The Night Villa (20 page)

Vesuvius had captured the ghost-roots

of trees beneath the lava-sheeted ground—

empty spaces traced with pebbles—long-lost truths

of leaf and bark, species, were brought to light.

Her plaster casts could resurrect the dead,

at least as sculpture, art. And now the flight

of sea hawks hints at pterodactyl blood

while ancient sunlight shimmers on the Bay,

and our thoughts turn to love, which if it lasts

a year will flirt with immortality…”

He stops before the final lines, recalling, I imagine, the way the poem ends and the occasion for which I had written it. “So look,” he says, sitting down on the edge of the fountain. “The reason I went to Sorrento—”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Elgin, I don’t care!” I say much too loudly and with an embarrassing wobble in my voice. “I really am over you.”

“Nice to hear, Dr. Chase,” he says, one side of his mouth quirking into a grin. “As I was saying, the reason I went to Sorrento is that I was meeting an FBI agent there.”

“Why? What did they want with you? Are you in some kind of trouble?”

Elgin laughs. “Your faith in me is touching, Sophie. No, I haven’t done anything wrong. I’ve been working with the FBI for some time to keep track of a certain cult operating in Austin.”

“You mean you’ve been spying on the Tetraktys,” I say, unable to keep the emotion out of my voice. We both remember the last time we talked about the Tetraktys and what that conversation led to.

“I suppose you could call it that. I’m not sorry about doing it; I’m only sorry I didn’t do it better. If I had, Odette Renfrew and Barry Biddle might still be alive.”

I feel suddenly cold. “Because Dale Henry was a Tetraktys member?”

“You knew about that?”

“I knew he’d gone to a few meetings, but I didn’t know he was a card-carrying member. But even if he was, how do you know they had anything to do with the shooting?”

“Because the gun he used has been traced to a dealer in New Mexico ten miles from the Tetraktys compound. Also, there’s a former member of the group who’s working with the FBI who says that Dale Henry was at the compound this spring.”

“That’s when he and Agnes broke up and he disappeared from campus,” I say. “This former member—”

“I can’t divulge his identity,” Elgin says quickly and without looking at me. “They’ve got him in a safehouse in Sorrento at great personal risk to him so that he can advise us on any new developments at the dig. I can’t risk anyone finding out who he is.”

“Okay,” I say. “And has this informant…has he given you any useful information? Like why the Tetraktys would be interested in the Papyrus Project and the Villa della Notte?”

“We think they’re interested in one of the scrolls that’s turned up at the villa…possibly by Pythagoras himself.”

“Pythagoras never wrote anything,” I say.

“Not that anyone has ever found.” Elgin shrugs and looks at me for the first time since he’s mentioned the Tetraktys. “I can’t vouch for these crazies’ scholarship, but I think they believe that Pythagoras’s
Golden Verses
were real and that Phineas had a copy with him when Vesuvius erupted.”

“But how would they even know that Phineas was at the villa? You didn’t even know until recently…” I stop as Elgin looks away again. “There’s someone from the Tetraktys working on the project,” I say. “Do you know who?”

“No, not yet. But I wanted you to know that someone is, so you’d be careful.”

“How can I be careful if you don’t even know who it is? And how could you have invited me here knowing there was a Tetraktys member on the project after what they cost me? And what about Agnes? How could you endanger her?” My voice has been steadily rising in pitch as my anger escalates. Elgin only nods glumly at each accusation, but suddenly he cocks his head and then holds up a finger to his lips to silence me. There are voices coming from the atrium heading in our direction. I see flashes of bright clothing and hear a child’s voice ask as he is shown the household shrine, “What did the pagans pray to if they didn’t believe in God?”

Instead of waiting for the tourists to leave, I get up to go. Elgin tries to follow me but the father of the group waylays him to ask directions to the Villa of the Mysteries. If I weren’t so angry at Elgin I’d have to laugh. It’s not the first time that Elgin’s khakis and tanned good looks have gotten him mistaken for the resident tour guide. By the time Elgin explains that the Villa of the Mysteries is in Pompeii, I’ve gotten a substantial head start. He doesn’t catch up with me until the Porta Marina.

“Sophie, please,” he calls, grabbing my arm, “don’t be angry. If I thought you were in danger I’d never have asked you here. I knew I’d be here to keep an eye on things.”

“Oh, great. My protector. A lot of good you did when Dale Henry burst into that conference room. If I remember correctly, you dived under the table with me.”

He looks so stunned that I instantly regret what I’ve said. After all, I was under that table, too. It’s not fair to have expected more from Elgin. Before I can apologize, though, he lets go of my arm and draws himself up to his full six feet two of dignified pique. “I’m sorry I was such a disappointment to you,” he says coldly. And then he turns and walks away, through the Porta Marina and past the bookstore and gift shop, turning left to follow the old sea wall to the Villa della Notte. I’m too angry to call him back, too proud to run after him. For a moment, standing here between the town and the old sea wall, I feel as trapped as the Herculaneans must have felt with their backs up against a wall of approaching ash and their only retreat a violent and impassable sea.

I
catch up to Elgin at the entrance to the Villa della Notte. The gate to the site is locked, but Elgin surprises me by producing a key.

“Lyros gave it to me,” Elgin says, noting my surprise. “We
are
partners on the Papyrus Project after all.” He still sounds a little touchy.

“Listen—” I begin.

“It’s okay, Sophie, you’re completely right. I shouldn’t have asked you here. It was selfish. I suppose I hoped that being here together, well, I see how silly
that
idea was. I promise not to bother you anymore. And I promise to keep an eye on Agnes.”

It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask what his silly idea was, but Elgin’s already through the gate and then the noise is too loud to say anything without shouting. While the pit had been silent save for the croak of frogs on my last visit, now the air is full of the dull whine of a drill and a fine gray dust. We pass the boarded-up tunnels bored into the lower levels of the villa by eighteenth-century “excavators” (little better than tomb raiders). I notice that some of the boards have come loose. When I step onto the stairs I think I see why: the whole structure is vibrating.

“Is this drilling good for the rest of the excavation?” I shout at Elgin as we climb the stairs.

“It’s not ideal. Usually they’d use chisels and go slower to minimize damage to the rest of the villa, especially with a structure like this that’s been undermined by tunneling by eighteenth-century looters. Lyros must be pretty anxious to get to that trunk.”

When we step into the ancient courtyard, I experience a moment of vertigo—the result, I imagine, of all the time I’ve now spent at the restored villa on Capri. The space and proportions have become so familiar to me that for a moment an image of that villa is superimposed over the ruin, a veil of bright sunlight reflecting off the fountain’s spray and the burnished bronze of the statue of Nyx, and then all that brightness is eclipsed by the gray shroud of tufa dust, a pall of sadness that settles over me as if Vesuvius had just now erupted and I was watching the villa fill with ash and volcanic rock as it had on that August night so long ago.

“Here, you’d better put this on.” Elgin hands me a face mask and we dive into the thickest dust that’s coming from what I can’t help but think of as
my
room. A narrow tunnel has been bored into the room, at the entrance of which Lyros and Maria are crouching. Maria has a camera strapped around her neck, presumably to record the trunk in situ, but right now she’s not using it. The noise of the drill makes it impossible to get their attention. A workman crawls out, so covered in dust that he looks like a piece of living rock. He says something to Lyros in Italian, but before Lyros can respond, Maria answers in a stream of fast, angry Italian I can’t begin to decipher. A fountain of invective that reminds me of the woman on the Circumvesuviana. The man turns away from Maria, slips his mask from his face and spits in the dust.

“What’s going on?” Elgin asks.

Lyros turns to us and says, “They’re ready for their lunch break, but we’re within an hour’s work of freeing the lid to the trunk.” He turns back to the workman and in a less fluent, but politer Italian that I can understand, offers the man a bonus to continue work.

Maria rolls her eyes, but she doesn’t interfere. What is she hoping is in Phineas’s trunk, I wonder, that makes her so anxious to get to it?

The workman haggles with Lyros over the amount of the bonus for several minutes and then a deal is struck. I lean over Maria and ask where Simon and Agnes are.

Maria shrugs. “I think he offered to show Agnes some dirty pictures in the tunnels below.”

“Really?” Lyros asks. “I didn’t know that. Those tunnels aren’t safe. I’m going to go down and tell them to get out of them. Elgin, why don’t you take my place here?”

Elgin squeezes into the narrow opening beside Maria. I see right away that there isn’t room for me and Maria doesn’t look as if she’s willing to give up her place. “I guess I’ll go down with you,” I tell Lyros.

“Sure…or if you’d like you could log on to my laptop and see how George is getting on with today’s section of Phineas. It’s behind the west wall of the courtyard.”

Maria’s mouth twitches when she realizes I might get a head start on the Phineas, but she puts her mask back on and turns toward the tunnel with all the resolution of Cerberus guarding the mouth of Hades. Lyros is already heading down the stairs for the lower level.

I turn away and cross the courtyard and go behind the west wall, where I find a small field office in what might once have been a storage room. Plastic tarps hang around a couple of chairs and a folding table upon which is a silver laptop—a Lyrik, of course—a thermos and a stack of books, notebooks, and a packet of envelopes tied together with string: mail for the villa, which Lyros must have picked up at the dock before setting off this morning. The screensaver on the computer is a model of the solar system, the planets moving in elliptical orbits shown by dotted lines. When I touch the space bar the image fades and I see I’m already hooked up to the Internet. An Instant Message displayed from GPetherbrid reads, “You might want to see this.”

I click on the reply box and type in: “Hey, it’s Sophie. Lyros is busy with the excavation, but he said to check in and see how the Phineas is going.” I hit Send and turn to the stack of books, looking for something to distract me while I’m waiting for a response, but the laptop chimes and George’s reply pops up.

“Have they opened the trunk yet?”

“No,” I type, “but Lyros says we should be able to in the next hour.”

I hit Send and stare at the blank screen long enough for the screensaver to kick in again. What, I wonder, could the problem be? Had George found something in the next section about what was in the trunk? Whatever it is, how much difference could it make? There weren’t explosives back in AD 79—except for the volcanic kind. Still, I have a sense of foreboding as I wait for George’s reply, heightened by the tremors underfoot and the stultifying heat in my plastic lair. To distract myself, I untie the string holding the villa’s mail and leaf through it even though I don’t really expect anything for myself. M’Lou’s not much of a letter writer and she’s the only one I’ve given my summer address. I’m surprised, then, to find an envelope with my name typed across it. There’s no address or postmark, so it must have been hand-delivered. When I pick it up, I notice that it’s lumpy. For a second, I entertain the paranoid thought that it could be a letter bomb. I open it quickly, like tearing off a Band-Aid. Inside is a blank piece of white paper with three cardboard tiles taped across the page. A smiling crescent moon, a man falling down a flight of stairs, and a masked man. I turn the paper over. The reverse side is blank.

The computer’s chime startles me and I quickly fold the sheet, put it back in its envelope, and stuff it into my bag. Then I look back and find George’s reply.

“Read this,” it says, as succinctly as the command “Eat me” in
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
And so I do. The section starts out with the line that George recited to us last night.

As I walked back I pondered over all I had learned of Iusta and her unusual situation. I wondered what would come of the pact we had entered together. I had, of course, heard of the
cultus
to which Iusta belonged, but I had to admit that I knew little about it and, in truth, I didn’t care if I learned more. Iusta’s secret, however, had been useful in extracting from her a promise to show me the mysteries practiced by her mistress.

As I approached the villa, I scanned its walls for any openings into the sea. I saw none, but I did see that part of the wall was under the level of the sea. There could be, as I had surmised last night and Iusta had confirmed today, an underwater entrance to the sea that led to the grotto where the rites were held. This part of the rites was limited to the women, and normally I would not have been allowed to witness them, but Iusta had promised to show me a way that I might spy on them from a secret room behind the grotto. As I entered the villa, I felt confident that I would soon be master of its secrets.

I can’t help but smile at Phineas’s swaggering arrogance, and at the fact that I had guessed what kind of arrangement he had made with Iusta. We really haven’t lost much in the missing section of the papyrus, except for the name of the cult to which Iusta belonged and in which Phineas had so little interest that he couldn’t even be bothered to name it. I am beginning to think that the section has little in it to surprise me when I read the next paragraph. My assumption, I see, was as arrogant as Phineas’s. I quickly jot down the lines in shorthand on a page torn out of the notebook on the table and take it with me across the courtyard.

Outside the plastic tarps the air in the courtyard is so thick with dust that I can barely make out the figures crouched around the entrance to my—to Phineas’s—room. When I come closer, I see that Elgin is working with a chisel to clear the remaining scraps of tufa from the edges of a small trunk. Maria is sitting on her heels, her hands held in her lap grasping each other so tightly her knuckles are white under the gray dust. I gather from her rapt expression that she’s restraining herself from grabbing the chisel away from Elgin and hacking her way into the trunk. She also looks, curiously, as though she were praying.

“You guys,” I say, “I think you’d better hear this before you open that.”

Maria swings her head in my direction, her eyes gleaming white in her begrimed face.
“Aspetta,”
she hisses. “We’re almost there.”

“But listen, this is how the section George just scanned ends:
My confidence in my mastery of the situation dissolved, however, when I entered my room. My trunk lay open…”

As if the words were a spell to release it, the lid of the trunk swings open. Maria and Elgin lean forward, batting the dust plumes out of the air to see better. But I don’t have to see or hear Maria’s anguished cry to know what they see. I read the last line.
“My trunk lay open and empty. Someone had stolen my scrolls.”

“No!” Maria cries. “Who could have taken them?”

She sounds so despondent that I feel sorry for her. I move forward to put my hand on her shoulder, but as I do I feel the ground shift under my feet and hear an echoing thud from below me. It feels as if the foundations of the villa have been yanked out from beneath us and, for a moment, the only explanation I can come up with is that there’s been an earthquake. Another volcanic eruption that this time will split the floor of the villa and suck us all down into the underworld.

The motion stops. In the eerie silence that follows, Maria crosses herself and Elgin gets shakily to his feet.

“What was that?” I ask.

Instead of answering, Elgin gets up and rushes across the courtyard to the peristylium and looks over the edge of the railing. There’s so much dust in the air that it’s as if a premature dusk had descended over the pit. It’s hard to see anything at all. Then a dust-covered figure emerges from one of the tunnels. It takes me a moment to recognize John Lyros.

“Are you okay?” Elgin calls.

Lyros is coughing too hard to answer. He points at the tunnel and gasps something. I run back to where I’ve left my knapsack, grab the water bottle in it, and run down the stairs. Elgin is already down there examining the rubble outside the collapsed tunnel. I hand Lyros the water bottle. After he’s taken a long swallow, he manages to make himself understood. “Simon and Agnes,” he croaks. “I was trying to tell them to get out of there. They’re still in there.”