The Night Villa

by Carol Goodman

  “You’ve guessed already, haven’t you?” Ely says. “The magos is John Lyros.”

  In the silence that follows Ely’s declaration, I find myself staring at the Sorrentine peninsula and remembering what John Lyros said to me the day we climbed up to Tiberius’s villa. He said that the view reminded him of the view from the Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion, which is exactly where it turns out Phineas found The Golden Verses. And where else had Lyros excavated? Samos, Delphi, Eleusis…the birthplace of Pythagoras and then the two most important religious shrines in ancient Greece—the same places Phineas had traveled to. Had they both been tracking the lost writing of Pythagoras?

  I remember, too, that at our dinner last night Lyros had pretended never to have heard of the Tetraktys, and yet he’d known without me telling him that the cult believed in the transmigration of the soul. I had also noticed Lyros’s own obsession with numbers. It made sense, but one thing bothers me.

  “If John Lyros is really your magos, and he wanted all along to keep Elgin away from The Golden Verses—”

  “He didn’t just want to keep him away,” Ely corrects me, “he wanted him dead. But he couldn’t try again after Dale killed himself.”

  “Then why did Lyros invite the Papyrus Project here to use his villa for lab space and living quarters? Elgin told me the invitation came after the shooting, which surprised him because the Lyrik Foundation had turned down the project to begin with….” I pause, remembering that I had thought they turned down the project because Elgin didn’t have reliable proof that the MSI technology worked. But if what Ely is saying is true…“Lyros turned down the project at first because he wanted the scrolls himself?”

  “Exactly. But once Lyros realized he couldn’t stop Elgin from coming here he decided that the best he could do was keep him close so he could keep an eye on him.” Ely gets up and starts clearing away the breakfast things, plucking up plates and snatching at crumbs like a gull swooping down on moving prey. He’s clearly agitated. I wonder if it’s because I referred to Elgin by his first name. Is he, I wonder, still jealous? “You see, Lyros needs to see Phineas’s journal as it’s scanned to find out where the missing scrolls are. Now he knows they’re buried in the Sirens’ Grotto or one of the underground passages leading from the grotto to the Chamber of the God.”

  “How do you know that?” I ask. “Agnes and George only just scanned that portion yesterday.”

  Ely pauses in his cleaning-up and stares into the bottom of a china teacup as though he were looking for the answer to my question in the cup’s pattern of blue and white flowers. “The scanned portions of the Phineas scroll are being sent to the FBI agents I’m staying with.” He raises his eyes from the teacup and meets my gaze. “I shouldn’t really say by whom.”

  “It must be George,” I say. “I’d know if it were Agnes, and Maria wouldn’t want to cooperate with the American government. Simon couldn’t have sent the last scan…. My God, Lyros must have been the one who killed Simon! I saw them arguing the other night about something. Simon must have realized what was going on and threatened to go to the police—”

  “Or tried to blackmail Lyros. I knew as soon as I heard about Simon that I had to contact you and warn you about Lyros. I assume that after reading this last installment Lyros will want to explore the passages underneath the Villa della Notte, right?”

  “Yes, he wants to do that today.”

  I look back up at the villa, but there’s still no sign of life there. “They plan to get an early start. If I don’t get back soon, they’ll know I’m missing.”

  “Were you planning to go to the site?” he asks.

  “I hadn’t decided. I went to bed before we discussed who would work on the site and who would stay here. I assume George will stay to scan the rest of Phineas’s journal. I bet they’re working on it now—and Lyros and Lawrence will go to the site. And Maria, of course. After all, she’s supposed to keep an eye on the excavation for PISA. Wait. How would Lyros plan to smuggle the scroll away from Maria?”

  Ely shrugs. “I presume by bribing her.” He’s gotten all the breakfast things onto the tray and now turns to carry it down below.

  “Hm. I don’t like her much, but she doesn’t seem like the kind of person who would be influenced by money alone. There must be something else.”

  “The magos is very good at finding people’s weaknesses and working on them,” Ely says as he comes back up on deck. The way he looks at me makes me wonder how much he knows about my dinner with Lyros and his invitation to stay with him in Naples last night. “I don’t know what Maria Prezziotti’s weakness is, but I wouldn’t count on her to protect The Golden Verses. You should go to the site. If a scroll is discovered, someone will have to take it back to the lab to be scanned. Both Lyros and Dr. Lawrence will trust you to take it back to the villa, but Lyros will also make sure that he gets the scroll back from you once it’s been scanned. He’ll make up some story about why you have to give it to him and he’ll think that you’ll do it because, well, because he’ll think he’s charmed you.”

  “Because he’s made love to me, is that what you mean? He hasn’t, you know.”

  “But he’s tried, right? He asked you to stay in Naples last night.”

  “How do you know that? Do you have his car bugged?

  “No. I guessed. It’s what I’d have done. You didn’t go with him, though.”

  “No, I didn’t.” I don’t admit that I’d even considered it. The thought that I might have gone with him makes me shudder. Ely steps near to me and puts his arm around me, pulling me close. It’s the first time he’s touched me since we’ve come onto the boat, but I instantly feel that it’s what he’s wanted to do all along.

  “I can’t tell you how relieved I was that you didn’t spend the night with him. I know how persuasive he can be, how seductive…” Ely’s hand touches the collar of my robe, drawing it across my throat. His fingers graze my skin and linger on my throat. “But believe me, he can be brutal when he’s crossed. Did he become angry when you refused to stay with him?”

  “I demurred more than refused,” I answer, being as truthful as I dare. “And besides, he’s the kind of man who always thinks he’s got a chance with a woman. I doubt he was that put off by my hesitation.”

  Ely’s hand, which had begun to stray from my throat to my collarbone, grasps one lapel of my robe instead and, taking his other arm off my shoulder, grasps the other, tugging the robe around me tighter. I realize it’s because I’m shivering. “Then he’ll think he can trust you. Besides, he has another form of leverage: Iusta’s diary. He knows how much you want that. I saw that you ended up doing your thesis on her and I remember how excited you were when you first read about her. Don’t be surprised if Lyros offers to trade you The Golden Verses for the diary of Petronia Iusta.”

  “And if I don’t agree to let him have The Golden Verses?”

  “I’ll be watching you—and of course Elgin Lawrence will be there.”

  I’d almost forgotten about Elgin’s role in this. “Does Elgin know about this plan?”

  “It was his idea. He counted on the fact that you’d want Iusta’s diary enough to get the scroll for yourself. That’s what he used to lure you here to Italy in the first place, isn’t it?”

  I nod, remembering the day that Elgin dropped by my house with that first fragment of Phineas’s that mentioned Iusta.

  “And, of course, when you saw it was The Golden Verses you’d hand it over to him. Lawrence just didn’t think it was necessary to tell you everything that was going on, but I didn’t like that idea. I’m not sure I like the idea of you being involved in this at all. You can leave right now. I’ll take you to Naples. I can put you on a plane this afternoon.”

  “No,” I say. “If John Lyros is really responsible for the deaths of Odette Renfrew and Barry Biddle, then I want to help you get him. Just tell me what I have to do.”

  It doesn’t take long for Ely to outline the plan that he and the FBI h
ave worked out. Clearly they were confident that I would agree to help. When we’ve gone over it twice, Ely says I’d better get back to the villa before the tide blocks the passage through the grotto.

  I’d almost forgotten I had to swim back through the grotto. When I look in that direction, I can’t see the opening. Ely must notice my apprehension. He offers to swim back with me. I’m glad because when we get past the rock I see that the opening to the grotto is, indeed, completely underwater. I can’t even tell where it is. Ely finds it, though.

  “I’ll go through first,” he tells me as we tread water above the entrance to the grotto. “All you have to do is follow. Are you ready?” I’m not really, but the longer we wait, the more tired we’ll become and the higher the water level inside will rise. I nod my assent and take as deep a breath as my damaged lungs can manage.

  Ely porpoise-dives, jackknifing his body straight down along the rock face. I follow, keeping my eyes open, even though the saltwater stings, and fixed on Ely. The cleft in the rock is visible only as a pale blue seam, like a half-closed blue eye in the yellow face of the rock. It looks narrower than I remember. Ely slips easily through it, vanishing into the rough limestone as if absorbed into it. I hesitate, resisting the urge to surface, and then I force myself down deeper, grasp the edges of the rock on either side of the seam, and pull myself into the blue eye. My head and shoulders clear the cleft, but then, as I start to push myself free, something catches at my hip and holds me back. I twist around to see what it is and the pressure increases, like an arm circling my waist, as if the rock had pulled me into an embrace. Only it’s an embrace that will drown me.

  I twist further left. The edge of my T-shirt has caught on a sharp outcropping. By turning, the shirt has wrapped itself around my waist. I try to grip the shirt to pull it away, but the cloth is twisted so tight I can’t get any purchase on it. It’s so tight that I can feel the pressure now on my chest and lungs. You just have to turn the other way, I hear a voice inside my head say. The voice sounds far away but I obey it, spinning my torso to my right. My shirt loosens, but doesn’t come free of the rock. I try to look for Ely but I’m facing down and Ely, of course, would have swum upward to the surface. I try to look up, but that only tightens the rock’s hold on me. Finally, though, I catch a glimpse of strong legs kicking up to the sunlit surface—gold merging with gold while down here in this blue glass crypt I slowly begin to drown.

  If only I could call out, I think, and then, as if I had, Ely turns. He dives back and swims toward me, a streak of gold cleaving the blue. When he reaches me he tugs at my shirt, but I’ve managed to twist it so securely onto the rock it won’t come off. He tugs at it, trying to tear me loose, but the fabric holds. Then he looks up, his face level with mine, his black eyes wide and intent as if he were trying to communicate something to me through his look. But I can’t think what. Once again I’ve failed to understand his meaning, I think as even his face begins to blur in front of me. The water seems to be growing darker and colder, his hair and eyes melting into the blackness, retreating from me. I can feel his hands, though, moving down my body, under my shirt, over my breasts and shoulders, pulling me…but not up. He’s pulling me deeper into the water, his limbs wrapped around mine.

  I recall a painting that my freshman college roommate had tacked to our dorm room wall. She liked Pre-Raphaelites—pictures of nymphs with long hair pulling unsuspecting boys into lily-covered ponds. One picture—I think it was by Burne-Jones—showed a nymph or siren wrapped around the body of a handsome youth, dragging him down to the depths of the sea. That’s what it was called, I remember now: The Depths of the Sea.

  We’ve arrived at the cave at the bottom of the sea. I begin to make out others in the murk, black shapes flitting through starlit blue, all those who have died in the sea. Slaves still bound to the galley oars of their Roman triremes, fishermen tangled in their nets, village girls tossed into the sea as punishment for losing their chastity. I imagine their long hair billowing in the water like the mermaids at Aquarena Springs. One turns to me and it’s my mother, her eyes shining with that same excitement she had that day at the Mermaid show. It had scared me that day. I had thought the excitement came from the idea of staying on at the show for as long as we wanted, but now I see that the light in her eyes has nothing to do with the show. The spark in her eyes is her love for me. I feel an answering spark in my own chest, a flame that grows until it cleaves me open and leaves me gasping, drawing in raw, fiery mouthfuls of air, shipwrecked on a rocky shore.

  I open my eyes. Instead of my mother, I see Ely’s face hovering above me. His hair drips saltwater into my mouth and eyes. He lowers his face and presses his lips against my lips and blows air into my mouth. My lungs fill with his breath, reaching into the empty place in my chest that my damaged lung hasn’t filled yet. He pulls back, sees that my eyes are open and lays his hands on my bare chest to feel it rise and fall. I feel the ache of the emptiness under his fingers. He moves away, but I pull him back, unable to bear the feel of that yawning chasm anymore. He hesitates for just a second, searching my eyes for something. What he sees decides him. He lowers his head again and presses his lips to mine. Stretching out beside me on the rock shelf, Ely presses the length of his body against mine. I twine myself around him, drawing warmth out of his skin just as I’d drawn breath from his lungs.

  His chest, slim hips, and long legs are crisscrossed with waves of light reflecting off the water. Like a tattoo of scales. As I trace a wavy line from collarbone to pelvis, my hand absorbs the same pattern and the same blue glow. We’ve been transformed by the same spell—a couple from Ovid whose love turns them into blue-scaled sea serpents. Maybe we’ve both drowned, I think, tasting the salt of his shoulder as he presses himself on top of me. Maybe this is what happens when Orpheus goes back into the underworld to bring back Euridice, or Demeter sends Mercury for Persephone. Facilis descensus Averno. It’s easy to go down to Hell, but not so easy to come back. Maybe the price you pay is that you are branded with the mark of death, just as I’ve been branded by his absence these last five years—the ghost roots Ely left snaking deep inside of me.

  Above me, he hesitates, eyes as dark and fathomless as any underworld lake. Do I want to make that journey? they ask. I wrap my legs around him and pull him into me, hanging on to him as if I’d drown were I to let go.

  We stay until the tide reaches the edge of the shelf and licks at our naked bodies.

  “I have to swim back or I won’t make it,” Ely says. “If you want to come back with me…”

  “I’d better go back to the villa. They’ll wonder where I’ve gone and come looking. Besides, you need me at the excavation to watch for the scroll—to find The Golden Verses.”

  “Sophie, I don’t want you to think what just happened has anything to do with getting the Pythagorean scroll. I didn’t plan for this to happen.”

  “Of course not,” I say, laughing. The sound echoes in the grotto, the blue waves of light dancing like mocking imps. Ely has pulled on his swimsuit and dangles his legs over the edge of the stone shelf. I retrieve my robe from the step right outside the grotto and put it on. When I turn back to Ely, I see that he’s watching me. I bend down to kiss him, my damp hair falling between us. He wraps a lock around his finger, giving a little tug.

  “Don’t take any chances. If they find anything in the tunnels today, try to be the one who takes it back to be scanned. If Lyros objects, don’t argue. Don’t do anything to make him suspicious. When you come back to the island go to the Gran’Caffe and order a lemonade. I’ll know, then, that you found something. Then come here as soon as you can.”

  He kisses me again. Then he lets my hair go and dives into the water. The light reflections on the domed ceiling sway wildly, like a school of fish wheeling at the approach of a shark. I watch him swim through the crack underneath the water until I’m sure he hasn’t gotten stuck in the cleft as I had, and then I hurry outside onto the steps to see if I can get a glimpse of him sw
imming back to the boat. When I step outside, though, I’m blinded by the sun. I cover my eyes for a moment. When I open them, I see Maria standing two steps above me, hands on her hips, glaring at me through white-framed sunglasses.

  “There you are! They sent me down here to see if you’d gone swimming. Everyone was afraid you’d drowned!”

  I shrug, moving quickly up the steps to block Maria’s view of the water so she doesn’t notice Ely swimming back to the boat. “Well, as you can see, I didn’t.” I put my hand on her elbow and steer her back up the steps. “Let’s hurry back to reassure the others.”

  Maria raises her glasses and gives me a hard look. “Something has happened,” she says. “You look different somehow. You are, how do you say? Ardente.”

  “Glowing,” I translate. “It must be the Mediterranean sun and all the olive oil I’ve been eating.” I smile at the word Maria had chosen. Ardente. Yes, I feel like I’m on fire.

  Everyone is gathered in the lower courtyard at the breakfast table when Maria and I return. If I’d been expecting cries of relief that I haven’t drowned I’d have been disappointed. Only Elgin looks happy to see me even though his greeting is none too cordial.

  “You’re late, Chase, and you’ve missed Phineas’s account of the eruption. George and Agnes stayed up all night scanning it.”

  “She can catch up while we’re gone,” Lyros says, his lilac eyes rising from his china coffee cup and traveling up my body from my toes to the crown of my head. I’m uncomfortably aware that I’m naked under my robe and that he might wonder why I hadn’t worn a suit for my early-morning swim. “You went down to the grotto very early. You must not have gotten a lot of sleep.”

  “I woke up early, but I feel fine,” I say more curtly than I mean to. “I’d like to go to the site. It won’t take me a minute to change.”