In the Shadow of Vesuvius

by Tasha Alexander

  I could hear the sound of footsteps again, coming closer and closer. I examined my surroundings. I had entered the room not through a door, but through a hole in the wall made by the Bourbon explorers. The actual door, opposite where I sat, was completely blocked by debris. I was trapped. If he found me here, I would have no hope for escape. In vain I looked around, searching for anything I could use as a weapon—a heavy rock, perhaps—but there was nothing suitable. All I could do was turn off the lamp and pray that he chose to follow a different tunnel. But then, I caught sight of something glint beneath the sad pile of bones next to me.

  It was metal. I grabbed for it and cut my hand on the blade of an ancient dagger, still surprisingly sharp. Offering a silent apology to the skeleton for having disturbed it, I clutched the knife and extinguished the lamp. Then, moving silently, I rose to my feet and crept along the perimeter of the room until I reached the opening on the other side. There I stopped, pressed myself against the wall, and waited. If Mr. Taylor did not enter the room, but only looked in, he would not see me. If he did enter, I would be able to catch him unaware and use the knife to incapacitate him.

  I have been involved in enough murder investigations to have learned that wielding a knife is not so easy as writers of sensational detective stories would have us believe. I had no illusions about the difficulties I would face, but what choice did I have? I held the weapon firmly above my head and wrapped both my hands around its handle. He was close now, very close. Through the corner of my eye, I could see the flicker of his candle through the opening in the wall. I took a deep breath, held it, and waited.

  If only he had glanced in and gone back the other way! But Fortuna was not smiling on me that day. He stepped inside, leaving me only an instant to act. With one swift movement, I lowered the dagger and plunged it into his neck. He cried out and fell to the ground, his candle still burning after he dropped it. I did not wait to see if he was alive or dead. I pulled out the knife, retrieved the lantern from where I’d left it, stepped over his body, and fled from the room.

  In the relative safety of the tunnel beyond, I lit the lamp and somehow made my way back to the atrium. Now, I could retrace my steps. If I could remember them. The darkness pressed in. Even with the light I could only see a few feet in front of me. Twice I took wrong turns, but I pushed on, trying to stop the forward march of the panic surging through me. When, after an eternity, I reached the peristyle, I paused and stood very still, listening for any hint of footsteps. I heard nothing.

  I can barely recall the rest of my race to the ladder at the end of that first tunnel, but, somehow, I reached it and managed to get to the top. I flung myself from the last rung onto the ground in the little garden, where Ivy, Kat, and Mr. Stirling were sitting, waiting.

  “Dear Lord, what happened? You’re covered with blood!” Ivy rushed to me.

  “Covered must surely be an exaggeration,” I said, barely able to catch my breath.

  “Has there been an accident?” Mr. Stirling asked. “Where’s Taylor?”

  I gulped in air. “I stabbed him. He—he is our murderer. I don’t know if he’s alive or dead. I don’t know if he tried to follow me. I don’t—”

  “Don’t say anything more.” Kat was wiping my face with her handkerchief. “Mr. Stirling, we need the police, a doctor, and my father.”

  * * *

  The doctor was the first to arrive, summoned, on Mr. Stirling’s order, by the owner of the house. I started to explain that I was not certain of Mr. Taylor’s condition, nor of how long it would take us to reach him, but Ivy stopped me.

  “Your hand is sliced open, Emily,” she said.

  “But Mr. Taylor may be—”

  “We will see to him in good time.” She wrapped a blanket around me while the doctor tended to my hand. I could not stop shaking. When he was finished, Kat approached me.

  “Did he—did Mr. Taylor mention anything about me?” she asked, whispering, her eyes focused on the ground.

  “I know he did not attack you.”

  “No, he didn’t.” Her voice was a whisper. “I fell and made up the story of being attacked. I don’t know what I was thinking. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking. I—”

  I touched her arm. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

  She fell silent as Mr. Stirling, who had been making a careful examination of the knife I had carried out of the tunnel, started to speak. “It’s a prime example of a first century pugio, the same type of weapon wielded by Caesar’s assassins. Wherever did you find it?”

  “Beneath an ancient skeleton,” I said. “I’m fortunate that the Bourbon excavators were more interested in treasure than human remains. I don’t know how they missed the dagger. Perhaps they didn’t want to disturb the bones, perhaps they—”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Ivy said. “It was there, and for that, I am grateful.”

  Colin was at my side impossibly soon. He hadn’t come because of our message; he hadn’t received it. Half an hour after he’d started questioning Benjamin, he’d determined the young man was not our murderer. “I wish I could say I suspected Taylor, but I flew back here, worrying that I’d left you with Stirling.”

  When the police arrived, I once again descended the ladder into that awful tunnel, for although they were confident they could find Mr. Taylor without me, I knew it would take longer than if I led them. He might be a nefarious murderer, but I was responsible for his injury and would not stand in the way of him getting medical attention without further delay.

  Kat tried to insist on coming, too, but her father forbade it in a tone that no one can disobey. She was not happy, but she didn’t argue. With Colin in front of me, gripping my hand, and Mr. Stirling behind, I was able to keep from panicking. We had many more lamps with us now—the police had brought them—but, even so, the darkness was overwhelming. I was somehow able to retrace my steps, surprised at how familiar the buried rooms of the villa had already become, but when we came to the opening in the wall beyond which Mr. Taylor lay, I tasted bile and stopped short.

  Mr. Stirling stayed with me, but Colin and three of the policemen went into the room. When my husband returned, I was standing in the tunnel, my back pressed hard against the wall. “He’s unconscious, but not dead,” he said. We waited until the police had removed the injured man. When they had gone, I forced myself back into the room, wincing at the puddle of blood staining the mosaic floor.

  “I don’t know how you managed to overcome him,” Colin said. “Were you holding the knife over your head?”

  I nodded. “It was the only reliable way to ensure I struck him with enough force to incapacitate him. I aimed for his neck. You’ve told me countless times how vulnerable that area of the anatomy is.”

  Mr. Stirling was crouching next to the skeleton. “She’s female,” he said. “That much is clear from the pelvis. The Bourbon excavators would have taken any jewelry she was wearing, but they must have missed this.” Gently, he retrieved a charred clump from beneath the woman’s rib cage. “Papyrus.” He cradled it in his hands and held it out to me.

  “If only we could read it,” I said. “Perhaps she wrote her story while she took shelter here, waiting for the eruption to end.”

  “Unlikely,” Mr. Stirling said, “but it would make for gripping fiction. Perhaps you should write it, Lady Emily. I’ll go through the excavation records and see what else, if anything, was found in this room.”

  “Why would they have left her here?” I asked.

  “They were searching for treasure,” Colin said, “not a pile of old bones.”

  “You’re more cynical than I,” Mr. Stirling said. “I think they left her here, where she fell, to remind us of her humanity. As Horace tells us, we are but dust and shadow.”

  “You’re giving them far too much credit,” Colin replied. “Such optimism would be better suited to that fiction you suggested Emily write. Perhaps you can be her archaeological consultant. Now, though, there’s nothing more to be don
e here. Let’s remove ourselves from this subterranean nightmare.”

  1902

  48

  The carriage took us back to Pompeii. This time, Kat plopped down next to Ivy and insisted that I sit next to her father, to whom she refused to speak. She did, however, make a point of loudly telling me that she would never forgive him for forbidding her to go into the tunnels with us. It proved, she explained, that he did not consider women as capable as men.

  “That’s patently untrue,” I said. “I was with him, wasn’t I? And he never doubted your mother’s abilities. It is your youth, not your gender that concerns him.” She frowned and stared out the window, not looking at either of us again for the rest of the journey. Colin did his best to engage her in conversation, but eventually abandoned the cause. He never did like a futile endeavor.

  When we arrived at the villa, Jeremy and Callie were having an epic row, shouting at each other across the sitting room. He wasn’t angry about whatever her relationship had been with Mr. Walker, but he was furious to learn she had ordered the attack on Mario. She insisted the man she had hired took matters further than she had instructed him to, that she had only wanted to scare the guide into keeping silent, because he had discovered—after observing them in an unguarded moment (she declined to tell anyone but Jeremy what, exactly, Mario saw)—that she and Benjamin were not brother and sister. That catalyzed their meeting atop Mt. Vesuvius. She eventually convinced Jeremy to forgive her. How, I would rather not know.

  Ivy, her face a mask of discontent, only just managed to keep from interfering, in the end limiting herself to suggesting that Callie compensate Mario for his injuries. Callie agreed to this at once, while Benjamin, bruised and silent, brooded in the corner. Jeremy went to him and held out his hand.

  “Beastly of me to attack you when I didn’t know the whole story,” he said. “I realize now you were trying to save me from the heartbreak you suffered, but sharing private details of a lady’s life is never appropriate. I didn’t need to know about Walker.”

  “I need to know,” I said. “I believed you, Callie, when you said he was beneath your interest.”

  “I wasn’t lying,” she said. “Not about that, anyway. I did speak to him on the ship, but nothing of import transpired between us. He was unexpectedly charming and took my teasing about his sideburns in good humor. I didn’t have the heart to rebuff him altogether. We walked together the last three mornings of our voyage. Benjamin drew an erroneous conclusion when he claimed anything more happened between us.”

  “The less said about that the better.” Ivy scowled. “You ought to give more consideration to how your behavior affects those around you.”

  “You’ve every right to scold me,” Callie said.

  “Did you see Walker in Pompeii?” Colin asked.

  “No. He never mentioned it as his destination, only told me that he was going abroad to see an old friend. When I saw Emily’s sketch of him, I panicked, knowing what Benjamin suspected me of having done. I was afraid he’d killed him in a jealous rage and that it was all my fault. I didn’t dare deny having seen him on the ship—you could easily have got the passenger manifest—so I pretended never to have spoken to him.”

  “You needn’t have tried to protect me.” Benjamin pulled himself up to his full height. “I never saw Walker in Pompeii, and even if I had, I wouldn’t have interfered with him. I’m not quite the lovesick puppy you think.”

  “But what about Mr. Jackson?” Ivy asked. “Who killed him?”

  “We have no evidence to prove that his death was anything but accidental,” Colin said. “Taylor confessed to killing two men. I agree with Emily that he was telling the truth about Jackson.”

  “And Kat?” Ivy asked. “Did he admit to attacking her in an attempt to put us off our investigation?”

  I hesitated, but only for an instant. “He did.” Kat opened her mouth, but closed it when I almost imperceptibly shook my head. She might not like me, but she could not deny I could be an ally.

  Soon thereafter, a message arrived, informing us that Mr. Taylor’s condition had stabilized; he would live to face justice, and for that, I was relieved. I might not yet be able to free myself from the sickening sound of the knife sinking into his neck, but at least I had not killed him.

  “You would have been totally justified in doing so,” Jeremy said. “I’d like to see him dead, and I’m certain Hargreaves feels the same.”

  “I would have done anything to escape,” I said, “but all in all, I’m glad not to have his demise on my conscience, no matter how awful his crimes. I prefer official justice to vigilante.”

  * * *

  Three days later, we all gathered on the terrace, at Mr. Stirling’s request.

  “I should have spoken about this earlier,” he said. “But I was ashamed of myself. Hargreaves, you were correct to question my relationship with Michele Fabbrocino. I was short of money, once again having fallen into the habit of living beyond my means. I’d tried—in vain—to write a novel about the life of Alexander the Great, hoping it might provide an income, but couldn’t find a publisher interested in working with me. Soon thereafter, I met Fabbrocino in the ruins and we fell into easy conversation. I believed we were friends, and I swear I knew nothing about his connection to the Camorra. Not at first. He offered me a small loan, at low interest, and I took it. And then another after that, and another, larger one, at the end of last season. The payments I owed him made it impossible to cover my rent, which is why I turned to Jackson for a loan. I’ve returned what I borrowed to his estate and settled my debt with Fabbrocino, all thanks to Callie’s generosity.”

  “It’s the least I could do, given how much trouble I’ve caused,” Callie said. “Perhaps it will go a small way in rehabilitating my reputation with the rest of you.”

  “You’re not the only one of us who requires large measures of rehabilitation,” Benjamin said. “I’m ashamed of my own behavior.”

  Mr. Stirling looked uncomfortable. “Allow me to turn our attention to a more gratifying topic. I have something to share with you all that I hope will bring a happy sort of closure to the events in Herculaneum. I’ve read through all the excavation reports and learned that the room in which Lady Emily found the skeleton—and the knife that saved her life—was tunneled into in 1753. A pair of snake bracelets, gold drop earrings, a ring, and a wooden box, the sort used by the Romans to store books, were with the bones. The jewelry was removed to a private collection, a gift from the king. There was no mention of the dagger or the scroll. It’s possible that neither was immediately visible beneath her, buried in dust, but that, over the ensuing centuries, the ground shifted—there have been numerous earthquakes, after all—and exposed enough for you to see the knife when you most needed it.”

  “Why was her skeleton left in situ?” I asked.

  “An earthquake halted work in the room in which she died, and no later explorers ever went back to it. The men digging grabbed the jewelry but left her behind. The remains of two other people were also found in the villa, one in the peristyle—a male, approximately twenty-five years old, missing a front tooth—and one in the library, another male, in his mid-thirties. His skeleton showed signs that he had been stabbed. Both sets of bones were put in storage. Our girl was no more than twenty and in the wooden box found with her were thirteen scrolls, now in the museum in Naples, but not on display.”

  “Have they been unrolled?” I asked.

  “No, not yet. Perhaps, someday,” he replied. “I had a word with the current owner of the jewelry, and he agreed you should have these.” He handed me a velvet-covered box. Inside, were the twin snake bracelets.

  “I couldn’t,” I said. “They belong in a museum.”

  Mr. Stirling folded his arms across his chest and shot me a look so full of authority it made him all but unrecognizable. “They’re not going to wind up in a museum, regardless of whether you accept them. As I said, they went into a private collection and have changed hands severa
l times since then. I’m of the opinion that the original owner would prefer you to have them.”

  “You can’t argue with that theory, Emily,” Colin said. “After all, in a way, she saved your life.”

  I touched the polished surface of the thick gold. I could picture them adorning the slim wrists of an elegant Roman girl—her most treasured possessions, the things she chose to keep with her on that horrible day when Vesuvius exploded. The emeralds in the serpents’ eyes gleamed.

  Mr. Stirling continued. “The earrings are not in wearable condition, and the owner’s wife, while rather fond of the ring, has an aversion to snakes.”

  “The Romans considered snakes a symbol of abundance,” I said. “I shall be honored to have them.”

  “There’s one other thing,” Callie said. “We’ve arranged for you to take possession of the scroll we found. Someday, I hope, the techniques for unrolling and reading them will have improved, but until then, I know you will keep it safe.”

  “However did you manage that?” I asked.

  “Much though I regret to admit it, it appears dukes can, on occasion, achieve remarkable ends,” Callie said.

  Jeremy grinned. “She still won’t marry me.”

  “No, I won’t.” She leaned against his side. “Isn’t it enough to know I adore you?”

  Ivy’s eyebrows arched, but she said nothing.

  “What’s going to happen to Mr. Taylor’s excavation?” Kat asked. She’d been hanging back from the rest of us, keen to continue avoiding her father—she had not spoken to him since we’d returned from Herculaneum—but was having trouble keeping away. The bracelets, if nothing else, were hard to ignore. “Has anything been decided?”