in plain sight.'
'Yes?'
'I will tell you that after they fled from Baiae, this was their first destination.'
'Here? They came to your cave?'
'They came to seek the guidance of the Sibyl. They came to me as innocent men, not guilty ones.' 'Where can I find them now?'
'The one who is hidden you may find in time. As for the one in plain sight, you will find him on your way back to Baiae.' 'In the woods?' 'Not in the woods.' 'Then where?'
'There is a stone shelf that overlooks Lake Avemus…' 'Olympias showed us the place.'
'On the left side of the precipice there is a narrow path that leads down to the lake. Cover your mouth and nose with your sleeve and descend to the very mouth of the pit. He will await you there.'
'What, the shade of a dead man escaping from Tartarus?'
'You will know him when you see him. He will greet you with open eyes.'
It would be a clever place to hide, granted, but what sort of man could pitch his camp on the very shores of Avernus, amid the sulphur and steam and the reeking phantoms of the dead? The stone shelf was as near as I had cared to venture to the place; to descend to its edge sent a shiver through me. I could tell from the way he clutched my arm that Eco disliked the idea as much as I did.
'The boy,' said the Sibyl crisply, 'why does he not speak for himself?'
'He is unable to speak.'
'You lie!'
'No, he cannot speak.' 'Was he born dumb?'
'No. When he was very small he was stricken by a fever. The same fever killed his father; from that day Eco never spoke again. So his mother told me before she abandoned him.'
'He could speak now if he tried.'
How could she say such a thing? I began to object, but she interrupted.
'Let him try. Say your name, boy!'
Eco looked at her fearfully, and then with an odd glimmer of hope in his eyes. It was another strange moment in a day of strange moments, and I almost believed that the impossible would come to pass there in the Sibyl's cave. Eco must have believed as well. He opened his mouth. His throat quivered and his cheeks grew taut.
'Say your name!' the Sibyl demanded.
Eco strained. His face darkened. His Lips trembled.
'Say it!'
Eco tried. But the sound that came from his throat was not human speech. It was a stifled, distorted noise, ugly and grating. I closed my eyes in shame for him, then felt him against my breast, shivering and weeping. I held him tighdy, and wondered why the Sibyl should demand such a cruel price — an innocent boy's humiliation — in return for so little. I drew a deep breath and filled my lungs with the scent of decaying flowers. I summoned my courage and opened my eyes, determined to reprimand her, vessel of the god or not, but the Sibyl was nowhere to be seen.
We left the Sibyl's cave. The cavern of echoes and voices no longer seemed quite so mysterious — a curious enclosure, to be sure, but not the awe-inspiring place it had been when we entered. The way back to the temple was strenuous and rocky, but it hardly required that we crawl; nor was it as long on the way back as it had been on the way to the Sibyl's cave. The whole world seemed to have awakened from a strange dream. Even the fitful fog had receded, and the hillside was bright with afternoon sunshine.
The fire had died in the brazier. The blackened entrails still sputtered and popped occasionally on the hot stone, startling the swarm of flies that circled overhead. The sight was unpleasant, but the smell of charred flesh reminded me again that we had not eaten in hours. In a small recess behind the temple, the boy Damon had strung up and skinned the carcass of the lamb and was carving it with surprising expertise.
We scrambled down the ravine and untethered our horses. Bright sunshine reflected off the maze of rocks, making it as baffling a place as before, if not quite so menacing. We made our way towards the coast. At the crest of a small rise, a glittering expanse opened before us, not the circumscribed sweep of the Cup, but the true sea, an unobstructed body of water extending all the way to Sardinia and beyond to the Pillars of Hercules in the west. The ancient village of Cumae was at our feet.
We rode in silence. On our journeys I usually kept up a running conversation, even if Eco could not answer with his own voice. Now I could think of nothing to say. The silence between us was heavy with an unspoken melancholy.
A wagon driver pointed us to the house of Iaia, which stood perched on a cliff at the far end of the village, overlooking the sea. It was not impressive as villas go, but it was probably the largest house in the village, with modest wings extending to the north and south and what appeared to be another storey stepping down towards the sea on the west. The wash of colours that decorated the facade was subtly original, a blending of saffron and ochre together with highlights of blue and green. The house at once stood out boldly against the backdrop of the sea, and yet seemed an essential part of the view. The hand and eye of Iaia turned everything to art.
The door slave informed us that Olympias had gone out but would return, and had left word that our needs should be attended to. He led us to a small terrace with a view of the sea, and brought food and drink. Presented with a bowl of steaming porridge, Eco began to seem more himself. He ate with relish, and I was heartened to see him shake off his sadness. After eating we rested, reclining on couches on the terrace and gazing at the sea, but I soon grew restless and began to question the slaves about Olympias's whereabouts. If they knew where she was, they would not tell. I left Eco dozing on his couch and wandered through the house.
Iaia had collected many beautiful things in the course of her career — finely crafted tables and chairs, small sculptures so delicately moulded and painted they seemed almost to breathe, precious objects made of glass, ivory figurines, and the paintings of other artists as well as her own. These things were displayed about the house with a great sense of harmony and an unfailing eye for beauty. No wonder she had been so disparaging of Lucius Licinius's taste in paintings and statues.
It was my nose that led me to the room where Iaia and Olympias created their pigments. I followed a strange medley of odours down a hallway until I came to a chamber cluttered with pots, braziers, mortars and pestles. Stacked all about the room were dozens of clay jars, some large, some small, all labelled in the same hand that had signed the portrait of Gelina. I opened the lids and examined the various dried plants and powdered minerals. Some of them I recognized — brown-red sinopis made from rusted Sinopean iron; Spanish cinnabar the colour of blood; dark purple sand from Puteoli; blue indigo made from a powder scraped off Egyptian reeds.
Other jars seemed to contain not pigments but medicinal herbs — black and white hellebore ground to a powder, poisonous but having many uses; the holosteon or 'all-bone' plant (perversely named by the Greeks because it is entirely soft, just as they call gall 'sweet') with its slender, hairlike roots, good for closing wounds and healing sprains; white lathyris seeds, good for curing dropsy and drawing away bile. I was just replacing the lid on a tiny jar full of aconitum, also called panther's-death, when someone cleared his throat behind me. The door slave watched me disapprovingly from the hallway.
'You should be careful before you stick your nose in the jars,' he said. 'Some of the things inside can be very poisonous.'
'Yes,' I agreed, 'like this stuff. Aconitum — they say it sprang from the mouth foam of Cerberus when Hercules pulled him up from the Underworld. That's why it grows near openings to the Underworld, like the Jaws of Hades. Good for killing panthers, I'm told… or people. I wonder why your mistress keeps it.'
'Scorpion stings,' the slave answered curtly. 'You mix it with wine to make a poultice.'
'Ah, your mistress must be very wise about such things.'
The slave crossed his arms and stared at me like a basilisk. I slowly replaced the jar on the shelf and left the room.
I decided to take a walk along the cliffs beyond the village. The afternoon sun was warm, the sky was crystal. A progression of clouds scudded along the blue horizon, and overhead gulls circled and shrieked. The fog that had blanketed the coast an hour before had vanished. The Sibyl of Cumae began to seem unreal, like the vapours that rose from Lake Avernus, as if all that had happened since we left Baiae that morning were a waking dream. I breathed deeply of the sea air and was suddenly weary of the villa in Baiae and its mysteries. I longed to be in Rome again, walking through the crowded streets of the Subura, watching the gangs of boys who play trigon in the
