The Ancient Curse

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  Fabrizio followed her and together they began to search the solid, windowless ground floor. The long limestone wall was braced every five or six metres by vertical ribbing. Just behind one of these protrusions, they found the air shaft. Its heavy iron lid had been removed and it lay vertically on the wall, secured by a rusty ring. The shaft was closed by a grating of heavy iron bars that looked like it hadn’t been moved in some time. Fabrizio tried to lift it but it wouldn’t give a centimetre.

  ‘I was afraid of this. It’s sealed into the foundation.’

  Francesca knelt to take a look. ‘That seems strange to me. Usually these openings were also used for lowering barrels of wine into the cellars, or other foodstuffs that needed to be kept cool. Or anything they wanted to hide . . . Thank God there’s no one around,’ she added, sticking her hand in the grating. ‘If anyone saw us, Lord knows what they’d think.’

  ‘Especially if that someone was Signora Pina!’ said Fabrizio. ‘Fortunately, it looks like she’s closed tonight. I can’t see any lights on in the restaurant.’

  ‘Now that you mention it, you don’t have a torch, do you?’ asked Francesca.

  Fabrizio rummaged through his backpack, found a torch and shone it at the grating and the edges of the hole, but the beam went straight down to the cellar floor.

  ‘Hey, look at that!’ he said.

  Francesca peered at the muddy floor. ‘Footprints . . .’

  ‘Little ones, I’d say. It’s Angelo, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘So how did he get in?’

  ‘Through the bars.’

  ‘That’s impossible.’

  ‘He’s small and skinny, I’m telling you.’

  Francesca shook her head incredulously and continued to feel around under the grating.

  ‘Found it!’ she exclaimed suddenly. ‘There’s a chain.’

  She unhooked it and Fabrizio was able to raise the grating.

  ‘I’m going first,’ said Francesca, and let herself drop down to the floor. Fabrizio heard her swearing and shone the torch on her. She had slipped when her feet touched the ground and she was sitting in the mud. She got up and cleaned herself off as best she could, then looked up at Fabrizio. ‘Pass me my bag with the computer. Drop it. Don’t worry, I’ll catch it.’

  Fabrizio dangled the bag as low as possible, then called out to her and let it go.

  ‘Got it,’ rang out Francesca’s voice underground.

  Fabrizio lowered himself down as well and the two of them looked at each other without speaking for long instants in the dim light raining down from the street.

  ‘Let’s hope no one falls in,’ said Francesca. ‘Leaving the grating open turns this into a real trap. If someone stumbles over it, they’ll kill themselves.’

  ‘Who do you think is roaming the streets at this hour of the night? You saw for yourself. There’s not a living soul out there.’

  ‘Well, I’d also like to know how we’re going to get out.’

  ‘We’ll worry about that when the time comes. We could go through the front door – the place looks like it could use some airing out.’

  Fabrizio was trying to make light of a fairly grim situation. The air was heavy in the intense darkness of the underground chamber and there was a strong musty odour. He pointed the torch at the walls and ceiling to get an idea of the dimensions and characteristics of the room and found another wall that crossed it from one end to the other, interrupted by a couple of round arched doorways made of big hewn tufa stones oozing dampness and covered with grey mould.

  ‘Definitely ancient,’ observed Francesca.

  ‘Etruscan,’ concluded Fabrizio, shining the ray of light from one end to another. He swept the beam across the floor to light up the line of small footprints leading away from them under the arch.

  Francesca took out her laptop and turned it on. ‘These cellar rooms may even be included on the map,’ she said. ‘The registry date is old enough. It goes back to the age of the Leopoldo dukes, if I’m not mistaken. OK, look at this . . . See . . . This is the wall with the arches, right? Good, we’re here . . . Let’s go on, this way.’

  They proceeded about ten metres or so until they found themselves in front of an iron railing which flanked a ramp of stairs leading downward.

  ‘Is this on your map?’ asked Fabrizio, peering at the screen.

  ‘No,’ said Francesca, ‘it’s not. At least, I don’t think it is.’

  They descended seven grey stone steps until they found themselves in a completely empty room whose walls still displayed traces of colour and peeling plaster. At the corner opposite the bottom of the stairs was a sloping ramp. They continued down despite the fact that they could no longer make out any footprints on the stone slabs. There was no way of telling whether Angelo – if the prints they’d seen had truly been his – had continued in this direction.

  ‘I can’t believe the only way we can go is down. There must be a point where we can get up into the main building, right?’ asked Francesca, as if thinking aloud.

  ‘Yeah. I was just thinking the same thing,’ admitted Fabrizio. ‘But it doesn’t look like we’ve got much choice.’

  They stopped and took a look around. The entire room had been roughly carved out of a bank of tufa and Fabrizio made his way forward laying one hand after another on the damp surface.

  ‘Do you realize where we are?’ he asked all at once.

  ‘We’re at the ground level of the ancient city,’ replied Francesca. ‘The two archways we came across earlier must be from a section of the Etruscan city walls.’

  ‘Well, we’ve reached the end of the line anyway,’ said Fabrizio. ‘There’s no one and nothing here.’

  They fell silent for a few moments, watching their breath as it condensed into little puffs of steam. They stared up and around at the walls and ceiling.

  ‘Come on. Let’s turn back,’ said Fabrizio. ‘I feel like I’m suffocating down here.’

  Francesca nodded and followed him up the stairs until they reached the big underground chamber where they had lowered themselves down from the air vent. They examined the wall minutely with their hands until they discovered a narrow stairway enclosed and partially hidden between two brick walls. Fabrizio started up, followed by Francesca, but the feeling of oppression he’d experienced down below only increased as they made their way to the ground floor. They ended up at a little door clad with iron studs that let them into the palazzo’s central hall, but as they raised their eyes towards the ceiling they were amazed by the vision of a spiral staircase reaching up several storeys all the way to the ceiling, free-standing in the middle of the space, without any central support.

  ‘My God!’ exclaimed Francesca. ‘This is incredible! I’d heard this existed but I’d never seen it. It’s absolutely perfect, a masterpiece! I believe it’s attributed to Sansovino.’

  Fabrizio pierced the elliptical cavity of the daring staircase with his torchlight, all the way up to the ceiling beams. ‘Christ! It may be a masterpiece, but there’s something really disturbing about it. It reminds me of the coils of a gigantic snake or the circles of hell! If you stare at it long enough, it looks like a monstrous screw. Isn’t that strange?’

  ‘Do you think Angelo might be here, hidden somewhere?’ asked Francesca. ‘Maybe he’s watching us from the top of one of those ramps. Maybe he likes sliding down the banister! I’d always do that when I was little and I lived with my parents in the Annibaldi villa at Colle Val d’Elsa.’

  Fabrizio stepped forward and tried calling, ‘Angelo! Angelo, are you there?’

  All he got back was an echo in the huge empty chamber.

  ‘I’d like to go up. It’s the only way to know whether he’s here or not. Maybe he’s fallen asleep somewhere.’

  ‘If those footprints were his,’ Francesca reminded him.

  ‘Right,’ agreed Fabrizio.

  He tried pressing a light switch but nothing happened. The electricity had probably been disconnected years ago. They began to
climb the staircase slowly, keeping to the outside, until they got to the second floor, where, to their left, they found another hall as long as the entire mansion. It was closed on one end by a huge set of French doors that must have led to a balcony over the main door at the front of the palace, where they’d seen the stone shield.

  The odour of dust filled the place and as Fabrizio trained his torch beam down the length of the vast hall he jumped at the sight of two long rows of bizarre, grotesque figures that appeared to be glaring at him from either side of the room. An astonishing collection of stuffed exotic animals loomed to the left and right: lions, leopards, gazelles, antelopes, jackals and hyenas baring their yellowed fangs in dusty sneers.

  Both Francesca and Fabrizio found themselves tiptoeing among the beasts of this unexpected taxidermy gallery.

  ‘This guy must have been crazy!’ gasped Fabrizio. ‘Did you know this was here as well?’

  ‘I thought the contents had been donated to a natural science museum . . . Perhaps they were, at one time, but no one ever came to claim them. Maybe it would have cost too much to transport all of them. Anything can happen in a country like Italy. Anyway, there are side rooms along both walls,’ observed Francesca. ‘And here’s a candleholder. You go that way with the torch and I’ll search this way by candlelight.’

  They began their inspection of the side rooms, with Fabrizio constantly calling out, ‘Angelo! Angelo! Are you in here?’ But the rooms were filled only with more specimens of the grotesque collection of creatures. One featured night birds on their perches: long-eared owls and little owls, tawny owls, scops owls and screech owls. There were daylight birds of prey in another, ravens and crows in another, and yet another filled with fish, sharks and octopuses, all covered with a shiny wax and impaled on stands. They looked like suffering souls. He opened the last door and cried out, slamming it closed. The door banged so loudly that Francesca turned in alarm and ran over to join Fabrizio, who was pale and shaking.

  ‘What’s in there?’ she asked.

  Fabrizio shook his head. ‘It’s nothing. These things are just so weird.’

  Francesca took him by the arm. ‘We’ve seen dozens already. What’s so special about that room that has you trembling like a leaf? Let me see.’

  She strode towards the door and opened it decisively, lifting her candle to see inside. She closed it instantly and leaned hard against it, drawing a sharp breath. ‘Oh, Good Lord!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘I told you this felt like the circles of hell! But I never thought I’d meet up with him here.’

  ‘Oh, God, you’re right,’ gasped Francesca. ‘It’s horrible!’ She was still trying to catch her breath. ‘Do you feel up to taking a second look?’

  ‘Do I have a choice?’ asked Fabrizio.

  He slowly pulled the door open and shone the beam of light inside. At the centre of the room stood an animal which appeared to be identical to the beast he’d seen ripping out Pietro Montanari’s throat two nights before. He turned to Francesca.

  ‘It’s pretty shocking, isn’t it?’ he offered, trying to keep his gut reaction under control.

  ‘I don’t know what to say,’ agreed Francesca. ‘It looks just like the animal we saw. My God, it’s a monster. What kind of breed . . . Fabrizio, what does this mean?’

  ‘I have no idea. Don’t ask me. I only know I really want my life back – as soon as possible!’

  ‘What’s stopping you?’

  ‘Nothing . . . No, a lot of things. I don’t want to leave you on your own here . . . and . . .’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I want to know how this ends up.’

  Francesca nodded and circled all the way around the stuffed animal. It was a kind of dog, with a dense, bristly coat. Its huge jaws were gaping in a show of enormous fangs. Its long, thick tail was also covered with shaggy hair. The stuffed creature was completely covered with dust, giving its black coat a greyish cast.

  ‘Do you think this means the one we saw comes from here as well?’ wondered Francesca.

  ‘Who can say?’

  ‘I’d always heard that Count Ghirardini had a real reputation for being eccentric. He was famous for his game hunts in Africa and other exotic places. I don’t know much more than that, other than that he was quite private and reputed to be very strange.’

  ‘I’d say there’s little doubt about that. Anyway, this is Reggiani’s dream: seeing that animal pumped full of lead and filled with straw in some museum.’

  Francesca leaned closer to illuminate the creature with her candle, but all of a sudden, part of the fur caught on fire. She cried out and Fabrizio tore off his jacket and hit the animal’s side hard to put out the flames.

  ‘Careful with that thing! This whole place might have burned down!’ he said.

  Francesca held out her hand for the torch and shone it at the scorched coat to see how bad the damage was. She looked astonished at what she was seeing. ‘Will you look at that . . .’

  ‘Look at what?’ asked Fabrizio.

  ‘It’s fake.’

  ‘That’s not possible.’

  ‘Look for yourself’ She tapped her knuckles against the animal’s side. ‘It’s wood. It’s not an animal at all. It’s an extremely realistic sculpture. As if Ghirardini, or whoever it was, had wanted to reproduce something that he’d seen but couldn’t have in his collection. If we had the time to search through here, I’ll bet we’d find sketches, drawings, notes. I’m sure of it.’

  ‘So Ghirardini saw it too,’ he said, raising his eyes to Francesca’s. ‘The animal has to be somehow connected to this place.’

  ‘Do you want to scare me to death? Come on. Let’s get out now. The little boy’s not here, Fabrizio.’

  She hadn’t finished saying that when they heard a noise, in the distance, followed by a louder, sharper one.

  ‘What was that?’ asked Francesca.

  ‘I don’t know. It sounded strange.’

  ‘Is it coming from outside?’

  ‘No, it’s coming from inside. From upstairs, maybe . . .’

  ‘Fabrizio, it’s definitely coming from outside. I can tell. Let’s get out of here.’

  ‘No, I was wrong. It’s coming from downstairs. Hear that?’

  ‘But there is no one downstairs – you saw that for yourself.’

  ‘Maybe we didn’t look closely enough.’

  ‘Yes, we did. I want to leave, now.’

  ‘To leave we have to go back downstairs, don’t we? We can’t just walk out of the front door.’

  Francesca gave in. ‘All right, then. Let’s go downstairs to see. At least I won’t have to look at these revolting animals anymore.’

  They descended the stairs to the first floor and then went down the narrow steps leading from the corner of the main hall to the floor below. The sound was becoming sharper and more distinct. Hammering, against something hard: the ground, perhaps, or a wall.

  ‘See! I told you it was coming from down here,’ said Fabrizio.

  ‘I really am scared now.’

  ‘Come on. Nothing’s going to happen. Maybe someone else fell through the hole, ended up somewhere down below and is just trying to get out.’

  ‘Fabrizio, there’s nothing but an empty, doorless room down there, cut into the tufa,’ said Francesca, grabbing on to his arm as he continued to descend slowly.

  ‘So that’s all we’ll see,’ replied Fabrizio, setting his foot on the last step.

  A slight luminescence shone from the room below, like the light of a candle. Fabrizio put his head around the corner as the noise stopped abruptly and directed the torch beam at the middle of the room. He stood gaping open-mouthed at what he saw.

  It was Angelo, covered in mud from head to toe, and he was holding the missing bronze fragment in his hand. A candle stub at his feet let off a tiny glow.

  The child smiled as if this were the most normal thing in the world.

  ‘See?’ he said. ‘I know how to be an archaeologist. So, can I stay with you
now?’

  15

  FABRIZIO DREW CLOSER carefully, slowly, as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing, as if that vision might vanish from one moment to the next. Angelo was standing hunched over in front of him, bowed under the weight of what for him was a very heavy bronze slab. He didn’t seem frightened or upset, or even uncomfortable, in that dark underground chamber. He looked like he had been biding his time, waiting for this very encounter.

  ‘Do you want to . . . give it to me?’ asked Fabrizio, holding out his arms.

  The boy nodded and handed over the slab.

  Fabrizio took it as he nodded to Francesca. ‘This is Angelo.’

  ‘It’s a pleasure, Angelo. I’m Francesca,’ she said, extending her hand.

  Fabrizio noticed a pickaxe at the corner of the room, along with a pile of freshly dug earth, and asked, ‘How did you know where it was? Do you know who put it here?’

  But the child seemed suddenly alarmed, as he strained to hear sounds that the others were unaware of. ‘We have to get out of here before she finds us. Hurry. This way, fast . . . She’s coming.’

  He was frightened now. He had taken Francesca’s hand and was tugging her towards the staircase. She gave Fabrizio a look and all three of them started up the steps. They reached the main hall and moved towards the front entrance. Angelo stood on tiptoe to push back the latch of the secondary door and Francesca immediately went forward to give him a hand, but it was stuck and would not move. Fabrizio had no better luck: the door had been bolted from the outside.

  Angelo seemed paralysed for an instant, then looked up at his companions and said, ‘This way. Come on – follow me.’

  He turned back and retraced his steps until he was halfway down the hall, then opened a side door and started to run down a long, dusty corridor filled with cobwebs.

  Fabrizio was weighed down by the slab and was having trouble keeping up, but Angelo kept turning to say, ‘Hurry! We have to get out.’