The Night Villa (29 page)

His chest, slim hips, and long legs are crisscrossed with waves of light reflecting off the water. Like a tattoo of scales. As I trace a wavy line from collarbone to pelvis, my hand absorbs the same pattern and the same blue glow. We’ve been transformed by the same spell—a couple from Ovid whose love turns them into blue-scaled sea serpents. Maybe we’ve both drowned, I think, tasting the salt of his shoulder as he presses himself on top of me. Maybe this is what happens when Orpheus goes back into the underworld to bring back Euridice, or Demeter sends Mercury for Persephone.
Facilis descensus Averno.
It’s easy to go down to Hell, but not so easy to come back. Maybe the price you pay is that you are branded with the mark of death, just as I’ve been branded by his absence these last five years—the ghost roots Ely left snaking deep inside of me.

Above me, he hesitates, eyes as dark and fathomless as any underworld lake. Do I want to make that journey? they ask. I wrap my legs around him and pull him into me, hanging on to him as if I’d drown were I to let go.

We stay until the tide reaches the edge of the shelf and licks at our naked bodies.

“I have to swim back or I won’t make it,” Ely says. “If you want to come back with me…”

“I’d better go back to the villa. They’ll wonder where I’ve gone and come looking. Besides, you need me at the excavation to watch for the scroll—to find
The Golden Verses.
”

“Sophie, I don’t want you to think what just happened has anything to do with getting the Pythagorean scroll. I didn’t plan for this to happen.”

“Of course not,” I say, laughing. The sound echoes in the grotto, the blue waves of light dancing like mocking imps. Ely has pulled on his swimsuit and dangles his legs over the edge of the stone shelf. I retrieve my robe from the step right outside the grotto and put it on. When I turn back to Ely, I see that he’s watching me. I bend down to kiss him, my damp hair falling between us. He wraps a lock around his finger, giving a little tug.

“Don’t take any chances. If they find anything in the tunnels today, try to be the one who takes it back to be scanned. If Lyros objects, don’t argue. Don’t do anything to make him suspicious. When you come back to the island go to the Gran’Caffe and order a lemonade. I’ll know, then, that you found something. Then come here as soon as you can.”

He kisses me again. Then he lets my hair go and dives into the water. The light reflections on the domed ceiling sway wildly, like a school of fish wheeling at the approach of a shark. I watch him swim through the crack underneath the water until I’m sure he hasn’t gotten stuck in the cleft as I had, and then I hurry outside onto the steps to see if I can get a glimpse of him swimming back to the boat. When I step outside, though, I’m blinded by the sun. I cover my eyes for a moment. When I open them, I see Maria standing two steps above me, hands on her hips, glaring at me through white-framed sunglasses.

“There you are! They sent me down here to see if you’d gone swimming. Everyone was afraid you’d drowned!”

I shrug, moving quickly up the steps to block Maria’s view of the water so she doesn’t notice Ely swimming back to the boat. “Well, as you can see, I didn’t.” I put my hand on her elbow and steer her back up the steps. “Let’s hurry back to reassure the others.”

Maria raises her glasses and gives me a hard look. “Something has happened,” she says. “You look different somehow. You are, how do you say?
Ardente.
”

“Glowing,” I translate. “It must be the Mediterranean sun and all the olive oil I’ve been eating.” I smile at the word Maria had chosen.
Ardente.
Yes, I feel like I’m on fire.

E
veryone is gathered in the lower courtyard at the breakfast table when Maria and I return. If I’d been expecting cries of relief that I haven’t drowned I’d have been disappointed. Only Elgin looks happy to see me even though his greeting is none too cordial.

“You’re late, Chase, and you’ve missed Phineas’s account of the eruption. George and Agnes stayed up all night scanning it.”

“She can catch up while we’re gone,” Lyros says, his lilac eyes rising from his china coffee cup and traveling up my body from my toes to the crown of my head. I’m uncomfortably aware that I’m naked under my robe and that he might wonder why I hadn’t worn a suit for my early-morning swim. “You went down to the grotto very early. You must not have gotten a lot of sleep.”

“I woke up early, but I feel fine,” I say more curtly than I mean to. “I’d like to go to the site. It won’t take me a minute to change.”

“I’ll make you a copy of the latest scan,” Agnes offers, getting up from the table. “And then I thought I’d go, too.” She looks toward George. “That is, if you don’t need me for anything. After reading this”—she holds up the slim sheaf of paper in her hands—“I’m dying to see those tunnels.”

“It’s fine with me,” George says, yawning. “We don’t have anything left to scan after this and I’m exhausted after working all night. I plan to sleep all day while you folk toil in the salt mines. I don’t know how you’re so fresh.”

“One of the blessings of youth,” Lyros says, smiling at Agnes. “By all means, join us. The more the merrier.”

I detect a tightness in his smile, but it might be my imagination. He can’t welcome so many extra witnesses if he plans to steal
The Golden Verses.
It’s Elgin who makes me realize I’m staring at Lyros. “Well, don’t just stand there, Chase,” he snaps. “Go get some clothes on.”

I shower and dress quickly, but when I get out to the front gate only Agnes is there waiting for me. “Elgin and Mr. Lyros have already gone down to the dock to get the boat ready. They left the cart for us to take. Maria went with them, but she’s taking the ferry in because she has business in Naples and will meet us at the site later.”

“Thanks for waiting for me,” I tell Agnes, opening the wrought-iron gate so she can drive through.

“No problem,” Agnes says after I’ve closed the gate and climbed onto the seat next to her. “To tell you the truth, I’d just as soon avoid being alone with the two of them. You can practically
smell
the testosterone coming off them in waves. I haven’t seen two guys hate each other so much since Sam first met Dale Henry—oh, gosh!” Agnes claps a hand over her mouth, almost swerving the cart off the path into an oleander bush. “I shouldn’t joke about that after what happened. Maybe if I had taken Dale’s jealously more seriously…”

“You can’t blame yourself for that, Agnes. You couldn’t have known that Dale Henry was that crazy or what other influences he might have been exposed to.” I’m thinking about what Ely told me, angry that on top of everything else that’s happened to her Agnes blames herself for Dale Henry’s rampage when it’s really John Lyros who’s to blame. But Agnes reads the emotion in my voice differently.

“Like
your
ex-boyfriend?” Agnes asks shyly. “Didn’t he leave you to join some kind of cult?”

“Who told you that?” I ask more sharply than I mean to.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. Elgin said something about it, to make me feel better about Dale, I think. He said if even a smart, beautiful woman like Dr. Chase could make a mistake like that, it could happen to the best of us.”

“Hmph,” I snort, trying not to feel pleased at Elgin’s description of me. “That’s very generous of Dr. Lawrence, considering the mistakes he’s made. Yes, my boyfriend, Ely, did join a cult, but that’s not why he left. He left because I was seeing another man.”

“Oh,” Agnes says. “I
am
sorry. I didn’t mean—-”

“It’s okay, Agnes. Elgin’s right about one thing: we all make mistakes. The important thing is what we do after we’ve messed up. We can give up or we can try again. And we can try not to mess up if we’re lucky enough to get a second chance.”
If your lover comes back from the underworld,
I want to say, remembering how Ely touched me this morning in the grotto,
you should not second-guess your good luck by looking over your shoulder to see if he’s still there—like Orpheus did when he lost Eurydice.

Agnes gives me a long, searching look, but she says nothing. I imagine she’s thinking about Sam and wondering if it’s too late for them. “Everyone deserves a second chance,” I tell her as we arrive at the dock where the
Parthenope
is anchored. She nods and looks away, but not before I notice her eyes filling with tears.

Clearly Agnes has taken my exhortation to heart. As soon as we’re on the boat she asks to borrow Lyros’s laptop and then spends the trip e-mailing and IM-ing, her body curled around the screen so that no one can see what she’s writing (as if we’d all want to see the romantic dialogue of two twenty-two-year-olds!). Lyros steers the boat and Elgin stands at his side, keeping his eyes on a chart of the bay as if he doesn’t trust Lyros not to run us into a sand bank. Although I feel a bit neglected, I’m glad to have the time to read Phineas’s account of the morning of August 24, AD 79. Once I’ve begun, I hardly notice I’m on a boat at all.

Because I had stayed up so late the night before—and anticipated another late night to come—I ordered the slaves not to wake me in the morning. I was, however, awoken by a loud clamor, a sound I first thought was a thunderclap. Good, I thought, a thunderstorm will relieve this infernal heat. I fell back to sleep and dreamed that I was at sea in the storm that had besieged my ship on the journey from Alexandria and left me shipwrecked. In my dream, I couldn’t escape into the sea because I was chained to the oarlocks along with the galley slaves. Just as I realized that this terrible trick had been played on me, and that I was to be drowned at the bottom of the sea along with my slaves, the deck of the boat pitched upward, borne aloft by a towering wave, and then slammed down into a wall of water, shattering the bow. I clung to broken boards as I slipped down into the maws of the sea that opened like the jaws of a giant serpent hungry for my flesh.

I awoke to find myself on the floor, pitched from my bed, which was in fact rocking back and forth like a ship upon an angry sea. It took me another moment to realize it was not the bed that was moving, but the floor I lay upon. The whole house shook so hard that I could not get to my feet. I crawled through the door to the courtyard, believing that I would be safer in the open than under a roof.

The courtyard offered little promise of safety. The columns ringing the pool swayed like snakes writhing on a Minoan priestess’s arms and clay tiles from the rooftop were flying through the air. Most horrible to say, the painted figures on the wall appeared to be dancing—some dreadful celebration of death and destruction, the sirens cracking their whips to the sound of thunderclaps that rent the still, dry air. Dionysus leered as he bounced up and down atop the virgin suppliant bound beneath him.

Everything stopped.

The stillness that followed was unnaturally silent. The water in the fountain had ceased to run. Even the sea had been silenced and as I crept toward the balcony, I was almost afraid to look, so sure was I that I would come eye to eye with avenging Poseidon, holding back the wrath of the deeps to unleash a last fatal blow upon me.

Instead I found myself eye to eye with a dying gray mullet gasping its last breath on the railing. The sea did appear to have retreated, leaving the stranded bodies of many sea creatures—fish, octopi, sea urchins—on the beach, but no avenging god stood ready to strike. Instead the air was now full of the shrieks and lamentations of the slaves in their quarters below. I turned to see what damage had been done by the tremor.

All was chaos: amphorae and statuary toppled and broken, roof tiles scattered about, slave girls crying hysterically and older slavewomen on their knees praying before the lararium, through which a crack, a hand’s-breadth across, had opened, shattering the clay figures of the household gods. And amidst this chaos stood the goddess Night, impassive and regal. Of course, I thought, recalling my Hesiod:
Chaos gave birth to Erebos and black Night.
And standing before the statue of Night was another figure, so still in the midst of all the tumult that for a moment I thought that she was Night’s sister, Day. Then I realized it was Calatoria standing in front of the fountain, one arm held out, her hand cupped as if offering a libation to the goddess Night. Indeed some liquid dripped through Calatoria’s fingers, staining the still water of the fountain red. I stepped closer to see what she held in her hand and saw that a sickle of broken pottery was lodged in the palm of her hand. It was her own blood that dripped into the fountain.

“Domina, you’re injured—”

“Struck by the gods.” She turned to me with a ghastly smile on her face. “I was trying to gather the lares for safety when the second tremor hit and it shattered in my hands. I believe the genii of my husband’s house are angry with me.”

“Nonsense!” I said. “You yourself know how common tremors of the earth are in this region. Let us get your wound bandaged and then discuss where the safest place might be….” I faltered. As much as I wanted to reassure Calatoria I was not sure if the tremors were really over. She did not seem to notice my hesitation. Instead, she extracted the shard of broken pottery from her flesh without so much as a wince, then washed the cut in the water that remained in the fountain basin. She cupped a handful of water in her hands and brought it up to my nose.

“Do you smell it?” she asked. I noticed then that the pupils of her eyes were unnaturally large. She had taken a drug—in preparation for the rites, I guessed. No wonder she spoke so strangely. To humor her, I sniffed the water. It did have an odd smell, familiar, like the fumes I had smelled wafting up from the cracked earth below the tripod that supported the Oracle of Delphi.

“Sulfur,” I said.

“Yes,” she agreed, nodding. “From Hades. The Queen of the Underworld approaches. We must be ready—” She turned from me and called to her slaves to make haste to clean up the debris. The house had to be readied for tonight’s ceremony. I was surprised that she intended to go through with the rites, but realized that there was no point in arguing with her in her current state. I resolved instead to go into the town to see what damage had been done to other buildings and what plans were being made to ensure the safety of the residents. Before I left, I stopped Calatoria to ask what had become of Iusta.

“One of the other slaves saw her running toward town after the first tremor,” she said, sniffing distastefully. “She’s always running off to town for some reason or other. Perhaps she has a lover,” she added, with a mischievous glint in her eyes. “If you see her, please tell her she must come back right away. She must be prepared for tonight.”

I told Calatoria I would give Iusta her message. I had an idea where she had gone.

As I made my way along the seawall toward the Porta Marina I passed small groups of people discussing the earth tremors. Voices were high-pitched with fear, but I also heard laughter among them. The general tone was relief that the worst seemed to have passed without much damage. One old man said that this morning’s shaking was nothing compared to the convulsions that had occurred seventeen years ago. Another responded that smaller tremors had, at that time, preceded the larger convulsions and that one shouldn’t assume that all danger had passed. Precautions should be taken, but what precautions? As I passed from one group to another, I gathered that there was no consensus as to what course of action would best ensure safety. Where could one flee if the very earth was unstable? Better to stay at home and pay homage to one’s household gods than to take one’s chances on the open road.

The sea, which had been calm and flat these last few days, was now rough and flecked with white foam. Turning my face away from the city, I saw why. At last a wind was blowing—from the northwest. The breeze felt mild enough on the sunny sea wall, but apparently it must be stronger on the open sea. The fishing boats on the water were encountering rough waves. No, after my last experience at sea I had rather take my chances on land.

I turned my face back toward the town and my eyes traveled quite naturally up the steep slope of Mount Vesuvius, which loomed over it. The area around the summit was covered with a white substance. If it had been winter, or if this were Germania or Helvetia, I would have thought it was snow. Plumes of the stuff moved in the wind, sifting toward the southeast like a great rainstorm. Whatever it was, it was headed in the opposite direction from Herculaneum.

Once inside the city gates, I found myself caught up in the human traffic that flowed toward the Forum, where larger groups had gathered. A priest of the Collegium of the Augustales was addressing the masses, ordering what sacrifices and prayers should be made to avert the wrath of the gods. I quickly passed by this group, dispirited by the rather lackluster approach to calamity. Although I have no objection to the deification of the emperors, I often find the religious practices surrounding their worship rather colorless. I could sense in the mood of the crowd a certain tension that was not dispelled by the priest’s assurances. What was needed was a dramatic flourish: a blood sacrifice—animal, if not human—and a little magic. I passed out of the Forum in search of Iusta, hoping that I could retrace my steps to the house where I had found her before.