Water Theatre (46 page)

Adam walked back to the open door, waited for me to get up and follow him and led the way along a vaulted corridor, up a flight of stone steps and out into a moonlit night. Bats skittered about the eaves of the villa. The air smelt heady and fresh. Beyond the hypnotic whirr of the crickets I took in the sound of water flowing through the garden below.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“To the House of the Dead.” Adam turned towards me then. “If you're still sure you want to go through with this, that is. You can leave, if you prefer.”

Already the night felt to be floating round me. His answer had added to the prevailing air of unreality, but I nodded my assent and followed him through the shadows of the pergola and out across the enclosed courtyard at the rear of the villa. As we made for the dark archway in the wall opposite the house, I heard a coarse peal of laughter somewhere above my head. Looking up, I saw the bulky figure of a woman standing
on the little balcony above the arch. She bent forward from the waist, reached for the hem of her long black gown and lifted it high to her chest, revealing the naked white spread of her belly, thighs and groin.

The spectacle lasted only a fraction of a second before she laughed out loud again with an edge of mockery in her laughter and let the dress drop. Then she dissolved into the shadows at her back.

I said, “Was that Angelina?”

Adam offered no explanation. He pushed open the wrought-iron gates and stepped through into the dripping darkness of the arch. I hesitated, staring down the tunnel to the far end, where moonlight gleamed like frost on the surface of the pool. Adam turned to beckon me on, waited until I stood at his side, and then we entered the grotto together.

I glanced up where the larger-than-life statue of a satyr embraced a nymph on one side of the cave, and a Nereid reclined in the arms of a Triton-like figure on the other. The floor beneath my feet was no longer paved with flagstones, and we had taken only a couple of steps onto an iron grating when a grinding noise creaked out of a crevice in the rocks to our left. Adam stopped as if in surprise, putting a hand to my shoulder to halt me. Almost immediately fierce jets of cold water spurted from the carved wineskins held by the satyr and the nymph to our left, and from the conch shells in the hands of the other two figures on our right. The water splashed against our bodies where we stood. It was pouring from the roof above us and spouting from the mouths of fauns and dolphins carved into the rocks. By the time we dashed through the grotto and out onto the path around the pond, we were both drenched.

Orazio was waiting for us there, offering two large bath towels. Beside him stood Larry Stromberg holding what looked like lengths of white cloth folded over his arm. Smiling at my furious scowl as I shook water from my hair and clothes, he said, “Welcome through, old thing. Don't be too upset by our
little
gioco d'acqua
. It's done you no harm, and serves a serious purpose. Now get out of those wet clothes, dry yourself down, and put on this spankingly clean tunic I have for you.”

Before I could reply, Adam touched me on the shoulder again. I turned and saw him standing beside me, his lean body already naked as he dried his hair with the towel that Orazio had handed to him. If the drenching had been intended as a humiliation, then he had suffered it too.

He said, “The same thing happens to everyone who enters the water theatre for what we're about to do.”

Larry handed him a white tunic, which he pulled on over his head. With my clothes dripping wet, I had no practical choice other than to strip and dry myself and do the same. The linen tunic fell to calf length, hung loosely at the left shoulder and was belted at the waist with a narrow cord. By contrast with Larry's buttoned and embroidered costume, it left me feeling like a spear carrier in an amateur production of a Jacobean play. I was about to ask Adam just what he thought we were about to do when I was silenced by a startling alteration in the light. The ornate façade rising beyond the marble pool was now brightly illuminated, and the sculptures carved into its panels and niches – wild men, armoured knights, garlanded ladies, various animals and birds – were all thrown into sharper relief. At the same time, the night air filled with a shushing sound, and water began to pour from chutes concealed within the stonework. Gathering force, it twisted and plunged in cataracts among the carved figures, which seemed animated now by the play of light on the water cascading round them.

The façade of Gabriella's
teatro d'acqua
had been impressive enough the first time I saw it, motionless and silent, on the morning when I left the villa, but gazing up again at that kinetic stage set, I felt something of the same wonder with which the hermaphroditic figure at the top of the pediment seemed to meditate on the shining spectacle at his feet. In that moment I saw that this fantasia of the baroque imagination
was a portrayal of the legend of Fontanalba. The statue was the transfigured revenant returned from his search for the sun at midnight to see the spring breaking from the earth at his command. And this whole improbable artifice had been set in motion, on this occasion at least, for no one's benefit but mine.

“Our presence is required,” said Adam quietly.

A female figure was now standing by the arch at the centre of the façade. Holding a silver staff, she wore a costume of deep carmine red cut in the High Renaissance style. The muslin-veiled hat, the full sleeves, frothy with lace, fastened to the bodice by ribbons stitched with pearls, and the richly brocaded skirt might have been worn at a Venetian carnival – not least because the woman's face was covered by a mask as pallid as the moon. For a hopeful moment I thought this was Marina, come to meet me at last, even if concealed behind a disguise; but the figure's height was wrong. My spirit dipped again.

Guessing it must be Gabriella, I said to Adam, “Sibilla, I presume!”

Without smiling, Adam said, “It might be wiser to keep your sarcasm in check.”

“Against the voice of the
nihil
,” Larry put in, “nothing is safe.”

I gazed back at the glistening marvel of the water theatre, reflecting that the cascade must flow through into the garden and out to the fountain at the front of the villa. In Adam's account of Clitumnus, Gabriella had called the
tempietto
“a sacred machine”, and it occurred to me that this house might have been built on the same principles, for it too seemed to be a vestibule through which water was conducted between the dark world under the hill and the world of light outside.

As we approached, Gabriella turned into the narrow arch and led the way under the vault of a short stone passage, through into a chamber with a half-domed ceiling, similar to the roof of an apse. After the baroque fantasia of the façade, the room
we had entered was small, dimly lit by candlelight and almost shockingly bare. Covered only in brownish-pink plaster, the walls were featureless, apart from a small wooden door directly opposite the one by which we had entered. Even when that first door had closed behind me, I could still hear the murmur of the water plunging outside.

Gabriella led the way to the door at the far end of the chamber, took a candle from a basket on the wall and lit it from one already burning in a sconce. Adam and Larry did the same with the two remaining candles. The hinges of the door whinnied as Gabriella opened it. With the two men offering the shifting light of their candles at my back, I stepped through the arch into a narrow tunnel. The candle flames bowed to the suck of air as the door fell shut behind us. Under a low barrel vault of rock our shadows flitted along walls covered in rough-cast plaster. The stone floor slabs sloped downwards into the belly of the hill.

After ten yards or so, the tunnel opened into a wider natural gallery in the rock. From somewhere out of sight came the sound of falling water. We advanced up a steepish gradient before Gabriella mounted a flight of rough steps and vanished in the darkness at the top. Following her, I saw how the passage curved sharply to the right to dip through a narrow cleft in the rock face, which was shiny with damp. The candles illuminated splashes of ochre, pink, white, dun brown and amber-tinted calcite in the rock, but their light penetrated only a little way into the gloom.

Where the track inclined steeply down again, I saw Gabriella stoop to pass through a gap little more than four feet high beneath a spur of mineral-stained limestone. As I crouched to get through, my hair brushed against the underside of the rock, making me think of the massive tonnage above my head. The passage took a narrow turn. I found more headroom. The sound of water came louder on my ears. Then we were through into a wide chamber, where Gabriella used the flame from her
own candle to light others fixed in sconces to the walls. Light leapt among the recesses of the cave. One wall was textured like drapery gathered into swags. Another formed a geological map of compacted layers. I made out the swirling patterns etched by some primordial whirlpool into the low roof of the chamber. I felt as though I had entered one of the organs of the earth.

Now the candle flames were reflected in the bluish-green water of a pool. A skiff floated there, tied by its painter to a stake driven into a gravel strand. An arch of rock sprang from the strand with the grace of a flying buttress, spanning the pool to meet the opposite wall of the cave. A torrent of water poured down that wall.

Despite Adam's earlier warning, I felt a strong need to break the silence. Smiling at Gabriella I said, “Is this Sibilla's cavern then? I don't see any pomegranates.”

“You are letting your imagination wander inside the wrong story,” she answered. “
La grotta della Sibilla
is in another part of Umbria. We have our own legend here in Fontanalba.”

“So is this where the Revenant came to see the sun shining at midnight?”

“You have to go deeper still for that,” Adam said. He handed me the candle he was holding, turned towards the skiff, hauled on the painter to pull it closer to the strand, and with a curt nod of the head indicated that I should sit in the stern. I hesitated, looking from his impassive face, beyond the buttress of rock, to the black hollow into which this underground river was flowing. Having come this far, could I just laugh it off, call a halt, say this was too much and walk away?

Adam, Gabriella and Larry were all studying me. Not one of them said a word. A flippant remark about Charon and obols, sops and Cerberus stuck in my throat. Thinking
What the hell!
and wondering why I was doing it, I boarded the boat. Adam climbed in after me, and fitted the oars into the brass rowlocks. Calling out something I didn't understand, Larry pushed us off towards the middle of the pool.

“What did he say?” I asked.

“He said
Tharsei
,” Adam answered. “It's ancient Greek. It means
Take heart
.”

A moment later we were floating under the arch of rock into the gloom beyond.

When we rounded a bend in the rock, the faint light from the candles vanished behind us. Moments later the prow bumped against stone as the skiff took another turn. I heard the creak of the rowlocks and the dip of oar blades into slowly moving water. Otherwise we were afloat on silence.

“Why haven't the others come?” I asked.

“You'd better not let that candle blow out. It's our only light.”

“You don't have matches with you?”

“It's best if you keep quiet.”

After a pause I said, “You might at least say where we're going.”

“I already have.”

“And you're seriously suggesting that my father's there?”

“Not only him.”

“Who else?”

“One can never say.”

“You mean you're taking me to some sort of seance?”

“I mean what I said. We're entering the House of the Dead. Now be silent please.”

Apart from the small flame cupped in my hand, we were in complete darkness. Already nervous, it was impossible suddenly not to feel very scared.

Over countless millennia this underground river must have incised its way ever more deeply, gouging its passage through almost solid rock. A couple of feet above our heads, the roof had been worn smooth. Again it was like travelling through the entrails of a living organism, though when I closed my eyes it also felt as if I was being drawn on strong currents through the channels of my mind.

We rounded a number of bends before Adam shipped the oars. I saw how the passage had narrowed to a constricted throat of rock. Pulled by the current, the skiff was moving more swiftly. Nor was there room to turn the boat about and go back.

Minutes later the skiff grounded on another strand. Immediately Adam stepped ashore and held the prow steady as I climbed out, anxiously protecting the candle flame. Then he hauled the skiff farther up the slope to where the current couldn't pull it away, and pulled out two jumpsuits from under the prow. “We'll need these,” he said. He slipped out of his tunic, put one of the jumpsuits on, and then took the candle from me while I did the same. The cloth, I noticed, was thickly padded at the elbows and knees. When we were both suited up, Adam led me across the uneven floor of rock beyond the strand. After ten yards or so he pointed to a dark pit in the floor ahead. Holding the candle close to the mouth of the shaft, he said, “Can you see the ladder? We're going down. You go first.”

I stared down where the ladder vanished into darkness. “How deep is it?”

“There are twenty-two rungs. Count them as you go. The ladder's secured into the rock. Just hold on till you reach the ground.”

“Is this really necessary?

“Yes. Now go.”

I had made my way down a dozen rungs of the iron ladder when, without warning, total darkness shut down round me.

“What's happened?” My shocked voice echoed in the shaft.

“The candle went out.” In the darkness I heard Adam swing on to the ladder. “Keep going,” he ordered. I'm coming down.”