The Oracle of Cumae

by Melissa Hardy

  My mother, Esperanza Umbellino, kept a prize herd of goats and sold what cheese and milk the family could not eat. Of the seven children she bore my father, five survived to adulthood: in order of birth there was my elder sister Concetta, then me, then three younger brothers—Carmine, Emilio, and Rinardo. These boys were rarely apart and functioned much like a rowdy dog pack—they were raucous in their enthusiasm and most often perceived as a blur of motion. Of all those children, I alone survive, but that is hardly surprising. I always was bad-tempered and bad-tempered people, I have noticed, tend to live longer.

  The Umbellini were not poor. We were neither peasants nor savages. We might have been country folk and unsophisticated in our ways, but we were the most prosperous family in Montemonaco and had been since Roman times, which is as far back as the collective memory of my village stretched. My father’s olive grove was the largest and the best producing in the region. The oil we pressed was light and fruity and green. The wine we squeezed from our grapes was known for its clarity and our mistà for its potency—this was a brandy Papa distilled from the fermented residue of grapes pressed for winemaking.

  As for my mother, her goats were famous for the sweetness of their milk, the creamy tartness of their cheese, and their sublime good looks—ours was the prettiest herd of goats in all the Marches and, I dare say, of neighboring Umbria as well. Our land was extensive and well situated to receive the benefits of weather, and our house, if inelegant, was large and comfortable. Our part of the mountain was generous in its gifts–cheese, bread and olives, grapes for wine, game that was always plentiful—my parents were good stewards of the land, as had been their forebears, and we had not learned to want what it could not easily give us. As for gold and silver, which we sometimes required, though only occasionally, there was the annual truffle hunt. In the fall, the entire village of Montemonaco mustered dogs and pigs and spread out over the limestone mountains to hunt for truffles among the scrubby woods of white oak and manna, ash, and hornbeam. The Umbellini, having the best pigs and the best dogs, always harvested the most and the best truffles. The men would then take the autumnal harvest of succulent pale mushrooms to the valley towns below to sell at market for a price that took our breath away. To us Montemonaci, Casteldurante was just another valley town whose inhabitants did not know better than to pay ridiculously inflated prices for things that were, after all, second cousins once removed to soil, moss, and bark.

  The bottom line, Padre, is this: my parents were simple people who lived the way their mothers and fathers had and their mothers and fathers before them—in harmony with the mountain, with its permission and at its pleasure, and I was raised to believe in the power of sacred things…in the utility of spells. We did not concern ourselves overly with the architecture of Heaven and Hell, nor did we unduly strain our credulity by trying to imagine how many angels might dance on the head of a pin. How could we presume to speculate on matters that are, by their very nature, unknowable? We were good Catholics, but we were also good pagans in the original sense of that word—for the word pagan comes from the Latin paganus, meaning a rustic, one who lives in the countryside, as opposed to the city.

  What my fellow villagers did know for an absolute certainty was that Old Ones lived in the wild and desert places of our blue mountains—indwelling spirits, who are neither born nor are they likely to die, whom our ancestors knew as the gods and goddesses of these places. Holy Church may have reviled these Old Ones, calling them shapeshifters and sorcerers and hags. It may have sought to confine them to distant crags and remote vales to live wild alongside wolves, eagles, falcons, and orchids. But the inhabitants of our region, at least, were careful to pay them the full measure of respect due them for, like a rich landlord or a potent magistrate, they have the power to help or to hinder and are, by nature, meddlesome, fickle, and easily offended.

  One of the greatest of these lived just up the road from us; she had done so for more than forty generations. I have said that the Umbellini were prosperous, that we lacked for nothing. This was not accidental: since the fourth century Anno Domini, the Umbellini had served as the gatekeepers to the Grotto delle Fate, the home of the Oracle Sibylla, she from whom our mountains took their name. This is her story.

  Long, long ago, in the times before Christ, there were Oracles consulted by kings and heroes. One of the greatest of these was Sibylla, the Oracle at Cumae in Campania. According to the poet Virgil, who was very knowledgeable about such matters, it was Sibylla who showed Aeneas the way to the underworld—no small feat. As Christianity gained ground in Europe, however, Sibylla’s popularity waned. Then a sixth-century bishop, wishing to capitalize on his parishioners’ seeming inability to distinguish between the Son of God on the one hand and the God of the Sun on the other, caused a church to be erected over the ruins of the temple of Phoebus Apollo at Cumae. It was beneath this temple that Sibylla’s famous shrine lay.

  As might be imagined, the Oracle was mightily offended by this (she was, after all, beloved of Apollo and accustomed to more deferential treatment). Consequently, she decamped and made her way through the series of underground cave systems that underpin the Italian peninsula to the Grotto delle Fate, or the Grotto of the Fates, an extensive limestone cavern through which an underground river runs. The entrance to the Grotto was but an hour’s journey on foot along the same road that led from Montemonaco to our farm.

  Here Sibylla had lived in peace and tranquility for many centuries, visited now and then by the occasional pilgrim or supplicant. Her counsel might have been more sought after, but she had made it abundantly clear early on that she was to be consulted on serious matters only. She became quite cranky if the problem brought to her seemed in any way frivolous. Although immortal, she was old and ill tempered by disposition.

  Of course, she did have her favorites. My great-grandmother she had treated as a kind of confidante and my grandmother after her. In fact, it was Sibylla who taught my grandmother to read and write and do sums, who advised her that literacy and numeracy were mechanisms by which a woman might first obtain and then retain power. (My nonna taught my mother these arts, and my mother, in turn, schooled me and my sister in them. My dear father and noisy, impetuous brothers remained blissfully unschooled, as did the majority of my fellow Montemonaci.)

  However, our special relationship with the Oracle had roots other than the friendship that existed between her and the women of my family. The road to the Grotto ran past our house. Therefore, it fell to us to act as gatekeepers to the Grotto and, understanding full well that we owed our prosperity in large measure to Sibylla’s good graces, we took our responsibilities in this regard very seriously indeed. Which is why the sudden appearance of a small band of strangers coming ’round the bend in the bumpy road that led from San Sebastiano toward the grotto put my parents immediately on their guard.

  It was coming onto Evensong, mid-May, warm enough by day, but still cool by night. My mother, Concetta, and I were in the midst of preparing a meal outside under a pergola constructed for that purpose a little distance from the house—the farmhouse had only slits for windows and cooking inside created a great deal of smoke. When the weather was clement, as it was much of the year, we cooked outside.

  At the time, Mama would have been in her mid-thirties, a sturdy, blocky woman who wore her hair—dark and liberally streaked with gray even then—in a thick braid down her back. Concetta was sixteen—pretty, sweet-tempered, docile, and a little dull with ample curves and brown eyes like a doe. I was eighteen months her junior and more closely resembled a small boy than a woman—that is to say, I was slight and wiry and in no way possessed of anything that might be described as a figure.

  “I’m putting you in charge of chopping,” Mama told Concetta. “As for you, Mariuccia, it’s your turn to sauté the vegetables until they are soft. Soft, not burnt! Golden, not brown!” She waved her big wooden spoon menacingly at me, for I was inclined to daydream and could not b
e counted on to concentrate to the degree required to cook vegetables properly without some vigilance on her part. Nor, in fact, was I much interested in the womanly arts. I was a bold girl, sturdy and strong, and more interested in hunting wolves alongside my father or tending the goats on the mountain than cooking up a skillet of wild greens or a pot of beans.

  Just then a voice called out, “Hallo!” and glancing up, we spotted a small party of men round the bend in the dusty road that led from the village past our farm on its way to the Grotto.

  Papa glanced up from the otter’s pelt he was stretching on a frame, then raised his hand in greeting. “Hallo!”

  My mother left the cook fire to join him, and Concetta and I stepped out from under the pergola, wiping our hands on our aprons and craning our necks to have a better view. These were strangers—we could see that straightaway—and, as there were not often strangers in those parts, their arrival was a matter of some interest.

  At the head of the party shuffled a roughly clad boy in wooden clogs. He looked to be about Concetta’s age and was half leading, half dragging a reluctant donkey, on the back of which wobbled an old priest who looked, even from that distance, as brittle as glass. A stooped, heavy-set man wearing a sweat-stained linen shirt, broadcloth breeches, and dusty jackboots strode alongside the donkey, his hand on its neck as if to steady the creature. Bringing up the rear was a portly young man in his late twenties, wielding a stout walking stick and attired in what I now know to be smart Alpine gear, although at the time nothing could have seemed so out of place and preposterous as his black lederhosen, trimmed with light-green embroidery and held up by black suspenders, a white shirt with a silver-ringed red tie, and a hat of dark-green felt with a feather poking out of its band. His choice of costume was rendered particularly unfortunate by the fact that he sported a significant belly, which strained at the buttons that held his shirt together, while his legs, by way of contrast, were skinny, hairy, and slightly bowed. On catching sight of us, he signaled to his party to remain where they were and swaggered toward us—large and doughy with brown, swimming eyes and full red lips—I have observed that it is impossible for someone wearing lederhosen to walk normally.

  “Hallo there! Salutations!” this fine fellow greeted my father. “Are you, by chance, Signor Umbellino?”

  “The same!” My father—grizzled, humorous, and lacking in teeth—wiped his hands on his flanks. “And, you, Signor, who might you be?”

  “I am Signor Cesare Bacigalupo from the town of Casteldurante in the diocese of Urbino and I have the distinction of being Prior of that city’s Confraternity of Good Death and…hmmph…I also happen to own Bacigalupo & Son, Producers and Exporters of fine majolica ware.” He ducked his head, twirled his black mustachios, and added, “It has been in my family for several generations. Perhaps you’ve heard of it?”

  “I have not,” my father admitted genially. “However, as I have discovered in the course of all my many years on the dear Lord’s earth, there is much I have not heard of and I have never ventured farther north than the town of Ascoli Piceno. But have your men advance. We Umbellini are not brigands. Nor do we bite unless the occasion requires, in which case we most assuredly do.”

  Cesare turned and waved to the party of travelers to approach.

  The boy yanked at the donkey’s halter. The donkey, in turn, balked, at which point the stooped fellow cried, “Yee ha!” and slapped the beast on the rear. This had the effect of startling the donkey into activity, as a consequence of which four of them—the donkey, the priest riding the donkey, the boy leading the donkey, and the man traveling alongside the donkey—catapulted forward. They came to a jolting halt about five feet away from our family.

  “And who might you be, Venerable Monsignor?” my father asked the priest.

  “Only poor old Padre Eusebio from Capella Cola in Casteldurante,” the priest informed him gloomily. “And, I must tell you straightaway, good man, I am here under protest.”

  “Are you being kidnapped?” my father asked.

  “Pay him no mind,” said the heavy-set man. “He is never happy, no matter the circumstances. As for me, I am Pio Assaroti, lay sacristan to Padre Eusebio here and a fellow member of the Confraternity of Good Death, and this is my son Pasquale.” He indicated the boy leading the donkey.

  “A pleasure and an honor, Signori!” My father bowed to the party. “And this is my wife Esperanza and my many children. But, tell me: What business brings you to these parts?”

  “Monkey business!” Father Eusebio spat out. “Sheer madness!”

  “Now, Padre,” Cesare chided him, then, turning to my father, “We come on very important business, indeed! The Pope’s business, to be precise.”

  “You don’t say!” My father was impressed. “The Pope himself! And what business would His Holiness have in our remote parts?”

  “Why, the business of Our Lord, of course!” Cesare replied. And you can help by pointing us in the direction of a place called the Grotto delle Fate.”

  At this, we Umbellini gave a collective gasp and looked at one another in surprise and dismay. It was well understood on Monte Vettore that neither the Grotto nor its inhabitant was to be discussed in the presence of clergy or anyone connected with the church. Nothing connected with the old religion was.

  “Pardon me,” my father said warily, “but of what possible interest to His Holiness is an old cave in a faraway place?”

  “Do not be shocked, but His Holiness has heard that people visit this cave in order to consult a pagan sorceress,” Cesare informed us. “Obviously this is of the gravest concern to the Holy Father. Black magic, you know.” He shook his head. “Very bad!”

  “Yes, well, perhaps,” my father said. “But what you describe has been going on for a very long time. What does the Pope propose to do about it?”

  “His Holiness has charged us with sealing off the entrance to the cave with explosives,” Cesare explained. “We are going to use black gunpowder, a mixture of saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal. It’s the latest thing. The Chinese invented it. It’s remarkably effective.”

  My parents looked at one another, struggling to maintain their composure. “I don’t know…” my father began.

  “It’s very risky,” my mother agreed.

  At this Padre Eusebio seemed to rally. Sitting up straight on the donkey he asked in a creaky voice, “You too, have reservations? What are your concerns, good people?”

  “If you seal off the entrance to the cave, you will anger the Old One,” my father replied. “I think you will agree, Father, that angering an Old One is never a good idea.”

  My mother pointed to a scrap of wolf fur and bells dangling from a piece of red yarn tied around the donkey’s neck. “That may ward off the Evil Eye, Padre, but it won’t protect you from the Old One’s wrath.”

  “You see!” Padre Eusebio turned accusingly to Cesare. “I knew this was a terrible idea. Pio! Pasquale! Get me down off this infernal donkey! I’m not going a step farther!”

  “Don’t be ridiculous! What could possibly happen?” Cesare protested.

  Seeing the sacristan and Pasquale start to half wrestle, half drag the priest from the donkey’s back, I rushed forward and grabbed hold of the pack animal’s reins to steady it during the untidy procedure.

  “Mari!” my mother cautioned. “Let Carmine do that!”

  Carmine stepped forward and I reluctantly handed the reins to him.

  “What might come of angering the Old One?” my father asked. “Why, storms so fierce that crops are destroyed over a large region.”

  “Floods,” suggested my mother. “Of course, these would only affect towns in the valleys—your own town of Casteldurante, for example. Then there are earthquakes.”

  “Let’s not forget rock slides.”

  “And mudslides! Whole villages have been known to—”

  Padre E
usebio, who, by now, had both feet on the ground, shook a warning finger at Cesare and declared, “You see, Prior! I told you this was a fool’s errand, but, no! You forced me to ride two full days in a wretched stagecoach over appalling roads, before dragging me halfway up this accursed mountain, on a donkey so bony, up a goat path so rutted that I feel as if I’ve been bumped in a sack over rocks for the past five hours!”

  My mother shot a quick glance at my father—she looked worried. He nodded curtly to signal that he understood her concern, then cleared his throat. “If I may presume to offer you gentlemen a little advice?”

  “But, of course!” replied Cesare.

  “Abandon this enterprise. Trust me when I tell you that it cannot end well.”

  “Out of the question,” Cesare replied. “It is His Holiness who has asked this of us and you can’t say ‘no’ to His Holiness.”

  Papa sighed. “Then it is one Old One against another. In any case, I would encourage you to stop here for the night and continue on your journey tomorrow. It is an hour yet to the Grotto, the light is fading, and the way is treacherous enough when the sun is high in the sky.”

  “To get to the grotto, you must pass through the Gola dell’Infernaccia itself—the Throat of Hell!” Mama shook her head. “Not a thing I would undertake in the dark.”

  Padre Eusebio turned to Pio. “The Throat of Hell?”

  “Not only would you have difficulty finding your way there in the dark, you would not wish to remain there after sunset, especially on a Monday,” my mother said. “I’m referring, of course, to the Lamiae.”

  “What in Heaven’s name are Lamiae?” Cesare demanded. He sounded exasperated.

  “Shapeshifters who attend on Sibylla,” my mother replied. “Ordinarily they look like beautiful women, quite small, but every Saturday night, they turn into snakes and go writhing about the mountain meadows. They are highly poisonous. No one who has been bitten by a Lamia has lived to tell the tale.”