by Tom Pugh
“Durant,” called Vescosi, “bring my bag.” He lay in the dust, compass in hand. “Assuming it holds to this orientation, the passageway runs east to west.”
“We could be in Naples by nightfall, with rooms in a fine inn and all the food and drink we can stomach,” said Longstaff.
No one listened. Aurélie started down the passage and the rest followed. Sparrow dropped to her belly, shaking her broad head from side to side.
Aurélie led, musket slung across her back. Longstaff was caught in two minds. He wanted to push past the others and take over the lead, but someone had to protect their rear. His companions only had eyes for what lay ahead.
The tunnel seemed endless. Rectangular niches had been cut into the walls at shoulder height, the floor of each smooth with ancient wax. Longstaff walked with a hand on Sparrow’s head – to comfort the animal, he told himself. Vescosi kept making them stop. He could hear the Otiosi leader counting his steps, lying down each time he reached a hundred, asking Aurélie for his cloth roll.
Vescosi rose to his feet and uncovered his mouth. “We’re descending. The gradient is slight, but absolutely consistent.”
“Do you feel it?” said Aurélie. A cool breeze rising from the depths to meet them. She walked faster. “Stop,” said Durant.
She’d missed it. A second passage leading away from the first. Longstaff saw an uneven floor, walls smooth and free of niches. Beyond that, all was darkness.
“What now?”
Durant hunkered down, running his hands across the stone. “Pivots. There must have been a door here once.”
The four of them stood close together, torches above their heads.
“We should keep to the main passage,” said Aurélie.
Vescosi shook his head. “Think of the niches – they’re set too close together for the simple purpose of providing light. This main tunnel must have served a ritual purpose. If Durant is right about the pivots, the second would have been hidden. A secret passage, in other words, known only to initiates.”
“We have to split up,” said Durant.
“No,” said Longstaff. “We stay together.”
“Signor Durant is right,” said Vescosi. “We don’t have time to waste walking up and down every tunnel we find.”
Longstaff looked at Aurélie. Her expression made it clear she agreed with Vescosi and Durant.
“Fine,” he said. “Aurélie and I will continue along the main passage. You and Gaetan take the other. Count your steps. Turn back when you reach five hundred.”
The temperature continued to rise as Longstaff and Aurélie pushed on into the darkness. The air was foul with sulphur.
“Listen,” said Aurélie. “Do you hear?”
“Water.”
They hurried forward, almost tumbling down a long flight of steps. Longstaff grabbed Aurélie by the arm, pulled her to safety and held her close.
“Careful.”
Side by side, they walked down the steps. “God’s teeth,” spat Longstaff.
“The River Styx!” said Aurélie. “Remember Strabo? Remember Virgil? The Romans believed this was the entrance to the Underworld. Of course there has to be a river.” She laughed, before shaking her head in wonder. “How in God’s name did they discover it was here? The stairway meets it perfectly.” She raised her torch. Steam rose from the black water. Longstaff saw steps rising on the far side.
“We should turn back,” he said. “Tell the others what we’ve found.”
She knelt on the lowest dry step and pushed up one sleeve.
“Wait,” said Longstaff.
“Hot, but not scalding,” she grinned up at him. “Time to get our feet wet.”
She was already tugging at her boots, peeling the tight hose down her legs. Smiling despite himself, Longstaff removed his clothes.
Aurélie went first, using Longstaff’s sword to probe the way ahead. Longstaff followed close behind, their two hands wrapped around one torch. The water was hot but not unpleasant, the current fast but not dangerous, and the riverbed mercifully free of debris. Ten careful steps. The water never rose above waist height.
Longstaff looked back at Sparrow, staring at them from the far side.
“Come on.”
She shook her head, started climbing backwards up the staircase.
“Wait here,” muttered Longstaff. He waded across the river, crouched to scratch Sparrow between the ears. He tried leading her to the water’s edge, but she ducked her head, setting up a low warning growl at the back of her throat.
“For the love of God, I haven’t carried you since you were a pup,” Longstaff heaved her onto his shoulders and rejoined Aurélie.
Eyes sparkling in the torchlight, she handed him his sword.
“Time to find out what’s at the top.”
Longstaff insisted on taking the lead. They passed through a high stone doorway and saw two orbs of light in the distance, two torches burning merrily in a huge, circular chamber. Durant and Vescosi.
The walls were smooth and bare, the floor a chaos of scattered tesserae, broken statues and human bones. A battle had raged in this chamber, long ago in the distant past. The mosaic was so badly damaged it was impossible to make out the original design. A round table lay on its side in the centre of the room, next to an eight-sided pit.
“You took your time,” Durant upended a piece of marble with his boot. “Nothing here but lies and trickery.”
“What’s happened?”
Vescosi looked at Aurélie. “The second passage was a short cut to this chamber. This whole place is an elaborate hoax, set up to make people believe they were visiting the Underworld. Did you cross water on your way here?”
“Yes.”
Vescosi nodded. “Corrupt priests preying on rich fools, leading them through drifts of vapour, down dark and menacing tunnels to an underground river. There must have been a landing stage originally, a small boat to ferry them across,” he gestured around at the ruined chamber. “Got up to look like the Palace of Hades. Visitors would have been tired, dizzy from the fumes, perhaps drugged.
“Look there,” he beckoned them towards the pit in the centre of the room. Longstaff peered down. Eight feet deep, he judged, the floor covered in a thick layer of… what? It looked like leaves.
“Snake-skins,” said Vescosi. “The table would have been moved aside and the visitor pushed into a pit of harmless snakes, experiencing for himself the days when Earth was covered in a plague of serpents.” He shook his head. “Maybe there were books here once. Who knows? I’m sorry, Aurélie, but there’s nothing sacred about this place, nothing but sleight of hand and mummery.”
“No,” said Aurélie, “you’re wrong.” She brandished Aristarchus’ book.
Durant sighed. “None of us wants to admit defeat, but we’ve been over every inch of this room.”
“Think,” said Aurélie. “Jupiter is a planet, not a God. The moon is a planet, not a Goddess.”
“Actually…” began Vescosi. She cut him off. “According to Aristarchus’ conception of the universe, the moon is a planet. We began our journey on Earth. We travelled to the moon. What comes next?”
“Mercury.”
“And the God, Mercury; what is he famous for?”
“Trickery,” a light came on in Giacomo eyes. “And what is this chamber, if not a trick?”
Aurélie dropped her musket and jumped into the pit.
“We’ve looked,” said Durant. “Nothing but dried snake-skins.”
“Matthew,” she called, “I need a damp cloth.”
He handed one down to her.
“Hold the torch so I can see.” She scrubbed at the panels. “Eight sides,” she muttered, “like a baptismal font. Eight is the number of re-birth.”
Four of the sides were plain, each of the others carried a simple sign.
“A lightning bolt,” said Longstaff, looking down, “a sun, a pair of crossed spears, a heart.”
“The sun is often used to represent kn
owledge,” offered Durant.
“The lightning bolt is Jupiter’s symbol,” said Vescosi. “Remember Lucretius’ letter: the moon shows them the way, and we, by Jupiter’s leave, journey with them into Hell.
Aurélie shook her head. “Aristarchus describes human history as a journey through the universe. Mercury stands for trickery. It stands for the confusion felt by primitive man, assaulted by a million new sensations, unable to pick the true from the false, the real from the ephemeral. The centuries rolled by and men and women developed self-awareness, beginning to exercise judgement. That’s when they were seduced by Venus/Lucifer.”
“What?” Durant shook his head. “Venus and Lucifer have nothing to do with each other.”
“Not any more,” Vescosi was grinning, “but they might have in the past. Think of Isaiah. How thou art fallen from Heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning. And the morning star is Venus, of course.”
Aurélie nodded. “According to Aristarchus, Lucifer and Venus are male and female representations of temptation. The book describes a time in our history when we became wise enough to find our true path. As soon as we did, however, we found reasons to go astray.”
“That would explain the snakes,” said Durant.
“And this pit,” added Aurélie with a smile. “A cavity or a shaft, depending on your point of view.”
“Then we have to break through the wall marked with a heart,” said Durant.
“Pass me a stone.”
He handed her a marble head, face too badly damaged to identify the god.
“Are you sure?” asked Vescosi. “The men who built this place might have laid traps.”
“Maybe we should think this through,” said Longstaff.
There was a wild look in Aurélie's eye. She turned like a discus thrower, away from the heart, and smashed the heavy marble head into the crossed spears on the opposite panel.
The thin sheet of stone exploded and the breath of Satan filled the chamber. Heat blasted into Longstaff’s face, mind filling with the stench of blood, iron and charred corpses. Through gritted teeth, he forced his eyes open.
“Aurélie,” he shouted. He could see her curled in a corner of the pit, whipped by the snake-skins, which rose on the winds of hell, turning madly in the air above him. Noise like the wail of war-horns. Close now, nearly upon them. Longstaff threw up an arm to protect his face, but the danger was already receding, rushing past them into the tunnels, falling back into the depths from which it had risen.
There was absolute silence in the chamber.
“Aurélie?” whispered Longstaff.
“I’m all right,” she was struggling to stand, eyebrows burned away, cheeks the colour of a bruised peach. She began to cough.
“What in God’s name… ” began Durant.
Vescosi wrinkled his nose. “Some form of gas, air trapped in these tunnels for aeons. There must be a second entrance; it’s the only possible explanation.”
CHAPTER 36
One by one, they passed through the shattered panel, huddling at the top of a steep flight of steps, breathing through their mouths to lessen the stench of sulphur. The roof was low. Durant, the tallest member of their party, was forced to stoop.
“The pit represented Venus/Lucifer,” explained Aurélie. “If I’d broken through the panel marked with a heart, we’d probably have ended up walking in circles.”
“Or worse,” muttered Longstaff.
“The nearest planet to Earth is the moon,” said Vescosi, “then comes Mercury, then Venus, then Mars.”
“Exactly. The God of War, represented by crossed spears.”
Aurélie continued talking as she led them down the stairs. “Aristarchus claims mankind was created for a hidden purpose, which we creep towards across the centuries. In the beginning we were no more aware than animals, but in time developed consciousness. At which point we promptly fell prey to the temptations of Venus/Lucifer. To free ourselves from pleasure…”
She paused at the bottom of the staircase. “Assuming we’d want to; Aristarchus does because he thinks we have a secret destiny. I don’t know whether he intends his book to be understood literally or as metaphor?”
“The cult of Aal did not originate in Rome,” said Vescosi. “I spent years tracing its slow passage west, finding evidence the Library was located on the island of Samos in the third century before Christ. Aristarchus grew up there; his observations on the nature of the universe are so extraordinary, I thought there must be a connection.”
Despite the stench and heat, Aurélie laughed. She was wild, Longstaff realized; courageous in a way he could scarcely fathom.
“To escape the false consolations of pleasure and achieve our true purpose, we need self-discipline – the quality most closely associated with Mars. Aristarchus goes on to say we’ll be judged at some future point, when Jupiter will decide if we’ve learned enough to be allowed into the presence of his father, Saturn, who guards the tree of knowledge at the centre of the universe.”
They heard the sound of running water, growing louder as they made their way along a narrow tunnel. The left-hand wall disappeared and they saw vapour rising from an underground stream the width of a spear, running in a man-made channel only inches below their feet. Durant turned to Longstaff.
“It smells like a sickroom,” he said. “The smell of death, like a fever.”
The stream grew angrier as they followed its path, almost boiling in places. The heat was crushing, the air like sand in Longstaff’s throat. His trousers were already bone-dry. He ripped off his shirtsleeves and threw them to one side. Vescosi hitched up his robe. Aurélie removed her jerkin and tunic and stripped down to thin shirt and hose. Durant discarded his doublet, but stubbornly refused to give up his bag.
The walls had a different quality here, the stone no longer smooth, but gnarled and twisted.
“They look like petrified tree roots,” said the Frenchman, “but surely we’re too deep underground.”
Longstaff had seen too many battlefields. In the red glow of the torches, he thought the whorls and ridges looked more like viscera than vegetation.
The stream grew wider and calmer. It became a river and the wall on the far side slowly disappeared from view. The temperature dropped. The roof soared up into inky blackness and the smudges of light cast by their torches failed within yards for want of anything to illuminate.
But there was something in the distance, a bridge of white stone, leading to a black island in the centre of the sluggish river. The design was simple; three wide steps up to a flat walkway, supported on seven thick columns. Longstaff overtook Aurélie, the stones reassuringly solid beneath his feet, throwing up such a glare he was forced to shield his eyes. He held the torch out in front of him. The bridge wasn’t long, but seemed to disappear into a void. He reached the keystone – three times the size of the others – and saw words carved deep in the surface. He brushed away the dust. Vescosi stood behind him. “The letters are Greek,” haltingly, he translated the ancient warning.
For him that stealeth from this Library, let the book change into a serpent in his hand and bite him. Let him be struck with palsy and all his members blasted. Let bookworms gnaw his entrails in token of the Worm that dieth not, and when at last he goeth to his final punishment, let the flames of Hell consume him forever.
“I don’t believe it,” Vescosi’s eyes were glazed. He hurried to the end of the bridge and disappeared.
“Giacomo,” shouted Aurélie.
“Come here, child,” there was a catch in his voice. “By the grace of God and his saints, come and see what we’ve found.”
“Wait,” snapped Longstaff. “Stay behind me.”
The single wall of darkness split in two, formed a wide corridor and curled away in the distance. Longstaff stood for a moment, trying to understand what he was seeing. It was impossibly beautiful after the horrors of the journey.
Vescosi sat with his back to them, cross-legged on the floor, slowly shaking his
head.
“I have candles here,” Longstaff could hear the awe in Durant’s voice. “Let’s put the torches out before we go any further.”
The island was the Library. What had looked like black walls from the outside were the backs of bookshelves, made from a hardwood Longstaff did not recognize, half petrified with age and rising up to the height of three men.
Durant distributed candles. Longstaff collected the torches, carried them across the bridge and extinguished them carefully. When he returned he saw two lights bobbing away down the corridor, but Vescosi was still on the floor, tears on his cheeks, candle held between his palms as if praying. Longstaff helped him up.
“I never really thought… ”
The shelves were divided into thousands of pigeonholes, a golden plaque beneath each one, giving the author’s name and title of the work. Longstaff raised the candle; some scrolls were as thin as reeds, others as thick as his forearm, all were neatly rolled on wooden pins.
“Areobindus,” read Vescosi. “Damian, Bassus, Vittigis, Indaro, Chrysippus, Malthanes.” He clutched Longstaff’s forearm. “I’ve never heard of any of them. Look here,” pointing to another plaque. “I don’t even know what language this is.”
Longstaff pulled him gently away.
“I’m trying to understand,” Vescosi shook his head. “We think St. Benedict visited this place at the beginning of the sixth century after Christ, and those were violent years. The early Christians were ruthless; the evidence of slaughter we saw in the first chamber… ” He turned to Longstaff. “Did the priests of Aal take their secret to the grave? Did they die defending this Library? Did the Christians even know it existed?”
Longstaff led him further along the curling corridor, trying to catch the others. “It’s like walking into the centre of a shell.”
Vescosi stopped. “You’re right. The Golden Spiral.”
“What?”
“A pattern of numbers; 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 and so on. Each number is the sum of the previous two, do you see? If you use them to create squares, then draw circular arcs to connect the opposite corners of each square, you create the Golden Spiral. It appears everywhere in nature, in the branching of trees, the shape of leaves on a stem, the uncurling of a fern. A man named Fibonacci discovered the principle in the thirteenth century. But, of course, he didn’t discover it,” Vescosi stared at Longstaff. “We don’t learn,” he said, “we re-learn. What a world we live in, signore.”