by Graham, Jo
A tablet, he meant, or something else that would have released the creature. Jerry chose his words with equal care. “I don’t think you could have gotten at — anything important — without modern equipment. They didn’t bring in diving suits until 1895 and that group was more interested in the showy pieces, mosaics and bronzes and the like. Luckily, the Director General of Antiquities realized the damage that was being done to the site and called a halt to private explorations. He had a survey done of the lake bed back in, I think, 1905, and there was talk then of draining the lake, but between the war and politics, nothing got done until three years ago. Mussolini threw government resources behind the project, and — that’s what’s gotten things this far. What really interests me is that when they started to look at draining the lake, there was already a Roman tunnel in place, and all they had to do was to clear it —”
“Excuse me, signore,” the maid said from the doorway. “Signor Averill is here. From the project?”
Jerry didn’t recognize the name, but from the look on Signora Ruggieri’s face, he had to be one of the graduate students. And so he proved to be, a fair, sun-burned English boy with a round clever face and unbecoming tortoiseshell glasses. He stood twisting his hat in his hands, but managed to convey apologies from both Professor Searce and Professor Ucelli: they were in the middle of preparing for the Prime Minister’s visit, and Searce wasn’t able to get away, but Averill would be happy to bring them down to the site and show them around a little. He was an epigrapher himself, Averill admitted shyly. His particular expertise wasn’t currently in demand.
Jerry accepted gladly, and there was a moment’s awkwardness as Alma started to suggest that Mitch stay behind and rest. He stared her down, and in the end they all piled into Averill’s ratty car — it might have begun life as a Fiat, but had been rebuilt enough times to be unrecognizable — and drove bumping along the track that led to the lakeside.
They could hear the heavy rhythm of the pumps, filling the air, and Averill pulled to a stop well shy of the exposed lakebed. A gang of laborers was working a frame sieve, while others pushed wheelbarrows up the muddy path, and another pair worked a hand pump, playing lake water gently through the frame. Another group was laying a fresh set of duckboards, adding to the network of wooden paths that ran to the water’s edge. Half out of the water, rising stark against the green hillside, the prow of a ship curved up from the mud, supported by a framework of new timber. The ribs of the bow rose behind it, shorter, stronger, also held up with props, and above it, higher than a man’s head, the deck itself was partially intact. The photos didn’t do it justice, Jerry thought. He had thought he’d pictured it properly, something like Cleopatra’s legendary barge, but this was so much larger, so much more elaborate — no wonder the first treasure hunters had found marbles and mosaics and bronzes. This was a floating palace, impossible — and impossibly sacrilegious, when it first set sail. It would have dominated the lake, erased it, negated even the temple that had stood on the far bank. It would have drawn all eyes, its gilding and its paint and silk and sails capturing all the light, all worship. No wonder Claudius had sunk the ships: they were beautiful and bizarre and entirely, painfully wrong, here in this perfect lake.
“I had no idea it was this big,” Alma said softly. Jerry glanced sideways, saw her shake her head. “I thought — I don’t know what I thought.”
Averill was nodding. “I know,” he said. “It doesn’t seem quite real, does it? And there were two of them.” He shook away the unprofessional awe. “It’s 67 meters long, that’s just a hair under 220 feet, and we’ve exposed about a third of that. And the second ship is even bigger.”
“How wide is it?” Mitch asked. He shaded his eyes, as though that could make it seem clearer.
“Nineteen meters,” Averill answered. “62 feet, or a little less.”
Lewis was silent, his face still and cold. He saw it, too, Jerry thought, saw the sacrilege, maybe more clearly than anyone.
“The second ship’s 235 feet long and 80 feet wide,” Averill said.
“How long will it take you to get that one out?” Mitch asked, and Averill gave an apologetic shrug.
“I’m not an excavator, I’m afraid. Very possibly another year or more. And there are funding issues, so there’s been some talk of stopping the pumping until we have the first ship squared away. That’s part of what the Prime Minister’s visit is about, to make sure we can continue the project.”
“It might make sense to secure the first ship,” Jerry said, and Averill nodded.
“Except that, as I understand it, we’d have to keep pumping the whole time just to keep the water from coming back, so it’s not as much of a saving?” He gave a shy smile. “But, as I said, I’m not an excavator.”
Lewis was frowning slightly, his gaze wandering from the ships to the workmen and back again. There was something there, Jerry knew, something he felt or saw, and he was glad to see Alma take his arm. Lewis started, smiled, but looked away again. Not for the first time, Jerry wished his own talents lay in that direction. Or that Lewis was better trained. He saw Lewis lean close to Alma, and saw his lips shape words: It’s here.
Not unexpected, Jerry told himself, but the cold crept over him anyway. Guessing and knowing were entirely different things. It was here, lying in wait for the Italian Prime Minister, here where it had been bound before. It would enjoy that irony. He glanced out at the mud, the sparkling water beyond. There were dozens of workers, and just as many archeologists. It could be any of them.
“I can take you out to the ship if you’d like,” Averill said, and Jerry brought his attention back to the matter at hand.
“I’d like that,” he said.
Alma declined, with a quick glance at Lewis, claiming her shoes wouldn’t stand it, and Lewis offered to keep her company. Mitch seemed to have gotten the message, too, and in the end it was only Jerry who made his way awkwardly across the duckboards to the platform erected beside the ship. The noise of the pumps was much louder here, and the dead-fish stench of the mud was very much in evidence. The wood of the ship was dark and swollen, the grain soft and rotten-looking; there were dents where the supporting timbers pressed into the planks of the hull.
Averill was talking to another young man, his voice drowned by the thud of the pumps, and came back grinning. “Erich says we’ve just turned up another beam-end sculpture — a Medusa, this time. Perfect for the Prime Minister’s visit!”
“Didn’t I read the others were all animal heads?” Jerry asked.
“Yes, that’s right. But now we’ve got Medusa.”
Erich was short and dark and hairy, stripped to trousers and singlet in the damp heat. He exhibited his find with appropriate pride — a woman’s face caught between a scream and a snarl, framed by writhing snakes that were nearly all intact — and Jerry leaned close to see the maker’s mark scratched into the bronze inside the cuff that held it onto the beam
“It was toward the middle of the ship,” Erich said, his voice only lightly accented. “Perhaps where the gangway was. Perhaps that’s why it’s different?”
“Jerry!”
Jerry turned, careful of his footing, smiled to see Harrison Searce clambered toward them across the boards. “Harris.”
They clasped hands, Searce shaking his head. “I’m glad to see you taking an interest again. I thought you’d quit the business for good.”
“Well, you know,” Jerry said, and tapped his cane against the peg that finished his artificial leg. “But I was traveling with friends and I couldn’t resist. Though I’m sorry my timing wasn’t better.”
“How long are you here?” Searce asked. “Once the Prime Minister’s visit is over, I can give you a proper look at the whole site.”
“I’m not sure yet,” Jerry said. “It depends on what I can talk my friends into.”
“You can talk anybody into anything,” Searce said, with a smile. “And it’s worth it, Jerry, I promise you. The things we’re finding �
�� there’s been nothing like this in my lifetime."
“It’s amazing,” Jerry said honestly. “I’d seen the photos, of course, but they don’t do it justice.”
“Come on up,” Searce began, and paused. “Can you make it?”
Jerry looked at the ladder that led up to the platform overlooking what was left of the ship’s deck. This was the problem, the reason he wasn’t here, wasn’t still in the field. The words were bitter on his tongue. “I could probably get up, but I can’t get down.”
“Oh, down’s no problem,” Searce said. “We’ve got lots of rope.”
There was no pity in his tone, just practicality, and Jerry smiled in spite of everything. “I’m not really dressed for it —”
“Scuse, Signor Dottore.” It was one of the workers, a foreman by the look of him, slightly less muddy, with rubber boots that reached almost to his knees. “One of the men would like to speak with you.”
“Has he found something?” Searce asked.
“He wouldn’t say,” the foreman answered. “He wanted to speak to you in person.”
“I’ve offered a bonus for each significant artifact,” Searce said, and Jerry nodded. It was a fairly common practice, though on a rich site like this, it was hard to pay the workers what a good piece was work. Although with government money to play with, and government sanctions behind them, maybe there was a chance. He remembered the tablet in his luggage, and wondered when Searce had established the policy.
“All right,” Searce said, to the foreman. “Send him over.”
“He says he’s left it in the ground,” the foreman said, and Searce gave a nod of approval.
“Well, he gets ten lire for that alone. Thanks, Marcello. Who is it?”
“That one there.” The foreman pointed to a man standing toward the edge of the site, a few yards from a new-looking shed. Tools, Jerry guessed, and maybe shelter in bad weather. “Imperiale — Gianni Imperiale. One of the new men.”
“I’m impressed,” Jerry said. His mouth was dry. There was something wrong here, he could feel it. An old hand might have the sense to leave an object where it was found, but not a new man, not a new hire. The excitement always overcame them, made them pick whatever it was up out of the ground….
“So am I,” Searce said. “Care to come along?”
The mud of the lakebed stretched toward the horizon, pocked with stones and still dotted with shallow puddles. It would be a painful walk, at best embarrassingly awkward, and at worst — at worst, he’d be stuck, someone would have to carry him out. Jerry took a breath, wanting to refuse, but the same sense of unease made him smile and nod. “Sure. Just — take it slow, if you don’t mind.”
“No worries,” Searce said. There were planks lying around seemingly at random, and he caught up a few of them, tossed them out into the mud with a nonchalance that suggested this wasn’t the first time they’d improvised a walkway. That bought them maybe ten yards, but after that it was mud all the way, and Jerry clung grimly to Searce’s shoulder, the peg leg sinking inches deep with every step. Searce didn’t seem to mind, just braced a hand under Jerry’s elbow, and at last they reached a band of more solid ground near the little hut. The man who had been leaning on his shovel straightened, frowning slightly, and Jerry felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck. The man himself was a stranger, young, fair like a northern Italian, with a homely, pock-marked face, but the eyes, and the darkness behind them, were terribly familiar.
“So,” Searce called. “Imperiale, is it? What have you found?”
“A tablet, Signor Dottore. At least, I think that’s what it is.”
The ground gave way under Jerry’s leg, and he threw his weight onto his good foot just in time to keep himself from sinking knee deep. “Damn it.”
Searce stopped, offered his hand, and Jerry hauled himself free again.
“Sorry.”
“It’s all right,” Searce said. “This might be right up your alley.”
Thank God for that. Jerry managed a smile and a nod. “I’m curious, I admit. What would a tablet be doing out here?”
“An excellent question,” Searce answered. “Probably it was pulled free in one of the earlier attempts to raise the treasures? We’ll see.”
Imperiale said, “Signor Dottore, the ground is worse further on. It’s not good for a one-legged man.”
“Dr. Ballard is a colleague of mine who specializes in inscriptions,” Searce answered. “He’ll manage.”
“I could bring the tablet,” Imperiale offered. “After you’ve inspected it, of course.”
Searce glanced over his shoulder, at Jerry struggling to keep up. “We could do that. I doubt there’s any real significance in the location. This was all lakebed.”
“No, no,” Jerry said. “I’d like to see myself. Just in case.” He couldn’t let Searce be alone with the creature. That had to be what it wanted, he realized, a chance to take one of the senior archeologists. They would have plenty of time with Mussolini, showing him over the site — perhaps even time alone, or relatively alone, and that — that was what they had to stop.
“Suit yourself,” Searce answered, and Jerry hauled himself through the mud. He couldn’t see the others, couldn’t risk looking for them to warn them, and he wasn’t strong enough — didn’t have the tools or the ritual prepared — to do anything except keep it from jumping.
Imperiale — the creature — gave him a single malevolent glance as he joined them, and pointed to a spot in the mud. “I was digging there, a sample to take to the sieves. And I saw that.”
It was a rounded bit of metal, bronze rather than lead. Not a missing tablet, then, Jerry thought, though on second thought he doubted the creature could stand to get this close to one of them. Searce squatted in the mud, carefully feeling for the object’s edges.
“Definitely a tablet,” he said, and looked up with a smile. “Nice work.”
“Thank you, sir,” Imperiale answered.
Searce probed a little further, and then stood up, wiping his hands on his pants. “Let me have that,” he said, and Imperiale handed him the shovel. Searce planted its edge carefully, brought up the tablet and the surrounding mud with a single deft movement. He held it out to Jerry, who took it automatically, reaching into his pocket for his handkerchief. His fingers brushed the sigil, and it took an effort not to palm it, keep it close against his skin. He concentrated instead on cleaning off the worst of the mud, revealing a square of bronze incised with Latin and inset with a stone seal.
“Interesting,” he said, and felt the creature smile.
“It looks a little like a curse tablet,” Searce said.
Jerry shook his head. “Votive — no, memorial,” he amended, and adjusted his glasses. “See? That’s a memorial inscription.”
“Not a standard form, though.” Searce leaned close. “And — is that Etruscan?”
“In gratitude to — no, in honor of the Thracian Gaius Caesar offers this token to the gods below,” Jerry said. “And, yes, then Etruscan. That’s unusual.”
“We’ve run into some other Etruscan inscriptions at the temple site,” Searce said. “Very interesting.” He straightened, wiped his hands on his pants again, and reached for his notebook. “Good job, Imperiale. Give this to your foreman, and he’ll pay you your bonus.”
The creature hesitated, but there was no excuse for it to stay. “Thank you, sir,” it said, and backed away across the mud. Jerry put his head down, studying the inscription, but he could still feel it watching for what seemed like a very long time.
“We’ve run into some other Etruscan inscriptions at the temple site,” Searce said. “But not associated with the ships.”
Jerry fumbled in his pocket and came up with his small magnifying glass. With its help, he thought he could make out the design of the seal, worn though it was: a warrior, holding a net and spear. A gladiator. He shivered in spite of the sunlight. No, not part of the binding, not at all. This was Caligula thumbing his nose at the g
oddess, the thing that possessed him making an offering in pure mockery. The gladiator who had killed the king of the grove: that had to be what had released the creature in the first place, and from the gladiator, returning in triumph, it had seized an emperor. And feasted until finally the Praetorian Guard had risen against it…. And it had positioned itself to begin the terrible cycle all over again.
“The design, the seal, looks like a retiarius,” he said. “So…. Caligula lost a gladiator here? The Etruscan formula looks like ones I’ve seen on burial stele, so I’d say it was a funerary marker. If the Thracian were a favorite, maybe Caligula wanted him commemorated? Perhaps there were even games aboard the ship?”
“Maybe,” Searce agreed. “There’s certainly room. And of course there’s the story about Caligula and the Rex Nemorensis.”
Jerry nodded. That definitely wasn’t a subject he wanted to pursue. “Before I left the states, I was in touch with Bill Davenport, and he said he was particularly excited about tablet inscriptions from the ships. I was hoping there might be some more Etruscan evidence here on the ships, but you said not?”
Searce shook his head. “Bill had a bee in his bonnet about Etruscan material, I’m afraid. There’s no reason we’d find anything Etruscan on the ships, they’re much too late. We did find some nice stelae at the temple, though.”
That was that, then. Good news and bad news: the good news was, the expedition hadn’t yet found the remaining tablets. The bad news was the same — well, that and that the creature was here already. And that Mussolini was coming. The noise of the pumps beat in his ears, the smell of the mud and the rotting ship filled his lungs. Somehow, they had to stop it, and he still had no real idea how. He took a breath, and let Searce move them on, struggling back through the mud toward the solid shore.
Chapter Twenty Four
They returned to the penzione at mid-afternoon, collecting in Alma and Lewis’s room. Alma sat down on the bed with crossed legs and looked at the three men.
“It’s here,” she said.
