When in Rome (7 page)

Grant fairly successfully repressed whatever embarrassment he felt. Suddenly the Baron and Baroness burst out in simultaneous laughter and cries of apology. How ridiculous! How impertinent! Really, what could have possessed them!

Throughout this incident, Major Sweet had contemplated the Van der Veghels with raised eyebrows and a slight snarl. Sophy, stifling a dreadful urge to giggle, found herself observed by Alleyn and Grant, while Lady Braceley turned her huge, deadened lamps from one man to another, eager to respond to whatever mood she might fancy she detected.

Kenneth leant far over the rail and peered into the depths. ‘I’m looking down through the centuries,’ he announced. His voice was distorted as if he spoke into an enormous megaphone. ‘Boom! Boom!’ he shouted and was echoed far below.
‘Ghost beneath: Swear,’
he boomed, and then: ‘Oh God!’ He straightened up and was seen to have turned a sickly white. ‘I’d forgotten,’ he said. ‘I’m allergic to heights. What a revolting place.’

‘Shall we move on?’ said Grant.

Sebastian Mailer led the way to a vestibule where there was the usual shop for postcards, trinkets and colour slides. Here he produced tickets of admission into the lower regions of San Tommaso.

The first descent was by way of two flights of stone stairs with a landing between. The air was fresh and dry and smelt only of stone. On the landing was a map of the underground regions and Mailer
drew their attention to it. ‘There’s another one down below,’ he said. ‘Later on, some of you may like to explore. You can’t really get lost: if you think you are, keep on going up any stairs you meet and sooner or later you’ll find yourself here. These are very beautiful, aren’t they?’

He drew their attention to two lovely pillars laced about with convolvulus tendrils. ‘Pagan,’ Mr Mailer crooned, ‘gloriously pagan. Uplifted from their harmonious resting place in the Flavian house below. By industrious servants of the Vatican. There are ways and ways of looking at the Church’s appropriations are there not?’

Major Sweet astonished his companions by awarding this remark a snort of endorsement and approval.

Mr Mailer smiled and continued.

‘Before we descend—look, ladies and gentlemen, behind you.’

They turned. In two niches of the opposite wall were terra-cotta sculptures: one a male, ringleted and smiling, the other a tall woman with a broken child in her arms. They were superbly lit from below and seemed to have, at that instant, sprung to life.

‘Apollo, it is thought,’ Mr Mailer said, ‘and perhaps Athena. Etruscan, of course. But the archaic smiles are Greek. The Greeks, you know, despised the Etruscans for their cruelty in battle and there are people who read cruelty into these smiles, transposed to Etruscan mouths.’ He turned to Grant: ‘You, I believe—’ he began and stopped. Grant was staring at the Van der Veghels with an intensity that communicated itself to the rest of the party.

They stood side by side admiring the sculptures. Their likeness, already noticed by Grant, to the Etruscan terra-cottas of the Villa Giulia startlingly declared itself here. It was as if their faces were glasses in which Apollo and Athena smiled at their own images. Sharp arrowhead smiles, full eyes and that almost uncanny liveliness—the lot, thought Alleyn.

It was obvious that all the company had been struck by this resemblance, except, perhaps, Lady Braceley who was uninterested in the Van der Veghels. But nobody ventured to remark on it apart from Sebastian Mailer who, with an extraordinary smirk, murmured as if to himself: ‘How
very
remarkable.
Both.’

The Van der Veghels, busy with flashlights, appeared not to hear him and Alleyn very much doubted if any of the others did. Barnaby
Grant was already leading them down a further flight of steps into a church that for fifteen hundred years had lain buried.

In excavating it a number of walls, arches and pillars had been introduced to support the new basilica above it. The ancient church apart from the original apse, was now a place of rather low, narrow passages, of deep shadows and of echoes. Clearly heard, whenever they all kept still, was the voice of the subterranean stream. At intervals these regions were most skilfully lit so that strange faces with large eyes floated out of the dark: wall-paintings that had been preserved in their long sleep by close-packed earth.

The air,’ Barnaby Grant said, ‘has done them no good. They are slowly fading.’

‘They enjoyed being stifled,’ Sebastian Mailer said from somewhere in the rear. He gave out a little whinnying sound.

‘More than I do,’ Lady Braceley said. ‘It’s horribly stuffy down here, isn’t it?’

‘There are plenty of vents,’ Major Sweet said. ‘The air is noticeably fresh, Lady Braceley.’

‘I don’t think so,’ she complained. ‘I don’t think I’m enjoying this part, Major. I don’t think I want—‘ She screamed.

They had turned a corner and come face to face with a nude, white man wearing a crown of leaves in his curls. He had full, staring eyes and again the archaic smile. His right arm stretched towards them.

‘Auntie darling, what
are
you on about!’ Kenneth said. ‘He’s fabulous. Who is he, Seb?’

‘Apollo again. Apollo shines bright in the Mithraic mystery. He was raised up from below by recent excavators to garnish the Galalian corridors.’

‘Damn highfalutin’ poppycock,’ Major Sweet remarked. It was impossible to make out in what camp he belonged. So Kenneth, Alleyn noted, calls Mailer ‘Seb’. Quick work!

‘And they are still digging?’ the Baron asked Grant as they moved on. ‘The Apollo had not risen when your Simon came to S. Tommaso? He is then a contemporary resurrection?’

‘A latter-day Lazarus,’ fluted Mr Mailer. ‘But how
much
more attractive!’

Somewhere in the dark Kenneth echoed his giggle.

Sophy, who was between Alleyn and Grant, said under her breath, ‘I wish they wouldn’t,’ and Grant made a sound of agreement that seemed to be echoed by Major Sweet.

They continued along the cloister of the old church.

It was now that Baron Van der Veghel developed a playful streak. Holding his camera at the ready and humming a little air, he outstripped the party, turned a corner and disappeared into shadow.

Mr Mailer, at this juncture, was in full spate. ‘We approach another Etruscan piece,’ he said. ‘Thought to be Mercury. One comes upon it rather suddenly: on the left.’

It was indeed a sudden encounter. The Mercury was in a deep recess: an entrance, perhaps to some lost passage. He was less strongly lit than the Apollo but the glinting smile was sharp enough. When they came up with him, a second head rose over his shoulders and smirked at them. A flashlight wiped it out and the echoes rang with Baron Van der Veghel’s uninhibited laughter. Lady Braceley gave another scream.

‘It’s too much,’ she cried. ‘No. It’s too much!’

But the elephantine Van der Veghels, in merry pin, had frisked ahead. Major Sweet let fly anathema upon all practical jokers and the party moved on.

The voice of the subterranean stream grew louder. They turned another corner and came upon another railed well. Grant invited them to look up and there, directly overhead, was the under-mouth of the one they had already examined in the basilica.

‘But what were they
for,’
Major Sweet demanded. ‘What’s the idea? Grant?’ he added quickly, apparently to forestall any comment from Mr Mailer.

‘Perhaps,’ Grant said, ‘for drainage. There’s evidence that at some stage of the excavations seepage and even flooding occurred.’

‘Hah,’ said the Major.

The Baroness leant over the rail of the well and peered down.

‘Gerrit!’ she exclaimed. ‘L-oo-ook! There is the sarcophagus! Where Simon sat and meditated!’ Her voice, which had something of the reedy quality of a schoolboy’s, ran up and down the scale. ‘See! Down there! Belo-oow.’ Her husband’s flashlight briefly explored her vast stern as he gaily snapped her. Heedless, she leant far over the railing.

‘Be careful, my darlink!’ urged her husband. ‘Mathilde! Not so far! Wait till we descend.’

He hauled her back. She was greatly excited and they laughed together.

Alleyn and Sophy approached the well-railing and looked downwards. The area below was illuminated from some unseen source and the end of a stone sarcophagus was clearly visible. From their bird’s eye position they could see that the stone lid was heavily carved.

As they looked, a shadow, much distorted, moved across the wall behind it, disappeared, and was there again, turning this way and that.

Sophy cried out: ‘Look! It’s—it’s that woman!’ But it had gone.

‘What woman?’ Grant asked, behind her.

‘The one with the shawl over her head. The postcard-seller. Down there.’

‘Did you see her?’ Mr Mailer asked quickly.

‘I saw her shadow.’

‘My dear Miss Jason! Her shadow! There are a thousand Roman women with scarves over their heads who could cast the same shadow.’

‘I’m sure not. I’m sure it was she. It looked as if—as if—she wanted to hide.’

‘I agree,’ Alleyn said.

‘Violetta is not permitted to enter the basilica, I assure you. You saw the shadow of someone in another party, of course. Now—let us follow Mr Grant down into the temple of Mithras. He has much to relate.’

They had completed their circuit of the cloisters and entered a passage leading to a spiral iron stairway. The ceiling was lower here and the passage narrow. Grant and Mailer led the way and the others trailed behind them. The head of the little procession had reached the stairhead when Lady Braceley suddenly announced that she couldn’t go on.

‘I’m frightfully sorry,’ she said, ‘but I want to go back. I’m afraid you’ll think it too dreary of me but I can’t, I can’t,
I can’t
stay in this awful place another moment. You must take me back, Kenneth. I didn’t know it’d be like this. I’ve never been able to endure shut up places. At once.
Kenneth! Where are you! Kenneth!’

But he wasn’t with them. Her voice flung distorted echoes about the hollows and passages. ‘Where’s he gone?’ she cried out and the whole region replied ‘—gone—on—on.’

Mailer had taken her by the arm. ‘It’s all right, Lady Braceley. I assure you. It’s perfectly all right. Kenneth went back to photograph the Apollo. In five minutes I will find him for you. Don’t distress yourself. No doubt I’ll meet him on his way here.’

‘I won’t wait for him. Why’s he suddenly taking photographs? I gave him a camera costing the earth and he never uses it. I won’t wait for him, I’ll go now.
Now.’

The Baron and Baroness swarmed gigantically about her making consoling noises. She thrust them aside and made for Grant, Major Sweet and Alleyn who were standing together. ‘Please!
Please!’
she implored and after a quick look round, latched with great determination on to the Major. ‘Please take me away!’ she implored. ‘Please do.’

‘My dear lady,’ Major Sweet began in tones more consistent with ‘My good woman’—‘My dear lady, there’s no occasion for hysteria. Yes—well, of course, if you insist. Be glad to. No doubt,’ said the Major hopefully, ‘we’ll meet your nephew on our way.’

Clinging to him, she appealed to Grant and Alleyn. ‘I know you think me too hopeless and silly,’ she said. ‘Don’t you?’

‘Not at all,’ Alleyn said politely and Grant muttered something that might have been ‘claustrophobia’.

Mr Mailer said to the Major: ‘There’s a continuation of this stairway that goes up into the basilica. If you’ll take Lady Braceley that way I’ll go back and find Mr Dorne and send him to her.’

Lady Braceley said, ‘It’s maddening of him.
Honestly!’

Sophy said, ‘Would you like me to come with you, Lady Braceley?’

‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘No. Thank you. Too kind but—’ her voice trailed away. She still gazed at Alleyn and Grant. She wants an entourage, Sophy thought.

‘Well,’ Major Sweet said crossly. ‘Shall we go?’

He piloted her towards the upper flight of the spiral stairway. ‘I’ll come back,’ he shouted, ‘as soon as that young fellow presents himself. Hope he’s quick about it.’

‘You’ll carry on, won’t you?’ Mr Mailer said to Grant.

‘Very well.’

Grant, Alleyn and Sophy embarked on the downward flight. They could hear Lady Braceley’s heels receding up the iron treads together
with the duller clank of Major Sweet’s studded brogues. Behind them the Van der Veghels shouted excitedly to each other.

‘It is only,’ roared the Baroness, ‘that I do not wish to miss a word, my darlink, that he may let fall upon us.’

‘Then on! Go and I will join you. One more picture of the Mercury. Joost one!’ cried the Baron.

She assented and immediately fell some distance down the iron stairs. A cry of dismay rose from her husband.

‘Mathilde! You are fallen.’

‘That is so.’

‘You are hurt.’

‘Not. I am uninjured. What a joke.’

‘On, then.’

‘So.’

The descending spiral made some two or three turns. The sound of running water grew louder. They arrived at a short passage. Grant led them along it into a sort of ante-room.

‘This is the insula,’ he said. ‘You might call it a group of flats. It was built for a Roman family or families somewhere about the middle of the first century. They were not, of course, Christians. You will see in a moment how they worshipped their god. Come into the Triclinium. Which is also the Mithraeum.’

He motioned them into a cave-like chamber. The roof was vaulted and studded with small stones. Massive stone benches ran along the sides and in the centre was an altar.

Grant said, ‘You know about the Mithraic cult. There’s no need for me—

‘Please! But
please,’
implored the Baroness. ‘We would like so much! Everythink! Please!’

Alleyn heard Grant say ‘Oh God!’ under his breath and saw him look, almost as if he asked for her support, at Sophy Jason.

And, for her part, Sophy received this appeal with a ripple of warmth that bewildered her.

‘Only if he wants to,’ she said.

But Grant, momentarily shutting his eyes, embarked on his task. The Baroness, all eyes and teeth, hung upon his every word. Presently she reached out an imploring hand and whispered, ‘Excuse! Forgive me. But for my husband to miss this is too much. I call for him.’ She
did so with a voice that would have done credit to Brunnhilde. He came downstairs punctually and nimbly and in response to her finger on her lips, fell at once into a receptive attitude.