“I know we’ve discussed hiring someone.” Bemis crossed his arms, ignoring Garvey. “Still, you should have run this by me first.”
“Any problem?”
“I don’t have a problem.” Bemis kept his eyes off Garvey. “Does she?”
“I answered all her questions, Wes. She’s satisfied with the hiring terms.”
“Remember me?” Garvey refused to play the demure mute while the Mormon played dumb. “We met at Logan Airport for your Harvard lecture. I picked you up instead of letting you pick me—”
“I don’t remember.” The Mormon’s voice cracked. “I . . . I give so many lectures, you know.” He rubbed his neck and turned to Fisher. “Silly me, I almost forgot to tell you. Commissario Leone called me.”
“About the shooting of Don Perugino in Naples?”
“Nope. He’s coming here to question Renaldi about the Festus parchment.” He slapped Fisher on the back. “Looks like you’re off the hot seat, pardner.”
“That’s a relief,” Fisher replied. “I wish he liked me more.”
“Let’s get to work.” Bemis headed for the shaft. “Time’s a-wasting.”
They edged single file down the shaft to the new discovery. If Bemis wanted to stonewall his sexual harassment, she’d have to put up with it. The professor wasn’t likely to take her word over that of his colleague.
She paused on the forty-five-degree decline to brush away fine powder sprinkling down on her helmet and clothes. She spit away the mildew taste on her lips.
The Mormon had charge of the project and the final say. She hated the idea of him getting away with his actions, though she needed the work. But if he ever tried to lay hands on her again—
“Oh . . . my God.” She bent over and covered her hair with her hands. A bat bounced off her arm on its way up the shaft. A few more whirred past.
“They’re gone.” Fisher put his arm around her shoulder. “It’s okay.”
From a hole in the ceiling where the shaft ended, the three dropped into the rectangular shape of the presumed Latin library. With flashlight beams crisscrossing through the gloom, they probed the wall facing them. Images of grain stalks and flower garlands blotched with mold bordered a plain wall painted a tomato-red color.
Bemis turned on a halogen lantern. Unlike the plain wall, the two sidewalls abutting it at right angles bore frescoes. One sidewall depicted a woman reading a scroll and the other, a man writing on papyrus.
“This is a library all right.” Fisher laughed, translating the Latin words at the top of the plain wall. “Kind reader, be so courteous as to reroll the papyrus scrolls when done so that the gods and the master of this house will bless you.”
The pyroclastic flow released by Mount Vesuvius had barreled through Herculaneum and crashed its way into buildings. Charred wooden shelves and cabinets along the library walls testified to the tragedy. “Look at those,” she said. A few cylinders hung out of collapsing cabinets and even fewer clung to splintered shelves. She looked down. Far more cylinders lay helter-skelter on the floor. “They look like giant charcoal sticks.”
“They’re carbonized papyrus scrolls,” Fisher said. “Like ones found in the villa years ago.” He hovered over a pile of scrolls. “We have to examine them right away.”
“Hold your horses, pardner.” Bemis held up his hand. “I still have to set up my equipment at the National Archaeological Museum in Naples, besides inventorying everything for Riccardo Renaldi, the superintendent’s right-hand man.”
He aimed the halogen lantern at the wall behind Fisher and Garvey. “Now, for the main event . . . turn around and behold Mithras with a twist.”
Their flashlights working the wall behind them, Garvey made out a red plaster surface decorated with a border of miniature bulls and fish. Because of the shine, she surmised the ancient craftsmen had mixed lime and marble dust with the plaster. In the center of the well-preserved wall stood two fresco figures shaking hands. One had to be the iconic Mithras, a haloed young man in a conical cap folded forward, wearing a star-studded cape. Curly hair spilled out under the cap. Saint Augustine had called this Roman god “that fellow with the cap.”
But Mithras was not alone. He shook hands with another haloed male bearing the face of Apollo. The Apollo fresco sported a trident over his shoulder. A lamb and a peacock rested at his feet. Two smaller figures sat cross-legged on either side of the larger ones. One of the seated figures held a torch facing down and the other a torch facing up.
Below the tableau, a row of five Roman numerals stuck to the wall. Incised on separate bronze plates, the numbers read from left to right: . . . III . . . , VIII . . . , VI . . . , VIII . . . , V. A sixth plate had fallen on the floor. The wall bore the imprint of the fallen VIII as the last number in the series.
“Amazing,” Fisher said. “Here’s Cautes.” He pointed to the diminutive figure holding a flaming torch upright. “And Cautopates.” He turned his finger to the form holding the torch down. “And they’re both in Phrygian caps, just like their master—the god Mithras.”
“Question,” Garvey said, tapping Fisher on the shoulder. “Who’s shaking hands with Mithras?”
“Could be an early depiction of Jesus Christ.” He held up his hands to forestall objections. “Early Christians used the lamb and peacock as religious symbols. The figure’s also holding a trident, another Christian symbol.”
“Not so darn fast.” Bemis put his hand on Fisher’s shoulder. “Lambs, peacocks, tridents . . . pre-Christian art also used these critters. And Neptune was the most famous trident holder of all.”
“But don’t you see?” Fisher asked. “The interlocking motif of bulls—identified with Mithras the bull slayer, and the fish—an acronym for Jesus, showed some friendly relation between Mithras and Jesus Christ.”
“Hold on. You’re spinning.” Bemis shook his head. “With no yarn.”
“I don’t think the figure is Jesus Christ.” It made her uncomfortable to speak in support of Bemis. “That’s the head of Apollo, not Christ.”
“Since no one knew how Jesus looked,” Fisher replied, “they used the head of Apollo sometimes to represent Jesus. Other times they used that of Hermes or Orpheus.”
“A Christian connection won’t work.” She looked around the room. “Julius Caesar’s father-in-law built this place, long before the birth of Jesus Christ.”
“You’re overlooking something.” He couldn’t take his eyes off the mural. “Even if you think the Festus parchment linking Saint Paul and Roman elite at the villa is a fake, the New Testament records Paul landed at nearby Puteoli on his way to Rome. He then preached in Rome under house arrest for about twenty years before the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.” Fisher opened his hands as if the conclusion were obvious. “Plenty of time for the Christian message to reach this pagan resort town.”
“Look, Will.” She put a hand on her hip. “No conclusive archaeological evidence shows Christianity reached Pompeii or Herculaneum before the eruption.”
“Face it, pardner.” Bemis lowered the halogen lantern. “No way of knowing who’s right. This wall may have ears, but it doesn’t have a tongue.”
“Maybe it’s trying to say something with those Roman numerals.” Fisher picked up the fallen number VIII with cotton gloves and held it close to its original location on the wall. After returning the number to the floor, he removed his gloves and scribbled in a notebook.
“They’re just numbers.” Bemis shrugged. “They don’t say anything.”
“Translated into the Arabic numerals we use,” Garvey said, “the sequence reads . . . three . . . eight . . . six . . . eight again . . . five . . . and the last eight fallen to the ground. What does it mean?”
Bemis scratched his head. “I’ll be a monkey’s uncle if I know.”
“I was talking to Will.”
“I have a hunch.” Fisher
looked toward the ceiling. “But I want to make sure.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Outside the concrete wall and steel gate sealing off the Villa of the Papyri, Nicole Garvey cupped her hands over her eyes. “Where are Bemis and Renaldi? They’re late.”
“Let’s wait a few more minutes,” Will Fisher replied.
Laundry fluttered from the balconies of tenements quarantining the decaying buildings of ancient Herculaneum from modern Ercolano. The afternoon sun ate into the ghost town of roofless buildings crumbling with neglect in fields of weeds and wildflowers. Rain and air pollution joined the assault on the past. Pigeons pecked away at the rotted-out rafters supporting their nests. Will Fisher tossed a stone at a pigeon flock befouling the Villa of the Papyri. “Damn birds.”
“Ditto,” she said, watching the whirl of wings flap into the sky. Fate mocked Herculaneum’s struggle to stay above ground with daily bombardments of pigeon droppings. In their wisdom, the authorities deemed it illegal to shoot pigeons but legal for falconers to kill them. The site decayed while the politicians picked nits.
The midnight call from her father still rattled her. He had sounded more depressed this time, but he wouldn’t talk about it. John Wayne heroes kept their troubles to themselves. He refused her offer to return to Rome and help out. He didn’t want to jeopardize her new job.
Colonel Soames, her great-grandfather, had committed suicide and lay buried in Rome. Her father’s visit to the grave yesterday had left him more morose than ever. He wasn’t supposed to visit until they could go together. Why did he? Was he, God forbid, thinking of imitating his grandfather? If something happened—
Fisher checked the time on his cell. “We’ve waited enough for Wes and Renaldi.”
“Why does Renaldi insist on chaperoning us in the villa?”
“A new security measure. He suspects trespassers.”
“I’m not buying it.” She hitched up her backpack. “We’re not trespassers, and we’d report any.”
“What can I do?” He pursed his lips. “Wes is the boss. And he wants it.”
His resignation irritated her.
After their descent to the newly discovered Latin library, Fisher photographed the mural of Mithras and his mystery friend. He sat cross-legged on the floor to photograph the Roman numerals at the bottom of the mural and one on the ground.
She sat next to him. “Enough suspense, Will. What does the mural mean?”
Fisher put the camera down. “Ever hear of gematria?”
“A code of numbers representing letters or words. Like a cryptogram.” She smiled at the memory. “I won a prize in Bible school for knowing the Book of Revelation refers in code to a beast whose number is three sixes . . . Nero’s name, the Antichrist.”
“You have the idea.” He had the tone of a professor validating a star pupil. “Ancient writers, including Saint Jerome, calculated the name of the god Mithras in Greek letters as equaling three hundred and sixty-five.” Fisher shrugged, looking puzzled. “So what, you ask?” He prompted her with a circular motion of his right hand.
“OK, Professor. I ask.” She laughed. “But no more showboating. Tell me.”
“We have the Greek letters in the word Mithras equaling three hundred and sixty-five. Next we must puzzle out the name of the person shaking hands with Mithras.” He opened his notebook to show her. “Eight hundred and eighty-eight is the numerical name of Jesus in Greek letters.” He tapped the page with his finger several times.
“What does this have to do with the mural?”
“Both sets of numbers,” he said pointing, “are on that wall.”
“All I see is one number . . . three, eight, six, eight, five, and a final eight.”
“Look again.” He held out his notebook for her to see the six letters he had copied down. Red highlighter marked the three, the six, and the five, and a blue highlighter marked the three eights. “The names of Mithras and Jesus are numerically woven together.”
“No way.” She shook her head. “You’re seeing what you want to see. You know how would-be prophets always find hidden meanings in the Bible.”
“The symmetry of the three eights counterbalances the three sixes.”
“That’s exactly what I mean.” She stood up. “You’re reading things into the text, just like the ancients. It’s like the coincidental similarities between the lives of Abraham Lincoln and JFK. No mystical connection there, just the human need to find meaning in patterns where none exists.”
“But that’s the point.” He stood up in front of her and banged his notebook against his hip. “We can’t look at this fresco through the contemporary glasses of scientific rationalism. We have to look through their eyes. Those letters had religious meaning.”
She was about to dismiss his interpretation with the fact the Greek alphabet had nothing to do with the fresco. The numerals on the wall were Latin. And the Romans spoke . . . She caught herself. Of course they spoke Latin, but the educated class, like those in this mansion, often preferred Greek. Greek was the language of the literary works so far discovered in the villa. Even Saint Paul wrote to the Romans in Greek.
“Do you have a better idea why those numerals are up there?” Fisher drummed the notebook with his fingers. “They must relate to the fresco. Otherwise their positions make no sense.”
“Assuming you’re right,” she said, “then some kind of relationship exists between the first Christians in Rome and their Mithraic contemporaries.”
“That is precisely what—” Fisher stopped in midsentence and stared at the plain wall on the opposite side of the room. “Didn’t the archaeology interns clean off that wall yesterday?” he said, his back turned to her and eyes fixated on the wall.
“Yes. Why?”
“That explains why we didn’t notice it before.”
“Notice what?”
“Look at that wall.” He went over to the far wall. “What do you see?”
Unlike the other walls, the tomato-red plaster had a slapdash quality. The ancient artisans had applied the plaster unevenly. They hadn’t even decorated it with frescoes.
“Except for the coarse workmanship, I don’t see anything special.”
“Come closer.”
She followed his flashlight beam around the edge of a different color tone in the center of the wall. Against the background of the tomato-red color appeared the apparition of an arch in the form of an inverted U shape. The arch had the tone of darker red, something like raspberry.
An optical illusion? Garvey ran her fingers through her hair. The Romans mastered the three-dimensional illusion known as trompe-l’oeil. But nothing about the two-dimensional arch suggested trompe-l’oeil.
Just a coincidence of different paints?
“Look here.” He stretched to examine the wall above the arch. “Where the lighter red plaster has chipped away, I can see brickwork underneath.”
He lowered his gaze to the wall center. Close up, the tomato-red background of the wall clearly enclosed the outline of an arch in faded raspberry paint. He peered into a crack in the archway. He shoved a pen through the crack as far as it could go and turned it into a hole.
“Be careful. Keep the site intact.”
Fisher peeked through the hole.
“Looks like rotted lattice. Why no brick?”
His walkie-talkie beeped. He pressed the Push to Talk button.
“I copy you, Wes. Where are you?”
“I had a last-minute problem. Some visiting Mormon missionaries.”
“Too bad you’re not here. I think I solved the Roman numbers mystery.”
“Good for you, pardner . . . but Renaldi wants to see me. Have to go. Over.”
The Mormon’s voice boomed over the walkie-talkie like the voice of God. The creep would like the comparison.
“Tell him we waited, but he neve
r showed up. Later, Wes. Out.”
Fisher ran his fingers across the archway.
“Don’t touch it, Will. You could damage the wall.”
He pressed his fingers against the archway—it broke apart.
Plaster chunks and wood splinters fell to the ground. The LED light on Garvey’s helmet illuminated the swirling dust from the collapsing archway. She covered her mouth and nose with a handkerchief. Coughing, she squinted at him through the haze. His coughing joined hers. With his hands over his face, he sat slumped down on the floor, his back to the broken wall. Tying her sweater over her nose and mouth, she squatted in front of him. Plaster dust covered him. After the haze settled, she removed her sweater from her face and shook his shoulder.
“Look behind you,” she said, rising. He staggered up and turned around.
The image of an archway had given way to a real archway leading into the darkness of an adjoining room.
“Somebody.” He coughed. “Somebody wanted the entrance sealed.” He brushed himself off. “Let’s check it out.”
The walkie-talkie beeped. He pressed the Push to Talk button.
“Bemis here. Renaldi is having a fit. You went in without him. Come back right now . . . Do you copy me?”
“Ten four.” The walkie-talkie crackled. “Can’t we work something out?” Fisher adjusted a knob. The crackling stopped. “We’re on to something big, a new room next to the library. Over.”
“Oh my heck . . . He’s ordering you out. Get out now.”
“He can’t stop us,” Garvey said, taking the walkie-talkie from Fisher.
“Is that Nicole?”
“The professional name is Dr. Garvey . . . if you please . . . Dr. Bemis.”
“This is serious . . . Dr. Garvey. I want to be nice. Please leave.”
“What can Renaldi do? File a complaint going nowhere?”
“Flippin’ crud,” proclaimed the voice of God, “Renaldi has authority to shut us down on the spot. Talk some sense into that . . . that female. Over and out.”
The Mithras Conspiracy Page 11