There was no doubt about what had happened here. A human being had been buried together with a wild animal that had torn the body apart and then tried to writhe and claw its way out of that narrow stone prison before dying of suffocation. Fragments of coarse cloth were still sticking here and there to what was left of the man’s head, and this detail left no doubt in Fabrizio’ mind as to the horrifying ritual that had brought about this person’ death.
He pulled back from the coffin, his face pale and beaded with cold sweat, murmuring, ‘Oh, Christ my God. A… a Phersu… ’
4
FRANCESCA ARRIVED at about five and saw that the workers had already loaded a sarcophagus on to the pickup and were removing the winch cables. It was a striking alabaster cenotaph coffin with the figure of a woman reclining on a triclinium. She saw that the door to the tomb was open and had been entered. Fabrizio was leaning into the other roughly hewn sarcophagus with his head and arms practically inside.
He straightened up when he heard her footsteps and she was shocked by the expression on his face. He looked as if he had been to hell and back.
‘What’s happened? You look horrible.’
‘I’m a little tired,’ he said, motioning for her to join him. ‘Look at this. Have you ever seen anything like it?’
Francesca leaned over the open coffin and her smile disappeared instantly. ‘Good God. It’s a…’
‘A Phersu… I think it’s a Phersu. Look at the skull. There are still shreds of the sack they closed his head in.’
‘This is a sensational discovery! I would say that this is the first time archaeological evidence of this ritual has ever been found. Up until now, we’ve only seen it represented in the iconography.’
‘I’m sure you’re right, Francesca, but I don’t feel satisfied or excited. When I opened the lid and saw this scene I thought I was having a heart attack. It felt like it had just happened.’
Well, that’s only natural,’ said Francesca. ‘The same thing happened to me when I excavated the harbour at Herculaneum with Contini. Those scenes of death and desperation seemed crystallized in time and were still laden with human drama… at least for me.’
‘What do you think this poor wretch did to deserve such an end?’
‘Come on, you know he was already dead when they shut him in the sarcophagus.’
‘All right, let’s say he was dead, but what led up to this? I mean, have you seen that animal inside? I’ve… never seen anything like it.’
Francesca leaned into the coffin again to peer inside, more apprehensively this time. ‘What do you think it is?’
‘It looks like a dog, but-’
‘Yeah, it does, but its snout is so long and it’s… enormous. Did they have dogs that big back then?’
‘Don’t ask me. I have no idea. I want to contact a friend of mine in Bologna tonight. Sonia Vitali is a palaeozoologist. I’ll email her a picture. Hopefully she’ll be free to come here and have a look at these bones.’
‘What do you have left to do here?’
‘I’ve photographed everything, both on film and digitally, and I’ve recorded the position of every find inside the coffin. I just have to remove the remains.’
‘Does Balestra know?’
‘I called him at the office and on his mobile phone, but he’s not answering. Have you seen him?’
‘I haven’t been at the museum today. But it seems strange you can’t reach him. I think he’d like to see the finds in their original positions.’
‘I’m sure he would, but both the Finanza and the carabinieri are telling me they can’t ensure continuing surveillance. That’s why I’ve had the alabaster sarcophagus loaded on to the truck and now I have to remove everything else. I can’t leave things here unguarded. Not that there’s anything precious, but you never know…’
‘Then I’ll help you,’ said Francesca.
She set to work with Fabrizio, picking out every little fragment, every last bit of that tragedy, and packaging it all up into plastic boxes. They put little yellow tags on each with the wording: ‘Rovaio tomb. Sarcophagus A. Human and animal remains.’ This formulation was as vague and confused as the situation that had presented itself once the coffin was opened.
Eventually nothing remained in the big chamber except for the bare sarcophagus, whose lid had been replaced. The boxes were numbered and loaded one by one on to a foam-rubber bed in the pickup. Each box had been wrapped in sacking and placed in a plastic bag to prevent dehydration. It was seven thirty by the time everything was ready.
‘What about the door?’ asked Francesca. ‘I know people who could sell that for a fortune to some fence in Switzerland.’
‘It’s awfully heavy,’ replied Fabrizio. ‘They’d need a thirty-ton crane. A truck that size could never make it down this path and the carabinieri said they’d send a vehicle over during the night. I think we can relax. When Balestra gets back, we’ll ask him what should be done.’
Francesca nodded. ‘You know, you don’t seem like a bumbling academic in the least! You’d make a fine inspector!’
‘Thanks. I imagine that’s a compliment.’
Francesca smiled. ‘Listen, you’ve done a great job.’
‘It wasn’t difficult. There wasn’t any stratigraphical work, just the two sarcophagi.’
‘Did you have a chance to check the surrounding area at all?’
‘I did yesterday. Mostly up at the top. I found a few bucchero pottery fragments, nothing much. They’re in the clear plastic bag.’
Francesca ran a final check to make sure that the alabaster sarcophagus and the boxes with the bones were safely positioned in the pickup, then asked the workers to close up the tomb. They shut the heavy stone doors and secured them, plunging the chamber back into darkness and leaving Charun the sole, silent custodian of the empty tomb.
The foreman started up the truck and drove off cautiously in first gear, followed by the carabiniere Land Rover. Francesca and Fabrizio were alone, standing in front of the closed door of the ancient mausoleum. Evening was falling and the last light was disappearing in the Rovaio woods.
‘Feel any better?’ asked Francesca softly.
‘Sure, I’m OK.’
‘I know you are, but you looked awful when I first came up. That’s absolutely normal, of course. It’s not every day that you see something so horrible. I must admit I was pretty shaken up myself
‘Now I know how the scratch marks on the ground got there.’
‘How?’
‘The animal, when they were trying to force it into the tomb alive.’
‘How did they manage that, do you think?’
‘They must have tied him up, his neck, his legs… I can’t even imagine the scene. Those claws gouged into the sandstone… Can you think of what they must have done to human flesh?’
‘Christ.’
‘Yeah.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s not worth dwelling on it. It did happen two and a half thousand years ago, after all. Not much we can do now. Maybe he was a bastard who deserved to die. But we’ll never know.’
Francesca did not acknowledge his weak attempt at humour. Instead she changed the topic. ‘What about the woman?’
‘His wife, I’d say.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Or his sister.’
‘Less probable. That empty sarcophagus seems more like a declaration of undying love.’
Fabrizio looked at the photo he’d taken earlier on his digital camera and admired the sublime features of the
