In the Shadow of Vesuvius

by Tasha Alexander

  “Mr. Stirling, my Latin is not good enough to read this. Could you translate?” I asked.

  “It’s not your Latin that is lacking, Lady Emily. It’s difficult to even make out the letters. Let me see … Minimum malum fit contemnendo maximum. The smallest evil, if neglected, will reach the greatest proportions.”

  “Ominous,” Ivy said. “And quite fitting, don’t you think?”

  I nodded, tapping the tip of my parasol on the ground. “The tableau is reminiscent of the first omen that predicted the death of Alexander the Great: Ravens fell dead at his feet as he approached Babylon.”

  “I don’t like where you’re headed with this, Emily,” Ivy said. She’d finished copying the drawing. “Is this meant as a portent of your demise? Perhaps we should skip our tour and see what Colin thinks.”

  “That’s a sensible suggestion, Mrs. Brandon,” Mr. Stirling said. “I wouldn’t want to do anything that might compromise your safety.”

  “If I had even the slightest inkling that this message suggested there’s some vicious criminal hiding in the ruins, ready to dispatch me, I would seek shelter,” I said. There was something about the graffito that made me think, once again, that we were dealing with two villains. The murderer might have ordered the tableau, but could his accomplice have chosen the location? And, by doing so, was he suggesting the path to Mr. Walker’s death—and Mr. Jackson’s—started with some small evil, the sort of thing likely to go unnoticed? Mr. Stirling knew we would be here this morning. Was he behind it?

  “Perhaps it would be best if we postponed our excursion,” he said, wiping sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief.

  “This is likely just another warning meant to discourage us from continuing our investigation. I shan’t be daunted. Lead on, Mr. Stirling.”

  He looked nervous. “Only if you’re quite sure.”

  “I am,” I said.

  He looked at Ivy who nodded. “We’ll skip the rest of the basilica for the moment and go back to the Porta Marina, the gate through which those arriving from the ancient port would have entered the city. Imagine, if you will, the sounds that would have greeted you. Donkeys carrying loads. Merchants hawking their wares. Look down at the street—do you see the small white stones between the larger dark ones? They were set that way deliberately. The bright color reflected the moonlight, making it easier to pass this way even at night. Pompeii was nowhere near the size of Rome, but it benefited from every ingenious advance made in the empire.”

  The picture he painted of the ancient world was striking in its detail, and all the more moving because he focused on the people who had lived here rather than on the buildings or the politics of the place. He took us through the Stabian Baths, with their ornate ceilings, and left me half expecting to see a slave with a strigil, ready to scrape from his master’s glistening skin the olive oil massaged into it. When we stood in the atrium at the House of the Silver Wedding (named, not for some ancient event, but for the twenty-fifth anniversary of the marriage of Umberto I, King of Italy, and his wife, Margherita of Savoy, celebrated the year the house was discovered), he asked us to picture the life of the family who had inhabited it.

  “This is the largest atrium in the city, more than fifty feet long,” he said. “It had Corinthian columns. The wax masks of the family’s ancestors would have been displayed here, and large chests, filled with their wealth, would have lined the walls. The patriarch would have met with his clients in this room here, the tablinum.” He pointed to a room at the far end of the atrium. “Some of the family’s slaves might have shared tiny rooms, or cubicula, but many of them would have slept on the floor, spreading out bedrolls after their masters had gone to sleep.”

  Much as I was enjoying our tour, I was focused more on observing Mr. Stirling than on the stories he was sharing. As always, he quoted poetry and appeared good-natured and even tempered, but I could not deny he seemed nervous, starting when I asked questions and frequently looking back over his shoulder, as if he expected someone to be following us.

  In this, he wasn’t alone. Twice I caught glimpses of shadowy figures in buildings, but found nothing when I tried to catch them. As Ivy and the archaeologist explored the atrium, I felt a prickling on the back of my neck, like someone was watching me. I turned around, but no one was there. At least not that I could see, so I went into the room that was behind me, its window looking onto the atrium. It was empty, except for an artist’s pencil, stamped A.W. Faber, its barrel painted dark green. Had someone been there, keeping an eye on me? Benjamin, perhaps? He always carried drawing supplies with him.

  I dismissed the idea. No one could’ve left the room without me seeing—there was only one door, and it led directly into the atrium. Countless visitors to Pompeii sketched the ruins. Anyone could have dropped a pencil. I returned to my friends, making no mention of the discomfort I felt.

  We continued on. Mr. Stirling talked about the theater and the games—Ivy peppered him with questions about gladiators—and translated for us bits of the graffiti so prevalent through the city. He pointed out the holes cut into the curbs outside shops, through which a rope could be slipped to secure a donkey while its owner shopped. By the time we had completed our circuit and were back in the basilica—all evidence of the morning’s grisly scene now gone—I felt a deeper connection with the ancient Pompeiians than I ever would have thought possible. Mr. Stirling had a profound understanding of the people who had lived in this town.

  Could a man with such sensibilities and so innate a sense of humanity commit a brutal murder? Something about him made me unable to trust him, but I couldn’t quite identify the source of my unease. Perhaps there are things capable of driving any of us to that darkest of deeds. I was still contemplating this when Ivy and I returned to the villa. I sought out my husband, who was playing chess with Kat, and pulled him aside. She glared at me and stormed out of the room. Colin gave no indication of having noticed this, but as he studied Ivy’s copy of the chalk drawing, a mask of grave concern fell over his handsome face.

  “Is it a coincidence that the birds appeared the very day after I started asking questions about Felix Morgan?”

  “It certainly supports the theory that Morgan is a critical component to our investigation,” Colin said. “And I agree it’s likely the graffito is a significant clue. Who might be hiding some small evil from his past?”

  “Mr. Stirling could have any number of old debts,” I said. “He might have done something underhanded to avoid paying one of them.”

  “And Carter’s temper could easily have got him in trouble.”

  “If only we could find some connection between either of them and Felix Morgan.”

  “The American Embassy has no record of anyone of that name coming through Rome,” he said.

  “We could ask The New York Times to search their files.”

  “I already did. He’s never been mentioned in the paper.”

  “Perhaps he adopted a nom de guerre after the incident in Montana.” I shook my head. “No, both Mr. Stirling and Mr. Taylor recognized the name. We’d best go back to focusing on Mr. Walker. Mario is the person here who spent the most time with him. Now that we know more about Montana and Morgan and all the rest, let’s question him again. Mr. Walker may have mentioned something about it that seemed insignificant to Mario—and to us—until now. Let’s find him without delay.”

  AD 79

  22

  With what innocence a tangle of lies begins!

  I met Silvanus the next day, in the middle of the afternoon, when I knew the bars would be relatively empty. I chose one as far from his house as possible, by the large theater, near my own domicile. It was a dingy place that gave no indication of ever aspiring to serve a high class of clientele. We sat across from each other at a table in the back garden, although to call it a garden is to give it more of a compliment than it deserved. There were no flowers or shrubs within, only a grimy open space with a pounded dirt floor and an ill-maintained wall surro
unding it, covered with obscene graffiti.

  A surly waiter with a bad attitude plonked a dish of half-shriveled olives down in front of us and Silvanus ordered two beakers of wine, the best they had. The waiter sneered. If my companion thought we’d get better service by spending more, he was wrong. Eventually, the man brought the drinks. After taking a sip, I couldn’t say he deserved any thanks.

  Silvanus drained his glass as if he didn’t notice how sour the wine was. “Recite for me, Kassandra. Recite.”

  I hadn’t had much time to write since leaving Plautus’s house, but knowing I would be seeing Silvanus today, had stayed up half the night working on my epic. My hero was still very much an idealized version of Silvanus, but he didn’t seem to notice. In a hushed voice, I leaned across the table and gave him fifty or so lines before passing him a scroll onto which I had copied them—and more—for him.

  “You tell a tale of war so unlike any I would expect from a woman,” he said. “How do you know the sounds of battle, the way it rings in a soldier’s head for days, haunting his sleep?”

  “So you were a soldier,” I said, ignoring his question. A man of his rank would likely have spent some time as a military tribune.

  He ignored my question as well, unrolling the scroll as if he hadn’t even heard what I said. “How quickly can you have more?”

  “I can’t spend as much of the day on poetry as I used to. In Plautus’s house, I had more free time. Satisfying my father’s needs for a copyist is more consuming than keeping Lepida content.”

  He grunted. “You have too much talent to waste it on the works of others. I shall speak to your father and arrange something.”

  “You could hire me to write the poem. That would be the simplest solution.”

  “Perhaps,” he said, not looking up from the scroll. He sounded unconvinced. “Meet me back here three days hence and bring whatever else you’ve managed to compose.”

  “I don’t know what to make of you, Silvanus. Why all this secrecy over a little poem?”

  He looked at me and now it was his turn to lean over the sticky table. His eyes burned into mine. “You are so wonderfully unaware of your charms. I can’t decide if this is due to some mystical innocence or if it’s a well-calculated act.”

  “Why would I need a well-calculated act?” I asked.

  “I know you expected something else from me that first night I asked to see you in private. It put me in a most awkward position in the house of my betrothed.”

  “If that’s true, it resulted from no deliberate action on my part.” I could hear my heart thudding. I couldn’t deny I had wanted him then, nor that I still did, now.

  “There’s something rather dangerous about you, Kassandra.” He reached toward my face and touched my lips with his fingertips. “A wiser man than I would flee and never speak to you again. But I am not so wise, even if you will prove my undoing.”

  1902

  23

  Given our past experience, we suspected Mario might not be easy to track down, so Colin left messages for him both at the excavation ticket booths and at his rooms, inviting him to meet us for dinner. This garnered a quick response. He told us to meet him at a restaurant owned by his brother, Pietro. When we arrived, he greeted us like long-lost friends, introduced us to his mother and grandmother, and ushered us to a table near the window. After asking about Kat and accepting that her injury was not serious, he refused to discuss anything further until we agreed to eschew ordering off the menu and instead let him bring us whatever he wanted, starting with a carafe of house wine. Once we had put ourselves in his hands—and he had filled our glasses—he asked how he could help.

  I explained to him what I had learned from Mr. Richards, and the moment I mentioned Montana, a broad grin spread across his face.

  “Oh, yes, Montana,” he said. “Signore Walker told me about this place. There, the skies are bigger than the ocean, and the weather unimaginable. He says there is snow as high as a man’s shoulder in the winter and that the wind will burn the skin right off your face.”

  “Did he mention his brother?” I asked.

  “No, only said that he lived there for some years before going to New York. Maybe New York is where his family was.”

  “What else do you know about his time in Montana?” I asked.

  “He was like some Spaniard from many centuries ago who crossed the sea to find a city with streets paved in gold. That Spaniard, he told me, conquered a whole people, but Signore Walker had nothing to show from mining. He did not speak of it much, only when we sat to have lunch in the amphitheater. I decided it was best not to tell too many tales of gladiators while we were eating, so I asked him about his life.”

  “Did he tell you anything about his colleagues in New York?” Colin asked.

  “No, only described the city, which to me, it sounds marvelous. Bigger than Rome.”

  “Can you remember anyone else—a client, perhaps—who has mentioned Montana?” I asked.

  “You are very curious about this place, Lady Emily,” Mario said.

  “I think it may be the key to figuring out who killed him,” I said. “Are you absolutely certain that you did not see him when he returned to Pompeii?”

  “I am. But, then, I was not working at the time. I’d gone to Naples to visit an old friend. That is why it took me so long to speak to you in the first place.”

  “Can you think of anything else that might be significant?” I asked.

  Mario closed his eyes, contemplative. “I cannot remember anyone else speaking of Montana, but I can tell you this. You have told me when, approximately, he died. In the weeks before then, there was a strange atmosphere in the ruins, as if nothing would be right ever again. The birds did not sing. The rain did not come. I began to wonder if Vesuvius, she was going to erupt again. I sent Mamma and Nonna to the north, just in case. But nothing happened, nothing at all. At least that is what I believed until Signore Walker’s body was found.”

  “What are you suggesting?” Colin asked.

  Mario shrugged. “I do not believe in ghosts, Signore Hargreaves, but something, somewhere was trying to warn of a great tragedy. I cannot prove it is so, but we men do not know everything, do we? There are signs, omens, that we miss, who knows how often. I have heard there was a circle of dead ravens in the basilica today. What evil does that portend?”

  When we’d finished eating, we thanked Mario and his brother, gave his mother and grandmother compliments on the excellent food, and stepped outside. We had a carriage waiting, but Colin ordered the driver to meet us some distance away.

  “I am in need of a little walk,” he said, looping his arm through mine. We crossed the tree-lined street and strolled alongside the wall of the excavations. “I don’t believe for an instant that there are mysterious forces at work, warning of imminent danger. Odd things happen before volcanic eruptions, but that’s not what these things Mario described point to. There’s no sign of seismic activity or of the springs drying up. Yet…” His voice trailed and he stopped walking.

  “There’s something about this place,” I said. “Perhaps it is a result of the immense and tragic loss of life that feels so close one can almost touch it. It’s otherworldly, but simultaneously all too familiar.”

  “It’s unnerving and at the same time deeply and profoundly moving.”

  “Precisely. Could this so-called strange feeling Mario described have, in fact, been managed by the murderer? Not the weather, obviously, but it’s simple enough to convince people something’s afoot. Man has a seemingly insatiable desire for the inexplicable, as if always looking for something supernatural.”

  “So what are you saying, my dear?” Colin asked. “That we are looking for a person skilled in the art of deception, who deliberately manipulated the way the broader populace here—that is, those working in the immediate vicinity of the ruins—viewed natural phenomena before the murder?”

  “Quite possibly so,” I said. “But more importantly, could thi
s individual have used those same skills to lure his victim here?”

  “You think Walker came to Pompeii because he was summoned?”

  “Not in those precise terms,” I replied. “But I do think it possible that the murderer reached out to him, somehow.”

  Colin laughed. “I fear we are in danger of letting tonight’s wine go to our heads, Emily. Walker came here to research a story. Perhaps in the course of doing so, he learned that someone involved in his brother’s death was connected to the site, but we have no evidence to suggest the murderer exerted some sort of pull over him. He returned, so far as we can tell, of his own accord, and although we don’t know his motive for doing so, I refuse to believe he was driven here by some mystical force.”

  “We know he didn’t plan to stay long. His return ticket told us as much. He had some specific purpose, and that purpose must have got him killed almost as soon as he arrived. He never returned to his hotel after dropping off his bag,” I said. “When I asked Mr. Richards about it, he didn’t even know his friend had returned to Italy. You’d think that an uneasy traveler would have wanted to rendezvous with—or at least speak about the journey to—someone he knew and trusted.”

  “Unless he wanted to keep the trip a secret. So what, my dear, was Mr. Walker trying to hide?”

  * * *

  Colin and I agreed that one of us should speak to Benjamin again. He had lied to me about his whereabouts the day Kat was attacked and stalked off before I had finished asking him about his father. I sent him a note when we returned from dinner, asking him to let me know where I could find him the next morning. My husband stayed back with Kat, still uneasy letting her out of the villa, while I set off for the House of Marcus Lucretius Fronto—arguably the most elegant and sophisticated in all of Pompeii—where Benjamin had said he would be copying a fresco showing Bacchus and Ariadne in triumph, oxen pulling them in a chariot.