The Oracle of Cumae

by Melissa Hardy

  “She thought you murdered her?” I asked. “How?”

  “Poison, I expect,” replied Antonella. “She was always complaining about the food.”

  “What did the doctor say she died of?”

  Antonella shrugged. “He couldn’t say. It’s a mystery.”

  “And now you think she haunts this room?”

  “I don’t think it. I know it. And I know Cousin Cesare and Dr. Pellicola say I’m being silly and superstitious, but Cousin Lucretia is here. She is. I know it. And I’m not going to give her the satisfaction of taunting me from beyond the grave. I’m not. She did that all my life and, now that she’s dead, I won’t tolerate it. As long as I don’t pass beyond this door, I am free of her. The moment I step inside the room, there she is, inside my head, berating and scolding me.”

  I reflected on this. “My nonna haunted our house, but only for a year or so. It was because my Papa missed her too much; he couldn’t let her go and so she stayed. Eventually she went away. There was gradually less and less of her and then she was gone. Three years is a long time. Your cousin Lucretia may be long gone by now.”

  “Not her,” said Antonella grimly. “Your father’s love for his mother tied her to life; my hatred for my cousin binds her to me and hatred is more powerful than love, more enduring.”

  We remained silent for a moment, as I considered Antonella’s story, then the housekeeper, doubtless regretting the degree to which she had opened up to a stranger, cleared her throat and shook her head and said with icy formality, “If that will be all…”

  It became my custom during my recuperation to spend several hours each day sitting on the balcony and observing what was—to me—the exotic life on the piazza. That was what I was doing when I spotted Pasquale Assaroti at the opposite end of the piazza. It had been more than a week since Cesare had dispatched him to Montemonaco with a letter to my parents advising them of my improved health and here he was at last, returned from the South, perhaps with a letter for me…or so I hoped. “Pasquale!” I cried, waving vigorously. “Pasquale, up here!”

  He spotted me on the balcony, lifted a hand in greeting and hurried across the expanse of cobblestones, coming to a halt just below the balcony. “Hallo, Miss! Feeling better?” he called up. His rough clothes were red with road dust and he carried in his right hand the handle of a battered leather satchel that looked strangely familiar.

  “Did you see my family?” I cried excitedly. “Is there a letter for me?”

  “There is and your mother sent you this.” He hefted up the satchel, which I now recognized as belonging to Mama.

  “What’s in it?”

  “Dunno. It’s a secret. She told me if I were to open it, I would die a thousand horrible deaths, so I didn’t. Open it, that is.”

  “Come up,” I wondered what secret the satchel could possibly contain. “Come up at once!” I rose and went into the bedroom.

  There was the sound of commotion downstairs—Flora colliding with Pasquale in the hall. Cico must have finished his feeding; she would be returning him to my care.

  “What are you doing here?” I heard Flora demand crossly. “No one ever tell you about knocking?”

  “Miss told me to come up!”

  “Well, up with you then, but mind those muddy boots, or that gorgon of a housekeeper will turn you into a stone statue of your former self!” A moment later Flora rapped at my door, then opened it without waiting for a reply. “Here’s Pasquale to see you.” She raised her eyebrows archly and glanced back over her shoulder at the sacristan’s son. As if I cared a fig for the spotty likes of Pasquale Assaroti!

  “Let him in. He’s got a letter from my family. And something else besides. You stay.” I was alone in the house except for Flora and Cico—Antonella was at the butcher’s and Cesare was still at the factory. I didn’t want anyone telling tales out of school, especially Flora who had a tongue on her like a prickly pear and a mind that never strayed far from the gutter.

  At the sound of my voice, Cico’s tiny face crumpled and turned the color of a plum; he began to sputter, tears squirting out in all directions.

  “What is wrong with this child?” Flora demanded, glaring down at him.

  I sighed. I was fond of Cico. Of course, I was. How can you not love an infant, especially one who clearly adores you? The fact that he left off wailing and grizzling only when I held him, however, was beginning to wear thin. “Just give him to me, Flora. I seem to be the only person in the world he actually likes.” The instant Flora handed him to me, Cico quieted and began, instead, to wriggle and coo. Remarkable. Annoying. “Yes, yes,” I told him. “I see you. Yes, I do. Now, hush for a second.” I turned to Pasquale. “My letter?”

  Pasquale set the satchel down on the bed and, reaching inside his coat, he removed a piece of paper folded in thirds and sealed with wax. He handed it to me. I broke the seal and scanned the words written in Mama’s rough hand:

  Dear Mariuccia,

  We are all well here and happy to hear of your recovery. The goats and the boys are doing fine. How is our grandson? We are eager to hear word of him. I have sent you some cheese and mugwort and also a little something extra. You will know what it is when you open it. Be careful. If it breaks, there will be Hell to pay. Between you and me, the situation here was becoming intolerable, what with the women of the village dropping in at all hours of the day or night and, besides, she wanted to get out and about a little, see something of the countryside. It seemed like a good opportunity. We expect to have the grotto dug out by summer’s end. She can return then.

  Love, Mama.

  “It smells funny,” said Pasquale. “The satchel.”

  Stunned, I said, “That’ll be the cheese.”

  “Cheese?” Pasquale was disappointed. “Is that what’s in there—cheese?”

  “And mugwort,” I managed, itching to get at the satchel. Had Mama really dispatched the Oracle to Casteldurante in a satchel?

  “She told me that I would die a thousand horrible deaths.” Pasquale was indignant.

  “She didn’t want you to eat the cheese,” I said. “It’s very good cheese. One bite and you would have eaten the whole thing. You couldn’t have helped yourself.”

  “Still!”

  I needed them to leave. I rallied myself. “Thank you, Pasquale. Thank you, Flora. That will be all.”

  “Right!” said Flora. She looked at Pasquale, who seemed reluctant to go without seeing for himself the contents of the satchel he had been charged with carrying for the entire return trip from Montemonaco. “Well, what are you waiting for?” she demanded. “You’ve done what you came here to do. Get along with you now.” She turned to me. “Right. I’ll be back at Vespers and not a moment sooner! The little ingrate!”

  They both left. I closed the door behind them and leaned my back against it, staring at the satchel, waiting until I heard the front door close behind Pasquale and the back door behind Flora. Then I deposited a protesting Cico in his bassinet and, returning to the bed, opened the satchel and retrieved from it an object wrapped in a flour sack and tied up with string. I untied the string and peeled away the coarse sackcloth to reveal the squat amber jug with the turquoise handle.

  “Cat got your tongue?” Sibylla’s voice crackled from the jug. “Put me somewhere, anywhere, as long as it’s far away from that terrible cheese! Four days of solitary confinement with a Caprino di Montemonaco half again as big as my jug! What was your mother thinking of?”

  I glanced around the room, looking for a place to set the jug down, but the Oracle preempted me. “Over there by the bed will do nicely. By Zeus, that cheese stinks! And that mugwort was no picnic, either! I’ll tell you that!”

  “Milady, keep your voice down!” I pleaded. “Antonella will be home any minute.”

  “And who is this Antonella? Now, this is what I call a pleasant room, Mariuccia Umbel
lino! So airy! Really, my dear, your father’s house could do with a few more windows!”

  “Monte Vettore is cold in the winters. Would you like us all to freeze? And Antonella is the housekeeper.”

  “The housekeeper? A slave? I don’t give a drachma what a slave thinks. No, nor an obol either.”

  What was she talking about? Drachmas? Obols? “She’s not a slave.”

  Sibylla ignored me. “Well, now that the journey is over, I’m glad I made it. I haven’t been away from my mountain for more than a thousand years and I wanted to see what’s become of the low country. My old home of Campania was such a land as this, albeit on the other side of the Appenines and on the sea. That is to say, it was low.” Clearly, living among people had made the Oracle more talkative than previously.

  “Really, Milady, try to keep your voice down. You’re not among friends here!”

  “And that’s the other thing,” said Sibylla. “A little matter called revenge. I’m not going to lie to you, Mariuccia Umbellino, I wanted see for myself this prior—the one who blew up my cavern—and determine how best to punish him for his transgression.”

  I considered this for a moment. What, I asked myself, would Mama say? “Well,” I began, “Cesare is the father of my nephew and we must think of what is best for Cico. On the other hand…” I trailed off, trying to find the words to delicately convey what my brother-in-law had been up to every night since my fever had broken.

  “Yes?” said the Oracle. “And?”

  “He’s been acting weirdly, like he did when he first came back to Montemonaco and asked Papa for my hand instead of Concetta’s,” I told her.

  “Has he…”

  I shook my head, feeling my cheeks flush with embarrassment. If you are raised on a farm, you have no need to be told how new life is created; that doesn’t mean you talk openly about it. “No,” I assured her. “But only because I lock the door every night straightaway after Vespers. Even then he comes to the door and begs and pleads to be let in. It’s annoying, but it’s scary too. What happens if he takes the key and I can’t lock the door? I can’t for the life of me understand why he hasn’t thought of that before now.”

  “Not very bright, is he?”

  “A total idiot. What I don’t understand is why he’s acting this way—like he’s in love with me. You and Mama recast the spell. It worked. He married Concetta.”

  “Well, I understand,” the Oracle said tartly. “It’s a simple case of overlay. When we recast the spell, we didn’t remove his infatuation with you, we simply overlaid it with a spell that bound him with Concetta. Now that Concetta is gone—”

  “I thought you two knew what you were doing!”

  “Don’t be impertinent, girl! How were we to know that Concetta would die so young? She seemed healthy enough. Anyway, it’s impossible to extinguish love once it is ignited by magic. And, by the way, if you’re wondering why that baby so dotes on you, it’s because love that results from sorcery is passed on down the line. It’s in the blood. All Cesare’s descendants will adore you. Treat them badly. Beat them. Do them grave wrong. They will still love you. They will not be able to help themselves, no matter what. I’m afraid there’s no getting around it. We will simply have to find someone else for the Prior to fall in love with. Unless of course, we kill him, which would solve the problem once and for all.”

  From down below I heard the sound of the back door opening and closing. Antonella had returned. “It’s the housekeeper!” I told the Oracle. “I have to hide you!”

  “Stuff and nonsense! You’ll do no such thing. I’m done with hiding.”

  “But she’ll notice your jug!”

  “Tell her that your mother sent my jug to you—as a gift. To remind you of home. As a cherished antique. I don’t care what you tell her. You’ll think of something.”

  We heard the sound of Antonella climbing the stairs, followed by a sharp rap on my door. Without waiting for an answer, she opened the door halfway and stuck her head in. “I’m back,” she announced. “Do you need anything?” Then she spotted the jug. She opened the door all the way and placed her hands on her hips. “And what, pray tell, is that?” Her tone was icy, her expression, that of someone who discovers a dead mouse in her soup…and, admittedly, in the light of day, in this well-appointed bedroom, the Oracle’s repository looked impossibly antique, like some artifact from the lost City of Atlantis, washed ashore tangled in seaweed.

  “That? You mean, that?” I pointed to the jug, trying to buy time until I could come up with a plausible explanation. “It’s a…a…it’s an old family heirloom. Been in the family since Roman times. My mother sent it to me. Pasquale brought it. He brought a letter too. You just missed him.”

  But Antonella was not to be diverted. “It looks dirty,” she said.

  “It’s old.”

  “Is it sanitary?”

  “Of course it’s sanitary! That is, we wash it from time to time.”

  “It had better not leave a mark on that marble top. Do you know how hard it is to remove a stain from marble?”

  “There will be no stain.”

  “There had better not be. Right then.” She left, closing the door behind her.

  “The nerve!” the Oracle exploded. “Old? Unsanitary? Who does that slave think she is? With whom does she think she’s dealing?”

  “Shhh!” I tried to shush her. “She’s not a slave. She’s a housekeeper, and you mustn’t let her trouble you. She is a rude, ignorant woman, unworthy of your notice.”

  “But how can I, one of only four Speaking Virgins that the world has ever known, allow myself to be insulted like that?”

  “But what can you do about it, Milady. You’re in a jug!”

  “Oh, you’d be surprised what you can accomplish in a jug!”

  I sighed and kneaded my forehead. “Please, Milady, let it go. We have bigger fish to fry than Cesare’s snippy housekeeper. We need to find Cesare a new object of desire before he…well, you know.”

  “Well, don’t ask me who to enchant! I don’t know anybody in this town.”

  “The only woman I know is Flora the wet nurse,” I said, “but she’s already married.”

  I sat there for a few moments racking my brains, then suddenly, “I’ve got it!”

  This from the jug.

  “Got what?”

  “What do you think? A new object of desire for the Prior! She’s perfect! Absolutely perfect!”

  “Who?”

  “The slave!”

  I stared at the jug. “You mean the housekeeper?”

  “Yes, that’s the one! You know! What’s her name?”

  “Antonella?”

  “Antonella! Yes, that’s exactly who I mean!”

  The following day, Antonella knocked on my bedroom door. She carried a covered wicker basket over one arm. “There’s the marketing to do,” she announced, “so, if you need anything, there’s no point calling for me because I won’t be there.”

  The Oracle and I were hard put to contain our glee at this unexpected bit of good fortune. It was a Thursday. The spell had to be cast on a Friday. We would need things that could most likely be found in the kitchen—a bunch of bay leaves, some sprigs of verbena, and a beeswax candle—as well as hairs from the heads of both parties—difficult to obtain with the two of them at home, but easy enough to harvest when they were out of the house. “Go! Go!” I told Antonella. “Don’t worry about Cico and me. We’re fine.”

  Rendered momentarily wary by the enthusiasm with which I greeted her impending departure, Antonella peered at me suspiciously, eyes narrowed. Doubtless she was considering whether the fine cutlery would be there when she returned. Then she evidently thought better of it, for in the end she only shrugged and left.

  As soon as we heard the back door shut behind her, I made my way down the hall to Cesare’s room.
It was the first time I had ventured out of the bedroom since I had arrived in Casteldurante a fortnight before, except to go out onto the balcony. Luckily, I had heard Cesare walk down the hall toward that room and open and shut its door often enough that I had a good idea where it was in relation to my own. It was larger than my room and airier still, but furnished in much the same luxurious manner, the principal difference being that it lacked a balcony and looked out on an inner courtyard rather than the piazza. But I had little time for exploration. I did not know how long Antonella would be or when I would have another such opportunity in the near future to obtain what was needed for the spell. I located an ivory-backed hairbrush on a dressing table, along with a fine linen handkerchief embroidered with the initials CB; I pulled a wad of hair from the brush and wrapped it securely in the handkerchief.

  Then I made my way downstairs. Here I was in unfamiliar territory. However, it is never hard to locate the kitchen of a house and, once I had rifled through a few drawers and opened a few cabinet doors, I was able to find the requisite bay leaves, verbena sprigs, and beeswax candle.

  From there it was a small matter of opening a door to discover the room just off the kitchen—Antonella’s spare windowless bedroom, which resembled nothing so much as a nun’s cell with its iron bedstead and lumpy mattress and the little wooden cross that hung above the narrow bed. A hairbrush—made of tortoiseshell this time—lay on the bedside table. I hastily removed a wad of hair from this brush as well and wrapped it in another handkerchief, this one of cambric and embroidered with the initials AA. Job done, I hastened upstairs, closing the door tightly behind me.

  The following night, after the household had retired and we were alone in our darkened room, the Oracle and I recast the spell, using Antonella and Cesare’s hair this time. I left it to the Oracle to pronounce the mysterious Etruscan words: “Ca suthi nesl amcie titial can l restias cal ca rathsle aperuce n ca thui ceshu lusver etva capuvane caresi carathsle.”