“There are still plenty of people around, and the corridors are well-lit,” I pointed out. “There’s really no need for you to put yourself to any trouble.”
I might as well have saved my breath. He made no attempt to take my arm, but made it clear he intended to accompany me whether I wanted his escort or not. There was no way to discourage him without making a scene, and what could I accuse him of, anyway? Other than the fact that I’d seen him throw a fairly expensive souvenir off the back of the ship, what reason did I have to distrust him? Maybe he was just one of those unfortunate, inept men who don’t know how to express interest in a woman without coming across as a pervert. Resigning myself to his company, I started for the stairs, some sixth sense cautioning against the closed confines of the midships elevator.
To his credit, Mr. Devos was on his best behavior. Gesturing toward the small trophy, he congratulated me on my dancing prize, and spoke knowledgeably about what I might expect to see in Rome the next day. Even when we stood before my cabin door with the long, empty passageway curving gently away fore and aft, he made no attempt to take liberties, but wished me pleasant dreams and then retraced his steps back up the passageway. Having braced myself for fending off unwanted advances (or, in my more lurid imaginings, fighting for my life), I felt more than a little foolish as I watched him go. I shook off the feeling and unlocked my stateroom door.
I switched on the light and then closed and locked the door, shutting out all thoughts of Devos as I shot the bolt home.
“Pedro, you wouldn’t believe what happened tonight,” I told the painted log, setting the plastic trophy next to him.
Humming “Night and Day” under my breath, I regarded the distorted reflection of my engagement ring in the metallic gold paint for a long moment, then, obeying a sudden impulse, I tugged the ring off my finger and dropped it into the little plastic trophy, then tucked the whole thing into the top drawer of the nightstand.
“It’s only for safekeeping,” I told Pedro, “so you needn’t look at me like that.”
He grinned knowingly back at me.
With a little huff of annoyance, I got ready for bed and turned out the light.
The wind rose in the night, and the seas grew choppy. I woke to the sound of the waves slapping against the side of the ship and a not unpleasant sense of being rocked in a cradle as the Oceanus pitched in the rough water. And then, very faintly, came another sound.
Someone was in the cabin with me, fumbling among the clothes hanging in my tiny closet.
Chapter 5
When Rome falls, so falls the world.
Attributed, THE VENERABLE BEDE
Cautiously, lest I knock Pedro off the nightstand, I groped for the bedside lamp, located the switch, and pressed it, flooding the cabin with light. The closet door stood ajar, swinging gently to and fro with the motion of the ship. Inside, my tulle evening dress swayed on its hanger as if reliving the memory of dancing in Markos’s arms. The unused hangers at one end of the closet collided together with faint click-clacking sounds; it was this noise that had awakened me.
“And what did you expect to find?” I scolded myself as I threw back the covers and padded across the room to close the closet door. “Mr. Devos ransacking your underwear? Face it, Fletcher, you’re as jumpy as a—as a—”
But similes, which I spent one week of every school year pounding into the heads of reluctant eighth-graders, failed me. I gave a final tug to the closet door to make sure the latch was secure, then went back to bed and the gentle rocking of the waves.
The morning dawned bright and clear, perfect weather for exploring the Eternal City. I dressed quickly and joined Maggie for breakfast on the Firenze Deck, where Paul already sat nursing a cup of coffee. He rose as we approached, and pulled out a chair for Maggie.
“I hope the rough seas last night didn’t disturb your sleep,” he said after the requisite “good mornings” were exchanged.
“Not at all,” Maggie assured him.
“In fact, it felt a bit like being rocked in a cradle,” I agreed, saying nothing of the midnight scare that had, after all, proved to be nothing more than my own overactive imagination. I gazed out the big windows at the ship’s stern at the port of Civitavecchia, bristling with cranes, crawling with trucks, and piled high with containers. “It seems a pity to me that the harbors of the most romantic cities in the world all manage to look exactly alike.”
“Not really,” Paul protested, chuckling. “You’re just looking at the wrong things. See the big brick building? That’s the Forte Michelangelo. It dates from the sixteenth century, and is built over the old Roman ruins. Civitavecchia has served as Rome’s port for centuries, you know. In fact, if you look closely, you can see the base of one of the old Roman towers.” He pointed toward a stout stone pillar, black with age, jutting up out of the water.
“I see it,” I said, “but I’ll admit I never would have noticed it if you hadn’t pointed it out.”
“Promise us you’ll accompany us into Rome and point out the sights,” Maggie urged him. “There’s no telling what we might miss if we’re allowed to wander on our own.”
Seeing my duty clear, I swiped my guidebook off the table and shoved it to the bottom of my bag, professing my own ignorance as I added my entreaties to my aunt’s. Paul protested that he didn’t want to horn in on our plans, but eventually allowed himself (not too unwillingly, I thought) to be persuaded. After fortifying ourselves at the buffet, we followed the herd down the ship’s gangplank and boarded one of the half-dozen buses bound for Rome. I hung back to allow Maggie and Paul to sit together, then took a seat immediately behind them—and was not at all pleased when Miss Duprée, casually elegant in close-fitting Capri pants, a striped boat-necked cotton sweater, and cat’s-eye sunglasses, sat in the vacant seat beside me. Oh, well, I told myself as I murmured a greeting, I suppose it could have been worse. It could have been Mr. Devos.
“Good morning, Miss Duprée,” Aunt Maggie said, turning in her seat. “Have you left Mr. Grimes on the ship today?”
“Yes, the poor lamb wasn’t feeling well,” she said, fishing a compact out of her large straw bag and reapplying carmine lipstick that had already looked flawless. “I think he got too much sun yesterday in Pisa.”
We all made sympathetic noises, which were entirely sincere on my part; after all, if Mr. Grimes had been well, I would have been spared Miss Duprée’s company on the long bus ride to Rome.
“I hope he’ll feel better by dinnertime,” Maggie said.
Miss Duprée lifted one tan shoulder. “I am sure he will.”
Apparently she didn’t mean to waste her day in Rome worrying about the health of the man who was no doubt funding the trip. But when the bus decanted us just outside St. Peter’s Square two hours later, it became clear that she’d settled on other traveling companions to take his place.
“Where shall we begin?” she asked, slipping one hand through Maggie’s arm and gesturing with the other in the direction of the curved colonnade surrounding the square—which, incidentally, wasn’t square at all, but elliptical in shape.
We all looked askance at the long line of humanity snaking out from the Sistine Chapel, comprising mostly European or American tourists with cameras slung about their necks, liberally interspersed with groups of habited nuns or priests on a religious pilgrimage.
It was Paul who said what we were all thinking. “If we get in line now, we should be able to view the artwork in the Chapel before boarding the bus back to the ship, but I’m not sure we would have time to see much of anything else.” He looked down at Maggie. “What do you say we buy tickets for one of those tourist buses, and then we’ll see what the line looks like when we get back?”
Maggie and I readily agreed to this plan; unfortunately, Miss Duprée made it very clear that she did not intend to be left behind. As we set out in search of a booth selling tickets for the tour buses, she fell into step beside my aunt. I hurried to catch up with her, determined not to
let her monopolize Paul. It soon transpired, though, that she was less interested in stealing Paul away from Maggie than in stealing Maggie away from Paul. When the tour bus lurched to a stop with a hissing and squealing of brakes, she followed Maggie down the aisle of the crowded vehicle and plopped down onto the seat beside her, leaving Paul and me to sit in the only other vacant row, three rows behind them. Miss Duprée didn’t strike me as the sort to bother cultivating friendships with other women when there was attractive male companionship to be had, so I couldn’t help wondering what sort of game she was playing.
“Never mind,” I told Paul, leaning close to be heard over the noise of the engine. “If I have to, I’ll drag her off in search of the ladies’ room or something.”
He chuckled and gave my hand a squeeze. “I can see why your aunt is so fond of you.”
“And I’m fond of her, as well,” I said, prompting him to spend the next few minutes asking probing questions about my aunt, my late uncle, and, finally, the long illness that had taken Uncle Herman’s life.
At last the bus set us down at the stop that served the Spanish Steps and the Trevi Fountain, and our attention turned to consulting maps and plotting the best route to see both sights with the least walking. We set out first for the Spanish Steps, the broad staircase named for the Spanish embassy to the Vatican located nearby. Built in the early eighteenth century, the one hundred and thirty-five steps served as a sort of pedestrian roadway up a steep slope, linking the Piazza di Spagna at the foot of the stairs with the Trinitá dei Monti church at the top—although it was a mystery to me how anyone could climb it without stepping on, or tripping over, the crowd of tourists posing for photographs or locals loitering on its treads.
No English teacher worth her salt could visit the Piazza de Spagna without paying special attention to the cream-colored building to the right of the Steps, where the poet John Keats had once lived. It was now a museum dedicated to the English Romantic poets, in particular Keats and Shelley. Recognizing that my interests were not necessarily shared by my traveling companions, I didn’t push to spend our precious time in Rome touring the museum, but settled for fishing my camera from the depths of my bag and snapping a few shots of the exterior. Miss Duprée surprised me by offering to take one or two of me standing in front of the building, and I readily agreed, hoping that the sight of their teacher visiting the poet’s house might make the subject more interesting to my students.
“What a fine camera,” she purred as I pointed out which button to push. “Is it new?”
“Yes, I bought it just for the trip,” I said proudly. It had been a major purchase on my part, and I was pleased that the Mistress approved; I suspected she wouldn’t be impressed by cheap stuff. Yielding to a charitable impulse, I suggested, “Why don’t I take one of you, so you can show Mr. Grimes what he missed?”
There followed a great deal of camera-swapping as the four of us took pictures of each other standing in front of the Fontana della Barcaccia, the fountain at the foot of the Spanish Steps, with the church of Trinitá dei Monti in the background at the top.
Having exhausted the glories of the Piazza de Spagna, we turned our steps southward toward the Trevi Fountain, the enormous and elaborate creation built right into the façade of the Palazzo Poli behind it. In its center, an arch supported by Corinthian columns framed a niche where a bearded male figure stood on what appeared to be a seashell, while winged horses cavorted at his feet. Below the horses, the detailed figures gave way to rough rocks over which the water cascaded.
“Poseidon?” I hazarded a guess as to the bearded man’s identity. “Or, Neptune, maybe, since we’re in Rome?”
“Oceanus,” Paul corrected me.
“Just like our ship!” I exclaimed delightedly.
“Exactly. The ancient Greeks believed the ocean was a single enormous river circling the world. Oceanus was the god who ruled over it.”
“I thought that was Poseidon,” I said.
Paul shook his head dismissively. “Oh, Poseidon was only a local boy. He had charge of the Mediterranean. Oceanus was more exotic, and more powerful, having charge of the bigger and less familiar waters beyond Poseidon’s territory. That’s the theme of the fountain, you know, the taming of the waters. This fountain marks the location of one of the ancient Roman aquaducts. In fact, the water you see here still comes from the old aquaduct, although it’s been rerouted since its source was first discovered in 19 B.C.” He pointed to one of the bas reliefs forming the backdrop of the fountain. “If you’ll look just to the right of our friend Oceanus, you’ll see a representation of the young girl who, according to legend, led Roman soldiers to a source of pure water eight miles outside the city—no small thing for a city as large as Rome was, even in those days.”
“All this Roman stuff is Greek to me,” Maggie said, fishing in her purse. “I want to throw a coin into the fountain, like Dorothy McGuire in Three Coins in the Fountain.”
I’ll admit, I felt a bit like Maggie McNamara, the youngest of the three heroines of that film, as I turned my back to the fountain and—
And caught a glimpse of someone I was certain was Markos. But in the next instant, I lost sight of him among the crowd milling about the square, and I was left to wonder if I’d actually seen him at all.
“Robin, it’s your turn, honey,” Maggie said. “Sylvia and I have already thrown ours, and are guaranteed a return trip to Rome. We’d hate for you to be left behind.”
Sylvia? Apparently my aunt and the Mistress were now on a first-name basis. I wasn’t quite sure how I felt about that, but I hadn’t time to consider the matter, not when everyone was waiting on me. Not wanting to waste any of my Italian coins—I had no very great faith that I would be returning to Rome, no matter how many wishes I made— I fished a good old American penny from the depths of my bag and, taking it in my right hand, tossed it over my left shoulder, just like they’d done in the movie.
“Perfect!” Maggie declared. “Make sure you keep your passport up to date, Robin.”
After taking another round of photos, we began to walk back toward the bus stop. I kept my eyes peeled for another glimpse of Markos or his doppelgänger, but saw no sign of him.
“I’m parched,” Maggie declared, pressing a hand to her throat. “Anyone else care for a drink?”
“That little place looks promising,” Paul said, gesturing up the street a short distance toward an osteria with umbrella-covered tables set along the sidewalk. “What do you say we have a glass of wine while we watch the world go by?”
“It sounds heavenly,” Maggie declared.
“Heavenly,” agreed Miss Duprée. “But can we not go into that shoe shop first? I would like to buy a pair of flats. My feet, they are killing me.”
Frankly, I thought anyone who chose to tiptoe about Rome in stiletto-heeled pumps was asking for pain, but seeing a chance to do Paul and Maggie a good turn, I spoke up quickly. “I’ll go with you. I’ve always wanted a pair of Italian shoes.”
Behind her back, Maggie gave me a grateful smile—apparently she wasn’t any more thrilled with “Sylvia’s” sudden chumminess than Paul was—and Paul puckered his lips at me in a silent approximation of a kiss. We agreed to meet in front of the osteria in an hour, and split into two pairs. I’d thought I was sacrificing myself for the sake of my aunt’s romance, but I was pleasantly surprised. Miss Duprée was an enthusiastic shopper—no big surprise there—but an unexpectedly helpful companion as well. Maybe my own budget constraints gave her a chance to feel superior, or maybe I’d misjudged her in thinking she didn’t care for female companionship. Whatever the case, she unerringly picked out the best deals and, when I found a pair of leather sandals that cost a bit more than I felt comfortable paying, she even persuaded the shopkeeper to offer a discount to “la bella giovane americana.” For herself, she more than made up for his loss, buying not only a pair of Porselli ballet flats handmade in Milan, but also a pair of genuine alligator pumps as well as a handbag to matc
h, a purchase that probably cost more than I earned in a month.
“The Porsellis will be very useful tomorrow, when we visit Pompeii,” she told my aunt after we’d rejoined Maggie and Paul an hour later outside the osteria. “The ruined streets there are very uneven. It would be easy to trip and fall.”
“You’ve been there before?” Maggie asked.
“Once, but it was long ago.” Realizing, no doubt, that she’d accidentally admitted to being older than she liked to pretend, she added hastily, “I was only a child at the time. I remember it particularly because I fell and scraped my knee.”
Maggie and Paul exchanged knowing, secretive smiles that gave me the impression their little tête-à-tête had gone very well indeed. I made a mental note to demand the details from Maggie later, and resigned myself to spending my day in Rome squeezed onto the bus next to Sylvia Duprée and her cumbersome shopping bags.
We retraced our steps to the bus stop, and boarded the next tour bus for the Colosseum. I’d seen pictures, of course, but they didn’t prepare me for the size of Rome’s most famous ruin. The five-tiered oval structure was so enormous that I had trouble fitting the whole thing into my camera’s viewfinder.
“Its name was originally the Flavian Amphitheatre,” Paul said. He’d offered to hold my guidebook while I took photos, and apparently decided to make good use of it. “The name ‘Colosseum’ probably referred to a nearby statue of Nero, which was modeled after the Colossus of Rhodes, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. At some time, the Nero statue fell, or was pulled down so its bronze could be reused for some other building project, but by that time the name had come to stand for the amphitheatre itself.”
Moon over the Mediterranean Page 6
