The Etruscan Net (5 page)

Broke got up, brushed the grass from his knees, and ran up the path. Once over the crest he saw the marksmen, three boys, carrying light rifles. They were looking at a pigeon on the ground. It was dragging itself round in a circle, but making no attempt to fly. As Broke came up, one of them prodded the bird with his foot and said, ‘Perhaps if we set fire to its tail, it might fly once more.’

Broke saw a cage on the ground, with two other birds in it. He said angrily, ‘What are you doing?’

The boys swung round, and he recognized the two boys who had taken charge of the car the night before. The third, he thought, had been one of the waiters.

The tall boy said, ‘We are practising our shooting. We are sorry if we frightened you. But this is a private property.’

‘What are you doing to those birds?’

‘We pluck their wing and tail feathers so they can fly a little, but not too far, and we shoot at them. We are using rifles, as you see, so they are not easy to hit. Sometimes they fly five or six times. This one, I think, is tired.’

Broke stooped down, caught the bird, and wrung its neck. The boys shouted in anger, and Broke realized that if they attacked him he would be in trouble. The leader of the boys was as tall as he was, and probably stronger. The other two nearly as strong.

Out of the concrete hut beside the tumulus shambled the untidy figure of a man. He looked as if he had been wakened by the noise from the siesta which should follow a heavy lunch. His red face was moist and fringed with a stubble of grey beard.

He said, ‘What the hell’s going on? What are you shouting about, Lorenzo?’ And, as his bleary eyes took in Broke, ‘Who is this man?’

The tall boy said, sulkily, ‘He killed our bird. No one asked him to interfere.’

‘What are you doing here?’

Broke took Professor Bronzini’s card out of his wallet, and said, ‘I am here by invitation of the owner. He invited me to inspect the digging.’

‘I know nothing of that,’ said the man. He seemed to be working himself up into a rage. ‘You must leave, now. At once.’ When Broke held out the card he pushed it away, repeating, ‘Now, at once.’

‘I’ve come quite a long way to see these tombs,’ said Broke. ‘The owner has invited me. Until he withdraws his invitation, I have no intention of going away.’

His coldness added to their fire. The man said, the edge of venom showing plainly in his voice. ‘If you do not go quickly, perhaps you will be made to go, and perhaps it will not be so pleasant for you. You understand the frog march. That is not very dignified for the frog.’

The boys laughed. Broke said, ‘If you do anything so stupid, I promise that you will be very sorry for it.’

‘It is you who are going to be sorry,’ said the man. He was spitting in his excitement. ‘Take his arms, two of you.’

The smaller boys had been working their way behind him. Now they jumped at him, grabbing an arm each. Broke stood very still. The man came up and thrust his face close to Broke’s; so close that he could smell the wine on his breath, and see the spittle which dribbled from his open mouth into the hog-bristles of his beard. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘you will go, whether it pleases your lordship or not.’

Broke twisted to the right, and as the resistance built up, reversed the motion, tearing his right arm free, and hit the man hard in the stomach. The man doubled up, mouthing obscenities, and a cool voice said, ‘Would someone kindly explain what this entertainment signifies?’

The car must have come very quietly along the rutted track. Danilo Ferri had got out of it and the giant Arturo sat beside the driving wheel. The boys had released Broke, and were standing in a sheepish group, reduced suddenly in size to naughty children. Ferri said to the tall boy, ‘Well, Lorenzo?’

The old man had got his breath back. He said, ‘Our orders–’ Ferri ignored him. He continued to talk to the tall boy. ‘Were your orders to assault a friend of your master, who comes here, with his permission? You have earned a whipping, all three of you.’

The boys said nothing, but stared down at the ground, scuffling the dust with their feet.

‘Be off.’ They went, without looking back. The red-faced man said, sulkily, ‘How was I to know?’ but he sounded frightened, too.

The card had fallen to the ground, Ferri stooped to pick it up.

‘It seems that he showed you this card. Are you unable to read?’

The man said nothing. Ferri handed the card to Broke, and said, ‘I am grieved that you should have had such an uncivil reception. Had I known you were coming, I would have been at pains to accompany you myself.’ As they walked across to the tumulus he added, ‘They are primitive people here. They have to be dealt with in a primitive way. But that is no excuse for Labro’s behaviour. I have long suspected that he was a drunkard. He will have to go.’

Broke said, ‘I was partly to blame. The boys were shooting at crippled birds. I interfered.’ He pointed to the dead pigeon and the two captive birds.

Ferri said, ‘I will have the birds destroyed. I see that you have brought a torch with you. Good. Allow me to lead the way.’

The tumulus rose, gently as a breast, from the body of the earth. It covered an acre of ground. They went down three steps, through a gap in the stone girdle, along a man-made cleft, and into the tumulus itself. There were small chambers, cut in the rock to right and left, all quite empty.

‘These, and the two beyond, were ransacked long ago,’ said Ferri. ‘Fortunately the vandals got no further. The passage was a false entrance. We found another on the other side. That, too, led to an apparently blank wall of rock.’

‘Which you broke down?’

‘Certainly. With modern implements it was not difficult.’

‘What did you find?’

Ferri chuckled. ‘We found that we were back in the first passage. They were intercommunicating. An Etruscan joke. There were some interesting terracotta figures in the tomb which lay off the second passage. Some the Professor has kept. Others he has given to different museums in Italy. Also two caskets of alabaster containing ornamental jewellery.’

They made their way down the central passage, which dipped and curved to the right, then started to rise again. By the light of his torch Broke could see the chiselling of recent excavation in the rocks. Daylight showed ahead. Broke was counting his paces. It was sixty-five yards before they emerged at the far side of the tumulus. Ferri led the way round to the left.

‘Here we broke in again,’ he said. ‘We are working here now. You will find this more interesting, I think.’

Broke scrambled through the hole which had been cut in the rock and turned on his torch. He was in a tiny room, some eight foot by six, with the usual rock shelf around two sides of it. The walls above were covered by a continuous painting. It was a seascape. A curly border, half-way up the wall, gave a formal representation of the surface. A multitude of fish and strange marine creatures swam below it and from the rocks along the bottom anemones grew, and crabs lurked in stylized fronds of weeds. Higher up, porpoises broke the surface. And on the water there floated, as centre-piece to the picture, a single open-decked ship, with high poops at each end and a line of rowers in the waist.

Broke drew in his breath sharply. He said, ‘This is very fine. Has it been recorded?’

‘The Professor has had colour photographs taken of it. He places it as fifth century, I believe.’

‘Sixth or fifth,’ agreed Broke. He had out his glass and was examining the ship carefully. ‘This is a representation of a pirate ship. You can see the iron beak at the prow which was used for ramming. The man at the back is armoured too. The captain, or pirate chief, one presumes, since he is wearing such a splendid helmet.’ It was an elaborate contraption, like a dowager’s Ascot hat, but constructed in metal sections. At the front, in the centre, was a small lion’s head.

‘It is interesting that you should say that. This cluster of tombs is thought to have belonged to a pirate and his family. His name seems to have been Thryns. It is supposed that he ruled over this settlement. He may have owed allegiance to the Lucomie of Volterra, or he may have been independent. His name had been seen on the lintel of a door at Vada, on the coast.’

‘Fascinating,’ said Broke. ‘Winter quarters here. A summer house on the coast, near his ship. If he was really a big-shot, his burial chamber would be worth finding.’

‘Of course. That’s what we’re hoping for.’

‘What have you got so far?’

‘Some interesting mirrors, and some small alabaster figures. Come, I’ll show you.’

With a last look at the pirate chief, erect in the stern of his galley, peering forward over the bowed backs of his slaves at the oars, Broke followed his guide. Each small chamber led, by a mousehole in its wall, to a further one.

‘There would be more logic in it,’ said Ferri apologetically, ‘if we could divine the plan of the central passages. As it is, we have had to make our way in ignorance, supplemented by force. This is where we are working now.’

The innermost chamber was lit by a single electric light. Two youths were working quietly at the far end, chipping into the soft rock with steel chisels and mauls. The dust had blackened their faces and when they grinned their teeth showed white in the torch light.

‘This must have been the tomb of some lesser members of the household. Women, probably.’

Set out on one of the low rock benches was a collection of terracotta jars, lamps, combs and brooches, and an incense burner with three goats’ feet.

‘If we go out this way,’ said Ferri, ‘we come back to the linked passageways.’

‘Yes,’ said Broke. He was trying to picture in his mind the ground plan of what he had seen. An acre of tumulus offered a lot of hidden space. A team of excavators, working systematically, could probably cover it in a year. Tackled piecemeal in this way it might take ten years. If the linked passages divided the mound roughly into two, all the work so far had been done on the left-hand, or northern side. Or most of it. He glimpsed one opening to the right, and peered in. Ferri, ahead of him, swung round.

‘I wouldn’t go in there,’ he said. ‘There’s been a lot of settlement on that side. We’ve had to shore up as we go.’

The light from Broke’s torch cut a strong white swathe through the room. It rested for a moment on something which stood on the shelf of rock at the far end of the room.

‘I don’t want to hurry you,’ said Ferri, ‘but I myself have to be back in Florence by eight o’clock. And I think – in view of what happened – I had better see you back to your car, if you don’t mind.’

‘Of course,’ said Broke. He clicked off his torch and followed his guide out into the blinding sunlight of an Italian evening.

‘You will want more time to examine it all properly,’ said Ferri. ‘Why not have a word with the Professor. He could take you round himself. You would find much to talk about.’

‘I’d like to do that,’ said Broke.

He spoke absently, because he was thinking of something else. He was thinking about it as Ferri drove him back to where he had left his own car, and later, as he drove himself back to Florence.

What he had seen, for a few seconds, in the light of his torch, was a helmet, shaped like a dowager’s Ascot hat made in metal sections. In that one glance he had, he thought, seen the small reproduction of a lion’s head which formed the centre-piece in front. He wondered how it could have come there, and why Ferri had not commented on it. He wondered very much if it would still be there when the Professor eventually found time to show him round.

Annunziata Zecchi put down the worn coat, in the elbow of which she was inserting a patch, and said, ‘Are you sure he will come?’

She was a fine woman. At fifty still broad in the hips and full in the bust, her grey hair piled, pompadour-fashion, above a face beginning to wrinkle, but full of life and authority. Tina said, ‘Yes, Mother. If he said he will come, he will come.’

‘You have confidence?’

‘Yes. I have confidence.’

‘Where is your father?’

‘He went up to the workshop as soon as he had finished his supper.’

‘He eats so little,’ said Signora Zecchi. ‘Hardly enough to keep a sparrow singing. And he worries. All the time, he worries.’

‘Perhaps when he has spoken to Signor Roberto it will relieve his mind.’

‘
If
he speaks. He has become so secretive. He goes to confession, but I know that he tells the priest nothing.’

A door banged in the courtyard behind the house and steps approached. The two women looked up hopefully, but it was the crippled Dindoni who came into the kitchen, the usual malicious half-smile on his face.

He said, ‘Not sitting at home tonight, Tina? What are the young men of Florence thinking about? Have they no eyes in their heads?’

Tina said, ‘Be off, and mind your own business.’ But Dindoni seemed inclined to linger. He perched on the corner of the kitchen table, and said, ‘Who was that sweet, that really
very
sweet young man who stopped his car in the Via Tuornaboni yesterday afternoon to speak to you. And held up all the traffic for two minutes.’

‘It was the Sheik of Araby. He is in Florence to choose himself two or three more wives. Didn’t you know?’

‘He looked to me to be very like Mercurio, the son – or to be accurate, the adopted son – of Professor Bronzini. A pretty boy, isn’t he? Really very attractive.’

‘Which is more than can be said for you,’ said Tina.

Dindoni hobbled to the door, and turned for a parting shot. He said, ‘But we mustn’t make Signor Roberto jealous, must we?’ He shut the door, and they heard his feet clattering off down the pavement.

‘Oaf,’ said Tina. But the colour had come into her cheeks. ‘How I hate the little toad.’

‘You shouldn’t allow him to tease you,’ said her mother. ‘I don’t care for him a great deal myself, but he is a hard-working little man, and it would be difficult for your father to get by without him.’

‘He’s vile,’ said Tina. ‘Do you know where he has gone now? To drink with that woman, Maria. She is no better than a whore.’

‘Agostina,’ said her mother, ‘that is a word no woman should use of another.’