The Night Villa (19 page)

It soon became apparent that the three men were discussing a lawsuit in the local courts and that the case concerned the disputed manumission of a slave.

“It all came down to the birthdate,” one man with a weak chin and prominent nose said to his companions. “On whether she was born before her mother was freed or after.”

“I thought there was a witness who said she was born after,” his companion said.

“Yes, but the same man changed his testimony,” the first man said. “They say he gained his freedom by lying in court.”

“I say they shouldn’t have taken the word of a slave,” contended the youngest of the three, a handsome youth with a feminine face and ringleted hair. “Of course he’d say what his mistress bid him to say.”

“If the word of a slave is so suspect, my dear Dexter, then why should we listen to you?” the third man said, draping his arm around the shoulder of the youth and twining his fingers through his curls. “And why should anyone believe the word of this girl who could not be expected to remember the day of her own birth?”

“An excellent point, Apelles. I could have told you the outcome of the case before its conclusion. Why would the family have allowed a pregnant slave to buy her freedom before the birth of the child when they could just as easily wait and retain a replacement for the lost slave? It makes no sense at all.”

“Ah, but I’ve heard that the master of the house was fond of this slave and so granted her the right to buy back her freedom before the child was born. How else could she have set herself up in such a lucrative business if not with her former master’s backing?”

“Hm, I did wonder about that,” the long-nosed man said. “I’ve tasted her oysters—they’re the best in the Cup.”

“Yes,” the boy Dexter said eagerly, “and now all those oyster beds have become the property of—”

“Her mistress,” Apelles concluded, clapping Dexter on the back. “And none too soon. The word in the marketplace is that since her husband’s death Calatoria’s household has been severely depleted of finances. They say Gaius Petronius made a number of unwise investments and gambled away his wife’s fortune. No wonder it is said that Calatoria despises all men and practices rites only to female gods in her household. They say—”

I had perhaps unwisely shown my interest in the conversation since hearing the name of my hostess and the man called Apelles now stopped, seeming to take notice of my presence for the first time. At the same moment, a slave appeared, telling the three men that their guest had arrived and was awaiting them in a private room. Then, turning to me, the slave indicated that I could now enter the tepidarium. I was sorry that we were separated before I could learn more. Even the pleasures of the warm bath, followed by a good sweat in the sudatorium and then a plunge in the frigidarium, did little to distract me from pondering the conversation I had overheard. Clearly they were talking about Iusta—the daughter of the oyster vendor who gained her freedom either just before or after giving birth to her. I found I agreed with the long-nosed man when he said it didn’t make sense for Gaius Petronius to grant Vitalis her freedom before she gave birth…unless she was a particular favorite. As I was toweled off and rubbed by a most efficient masseuse I thought about the pictures of Iusta’s mother on the wall in the courtyard, depicting her as the young frightened initiate. Who, I wondered, had played the role of the god Dionysus in that rite? Had it been Gaius Petronius himself? And if he had played the role of Dionysus with Vitalis, might he have been Iusta’s father? That might explain why he would give Vitalis her freedom before her child was born. It would also explain the superior education he had given Iusta. I determined that the next time I saw Iusta I would ask her if Gaius Petronius ever gave her reason to believe he was her father. The old man had said Iusta was doing errands in town; perhaps I might find her in the forum.

So anxious was I to leave the baths in order to pursue this goal that I became lost in the back rooms. I opened one door and found the furnace, then hearing voices and thinking that it must be the exit I opened another.

It was not the exit. It was the private room to which the men whose conversation I had overheard had repaired, along with their guest. The guest was a lady whose age it was difficult to judge both because of the great quantity of powder on her face and the unusual position she had assumed—a position I am reluctant to describe, suffice it to say that she was doing her best to entertain the gentleman with the long nose while the other two men, Dexter and Apelles, did their best to entertain each other.

I hastily closed the door, muttering apologies, and went in search of the exit. By the time I found it, I was sweating—the effects of the cold plunge already negated by the heat of the day and my exertion. The door I came out of let onto a narrow alley leading away from the sea and toward a steep flight of steps back up onto the level of the town. At the top of the steps I found myself at the crossroads of three streets marked, fittingly, by a shrine to Hecate, goddess of crossroads.

“And which way now?” I asked the three-bodied goddess. I noticed that one of the figures carried a torch, the other a pomegranate, and the third a poppy. Because I had been given a poppy last night I decided to take the street the last figure faced. “After all,” I said to myself, “it is a small town organized along a grid. How lost could I get?”

It seemed though that no matter how many turns I made none led to the forum, nor did I see anyone of whom I could ask directions. The entire town seemed to be deserted. Had they all gone to Surrentum to worship at the Temple of the Sirens? Or were they all inside, engaging in recreations like those that occupied my friends from the baths?

Laughter and voices came from deep inside the houses I passed, but I was reluctant to venture inside any more private rooms. Then, as I turned down yet another long deserted street I saw a woman in a saffron-yellow stola and green palla framed in an archway, her back to me. Her head turned as she looked over her shoulder. Our eyes met and I recognized Iusta. I lifted my hand to summon her, but she must not have seen me because she disappeared around the corner. I ran up the street, determined to catch up with her, but when I reached the street she had gone down and turned in the direction she had gone, I found myself facing a blind and empty alley. It was as if she had been swallowed up by the earth. I ran to the end of the alley and pressed my hands up against the stone wall, as if I could melt through it and join her, and then I noticed that there was a small doorway in the wall to my right that was so covered with trailing flowers that I had at first missed it. Above the doorway, scratched in the stone, were three signs: a boat, a woman holding a child, and a crudely drawn fish. Was the girl here being prepared for Calatoria’s rites? If that were the case, and I blundered into a secret rite only for women, mightn’t I be subject to some awful punishment? I recalled what the men at the baths said about Calatoria’s hatred toward men. Did I want to earn her wrath? I was on the verge of turning away, but then I heard a sound come from inside the house: a low moaning as of someone who had been gravely injured. Without further considering the consequences, I pushed aside the vines and entered…

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I say aloud to the blank page. “Damn it, George! That’s where you break off?”

I’ve spoken louder than I meant to and as I look up I notice several tourists staring at me. Including one man at a table at the edge of the square in a red T-shirt and white jeans and dark sunglasses. He smiles at me and holds up his hand in the same gesture he’d made from the boat. As my hand moves to mirror it, I knock the pitcher of water into my lap. I look away—for only a moment, concerned mostly for the transcripts, forgetting for the moment that they’re not originals. When I look up, the man is gone.

I stand up and take off after him. He can’t have gone far, I figure, passing under a tiled arch. I see a flash of red in a crowd of tourists outside a gelateria halfway down the street, but by the time I struggle through the crowd he’s gone. I turn up a winding street lined with souvenir and postcard shops and get stuck in the crowds spilling out of the funicular station. Past the station is a terrace overlooking the steep streets descending toward the Marina Grande. I scan the whole terrace and the streets I can see from there, but there’s no sign of him. It’s then that I realize I left my purse at my table in the Piazzetta. I run back, sure that my bag with my wallet will be gone, but when I reach the square I find that my bag’s still hanging from my chair and my books and papers are still on the table.

A miracle, I think, gathering up my things. I get my watch stolen off my wrist, but when I leave my bag for anyone to take it’s spared. I check my wallet and see that the cash is all there and then, as I’m counting out change for a tip I notice that, far from anything having been taken from the table, something’s been added. Three small cards, each about an inch square, are lying in the plastic tip tray. Each one has a small, cartoonish figure on it: a man sweeping with a broom, a frying pan, and a sun. Signs as enigmatic as the one’s Phineas found over the door in the alley. Unlike Phineas, though, I have no way of tracking down the meaning of the signs, so I pick up the little cards, slip them in my skirt pocket, and head back to the villa.

A
t the villa, I find everyone gathered at the table on the peristylium.

“Did you read it?” Agnes asks me. “I ended up translating the whole thing and distributing it because it wasn’t very long.”

I nod as I collapse into one of the chairs. Looking around the table, I see that everyone has a slim sheaf of papers in front of them. Elgin and Lyros are still reading theirs—presumably because they’ve just gotten back from Herculaneum. Simon is using his to fan himself. Maria has rolled hers into a tube and is tapping it on the arm of George’s chair. “How could you stop just as he was going to the girl’s house?” she asks. “Were you trying to tease us?”

George, the only one of the group who’s not holding his manuscript, drags his long bony fingers through his hair as though he were trying to pull it out by the roots, but from the way he’s looking at Maria I guess that it’s her hair he’d like to pull out. “As I told you, that part of the papyrus is badly damaged. I’m not sure we’ll be able to decipher it at all.”

“You mean we may never know what happened in the house?” Agnes asks, her eyes wide. “Or who was screaming or why Iusta went in there?”

“I imagine Phineas was right: she was engaged in some purification rite,” Elgin says. “The symbols sound like they could be associated with Isis.”

“Then it really is a shame we don’t have this section,” Simon says. “The only details we know of the Rites of Isis are from Apulius and those are quite…tantalizing. It almost seems as if Phineas deliberately damaged the scroll at this point in the narrative to keep us in suspense.”

“Or someone else did,” Elgin says, looking up from his copy, “in order to keep the rites secret.”

“Where does the papyrus become legible again?” Lyros asks.

George closes his eyes and recites from memory. “At the line: ‘As I walked back to the villa, I pondered over all I had learned of Iusta and her unusual situation and wondered what would come of the pact we had entered into together.’”

A groan rises from the whole group.

“Maybe he tells us later,” Agnes suggests. “I say we go on scanning and see if we can figure out what happened in the house from the rest of the papyrus.”

Maria shakes her head. “It’s like reading a mystery with half the clues torn out—”

“Or like coming into a Buñuel film half an hour late,” Simon adds.

“Really?” Elgin asks, tilting his head toward Simon. “I can’t make head or tails of Buñuel even if I’m there from the beginning.”

“We’ll just have to hope the rest of the journal explains the lapse,” Lyros says. “In the meantime, the good news is that we think we’ve located Phineas’s trunk. We should be able to open it by tomorrow. I thought perhaps some of you might want to be there.”

“Well, I have to be there,” Maria announces.

As the rest of the group wrangles out the details of tomorrow’s excursion I turn back to the bay and reach into my skirt pocket to touch the three cards left for me at the cafe. There was no scroll to scan or trunk to excavate that might throw light on their meaning. I wondered if I’d ever figure it out.

At breakfast the next morning, Agnes offers to stay behind and work on scanning the next passage, but George insists she go to Herculaneum with the rest of us. “You really shouldn’t miss seeing the villa,” George says. “After all, you did your paper on the paintings there and you haven’t even had a chance to see them in person yet.”

“I’ll be happy to show them to you,” Simon offers. “I have to make some sketches for the reproductions. There are some details I think you will find especially interesting.”

Agnes blanches, no doubt envisioning that she’ll have to endure Simon Bowles pointing out the more lascivious features of the paintings. I’m expecting another outburst like those of yesterday, but to her credit Agnes composes herself and answers calmly. “Since I’ve studied the paintings, perhaps I could show
you
a thing or two about them. Why don’t I bring my paper on the murals with us? You can start by reading it on the boat.”

“I think you’ve met your match, Simon,” Elgin says. Simon laughs, but when I look at Elgin I notice he’s not smiling, and I wonder if he’s worried that he’s got a competitor for Agnes’s attentions.

On the boat trip across the bay Agnes seems to have completely forgiven Simon’s teasing from last night. She spends the whole trip down below in the cabin showing Simon her paper on the paintings of the Villa della Notte and discussing her theories. With Lyros at the helm, and Maria sunbathing on the prow of the boat, that leaves me with Elgin Lawrence for company, the last person I want to spend time with.

“I’m rereading the description of Isis in Apulius,” I tell him when he settles down next to me.

Elgin ignores the hint and instead leans close and whispers in my ear. “There’s something I have to talk to you about alone.”

I pull back to look at him, to see whether he’s flirting with me, but his expression is masked by dark sunglasses. I look back to the helm and meet John Lyros’s gaze. I return his smile and say to Elgin in a low voice, “Why did you wait until today when we’re on a field trip? You’ve had plenty of opportunity to talk to me alone.”

“No, I haven’t. You’ve been avoiding me.”

“Me? You’re the one who took off to Sorrento when I was bedridden.”

Elgin’s head moves back abruptly and his nostrils flare, looking a bit like the angry cobra on Isis’s headdress that I’ve just read about in Apulius. “Is that what you’re angry about? I couldn’t help that, Sophie, honest. I left only after I was sure you were safely on the island”—he looks over his shoulder at John, who, I notice, is watching us—“and then I had to go. I had an appointment.”

“Well, I hope she was worth it.” As soon as the words are out, I’m ashamed of myself. Where did all this spite come from? Surely I’m long over my little fling with Elgin. It’s been five years, after all, and it isn’t like I’d ever really been in love with him. I’d turned to him out of anger at Ely, as a distraction—a distraction I’d paid heavily for.

Elgin must think my reaction is strange, too, because he’s studying me with the same intent look he uses to examine difficult Latin inscriptions. “It wasn’t a woman,” he says at last. “I have to explain—”

I’m spared Elgin’s explanation by a summons from our captain. “Professor Lawrence,” Lyros calls, pitching his voice to be heard above the roar of the engine and the slap of the waves. “Why don’t you take a hand at steering. You mentioned you were a yachtsman.”

Elgin winces. True, he keeps a sailboat on Lake Travis, but even he wouldn’t refer to himself as a yachtsman. He clearly doesn’t want to disappoint our rich benefactor, though. As he rises to go he whispers in my ear, “Let’s talk when we get to Herculaneum. I’ll figure out a way for us to be alone.”

Elgin’s rather transparent method of ensuring us privacy is to turn to me as we approach the excavation site and loudly ask, “Didn’t you say you wanted to take a walk through the town, Sophie?”

Lyros, who’s unlocking the gate, looks back at us, puzzled, but Maria says, “That’s a good idea. We can’t all crowd around the workmen.” She glares at Agnes, but Simon comes to her rescue. “Don’t worry about Agnes and me. We’ll be busy looking at those paintings.”

“Okay, then,” Lyros says, checking his watch. “We should be done by noon, so if you want to be there at the unveiling—”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Elgin says, winking at Lyros. Then he turns to the gate that leads back to the public excavations.

“Sophie,” Lyros says before I can turn away, “I’ll make sure we don’t open it before you get back.”

“Okay,” I say, unsure how I’m supposed to respond to this. “Thanks. I won’t be late.” Then I turn to catch up to Elgin who, unlike the gentlemanly Lyros, hasn’t waited for me at all. Finally, at the Porta Marina, the old entrance to the city, I catch up with him. He’s striding down the cobbled streets of the ancient town as if down an avenue in a modern city, only here the streets are paved with giant blocks of stone worn smooth by pedestrians of two thousand years ago and rutted by cartwheels. At each intersection there are square-shaped blocks in the center of the street to make crossing easier, but which now impede our progress. Although it’s only nine it’s already brutally hot, and I remember that after my last visit here I collapsed with pneumonia.

“Slow down,” I say.

“I will as soon as we’re far enough away from the others,” he says. “I don’t want to risk being followed.” We go three city blocks before Elgin slows down his pace to a manageable clip. I make him stop so I can catch my breath at the open doorway to a house. Looking inside, I can see that its atrium is still perfectly preserved from the open skylight to the mosaic floor of its impluvium—a shallow basin for collecting rainwater. The simple plan of the entrance hall, common to most traditional Roman houses, evokes a sense of order and peace, perhaps because the house seems to be welcoming rain and sunlight into it along with its guests.

“I’d forgotten how amazing this place is,” I say. “It really feels as if you’re in an ancient city.”

Elgin sees me looking longingly into the house and after taking a quick look up and down the street steers me into the atrium. “This is probably as good a place as any,” he says. “I think there’s a garden inside this house that’s pretty private.”

As soon as we’re inside the house it’s cooler. The marble mosaic floor is buckled from the eruption, but it’s still beautiful and the proportions of the house are so perfect that I immediately feel peaceful inside its walls. I feel as welcomed as the long bars of mote-filled sunlight that slant across the walls. The Romans had a god dedicated just to thresholds, and I can still feel its presence in this entrance.

“Do you know what this house is called?” I ask Elgin. But he’s busy peering into the side rooms to make sure we’re alone. I follow him into a small room off the atrium and gasp at the sight of the household shrine: it’s a green and blue mosaic, perfectly preserved, and glittering in the morning sunlight. It depicts a goddess rising from the sea surrounded by dolphins. Venus perhaps? Or Neptune’s wife, Amphitrite? Or even Isis, whom Apulius describes at the end of
The Golden Ass
as emerging from the sea, “shaking off the brine” before his eyes? But this figure has none of the other features Apulius described—no moon disk on her forehead or viper by her side or wreath of corn on her head. She could be one of many sea-born goddesses. It hardly seems to matter. The residents of this town wedged between sea and volcano no doubt prayed to every god of sea and underworld just to keep the ground beneath their feet steady.

In among the shiny glass tesserae are seashells and tiny pearls. A small marble statue of the goddess stands in the little niche, her features so worn that her face is little more than a smooth stone. And yet some spirit still radiates from her. I’m surprised to feel my eyes stinging, moved by the ancient shrine in some inexplicable way. Is it the thought of generations kneeling before the pretty little goddess, praying for the daily blessings of food and children and another day, all to no avail? For the first time I feel acutely aware of this as a place where many people died, suddenly and unexpectedly, their daily routines interrupted in medias res and frozen for all time for us to gawk at.

“There you are,” Elgin says, poking his head in. “Come on, you’ll love the garden. It’s been restored according to the research done by your beloved Dr. Jashemski.”

I follow him to an open courtyard rimmed by slim marble columns. In the center is a small fountain with a bronze statue of a leaping faun. The partitioned beds have been planted with oleander and box hedges to replicate the plan of the original garden. “She’s not my
beloved
Dr. Jashemski…” I begin.

“Ha! You wrote a poem about her. I think it was the first time a student of mine ever wrote an archaeological sonnet. Let’s see, how did it go?” He looks up at the sky, puts his hand over his heart in what his students always called his Cicero pose, and much to my embarrassment recites the poem I wrote for him.

“When Wilhelmina F. Jashemski found