“No.” Her throat felt tight and she could almost see and taste the bittersweetness of that morning. “Not now.”
“You said you wanted the flavor of her time.”
“You certainly gave it to me,” she said unevenly. “It seems impossible that it all disappeared in the blink of an eye.”
“No, not impossible. We manage to destroy pretty efficiently without the help of nature. Look at Hiroshima. And it was more like a bellow than the blink of an eye. Reports said that great bull-like bellows seemed to come from the earth itself. Acrid sulphuric smoke was everywhere and a mushroom cloud shot up from the mountain.”
“And everyone dropped everything that made their lives worth living and ran.”
“Those who could do it. There wasn't much time.”
No air.
No time.
She was suddenly having trouble breathing. “I want out of here. How close are we to the tunnel where this anteroom is supposed to be located?”
“Just ahead.” He shone the flashlight on her face. “You don't look too well. Do you want to go back?”
“No, let's go. Show me. That's why we're here.”
“No, it's not. We're here because you had to see this theater. It's been bugging you.”
“It's natural that I'd want to see this place when the woman who looks like me—”
“You don't have to make excuses to me. You wanted to be here. I brought you. Now you want to go home. I'll take you home. But you haven't really seen the main excavation. I can get you closer to the stage by accessing the next tunnel.”
She shook her head. “I'm ready to go back after I see where you and Sontag have put the coffin.”
He shook his head. “Stubborn.” He shone the beam on the ground and took her hand. “Come on. We'll take a quick peek and get you out of here. There's nothing much to see. We've walled off the entrance to the robbers' tunnel so that no one stumbles into it before we're ready.” He led her forward. “I'm not sure your hot, smoky dream tunnel isn't preferable to this one. It's oozing slime and filth.”
“But you know where you're going. You're not lost and continually going down blind alleys.”
“No, I know where I'm going. You're safe with me.”
She felt safe, she realized suddenly. His voice was as sure as his grasp around her hand, and the darkness was no longer suffocating but . . . intimate. She felt strange. She wanted to pull away. No, she wanted to move closer. She did neither. She let him lead her into the darkness.
Do what she'd set out to do. See the tunnel where Trevor had set up his big con, check out the vomitorium, and then get back to the villa on Via Spagnola.
Are you sure you still want to visit the vomitorium?” Trevor asked as he moved ahead of her through the tunnel toward the villa. “I think you've had enough for one night.”
“Stop treating me like I'm some kind of invalid. Of course I want to go. It's not as if being down here has been particularly traumatic. You were right, we couldn't get that close to the anteroom tunnel.”
“And there's nothing major to see in the vomitorium. So let's skip it for now.”
“No, I have to know what's waiting for me.” Lord, she was tired of this overpowering darkness. What a horror it must have been for the thieves who had dug their way into the bowels of the earth, not knowing what they were going to find around the next bend. “You said some of these tunnels collapsed over the years. Did it happen here?”
“I ran into a couple dead ends while I was exploring. Don't worry, the walls seem pretty sturdy around the vomitorium. I wouldn't let you down here if they weren't safe.” He stopped. “We turn here. If you're sure you want to go.”
She didn't want to go. She wanted to run straight back to the villa and go to bed. She wanted out into the light, dammit. She felt as if she'd been buried alive.
As Cira had been buried alive by those falling rocks?
“Jane?”
“I'm going.” She moved past him down the turnoff for the tunnel. “You said it's not that far off the main tunnel. It shouldn't take long. Right?”
He moved ahead of her. “It depends on what you consider long. I have an idea time's moving a little slow for you right now.”
She tried to think of something else besides this blasted darkness. “Cira probably knew about that vomitorium. This was her town, her place. I can see her walking around, talking, laughing, playing her games with the men of the town.”
“So can I. That's not hard to imagine.”
“Not for someone like you who definitely thinks about Cira in a physical sense. She did what she had to do to survive.”
“She was no martyr. She enjoyed life. According to Julius's scrolls she had an unseemly sense of humor, but he forgave her because in bed she was a true goddess.”
“How patronizing. She probably had to have a sense of humor if she was forced to go to bed with him.”
“No force. Choice. She made the choice, Jane.”
“Her birth and circumstances made the choice. What else did the scrolls say about her?”
“That she was kind to her friends, ruthless to her enemies, and it wasn't wise to cross her.”
“Who were her friends?”
“The actors in the theater. She didn't trust anyone else.”
“No family?”
“No. She took a street boy into her home and was said to have been very kind to him.”
“No mention of anyone else?”
“Not as far as I remember. Most of Julius's scrolls concerned her beauty and sexual prowess, not her maternal attributes.”
“Chauvinist pig.”
He chuckled. “Me or Julius?”
“Both of you.”
“Chauvinist or not, he was ready to kill for her. In one scroll he was contemplating murdering his rival who was stealing her away from him.”
“Who was it?”
“He didn't name him. He referred to him as a young actor who had recently come to Herculaneum and taken the town by storm. Evidently he had also taken Cira by storm and it threw Julius into a rage.”
“Did he kill him?”
“I don't know.”
“He's far more likely to have tried to kill Cira if he couldn't change her mind about leaving him.”
“You think so? Interesting.”
Not interesting. Horrible. And only a small example of the life Cira had lived.
Trevor suddenly stopped. “Here's the passage Joe will take to get to the ledge overlooking the vomitorium.” He shone the light on the rocky wall to the left and she saw a shallow dark cavity close to the tunnel floor. “It's barely crawl space and he'll have to wriggle through the opening, but two yards into the passage he can stand and walk upright until he gets to the ledge.”
“I would never have noticed it if you hadn't pointed it out.”
“And neither will Aldo.” He started down the tunnel again. “There are too many offshoot branches in this tunnel for him to notice a small hole in the wall. He's going to have a plethora of choices.”
“Aren't we close to the vomitorium yet?”
“Yes, a few minutes' walk from here.”
“Then let's hurry. I want out of here.”
It seemed longer than the few minutes Trevor had stipulated when he stepped aside and shone his flashlight into the blackness ahead. “Here we are. Not exactly the most elegant example of Cira's time. Though those six marble bases that are scattered around the area probably held statues of gods and goddesses and maybe the current emperor on the throne.”