Beats the brutal midday sun,
From the Mountains of Chiusa, across the plains,
Resounds the dreaded horn of doom…
The poem recounted the strange death of the Visigothic king Theodoric. Pendergast read it once, and then again, failing to see what momentous importance Constance could have attached to it. He read it again slowly, recalling the obscure legend.
Theodoric was one of the earliest of the great barbarian rulers. He carved a kingdom for himself from the corpse of the Roman Empire, and among other brutal acts he executed the brilliant statesman and philosopher Boethius. Theodoric died in 526. Legend had it that a holy hermit, living alone on one of the Aeolian islands off the coast of Sicily, swore that in the very hour of Theodoric’s death, he witnessed the king’s shrieking soul being cast into the throat of the great volcano of Stromboli, believed by the early Christians to be the entrance of hell itself.
Stromboli. The Doorway to Hell. In a flash, Pendergast understood.
He rose, walked over to the shelf of atlases, and selected the one of Sicily. Returning to his seat, he carefully opened it to the page displaying the Aeolian islands. The outermost of these was the island of Stromboli, which was essentially the peak of a live volcano that rose abruptly from the sea. A lone village hugged its surf-pounded shore. The island was exceedingly remote and difficult to reach, and the volcano of Stromboli itself had the distinction of being the most active in Europe, in almost continual eruption for at least three thousand years.
He carefully wiped the page with a folded white linen handkerchief, then examined it with his magnifying glass. There, stuck to the linen weft, was another curled red wool fiber.
Chapter 76
Diogenes Pendergast stood on the terrace of his villa. Below him, the tiny whitewashed village of Piscita crowded down to the broad, black-sand beaches of the island. A wind came in from the sea, bringing with it the scent of brine and flowering ginestra. A mile out to sea, the automatic lighthouse on the immense rock of Strombolicchio had begun winking in the gathering dusk.
He sipped a glass of sherry, listening to the distant sounds from the town below-a mother calling her children in to dinner, a dog barking, the buzz of a three-wheeled Ape, the only kind of passenger vehicle used on the island. The wind was rising, along with the surf-it was going to be another roaring night.
And behind him, he heard the thunderous rumble of the volcano.
Here, at the very edge of the world, he felt safe. She could not follow him here. This was his home. He had first come here twenty years before, and then almost every year since, always arriving and departing with the utmost care. The three hundred or so year-round residents of the island knew him as an eccentric and irascible British professor of classics who came periodically to work on his magnum opus-and who did not look with favor on being disturbed. He avoided the summer and the tourists, although this island, being sixty miles from the mainland and inaccessible for days at a time due to violent seas and the lack of a port, was far less visited than most.
Another rolling boom. The volcano was active tonight.
He turned, glancing up its steep, dark slopes. Angry clouds writhed and twisted across the volcanic crater, towering more than a half mile above his villa, and he could see the faint flashes of orange inside the jagged cone, like the flickering of a defective lamp.
The last gleam of sunlight died on Strombolicchio and the sea turned black. Great rollers creamed in long white lines up the black beach, one after another, accompanied by a monotonous low roar.
Over the past twenty-four hours, with enormous mental effort, Diogenes had expunged from his mind the raw memory of recent events. Someday-when he had acquired a little distance-he would sit down and dispassionately analyze what had gone wrong. But for now he needed to rest. After all, he was in his prime; he had all the time in the world to plan and execute his next attack.
But at my back I always hear
Time’s winged chariot hurrying near
He gripped the delicate glass so tightly it snapped, and he dashed the stem to the ground and went into the kitchen, pouring himself another. It was part of a supply of amontillado he had laid down years before, and he hated to waste a drop.
He took a sip, calming himself, then strolled back onto the terrace. The town was settling down for the night: a few more faint calls, a wailing baby, the slamming of a door. And the buzz of the Ape, closer now, in one of the crooked streets that rose toward his villa.
He put the glass down on the parapet and lit a cigarette, drawing in the smoke, exhaling into the twilit air. He peered down into the streets below. The Ape was definitely coming up the hill, probably on Vicolo San Bartolo… The tinny whine drew still closer, and for the first time Diogenes felt a twinge of apprehension. The dinner hour was an unusual time for an Ape to be out and about, especially in the upper village-unless it was the island taxi taking someone somewhere. But it was early spring and there were no tourists: the ferry he had taken from Milazzo had carried no visitors, only produce and supplies; and besides, it had departed hours ago.
He chuckled at himself. He had grown too wary, almost paranoid. This demonic pursuit-coming hard on the heels of such a huge failure-had left him shaken, unnerved. What he really needed was a long period of reading, study, and intellectual rejuvenation. Indeed, now would be the perfect time to begin that translation of Aureus Asinus by Apuleius that he had always intended.
He drew in more smoke, exhaled easily, turned his eyes to the sea. The running lights of a ship were just rounding Punta Lena. He went inside, brought out his binoculars, and-looking to sea again-was able to make out the dim outline of an old wooden fishing boat, a real scow, heading away from the island toward Lipari. That puzzled him: it had not been out fishing, not in this weather at this time of day. It had probably been making a delivery.
The sound of the Ape approached and he realized it was now coming up the tiny lane leading to his villa-hidden by the high walls surrounding his grounds. He heard the engine slow as it came to a stop at the bottom of his wall. He put down the binoculars and strode to the side terrace, from where he had a view down the lane; but by the time he got there, the Ape was already turning around-and its passenger, had there been one, was nowhere to be seen.
He paused, his heart suddenly beating so hard he could hear the roar of blood in his ears. His was the only residence at the end of the lane. That old fishing scow hadn’t brought cargo-it had brought a passenger. And that passenger had taken the Ape to the very gates of his villa.
He exploded into silent action, running inside, dashing from room to room, shuttering and barring the windows, turning off the lights, and locking the doors. The villa, like most on the island, was built almost like a fortress, with heavy wooden shutters and doors bolted with hand-wrought iron and heavy locks. The masonry walls themselves were almost a meter thick. And he had made several subtle improvements of his own. He would be safe in the house-or at least he could gain enough time to think, to consider his position.
In a few minutes, he had finished locking himself in. He stood in his dark library, breathing hard. Once again he had the feeling he had reacted out of sheer paranoia. Just because he’d seen a boat, heard the taxi… It was ridiculous. There was simply no way for her to have found him-certainly not this quickly. He had arrived on the island only the evening before. It was absurd, impossible.
He dabbed his brow with a pocket handkerchief and began to breathe easier. He was being utterly foolish. This business had unnerved him even more than he realized.
He was just feeling around for the light when the knock came: slow-mockingly slow-each boom on the great wooden door echoing through the villa.
He froze, his heart wild once again.
