Back outside, the showers of the last hour have turned into heavy rain. The black skies do their worst and the two men are soaked to the skin as they approach San Sebastian Gate and the start of the Via Appia Antica.
‘Do you know where you are?’ asks Guilio.
Tom does.
He looks up at the huge block of marble that forms the base of the gate, and its magnificent crenellated towers. ‘This is the start of the Appian Way.’
‘That’s right. Italy’s Route 66. The most famous road in our country.’ He points to the archway. ‘This is the bit of ancient highway that gave birth to the famous saying “All roads lead to Rome”. It was started three hundred years before Christ and ran for more than three hundred miles, finishing at Brindisi on the Adriatic. From there, ships left for Egypt, Greece and North Africa. This road we’re walking on carried Rome’s armies to some of their greatest victories.’
‘Let’s hope it does the same for us.’
Guilio laughs. ‘It wasn’t all good. It was also the place where more than two thousand members of Spartacus’s beaten slave army were crucified.’
They trudge on in silence.
Set back on their left is the Chiesa del Domine Quo Vadis, the Church of Santa Maria in Palmis.
Tom doesn’t need any history lesson on this landmark. It’s home to a slab of marble said to bear the imprints of Christ’s feet. The spot where St Peter had a vision as he was escaping from Nero’s soldiers. Christ is reported to have been walking past him back into Rome, when Peter turned and shouted: ‘Domine, quo vadis?’ — ‘Where are you going, Lord?’ Christ answered: ‘Eo Romam iterum crucifigi’ — ‘I am going to Rome again to be crucified.’ Peter took this as his cue to turn around and head back into the city and accept his own death and martyrdom.
Guilio shouts, ‘Through here.’
By the time Tom looks up, his guide has disappeared again.
The only place he can have gone is through an implausibly narrow gap in a large ancient wall.
Tom breathes in and painfully crushes his damaged shoulder through the gap.
Guilio is waiting for him. He’s crouched down, pointing at something on the horizon. ‘You see in the distance the Catacombe di San Callisto?’
Tom can’t. ‘No, not really.’ He puts his hand tenderly on the reawakened pain in his shoulder.
‘Trust me, it is there, the famous Catacomb of Callixtus.’ He points beyond a line of cypress trees. ‘And over there are the Catacombs of Saint Sebastian.’ He stands up. ‘We are now between the two.’ He floats his hand in a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree arc. ‘Beneath our feet are a hundred acres of hidden catacombs, tunnels and galleries, some up to twelve miles long. There are more than half a million tombs and tens of millions of secrets buried right underneath us.’
‘And Valentina is being held down there?’
Guilio looks at him distrustfully. ‘Valentina and Anna.’
Tom knows this is the moment.
He can’t put it off any longer.
The time has come to tell Guilio that Anna is dead.
117
Guilio can tell that something bad is about to be said.
He’s right.
Tom gives him the truth. ‘Anna’s dead.’
The words drop like stones down a deep well.
It takes several seconds for them to make an impact.
‘What?’
‘I’m sorry. She died in hospital.’ Tom moves closer, extends his hand to Guilio’s arm.
Guilio smashes it away. ‘Dead? She’s dead and you didn’t tell me?’ Blood flushes to his face. His hands ball up into fists.
‘I couldn’t. Louisa’s life was in danger and now Valentina’s is.’
‘Aaaw!’ Guilio vents a deep scream and with both hands punches his own head. ‘No! No! No!’ He sinks to his knees on the wet ground and doubles up.
Tom stands over him.
He puts a calming hand to the back of Guilio’s head. ‘I’m very, very sorry. She died of a heart attack. I don’t know all the details, but I know everyone was shocked. They really were all trying to help her.’
Guilio doesn’t look up.
He can hear Tom but his words are muffled clouds blown around by a hurricane of emotion.
Already he’s starting to blame himself.
He promised Anna he would look after her, wouldn’t let anything happen to her. He told her not to be afraid, that he would always be there for her.
But he hadn’t been.
He’d failed her.
No two ways about it. When she needed him most, he’d been somewhere else.
He let her down and now she’s dead.
Tom moves away a few paces. Guilio has literally been struck down with grief and he understands that he needs space.
He has to come to terms with the initial shock.
Tom has stood many times with the loved ones of those who have just died, and he knows that acceptance of their death comes in waves. Slow waves. Only today, there’s no time for slow. Every second that Guilio spends crying and grieving brings Valentina closer to death.
Yet he has to be patient.
If Guilio shuts down, he’s lost.
He has no idea where the opening to the so-called womb is, or where to go even if he manages to get inside.
And he has no weapons.
Until now, he hasn’t even thought about such a thing.
He touches his pocket and feels the cell phone. The Carabinieri will have traced it by now; they’ll have a lock on it, he’s sure of that.
But will they arrive in time?
Too early would be disastrous.
Too late could be fatal.
Guilio stands up.
He turns.
His face is heavy with despair and loss.
Tom can tell he’s close to losing him. ‘Anna believed in God. I know she did, and you certainly know she did.’ He walks slowly forward and tries to bridge the chasm rapidly opening between them. ‘She is at peace now. She’s no longer frightened and can no longer be hurt by these people.’
‘She’s dead.’ Guilio’s face contorts. ‘Dead! You can’t get more hurt than that.’
‘I know. And these people must be held accountable for that. You can help make them accountable.’
Guilio stares blankly across the fields.
Tom hasn’t reached him. The gap is too big. He puts his hand on Guilio’s arm and is relieved that this time it’s not brushed away. ‘You can’t save Anna, but you can save someone who cared for her. Someone who wanted her to be looked after and who risked her life not just to help her but to catch the people who had hurt her.’
Guilio understands what Tom is saying.
He also knows he’s being manipulated.
But he can’t simply walk away, even though that’s what he wants to do. He can’t run to the loneliest spot on the earth and cry his lungs out like he needs to do.
Something won’t let him.
He tried to protect Anna because it was the right thing. And he knows that walking away from Tom and the woman he loves would be wrong.
‘I’ll help you.’ He nods several times, more as though he’s confirming things to himself than to Tom. ‘I’ll help you, even if it’s the last thing I do.’
118
A shaft of honey-coloured sunlight forces its way through a crack in the dark, thunderous sky.
Guilio walks towards a lightning-blasted apple tree and swings on a thick dead branch until it splinters away.
Once he’s broken it off, he rubs the splintered end on the field wall until it sharpens into a spike.
He walks back to Tom and throws the stake into the ground just in front of him. He slips off his newly bought rucksack, puts his hands around the back of his neck and unclasps a rope necklace from beneath his shirt.