Justine felt the rhythm of someone’s breathing nearby. She turned, expecting to see her mother leaning against the doorframe. “Riccardo? What brings you here?”
“Maria told me I could find you here. I thought you might need my help. With the Italian legal system and all.” He smiled. Almost handsome, she thought, surprised.
Justine stared, always pleased to see him, yet somewhat annoyed at being torn away from the lives of Isabella and D.H., or David, as she now called him. She tightened her robe around her, overlapping the fabric to diminish its transparency, and carefully gathered the letters, crawled off the bed, and placed the bundles in her drawer. She hugged him warmly. “What do you have to tell me? But first, how are you feeling?”
She noticed how his muscles moved smoothly under his loose linen shirt and pleated tan slacks as he walked across the small room and sat in the antique rocking chair, resting one ankle on the opposite knee. “I’m doing fine,” he said finally. “Very well, in fact. Your dad told me that you have been summoned to the Florence court in a few weeks. What about? If I am not being impertinent.”
“Never,” said Justine, smiling. She described the discovery of the codex in Egypt, its theft from the office of the Supreme Director of Antiquities, and her escape to Fiesole with the copy. “I did find the codex during the earthquake, and I do have the copy,” she said. “Perhaps I’m being charged with possession of the copy.” She sat back on the bed, since Riccardo occupied the only chair in the room, and absentmindedly began to braid her hair.
Riccardo’s eyes formed into giant orbs. He was stunned. He had spent enough time in the priesthood to know how reverent the Virgin Mary was held. Considered untouchable. He was not entirely immune himself to the aura of the Holy Mother. “I can understand the intrigue such a story could create in Italy. All we need to launch an inquiry is a hungry functionary looking to make a power move. But this story . . . well . . . well, it would invite conspiracy theories. Italians like to be in the game.” Riccardo leaned forward with his elbows on both knees.
Justine looked like a little girl propped up on the bed with pigtails. “In the game?” She knew what “in the game” meant, but wanted to hear an Italian’s explanation.
“We like to play with the big boys,” he went on. “Appear to be experts. Our prestige as a nation depends on it. You’ll recall the case of the ‘Italian Letter’ documenting the discovery of yellow cake uranium in Niger. The very letter that Bush used in his State of the Union speech. False, all pretense, in order to be in the game.”
“I remember it well.” She shivered, suddenly aware of the lengths the Italians might go to in order to indict her.
“In any case, if real evidence is razor thin, we Italians will embellish it. You were there and now you are here. That’s enough to raise suspicion.”
Justine swung her long legs off the end of the bed, picked up her jeans and T-shirt, and headed into the bathroom, leaving the door ajar so they could continue the conversation. “I can understand the hysteria that could accompany the discovery of the Virgin Mary’s diary, but mustn’t they have some sort of case?”
Riccardo rose and leaned against one of the four bed posters, facing the bathroom. He imagined Justine gracefully slipping out of the flimsy robe and stepping into her tight jeans. He was intrigued by beauty, the aesthetics of movement—and there were even a few moments when he wished he were interested in women. “The lack of legal safeguards here provides gaping holes for power to occupy,” he said, raising his voice a little. “Let me put it this way. You are involved in finding and interpreting the codex. It disappears and so do you. Your famous father is here. Your mother. Probably a family ring of black marketers.”
Justine was still laughing when she stuck her head around the doorframe. “If it were not me being accused I would find this delightful. The stuff movies are made of.” She stepped back into the bedroom in jeans and T-shirt, a hand relaxed high on the doorframe. “What can I expect now?” she asked.
“In Italy, justice is about the person rather than the crime. That’s the good part in this case.”
“What does that mean??”
“You don’t appear to be a dangerous person.” Especially right now, he refrained from adding. “That’s the first thing. The court may decide during your first appearance that the evidence is scant. It depends on how adamant the prosecutor is, how much he has at stake. But the Florentine court is quite sophisticated in such matters. Hundreds of years of dealing with precious art. And, of course, you will have the representative from the American Embassy with you. If he is respectful and contrite, you could walk out of there a free woman.” With his left hand still holding the bedpost, he swung around and sat on the edge of the bed next to Justine.
Neither spoke for several moments while she pondered what she’d been told. Whose football was she? An ambitious Italian prosecutor’s? A customs bureaucrat’s, out to make a name for himself? She looked directly at Riccardo with a self-conscious smile, realizing that she had left him hanging while she succumbed to her own ruminations.
“How is the dig coming?” she finally asked.
“We’re into the new tomb,” he said excitedly. “Right now we’re trying to sort out and catalog the objects inside this amazing room. Your dad found a gold filigree earring just yesterday.” He paused. “I must get back.”
Justine realized that he had made the four-hour-plus drive just to talk with her about her legal dilemma. Gratitude washed over her tanned face. “Can’t you stay for lunch?”
He shook his head.
“Please tell Dad to call me the minute you know anything about the tomb. And Riccardo, thank you very much for coming here.”
He kissed her extended hand and left the room.
As she watched him head for the stairs, her cell phone rang.
“Justine. We think we’ve found something interesting. Come,” said the urgent voice on the other end of the line. That was all. Amir hung up.
Annoyed yet enticed by Amir’s taste for the dramatic, Justine turned and ran to the top of the stairs. “Riccardo. Wait. I’m coming with you.”
CHAPTER 20
Egypt did not contain me. I crossed three continents.
I was honored upon the Tigris and the Tiber as well as the Nile.
I sailed beyond the Mediterranean, and flew north with the Roman eagles.
From the mists of Britain to the sands of Arabia, I was the universal Goddess,
And you who are not of the blood of my birthland may still be my children.
—Jezibell, Poet, Actress, Belly dancer
THEY HARDLY SPOKE. Hours sped by as Justine and Riccardo imagined what lay ahead in the archeological find and took turns driving his Maserati as the other pretended to doze. The call had told them little, really, but both knew that a cavern deep below the original tumuli in Cerveteri had been discovered and that there was something there. Each felt the suppressed excitement of impending discovery. Without asking, Riccardo pulled in at the autostrada way station at the Orvieto exit.
Justine set a large cappuccino in the cup holder and tore off pieces of a croissant, feeding it to Riccardo as he drove. Now well into the trip, she finally dared ask, “So, what do you think?”
Riccardo laughed. “After all this time I thought I’d hear a more complicated question.” He reached over and pulled one of her pigtails. For the first time since she’d left home, Justine realized that she was indeed wearing pigtails. She held them in the air and grinned. “I considered asking whether lavish tombs brimming with treasures would offer up answers to all the unknowns about the Etruscans—but thought that was a bit much.”
“I prefer the first question, the answer to which is, ‘I don’t know.’ Dipende.” He managed a lopsided grin, glanced into the rearview mirror, and moved into the left lane to pass three cars, speeding the sports car to 120 km/h.
Justine stared straight ahead, methodically loosening her hair.
No one was on hand to greet them
when they drove into the back entrance of the necropolis site at Cerveteri. They scrambled down the first ladder into the deep trough and moved to the inside of the initial level of excavation, the one where Morgan and Riccardo had been trapped weeks earlier. Justine could hear Riccardo’s breathing shift; he was beginning to struggle for air. She turned and took his hand as they reached the top of the second set of stairs, and felt the muscles in his hand relax as they stepped into the narrow passageway leading to the cavern below.
At the bottom they found Morgan, Amir, and Delmo staring at a corner of the dished-out cavern lit by three overlapping electric torches. The newcomers edged their way through, eager to discover the source of fascination.
Justine slowly began to identify the focus of the converging lights. Two alabaster women sat erect atop a sarcophagus about two and a half meters in length. The women faced each other from opposite ends of the lid, their legs lying alongside each other’s. One bare foot of each woman extended beyond the ripples of cloth that were wrapped tightly around slender midriffs. Their faces were beatific, yet amused, staring at one another through almond-shaped eyes with affectionate, unabashed daring while somehow managing to glance at an imaginary audience as well. Their hair, swept upward and back, cascaded down their backs and adorned one bare shoulder; a large broach secured their gowns at the other shoulder. One arm of each woman extended forward, holding her open palm toward the other. Their left hands lay flat on their laps, gripping a lotus flower.
Justine stood thunderstruck by the scene before her. Such strong, confident women, so in command of their world. Were they lovers? Friends? Related in some way?
Morgan’s slowly exhaling breaths whispered in the stillness, “This image. What can it mean? These women have a stance of power, of command.” No one was listening.
Mythical images, in carved relief, adorned the outer walls of the sarcophagus. Justine could distinguish the large wings of a sparrow hawk, waves symbolic of water, lotus blossoms, ducks. She placed her hand on Riccardo’s forearm, moving the light beam to focus it directly onto the embossed base. The woman bearing the wings came into focus, her headdress a majestic crown. Golden bands braceleted her upper arms, and her body was tightly bound in the skin of a reptile. To her right, the Scorpion Goddess, and on her left, Hathor, balancing the sun disk between her horns. Below the winged Isis, an undulating river bore the dismembered body of her husband, Osiris—a leg here, an arm there, a torso floating facedown. A long-necked cat looked up with adoration.
Justine gasped. “It’s Egyptian!” she exclaimed. “Egyptian.” Her face was flushed, her wide eyes caught by the perimeter of the flashlight beam.
Her father finally acknowledged her presence. “Or a culture heavily influenced by Egyptian mythology,” he said more calmly. “Did you just arrive?” His face warmed, acknowledging his daughter and her thrill of discovery.
“With Riccardo,” she said absently, unable to draw her eyes from the image of Isis. “Hello, Amir. Delmo.”
Amir turned, took two steps toward her, and smiled. “Quite a find. Yes, quite a find.” For so long he had felt imprisoned by his work at the Egyptian museum, trying to make sense of their meager Greek collection. This was his first real discovery experience.
Even in the dim light, Justine could see Amir’s face, flushed with excitement. She wondered how much of his excitement was stoked by memories of their time together in the caves at Sovano. Right now it didn’t matter.
“Professor Delmo Della Dora, what do you think we have here?” asked Morgan without taking his eyes off the sarcophagus.
Delmo, the distinguished retired linguist from the University of Bologna, was fixated on the sarcophagus and paying no attention to the crowd behind him. Reluctantly, he acknowledged the question and the man who asked it. “At this point we can only describe what we see: two sculptured women, somehow connected to one another, seated on an alabaster sarcophagus embossed with Egyptian goddesses. When can we remove questo maledetto coperchio?” he exclaimed, pointing to the sarcophagus lid.
What will we find inside?! Their corpses bound as mummies? Jewels? Literary remains? Explanations of this early culture? Justine was speechless with wonder.
Spotlights planted around the rim of the cavern illuminated the sarcophagus, their electrical cords trailing down the ladders more than fifteen meters from the rattling generator above. A fifteen-kilogram hand winch had been lowered into the lower tomb by three ropes held by local hires. Cleaning the caked soil from the sarcophagus had taken days of tedious work; small brushes, trowels, and shovels were scattered around the floor alongside equipment for removing the lid. Two soil sifters leaned against the damp wall.
A large oak table, the same height as the sarcophagus, stood on jointed legs in front of the massive coffin. The team had reached the decision that sliding the lid onto a table was the safest approach. Justine’s cotton T-shirt, wet with perspiration in the sauna-like cavern, clung to her back and chest. She clutched an armload of gunnysacks. The dense air caused everyone to breath more deeply, fresh air in short supply.
Fabiano and Riccardo stood on either end of the sarcophagus with crowbars, ready to pry open the lid. Placing the bars along the edge and slowly maneuvering them back and forth, they inched along as though carving into a glacier. An hour passed. Sweat dripped from every pore. Finally, tiny cracks appeared between the lid and the base. Moving the crowbars more quickly now from side to side, the team was able to gently lift the lid a millimeter and insert a cable from each end, sliding the coiled wires toward the middle.
Justine wedged her gunnysacks into the narrow spaces as the team parted thousands of years of settlement. The two men gently clasped a steel cable over the padded laps of the two women, and Morgan stepped forward to attach the cables to a steel hook on the outer side of the lid, careful to avoid breaking off one of the women’s extended arms as the cables became taut. Amir attached the hook to a new line of cable and ran it across the oak table to the hand winch, which was situated three meters out front.
Justine watched Riccardo closely, alert to his breathing, any uptake in his asthmatic response. Their eyes met and she motioned him back up the stairs to find fresh air. He shook his head, refusing the leave the scene.
Morgan, Fabiano, and Riccardo removed their gloves in order to get a firmer hold. They managed to slowly turn the wooden handle of the winch, causing the cables to tighten against the swinging hook. The others stood ready on all sides of the lid to steady and guide it to the table.
The giant lid groaned and creaked under the demands of the winch before finally giving way to glide, in jerks and starts, toward the table. The two ancient women moved gracefully through the changing light as though dancing a minuet, excited to be discovered. Justine stood, mesmerized, as the two were guided away from the sarcophagus itself and gently came to rest on the well-padded oak table. Morgan stepped forward, bowed slightly as though honoring royalty, and unhooked the cable, drawing it away from the lid. Amir unfastened the other cables.
Silence honored the moment. Then, as though on cue, everyone stepped to the sides of the colossal sarcophagus and peered in. They were nearly overcome by the escaping stench of ancient death, of mold and decay. What they saw left them all speechless.
CHAPTER 21
All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.
—Galileo Galilei
MOMENTS PASSED. Riccardo moved the lights closer to erase the shadows, to shine light on the persons within. Two mummies lay side by side, heads at opposite ends, nearly mimicking the pose of the women on the lid, their bodies wrapped with wide swaths of cloth. Their uncovered heads revealed hollowed eyes and leather-like skin pulled tight around now-protruding teeth. Long, steel-gray hair fanned outward as through recently ruffled by a spring breeze.
“What the hell!” exclaimed Morgan. “I’ve never seen anything like this!”
Justine let out a low whistle, as though she had been hold
ing her breath for several moments. “Magnificent! The find of the century, Dad. The Italians will be jealous.”
Morgan pondered her last statement briefly, then reconfigured his face into one of extreme pleasure and excitement. After all, discoveries like this came once in a lifetime, if that, although Morgan has been more fortunate than most. The library at Machu Picchu had been an extraordinary find, and the reason he was hired for the Italian job.
“Bella dente—nice teeth,” Delmo observed enthusiastically. “Couldn’t ask for anything better than this! Everything worth knowing can be found in good teeth.” To this seasoned scientist, yellow, rotted teeth were glorious indeed.
Amir and Riccardo spoke almost simultaneously. “This is unlike . . .” Riccardo stopped, permitting Amir to continue.
“I’ve seen nothing like this in Egypt,” said Amir, nodding to acknowledge Riccardo’s gracious withdrawal. “Unless the wrappings are linen, of course. But uncovered, intact heads. Never.”
“Certainly between the hair and the teeth roots we’ve got good DNA samples,” suggested Justine, wildly pondering the fate of these two elegant women.
“The teeth, possibly, but not the hair. The follicles couldn’t have survived this long,” said Morgan, both deeply tanned hands gripping the side of the sarcophagus. “We may have original Etruscans here.”
Delmo’s slightly raised eyebrow could barely be seen in the shadows where he now stood. “Pazienza, Morgan,” he insisted. “We must not jump to conclusions. These women could be Villanovans.”
“We must bury these ladies in proper graves,” said Fabiano finally, crossing himself. “It’s the right thing.”
Justine smiled at Fabiano’s innocence. These women would never be hidden again.
It was dusk when Justine and Amir walked away from the site. He slipped his hand into hers, and she turned unconsciously to assure herself that no one saw her hand pocketed into Amir’s. She wasn’t sure why—or if—it mattered.
The Italian Letters: A Novel (The Justine Trilogy Book 2) Page 15