The sky was filled with shadow, a deep, brutal gray that spread like a cancer above them, churning and growing darker each second. Its weight pressed down on them, descending, threatening to consume them. In the far distance, miles to the west, blue sky still shone beneath its widening edge.
Forsaking their helmets, Dyson jumped on the scooter, dragging Anna onto the seat behind him. The headlight flared and they were off, coursing back through the trembling city streets, headed at top speed for the beach.
Anna allowed herself to look back. The terror she found behind them was like none she had ever known. She cried out, her scream unheard, drowned in the roar of the cataclysm.
Vesuvius had erupted. A massive column of smoke and ash billowed upward from the crater, spreading to fill the heavens, promising death. The sound it made engulfed everything else, filling her being, passing through her, jarring bone and sinew. Lightning flashed everywhere, a continual barrage of uncontained rage. She slammed her eyes closed, shutting out the crushing horror, barely able to hear herself think.
Father! Not now! It can’t happen now!
The continually moving earth threatened to toss the scooter from the street, but Dyson somehow kept it on the road. Anna kept her eyes closed, not knowing just where they were, praying the beach would appear at any moment. She felt them accelerate and knew they had reached a straightaway.
Anytime now … anytime now!
A rain of tiny hailstones began to fall, odd in the force of their impact. She allowed herself a peek.
It wasn’t hail. It was hot pumice.
She wanted to scream.
Then suddenly they came to a screeching halt.
“Let’s go!” Dyson shouted, tearing her from the bike. They ran through the line of trees and across the railroad tracks, finally coming within view of the rocky shoreline.
Except, it wasn’t the shoreline anymore.
The waters had receded. As if in fear, the Mediterranean itself had pulled away from the land and was still in flight. The boat’s anchor cut a narrow, jagged swath across the dark, wet sands, and in the distance, at the other end of two hundred feet of anchor line that had paid out to its limit, the boat bobbed in the still-retreating surf.
The pseudonight grew blacker and heavier, descending like an unearthly hand. The drying air grew acidic and sulfurous, making it hard to breathe. Dyson pulled Anna across the rocks, and they broke into a dead run across the sand, toward the only salvation they had. Her heart was pounding, both from fear and exertion. Pumice rained down, the stones larger now.
Finally, Anna felt water splashing around her feet, and when it was knee-deep, she saw Dyson climb into the boat, whirl around, and drag her aboard in one adrenaline-charged motion.
Anna fell into the forward seat as Dyson severed the anchor line with his pocketknife and flew to the controls. Her eyes shut hard against the looming terror, she felt the boat come to life beneath her as it swung around. She couldn’t hear its motor.
All she heard was the thunder of Vesuvius.
As she put her hands over her ears, she was pressed back into her seat by the forward acceleration of the vessel. Faster and faster it leaped through the water, putting behind them a distance that seemed too little too late.
A loud crack sounded, rising above the encompassing roar, slamming against them. Anna feared the moment had come.
Father, she prayed, accept me into your hands.
And then she felt something warm against her face, her hands.
She opened her eyes.
Sunlight.
The aural assault had diminished slightly with distance, falling away to a tolerable level.
“I think we made it,” she heard Dyson shout.
In her lap and around her feet lay pebbles of pumice stone. In her hair were flecks of volcanic ash. She turned to find Dyson behind her at the wheel, and beyond him, beyond the maroon canopy covering the stern of the boat, Vesuvius roared like an insane beast. Lightning still cut cruel arcs across the sky, more intensely now. The pillar of cloud issuing from the mountain’s maw spread wide, climbing twenty thousand feet into the darkening sky. Flame and sparks rose from the summit as if from the anvil of a gargantuan blacksmith.
“We’re about five miles out and headed northwest,” he added. “I’ll make for the other marina. It’s only a mile or so ahead.”
“Can it reach us?” she asked, eyeing the dark cloud.
“The ash cloud looks to be headed southwest. I think we’re safe. There isn’t supposed to be another shift in the wind today.”
Her eyes were glued to the volcano, still so large behind them.
“The man,” she began. “The man in the temple … Did you see him?”
“What man?”
She paused, suddenly unsure. “Nothing. Nobody.”
“Anna,” Dyson said, standing over her, “marry me.”
The words easily penetrated the rumbling of Vesuvius. Her gaze snapped to him.
“What?”
“Marry me,” he repeated.
She rose from her seat and went to him. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she stood on tiptoe as he kissed her, running his fingers through the ash-speckled swirls of her windblown hair.
“Yes,” she whispered in his ear, her cheek caressing his.
And he heard her.
She knew she finally was free. Free of the shadow of the papyrus scrolls, the guilt of their release. Free of the shadow of Qumran, the guilt of two deaths she hadn’t caused.
Free.
They stood together at the wheel, his arm around her waist, as Naples spread wider and nearer before them. After a few minutes she turned and looked back, Lot’s wife very much on her mind.
“Jack,” she said, awe choking the words. “Look.”
The western lip of Vesuvius had collapsed. A malevolent roiling of gray, black, and hellish crimson, part of the fiery column rising from the caldera, was coursing down the slope, funneled narrowly toward the coast. Its speed didn’t seem great, but Anna knew that was just an illusion—it was hurtling at almost one hundred miles per hour, a flow of fiery gases and choking ash of almost fifteen hundred degrees.
A pyroclastic surge, the most lethal child of Vesuvius. It had buried Herculaneum once before, long ago.
Now, it would do so again.
She watched as it swept inexorably over the town. She mourned for Ercolano and the other villages of the region, already mortally wounded by humankind. She mourned for Herculaneum, its history and its beauty, lost once more, perhaps forever. She mourned for those caught in the path of the flow, should anyone still have been in the evacuation zone.
And she mourned for Neil Meyer.
Great plumes of steam rose in the distance as the surge slammed into the sea. A new shoreline was being created, upon which children would one day play, and fishermen yet unborn would earn their livelihoods. The fertile soil, soon to overspread the whole of the western slope, would bring forth abundant vineyards, bountiful crops, and fruit-laden trees for those choosing to risk life in the shadow of the mountain.
Expended, Vesuvius would sleep. But it would not die.
As Anna looked on, watching the brutal outpouring, she realized that something else had not died; it had only been asleep.
Her precious faith, in loving grace and mercy, had returned to her.
Thirteen
They took new rooms, this time at the Hotel Splendid in western Naples. After checking in, Anna collapsed on the bed. Dyson ran into the bathroom, something he had needed for a while.
He walked back into the room to find her sitting there, shaking uncontrollably.
“Anna?” he worried, rushing to take her into his arms. “Are you okay?”
“I think so,” she said. “I guess … it’s just a
ll hitting me now.”
He sat beside her on the bed and held her, rocking her, cradling her head on his shoulder.
“A little later, after you’ve gone to sleep,” he said, “I’m going to be a basket case. I’ve already got it penciled into my appointment book.”
Fifteen minutes passed. Twenty. He felt her calming in his arms. Her pulse slowed, as did her breathing. For almost half an hour they sat silently, sharing the moment, there for each other as they came to terms with what they had survived. Anna drew strength from him, her sanctuary in the storm, her refuge.
Finally, she spoke.
“You really meant that? What you said out there?”
“Every word,” he said, smiling. “I love you, Anna. I always have.”
She drew a deep breath. He kissed her forehead.
“Did you mean it?” he asked. “When you said yes?”
“Mostly,” she teased. “Yes!”
Thunder sounded outside, distant and rolling. His arm still around Anna, Dyson reached for the television remote. “We’d better take a look and see how she’s doing.”
Live coverage of the event wasn’t difficult to find. An image of the churning Vesuvius, the sun glinting off its heaving back, immediately filled the screen.
“The ash is still headed away from here,” he noted, studying a graphic. “Naples should come through fine.”
“Did you reach Gianni?” she asked, referring to the call Dyson had placed from the lobby. “Is he all right?”
“Yes. He’s going to run me over to the Hotel Neapolis to get our things. I’m sorry we lost your other stuff at Herculaneum.”
“No problem.” She smiled with a measure of relief. “I’m quite happy with the way that turned out.”
“I’m also sorry you lost the papyri you found in the pouch,” he said, hugging her a bit more tightly. “What was on them? Why did Raphael want them so badly?”
“Because of what they said.”
“Which was?”
“Something wonderful.”
“Why did you refuse to hand them over?”
“Because of what they said,” she repeated.
“He really would have shot you, you know. He shot me.”
“I know,” she said, reaching up to caress his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
“Anna, what did they say?”
“Look away,” she said, an impish smile playing on her lips.
“What?”
“Look away.”
Intrigued, he did as she asked. Anna plunged a slender hand deep into the V-necked collar of her sweatshirt, her fingers slipping beneath the band of her long-line bra. Then, after a moment, she pulled her hand free.
Along with the papyri.
“Okay, you can look,” she said, holding them out with a giggle.
Dyson smiled, tickled at her ingenuity. “You little …”
“I couldn’t let him have them,” she said. “Even if he would have killed me, I couldn’t. I knew God hadn’t put these into my hands just to lose them again. I knew something would happen to ensure they reached the world.”
“And that something was Vesuvius?” he asked.
“Turned out that way.”
“So what’s the big secret? What do they say?”
“I only read the first few lines,” she said, carefully unrolling the leaves. “But that was enough.”
She feared she might have damaged them in the escape, but they seemed not too much worse for having ridden it out beneath her top. Still, they felt more fragile to her fingers than had those from the travertine boxes.
And then she read.
“I, having served as the scribe of the apostles of Christ, do here with these my last words confess that it was I who authored their denials of our Lord, they who were my brethren; that I did so without their knowledge, my hand guided by the Evil One, as I now, too late, have come to realize …”
Dyson stared in wonder. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“The handwriting’s identical,” Anna said, her eyes misting with happy tears. “So is the language, the structure, everything. I’d be willing to bet the ink and paper match too.”
“Incredible,” he said, looking closer. “The odds that you’d find both those and these, and all within a year? Buried under Herculaneum? And the only reason we found that temple chamber at all was because a nuclear bomb went off in the neighborhood! This is impossible.”
“It’s not impossible,” Anna said, smiling softly. “It’s God.”
He fell back on the bed, his mind awhirl as he stared at the ceiling.
It really is you?
“Read some more,” he said. “Read them all. The whole thing.”
There came a knock on the door. Dyson rolled off the bed, crossed the room, and looked through the peephole.
“Gianni,” he said, smiling at Anna.
He opened up and invited his friend into the room. Anna rose to her feet and shared in their embrace.
“You were so lucky,” Gianni said, hugging them both and patting his friend on the back. “I can’t believe you got out of there alive.”
“We had help,” Anna observed.
“That is one angry volcano out there,” he said. “The eruption isn’t as big as it could have been, and we’re not in the shadow of the ashfall, but they’re suggesting everyone be ready to leave, just in case the winds shift out of the south.”
“Not likely in December,” Dyson said. “The cloud’s headed out over open water.”
“And Sorrento. I know. But I didn’t issue the warning. The volcano blew all of a sudden … things change.”
“How much time do we have?”
Gianni checked his watch. “We can run by the other hotel if you still want to, but after that I say we all get out of here. The traffic is going to be pretty bad.”
“What else is new?” Dyson said.
“I have the museum van downstairs. It’s only a couple of miles each way. If we hurry, we can be there and back within an hour.”
Dyson took his new fiancée into his arms and held her close.
“Wait here,” he told her. “Keep those papers safe. You seem pretty good at that. We’ll be right back.”
“You be careful, Mister,” she said, his warmth mingling with her own. As he kissed her, she melted into his embrace, wishing it could go on forever.
Finally, he released her, grabbed his phone, and hurried to catch up with Gianni. She followed him to the door and watched the men disappear down the hallway, then she went back inside the room and locked herself in.
Walking over to the window, she gazed out at the woodlands and aged pastel buildings spread wide before her, extending to the horizon. People scurried in all directions, some carrying what possessions they could as they heeded precaution and headed north. The room was on the side of the hotel facing away from Vesuvius, which suited Anna just fine. With her, the mountain had more than worn out its welcome.
Hey, I didn’t break a nail, she realized, holding a perfect ten before her. And there’s not a thing wrong with that.
The quiet hillside surrounded her, the budding trees swaying gently in the cool breezes of a welcome and approaching spring.
Anna sat on the balcony of her apartment, reading over the translation she had completed. Though she had already informed the archaeological community and the press of the gist of the document, she had checked, rechecked, and verified that her word-for-word analysis was correct before sending it to Dean Mercer at Oldefield, for release the following day.
“Do I get to hear it now?” Dyson asked, emerging from the doorway. “It’s finished, right?”
“Right,” Anna said with a smile. “Pull up a chair.”
She glanced down at the s
parkling diamond on her finger. He had given it to her the very day they had arrived home from Italy, telling her he didn’t want to waste a moment in formalizing his proposal. The ring had come wrapped in a brand new purple gym bag, which now rested at her feet, far from empty.
Their wedding would soon follow. The final arrangements were in place, and the invitations had gone out. Bonnie would be her matron of honor. Albert Mercer had agreed to give her away.
And her students would be there too. All but one.
“You’re going to love the ending,” she promised, waving the translation in front of him.
“I love it already,” he said.
She straightened the computer printout, took a breath, and began.
“I, having served as the scribe of the apostles of Christ, do here with these my last words confess that it was I who authored their denials of our Lord, they who were my brethren; that I did so without their knowledge, my hand guided by the Evil One, as I now, too late, have come to realize.
“As I traveled with my teacher Paul, once Saul of Tarsus and student of Rabban Gamaliel the Elder, I found the favor of a Roman girl named Jessana, whose attentions I found desirable. Her family had great wealth, her father great influence. We spent much time together, and I did fall in love. She spoke harshly in my presence of Paul and the brethren, convincing me that their intentions were not honorable, and their aims political more than spiritual. She filled my pockets with silver and my head with notions alien to me, and after a time I did listen.
“A place of meeting was provided the brethren in Rome, a secret room beneath the country house of a noble named Septimus. He had been swayed by the powerful words of Paul, whom he had heard speaking upon the occasion of one of our first ventures into the city, and had commissioned the building of the room without the sanction of Rome. There, we gathered in safety and in numbers, knowing the danger presented by Nero, who opposed our teaching. But as our peril increased and the girl Jessana spoke sweet words into my ears, put money into my pockets, and brought earthly pleasures I had not imagined, I came to believe I could no longer trust my brethren, that I should leave their company.
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