bring the water and wine. Food is optional.”

Marco snorted. “For you,
maybe. I’m already hungry.”

“Very well. But we won’t be
needing these.” William set aside the bowls and utensils.

“What else?” Nadja asked.

“Bring the torch. The oil.
Flint and steel.”

“Rope?”

“Yes, yes. Very good. The
charcoal, too.”

The girl gave him a puzzled
look.

“Bring it,” he said.

When they had repacked,
William addressed the group: “We must ask a blessing on our journey. Let us all
hold hands.”

He took Nadja’s hand and
Marco’s. Nadja joined hands with Giovanni, but the poet and the knight each
kept a hand free.

William said, “Please. Both
of you. This is important.”

Giovanni and Marco obeyed
with reluctance, joining their hands to complete the circle. They all bowed
their heads.

“
Oremus,
” the old friar said, then prayed in the
vernacular so Nadja and Marco could draw hope from his words: “To our most
merciful Father, the one true God, Maker and Ruler of all things, in whom we
mortals have our being, we humbly pray that You will favor and aid us in this
most treacherous journey. May You light our way through darkness; may we follow
a course redounding to the splendor, honor, and glory of Your name; and may all
our enemies be cast into confusion, disgrace, and eternal damnation. Amen.”

“Amen,” said the others.

Turning to Marco, William
made the sign of the cross. “‘
induite vos arma Dei ut possitis stare
adversus insidias diaboli.
’”

The cave of the Sybil was
long and narrow. The dromos ran parallel to the hillside. Giovanni saw several
openings to their right, cut into the rock. He let William take the lead. The
old man held the torch before him. They went slowly, studying the walls as they
passed, looking for markings or other clues. A passage opened to the left.

“There’s nothing down that way,”
Giovanni said.

“Let’s find out,” William
suggested.

“The chamber of the Sybil is
straight ahead.”

William took his own counsel
and led them to the left. Giovanni fretted in silence. The tunnel split into
more passageways, forming a kind of labyrinth in the rock.

“We could get lost down
here,” Giovanni remarked, hearing a nervous edge in his voice.

William said, “All who come
this way are lost.”

The passage came to a dead
end.

“Look,” said William.
“Something’s written here.”

Giovanni came up beside the old man, who
passed the torch along the wall, illuminating the inscription. He saw dark
letters etched into the stone: HOPE.

“This is it,” said the friar. “This is
the gate.”

Can’t be,
Giovanni thought. Hadn’t he come this way
before? How could he have missed it?

Nadja edged closer. “What
does it say?”

William moved the torch to
the left, revealing the rest of the inscription. He read the words aloud.

“Abandon all hope.”

From somewhere deep below
came a sound like thunder. The cave shook. The writing on the wall cracked and
crumbled. Rocks with dark letters fell to floor.

A fissure opened beneath
their feet.

Marco yelled, “Get back!”

They stepped away from the
widening chasm, unstable on their feet as the temblor intensified. William
staggered, reached out a hand to brace himself, and dropped the torch. Giovanni
tried to grab it, but the torch rolled into the chasm and tumbled into
darkness.

The earthquake was felt from
Avignon to Constantinople, from Munich to Malta. Towers toppled. Mountains
slid. Ancient trees were riven at their roots. The earth trembled like a sinner
at the sight of an avenging angel thundering havoc over the work of a thousand
years.

Apollo’s temple shook and
shattered. In Tavern Avernus, rats scurried and patrons cowered as wine barrels
crashed to the floor, exploding in crimson. In Naples the cathedral façade
cracked and spalled, then calved from the building and fell to ruin. Terra
firma rolled and swelled beneath Monte Cassino, reducing the abbey to rubble.
In Venafro the Pandone Castle was torn asunder. A shockwave swept through the
Apennines and leveled the town of Rocca Calasco, sending nine hundred souls to
judgment. Corona Corvina fell from its perch, chased to the bottom by what had
been the mountaintop.

In Padua, Petrarch sat on a
garden bench reading Pliny’s
Historia Naturalis
when the earth began to shake. He stood
with a start, dropping his book as the statue of Mnemosyne wavered and fell,
missing the poet and crushing the bench.

Rome, the Eternal City, was
nearly destroyed. Devastation ripped through the heart of the ancient empire.
Columns crumbled in the Forum to the sounds of an infinite scream as people
stormed the streets in terror. Buildings old and new were pulverized. Marble
turned to dust, scattered on the wind. Some buildings stood while others were
razed: Tiempo della Pace; Saint Paul’s church and Saint John’s basilica; the
Conti and Milizie Towers. Rome’s greatest monument was not immune. The
Colosseum cracked and the southwest outer wall collapsed.

A moment undid the glories
of an age.

The earthquake stopped. Dust
settled. The dark chamber smelled of marl and broken stone. Giovanni coughed to
clear his throat, thinking of Saint Sunniva, who was buried alive in a
mountainside.

“The exit is blocked,”
William said, somewhere behind him.

Giovanni went to the friar’s
voice, felt the man’s tattered robe, then searched for the opening and
confirmed the verdict: he moved his hands along the cold walls of their
enclosure, palm over palm, until he came to a ruin of rubble that obstructed
the exit. “Can’t go back.”

“Can’t go forward,” said
Marco. “Not without a torch.”

Nadja prayed: “
Ave Maria,
gratia plena, Dominus tecum. Benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus
ventris tui, Iesus
.”
William joined her. “
Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus
.” Giovanni, too, spoke the words. “
Nunc,
et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.
”

“Amen,” said Marco.

A light pierced the
darkness. The Holy Lance began to glow in Marco’s hand until the iron tip
beamed brilliant as a torch.

The friar crossed himself. “
Deo
gratias.
”

Shadows animated the walls.
Nadja laughed in wonder, Giovanni in disbelief.

“‘
fiat lux,
’” said William. “God will light our way.”

“I’ll go first,” Marco said.

He moved to the front of the group. The
crack in the floor was wide enough to step through. Marco paused at the verge
of the abyss, surveyed the entrance, then took the first step.
William entered second, bracing against the walls
to ease himself down. Nadja went third. Her hair caught the light rising from
the Lance.

Giovanni watched them go.

When the others had
vanished, their footfalls continued to echo up to the chamber where the poet
stood alone. Light dwindled in the lower passage.

You wanted to
be another Dante,
he
chided himself, and took a deep breath to summon his courage.

He peered into the dismal
maw and felt a warm draft on his face. The hole in the ground seemed to
breathe. He sensed no sulfurous odor, merely the smell of damp stone. The echo
of footsteps diminished and died. The only sound remaining was his galloping
heartbeat and his panicky breath. It taunted and shamed him.

Giovanni crossed himself,
muttering, “
Libera nos a malo,
” and followed the others down into Hell.

CHAPTER 20

Marco led them into the
realm of grief. Nadja kept her hands on the rough walls to stop herself from
slipping down the steep stone ramp. Loose rocks littered her path. A crack had
opened between two worlds. The pilgrims now walked between. As Nadja warily
descended, the air grew more obscure. Marco was far ahead and taking the
lancelight with him.

“Slow down,” she said.

The knight waited. “Where’s
Giovanni?”

A voice behind them and
above: “Coming.”

Now he believes me,
she thought.

They started forward as a
group. Marco set an easier pace. Nadja followed William. Giovanni followed her.