by Gregg Loomis
The ship’s log included a stop at Naples, where a single container had been taken on board, marked simply, landscaping goods. The question of why any shipper would detour across the globe for such a small and mundane cargo might have caught the attention of port authorities had their union not repeatedly told them that questioning logs and cargo manifests was Uncle Sam’s job, not theirs, and performing such a task gratuitously could only jeopardize the next contract negotiations.
Once quayside, the landscaping goods were lifted off the deck by a crane like any other bit of cargo and stacked on the dock five or six containers high. There was approximately a one in one hundred chance its contents might actually be inspected. The funding of the Transportation Security Administration was far too stretched to permit both the high-profile confiscation of passengers’ cigarette lighters at the nation’s airports as well as the far lesser known investigation of the millions of tons of shipping entering ports annually.
Few voters passed through marine ports of entry.
A large German shepherd, trained in detection of explosive material, did lead his handler down the corridor of stacked containers. Whether he discerned something or felt only the urge to leave a pee mail message for the next canine to pass this way, he cocked his leg as he panted in the increasing heat.
That was as close an inspection as the crate would receive in Savannah.
JOURNAL OF SEVERENUS TACTUS
My journey is to me a dream, as I see it now. The tiny craft, weighted by two men and the spare form of the Sibyl, wallowed precariously across a river that so reeked of rot, ^1 I put a cloth over my nose.
Charon had hardly touched the far bank with his oar to hold the little boat in place when the Sibyl jumped to shore with a nimbleness I would have expected in a much younger woman. As I have said, all the underground was enveloped in a dark haze, but I saw this other side of the river as though through a veil as well as eyes that did not want to remain open. ^2
We were in a domed cavern of some sort, the size of which I was unable to measure. The landscape was one of the most scant of features I had ever encountered, scattered sparse bushes and huge rocks. Surrounding us were faceless forms, spirits of the departed clad in hoods that shadowed faces. All were unknown to me but moaned in a manner most pitiful. As the Sibyl led me past them, many held out supplicating arms as though they suffered some torment I might relieve.
We had not gone far when the Sibyl held up a hand to restrain my further progress. In front of me stood a figure silhouetted in the fuzzy light. He was as tall as my father, but his face, like the others, was concealed by a hood. Yet I could see light reflecting from his eyes and make out the line of the wound he received when as a hoy he fell from a horse. ^3
He said nothing hut gazed at me with a steady look.
“Father,” I said, “it is I, your son, Severenus, come here to the place of the dead to speak with you.”
If he heard, he gave no sign.
I tried again. “Father, my mother-your wife, Celia-sends you greetings, as do your other children.”
Again there was no response and I was beginning to wonder if the dead had no ears. ^4
“Father” I said, raising my voice to be certain it might be heard above the moans of the other shades. “At your death, the granary was near empty; there were few goods in the storehouse and less in the treasury. Surely you removed these things elsewhere. Pray share with your family that location.”
I feared, once again, that I would receive only silence as an answer.
Instead the form spoke in a whisper that could have been my father’s voice or that of the wind in the spring leaves. “What you truly seek has been removed beyond your reach ^5 to be placed in the care of the servant of the god.”
This made little sense. My father, although careful to offend no deity, was not a religious man, worshiping only Augustus, the man-god emperor.
He turned and began to walk away.
This was no answer but a riddle. I had not journeyed this distance nor spent funds that my family needed for other purposes to leave with only an enigma. I started after him, but the Sibyl stood in my way. I stepped aside to get around her.
Just then there were flashes of fire and I could see the flaming bushes were burning. As before, they consumed not themselves, but there were rocks placed next to each plant that began to glow from the flames. I thought I saw a mist emanate from stone, as though a spirit therein were being liberated.
My memory is a blank slate from that point until the time I awoke from what must have been a deep sleep, tormented by Morpheus. ^6 I was in a plain room with no idea how long I had so been. Almost immediately robed priests appeared, carrying some sort of stew, which I consumed in its entirety. They would answer neither my questions as to how long I had remained in these quarters nor what had happened in the place of departed spirits after the bushes began to burn.
Instead, they interrogated me closely as to my experience. Had I seen my father? Was I certain it was he? Had I received the answer I sought? These questions were not asked in the manner of a friend making inquiry, but rather with the intensity of one determined to receive information. ^7
At last I was free to go. I was shocked to discover that a full four days had passed since I entered the Netherworld.
But I could not go home, not without the information for which I and my family had paid so dearly. Then, like a vision from Jupiter, I recalled the view of Agrippa’s home. Surely an old family friend, particularly one so powerful, would render such assistance as he could, perhaps intercede with the priests or even force them to restore part of the fortune I had spent.
The villa was as glorious as I remembered, high on a cliff overlooking the sea. Its walls enclosed three full acres, ^8 with a path winding to the beach below, where strange and exotic fish swam in ponds. ^9
I entered the enclosure and gave my name to an inquiring slave. I had hardly dismounted to sit in the shade of a towering fruit tree ^10 when I was led into the coolness of the house.
Agrippa himself, older and more enfeebled than I remembered, greeted me dressed in a shining white toga trimmed in purple. ^11 He took my elbow in his bony grasp, taking me to a room that opened onto an inner courtyard, where we were furnished cool wine and sampled figs and dates. After solemnly noting his sorrow at my father’s death, he asked what he might do for me.
I told him as much of my experience in the underworld as I could remember, including my father’s shade’s strange remark that his fortune had been placed in the “hands of the servant of the god.”
The problem, of course, was which servant of which god, a puzzle the old man promised to consider. I could see the riddle disturbed him but I knew not why, perhaps because of the great price I had paid for a mere puzzle to solve. He suggested I remain his guest until he ascertained the best course of action, an invitation I was hardly in a position to decline.
NOTES
1. Severenus uses the word putrescere, the Latin verb for “to rot or putrefy.” Knowing what we do today of the area, it would be safe to assume the air was heavy with sulfuric fumes.
2. Consider the smoke from lamps or torches, the fumes previously alluded to, and the drugs he had been fed over the last few days.
3. A well-known scar easily reproduced by cosmetics?
4. Hearing.
5. Extra manum, literally, “out of hand.”
6. Greek god of dreams.
7. It could be speculated that the visitors to Hades who did not return were those who were skeptical of what they had seen and heard.
8. A rough equivalency. The actual words were “fifty by fifty heredia.” One hundred heredia equals approximately ten thousand square meters.
9. Ponds of fish, both fresh-and salt-water, were a competitive display of wealth among Romans with seaside villas. The occupants of these ponds were frequently edible, and the more uncommon the species, the better. At least one fulltime servant would be required to monitor the water level a
nd temperature, feed, etc.
10. Since few fruit trees “tower,” it is likelySeverenus refers to a date palm, which would have been imported from Africa, another Roman version of conspicuous consumption.
11. A color allowed only to senators and other nobles.
PART VI
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Baia
Early the next morning
Jason had finished all but one chapter of the article in Adrian’s archaeological magazine in the waning hour of daylight as the Scot drove the short distance from Cumae. They had parked the Volvo in a lot near Pozzuoli’s ancient forty-thousand-seat Greek amphitheater in hopes it would remain unnoticed. Jason and Maria had taken a cab to Baia, leaving Adrian to find a van large enough to carry both him and the gear from the observatory.
They had found a single room in a small pensione. Jason had handed over the false passports and made sure the elderly proprietor had returned to his quarters before admitting Adrian, who had spent the night in a less than comfortable chair. Jason had hoped that the police would be looking for a trio, not a man and wife.
Early the next morning, Jason attempted to retrieve the passports after letting Adrian out through a window. The proprietor was not to be found, and Jason made a mental note to regain the documents later in the day. Now they waited among the crumbled walls of a Roman temple of
Venus on a terrace above the present town. Below were the domes of the baths of Mercury and Venus, therapeutic springs used well into the Middle Ages.
The rising sun painted the bay the color of pink roses until it cleared the horizon, leaving the sky a cloudless blue tinged with purple, an expanse marked only by the twinkling eye of a single morning star until it, too, winked out.
Jason stood and stretched. “Do we know how to find wherever it is we’re going?”
Maria pointed up a slight slope. “There.”
Jason squinted. In the early light what he had mistaken for the rock face of a nearby hill bracketed by stumps of columns was in fact a single slab of cement. Closer inspection revealed a razor-wire fence partly concealed by scrub bush. He could not make out the words on a couple of faded signs. He was fairly certain they didn’t offer welcome.
“The Great Antrum to the underworld,” Maria announced.
“Not exactly hospitable,” Jason observed. “Someone sure doesn’t want us in there.”
“The Italian government,” Maria said. “They claim that it may collapse and it may be filled with poisonous gases. It has been sealed since 2001, remember?”
Jason helped her sling her air tank and regulator over a shoulder before picking up his own. “Since Robert Temple’s exploration.”
She was walking up the gentle slope. “Yes.”
They stopped at the strands of wire. A few minutes with a wire cutter from Adrian’s pack made a narrow but passable entrance. Now they stood at the base of a slope of some twenty feet, a solid face of concrete.
“This may na’ be so deft,” Adrian observed. “We canna spend th’ day chippin’ through cement.”
Jason, his hand touching the wall, was moving slowly to his left. He felt what he thought was a crack. He was looking at a rectangular cut around an area about five and a half by three, just large enough to admit a man. Someone had made an effort to conceal the seams with vegetation pulled from nearby.
Adrian took a few steps back, arms akimbo. “Y’ may have found a way in, but I’m doubtin’ th’ three of us kin lift such a slab.”
“Someone obviously can,” Jason replied. “Otherwise cutting it in here wouldn’t have made sense.”
Maria reached out a hand to run it across the surface. “This is not cement.”
“Not cement?” Jason echoed.
There was a flat thumping sound as Maria rapped her knuckles against the surface. “Not at all. Plastic.”
Adrian reached out and confirmed what she had said. “Someone must’ve cut a hole here and replaced it with lighter material.”
“Only reason they’d do that,” Jason said, “is so they can come in and out whenever they wish.”
There was no doubt as to who “they” were.
It took little effort to remove what was no more than a cleverly customized plastic form, one that a single person could easily lift and replace from inside. The three checked their regulators before struggling into the backpacks with heavy their air tanks and tested the lamps in their helmets. Adrian and Jason both made sure their weapons were readily accessible.
On his knees, Adrian leaned into the entrance. The hungry darkness swallowed the light of his helmet lamp. “Ye’re right, laddie, aboot someone comin’ in ‘n’ out. There’s a ladder here.”
Sure enough, the entrance dropped straight down to a floor about six feet below before the passage disappeared under the hill. Jason helped Maria down.
Jason stood at the gates of Hades. He tried to remember how many people had prophesied his arrival.
Gas detector extended, Maria led the way single file down a corridor wide enough only for single file. Even so,
Jason’s shoulders brushed against the walls constantly, and he bowed his head. The corridor wasn’t built for the size of a twenty-first-century man. Anyone who didn’t believe in evolution should try strolling through a passage carved two thousand years ago.
Rubble, either from Agrippa’s attempt to close the passages or moved there by one of the two explorations, littered the stone floor, sometimes piled so high that the trio had to crawl between it and the roof.
The lights on their helmets revealed chiseled marks on the low ceiling as the passage began a gradual descent. At regular intervals, the rock was streaked with black above small ledges that had once held lamps. There was the smell of long-dead earth and a silence that rang in the ears, a quiet that seemed to resent the interruption of footsteps upon stone. At the periphery of his light, Jason could see moving things, large insects, he guessed, indignant at the intrusion. They silently swarmed, divided, and reunited in hazy clouds before disappearing back into the sea of gloom.
He shined his light on a handheld compass for a few steps, surprised to see the excavation had been placed in a precise east-west orientation. How could that have been done underground before compasses were invented?
A few minutes later they entered a vaulted chamber, the roof invisible above. In the center, a slab of the native tufa rock had been carved with figures of gods and animals, still quite clear.
“A sacrificial altar,” Adrian whispered as though in a church. “Where animals were slaughtered, I’d guess.”
Past the chamber, the passageway took a sharp turn. Maria was so intent on the gas detector she bumped into the far wall before she saw it.
“Stronzo!” she exclaimed, backing into Adrian.
Jason was fairly certain the exclamation had not invoked the name of a saint. “You okay?”
He could see Maria rubbing her nose. “I will be fine,” she grumbled in a tone that said she didn’t believe it.
Jason took a step backward, the light on his helmet probing shadows he had not previously noticed. He looked closer. A slit carved into the rock led into an even narrower passageway that seemed to go in a direction that intercepted the angle made by the turn like the hypotenuse of a triangle. On one side, crumbling iron hinges were still visible.
Adrian had somehow managed to turn around despite the bulk of his backpack. “A concealed path, I’d say.”
Jason nodded. “One that would put the priests and animals in front of the visitor when they had been behind, just as Severenus described. That must have seemed like magic.”
“Na’ chance we could squeeze through wearin’ this kit?”
Jason shook his head. “We’d have to leave the air tanks here.”
“That would be unwise.” Maria’s head was poking around Adrian’s body. “If what Jason says is correct, we will see where this path comes out anyway.”
With Maria still holding the gauge in front of her like a cr
ucifix leading a choir’s procession, they continued until they reached another chamber with its sacrificial altar. To the altar’s left was another ancient doorway, probably the end of the passage they had discovered a few minutes earlier. On the other side of the room, the slope decreased and flattened out.
Shortly past where the passage began again, they came to a dry riverbed. Their lights shone into only a void, the far shore being too far away to see. The water had been hardly three feet deep, but the sharp edges of the banks indicated the current had been swift. The streambed was mostly polished slabs of stone, making their crossing fairly easy.
The River Styx had been about a hundred feet wide, although the dark and the time it would have taken to pole against or across the flow could have made the distance seem longer.
The far bank was an immense cavern, sloping gently upward from the riverbed. Its walls soared like the nave of a cathedral until vanishing into darkness beyond the beams of their lights. A sole bat, disturbed by the illumination, flew erratic circles before disappearing into the dusk from which it had come.
“See here.” Adrian was kneeling over what at first looked like a slight depression in the rock floor. “It’s a hole with what looks like a tunnel at th’ bottom.”
“That would allow the ‘shades’ of the dead to appear and disappear,” Maria observed, pointing to several more.
Very interesting, Jason thought-but not what they had come to find. Walking slowly to avoid falling into one of the openings, he played his lantern across the nearest wall.
“Maria,” he called, “what do you make of this?”
She was beside him in a moment, both looking at a series of round gray boulders. Between each a scraggly, seemingly dead bush had been inserted into a hole cut into the rock floor. How could anything grow in such darkness? It couldn’t, Jason concluded. Someone had placed them here. But why?
Maria knelt on the hard-packed earth, running a hand over one of the rocks.
“Pumice.”
The word took Jason back to the house in Georgetown, to Saturday mornings when Laurin, clad in rubber gloves, goggles, and coveralls bearing the logo of some oil company, would begin work on an obvious piece of junk rescued from one of the local shops. Before the day was out, her abrasive-sandpaper and pumice-usually produced a treasure that had been hidden below years if not centuries of chipped paint and blackened varnish.