Order of the Air Omnibus: Books 1-3 (39 page)

Instead he nodded. “I think we can,” he said.

F
rom 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.

A
lma’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 purpose 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.”

A tablet, he meant, or something else that would have released the creature. Jerry chose his words with equal care. “I don’t think you could have gotten at — anything important — without modern equipment. They didn’t bring in diving suits until 1895 and that group was more interested in the showy pieces, mosaics and bronzes and the like. Luckily, the Director General of Antiquities realized the damage that was being done to the site and called a halt to private explorations. He had a survey done of the lake bed back in, I think, 1905, and there was talk then of draining the lake, but between the war and politics, nothing got done until three years ago. Mussolini threw government resources behind the project, and — that’s what’s gotten things this far. What really interests me is that when they started to look at draining the lake, there was already a Roman tunnel in place, and all they had to do was to clear it —”

“Excuse me, signore,” the maid said from the doorway. “Signor Averill is here. From the project?”

Jerry didn’t recognize the name, but from the look on Signora Ruggieri’s face, he had to be one of the graduate students. And so he proved to be, a fair, sun-burned English boy with a round clever face and unbecoming tortoiseshell glasses. He stood twisting his hat in his hands, but managed to convey apologies from both Professor Searce and Professor Ucelli: they were in the middle of preparing for the Prime Minister’s visit, and Searce wasn’t able to get away, but Averill would be happy to bring them down to the site and show them around a little. He was an epigrapher himself, Averill admitted shyly. His particular expertise wasn’t currently in demand.

Jerry accepted gladly, and there was a moment’s awkwardness as Alma started to suggest that Mitch stay behind and rest. He stared her down, and in the end they all piled into Averill’s ratty car — it might have begun life as a Fiat, but had been rebuilt enough times to be unrecognizable — and drove bumping along the track that led to the lakeside.

They could hear the heavy rhythm of the pumps, filling the air, and Averill pulled to a stop well shy of the exposed lakebed. A gang of laborers was working a frame sieve, while others pushed wheelbarrows up the muddy path, and another pair worked a hand pump, playing lake water gently through the frame. Another group was laying a fresh set of duckboards, adding to the network of wooden paths that ran to the water’s edge. Half out of the water, rising stark against the green hillside, the prow of a ship curved up from the mud, supported by a framework of new timber. The ribs of the bow rose behind it, shorter, stronger, also held up with props, and above it, higher than a man’s head, the deck itself was partially intact. The photos didn’t do it justice, Jerry thought. He had thought he’d pictured it properly, something like Cleopatra’s legendary barge, but this was so much larger, so much more elaborate — no wonder the first treasure hunters had found marbles and mosaics and bronzes. This was a floating palace, impossible — and impossibly sacrilegious, when it first set sail. It would have dominated the lake, erased it, negated even the temple that had stood on the far bank. It would have drawn all eyes, its gilding and its paint and silk and sails capturing all the light, all worship. No wonder Claudius had sunk the ships: they were beautiful and bizarre and entirely, painfully wrong, here in this perfect lake.

“I had no idea it was this big,” Alma said softly. Jerry glanced sideways, saw her shake her head. “I thought — I don’t know what I thought.”

Averill was nodding. “I know,” he said. “It doesn’t seem quite real, does it? And there were two of them.” He shook away the unprofessional awe. “It’s 67 meters long, that’s just a hair under 220 feet, and we’ve exposed about a third of that. And the second ship is even bigger.”

“How wide is it?” Mitch asked. He shaded his eyes, as though that could make it seem clearer.

“Nineteen meters,” Averill answered. “62 feet, or a little less.”

Lewis was silent, his face still and cold. He saw it, too, Jerry thought, saw the sacrilege, maybe more clearly than anyone.

“The second ship’s 235 feet long and 80 feet wide,” Averill said.

“How long will it take you to get that one out?” Mitch asked, and Averill gave an apologetic shrug.

“I’m not an excavator, I’m afraid. Very possibly another year or more. And there are funding issues, so there’s been some talk of stopping the pumping until we have the first ship squared away. That’s part of what the Prime Minister’s visit is about, to make sure we can continue the project.”

“It might make sense to secure the first ship,” Jerry said, and Averill nodded.

“Except that, as I understand it, we’d have to keep pumping the whole time just to keep the water from coming back, so it’s not as much of a saving?” He gave a shy smile. “But, as I said, I’m not an excavator.”

Lewis was frowning slightly, his gaze wandering from the ships to the workmen and back again. There was something there, Jerry knew, something he felt or saw, and he was glad to see Alma take his arm. Lewis started, smiled, but looked away again. Not for the first time, Jerry wished his own talents lay in that direction. Or that Lewis was better trained. He saw Lewis lean close to Alma, and saw his lips shape words:
It’s here.

Not unexpected, Jerry told himself, but the cold crept over him anyway. Guessing and knowing were entirely different things. It was here, lying in wait for the Italian Prime Minister, here where it had been bound before. It would enjoy that irony. He glanced out at the mud, the sparkling water beyond. There were dozens of workers, and just as many archeologists. It could be any of them.

“I can take you out to the ship if you’d like,” Averill said, and Jerry brought his attention back to the matter at hand.

“I’d like that,” he said.

Alma declined, with a quick glance at Lewis, claiming her shoes wouldn’t stand it, and Lewis offered to keep her company. Mitch seemed to have gotten the message, too, and in the end it was only Jerry who made his way awkwardly across the duckboards to the platform erected beside the ship. The noise of the pumps was much louder here, and the dead-fish stench of the mud was very much in evidence. The wood of the ship was dark and swollen, the grain soft and rotten-looking; there were dents where the supporting timbers pressed into the planks of the hull.