Out of the Waters: Chapter Six

    Alphena would have been happier walking, but Hedia had insisted that they take the litter to the Field of Mars. This shopping expedition was part of the business–business or trouble or mystery, Alphena didn’t know what to call it–so she’d agreed, but it still made her unhappy.

    Her face must have been squeezed into a petulant frown. Hedia raised her slippered foot and wriggled the big toe at her. Because they were seated facing one another in the litter, it was like somebody pointing an accusatory, short, but nonetheless very shapely, finger at her.

    “Cheer up, dear,” Hedia said. “We really have to do it this way, you see. No one would imagine me going shopping on foot. And though they’d let us into the shops I want to visit even with your original footgear–you’d be with me, after all–the last thing we want is to appear eccentric. We’ll learn much more if Abinnaeus is thinking only about the amount of money he’ll get from their gracious ladyships of Saxa’s household. Besides–”

    She touched the tip of Alphena’s slipper with her finger. The upper was silk brocade instead of a filigree of gilt leather cutwork, and the toe was closed. Sword exercises wearing army footgear had left Alphena’s feet beyond transformation into ladylike appearance in the time available, despite the skill of Hedia’s own pedicure specialists.

    “–these shoes wouldn’t be at all comfortable to walk across the city in, dear. And we really do have to dress for the occasion. Think of it the way men put their togas on to go into court, even though there’s never been a more awkward, ugly garment than a toga.”

    Alphena giggled. Even a young, gracefully slender, man like Publius Corylus looked rather like a blanket hung to dry on a pole when he wore his toga. Father, who was plump and clumsy, was more like the same blanket tumbled into a wash basket.

    The Cappadocian bearers paced along as smoothly as the Tiber floating a barge. They were singing, but either the words were nonsense or they were in a language of their own.

    Only the thin outer curtains of the litter were drawn, so Alphena could see what was going on about them. They were making their way through the forum built by Julius Caesar; the courtyard wasn’t less congested than the streets to north and south, but there was more room for the crowd which was being pushed aside. The brick and stone walls bounding the street wouldn’t give no matter how forcefully Hedia’s escorts shoved people who were blocking the litter.

    Alphena nodded in silent approval: someone had chosen the route with care and intelligence. This heavy vehicle required that sort of forethought.

    The particular servants in attendance must have been chosen with equal care, because they were not Hedia’s usual escort. “Ah, mother?” Alphena said. “That’s Lenatus walking beside Manetho, isn’t it?”

    “Yes, dear,” Hedia said approvingly. “Manetho is in charge of things under normal circumstances, but Master Lenatus will take command if, well, if necessary.”

    Alphena didn’t recognize every member of the entourage, though she didn’t doubt that they were all part of Saxa’s household. She’d seen at least one man working in the gardens. Several more had been litter bearers before Alphena bought the new, larger vehicle with the matched team of Cappadocians; simply by inertia the previous bearers remained members of the household, though they had no regular duties.

    The escort wore clean tunics, most of which appeared to have been bought as a job lot: they had identical blue embroidery at the throat, cuffs, and hem. Further, the men’s hair was freshly cropped and they’d been shaven, though that had been done quickly enough that several were nicked or gashed.

    The razor wounds stood out sharply against chins which since puberty must have been shaded by tangled beards. Alphena supposed that was better than being attended by a band of shaggy bravos. Though they still looked like bravos.

    She leaned sideways, bulging the side curtain, to get a better look at the trainer toward the front of the entourage. She said, “I don’t think that’s a club that Lenatus is hiding under his tunic, is it, Mother?”

    Hedia shrugged. “I didn’t ask, dear,” she said. “I leave that sort of thing to men.”

    She leaned forward slightly, bringing her face closer to Alphena’s. “I told Lenatus to choose the men,” she said. She was as calm and beautiful as a portrait on ivory. “I told him I didn’t care how handsome they were or whether they could communicate any way except by grunting in Thracian. I just wanted people who would stand beside him if there was real trouble.”

    She laughed briefly. “Beside him and in front me, of course,” she said, “but I didn’t need to tell Lenatus that. I think he felt rather honored. I’ve never quite understood that, but men of the right sort generally do.”

    Of course men feel honored to be given a chance to die for you, Alphena thought, suddenly angry. And don’t tell me you don’t understand why!

    But that wasn’t fair to Hedia, who was risking her life too. Or seemed to think she was.

    “Mother?” Alphena said, shifting her thoughts into the new channel with enthusiasm. “What’s going to happen? Are we going to attack this Abinnaeus?”

    Hedia’s mouth opened for what was obviously intended for full-throated laughter, but she caught herself with a stricken look before a sound came out. Leaning forward, she caught Alphena’s wrist between her thumb and two fingers.

    “I’m sorry, dear one,” she said. “No, Abinnaeus is a silk merchant with a very fine stock. His shop is in the Portico of Agrippa. My husband Latus’ house is just up Broad Street from the portico.”

    Alphena saw the older woman’s expression cycle quickly through anger to disgust to stony blankness–and finally back to a semblance of amused neutrality. “My former husband’s house, I should have said,” she said. “And briefly my own, when the lawsuits against the will were allowed to lapse after your father took up my cause.”

    Hedia’s lips squirmed in an expression too brief for Alphena to identify it with certainty. It might have been sadness or disgust, or very possibly a combination of those feelings.

    “I got rid of the house as quickly as I could,” Hedia said, falling back into a light, conversational tone. “There wasn’t anything wrong with it. I didn’t have bad memories of it, no more than of any other place, but I didn’t want to keep it either. I told Saxa’s agent to sell it and invest the money for me. I suppose I have quite a respectable competence now, dear one–by any standards but your father’s.”

    “Father has never been close with money,” Alphena said, thinking of her childhood. She had been angry for as far back as she could remember: angry about the things she couldn’t do, either because she was a girl or because she was the particular girl she was.

    She forced the start of a smile, but it then spread naturally and brightened her mood. She said, “I envied you so much, m-mother. Because you’re so beautiful.”

    The smile slipped, though she fought to retain it. “And I’m not.”

    “You’re striking,” Hedia said, touching Alphena’s wrist again to emphasize the intensity she projected. “In a good way, a way that shows up much better in daylight than I can.”

    She leaned back, suddenly regally cool. “If you want that,” she said. “Not if you’re going to wear clodhoppers–”

    She gestured dismissively toward Alphena’s feet.

    “–and scowl at everyone as though you’d like to slit their throats, though. Do you want that? Do you want people to say you’re beautiful?”

    Hedia grinned like a cat. “That is,” she said, “do you want it enough that you’re willing to spend as much effort on it as you do now on hacking at a stake, or as your brother does on reading Lucilius and similarly dull people who didn’t even write Latin that ordinary people can understand?”

    “I shouldn’t have to–” Alphena blazed. Part of her mind was listening to the words coming out off her tongue, so she stopped in embarrassment. She closed her mouth.

    Hedia’s smile had chilled into silent mockery, but that didn’t, for a wonder, make Alphena flare up again. She’s right. She’s treating me like she’d treat an adult; and if I flame up like a four-year-old, then I’m the only one to blame for it.

    “I have spent a great deal of time on the training ground,” Alphena said with careful restraint. “And of course my brother almost lives for books. For them and with them. But he could put just as much effort hacking at the post as I have and he’d still be a clown rather than a swordsman; and if I struggled with Lucilius and the rest for my whole life, they’d be as useless to me as my trying to read prophecies in the clouds.”

    Hedia gave a throaty giggle at the thought..

 

---

 

    “I don’t think I’d be much better at being a beauty than at being a scholar, mother,” Alphena said. “But I can stop resenting the things I won’t take the effort to succeed at.”

    She felt her smile slipping again. “I don’t know what that leaves me,” she whispered. “I’m not really a good swordsman, even. Not good enough to be a gladiator, I mean, even if father would let me.”

    “Your father wouldn’t have anything to do with it, dear,” Hedia said. She was smiling, but Alphena had seen a similar expression on her face before. A man had died then. “I would not permit you to embarrass that sweet man so badly. I hope you believe me, daughter.”

    “I wouldn’t do it,” Alphena said. The interior of the litter seemed suddenly colder, shiveringly cold. “I used to think I wanted to, but I really wouldn’t have.”

    She swallowed and added, “And I do believe you, mother.”

    Hedia held both her hands out, palms up, for Alphena to take. “I apologize for saying that just now,” she said. “I–your father is very good and gentle. People of his sort deserve better than the world often sends them, and I want to protect him. I am neither good nor gentle.”

    Alphena squeezed the older woman’s fingers, then leaned back. “Thank you for what you do for father,” she said. “And what you’ve done for me.”

    “Well, dear,” Hedia said with a tinge of amusement, “I quite clearly recall you chopping away at demons with what seemed at the time to be a great deal of skill. That needed to be done, and I certainly wasn’t going to do it. And I strongly suspect that none of those gladiators whom you admire would have faced demons either.”

    What does she mean by that? Alphena thought; then she blushed at the way her mind had tried to turn Hedia’s words into a slur. Aloud but in a low voice, she said, “I should just learn to accept compliments, shouldn’t I?”

    Hedia laughed merrily. “Well, dear,” she said, “I don’t think I would suggest that as a regular course of conduct for a young lady. But with me… yes, I generally mean what I say.”

    The litter slowed. There was even more shouting than usual ahead of them. Alphena touched the curtain, intending to pull it aside and lean out for a better look.

    Hedia stopped her with a lazy gesture. She said, “Ours isn’t the only senatorial family going by litter to shop in the Field of Mars today. I’m confident that our present escort could fight their way through anything but a company of the Praetorian Guard, but I warned Manetho before we started that if he allowed any unnecessary trouble to occur, he’d spend the rest of his life hoeing turnips on a farm in Bruttium.”

    Alphena forced herself to relax. “I guess if there’s going to be trouble,” she said, “we’ll get to it soon enough.”

    She pursed her lips and added, “I didn’t bring my sword.”

    “I should think not!” Hedia said. She didn’t sound angry, but she appeared to be genuinely shocked. She turned her head slightly–though she couldn’t look forward from where she sat in the vehicle–and said, “I thought of suggesting that Lenatus go along with Saxa this afternoon. Just–”

    She shrugged her shoulders. She looked like a cat stretching.

    “–in case. But I understand that Master Corylus will be accompanying the consul, and I’m sure his man Pulto will be equipped to deal with unexpected problems.”

    “Father?” said Alphena, taken aback. “He shouldn’t–”

    She stopped, unwilling to belittle Saxa by saying he had no business in anything that might involve swords. It was true, of course, but it wasn’t something that her stepmother needed to be told.

    “That is,” she said, “what’s father doing? I didn’t know about it.”

    She didn’t know–she didn’t bother to learn–very much about what other people were doing. If Hedia hadn’t taken family obligations more seriously than her stepdaughter had, Alphena would either be wandering in fairyland or be in the belly of something wandering in fairyland. Or be in a worse place yet.

    “Your brother wants to visit a senator’s house,” Hedia said. “He thought the consul’s authority might be necessary to gain entry. I don’t know all the details. I don’t expect Saxa to have difficulty, but–”

    That shrug again.

    “–I do worry about the poor.”

    The litter slowed again, then stopped. Manetho came to the side of vehicle and said, “Your ladyships, we have arrived at the shop of the silk merchant Abinnaeus.”

    Hedia grinned and said, “Come, dear. At the very least, we can outfit you with a set of silk syntheses to wear at formal dinners. Since we’re coming here anyway.”

    She slid her curtain open and dismounted, allowing the deputy steward to offer his arm in support. Alphena grimaced and got out on her own side.

    Maximus, normally the night guard at the gate of the back garden, held out his arm. Alphena lifted her hand to slap him away. She stopped, thinking of Hedia; and of Corylus, who had mentioned Maximus’ intelligence.

    “Thank you, my good man,” Alphena said, touching the back of the fellow’s wrist with her fingertips but pointedly not letting any weight rest there.

    She turned, eyeing their surroundings. The Altar of Peace was to the left. Not far beyond it was the Sundial of Augustus–a granite obelisk brought from Egypt and set up to tell the hours. The metal ball on top of the obelisk blazed in the sunlight.

    Alphena stared, transfixed. She felt but didn’t really see her stepmother walk around the vehicle to join her.

    “Is something wrong, my dear?” Hedia said.

    “That ball,” Alphena said. Her mouth was dry. She didn’t point, because she didn’t want to mark herself that way. “On top of the pillar.”

    “Yes, dear?” Hedia said. “It’s gold, isn’t it?”

    “No,” said Alphena. “It’s orichalc. Mother, I’d swear that’s the ball that was on top of the temple we saw in the vision. The temple that w-was being torn apart!”

 

---

 

    Hedia stared at the sunlit globe in the middle distance, trying to empathize with what Alphena was feeling. With whatever Alphena was feeling, because despite real mental effort Hedia couldn’t understand what was so obviously frightening about a big metal ball.

    Did it come from a ruined city as the girl said? Well and good, but so did the obelisk it stood on top of; and the huge granite spike must have been much more difficult to move and re-erect here in Carce.

    “Is there something we should do, dear?” Hedia said. “Ah, do you want to go closer?”

    She didn’t understand why Alphena was concerned, but she understood all too well what it was to feel terrified by something that didn’t seem frightening to others. She hadn’t particularly noticed the temple Alphena talked about, because her mind had been frozen by the sight of glass men like those of her nightmare, walking on the walls of the city.

    “No!” Alphena said; then, contritely, clasping Hedia’s hands, “I’m sorry, mother. No, there’s no reason to… well, I don’t know what to do. And–”

    She grinned ruefully.

    “–I certainly don’t want to go closer. Though I’m not afraid to.”

    “We’ll shop, then,” Hedia said, linking her arm with her daughter’s. “But when we return, we’ll discuss the matter with Pandareus. I think he’ll be with Saxa and the boys, but otherwise we’ll send a messenger to bring him to the house. He’s a….”

    She paused, wondering how to phrase what she felt.

    “Pandareus is of course learned, but he also has an unusually clear vision of reality,” she said. “As best I can tell, all his choices are consciously made. I don’t agree with many of them–”

    She flicked the sleeve of her cloak. It was of silk lace, dyed lavender to contrast with the brilliantly white ankle-length tunic she wore beneath it. It was unlikely that Pandareus could have purchased its equivalent with a year of his teaching fees.

    “–obviously. But I respect the way he lives by his principles.”

    As I live by mine; albeit my principles are very different.

    Syra waited with Alphena’s maid behind the litter. They had followed on foot from the townhouse. Ordinarily Hedia would have had nearly as many female as male servants in her entourage, but for this trip the two maids were the only women present.

    They didn’t appear to feel there was anything to be concerned about. Syra was talking with a good-looking Gallic footman, though she faced about sharply when Hedia glanced toward her.

    Alphena noticed the interchange, but she probably misinterpreted it. She said, “I’ve asked Agrippinus to assign Florina to me permanently. I’m not going to get angry with her.”

    Hedia raised an eyebrow. “My goodness, dear,” she said. “I doubt the most committed philosophers could go through more than a few days without getting angry at the servant who forgot to mention the dinner invitation from a patron or who used an important manuscript to light the fire.”

 

---

 

    “I don’t mean that, exactly,” the girl said, flushing. “But I’m not going to hit her. And I’m going to try not to scream at her either.”

    Alphena was upset, but Hedia wasn’t sure who she was upset with. Perhaps she was upset–angry–at herself, though she might be directing it toward the stepmother who was forcing her to discuss something that she apparently hadn’t fully thought out.

    “I really can change, mother!” she said. “I can be, well, nicer. To people.”

    “Let’s go in, dear,” Hedia said. As they started toward the shop between a double rank of servants, she added quietly, “In law, slaves are merely furniture with tongues, you know. But slapping your couch with a comb isn’t going to lead to it informing the palace that you’ve been mocking the Emperor. I applaud your new resolution.”

    Abinnaeus had chosen an outward-facing section of the portico. The majority of his trade arrived in litters which could more easily be maneuvered in the street than in the enclosed courtyard. There was a gated counter across the front of the shop, but clients were inside where bolts of fabric were stacked atop one another. There was a room behind and a loft above.

    Within, a pair of no-longer-young women were fingering the silk and speaking Greek with thick Galatian accents. Their maids were outside, watching the new arrivals with interest verging on resentment.

    That pair came to Carce with their feet chalked for sale, Hedia sneered mentally. They were the sort to have moved into the master’s bedroom and made a good thing out of his will, but she doubted whether they were wealthy enough to do real business with Abinnaeus.

    Only a single attendant, a doe-eyed youth, was visible when Hedia approached. A moment later the owner waddled out behind a second attendant–similar enough to the other to have been twins–who had gone to fetch him. Abinnaeus beamed at her, then directed his attention to the previous customers.

    “Dear ladies,” he said. “I do so regret that a previous engagement requires that I close my poor shop to the general public immediately.”

    “For them?” said one of the women, her voice rising shrilly. “I don’t think so! Not till you’ve served me!”

    She turned to the stack of silk and started to lift the top roll. It was colored something between peach and beige and would clash with every garment the woman was wearing now; but then, her hennaed hair, her orange tunic, and her vermillion leather shoes were a pretty ghastly combination already.

    Abinnaeus put a hand on the roll, pinning it down, and reached for the woman’s arm. She shrieked, “Don’t you touch me, you capon!” but the threatened contact did cause her to jump aside–and toward the counter.

    Hedia waited, her fingers on Alphena’s wrist to keep the girl with her. The events of the past few days had put Hedia in a bad enough mood that she found the present business amusing. She didn’t scorn people because they were former slaves–but she scorned former slaves who gave themselves the airs of noblewomen.

    “I’m sure my colleague Cynthius in the courtyard will be delighted to serve you, ladies,” Abinnaeus said. He spoke with an oily solicitude; nothing in his tone or manner indicated that he was sneering. “I think you’ll find his selection suitable. Indeed, very suitable for ladies as fine as yourselves.”

    The youthful attendants were urging the women toward the opened gate. One went quickly, but the protesting woman tried to push the boy away.

    Something happened that Hedia didn’t quite see. Off-balance, the woman lurched toward the street and into it. The youth–who wasn’t as young as he had first seemed; he was some sort of Oriental, childishly slight but not at all a child–walked alongside her without seeming to exert any force.

    Hedia saw the woman’s arm muscles bunch to pull away. She wasn’t successful, though the youth’s smile didn’t slip.

    “Well, you’ll never see me again!” the woman cried. Her companion had been staring first at Hedia and Alphena, then–wide-eyed–at their escort. She tugged her louder friend toward the entrance into the courtyard; their maids followed, laughing openly.

    “Ah,” Abinnaeus said in a lightly musing voice that wasn’t obviously directed toward anyone. “If only I could be sure of that.”

    He turned and bowed low to Hedia. “I’m so glad to see your ladyship again,” he said, sounding as though he meant it. “And your lovely companion! Please, honor my shop by entering.”

    “Come dear,” Hedia said, but she swept the younger woman through the gate ahead of her. “Abinnaeus, this is my daughter, Lady Alphena. We’re looking for dinner dresses for her.”

    “You could not do better,” Abinnaeus agreed. He was a eunuch; his fat made him look softly cylindrical instead of swelling his belly. “Please, be seated while I find something worthy of yourselves.”

    One of the attendants was closing the shutters: barred openings at the top continued to let in light and air, but street noise and the crowds were blocked by solid oak. The other attendant had carried out a couch with ivory legs and cushions of silk brocade; he was returning to the back room to find its couple.

    Hedia gestured Alphena to the couch; she dipped her chin forcefully to refuse. Hedia sat instead of reclining and patted the cushion beside her. “Come, daughter,” she said. “Join me.”

    Alphena hesitated only an instant, then sat where Hedia had indicated. The youth appeared with the second couch. He eyed them, then vanished back into storage with his burden.

    Abinnaeus returned with six bolts of cloth over his left arm. “Sirimavo,” he said to the youth who had bolted the shutters, “bring wine and goblets, then go fetch some cakes from Codrius. Quickly now!”

    “No cakes for me,” Hedia said. “Though if my daughter…?”

    Alphena gestured a curt refusal, then consciously forced her lips into a smile. “Not at all, thank you,” she said.

    The girl really is trying. Soon perhaps I can introduce her to some suitable men without worrying that she’s going to tell them she’ll cut their balls off if they dare to touch her again.

    “It would be remiss of me not to offer your ladyship every courtesy,” the eunuch said. “What you choose to accept is your own affair, but I will say that my friend Codrius just down the portico has even better pastries than my beloved father at home in Gaza.”

    “No one has ever been able to fault your hospitality to a customer, Abinnaeus,” Hedia said. The tramps he had just turfed out of his shop might have quarreled with her statement, but they weren’t proper customers. “It’s been too long since I’ve been here.”

    “We have missed you, your ladyship,” Abinnaeus said, setting down five bolts. “Your custom is always welcome, of course, but even more I’ve missed your exquisite taste. So like mine, but more masculine.”

    He and Hedia laughed. Alphena looked shocked, then went still-faced because she wasn’t sure how she should react.

    Abinnaeus stretched a swatch from the last bolt and held it close to Alphena’s ear. “There, your ladyship. What do you think about this with your daughter’s coloring?”

    Hedia gave the fabric sharp attention. It was faintly tan–the natural color of the silk, she was sure, not a dye–but it seemed to have golden highlights.

    “Is that woven with gold wire?” she said in puzzlement. Surely no wire could be drawn that fine.

    Abinnaeus chuckled. “To you and you alone, your ladyship,” he said, “I will tell my secret. No, not wire–but the blond hair from women of farthest Thule. They let it grow till they marry, then cut it for the first time. The strands are finer than spider silk, purer than the gold of the Tagus River.”

    “And you, dear?” Hedia said to her daughter. Abinnaeus stepped back with the cloth spread in a shaft of sunlight through the clerestory windows. “It complements you perfectly, but do you find it attractive?”

    Alphena had swollen visibly while Hedia and the proprietor discussed the matter as though she was a dog being fitted with a jeweled collar, but she had managed to control herself. “It’s all right, I guess,” she muttered. “It’s–well, it’s all right, if that’s what you want.”

    When we’re back in the litter, I’ll remind her that we came for information; and that I had to put Abinnaeus at his ease. He wouldn’t be able to imagine Lady Hedia caring about anybody else’s opinion on matters of taste and fashion.

    The attendants returned, each carrying a small table already set with a refreshment tray. There was a passage to the courtyard shops from the back room, but the wine was probably from Abinnaeus’ own stock. He kept better vintages on hand for his customers than could be purchased nearby.

    He eyed Hedia and gestured minusculely toward the wine. “Three to one,” she said, answering the unspoken question. That was only possible choice with her daughter present, and it was what she probably would have said regardless.

 

---

 

    Turning to Alphena, she said, “I used to visit Abinnaeus more frequently before I married your father, dear. I lived close by; just across Broad Street, in fact.”

    To Abinnaeus she went on, “I sold the house to a Gaul from Patavium; Julius Brennus, as I recall. Do you see any of him, Abinnaeus?”

    “Well, not Master Brennus himself, your ladyship,” he said, kneeling to offer each of the women a silver cup. “But his wife, Lady Claudia, visits me frequently, I’m pleased to say.”

    So the wealthy–extremely wealthy–trader from the Po Valley married a patrician after moving to Carce, Hedia thought. Good luck to both of them.

    She sipped her wine, which was just as good as she expected it to be. Alphena had leaned forward slightly to lift the silk for closer examination. An attendant moved the bolt slightly closer. He didn’t speak or otherwise intervene for fear of causing the young customer to rear back. It must be like bridling a skittish horse.

    Aloud Hedia said, “I recall Brennus having some very odd-looking servants. Is that still the case?”

    “Odd?” said Abinnaeus, pursing his lips. Discretion warred with a desire not to lose the chance of a present sale. “Well, I don’t know that I’d put it quite that way, your ladyship. But it is true that many of Master Brennus’ servants did come with him from the north… and one could say that they brought their culture with them. One could scarcely claim that boorishness and bad Latin are unusual in Carce, though, I’m afraid.”

    Hedia laughed. “No, not at all,” she agreed, holding out her cup for a refill. “I thought he had a number of fellows in shiny costumes, though. You’ve never seen anything like that?”

    “Nothing like that, no,” the proprietor said, clearly puzzled. “Ah–is it possible that Master Brennus added moving automatons to his courtyard, though. Alexandrine work, I mean, worked by water. I’ve never been inside the house.”

    “That could be the story I’d heard,” Hedia said as if idly. “Well, I think this first pattern will be a fine choice. What else have you for us, Master Abinnaeus?”

    The afternoon wore on. The familiar routine was pleasurable during those moments when Hedia forgot the danger which had really brought her here, and such moments were more frequent as she became absorbed in fabric and fashion. Alphena was showing real interest also, which was a success beyond expectation.

    The maids waited silently, their backs against the counter. There was nothing for them to do, but they too were entranced by the lovely cloth.

    It was time to be getting back. Hedia rose and stretched.

    “Have these eight patterns made up,” she said, “and send them to the house. I’ll tell our major domo to expect them. I dare say we’ll be back for more, though.”

    “You are always welcome, your ladyships,” Abinnaeus said. The attendants were rattling the shutters open as he bowed. “Your intelligence and taste brighten an existence which sometimes threatens to be about money alone.”

    He made a quick, upward gesture with a plump hand. “Taking nothing away from money, of course,” he added. “But there can be more.”

    The sun was well into the western sky when Hedia followed her daughter into the street. “You did very well, dear,” she said; truthfully, but mostly to encourage the girl.

    Hedia looked idly toward the great sundial. In the wavering sunlight she saw three glass figures glitter like sundogs in the winter sky.

    “Ah!” she cried, grasping Alphena’s arm.

    “Mother?” the girl said. The alerted escorts were pulling weapons from beneath their capes and tunics.

    None of them saw anything. Hedia didn’t see anything–now.

    She forced a clumsy laugh. “I tripped on these foolish shoes,” she said, “but I don’t seem to have turned my ankle.”

    She wiggled her shapely leg in the air.

    “Let’s be getting back to the house, shall we?” Hedia said. The others were staring, though they had started to relax. “There’s nothing more for us here.”

    She hoped that was the truth; but she was sure in her heart that it was not.

 

---

 

    Varus realized he was holding his breath as he waited for someone inside the house of Sempronius Tardus to open the door. No one did. He breathed out, then snorted fresh lungful of air.

    The chief lictor banged again and growled, “Open it for me or by Jupiter you’ll open it for a cohort of the Guard!”

    Apparently Varus had been unable to hide his smile. Pandareus looked at him and raised an eyebrow in question.

    “I was wondering how it would affect our mission if I were to faint from holding my breath,” Varus said. “I think it better not to make the experiment.”

    He opened his tablet and resumed his notes. This was, after all, an official activity of the consul and therefore part of his self-imposed duty of recording the ritual business of the Republic. There was at least the possibility that his records would be of service to later historians, whereas there was no chance at all that anyone in the future would have wanted to read the Collected Verse of Gaius Alphenus Varus.

    The door jerked open. A tall man with the beard of a Stoic philosopher and a cloth-of-gold sash that suggested he was the major domo stood in the opening, looking flustered.

    “Your Excellency,” the tall servant said, “my master, Senator Marcus Tardus, will be with you in a moment. If I may ask your indulgence to wait here until the senator is ready to receive you–”

    “You may not,” said the chief lictor, prodding his axe head toward the servant’s stomach. “This is the Consul, you Theban twit!”

    He shoved forward with the remainder of his squad following. The major domo hopped backward.

    “My goodness, what an unexpected slur from a public functionary!” Pandareus said. “Though he caught the Boeotian accent correctly, so I can hardly describe the fellow as uncultured.”

    They started into the house. Saxa seemed oblivious of the interchange between servant and lictor. Varus looked sharply at his father, wondering if he could really be as lost in his own world as he generally seemed to be.

    Perhaps so. Saxa was insulated by his wealth, which would one day become the wealth of his son Varus. If Varus survived him. If Carce and the world survived.

    Sempronius Tardus trotted into the entrance hall from a side passage. He was tightening the wrap of the toga which he must have put on only when the lictor banged for admittance. A dozen servants fluttered around him, all of them frightened.

    “Saxa?” Tardus said. “That is, Your Excellency. You’re welcome, of course, but I don’t see…?”

    Tardus looked dazed. Well, this business would be startling to anybody, but it seemed to Varus that more was going on than surprise at a Consul’s unannounced formal arrival. Though the Emperor was known to be erratic, and even the most loyal and honest of men probably had something in his life that could be turned into a capital offense.

    “I am here with my learned advisors…,” Saxa said. “To inspect the Serapeum on this property.”

    He turned slightly and indicated Varus and Pandareus with a sweeping gesture. This is probably the first time father has used the rhetorical training that I’m sure he got when he was my age.

    “If you will lead us to the chapel,” Saxa continued, “we will finish our business and leave you to your privacy, Lord Tardus.”

    “What?” squeaked Tardus. “I–this is a mistake! Saxa, I must ask you to leave my house immediately. You have been misinformed!”

    Pandareus looked up quizzically, as though he expected Varus to do something. Varus felt the crowded hall blur about him. There was barely room to move, but he found himself walking forward in the familiar fog.

    A bull snorted nearby. Varus turned his head sharply, but he could see nothing in the fog though the sound had come from very close. He walked on, picking his way past outcrops. Some of the rocks looked like statues, or anyway had human features.

    He wondered where the Sibyl was. Usually in these reveries, he would have come upon her by now.

    Varus heard the bull again, this time behind him, and glanced over his shoulder. The fog had cleared enough for him to see a figure that would have been a giant if its human body had not supported the horned head of a bull. It snorted angrily.

    A voluptuous woman reclined on the stony ground behind the creature. She caught Varus’ startled expression and smiled lazily.

    He stepped into sunlight. The Sibyl held a small glass bottle in her left hand, the sort of container in which perfume was sold. Something moved inside it, but the glass was iridescent and Varus couldn’t be sure he was seeing a tiny figure rather than the sloshing of liquid.

    He bowed formally to the old woman. “Sibyl,” he said. “My father has entered the house of Sempronius Tardus, but the senator denies there is a chapel of Serapis in the property. Will you help me find the chapel, please?”

 

---

 

    The old woman’s laughter was like the rasping of cicadas. She pointed with her right hand, down the craggy reverse slope of the ridge.

    “Why do you ask me to tell you things you already know, Lord Magician?” she said. “You stand beside the entrance now.”

    Varus followed her gesture. He saw himself in the garden behind Tardus’ house. The plantings were unusually extensive, covering a greater area than the building itself. Palms grew on either side, and water flowed down and back along a pair of lotus-filled channels in the center. The gazebo where Varus stood was between them, reached by small bridges to either side.

    Pandareus was on his right; his father was to the left. Tardus was with them, but all the other people visible in the garden were members of the consul’s entourage. The household servants had vanished into corners of the house where they hoped to escape attention.

    “How…?” Varus said. Then he said, “Thank you, Sib–”

    As the final word came out of his mouth, he was again with his companions, beneath a dome supported by thick wooden columns shaped like papyrus stalks. Tardus stared at him numbly.

    “–yl.”

    Varus blinked. His father and Pandareus were staring at him also: Saxa in concern, the teacher with keen interest.

    “I’m sorry,” Varus said. He coughed, because his throat was raw. “I’ve been daydreaming, I’m afraid.”

    “You have been repeating, ‘There is a certain dear land, a nurturer for men,’ Lord Varus,” Pandareus said. “Repeating it quite loudly, in fact.”

    “Shouting, my son,” Saxa said. “I was rather worried about you.”

    “And you led us here to this pavilion,” said Pandareus, who beamed with cheerful satisfaction. Turning, he added to the waxen looking householder, “The motif is interesting, Lord Tardus.”

    Varus looked at the gazebo into which he had walked unknowing. The domed ceiling had an opening in the center, but around that was a frieze of men in boats in a landscape of tall reeds. Some were hunting ducks with throwing sticks; others were trying to net the variety of fish shown swimming on a bottom register which was painted sea-green.

    “If that’s meant to be the Nile,” Pandareus said, musing aloud, “and I suppose it is, I would suggest that brown would have been a more suitable color. I recall thinking that it seemed thick enough to walk on.”

    Varus grinned; neither of the other men reacted.

    The floor was a pavement of jasper chips in concrete, but in the center was round frame about a mosaic of a priest with a bronze rattle. Varus looked at it, then raised his eyes to Tardus.

    “There’s a catch here,” Tardus said, sounding as though he had received a death sentence. He opened a concealed panel in one of the columns, disclosing a lever. “You’ll need to step off the mosaic.”

    Varus, Pandareus, and a moment later Saxa as well stepped back between pairs of pillars.

    Tardus threw the lever. The circular mosaic sank into the darkness with a faint squeal. It must have been counterweighted, because it had not required more effort on the lever than to draw a bolt. Broad steps led downward; Varus couldn’t see the bottom in the shadows.

    “I had forgotten this old grotto existed, Consul,” Tardus said, looking distinctly ill. “I suppose it’s been here for many years. Since my father’s time, no doubt, or even longer.”

    Tardus is an old man, thought Varus. That was true, of course, but in simple years he was younger than Pandareus. Official discovery of a banned chapel on his property seemed to have ripped all the sinews out of his limbs.

    “The worship of Serapis is legal nowadays, of course,” said Saxa, apparently trying to calm his fellow senator.

    “There are now official temples of Sarapis in Carce, Lord Saxa,” Pandareus said. “Note, however, that they have not been permitted within the religious boundary of the city. This chapel–”

    He gestured rhetorically. He was in his professorial mode again and probably didn’t, Varus realized, notice the effect that his words were having on Tardus.

    “–could not be erected today or at any time after the Senatorial edict when Aemillius and Claudius were consuls.”

    One of Saxa’s footmen trotted out of the house, carrying a lighted lantern. Candidus waddled quickly behind him.

    Varus nodded approval. The deputy steward wouldn’t demean himself by actually lifting an object, but he had thought far enough ahead to get lights as soon as he saw his master would be entering a crypt.

    The footman crossed the short bridge but stopped at the gazebo and held the lantern out. Saxa started to reach for it but paused and looked at his son.

    “I think I had best go down,” Varus said, taking the lantern. “Ah, your Lordship. I will return with a report.”

    At any rate, I hope to return.

    “With your permission, Lord Varus,” Pandareus said, “I’ll accompany you.”

    “Yes,” Varus said. “That might be helpful, Teacher.”

    They started down into the crypt side by side. Varus held the lantern out in front of them.

    If it hadn’t been for the Sibyl’s roundabout direction, Varus would have been pleased and excited to enter a Serapeum. It was a link to Carce’s past; not so ancient as the crypt in which the Sibylline Books were stored, but old and part of a mystery cult besides.

    The Sibyl had sent him here, however. Therefore, more was involved than viewing the decoration and appointments of a secret chapel.

    “I doubt,” said Pandareus in a mild, musing tone, “that we will encounter Apis in the form of an angry bull. Though I’ll admit that I’m less confident than I once was at my ability to predict events.”

    “I was thinking more along the lines of the goddess Isis loosing cobras on us,” Varus said. “Unlikely, but less unlikely than other things that have occurred recently. Or that I imagined happened.”

    They reached the bottom of the stairs: only twelve steps down. It had looked deeper. There was no door at the base of the staircase, but the archway there was too narrow for more than one person to pass at a time.

    Varus, holding the lantern high, stepped into what was clearly an anteroom. There was a doorway in the opposite wall with a niche on either side. To the left was a statuette of a male figure with a bull’s head; on the right stood a female figure with a cow’s head and a crescent moon rocking between her horns.

    “If this were an Egyptian temple,” Pandareus said, looking past Varus’ shoulder, “I would describe them as Apis and Isis. The Ptolemies were eclectic when they created the cult, however, and they may have made other choices.”

    He sighed. “My friend Priscus–” Senator Marcus Atilius Priscus “–would know that sort of thing without having to look it up, but I didn’t think it would be right to involve him in this matter.”

    “If the question becomes important,” Varus said, “we can answer it at leisure when we return. Unless we’re arrested for some political crime, as you suggest.”

    Varus would have said he was the least political of men, unless that honor was due his father. Yet here they both were, invading the house of another senator under consular authority, an action that could easily be described as rebellion or insult to the Emperor as head of state.

    “I don’t think Tardus will be reporting this intrusion to the authorities,” Varus said.

    “Probably true,” Pandareus said. “In that case, we have only a monster capable of wrecking a city to worry about.”

    Varus chuckled.

    They entered the second chamber, twice the size of the first. Stone benches were built into three walls, intended for diners who were sitting upright instead of reclining as was the custom for men in Carce. Servants would set tables of food and wine in the hollow within the three benches.

    In place of a fourth wall, passages to either side flanked an alabaster slab carved in relief. Varus raised the lantern again to view the carving, a man with a full beard seated in a high-backed chair and glaring outward.

    “Sarapis joining his worshippers for the sacred meal,” Pandareus said. Then, looking upward, “The frieze is interesting.”

    Varus moved the lantern. The reliefs were of very high quality: a bearded man flanked by a youth and a young woman in flowing robes; in the next panel, the youth thrusting back the woman who, bare-breasted, was trying to pull him onto a couch; in the last–

    “This is Hippolytus and Phaedra,” Varus said aloud. “Hippolytus cursed by his father Theseus, who believed his wife’s false claim that her stepson had raped her.”

    “Yes,” said Pandareus. “Those three, and the monster which executed Theseus’ curse.”

    On the third panel, a tentacled, many-legged monster climbed out of the sea in the background. Hippolytus’ chariot raced through brush, dragging behind it the youth whose reins remained wrapped around his wrists when he was thrown out.

    “Do you suppose this is what we were meant to see?” Varus said.

    Pandareus shrugged. “There must be another room,” he said.

 

---

 

    They walked to right and left of the carving of Serapis. On the other side, Varus found a tunnel stretching farther into the distance than his lantern could even hint. “This seems to slope downward,” he said, turning toward Pandareus.

    The teacher was not there. Varus was alone in a tunnel. Behind him was a faint rectangular glow, the sort of light that he might have seen creeping past the edges of the slab from the trap door in the distant gazebo.

    Varus took a deep breath, then walked forward at the measured pace of a philosopher and a citizen of Carce. He wondered what he would find at the other end of the tunnel, but it was pointless to speculate. If Typhon waited for him, so be it.

    The floor of the chapel had been of simple mosaic design, black frames each crossed by an internal X, on a white ground. Now Varus was walking on seamless sandstone: the tunnel had been drilled through living rock.

    There was something ahead: at first just a texture on the sidewalls. Then, as Varus proceeded with the lantern, he saw that the walls had been cut back at knee height to make shelves. On them were terracotta urns, similar to ordinary wine jars. Instead of ordinary stoppers, these jars were closed with the stylized heads of birds with long curved beaks.

    One of the jars had fallen and shattered some distance down the long corridor. Varus paused and knelt to bring the lantern closer: there would be nothing at the other end of this passage that wouldn’t wait for him to arrive. Given that it might be his goal might be death, he wasn’t going to have the regret that he’d hastened past his last opportunity for learning.

    He smiled, but he meant it. Pandareus would understand; and perhaps Corylus would as well.

    The jar had enclosed the corpse of a bird. It had been mummified–the smell of natron and cedar resin was noticeable even after what might have been ages–but the skull was bare beneath rotted linen wrappings.

    It had been an ibis. There were thousands or tens of thousands of ibises in this necropolis.

    Varus rose to his feet and walked on. He had to restrain himself from counting paces under his breath. He wasn’t sure that he was really moving physically anyway. It would be unworthy of a philosopher to carry out a meaningless ritual to trick his mind into the belief that he was imposing control over his immediate surroundings.

    I think I see light. But Varus knew that he could see flashes even when his eyes were closed; and he had to admit that his present state of mind wasn’t wholly that of a dispassionate philosopher.

    He wondered if Socrates had really been that calm when he prepared to drink the poison. Plato had not been a disinterested witness, now that Varus thought about it; given that Plato’s stature as a teacher was directly dependent on the stature of the master whom he portrayed as showing godlike wisdom and fortitude.

    Varus chuckled. He would have described himself as an Epicurean; but perhaps the teachings of Diogenes the Cynic better suited his present mental state.

    “Greetings, Lord Varus,” called the man standing at the end of the corridor. The pool of light surrounding him did not come from any source Varus could see. “I am Menre.”

    Varus stepped to within arm’s length of the stranger who wore a woolen tunic, a semicircular cloak that hung to his waist, and a low-crowned, flat-brimmed leather hat. He would have passed for an ordinary traveller anywhere in Greece or the southern portions of Italy.

    “Sir, you’re Menre the Egyptian?” Varus said in puzzlement. The stranger–Menre–held a bulky papyrus scroll in his left hand.

    Menre laughed. “Sarapis is more Greek than Egyptian,” he said, “and perhaps the same is true of me. Regardless, the chapel was a useful connection between you and the place I am.”

    Varus found his lips dry; he licked them. He said, “Sir, I would have expected you to visit my teacher Pandareus, as you have in the past. Rather than me.”

    Menre looked him up and down as though he were a slave–or a couch–he was considering buying. Smiling faintly, he said, “Pandareus is a great scholar, worthy of a place in any learned academy. But he is not a magician, so this–”

    He offered the scroll in his left hand.

    “–would be of no use to him or to the world.”

    Varus took the scroll. He started to fumble with it, then set the lantern on the floor so that he had both hands free. There was as much light as there would be outside at midday in Carce, even if he couldn’t tell where it was coming from.

    He unrolled a few pages of the book; Menre watched him, continuing to smile. The text was in pictographs; chapters were headed–he unrolled more of the scroll to be sure–by paintings in the Egyptian style, full frontal or full profile; gods of terrible aspect confronted humans.

    Still holding the book open, Varus met the other man’s eyes. “Sir,” he said, “this is written in Egyptian holy symbols. I can’t read it.”

    “Can you not, Magician?” Menre said. To Varus, his words were an eerie echo of those the Sybil sometimes directed at him. “Try.”

    Scowling, Varus looked down at the page, as meaningless to him as bird tracks in the dust. He said, “All hail to Ra, the Sun, as he rises in the eastern quadrant of heaven!” He stopped, amazed.

    “You will need the book,” Menre said, smiling more broadly. “Give my regards to your teacher, whose scholarship I respect.”

    The light began to fade; Menre faded with it, as though he had been only a mirage. Just before he vanished completely, his faint voice added, “You will need more than the book, Lord Varus. Perhaps more than your world holds. Good luck to you, but I am not hopeful.”

    Varus swallowed. For a moment, his surroundings seemed as dark as the tomb; then his eyes adjusted to the oil flame wavering in the lantern which sat on the ground beside him. He picked it up again. The large scroll had vanished, as though it never was.

    He and Pandareus were in the service area of the chapel. Food couldn’t be prepared here, but prepared dishes would be brought in ahead of time and then served in sequence to the diners.

    “Lord Varus?” Pandareus said. “Are you all right?”

    “I–” Varus said. He rubbed his eyes with the back of his free hand. “Did I disappear, Master?”

    “No,” said Pandareus, “but you stopped where you were and put the lantern down. You didn’t appear to hear me when I spoke to you.”

    “Ah,” said Varus. “Was I, that is, was this for long?”

    “Not long,” said Pandareus. “Not much longer than it took you to pick up the lantern again. Did something happen to you?”

    “We may as well go back,” Varus said, turning. He felt queasy, as though he had grasped for a handhold while falling and felt his fingers slip off it. All that remained now was to hit the ground. “I thought I met Menre and that he gave me a book that he said I would need. That we would need. But I don’t have it now.”

    “Can you remember any of it?” Pandareus said, leading through the central room of the chapel. The light from above was enough for him to avoid the benches now that they had been underground for long enough.

    “I didn’t read it,” Varus said, feeling an edge of irritation. “I just glanced at the opening columns. And even if I had–”

    Suddenly, unbidden, the phrase, “Let not the Destroyer be allowed to prevail over him!” leaped into his mind. He shouted the words aloud.

    Pandareus glanced back at him and nodded in satisfaction. “It appears to me, Lord Varus,” he said, “that you have what we need. What all the world needs.”

    They walked up the stairs together, as they had gone down.

 

---

 

    “This is the place?” Corylus said. Pulto had stopped at a sunken place on the hillside, but he hadn’t said anything for the long moments while his master waited politely for him to speak.

    “It’s where Anna showed me this morning,” Pulto agreed in a dull voice. He turned to face Corylus. They carried a lighted lantern, but there was moon enough to show their features clearly.

    “Master,” Pulto said, “we shouldn’t be doing this. I’m not a god-botherer, you know that, but it’d be better to lose than to win by the kind of magic that you find in graveyards. Though it was my own Anna as sent us here.”

    Corylus thought about the vision of Typhon, wrecking the world it crawled across. “No, old friend,” he said. “Losing would be worse, for the Earth, at any rate. For me personally–”

    He shrugged. “I don’t know what it means for me personally. It doesn’t matter. But Pulto? You can wait for me back where we crossed the old wall. I won’t think the less of you if you’re unwilling to be involved in this sort of thing.”

 

---

 

    That wasn’t really true, but Corylus knew that it should be true. He’d known a man, a centurion with scars marking every hand’s-breadth of his body–he couldn’t remember the tale of half of them–who had frozen in mumbling fear when a wolf spider ran up the inside of a leather tent and stopped directly over him. If magic disturbed Pulto in the same way, well, there was more reason for it.

    Pulto snorted. “I’m afraid,” he said, “but I’m a soldier, so what’s being afraid got to do with anything? And I’ve done plenty of things this stupid before, begging your pardon, master. Only–”

    His smile was forced, but the fact he could force a smile spoke well of his courage and his spirits both.

    “–this time I’m sober. Which is maybe the trouble, but it’s one I plan to solve right quick when we’re done with this nonsense.”

    Corylus grinned. “I’ll split at least the first jar with you,” he said. “Now let’s get to work.”

    The tombs of Carce’s wealthy ranged along all the roads out of the city. The great families had huge columbaria, dovecotes; so called because the interiors were covered with lattices to hold urns of cremated ashes.

    Lesser, more recently wealthy, households had correspondingly smaller monuments. Often there was just a slab with reliefs of the man or couple and a small altar in front to receive the offerings brought by descendents.

    But the poor died also, and even a slave might have friends and family. The slope of the Aventine outside the sacred boundary of the city received their remains. Small markers, generally wooden but occasionally scratched stones, dotted the rocky soil. Badly spelled prayers or simple names which were themselves prayers for survival, lasted briefly and were replaced by later burials and later markers, just as other wretched souls had moved into the tenements that the dead had vacated earlier.

    By day this end of the Aventine was a waste of brush which feral dogs prowled and where crows and vultures croaked and grunted. Fuel for pyres was an expense which the poor skimped on, as they skimped on food and clothing during life. At night occasional humans joined the beasts, witches who searched for herbs which had gained power through the presence of death; and who sometimes gathered bones as well, to be ground and used in darker medicine.

    No one would disturb Corylus and his servant, but Pulto had brought swords for both of them among the other tools: the mattock and pry bar, ropes and basket. By concentrating on the thought of human enemies, Pulto could push the other dangers from his mind.

    “It’s a well, I think,” Pulto said, loosening up now that Corylus had broken the glum silence. “Under a lot of crap and full of crap, of course, but that’s what I thought by daylight.”

    “Right,” said Corylus, thrusting the blade of his mattock between two stones gripped by vines and levering upward. “People throw things down the well when they’re in a hurry to leave. We should be able to find what we’re looking for and get out before the wine shops close!”

    Among the things people threw into wells were bodies, depending on who the people were. Well, they’d deal with that if they had to.

    Corylus put on his thick cowhide mittens. He didn’t need them for the tools–he spent enough time wielding a sword in Saxa’s exercise ground that his calluses protected him–but the loosened rocks were often jagged or wrapped in brambles. He didn’t mind a few cuts and scratches, but it was easy to wear protection when throwing rubble down slope.

    He and Pulto worked together briefly, but when they had excavated the fill a few feet down, Corylus got into the shaft and filled baskets for his servant to lift and empty from the top. It was a well shaft as Pulto had guessed. The coping of volcanic tuff had mostly collapsed inward, but the remainder was cut through the hillside’s soft limestone. There was no way to tell how old it was, but it was certainly old.

    Corylus lost track of everything except the task. This was monotonous but not mindless work, much like ditching or cutting turf to wall a marching camp. He had to decide each next stroke, sometimes scooping loose dirt with the blade of the mattock, sometimes using the pry bar to separate rocks that were wedged together.

    Once he found a human jaw. There wasn’t room in the shaft to leave it, but he made sure it was on the bottom of the next basketful he sent up to Pulto.

    Corylus wasn’t sure how long he had been working–it didn’t help to think about that, since he would work until the task was finished–but his feet were by now some ten feet below the level of the coping. He bent to work more of the light fill–gravel and silt–loose with the mattock while Pulto hauled up the basket with the latest load.

    He stopped and put the mattock down. The light at this depth wouldn’t have been good even without Pulto leaning over the top, so Corylus tried the seam between stones with his fingers and found what he thought his eyes had told him: a slot wide enough for passage had been cut in the living rock, then closed with a fitted stone with a stone wedge above it.

    “Pulto?” Corylus called. “Send the lantern down to me on a cord.”

    Pulto only grunted in reply, but he jerked the basket up more abruptly than usual–a long task was better handled at a steady pace than by fits and starts. Moments later the lantern wobbled down, tied to the end of Pulto’s sash. They could have passed it directly from hand to hand, but not without searing somebody’s fingertips on the hot bronze casing.

    Corylus set the lantern at an angle on the ground so that the light through its mica windows fell on the stones inset in the smooth shaft. He set the point of his pry bar, then used it to work the wedge sideways. When it bound, he blocked the widened crack with a pebble, then shifted the pry bar to the other side and levered the wedge the other way.

    An inch of the wedge was clear of the wall. Corylus thumped it with the heel of his bare palm so that the pebble fell out, then gripped the stone with the fingertips of both hands and wriggled it back and forth while he drew it out. He hopped when it fell, but it landed between where his feet were anyway.

    “What are you doing down there, boy?” Pulto asked with a rasp in his voice. He was worried, and that made him harsh.

    “I think I’ve found what we’re looking for,” Corylus said. He didn’t say that he’d found an Etruscan tomb, because he knew that the information wouldn’t please Pulto.

    As Corylus hoped, the larger slab tipped forward when the wedge was removed. He walked it awkwardly to the side, trying not to crush the lantern or trip over the wedge. Holding the lantern before him, he knelt to peer into the opening.

    The chamber beyond was cut from the rock like the well shaft. It was about ten feet long but not quite that wide. Benches were built into the sidewalls. At the back, facing the entrance, was a chair that seemed to have been carved from the limestone also.

    On the chair sat a bearded man with a fierce expression. He wore a white tunic with fringes of either black or dark blue and a heavier garment of deep red over his left shoulder, leaving the right side of his chest covered only by the tunic. On a gold neck-chain was an elongated jewel clasped by gold filigree at top and bottom.

    “Master, what are you doing?” Pulto said. His voice echoed dully in the well. “Hold on! I’m coming down!”

    “Stay where you are!” Corylus said, twisting his head backward as much as the tomb door allowed him. “I’m coming right back!”

    He stepped forward, hunching; the floor was cut down so that the ceiling might have been high enough for him to stand, but he didn’t want to chance a bad knock in his hurry. He set the lantern on the floor, then took the jewel in his hands and started to lift the chain over the head of the bearded man.

    The figure and his clothing vanished into a swirl of dust. A bracelet of braided gold wire clinked to the stone chair, then to the floor.

    Corylus sneezed, then squeezed his lips together. He backed quickly out of the tomb, then dropped the chain over his own head as the easiest way to carry it. I’m not going back for the lantern, he thought.

    “Pulto!” he said. “Drop me an end of the rope and snub it off. I’m coming up and we’re getting out of here!”

    The rope sailed down; the basket was still attached to the handle.

    “That’s the first thing you’ve said tonight that I agree with!” Pulto said. “By Hercules! it is.”