Midnight in the Piazza

by Tiffany Parks

  Her descent slowed and, as if her worst nightmare were coming true, the wooden box came to a lethargic stop. She couldn’t catch her breath. Her head, by now nearly resting on her knee, was spinning. Blackness gave way to big orange splotches. Her hands frantically pressed against the walls of the dumbwaiter. She wanted to scream but couldn’t find her voice.

  Her right hand punched out wildly and the door flew open. She tumbled out of the box and landed with a thud on a cold stone floor.

  Cool, welcome air flooded her lungs. She got to her feet and was hit with a head rush. Red spots twirled in front of her eyes like polka dots on a Spanish dancer’s dress. She waited for her vision to return, and when it didn’t, she concluded that the room she was standing in was as dark as the dumbwaiter.

  She must be in the kitchen. Where else would the dumbwaiter lead? She felt in the dark and located her bag where it had fallen on the floor. She unzipped it and fished out her flashlight.

  She switched it on and shined it around a large, stark room that looked more like a laboratory than a kitchen. Long wooden worktables filled the space and the floor was tiled with a dull gray stone. There were giant sinks as deep as bathtubs and a fireplace big enough to walk inside. Dozens of hooks hung over the tables, where gleaming copper pots must have once dangled. Nothing but cobwebs hung from them now. Judging from the layers of dust on the tables, the kitchen hadn’t been used for decades, maybe centuries. Who knew the last time a human had walked through these rooms? Who knew what she’d find lurking around the corner?

  Steeling herself, she grabbed her bag and followed the beam of her flashlight through the kitchen’s only doorway and into a narrow corridor. To the right was a small wooden door with a rounded top that barely reached her shoulder. To the left stood a doorframe, walled up like the window upstairs. The kitchen must have been sealed off from the rest of the house years ago.

  The tiny wooden door was her only option. It was rough and splintered with an iron latch instead of a handle. She tried to pull it back, but it didn’t budge. Pulling harder, she managed to move it about a millimeter. She’d need both hands. She stood her flashlight on the ground and the upward beam turned her shadow into a grotesque monster.

  Using the force of her entire body, she managed to pull back the latch, but even unfastened, the door remained tightly sealed, its boards swollen with time. After a few minutes of futile pushing and pulling, Beatrice gave it an exasperated kick. The warped wood splintered at the sides as the door swung open.

  She snatched her flashlight and shined it into the void. Ducking under the low doorframe, she almost lost her balance and stumbled down a flight of rough stone steps that led to a cavern below. Her arms bristled as the temperature dropped with every step.

  Her flashlight illuminated a narrow space with a dirt floor, a barrel-vaulted ceiling, and crumbling brick walls that looked a thousand years old. Along the wall squatted fat wooden wine barrels, covered with cobwebs and filth. She wrinkled her nose at the stench of centuries of decay. She scanned the cellar for a door or passageway. Nothing.

  Another dead end? Panic seeped through her body, as hot and unstoppable as lava. As she took a deep breath to slow her furious heart, Caterina’s eyes flashed into her brain. Only you can do this.

  She braced herself and ventured deeper into the cellar. On the far wall sat more wine barrels. One stood apart from the others, positioned upright instead of on its side and flush against the wall, as if it were hiding something.

  Beatrice edged up to the barrel and shined her flashlight around the back to reveal a chink in the wall. The barrel was empty and the wood was rotten, so one good shove was enough to move it aside, exposing the opening of a long, narrow tunnel that stretched into the distance. She shined her light inside, but the tunnel reached well beyond its beam. Crawling through a dark, dusty tunnel with no idea where it led—or even if it led anywhere—was not an especially appealing idea. Not that she had any other options.

  She knew she was just postponing the inevitable, but she decided to consult Caterina’s map. It showed the path from the library, not from the kitchens of course, but she figured it was worth a look. As she spread the map out on the gravelly ground, her flashlight flickered and went out. She was plunged into blackness.

  Gripped with panic, she shook the flashlight violently. The light mercifully came back on, but how much time until the battery died completely? Stuffing that worrisome question into the back of her mind, she stared at the map, trying to make sense of its perplexing squiggles.

  It was at that precise moment that Beatrice Archer had one of the most brilliant ideas of her life to date. She dug out the photocopy of the Isola Mattei floor plan and quickly located her position. Then she placed Caterina’s map of the ruins directly on top. When she shined the flashlight on the aged parchment, it became translucent, the lines on the floor plan showing through, plain as day. She lined up the markings of the cavea with the curving walls of the floor plan beneath and pinpointed where she was on Caterina’s map.

  Nothing on the map looked like a tunnel, but if her calculations were correct, she wasn’t far from the curving wall of the theater—and the telltale X just beyond. At the very least, she’d be heading in the right direction. She folded up the papers and tucked them into the pocket of her dress. Ignoring her hammering heart, she ducked into the tunnel.

  Cobwebs and dirt rained down on her head and the thought of the hideous pests that might be lurking nearby made her shudder. The tunnel seemed to go on forever. After hitting her head more than once, she decided it would be easier to crawl. Fumbling with the flashlight, she squirmed her way through the dirt and dust, gravel cutting into her bare knees. Was it just her imagination, or was the tunnel getting tighter? Was it beginning to slope downward?

  She fought the urge to panic as the walls closed in around her.

  Just when she’d convinced herself she’d never get out alive, the tunnel abruptly ended. With a final scramble, she was out. She gulped down several breaths and dusted herself off, then shined the flashlight in front of her.

  Nothing could have prepared her for the sight of the ancient theater rising before her. Her meager beam couldn’t illuminate the entire structure at once, but as she flashed it here and there, the theater slowly materialized before her eyes, as if it were waking from a centuries-long sleep.

  Rising from a pavement of broad, dusty flagstones, the curving outer wall was a series of massive arches. A shorter set of arches stood upon the first, their tops disappearing into the ceiling. The upper levels were long gone.

  Beatrice shivered, and not because of the cold. She’d succeeded in finding the ancient ruins, but she was unspeakably alone. And what was worse, no one alive knew where she was.

  Twenty-Eight

  DISCOVERY IN THE DARK

  Despite the palpable stillness of the underground lair, the past rumbled into life around her. Beatrice scuffed her sandal on an ancient flagstone, thinking of all those who had trod that same spot, imagining what they would have seen: a towering marble-faced theater bustling with loud-voiced merchants, scruffy beggar children, senators in togas. She pictured soldiers shouting orders from prancing horses and wealthy matrons being carried in litters by long-suffering slaves. It was thousands of years away, and yet, it had happened right here. The thought both fascinated and terrified her, and with an unexpected pang, she found herself wishing Marco were there to experience it with her.

  On shaking limbs, Beatrice approached the theater. She placed a sweaty palm on a gritty stone archway and the weight of the centuries rippled through her. She stepped inside and a wide curving corridor stretched to her left and right. Beyond it stood an inner wall of identical arches. She peered through one to find a vast wedge-shaped space with a barrel-vaulted ceiling. Just like in the tunnel, the feeble beam of her flashlight did little to illuminate the gloom beyond. But if the map was correct, one of these spaces held—at least at one time in history—Caterina’s secret room. Would the
turtles be there, as her intuition assured her, or was she on a wild-goose chase?

  Only one way to find out.

  She forced herself to walk slowly and deliberately, shining her light into each wedge-shaped chamber and counting them in turn. After passing eight empty spaces, she began to lose hope. But as she aimed the flashlight into the ninth chamber, instead of being eaten up by impenetrable blackness, the beam reflected off a shiny surface five or six feet in front of her. Her breath caught in her throat.

  With halting steps, she inched toward the unknown surface and came face-to-face with a broad antique wooden door, conspicuously out of place in the abandoned archaeological site. It had no handle, just a big brass knocker in the middle. She pushed tentatively, half expecting it to be locked. Instead, the door swung open with a satisfying groan. Beatrice was standing on the threshold of the secret room.

  She swept the flashlight around, taking in a space so contrary to its setting that it seemed unreal. Intricate tapestries and unlit torches hung on the walls, oriental carpets covered the rough ground, and an ornate writing desk and chair stood against one wall. A lavish divan and a leather trunk sat at the far end of the room where the walls narrowed and the ceiling inclined sharply, almost all the way to the ground. A thrill zipped up her spine as she realized she was standing directly under the rising seats of the ancient theater.

  Through her mind danced images of Roman slaves laying the walls brick by brick and theatergoers climbing to their seats to watch a performance. Most vividly of all, she saw Caterina, the woman whose face was now burned onto her brain, sitting at this very desk, putting words to her lonely thoughts. She was so overwhelmed by these visions that she almost forgot about the turtles. Almost.

  She ventured deeper inside. A cursory inspection revealed no bronze turtles and for a split second her old doubts came rushing back. Maybe she’d gotten it all wrong, like Marco had said.

  The flashlight beam wavered. With a thunderclap to the gut, Beatrice realized she didn’t have a moment to lose and sprang into action. The desk? No, the fussy drawers were too small to hold the turtles. Her eyes flicked around the room, searching for possible hiding places.

  She crept deeper into the chamber and her head brushed the slanted ceiling, sending down a cascade of cobwebs. As she shook the debris of ages from her hair, her flashlight flickered off and darkness enveloped her. This time, no amount of shaking would make it work again. She threw the useless object to the ground.

  In the sudden and total darkness, Beatrice’s heart thumped in her ears. Visions of spiders and rats swam before her unseeing eyes. She stamped them out, picturing instead the room she’d seen just moments before. She stumbled forward, arms outstretched, ducking to avoid the low ceiling. After a few more steps, she tripped over an unwieldy object and landed on it with a smack. She ran her hands across its smooth hard surfaces. The trunk!

  She knelt beside it, and after fumbling with the latch, she eased it open. The hinges creaked like the cry of a bat. She reached inside blindly but her hands recoiled instinctively, as if they feared to meet with the withered bones of an ancient skeleton, maybe even the skeleton of Caterina herself. Her stomach lurched at the thought but she forced her unwilling hands into the trunk.

  They touched neither bones nor metal, but soft, feltlike fabric: the last thing she expected. Still, there was something hard underneath. Grabbing fistfuls of fabric, she pulled a bulky weight out of the trunk and onto her lap, her heart hammering. She tore at the fabric until she touched cool metal.

  Beatrice’s eager fingers explored the object’s every curve and sinew, noting a rounded shell, four protruding feet, a curling tail, and an unmistakable head. She was holding one of Bernini’s turtles.

  She cradled her prize as if it were a lost child, wishing she could admire it with her eyes and not just her hands. Euphoria bubbled up inside her, but she didn’t have time to savor the moment. She had work to do. She pulled the turtles out of the trunk one by one, handling them clumsily in the dark. They’d looked so delicate sitting atop the fountain, but in reality they were the size of small watermelons and nearly as heavy. She arranged two in her canvas bag and two in her backpack. Meanwhile the seconds ticked relentlessly by.

  She heaved on the backpack and hoisted the strained canvas bag onto one shoulder, staggering out of the room under the nearly impossible weight. As she turned into the theater’s inner corridor, she heard the rumble of voices echoing off the ancient stones. The men were coming for the turtles. It was only a matter of minutes, perhaps seconds, before they discovered they were gone. She had to hide them, fast. Only then could she concentrate on saving herself.

  With nowhere else to go, Beatrice turned her inner compass back toward the tunnel. But would she find it in the dark? She couldn’t run blindly, and besides, her burden wouldn’t allow it. Instead she slowly and deliberately retraced her steps along the curving corridor until she felt her way through the archway and out of the theater. She inched forward, her free hand outstretched, tripping over stones and bits of ancient debris. At last her fingertips brushed a wall as rough as sandpaper.

  Flashlight beams bounced off the nearby walls, making Beatrice’s mouth go dry. They were getting closer. Blinking back tears as the straps of the bag cut into her shoulder, she shuffled from side to side, kicking at the wall. Finally she kicked into emptiness—the tunnel.

  Her stomach contracted at the thought of crawling back through the impossibly tight space, but the footsteps beating ever louder told her she had no choice.

  She eased the cloth bag off her shoulder and shrugged off her backpack, placing them both into the mouth of the tunnel. She thrust the bags—and their precious cargo—in as far as her arms would reach, then scrambled into the tunnel behind them. Pushing the cumbersome turtles while crawling through the narrow pitch-black tunnel was no easy feat. A sloth would have moved faster.

  She hadn’t gone more than a few feet when angry voices rang out behind her. The tunnel was suddenly flooded with light and a rough hand clamped around her ankle. Instinctively, her arms flailed out, trying to grab hold of something—anything. But it did her no good. With a vicious yank she was hauled out of the tunnel feet first. A pair of burly arms wrapped around her like an angry snake and a meaty paw clapped over her mouth.

  Beatrice tried to scream, but it came out a whimper as someone lifted her off her feet. She thrashed and squirmed, but the grip didn’t loosen.

  The beam of a wildly jostling flashlight provided fleeting glimpses of her surroundings: rough stone walls, a hairy wrist, feet shuffling along a dirt floor. She recoiled in horror at the realization that they were carrying her deeper and deeper into the ruins.

  Suddenly the second man grabbed her legs and her two tormentors began dragging her up a steep flight of stairs. She kicked out her legs, twisting and flailing to try to throw them off-balance. She was rewarded for her efforts by a sharp pain on the top of her head, a tingling in her ears, and then nothing.

  Twenty-Nine

  INTERROGATION AND REVELATION

  Gibberish. Melodic gibberish, but gibberish nonetheless. At least that’s what it sounded like.

  Beatrice lifted her lids and was greeted by a hammering headache and clouds before her eyes. As her vision cleared, she took in the strangely familiar surroundings: a mahogany desk, leather sofas, towering bookshelves, all bathed in low light. She was back in the palace library, lying on a couch.

  A quick glance at her person revealed she was a mess. Her bare knees were caked in dirt, her feet and sandals were black with grime, and her polka-dot dress was unrecognizable. She didn’t even want to imagine what her hair looked like.

  Across the room, two men in dark suits were arguing in Italian with a third person, hidden from view.

  “Ascolta un attimo.”1 The bright, round tones of a feminine voice floated across the room.

  Beatrice’s ears perked up. She lifted her throbbing head to get a better look and her eyes bulged.

  “
Ah, guarda chi si è svegliata!”2

  One of the men stomped across the room. He had short black hair that was thinning on top and sharp features. It was Mr. Beak Nose, the man she’d seen in this very library just days before.

  “DOVE SONO?”3 he bellowed, inches from her nose.

  Beatrice recoiled. No one had ever screamed in her face like that. She lay speechless, trying to remember why she’d gotten herself into this mess.

  “Dove sono, bambina impudente?”4 His angular face was twisted by rage.

  “Non parla italiano,” said the woman indifferently.

  Beatrice felt the urge to shout that she did too speak Italian—at least a little bit—but on second thought, perhaps it wasn’t the most opportune moment to bring that up.

  The man took hold of her shoulders and yanked her up to a seating position. He took a deep breath, as if it were taking all his self-control not to tear her to bits.

  “Where are they?” he growled.

  “Who?” was all Beatrice could manage.

  “Le tartarughe, you little brat! Where have you hidden those blasted turtles?” He sprayed her face with saliva.

  Beatrice winced. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You know exactly what I’m talking about.” His dark eyes bored into hers like a pair of daggers. “I don’t know how you did it, but you found the turtles and now you’ve hidden them. We’ve searched, but it’s a maze down there.” For a moment, in his wild eyes, Beatrice glimpsed a desperate man, but he turned back into a bully in no time. “If you don’t start talking this second, you’ll regret the day you were born.”

  Beatrice shuddered in spite of herself.