by Graham, Jo
As soon as they were well and truly underway, and the conductor had been by and checked their tickets, Lewis closed the door behind him. He sat beside Alma, who was at the window facing forwards, with Mitch and Jerry across.
"We need a council of war," Alma said. "Jerry, we'll be in Rome in fifteen hours. We've got to have a plan by then."
"We've got a problem," Jerry began, sinking into his seat.
"Only one?" Mitch said.
"You know that the excavation of the Nemi ships is an official dig, right?" Jerry asked rhetorically. "It's sponsored by the Italian government, with the government footing the bill and everything done right, all the artifacts reserved for Italian museums."
"Isn't that a good thing?" Alma asked. She was certain he'd had a lot to say about the desirability of government digs in the past, no fly by night operations with most of the treasures disappearing untraceably into private collections.
"Generally, yes," Jerry said. He pushed his gold-rimmed glasses up on his nose. "But in this case, not necessarily. This dig is a pet project of the Prime Minister. He got the funding for it and he takes a personal interest in it. He's going to make one of his frequent visits to the site day after tomorrow."
"And that's bad how?" Mitch asked.
It was Lewis who spoke up. "It wants power," he said. "The kind of power Henry doesn't have. Being a millionaire is great, but it doesn't give you the power of life and death. It doesn't give you the kind of power Caligula had."
"Neither does being Prime Minister of Italy," Mitch said. "Italy is a constitutional monarchy. There's a big difference between being a modern Prime Minister and being a Roman emperor." He shook his head. "I'm sure there are a lot of perks, but Italy isn't even a great power."
"But it could be, arguably," Alma said. "After all, isn't that one of the things that Mr. Mussolini keeps harping on? It's time to restore Italy to her former greatness?"
Jerry had a militant look in his eyes. “Don’t underestimate the Fascists just because they’re following the letter of the law. Mussolini’s party is in control, and he’s their Leader, Il Duce himself, with all that brings with it.”
Mitch gave him a skeptical look, but Lewis interrupted.
"Besides, this thing has been trapped for hundreds of years. It probably overestimates the importance of Italy, because in its time Rome was so important. I mean, in terms of sheer power Stalin would be a much better choice, but would it think that way?"
Jerry grimaced. "A Scythian barbarian? Hardly worth its time. No, Rome has been the center of its world. I think it will return to Rome. And I think it will try to jump into the Prime Minister the day after tomorrow."
"If it does, we'll never get to it," Alma said. "The security around a head of state…."
"Ok," Mitch said. "That's bad news. He put his feet up on the seat opposite him, between Alma and Lewis. "How do we figure out who this thing is wearing now?"
"We don't," Jerry said with a glance at Alma. "We don't need to know who it is or where it is, because we know where it will be the day after tomorrow. It will be at the dig when the Prime Minister visits, and it will be someone who can get close enough to jump into him."
Lewis nodded gravely. "So we do something like the amulets?"
"I'm afraid not," Jerry said. "How would we get the Prime Minister to wear one? Not to mention his whole entourage, bodyguards, chauffeur, everybody…. We're going to have to do this the hard way."
"Ok," Alma took a deep breath. "Let's lay this out. We can get to Lake Nemi easily from Rome. It's only something like fifteen miles. I'm sure tourists hire cars all the time."
"Getting there isn't the problem," Jerry said, pushing his glasses back up on his nose. "But once we get there we have two problems. Number one is that we only have one of the tablets." He looked around the three of them. "This is the first tablet. But from the way it ends in the middle there is at least one more, and possibly two. We need the full set to make the binding work."
"Ok." Alma put her hands to her forehead, considering. "If the dig has already uncovered it, it's probably in one of the labs or storage rooms, right? It's not so intrinsically valuable that it would be taken to a bank vault, right?"
Jerry shook his head. "It's a nice piece, but I'm sure if this site is as rich as they say there are many finer artifacts with much greater market value. Statues and sculptures are worth a lot more than tablets, and this one isn't even pictorial. It's probably in one of the labs for cleaning, conservation and photography."
"So how do we get in?" Alma asked.
"I have no idea!" Jerry said. "Do you think breaking and entering is part of my skill set?"
Alma made her voice very calm. "Jerry, you're the archaeologist. You're the one who can best figure out where things are kept. Moreover, you're the only one with a legitimate reason to be there. Surely a visiting American archaeologist might come by the dig during normal working hours and show an interest?"
"With a stolen artifact in my pocket?" Jerry countered.
"Which we're trying to return," Mitch said mildly.
"Can't we do that thing with the map and the tablet and just find out where they are?" Lewis asked. "Like you did back in LA?" Everybody looked at him. "Just an idea," Lewis said.
"We don't have a map," Alma said, "But the principle works. We could use the tablet to lead us to the others. I can do that."
"That would work," Jerry said. "Of course, if they're locked up in one of the workrooms…."
"We'll get to that when we get to it," Mitch said. "For all we know they've never been excavated. Isn't that more likely?"
Jerry nodded slowly. "In which case we have to do some after hours digging. But that ought to be manageable. If they have a security guard he's probably on the workrooms and storerooms where the artifacts are kept. The whole site is huge and heavily wooded. We ought to be able to move around the site after dark without too much trouble."
"And then what?" Alma asked.
"We need to rebury the tablets with the appropriate invocation to Diana," Jerry said.
Mitch sat up straighter. "That's all?"
"Well, no. Obviously we have to have the creature there and bound while we do it."
"Obviously," Alma said dryly. "Ok, can we summon it? And would that bring it out of whatever host it's jumped to?"
"I think so." Jerry nodded. "If we can summon it correctly, we can force it to abandon whoever it has, wherever they are, and return to the tablets."
Lewis looked spooked, and Alma didn't blame him. "But it can't jump into us because of the amulets," she said. "So if we summon it to a location where we're the only people, the only thing it can do is go into the tablets?"
"That's the theory," Jerry said. "It ought to work."
Alma nodded. "And we don't need to know who that person is or have them physically present?"
"I don't think so."
"That's the only break we've gotten so far," Mitch said.
"It shouldn't matter," Jerry said. "We're summoning the animus infernus, not its host. When we summon it, we should force it to leave the host. Then whoever that is can go on doing whatever they were doing with no harm to them except having spent a day or two in a fugue state."
"And then we put the tablets where?" Alma asked.
"That's something we need to talk about," Jerry said. "I think that when the Emperor Claudius did the same thing he put the tablets on the deck of the primary ship and then had the ship sunk in the lake. That effectively put the tablets out of reach to anyone, since they were beneath the surface of a lake on which boating was forbidden, and made an appropriate expiation to Diana at the same time. But the problem with us putting them back in the lake…."
"Is that the archaeological expedition is draining the lake," Mitch said. "So they'll just be found again in a few months."
"Exactly," Jerry said.
"Any ideas for an alternate site?" Alma asked.
Jerry nodded. "The most appropriate place would be the ruins
of the Temple of Diana. The Sanctuary of Diana would be analogous to the lake, and should be as protective. The problem is that the archaeological expedition isn't just draining the lake. They're excavating the site of the temple complex as well."
"Which means they'll dig it up again," Lewis said.
"Unfortunately," Jerry said. "It may be possible that we could put it in an out of the way corner of the complex, but I have to tell you that if their professional archaeologists are worth their salt, they'll notice the fresh digging, assume it's treasure hunters, and be all over it in a matter of days."
"And then there we go again," Alma said. "Ok, how about a third option?"
Jerry shrugged. "The sanctuary of Diana isn't just the temple. The entire area, everything inside the cingulum, or temple grounds, was sacred to Diana, including the surrounding woods. We could bury it in the woods and technically we'd be inside the bounds of Diana's protection. There are acres and acres of woodland. There's no way anybody is going to excavate it all anytime soon."
"That sounds like it has more potential," Mitch said.
"And also more opportunity for privacy," Alma agreed. "If we're going to be summoning a demon I don't want to do it where we could be interrupted or some innocent person could wander up and break the circle or be the new host."
Lewis was looking strange, his eyes unfocused.
"Lewis?" Alma said gently. "Do you see something?"
He shook his head regretfully. "I wish I did," he said.
"Ok," Alma said. "I think we have a plan. Jerry, you work on the specifics of the summoning. When we get to Rome we'll hire a car and go out to Aricia. There should be somewhere we could stay around there, a penzione or something. We can do the dowsing there. Then we go over to the site with Jerry and see if we can find the tablets. Then tomorrow night we do the summoning and bury the tablets in the forest."
"You make it all sound easy," Mitch said wryly.
"It's perfectly doable," Alma said, and thought she sounded more confident than she felt. She half suspected that Gil hadn't known what he was doing most of the time, but his best try usually worked out. And it wasn't as though they could give up, not when it had shown such a propensity for carnage. "We can handle it." She looked at Jerry, willing him not to disagree.
Instead he nodded. "I think we can," he said.
From the moment they arrived in Rome, Alma took charge. Lewis was used to her, but he was still a bit surprised by how the Signora arranged all. Alma changed when she spoke Italian, he thought. She was more mobile, more animated. She put her head to the side and her hands on her hips, walked with a different swing in her step. Not a different woman, no. But a younger, more exciting one, one more confident of her charm. Alma was usually a little diffident, a little awkward, as though not certain where to put her feet. This Alma wasn't. Even in the dowdy gray dress, she sparkled.
Gil's bride, some part of him said. Ten years ago in Venice she had been Gil's bride, and if she had been honed by war she had also been changed by emerging passion. Having come to it late, the change was all the more profound. Twenty eight was old for a bride, old to transform into something else, as though delayed summer had come all at once, bursting into a riot of bloom and warmth. Alma was passionate, inventive, eager. He knew that. But now she knew what she wanted and how to ask for it. Then it must have been a voyage of discovery.
Mitch watched, unsurprised. He'd been there for all of that. Lewis envied him that for a moment. Not that he would trade what he had, summer full blown and rich, but that there were parts of their lives that would never touch, people they had each been the other would never know.
A car and driver for Lake Nemi. Alma bundled them into a hired car, talking a mile a minute with the driver. Everyone spoke Italian but him, so Lewis settled in the middle of the backseat between Mitch and Alma. Jerry took shotgun so that he would have more room for his leg, and Lewis put his arm around Alma as she leaned forward, telling the driver something.
She settled back against it and gave him an apologetic smile. "I'm sorry to go on like this. I lived in Italy for two years before."
"I know," Lewis said. He smiled to let her know he really didn't mind.
Clouds were rolling in, and before they left Rome the rain began. It was the end of May, everything green and growing, nothing burned by the heat of summer yet. The car jolted down the road, stopping and starting in heavy traffic in the city.
"This is the line of the old Via Appia," Jerry said, leaning over the seat in front. "Beneath the tar there's a Roman road, one of the finest in the world. It pierced the Servian Wall at Porta Capena back there. You can't see the line of the Aurelian Wall here, but we'll pass through it shortly, the one that was built to hold back barbarians like us." He gave Lewis a quick grin. "And then the road takes off straight as an arrow southward. We'll follow it about ten miles before we turn off for Lake Nemi."
"The same road," Lewis said. The same road they would have taken, Claudius and his people, on their way to Aricia to bind the demon that had consumed his nephew.
"The past is always right beneath our feet," Jerry said. "It never goes away. We may not notice it, but it's always there. It always matters."
Alma squeezed his hand.
Mitch looked out the window. "This rain will play hell with the ground," he muttered.
They made better time once they turned off what had been the Via Appia. The two lane road ran up into the hills, curving gently through woodland, the occasional pillared drive leading back to a house invisible from the road. The rain stopped, the sun breaking through streaming clouds. The long green leaves steamed in the sun.
Up a hill and then the driver stopped the car at the crest, gesturing. "Guarda, Signora!" he said.
Between pine trees a spectacular view opened out, a perfectly round lake reflecting the sky above. Green lawns surrounded it, hills gently rising on all sides to dense forest, the opposite side strangely terraced, only a few cypress trees marring its perfect symmetry.
"Diana's Mirror," Lewis said, feeling a cold touch at his back.
Jerry leaned over the seat again. "In Claudius' day there was a beautiful Hellenistic temple there with a gilded roof. You could see it perfectly from here, I expect. This would have been the first sight of Aricia for people on the pilgrim way – the lake like this and Diana's Temple across the lake reflected in the water. Right over there were the buildings. There were gardens and mazes that came down toward the lakeshore on that side."
"It's beautiful," Alma said.
"It truly is," Jerry agreed. "This whole valley is the caldera of an extinct volcano. It's a microclimate that's richer than the surrounding area. No doubt that's why the first people in this area marked it as a sacred place."
When they had looked their fill the driver went on, descending on the other side of the hill below the rim of the old crater. Lewis felt it. They passed under the shade of the trees, and he felt it like a distant echo. Enter, and be changed.
Alma’s driver had recommended a penzione, one not too far from the dig, but too nice, he said for those scholars who didn’t live in the houses rented for the expedition. Besides, his cousin had had bad experiences with archeologists — mud everywhere, and the drinking, and bones washed in the bathtub — and didn’t think much of them. But tourists, visitors from America — that was entirely another matter. Mitch was grinning, translating sotto voce for Lewis, and Jerry hoped they still thought it was funny when he got them kicked out for being archeologists.
However, it wasn’t so much archeologists that Signora Ruggieri minded as graduate students in archeology, and she was happy to rent them her two small second floor rooms with a shared bath and a view of the lake. From here, it was easier to see the mud, and to see that the water level had dropped considerably. It was also possible, if one craned one’s neck, to see the tents and the dark fingers of timber sticking out of the mud. Caligula’s pleasure barges: an extraordinary discovery, unique in the Ancient world, their true purpo
se a mystery…. Jerry shivered in spite of the revived sun, and made his way carefully down the stairs.
Signora Ruggieri was willing to send a note to the dig site, and to fix them lunch while they waited for an answer. They sat for an hour in the ochre-painted dining room, sun and shadow alternating outside the long windows, while Signora Ruggieri and her maid brought plates of pasta tossed with cream and new peas and slivers of prosciutto, and they drank most of a bottle of soft, sweet wine. The king of the grove lived like a king indeed, until his challenger bested him. Jerry pushed the thought away, and as he poured himself a second glass of wine, he saw that his hand was trembling. He stilled it with an effort, poured more wine for Alma and the others.
“So how’d they find out there were ships in the lake, anyway?” Lewis asked. He sounded as though he was trying to take his mind off something, and Jerry couldn’t blame him.
“They were never really lost,” he answered. “Supposedly on a calm day, you could see the shadow of the first wreck, and people tried to raise them throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. In fact, there’s a pretty good argument to be made that the first diving helmet was used in Lake Nemi, in an attempt to raise the larger of the two ships. One Francesco de Marchi tried to attach grappling hooks and pull the ship out of the mud, but all he did was rip off more pieces of the ship. Fishermen here had a thriving side business in artifacts through the seventeenth and eighteenth and even the nineteenth centuries — I can’t even guess how many bits and pieces of the ships are scattered around Europe in private houses, antiquities picked up on the Grand Tour.”
“Sounds like wholesale looting,” Mitch said. He paused, choosing his words carefully even though he knew Signora Ruggieri spoke only minimal English. “I’m kind of surprised they didn’t pull up more than they’d bargained for.”