a vision from Jupiter, I recalled the view of Agrippa's home. Surely an old family friend, particularly one so powerful, would render such assistance as he could, perhaps intercede with the priests or even force them to restore part of the fortune I had spent.
The villa was as glorious as I remembered, high on a cliff overlooking the sea. Its walls enclosed three full acres, ^8 with a path winding to the beach below, where strange and exotic fish swam in ponds. ^9
I entered the enclosure and gave my name to an inquiring slave. I had hardly dismounted to sit in the shade of a towering fruit tree ^10 when I was led into the coolness of the house.
Agrippa himself, older and more enfeebled than I remembered, greeted me dressed in a shining white toga trimmed in purple. ^11 He took my elbow in his bony grasp, taking me to a room that opened onto an inner courtyard, where we were furnished cool wine and sampled figs and dates. After solemnly noting his sorrow at my father's death, he asked what he might do for me.
I told him as much of my experience in the underworld as I could remember, including my father's shade's strange remark that his fortune had been placed in the 'hands of the servant of the god.'
The problem, of course, was which servant of which god, a puzzle the old man promised to consider. I could see the riddle disturbed him but I knew not why, perhaps because of the great price I had paid for a mere puzzle to solve. He suggested I remain his guest until he ascertained the best course of action, an invitation I was hardly in a position to decline.
NOTES
1. Severenus uses the word putrescere, the Latin verb for 'to rot or putrefy.' Knowing what we do today of the area, it would be safe to assume the air was heavy with sulfuric fumes.
2. Consider the smoke from lamps or torches, the fumes previously alluded to, and the drugs he had been fed over the last few days.
3. A well-known scar easily reproduced by cosmetics?
4. Hearing.
5. Extra manum, literally, 'out of hand.'
6. Greek god of dreams.
7. It could be speculated that the visitors to Hades who did not return were those who were skeptical of what they had seen and heard.
8. A rough equivalency. The actual words were 'fifty by fifty heredia.' One hundred heredia equals approximately ten thousand square meters.
9. Ponds of fish, both fresh- and salt-water, were a competitive display of wealth among Romans with seaside villas. The occupants of these ponds were frequently edible, and the more uncommon the species, the better. At least one fulltime servant would be required to monitor the water level and temperature, feed, etc.
10. Since few fruit trees 'tower,' it is likelySeverenus refers to a date palm, which would have been imported from Africa, another Roman version of conspicuous consumption.
11. A color allowed only to senators and other nobles.
PART VI
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Baia
Early the next morning
Jason had finished all but one chapter of the article in Adrian's archaeological magazine in the waning hour of daylight as the Scot drove the short distance from Cumae. They had parked the Volvo in a lot near Pozzuoli's ancient forty-thousand-seat Greek amphitheater in hopes it would remain unnoticed. Jason and Maria had taken a cab to Baia, leaving Adrian to find a van large enough to carry both him and the gear from the observatory.
They had found a single room in a small pensione. Jason had handed over the false passports and made sure the elderly proprietor had returned to his quarters before admitting Adrian, who had spent the night in a less than comfortable chair. Jason had hoped that the police would be looking for a trio, not a man and wife.
Early the next morning, Jason attempted to retrieve the passports after letting Adrian out through a window. The proprietor was not to be found, and Jason made a mental note to regain the documents later in the day. Now they waited among the crumbled walls of a Roman temple of
Venus on a terrace above the present town. Below were the domes of the baths of Mercury and Venus, therapeutic springs used well into the Middle Ages.
The rising sun painted the bay the color of pink roses until it cleared the horizon, leaving the sky a cloudless blue tinged with purple, an expanse marked only by the twinkling eye of a single morning star until it, too, winked out.
Jason stood and stretched. 'Do we know how to find wherever it is we're going?'
Maria pointed up a slight slope. 'There.'
Jason squinted. In the early light what he had mistaken for the rock face of a nearby hill bracketed by stumps of columns was in fact a single slab of cement. Closer inspection revealed a razor-wire fence partly concealed by scrub bush. He could not make out the words on a couple of faded signs. He was fairly certain they didn't offer welcome.
'The Great Antrum to the underworld,' Maria announced.
'Not exactly hospitable,' Jason observed. 'Someone sure doesn't want us in there.'
'The Italian government,' Maria said. 'They claim that it may collapse and it may be filled with poisonous gases. It has been sealed since 2001, remember?'
Jason helped her sling her air tank and regulator over a shoulder before picking up his own. 'Since Robert Temple's exploration.'
She was walking up the gentle slope. 'Yes.'
They stopped at the strands of wire. A few minutes with a wire cutter from Adrian's pack made a narrow but passable entrance. Now they stood at the base of a slope of some twenty feet, a solid face of concrete.
'This may na' be so deft,' Adrian observed. 'We canna spend th' day chippin' through cement.'
Jason, his hand touching the wall, was moving slowly to his left. He felt what he thought was a crack. He was looking at a rectangular cut around an area about five and a half by three, just large enough to admit a man. Someone had made an effort to conceal the seams with vegetation pulled from nearby.
Adrian took a few steps back, arms akimbo. 'Y' may have found a way in, but I'm doubtin' th' three of us kin lift such a slab.'
'Someone obviously can,' Jason replied. 'Otherwise cutting it in here wouldn't have made sense.'
Maria reached out a hand to run it across the surface. 'This is not cement.'
'Not cement?' Jason echoed.
There was a flat thumping sound as Maria rapped her knuckles against the surface. 'Not at all. Plastic.'
Adrian reached out and confirmed what she had said. 'Someone must've cut a hole here and replaced it with lighter material.'
'Only reason they'd do that,' Jason said, 'is so they can come in and out whenever they wish.'
There was no doubt as to who 'they' were.
It took little effort to remove what was no more than a cleverly customized plastic form, one that a single person could easily lift and replace from inside. The three checked their regulators before struggling into the backpacks with heavy their air tanks and tested the lamps in their helmets. Adrian and Jason both made sure their weapons were readily accessible.
On his knees, Adrian leaned into the entrance. The hungry darkness swallowed the light of his helmet lamp. 'Ye're right, laddie, aboot someone comin' in 'n' out. There's a ladder here.'
Sure enough, the entrance dropped straight down to a floor about six feet below before the passage disappeared under the hill. Jason helped Maria down.
