1902
45
Colin dragged Benjamin in the direction of the carriages, leaving the rest of us behind, a subdued and silent group at the edge of the excavations, sitting on benches that faced the Bay of Naples.
“I can’t say I expected the day to turn out like this,” Mr. Taylor said.
“None of us did.” I shot a withering glance at Callie. “Perhaps you could enlighten us as to what happened?”
“You’ve got the wrong idea, Emily, and, as I’ve had occasion to tell you before, I will not discuss my private life in public.”
“Callie—” Jeremy reached for her, but she stormed away. He followed.
“We should return to Pompeii,” Mr. Stirling said. “I’m not entirely clear as to what is going on, but it strikes me as unsporting to leave Hargreaves alone with Carter.”
“Unsporting?” I asked.
“Carter’s proven himself a bit of a brute, hasn’t he? We all saw the state in which he left Bainbridge.”
I had almost forgot that none of them—save Ivy and Kat—knew much about the details of Colin’s work. Subduing Benjamin would not prove a challenge. “You’re kind to worry about him, but I’ve no doubt he can manage.”
“Do you really believe Carter is responsible for Walker’s death?” Mr. Taylor asked.
“I do,” I said, “but we still need a way to prove it. Colin will get a confession from him.”
“What about Mr. Jackson?” Ivy asked.
“Kat’s photographs revealed his feelings for Callie. Benjamin may have lashed out at him for the same reason he did Mr. Walker,” I said. “Jealousy.”
I had every reason to believe that Benjamin was guilty, but we could not yet prove Mr. Walker’s motive for having returned to Pompeii. He might have followed Callie, but why had he boarded the ship in the first place? Something wasn’t right.
We sat in silence, gloom hanging over us. After nearly a quarter of an hour had passed, Mr. Taylor spoke. “Would it be inappropriate to continue our tour? I don’t see what good will come from us sitting about and moping.”
“There’s nothing we can do to help in the current situation, and I would like to see the Villa dei Papiri and its library,” I admitted.
“I’m afraid you’re bound to be disappointed on that count,” Mr. Taylor said. “There’s been no excavation in Herculaneum since 1877, and the tunnels dug at the villa are all but forgot. They lie beneath private property and are inaccessible.”
“All but forgot,” I said. “Not entirely. Surely you know how to access them?”
“Years ago, I greased a few palms in order to get in myself, because, like you, I was desperate to see the place. It’s not what I had hoped. Narrow tunnels, difficult to navigate, and all of the sculpture, as well as most of the wall paintings, are now in the museum. We’d be better off exploring the rest of the excavations.”
“It can’t be all that disappointing if the work was thorough enough to result in a detailed floor plan of the house, which we both know it did. I brought my copy,” I said, pulling it out of the notebook in my reticule and handing it to him. “If I were to, as you say, grease those same palms, would you lead me through?”
“It would be more like visiting a coal mine than a villa, Lady Emily,” he said. “But if you’re bent on doing it, I would consider it an honor to accompany you. And I’m more than happy to re-grease the palms myself.”
“I, for one, am intrigued at the prospect of seeing my dear friend at last lay eyes on an ancient library,” Ivy said. “Small, dark spaces have never bothered me.”
“Nor me,” Kat said. “I wouldn’t miss it for anything.”
“I’m afraid you won’t be able to manage it,” Mr. Taylor said. “The only access is via a long ladder, and climbing it with an injured wrist is absolutely out of the question.”
Kat scowled. “I haven’t needed the sling for days, but kept it on as I’ve grown fond of everyone’s sympathy. Let me at least try.”
“No,” Mr. Taylor said. “I can’t risk you falling. I’m sorry.”
Kat continued to plead her case as we followed him to the house through which one of the Bourbon tunnels was accessible. The owner was more than happy to let us in—in exchange for a generous contribution to his well-being—but when he saw the sling on Kat’s arm, joined Mr. Taylor in forbidding her from joining us. Subdued but unhappy, she accepted the chair he offered her in his garden near the opening of the tunnel. The rest of us started down the ladder into a deep shaft. Mr. Taylor had brought with him two safety lamps that he and Mr. Stirling now carried.
“Candles made for a romantic exploration of the rest of the site, but these tunnels are too dark for them,” he explained.
When we reached the bottom, the smallness of the space took me aback. The roughly hewn tunnel was only three or four feet wide, and in spots, so low we had to crouch. My breath caught in my throat when we had walked far enough that we could no longer see any hint of the daylight that had illuminated the shaft in which the ladder hung, but I was too excited at the prospect of the villa’s library to give into any feeling of unease.
We covered a significant distance before we saw a bit of ancient wall, and it became evident that the Bourbon excavators had mined along the side of it, creating a corridor of sorts parallel to the structure. Eventually, we came to a room, dark and close, bare patches marking the spots from which its frescoes had been hacked. From there, the tunnel diverged in three directions. Ivy was no longer showing signs of enthusiasm.
“How do we prevent ourselves from getting lost down here?” she asked. “I’m all for exploration, but I’ve no intention of winding up trapped in some endless warren. I’m not sure continuing on is a wise course of action.”
“Fear not, Mrs. Brandon,” Mr. Taylor said. “I’ve been through here before and we have Weber’s map.”
“We should have brought bread crumbs, like Hansel and Gretel.” Ivy’s breath was coming fast and ragged. “I’m ashamed to say it, but I’m not comfortable going on.”
“What about you, Lady Emily?” Mr. Taylor asked. “Should we abandon our scheme? It’s not a pleasant place.”
I was torn. The labyrinthine passages were dark, damp, cold, and claustrophobic. But somewhere, further along, was the only intact ancient library in existence! The scrolls were now in museums, but I longed to see the room in which they were originally housed.
“Don’t go back on my account, Emily,” Ivy said. “I could never forgive myself if I kept you from a library. Mr. Stirling is more than capable of escorting me out of this dreadful place.” Perspiration dripped down her face, despite the chill in the air. “I’m half expecting the walls to collapse and it’s all I can do to ward off panic.”
“I’ll take you back up,” Mr. Stirling said. “We’ll wait for the two of you at the top with Miss von Lange, and I expect a full report on what you see.” The archaeologist took Ivy by the arm and we watched as he led her back through the tunnel until we could no longer see the light from his lantern. Mr. Taylor and I continued on, into the main part of the house. The peristyle was enormous.
“Do you recall the bronze statues of dancers in the museum in Naples?” he asked. “They were found in the southern portico, over there. A bit further now and we will come to the tablinum, where the first papyri were discovered.”
A thrill coursed through me—we were so close to the library!—but when we reached the tablinum and then the room to its south, where more scrolls had been found, it was all but impossible to imagine what the space would have been like before the eruption. The savage methods of those early archaeologists (if we can even call them that) wreaked havoc on the villa. Its paintings had been ignominiously removed, and the complete absence of natural light, combined with the mazelike tunnels made it difficult to get a sense of the structure as a whole. In truth, Weber’s map gave a better impression of what the villa had been like than struggling through the place itself.
I will admit that I was be
ginning to feel closed in by the stale air. Yet I went on, firm in my desire to see the library.
“You’ve gone very quiet, Lady Emily.” Mr. Taylor asked, “Is something troubling you? We can turn back if you’d like.”
“No, I want to see the library.” I would not succumb to fear and weakness, even as it fought to consume me.
“It’s not much further.” He removed my copy of the map from his jacket. “We’re here, and the library’s here.” He reached into his pocket again, pulled out a pencil, and marked both locations on the map, but I could only look at his pencil. The barrel was painted blue, and I could just see STAEDTLER stamped in the wood above a silver holder, engraved with Mr. Taylor’s monogram. The pencil was a perfect match for the stub I found at the abandoned campsite in Pompeii along with the cuff link engraved FM. My heart started to pound. He had mentioned his lack of artistic talent more than once. Had that been an attempt to remove himself from our list of potential murderers? He’d admitted to having met Felix Morgan, which sent us on a useless search for information about Morgan’s time in Pompeii. Furthermore, he had time and time again mentioned Benjamin’s temper, always sounding sympathetic to the boy, but ensuring we would consider him a suspect.
My head was throbbing. Perhaps Mr. Taylor collected strays because he was one as well. All his talk about it being impossible to change one’s nature was an attempt to hide his own darkness. His magnanimous spirit was carefully cultivated. He forgave others’ sins because he wanted to forget his own.
“Perhaps we ought to turn back,” I said. “I’m ashamed to say it, but I’m starting to feel closed in, as if the walls are pressing in on us.”
“Surely not, Lady Emily. You’ve too much courage for a narrow tunnel to intimidate you.”
There was something in his tone—a cutting edge—that made my limbs go cold. If the tunnels of Herculaneum had seemed claustrophobic before, now they all but slammed in on me.
“I’m not convinced I deserve the compliment,” I said, trying to sound as blasé as possible. He stepped closer to me and I backed up against the wall. There was a horrible hardness in his eyes.
“There must be something more troubling you. If you felt closed in, you would have returned to the surface with Mrs. Brandon. And thinking on it, you weren’t troubled in the least to see your husband go off with a murderer. Which surely is more frightening than tunnels. It’s because you know Carter isn’t guilty, isn’t it?”
“Of course he’s guilty.” All I wanted was to flee. Being in a confined, underground space with someone you now have reason to believe capable of committing that most grievous sin against his fellow man has very little to recommend it. “You saw how angry Walker’s relationship with Callie made him, and how violently he reacted to Jeremy. His anger gets the better of him, with disastrous results.”
“Come now, Lady Emily, we both know Carter is not the man you seek.”
AD 79
46
My face streaked with tears, I ran home. Melas, coming out of the house, stopped me, asking what had caused me to be so upset. Finding myself incapable of restraint, I told him everything: about Silvanus and the poem and Lepida’s curse.
“You don’t know then,” he said. “Silvanus did, indeed, recite the opening of your epic to his guests at a dinner party, but he also claimed authorship of it. He never intended to give you credit, Kassandra. He saw your talent and knew he could exploit it for his own glory. I’ve seen eight new graffiti quoting it—and naming him as the poet—today. Paid for, no doubt, by the man himself. He’s already rich, now he wants to be admired and respected for an intellect he does not possess.”
“There’s nothing I can do to prevent him from getting whatever he wants,” I said. “No one would believe me over him. I’m little better than a hopelessly naïve slave.” How could I have been so stupid, so gullible? Never had it occurred to me that he might want my poetry for his own. Instead, I had let myself believe, because I wanted it to be so, that part of the need for secrecy stemmed from his attraction to me.
“You can prove that you wrote the poem,” Melas said.
“How?” I asked. “He knows the verse almost as well as I do.”
“You have a copy of the entire work, I assume?”
“Of course. Two, in fact, as Silvanus did not come to collect his from me.”
Melas nodded, his eyes pensive. “In the end, do you care about what his useless friends think? Or do you want to be remembered as a worthy successor to Virgil?”
“My poem isn’t that good.”
“This is not the time for modesty,” Melas said. “I have a friend who lives in Herculaneum. He’s a devoted Epicurean in possession of a magnificent library. Tomorrow, we will take your epic to him and ask him to put it in his library, with you named as the author. I’ll persuade him to have copies made and distributed to his acquaintances in Rome, those who appreciate fine verse. Silvanus may get credit in Pompeii, but the rest of the world will know the work was yours. It is, perhaps, a slim consolation, but I hope better than nothing.”
“Silvanus will get credit in Rome as well as in Pompeii. He won’t limit himself to the provinces.”
I did want to be known for my work, but even if no one recognized my authorship, in the future, perhaps, my work would be mentioned along with that of Homer and Virgil—though never with the same awed respect. For the rest of the day and all of the night, I read through the scrolls that would become the exemplar of my epic, from which, I hoped, hundreds more copies would be made. When Melas collected me the next day, we told my father we were going to his friend’s so that I might peruse the library at his villa. By midday, we were close to Herculaneum.
Much though I longed for a way to ensure my name would be connected to my poem, at least I knew that copies would be distributed and that it would be read. What more could I desire than that? Glory? No, let Silvanus have that. I did not need it. At least I tried to convince myself of this, but I brooded as we walked, thinking of nothing but my poem until the sound of a massive crash assaulted us. Melas and I turned to look in the direction from whence it came. There, hanging above Vesuvius, far up in the sky, was an enormous dark cloud shaped like a pine tree. The mountain no longer looked as it had only a few minutes ago—the top section of its great cone had vanished, thrown by angry Vulcan. The ground trembled violently, Neptune’s fury as great as his fellow god’s, and an acrid, vile smell filled the air.
Melas and I flung ourselves down, and I clutched to my chest the wooden case that held my scrolls. We remained there, watching the sky until the earth stopped moving beneath us.
“We should press on,” Melas said. “The earthquake is over, but I’d prefer to reach the house before anything else happens.” He looked at the mountain and murmured quick prayers to Vulcan and Neptune.
More earthquakes came as we walked the last mile to his friend’s house, and when we arrived, we found only the steward in residence. The family, he explained, had fled to the port, where they would seek passage on one of the boats there. They wanted to get as far from Vesuvius as possible. “You’re welcome to shelter here with me until it’s all over,” he said. “The house is well built.”
What choice did we have? We were not about to return to Pompeii with that dreadful cloud hanging over Vesuvius. The steward gave us beakers of cool water and we sat in the long garden, away from any sculptures that might tumble over should the earth shake again. And shake again it did. The hours crawled by as the black cloud above the mountain grew more and more ominous, parts of it dark, parts of it bright. Ash had started to fall, but we could not decide if we were safer inside, shielded from it, or whether the threat of additional earthquakes made remaining where we were the better choice. The sun had disappeared behind the cloud of ash, plunging us into a gloomy darkness, punctuated by an occasional burst of flame shooting from the top of the mountain. I could no longer tell what time it was. Eventually, the steward went back inside to gather his belongings. He was tired
of waiting, worried about the mountain, and had decided to flee the city.
“To go where?” Melas asked. “It’s unlikely there are any boats still lingering in the harbor.”
“I’ll risk it,” he said. “I don’t feel good staying here. You should come, too—even if there are no boats, there’s nothing better built than the storage areas for the port. We can take shelter there. It’s bound to be safer than staying here.”
“You said the house is well built,” I reminded him.
“I’d feel better at the port.”
Melas and I did not go with him.
“I shouldn’t have brought you here,” the painter said.
“Pompeii would’ve been no safer. Besides, we’ve survived plenty of earthquakes. Why should this be any different?”
“It’s not the earthquakes that concern me.” He kicked at the ash piling around us. “Aren’t you scared?”
“Terrified,” I said. I’d pulled my veil over my nose and mouth to make it easier to breathe. He stood in front of me and took my hands.
“I’m sorry, Kassandra.”
“It’s not your fault.” I wished I could infuse my voice with a lightness of tone, but it was impossible. So I met his eyes and saw in them what I’d hoped—and almost believed—I’d seen in Silvanus’s. And then I remembered my favorite line of Ovid’s, Let love be introduced in friendship’s dress. “Why did you paint Venus’s face as my own?”
In the Shadow of Vesuvius Page 24
