FOR what seemed like hours, there was no sign of activity. We passed the time exploring this relic of the ancient world — a frozen, grey world, stopped in a moment by the power of the great volcano. The ruins that littered the gardens of the villa did not seem to form part of the main excavation, and were unattended — a private monument. Charlie came across what appeared to be the entrance to a tunnel but it proved to be merely an ancient well. Neither of us felt further inclined to mess with wells.
I recalled my previous visit to the ruin and how, despite the loathsome press of gawping day-trippers, I had found Pompeii quite magnificent; its frescoed villas, its filthy pictures, its roads still rutted with the tracks of ancient carts. Yet it also wears a melancholy aspect, for here are laid bare past lives, here is the shattered grandeur that was the Roman Empire, here lie the actual folk themselves, or casts of their tortured remains — the skeletons still within — so that teeth show horribly in rictus grins from shapeless lumps of plaster.
In the flickering torchlight now, undisturbed by the goggling crowds, it was possible to feel one had actually slipped back in time. I explored the villa while Charlie walked about the grounds. The black and gold murals I found looked fresh and vivid, the ancient scribblings on the walls outside as though the graffitist had only lately quit the scene. When Charlie returned from his recce, I half expected his silhouetted form to resolve itself in toga and sandals.
I gazed over his shoulder at the smoking summit of the volcano.
«Look at her, Charlie,» I whispered. «Vesuvius looks down upon Pompeii as if to say „I have destroyed you once. How dare you show your face?“ One day it’ll make good its threat and cover all this up again.»
«Then people could come and stare at us,» chimed in Charlie.
«Not a pleasant thought is it?» I replied. «I’d hate to have some hairy fool poking a stick at my petrified bum.»
We laughed. Charlie sat down next to me as I stretched out over the flagstones, enjoying my fag. Above us the stars packed the black sky.
«What are you thinking, Mr Box?» said Charlie gently.
I continued to stare at the sky. «Only that a night such as this should not be spent in the contemplation of mortal danger but of love.»
The boy lay down next to me. In the soft silence I could hear his quick breathing. I suppose I knew that he wanted me to place my hand on his, to turn him towards me and kiss him with all the fever that that sulphurous atmosphere demanded. Instead I flicked my cigarette away and heaved a sigh.
«But business before pleasure,» I said, sitting up. «Miss Bella Pok will have to wait.»
«Who?» said Charlie sharply.
«A rather singular young lady of my acquaintance. Perhaps when all this is over…»
The boy’s face fell. Aren’t I a rotter?
Before Charlie could say something he might regret I stayed him with an outstretched hand. Just visible in the distant gloom was a curious purplish glow.
Charlie had already moved away and I could see him straining to listen. Soon I became aware of the sound of trudging feet on stone and, a little afterwards, seven or eight unnaturally tall men lumbered into our line of sight. Charlie gasped and I too wondered briefly whether they were some kind of phantasm. The queasy mauve light above their heads told its own story, however; the poor wretches wore the same brass helmets as my attacker from the Vesuvius Club.
They clumped in single file towards the villa and I beckoned Charlie to duck behind the cover of the opened windows. As the strange procession trooped past us and into the villa, we stood stock still, aware solely of the warm breeze in the great dark trees.
With effortful grunting, the helmeted zombies trudged back into the garden, carrying the four coffins between them. We waited as long as we dared and then set off in pursuit.
The unearthly glow from the brass helmets functioned like the Israelites’ pillar of fire and so Charlie and I were able to shadow the funereal procession with some deftness. Appropriately enough we were making our way through the city’s ancient cemetery, the rather charmingly named Via delle Tombe. Passing through the old town gateway, we soon reached what seemed to be a massive earthworks. The zombified men put down the coffins and stood stock still, as immobile as the tombstones that surrounded them.
Crouching low, I peered across the earthworks. A thin strip of yellowy light was just visible.
«Where’s that coming from?» gasped Charlie.
«I do believe,» I said, getting to my feet, «from under the ground.»
Charlie began to rise also but stopped, half-crouched. «Sir?»
«Hmm?»
«You hear that?»
I listened. Very, very faintly, I could hear a curious susurration.
«What is it?» said Charlie.
It was indeed a strange sound, somewhere between the wheeze of a bellows and the whir of a motorcar engine. Suddenly one of the helmeted men jerked into life like a wound-up automaton and bent down towards the ground. The strip of light widened as, with a rending squeal, he opened some kind of hatch set into the rubble. With surprising dexterity, the others then began to lower the coffins through the hatch, clambering down after them. We gave it a minute or so after the metal door had finally swung to before we advanced across the excavation.
With the quiet concentration of a professional, I got to work on the hatch and within a few minutes I had levered the thing open. Despite my best efforts, it creaked loudly as I pulled it back on its hinges.
I peered down into the hole beyond. A shaft led steeply downwards, its sides studded with small electric lights. I could just make out the top of a metal ladder.
«Down?» queried Charlie.
«Down.»
Leading the way, I swung myself over the lip of the shaft and began to clamber down the ladder, the rungs sharp with the blood-like smell of warm iron. We seemed to have been descending for a full five minutes when I paused for breath and reached out a hand for Charlie’s ankle on the rung above me in order to stop him clambering on to my head.
He crouched down and tried to peer past me into the gloom. «Seems to me someone’s been doing quite a bit of digging.»
The helmeted automata could have only manhandled the coffins down here with inhuman strength. We recommenced our descent, and after a further minute or so we reached a layer of soft volcanic rock where the shaft abruptly flattened out, stretching ahead in a kind of dreary, dusty grey corridor. Again, electric lights had been strung from the walls, coiled wire looped between them like strange umbilical appendages.
«That sound’s much louder now,» commented Charlie as we advanced.
I nodded. «Perhaps some kind of air-pump.»
After a time, the loose, shale-like rock began to give way to the familiar sight of a Roman pavement. Seemingly we were now in the unexcavated bowels of Pompeii, amongst structures no man had seen for almost two thousand years. No man save those we now sought. The road branched off to the right almost immediately, giving on to a wonderfully preserved archway. The light was brighter here and clearly getting brighter still as the whole structure was suffused in a great ball of luminescence.
Charlie stumbled slightly on the pavement and I looked down to see that the stone floor was concave, a great grooved channel having been excavated in its centre. I glanced around swiftly then noticed the distinctive decoration that covered the walls in a series of serried niches, each containing a yellowy electric bulb.
«That appears to be Neptune,» I cried, pointing at the carving’s twisting tail and powerful muscled torso. «This must have been a bath house.»
Charlie nodded indifferently. «What is it
There seemed to be no one about, so we pressed on. The first chamber we entered, again decorated with the motif of the sea-god, had been only partially excavated from the rock. A series of chair-like niches, not unlike church vestibules, occupied each wall. Here the Pompeiians had evidently changed out of their togas and gone skinny-dipping in the plunge pools. One such pool, now half full of the rain water which streamed in from above, still stood close by.
