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Authors: Evangeline Walton
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jolly old doubts. I was lost, completely lost. The harder I tried to get out, the deeper in I got.”
Once, for what seemed hundreds of feet, he had to wriggle forward on his belly, feeling the stone roof above him scrape his hair. Nothing in his whole life had ever seemed so good as the moment when that pressure ceased.
But his relief did not last long. Soon all the passages began to slope sharply uphill; the only one in which he could stand upright became positively steep. He staggered on, sweat-soaked, his breath whistling, determined only to keep going until he dropped. Knowing that if—or rather, when—he would die there in the suffocating, stony dark.
Several times he fell, but managed to get up again. The last time was just within sight of another turn.
For beyond that turn, he saw a glimmer of light.
He staggered forward, shouting, burst into a room where bottle-filled shelves lined the walls. An old man yelled and dropped a pitcher of wine.
He was in Prince Mino’s wine cellar. “And it looked like heaven. For hours I hadn’t been able to see my hand before my face. Until you’ve been trapped in darkness like that, you don’t know what it means to be able just to see.”
He fell again then, his last strength gone. “And a good thing I did too, because a man chasing you looks dangerous. A man lying on the ground doesn’t.” The old fellow, who had been in full flight, heard that fall and the groan that went with it; he came back to peer down into the gaunt face.
“You! You, signore!”
It was Mattia Rossi; he remembered Roger from that young man’s pre-war visit to the villa, and he was quick to understand. He brought back the wine and gave him a drink.
“I will bring food too, signore. Thanks to God that here we are too deep beneath the earth for my foolish yells to have been heard! Most of us here would be glad to help you, but there is always one Judas.”
The old fellow’s simplicity, his kindly decency, breathe through every word that Roger Carstairs wrote. Mattia Rossi cannot have dreamed then who that Judas would be; when he did know, the knowledge must have meant heartbreak. I am sorry to think that he had to live through all those years remembering, perhaps knowing that it was he himself who unwittingly had set death to waiting, watching in the shadows.
All Roger knew then was that he was sinking comfortably, happily, into an abyss of peace. When the old man tried to raise his head and feed him, he could eat little. “Funny. I’d been so hungry. But all I wanted then was rest. Just to lie there and not move.”
He slept. And woke, hours later, in a completely strange place. A huge, circular chamber from the center of whose ceiling a grinning Gorgon’s head glared down at him. Round the walls a black, hideous man-vulture, his taloned hands brandishing whips made of snakes, was chasing the terrified shapes of men and women. “For a minute I thought I’d died and gone to Hell.”
Then he understood. He was in a typical late Etruscan tomb, built when the Rasenna’s power was fading and their once blissful belief in an afterlife had turned into a nightmare, perhaps because they thought their gods were punishing them for some known crime. He was lying on a camp cot, in clean silk pajamas, with clean sheets over and under him. Funeral urns lined the walls and, by turning his head, he could see the sarcophagus built against the massive central pillar, beneath the glaring Gorgon’s head. Here the master and mistress of some ancient household slept, their dependants around them. Their painted, life-sized effigies half-sat, half-reclined upon the sarcophagus, side by side. In the dim light, the two looked startlingly, almost threateningly alive, capable of rising to chastise an intruder.
Light! Where was it coming from? Roger raised himself on one elbow and saw the whole room. A gray-haired man sat at a folding table on which was an oil lamp strong enough to give his work full light.
Once, for what seemed hundreds of feet, he had to wriggle forward on his belly, feeling the stone roof above him scrape his hair. Nothing in his whole life had ever seemed so good as the moment when that pressure ceased.
But his relief did not last long. Soon all the passages began to slope sharply uphill; the only one in which he could stand upright became positively steep. He staggered on, sweat-soaked, his breath whistling, determined only to keep going until he dropped. Knowing that if—or rather, when—he would die there in the suffocating, stony dark.
Several times he fell, but managed to get up again. The last time was just within sight of another turn.
For beyond that turn, he saw a glimmer of light.
He staggered forward, shouting, burst into a room where bottle-filled shelves lined the walls. An old man yelled and dropped a pitcher of wine.
He was in Prince Mino’s wine cellar. “And it looked like heaven. For hours I hadn’t been able to see my hand before my face. Until you’ve been trapped in darkness like that, you don’t know what it means to be able just to see.”
He fell again then, his last strength gone. “And a good thing I did too, because a man chasing you looks dangerous. A man lying on the ground doesn’t.” The old fellow, who had been in full flight, heard that fall and the groan that went with it; he came back to peer down into the gaunt face.
“You! You, signore!”
It was Mattia Rossi; he remembered Roger from that young man’s pre-war visit to the villa, and he was quick to understand. He brought back the wine and gave him a drink.
“I will bring food too, signore. Thanks to God that here we are too deep beneath the earth for my foolish yells to have been heard! Most of us here would be glad to help you, but there is always one Judas.”
The old fellow’s simplicity, his kindly decency, breathe through every word that Roger Carstairs wrote. Mattia Rossi cannot have dreamed then who that Judas would be; when he did know, the knowledge must have meant heartbreak. I am sorry to think that he had to live through all those years remembering, perhaps knowing that it was he himself who unwittingly had set death to waiting, watching in the shadows.
All Roger knew then was that he was sinking comfortably, happily, into an abyss of peace. When the old man tried to raise his head and feed him, he could eat little. “Funny. I’d been so hungry. But all I wanted then was rest. Just to lie there and not move.”
He slept. And woke, hours later, in a completely strange place. A huge, circular chamber from the center of whose ceiling a grinning Gorgon’s head glared down at him. Round the walls a black, hideous man-vulture, his taloned hands brandishing whips made of snakes, was chasing the terrified shapes of men and women. “For a minute I thought I’d died and gone to Hell.”
Then he understood. He was in a typical late Etruscan tomb, built when the Rasenna’s power was fading and their once blissful belief in an afterlife had turned into a nightmare, perhaps because they thought their gods were punishing them for some known crime. He was lying on a camp cot, in clean silk pajamas, with clean sheets over and under him. Funeral urns lined the walls and, by turning his head, he could see the sarcophagus built against the massive central pillar, beneath the glaring Gorgon’s head. Here the master and mistress of some ancient household slept, their dependants around them. Their painted, life-sized effigies half-sat, half-reclined upon the sarcophagus, side by side. In the dim light, the two looked startlingly, almost threateningly alive, capable of rising to chastise an intruder.
Light! Where was it coming from? Roger raised himself on one elbow and saw the whole room. A gray-haired man sat at a folding table on which was an oil lamp strong enough to give his work full light.
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