The Oracle of Cumae

by Melissa Hardy

  “And don’t you come back until the Pope says Mass, you useless creature!” Sibylla called after her, then paused. “Who is in my antechamber? I smell human beings!”

  “It’s Esperanza Umbellino, Milady,” Mama said hurriedly, “and my daughter Mariuccia Umbellino.”

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  “Nothing, thanks be. She’s well.”

  “So, what is it then that brings you here in the dead of night, dragging your daughter along with you like a cat does a kitten?” demanded the Oracle. “Why have you woken me from my sleep if not for a sickly child or some curse or other?”

  “Something that concerns you directly, Milady,” my mother said. “The Pope has sent a party of men to seal off your grotto with black gunpowder.”

  “Black gunpowder? What is this black gunpowder? I’ve never heard of it.”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea,” Mama replied. “But it’s supposed to be very effective.”

  There was a silence, then, “Bother! What a bore! How am I supposed to find another cave? As if twice in a millennium weren’t enough! These awful churchmen! They’ll stop at absolutely nothing! No live and let live for them and no respect whatsoever for their elders! They’re simply impossible, that’s what!”

  “I thought we could take you with us,” Mama suggested. “Now. Tonight. We could hide you away, then, once the Castelduranteans are gone, the men of Montemonaco could dig out the cave and you could come home.”

  “No, no.” Sibylla sounded very distracted. “Won’t work.”

  “Why not?”

  “Out of the question.”

  “Why?”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it!”

  Mama sighed. “But, Milady, it would be such an honor—”

  The Oracle interrupted her. “Yes, yes. I’m sure it would, but it’s quite impossible. You see, I am not…as I once was.”

  “Who of us is? Believe it or not, I was once quite the beauty! These things pass.”

  “It’s not just my looks,” Sibylla told us. “How can I explain this so that you will understand?” She paused. Then, “I have shrunk.”

  “That’s only natural,” Mama pointed out. “I am shorter than I was as a maid and my nonna—”

  “No, you don’t understand,” Sibylla stopped her. “When I say shrunk, I mean, really shrunk. Really, really shrunk.”

  Mama considered this information for a moment. “So how small are you?”

  “So small that I no longer have an actual body.” Sibylla sounded bitter and wistful at the same time. “All that remains of me is my voice.”

  We were stunned by this revelation. “How can that be? How could such a thing happen?” Mama asked.

  “It’s a long story and one I’m not up to telling at the moment. Too depressing.”

  “So, if you are only a voice,” I blurted out, “how do you get from place to place?”

  “Mariuccia!” Mama scolded.

  “It’s a reasonable question,” the Sibyl replied. “The answer is I don’t. I just…stay in my jug.”

  “Your jug?”

  “It’s very disconcerting to be disembodied,” Sibylla explained. “One always feels as though parts of one might break away and drift off. Because, after all, that did happen. It’s how I lost the rest of me. So I stay in my jug. It makes me feel safer…more contained. It’s a very nice jug!”

  “So, why don’t we just take your jug home with us then?” Mama urged her. “No one needs to know what’s inside.”

  “I suppose that might be…possible,” Sibylla entertained the idea.

  “I have a goatskin pouch with me. I could carry your jug in that.”

  “That might be all right,” reflected Sibylla.

  “We swear to you that we will tell no one of your…condition and that we will return you to your home as quickly as possible. Don’t we, Mariuccia?”

  I nodded vigorously. “Oh, yes.”

  “Well, all right then,” Sibylla agreed. “But first you must come down and fetch me.”

  Icy fear washed over me. No mortal person had ever entered the Oracle’s inner sanctum; at least, that is what we had always been told. “Enter your…shrine?” Mama asked the Oracle. “Are you sure?”

  “I would have one of those silly Lamiae bring me to you, but, at present, they are sadly lacking in the hand department,” Sibylla informed us. “If the Pope would only get around to saying Mass instead of spending all of his time creating trouble for beings like myself, we wouldn’t be in this fix!”

  “We won’t…turn to stone or anything?” Mama asked carefully.

  “Of course not! What do you think I am? A gorgon? Just watch your step! The descent is slippery. It’s a cave.”

  At this, the doors yawned slightly more open, as if the mountain was exhaling. From within pulsed a kind of greenish glow, the same metallic color a firefly emits.

  Mama took a deep breath and, seizing hold of my arm with one hand and holding the lantern aloft with the other, she led me through the doors into a vast chamber spottily lit by patches of phosphorescence. A forest of sand-colored columns—stalagmites—twirled up from the floor of the grotto and stalactites like huge icicles of dripping rock reached down from a ceiling so high above us that we could not make it out. We seemed to be standing on a kind of rough staircase hewn from limestone, but only just—more like a ramp sloping toward what I could only assume was the bottom of at least this one chamber of the grotto. This was as much as we could discern; the cave was thick with rock formations; we did not have a clear view.

  “Don’t just stand there gawping!” Sibylla complained. “Come get me!” The Oracle’s voice, much amplified, seemed to come from everywhere and from nowhere at the same time.

  Mama appeared disoriented. “But where exactly are you?”

  “Down here by the disappearing spring,” she replied.

  Mama lifted the lantern, then lowered it, then lifted it again. “I think I might see your jug!” She pointed. “See, Mariuccia, down there!”

  Something glinted all right, catching at the light.

  “I see it!” I cried. “And I hear water!”

  “Be careful!” Mama warned me as we edged our way sideways down the ramp—it was steeply pitched and very slippery. “Addio! The last thing we need is for one of us to break a leg!”

  Finally reaching the bottom of the ramp, we picked our way through a grove of needle-sharp stalagmites to a little silver wriggle of a stream that writhed snakelike along the floor of the cave before disappearing into the rock. And there it was: a squat amber jug with a trefoil mouth shaped like a clover leaf and a thick turquoise handle.

  “Well?” asked Sibylla proudly. “How do you like my jug? It’s from Aleppo in Syria. Very fine workmanship. Someone brought it to me once. Can’t remember who.”

  “It’s very handsome,” Mama replied.

  I remember thinking how very odd it was to talk to a jug. Then I reminded myself that Mama wasn’t talking to a jug, but to a voice in a jug—which was also pretty strange.

  “You must be careful with my jug,” Sibylla cautioned. “It’s very old.”

  “We will be very careful, indeed!” Mama assured her. “Mariuccia, give me your shawl.” I did so reluctantly, for here in the bowels of the earth it was even colder than it had been in the chilly antechamber. Mama wrapped it around the jug and carefully placed the bundle in her goatskin pouch. “Ready to go?”

  “As ready as I’ll ever be!” Sibylla answered. “To tell you the truth, I’m rather excited. It’s been such a long time since I’ve been out and about.”

  I realized it was rude to ask, but I couldn’t help myself. “How can you see if you’re only a voice?”

  “Mariuccia!” Mama sounded scandalized.

  “It’s all right,” replied Sibylla. “That too, is a
fair question. How can I exist at all? What larynx produces the sounds I make; what lips shape them? What organ advises me what to say? I am a mystery, child, even to myself.”

  And with that we made our way back up the ramp, into the antechamber, and out into the cool May night. The skies were full of stars and I could just make out the Adriatic Sea glinting darkly to the east. As we started down the goat path toward the farm, we could hear a shrill sound from the meadow like peacocks crying.

  “Those Lamiae!” the Sibyl complained affectionately. “Always a party for those girls! And why not? When I think of the body I used to have…”

  “You and me both!” Mama replied.

  “Are you walking funny?” asked Sibylla. “When did you start limping?”

  “My buttocks are asleep. Next time around, let’s do something about that awful stone bench. I’ll have Umberto bring up some hay.”

  “Hay! What a good idea! Only, won’t it get moldy?”

  She sounded as happy, I thought, as a little bird in a warm spring rain.

  The men from Casteldurante rose with the dawn.

  Mama, upon our return from the grotto, had cleared a place in an old oak cabinet in the main room of the house for Sibylla’s jug. Then she made everyone a big breakfast of black coffee, flatbread, figs, and formaggio di fossa, a strong-flavored goat’s cheese that she aged in a limestone cave not far from the house. Having slept but a few hours, I kept nearly nodding off, causing Concetta to swat at me and complain, “What’s wrong with you? I hope you don’t expect me to serve everyone by myself!” I was awake enough, however, to note that Prior Bacigalupo looked just as ridiculous in the morning light as he had at twilight—and told her so.

  While Mama, Concetta, and I cleaned up, Papa rubbed his full belly and pointed to the sun, still wobbling on the horizon as yellow as an egg yolk. “Best be on your way if you want to arrive before midday. My sons, assist these gentlemen in their packing!”

  While Carmine, Emilio, and Rinardo were scrambling about the donkey with various bundles and parcels, Padre Eusebio emerged stiffly from the house, scratching his behind through his cassock with one hand and his nearly bald head with the other. He tottered, wincing, over to a chair set out in the yard and, easing himself down into it, declared, “I’m not feeling very well. Perhaps I’ll just stay here and pray for your safe return.”

  “Nonsense!” said Prior Bacigalupo.

  “But I am unwell!”

  “You’re going.”

  “But, Prior, it’s Tuesday! Tuesday!” the old man pleaded.

  “And what in Heaven’s name is wrong with Tuesday?” Bacigalupo demanded.

  “Every terrible thing that has ever happened to me personally happened on a Tuesday. It is my unlucky day.”

  “It’s not just you, Padre,” Mama said. “Tuesday is everyone’s unlucky day. As my old nonna used to say, ‘De Venere e di Marte né si sposa né si parte.’ Very unlucky to marry or embark upon a journey on a Tuesday…or a Friday, for that matter. That’s because Tuesday is named after Mars, the Roman god of war, and Friday is named after Venus, the goddess of love. Mars and Venus. Those two cause a lot of trouble!”

  “See!” Padre Eusebio crowed. “Tuesdays are very bad luck. I’m not just making it up!”

  “That’s ridiculous!” the Prior blustered. “We live in an age of reason…of science! There’s nothing wrong with Tuesdays! Tuesdays are a perfectly good sort of day.”

  “They are a terrible, fearful sort of day,” the priest insisted. “Awful things always happen on a Tuesday!”

  The Prior took a deep breath and made an effort to compose himself. “See here, Father, there’s absolutely no point in going on without you. You know that! Pio and I can’t perform the banishing ritual. Only a priest can do that and we are both laymen.”

  “Did we not pass a church not a mile down the road?” Eusebio asked. “Why not ask the priest of that church to do the banishing ritual? Maybe he doesn’t have a hammer-toe. Maybe he doesn’t have bunions. Maybe Tuesday is his lucky day!”

  Prior Bacigalupo sighed and turned to Papa. “Signor Umbellino, do you think we might impose upon your pastor to assist us?”

  Papa looked dubious. “I very much doubt it. Our Padre DiNardo is blind. He never learned to read and he can’t speak Latin. He wouldn’t know what words to say.”

  “He can’t read?” the Prior exclaimed. “How can he say Mass?”

  “He acts it out,” said Papa.

  “It’s very entertaining,” Mama added. “The children love it.”

  The Prior turned back to Padre Eusebio. “You see? You’re the only one who can do it. Do you really want me to tell Bishop Adeodatus that you refused a direct order from Rome? You know how unpleasant he can be! And he doesn’t like you much to begin with.”

  Eusebio cringed. “That is true. Oh, all right! Help me up on this terrible creature then. Let’s get this dreadful muddle over with. Mark my words, though. Embarking on a Tuesday…insulting a sorceress…. Misfortune will surely come of this foolhardy endeavor!”

  Pio and Pasquale hoisted the priest off the ground and onto the back of the donkey. The sacristan applied a willow switch to the donkey’s hindquarters. She tottered forward, then balked and registered her objection by rolling her eyes and braying.

  “See!” Eusebio pointed out. “Not even the infernal donkey wants to go!”

  “Avanti!” cried the Prior and, brandishing his walking stick as though it were a baton, he took his place at the head of the party.

  “Good-bye! Good-bye!” we cried, waving, as the Castelduranteans headed up the road toward the Gola dell’Infernaccia.

  “We hope you will join us for lunch on your return!” Mama shouted after them.

  “Watch out for wolves and vipers!” Papa cried.

  “Mind the witches and demons!” we children chorused.

  When they had disappeared from sight, I tugged at Mama’s sleeve. “Why are we asking them to lunch when they’re about to blow up the sacred grotto?”

  “The same reason we invited them to dinner last night,” Mama replied. “We are being hospitable. Besides, as a wise man once said, keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”

  In the meantime, Papa had turned to the boys and was rubbing his hands together in excitement. “Who wants to go see if this new black gunpowder really works?”

  “We do!” they cried. “Hooray!”

  “What about me?” I was exhausted from being up half the night, but I did not want to miss so grand a thing as an explosion.

  Papa shook his head. “No, no, Mariuccia, you must remember that you are a girl and, besides, you have to help Mama make lunch.”

  “Concetta can help Mama,” I pleaded. “She’s a better cook than me. I burn everything.”

  “She’s right about that,” said Mama. “Let her go with you, Umberto. Concetta and I can manage.”

  “But, Mama!” Concetta began.

  “Don’t you start,” Mama told her. “An explosion would only frighten you and, besides, how am I going to make lunch for so many with only two hands?”

  Papa pinched my sister’s plump cheek and, inclining close to her, murmured, “You must look your very prettiest, mia cara bambina, for it has come to your mother’s and my attention that Prior Cesare has taken quite a shining to you, and he is a rich and important gentleman.”

  At this Concetta blushed furiously and turned aside, casting her eyes down in pleasant confusion.

  “Get out of here!” my mother instructed the rest of us. “Go on! You heard me! Shoo! I have work to do and I don’t want you underfoot!”

  Papa and the boys took off for the olive grove. I was just starting after them when I heard Mama tell Concetta, “I hope those fools don’t do serious damage to the grotto! What will we do then? Thank goodness Sibylla is safe!” That stopped me in my t
racks. Surely she wasn’t telling Concetta our secret?

  “What do you mean?” Concetta asked. “How can she possibly be safe? She’s about to be entombed in a mountain!”

  There was a moment of silence, then, “I have a little surprise for you.”

  Anger flooded me. Mama had chosen me, the brave daughter, to accompany her to the grotto; she had entrusted the secret of Sibylla’s rescue to me, and now she was going to tell Concetta? I turned back toward the house and found the two of them standing before the old oak cabinet, the door of which was opened wide exposing jars filled with dried herbs, my mother’s treasured Book of Shadows—a collection of spells and rituals that had belonged to her mother’s great-grandmother—and the Oracle’s antique jug.

  “Lady Sibylla,” Mama began in a respectful tone. “I would like to introduce you to my eldest daughter, Concetta.”

  Furious, I stamped my foot. Then, remembering that the most exciting thing ever to occur in the history of my little village was about to take place—and shortly—I turned and ran after my father and brothers up the goat path.

  Because we had taken the shortcut to the grotto, we arrived a good twenty minutes before the party from Casteldurante straggled in, looking hot and very irritable. Papa had located a hiding place for us in a heaped tangle of rocks and scrub on the eastern ridge of the Gola dell’Infernaccia—the Throat of Hell. This was a narrow, twisting passage littered with the remains of eagle nests and the discarded bones of voles and mice and flanked by two walls of sheer rock for nearly a mile. It was, at the best of times, an arduous journey up the mountain from Montemonaco by way of the Gola—steep, sweltering, save in winter, and dusty always.

  Upon their arrival in the clearing, the Prior spotted the distinctive shield-shaped entrance to the grotto and announced, “This must be the place!” Removing his Alpine hat, he mopped his brow with a big red handkerchief, while Padre Eusebio yanked at his Roman collar and made choking sounds.

  “Get me off of this despicable devil-spawn!” he insisted; then, as Pio and Pasquale dragged him off the donkey, “Every bone in my body aches like a tooth!” The priest tottered to the edge of the clearing and plopped down on a rock. “Ooch! Ooch!” he complained. “My poor martyred feet—they are swollen to the size of cannon balls!” Removing a black lace fan from inside his cassock, he began to fan himself theatrically.