by M. J. Rose
He didn’t respond.
Her dog, Cleo, a five-year-old dark gray Basenji—a breed that dated back to ancient Egypt—trotted over to her and licked her hand. Beryl petted the top of her head. “I don’t like being pushed, Josh.”
“I know that.”
“So why are you pushing me?”
“Because I think this woman is connected to the stones in some way. People are dead, Beryl. Three of them. Murdered. And it’s because of what you and I and Malachai think was in that tomb. If we’re right, we can’t afford to risk losing one piece of knowledge. There’s too much we don’t know. There’s so much we need to know.”
“I can’t take chances with our reputations. I’m sorry. I really am.”
“With all you know, you don’t have any flashbacks yourself, do you? You and Malachai. You don’t know this kind of hell, and I hope you never ever discover what it’s like. Because if you do, this decision will haunt you. I swear it will.”
* * *
After leaving a message for Malachai to meet him at the Town Green restaurant in New Haven at seven, Josh left the foundation—glad to get away from there after the argument with Beryl—rented a car and headed out of the city. He was anxious to see Gabriella, even if he wasn’t sure why.
It was raining again, and the storm intensified the farther Josh traveled out of the city. The wind blew leaves mercilessly across the highway, and traffic was heavy on the Hutch and then on the I–95. Thunder cracked and bolts of lightning lit up a purple-gray sky. Tree branches flew, making the ride seem treacherous. By the time he got to Stamford, he’d passed three accidents. Five by the time he got to New Haven.
Parking the car in a spot he found after driving around the block twice, he hurried across the quad toward the building where Gabriella worked.
The campus was almost deserted, partly because of the rain, but also because the summer session had ended and the fall semester hadn’t yet started. The gloomy day made the emptiness disturbing.
Reaching 51 Hillhouse Avenue, Josh walked inside, appreciative of the dry interior, glad to be leaving the worst of the squall behind him.
When Gabriella opened the door and saw him, the right corner of her mouth lifted in a small smile. Behind her, Josh glimpsed a tall, gray-haired man.
“I’m a little early—I thought we could have a drink. Unless you’re busy?” Josh asked.
“No. That would be nice. Come in,” she said, and introduced him to her father, Peter Chase. The two men shook hands as the elder professor inspected Josh, frowning when she explained how she knew him.
Peter turned back to his daughter. “If this isn’t going to take long, I can wait for you downstairs and we can get a bite to eat before my faculty meeting tonight.”
“Thanks, but I’m having dinner with Josh and Dr. Samuels. Remember?”
“You are still getting over the shock of what happened here. I think you need to come home where it’s quiet,” her father insisted.
“I think the quiet might drive Gabriella crazy, Professor Chase,” Josh said.
Peter frowned.
Was it because Josh had butted in and was claiming to know his daughter that well? Or had contradicting Peter Chase been presumptuous?
Josh was surprised himself. Not that he’d interfered, but that he’d had such a strong sense of what the night would be like for her if she went home. The sound of the rain. A sleeping child. An empty bedroom. A melancholy night. No. It would all only increase her anxiety.
“And how the hell do you know what my daughter needs?”
Gabriella winked at Josh. “He’s right, Dad. The last thing I need is to sit at home and overthink what’s been going on. I’ll be okay.”
“I’ll cancel my meeting,” Peter offered.
She shook her head. “Absolutely not.”
“Well, okay, but I’ll be home by nine,” he said gruffly.
“Don’t rush because of me.”
“I don’t like the idea of you driving at night in this storm.”
“I’ll follow her home in my car, Professor Chase. She can leave her car there and then I’ll drive her to dinner and back.” He wasn’t sure if this made Gabriella’s father more or less upset. Obviously, it was safer, but he still didn’t look happy.
“Go ahead, Dad, don’t be late for your meeting. I’ll be fine. Josh will take care of me.” She kissed her father good-night and he left, but not without giving Josh a long, hard stare that he’d probably been torturing men with since his daughter had gone out on her first date.
On the way to the restaurant Josh asked her distracting questions about Quinn, and Gabriella seemed delighted to relate the ordinary day-to-day events that are small miracles when your child is almost three years old. Speaking about the little girl, she seemed to relax and the restive tenseness disappeared from her voice.
“How is it having your father live with you?”
“It’s been good for him and for Quinn.”
“And for you?”
She didn’t answer right away. “It’s important for Quinn to have a man around, and I never could go back and forth to Rome if it wasn’t for my father.” There was something she wasn’t saying, but Josh didn’t press her.
“I thought you told me you had a nanny.”
“I do. I’ve had a few nannies, but I wouldn’t be comfortable leaving Quinn overnight without my father being there, too.”
“Why a few nannies? Are you difficult?”
There were so many other things he wanted to ask her, but he knew she wasn’t ready for his questions yet.
“Very difficult,” she said in a teasing voice.
He liked the way it washed over him and lifted his spirits.
“I can’t imagine that.”
“And I can’t imagine that.” She laughed.
That was an even better sound.
If the laughter resonated inside of him, if it made him realize that he’d been waiting since the first time he met her to hear her laugh like that, if it gave him real pleasure to know that he’d alleviated some of her stress and had brought her to a more relaxed place, he chose not to think about those things. They were dangerous thoughts for a man determined not to get involved until he’d found the answers to some very difficult questions for himself.
“My father still thinks I’m seventeen,” she said.
“Yeah, he looked at me as if you were seventeen.”
“He did?”
Josh nodded.
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Actually, it was easier when I was seventeen. My dates expected that look then.”
Josh took notice that she had, in an oblique way, put him in the category of her dates, and it made him inexplicably happy.
He’d stopped at a red light. Its ambient glow warmed her face and lit up her long hair with fiery highlights. She caught his glance. Her eyes were a light, lovely gold, the color of fall leaves. The rain pelted on the windshield, beating down in a steady, comforting rhythm. What if he kept driving? Drove all the way back to Manhattan? What if he took her to his apartment and made them both drinks and put on a John Coltrane CD? What if he told her that he had wanted to be put in that category and understood why her father glared at the men whom he thought might be interested in his daughter?
No. Stay away. You’re not free. Not really. You’re haunted.
Out of the corner of his eye he could see her left hand in her lap. He wanted to reach over and take it. Feel her skin. Learn the landscape of her bones. See if what he sensed was all on his side or if she felt it, too.
You can’t touch her—touch anyone—until you’ve figured out why the past and the present are colliding.
The restaurant was on Chapel Street in an old Victorian building that had been renovated down to the crown moldings and tiled floors. The weather had kept a lot of people home, so they had one of the smallest of the four dining rooms to themselves. In the hour before Malachai arrived, they di
scussed their lives before Rome as if by some silent agreement they’d decided to avoid the one subject that was loaded for both of them and enjoy their time alone.
He’d ordered a Johnnie Walker Blue Label and she’d asked for a vodka and tonic with lime. In the soft lights her skin glowed and her hair reflected the light. Josh stopped himself from reaching out to touch her. He liked watching her face when she talked, how the shadows played off her strong bones, how the right corner of her mouth always lifted slightly more than the left when she smiled—and how, more than once, when he looked away and then back, he caught her starting at him. In a not-altogether-unpleasant way.
When Malachai arrived, Josh was sorry to see him. He watched Gabriella’s face to see if she was, too, but he couldn’t read her expression. They all exchanged pleasantries, and after ordering a Campari and soda, Malachai asked Gabriella about the robbery in Rome and the one in her office. What had been taken? Did the police have any leads?
Josh watched as her face fell and her body language changed. She looked as if Malachai had just wrenched her back to the recent past. He regretted that he couldn’t have prolonged her respite, and his.
She started with the last night she’d spent in Rome and explained how she’d come home from the hospital, late, after the professor had died, to find her window broken and her papers ransacked. “They took one of my notebooks that had some freehand maps I’d drawn of the tomb, some notes on the excavation and a batch of photographs of the mummy. But I don’t know why anyone would want those things. If the tomb hadn’t been robbed, if the professor hadn’t been shot, it might have made sense, but since the stones had already been taken, I don’t understand.”
“And that’s when you decided to leave?” Josh asked.
“It was so unnerving. I’m a single parent—I couldn’t risk my safety and stay. I called the airport, booked the first flight out the next day, packed a bag and checked into a hotel for the night. So much about this dig has been disturbing right from the start. There are always stories that excavations are cursed, but this is the first one I’ve worked on that really might be.”
“What do you mean, right from the start?” Malachai asked.
“I didn’t spend any time thinking about it when it happened, but the way I discovered the site was very strange.”
“You’re the one who found the site? For some reason I thought Professor Rudolfo had,” Malachai said.
“No. I did. And I think how it happened is tied into the stones being stolen and the professor being killed, and why someone broke into my apartment last week and my office on Saturday.”
While they ate, Gabriella told Josh and Malachai the story, starting with the priest finding her in the chapel at Yale. While she started recounting the first two digs, her fatigue and fear faded as she relived the excitement of those early days in Rome.
“So you didn’t find anything at either of those sites?” Josh asked.
“No. Both were dead ends.”
“So you moved on to the third site?” Malachai sat straight up in that slightly formal way he had, his eyes focused on Gabriella.
“Yes…” Her words trailed off.
“And that was where you found the Vestal and the stones?” Malachai asked.
“Yes.”
“Are you going to go back?”
“To Rome?”
“Back to finish working on Bella’s tomb?”
Josh wanted to correct him. It was Sabina’s tomb. But he let it go.
“I don’t know. I’d need to find another archeologist to work with me now that…” The sadness had slipped back into her eyes and she looked tired. “And if I go back, I’d want to take Quinn with me.”
“Is that a problem?” Josh asked.
“Right now it is, because of Bettina.”
“Bettina?” Malachai asked.
“She helps me take care of Quinn.”
“Is she leaving?” Josh asked.
“She’s an aspiring actress, and her plan is to go part-time and try to get some work on the stage once Quinn starts school this fall. She wouldn’t delay that to go to Rome with me for six months, and I wouldn’t take Quinn away from home with all the stress that will bring without having someone she knows and trusts with us. So I can’t think about returning before I work out those child-care issues.”
Malachai leaned forward yet farther. “You must go back. It’s imperative. You have a destiny with Bella. And with the stones.”
“The stones…” She shook her head. “I don’t imagine I’ll ever see them again.”
“How far did you get in substantiating their history or translating the engravings?” Malachai asked as he lifted his glass to his mouth.
Josh noticed how, even when he drank, his eyes didn’t leave Gabriella’s face while he waited for her response.
“Not far. There wasn’t time. We’d only just found the tomb. Those are the kind of details that we’d typically wait to deal with after we’d finished the excavation.”
“Can you work on the translations without the actual stones from your photographs?”
Why was he badgering her? Josh wanted to stop him, to make him be quiet, to give her some time. He wanted to wrap her in his arms and offer her a safe harbor. He wanted too much. All things he couldn’t have. Gabriella, the stones, proof of what was happening to him.
“I guess I can, but it seems pointless now.”
“It’s not. The foundation is determined to find the stones. They matter to us probably as much as they do to you. And when we’ve secured them we’re going to need to know how to use them.”
Now she was puzzled. “Do you think they have some power?”
“Going back to the beginning of the Phoenix Club, my great-great-great-uncle was certain they weren’t just a legend, but had properties that could induce past-life memories. I don’t know if I believe that, but I can clear up one mystery. I’m fairly certain the papers your priest gave you have something to do with my great-great-great-uncle’s research and efforts.”
“How so?”
Malachai poured what was left of the wine into his glass, took a sip and described the group of wealthy industrialists, artists and writers who financed an archeologist in Rome at the end of the nineteenth century who thought he had found a clue to where the stones were buried.
“What was his name?”
“Wallace Neely.”
Gabriella nodded vigorously. “Neely owned the site the tomb was found on. Rudolfo negotiated with his heirs. He was a very promising archeologist who had several successes but died tragically when he was only thirty-three.”
“Do you know how he died?” Josh asked her.
“He was killed in Rome a few days after he announced that he had made a marvelous discovery.” As she said it, she realized the coincidence.
“He was murdered?” Josh asked, astonished.
Now it was her turn to be stunned. “I hadn’t realized…it’s history repeating itself,” she said, her voice a whisper.
“Did you know this?” Josh asked Malachai.
“Some of it, but I didn’t put it all together until now.”
“Do you know what discovery he made?” Josh asked Gabriella.
“No one knows. Rudolfo and I were sure he must have cataloged his finds, but his records have long since disappeared.”
“Maybe he was killed for what he discovered, too,” Josh suggested. “If that happened then and this happened now—”
Malachi interrupted. “Things are not always what they appear to be. Remember that.” He reached out to Josh’s ear and pulled out a silver dollar.
Gabriella looked confused.
“It’s his hobby,” Josh told her. “Making magic.”
“It’s not just a hobby,” Malachai corrected. “It’s the preferable way to live your life.” He laughed. “Making magic,” he said, repeating Josh’s exact phrase.
Outside the restaurant, Malachai said good-night to both of them, and Josh drove Gabriella h
ome. The rain had stopped, but the trees still dripped and the roads glistened in the lamplight. After he pulled up in front of the lovely Tudor house on a quiet tree-lined street, Josh got out and began walking her up to the front door.
“You don’t need to—”
He didn’t let her finish. “Yes, I do. I want to make sure you get inside and are safe and sound before I leave.”
“It’s nice of you to watch out for me.”
Josh heard her words as if he was underwater again; it took an extra second for them to get to him. Holding her glance, he tried to read it. He was sure it only took a few seconds of real time, but he didn’t perceive it that way. It seemed to take ages to work through the pathos and foreboding in her expression and get to the longing.
He was so focused on her, the smell of jasmine and sandalwood crept up on him and he didn’t have time to fight the lurch because he hadn’t felt it coming.
Chapter 45
Julius and Sabina
Rome—391 A.D.
The crowds lined the streets and watched as the procession moved toward the gates of the city. To them it was tragic drama, it was sport, it was spectacle. For the first time in forty years, a Vestal Virgin was going to be buried alive for violating her vows.
Sitting atop her funerary bed, which rested on a cart held aloft by six priests from the college, Sabina let her eyes follow a woman who walked along the dray, a baby in her arms, keeping them in sight every second of the long, slow march.
The dust rose up and got into the priests’ nostrils, clouded their eyes and coated their skin. It was too hot to be walking this distance, too hot for them to be carrying this woman, so hot it was inflaming the crowds, whose voices rose to the heavens with their jeers and curses.
Julius feared that even on this holy procession, there would be violence. In the last month the emperor had issued a proclamation commanding citizens everywhere to encourage all remaining pagans to convert.
“Encourage” meant different things to different people: more temples had been plundered, more priests had been attacked during religious services, more fires had been set and more buildings had burned down to their stone foundations. Romans who had prayed to pagan gods months before, now, either out of true faith or to curry favor with the administration, came at holy men with weapons. With every priest they subdued, the greater their control and power grew. That was what religion was about now: power.