I had no doubt now that she had lied about being attacked. She’d been spying on Ivy and me while we talked to Mario. Yet I hesitated to question her story. What good would it do? She wanted her father’s attention and had sunk low to get it. If she knew I was onto her, it would not improve things between us.
Colin did not return until much later, but did not share with me the results of his day until after we were alone in our dressing room, getting ready for dinner. “Benjamin uses Faber pencils,” he said. “There was no other sort in his supplies, which isn’t surprising, as artists get attached to their favorite kind. That doesn’t prove the one you found at the House of the Silver Wedding is his, but it could be. The Staedtler likely belongs to someone else, unless he bought and left it deliberately. How was your day? Did you enjoy your lie-in?”
“I did, thank you, and managed to be unexpectedly productive despite it.” I detailed for him everything that had happened at Vesuvius.
“It’s unlikely any of this has a connection to the murder and, beyond that, Bainbridge does not need you to interfere,” he said, fastening the studs on his shirt. “He has a not inconsiderable amount of experience with the ladies. However things turn out between him and Miss Carter, he will come through it unscathed. At least in the long run.”
“But what of Mario’s warning about her?”
“Darling, he’s hot-blooded and passionate. Who knows what he meant? It may be nothing more than a jealous desire to prevent another man—a duke, in particular—from receiving the favors he could not persuade her to give him.”
“He doesn’t seem like that type of person,” I said.
“We’re only slightly acquainted with Mario.” Colin turned to the mirror and tied a cravat. “Let me talk to him. He may be more comfortably speaking candidly to another man than he was with you.”
* * *
Colin was correct about Mario being more comfortable with him. The guide insisted that there had never been a liaison between him and Callie; if anything, he had appeared alarmed by the suggestion. He said nothing that could lead us to believe his comments to me at Vesuvius pertained to the murder of Mr. Walker. Most important, perhaps, he gave my husband—who possessed an unparalleled skill for reading the silent signs that someone has something to hide—no indication of being anything less than open and honest. Colin and I agreed it was a personal matter and, hence, none of our business. Jeremy could make his own decisions. We might have quite forgot the whole incident at Vesuvius had Mario not turned up at the villa two days later, long after midnight, his face battered and bruised.
I had never seen such dreadful evidence of a violent beating. We brought the injured man to one of the house’s empty bedrooms. Ivy, with her preternaturally gentle touch, tended to his wounds, cleaning them up and bandaging them as necessary, while Kat took photographs, insisting they be recorded as evidence of the attack. All the color had drained from my Ivy’s face. I knew she was struggling at the sight of so much blood, but she did not let her emotions prevent her from the task at hand. Only when she was done did we let Mario speak.
He had gone to bed early, he explained, and had been awakened from his slumber by the sound of insistent knocking. Assuming it to be his brother, coming to inform him of some calamity afflicting either their mother or grandmother, he leapt from his couch and flung open the door. Instead, he saw a man dressed all in black, wearing a strange mask, with wide openings for the eyes and mouth, over his face. He said it might have been made from clay. It reminded him of those worn by actors in ancient Rome, similar to the ones depicted on the walls of many of the ruins of the houses in Pompeii.
“I was terrified, as anyone would be,” he said, accepting the glass of water Ivy handed him. “Before I could speak or even think he grabbed me and flung me down the stairs. I smashed into the landing and could hear his boots on the steps, coming for me again. I tried to stand up, so that I might fight him, but I was too unsteady to rise. He beat me badly and kicked me many times. Then he goes. He says not one word the entire time. I waited for a while, to be sure he would not come back, and then, I somehow find the energy to drag myself here.”
“You walked the entire way?” I asked. The villa was at least four miles from where he lived.
“I had no choice. I did not want to trouble my brother with this. To do so, in the middle of the night, would only upset Mamma and Nonna. So I come here, knowing you will help.”
“Many families live in your building, do they not?” Colin asked. “Did anyone open a door when they heard what was happening?”
“No, Signore Hargreaves,” Mario said. “They know better than to interfere when they hear such a thing.”
“Are you suggesting the Camorra is behind this?” Colin asked, his face deadly serious.
“No, no, it’s not them. They do not wear masks. They want you to know who they are.”
“Who, then, do you suspect?” Kat asked.
Mario has sunk back into the soft pillow on the bed. “I have no idea, Signorina von Lange. I am very careful not to anger anyone.”
Except Callie, I thought. The doctor we had summoned arrived, shooing us ladies from the room.
“Do you think, Emily, that we should return to England?” Ivy asked, her face still pale and drawn.
“And abandon Mario after someone has savagely beaten him? No, I don’t think that would be the right course of action,” I said. “It’s time I have a long, candid conversation with Callie. She’s lying about something, but I don’t know what.”
AD 79
28
It was growing more and more difficult to hide from my father what I was doing, first because it was a time-consuming endeavor, and second, because it took me away from my work as his copyist. He was too generous—and too indulgent—to reprimand me for the latter. He knew I was spending all of my free time writing, often staying up half the night (our slaves would have reported this to him, Telekles in particular), and he admired my diligence. Poetry, he told me, when I confessed that was the object of my work, was a far better occupation than making copies of exemplars. He would hire someone else before telling me to abandon my verse. This heaped more guilt upon that already consuming me over my feelings for Silvanus. Nausea plagued me whenever I saw Lepida. Was it my fate to deceive everyone I loved?
Melas and his assistants had finished the decoration of our house. I had hoped this would mean I’d no longer have to see him, but, unfortunately, he and my father had struck up a friendship, and he dined with us at least twice a week. A boon for the painter, as it saved him from paying for his own food.
“Your father tells me you’re writing,” he said, helping himself to a heaping portion of one of Galen’s less-successful dishes, pork in a caraway sauce too thin to be satisfying. “A noble endeavor. What is your subject?”
“I prefer not to discuss my work.”
My father nodded. “A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a quip and worried to death by a frown on the right man’s brow.”
“Ovid,” I said. “An extremely wise man. I do not, however, consider Melas the right man to criticize my ideas.”
“I don’t know whether to be wounded or pleased,” the artist said. “Am I the wrong man because you care not for my opinion or because you can trust that I would never seek to undermine you?”
“I’m afraid it’s the former,” I said. “Ought I have some great interest in your opinion? You’ve given me no cause to. Instead, you have criticized my preference for Virgil over Homer and balked at my taste in art.”
“I didn’t take you for the sort of boring girl who wants only to hear her own opinions mirrored back. Perhaps I was mistaken.”
“You don’t know me well enough to mirror my opinions.”
“Then I shall have to work harder to learn them,” Melas said.
“I shouldn’t bother,” I said. “I’ve no time for idle distraction and, even if I did, why should I argue the relative
merits of verse with a painter?”
“You believe that a painter can only appreciate his own medium? Then, I am afraid, you know me no better than I know you. A blow to us both, as anyone engaged in a creative endeavor ought to possess sufficient powers of observation to read the characters of those around him—or her.”
“It is precisely because I’m able to read your character that I lost interest in you, Melas.”
“You can’t lose what you never had.” The painter smiled. If I had hoped he was insulted, my words were not having their desired effect.
My father laughed. “You must stop, Kassandra, lest our guest refuses to dine with us again.” That outcome would please me greatly, but I was not so unkind that I wanted to see my father abandoned by his friend.
“I wouldn’t be that petty,” Melas said. “I appreciate your daughter’s spirit, Aristeides, even if it is more Roman than Greek.”
“Kassandra cannot change her spirit any more than you can, Melas,” my father replied. “She is Greek. No matter how much she longs to be Roman, she never will be.”
“Perhaps you could keep me locked up at home as they used to do in Athens. We could build a gynaikonitis so that I might be shielded from shocking and inappropriate conversations. Didn’t Aristotle believe women to be nothing more than failed men?”
“I have never claimed Aristotle is without fault,” my father said. “Now, if we want to discuss philosophy…”
I drained the wine from my beaker and raised it for Lysander to refill. This would be a long night.
1902
29
The doctor had assured us that Mario would make a full recovery. The next morning, at the guide’s request, Colin and I took him to his mother’s house. Signora Sorrentino, after first giving Pietro a hard smack on his arm for not having (magically, so far as I can tell) realized his brother might be attacked and taking action to stop it, set her younger son up in a bright bedroom and ordered his grandmother to sit with him. This freed her up to retire to the kitchen, where she started forming meatballs for a soup that, she explained, would help Mario heal more quickly.
She initially refused my offer of assistance, sizing me up and finding my potential in the kitchen lacking, but eventually was persuaded by Pietro’s wife, Gianetta, to let me chop vegetables. Apparently I did not do it well, as before I’d made my way through the stack of celery stalks in front of me, Gianetta pushed me aside and took over. Neither of the women spoke English, but my Italian was good enough to communicate with them, and I soon learned that Mario’s mother was more than a little disappointed—in her words, her heart was indelibly wounded—that her younger son had not yet married despite being the most handsome boy in all of Pompeii. When I asked her who she thought might have attacked him, she shook her head and suggested it was some jealous farmer’s son. Further inquiries told me she had no specific individual in mind, only, if I may summarize, a firm belief that every other single man in Campania envied Mario. Gianetta, through frequent eye rolls, communicated that she did not agree with her mother-in-law, but she admitted it was long past the time that Mario should have wed. When she started to list the girls in town she considered the best potential matches for him, I excused myself and went to find Colin and Pietro.
Pietro was stunned by the attack on his brother. “It was not the Camorra,” he said, echoing Mario’s opinion. “There’s no one with whom we are feuding, so it is not a family situation. Only a coward would cover his face with a mask, knowing that I would come after him for retribution, and I do not know any men who are cowards.”
“Are you acquainted with the Carters?” I asked.
“Signorina Callie and her brother? They come to my restaurant on occasion, but I cannot say I know them well.”
“Do you know any of the other American archaeologists?” I asked. “I imagine some of them are patrons of your restaurant.”
“Signore Taylor comes with some frequency, and I consider him a friend. He is usually on his own, so I make a point of talking to him.”
“Why does he come alone?” Colin asked.
Pietro shrugged. “Perhaps he is tired of his colleagues by the end of the day and desires a little peace. Sometimes, I think it is more that he is not so skilled at excavation as they are. He loves it, and has an appreciation for Pompeii that goes beyond the scientific, but he does not know so much about the methods as his workers. He is no useless dilettante, which makes him somewhat discontent with his situation.”
“Discontent how?” I asked. “His staff seem to like him well enough.”
“Forgive me, Lady Emily, I use the wrong word. Not discontent, but, maybe embarrassed. He is a strong man, intelligent, the leader of his expedition. All this is because of his money, not his knowledge. You understand?”
“I believe so. Do you see any of the other members of his staff regularly?”
“Signore Stirling, he comes, too, but not alone. I don’t much like his acquaintance—he is with the Camorra. I know better than to interfere when they are around, so I never speak much to them.”
“Do you know the man’s name?” Colin asked.
Pietro shook his head. “Even if I did, I would not share it with you. I pay the money to them necessary for protection, but otherwise, stay away from the Camorra. He may tell you the man’s name, but only if he is irredeemably foolish.”
* * *
We went straight from Pietro’s to Mr. Taylor’s dig, where Mr. Stirling proved himself—if Pietro was to be believed—irredeemably foolish. He claimed to have no idea that his friend, Michele Fabbrocino, was connected to the Camorra and offered to introduce us to him. Colin assured him that was unnecessary. He would seek out the man on his own and question him.
That settled, we asked Callie for a private word, walking with her along the Strada dei Sepolcri, the Street of the Tombs. The Romans did not inter their mortal remains within their cities, and, hence, graves lined the streets beyond their city walls; every informed visitor to Rome is familiar with those found on the Appian Way. Pompeii was no different. The tombs here were not yet completely excavated, and their ruined state contributed to an eerie feeling that chased me as we wound our way through them.
Just beyond these monuments stood the Villa of Diomedes, where the bodies of nearly twenty women and children had been found, huddled together in a cellar, surrounded by supplies. They had hoped to wait out the eruption there. Equally chilling was the discovery of a man, still holding the key to the house, his body close to that of a slave, who clung to his few valuable possessions. Was the man locking the door, hoping to keep his family safe? Or, had he and his slave tried to flee to safety? There was a hideous irony in passing by so many formal tombs only to come upon a house that now stood as the makeshift marker of so many graves.
“Let’s stop here,” Colin said.
“Should I be scared?” Callie asked. “The two of you, pulling me off for a quiet chat? Am I about to be accused of murder?”
“What do you think?” Colin asked.
“The fact that Mr. Walker and I crossed the Atlantic on the same ship might have aroused your suspicions,” she said, “but I can assure you that if I had killed him, I should never have been careless enough to draw your attention to having seen him before he arrived in Pompeii. And if I wanted him dead, wouldn’t it have been easier to fling him overboard than to dispatch him here and have to deal with the disposal of his body?”
“You appear to have given the matter a certain amount of thought,” Colin said.
“I have,” Callie said, sitting on the villa’s stone steps. “I’ve never before found myself in the midst of a murder investigation, as we ladies are rarely allowed anywhere near such tawdry things. Mr. Walker’s death troubles me. I can’t claim an acquaintance with the man, but I do remember him, and knowing he was violently struck down is unsettling.”
“Violent death is always distressing,” I said, “and all the more so when one has any personal knowledge of the victim. But we ha
ven’t come here to discuss that.”
“What, then?” she asked.
“I’m sure you can guess,” Colin said.
“I’ve already been scolded by Bainbridge for not going up Vesuvius with him. Surely he’s not so weak-minded as to have sent you to reprimand me as well?”
Colin leaned against a tree and crossed his arms. “I would never agree to such an absurd errand and, although it pains me to give him a compliment of any sort, not even Bainbridge would stoop to such underhanded methods.”
“He didn’t seem the type, but one never knows” she said. “So why are you here?”
“Am I to understand that you can think of no other reason we would seek you out today?” I asked.
“Yes, because I certainly cannot.”
“What about Mario?” I asked.
“Mario?” She sneered. “So that’s what it is, is it? Not even Bainbridge had the audacity to accuse me of that.”
I was about to rebuke her, but Colin spoke before I could. “Bainbridge’s mind doesn’t work that way. So you didn’t do it?” He was being deliberately vague to draw out a response from her.
“Mario is a friendly enough man,” she said, “but, a certain sailor excepted, I prefer more educated bedfellows.”
I know I blushed a shocking shade of crimson, but Colin continued to speak as if she had said nothing extraordinary. “I’ve no interest in your romantic entanglements, Miss Carter. I’m more concerned with Mario being flung down the stairs.”
“What? Flung down the stairs? What stairs?” She looked genuinely flummoxed.
I sat on the steps next to her. “He was attacked in his home last night by a masked individual who beat him badly and left him in a pool of blood.” True, the pool of blood was an embellishment, but I wanted to take advantage of her shock and lower her guard.
In the Shadow of Vesuvius Page 17