“I think it’s safe to say this is it,” Natalie whispered, taking in the marble and frescoes.
“Yes. But there’s a lot of detail here, a lot of images. Let’s work this in sections. You take the left side, I’ll take the right, and we can double our progress. Use the flashlight — I’ve got the light in my phone. We’re looking for something to do with olive pickers; maybe a carving or a picture,” Steven reminded her.
Natalie took the light and began her investigation. They pored over the walls, searching for anything that might be consistent with the cryptic message from the Basilica of San Clemente. It was slow going, and some of the paintings had degraded to the point that they were unrecognizable. Steven was getting that sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach again — it seemed pointless to be playing detective six centuries after the clues had been created. He was amazed that they’d gotten this far, and to expect to progress any further was a kind of madness. Too much time had passed — there were too many variables; too much entropy at play.
After twenty minutes, Natalie called out, “I’ve found something.”
“What is it?”
Steven was reluctant to leave his position, fearing that he’d lose track of what he’d already inspected, requiring him to start all over again.
“It’s a painting of men picking something. Could be grapes, or…olives.”
“Okay, I’ll be there in a sec. Let me just mark where I am.” Steven fished out his trusty piece of chalk and made a line on the floor before joining Natalie, who was shining the flashlight on several images. Birds perched upon ornately drawn vines, replete with authentic-looking flowers. At the bottom, several men were going about their business, which involved harvesting of some sort.
Steven peered at one in particular. “That’s an olive picker, all right.”
“How do you know?”
“The central figure? He’s on a ladder. And you can just make out a tree — it’s faded, but it’s there. You wouldn’t need a ladder for grapes — only for olives, which grow on—”
“Trees.” Natalie finished the thought and smiled. “We found it! What was the rest of the message?”
“…three paces from the olive pickers points the traveler to the path, five hands above the trinacrium,” Steven intoned.
“Three paces. That’s fifteen feet, right?”
“Yes. Let me walk it off,” Steven said, a hint of excitement in his voice. Maybe there was a chance, after all…
He took three long steps along the wall in one direction; he marked the floor, then reversed and took six, marking that spot as well.
“Five hands above the trinacrium,” he murmured, studying the drawings.
He went over the first area carefully, but there was nothing of note. No labyrinth crest. Nothing. Moving to the far side, he stopped at the base of the wall. There was a new, more modern painting amongst the vines: a small depiction of an island, crudely painted, in the rough shape of a triangle. Sicily, the island where Saint Januarius had died. Steven examined the image more carefully.
He knew the Romans had associated Sicily with the classic symbol of Medusa’s snake-topped head, three running men’s legs sprouting equidistant from the rough circle of the mythical woman’s face. That odd image was referred to by the Romans as the trinacrium. Even to this day, the symbol was part of the flag of Sicily, although absent Medusa’s countenance.
The crude painting’s presence on the wall would have had no meaning to anyone looking at it, or perhaps it would have seemed to be some untalented artist’s homage to Januarius’s place of death — had it not been for the basilica message. Certainly, had Steven been studying the crypt absent that information, it wouldn’t have meant anything special. But now, armed with the cryptic clue, the island took on a new significance.
Five hands above the trinacrium.
Each hand was roughly four inches. Five hands, twenty inches. Steven slid his fingers along the ancient wall, and sure enough, there was a subtle change in the texture of the surface, where the plaster had worn off and been repaired. Steven suspected that there was considerably more to it than that. He knocked on it with his knuckles and confirmed it was hollow. Natalie moved to where he was studying the spot and extracted her screwdriver and Dremel.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” she asked.
“Seems like they enjoyed hiding things in walls back in the fifteenth century,” Steven observed.
Natalie rapped on the area in question with the screwdriver blade. A few chunks of plaster flew off. Five hundred years of dampness had rendered it crumbly. She hacked at the spot with the screwdriver and then fired up the little battery-powered jeweler’s drill, grinding through the plaster and mortar behind it with relative ease.
After ten minutes, she’d excavated a spot eighteen inches wide by six high. Dust caked her arms and top. As she stepped back and brushed herself off, Steven wiped away the worst of the debris in the hole and peered into the opening.
“There’s something in there, but it’s not a parchment. Do me a favor and hold the flashlight for me, and I’ll see if I can get it out,” Steven said.
“What is it?” Natalie asked.
“I don’t know. Hard to tell with all the dust. Give me a second,” he said, handing her the light. She shone it into the aperture, and Steven tentatively reached inside.
He jerked his arm back with a shudder as a large black spider scuttled up his bare arm. Natalie swatted it away and stepped on it while Steven worked to bring his racing pulse back to something approaching normal. They exchanged a look.
“Do you want to get it out?” Steven asked, only half joking.
“You’re the expert. Besides, I’m not a big spider fan,” she said.
“Thanks for knocking that one off me. I think it was some kind of tarantula. That could have ruined my day,” Steven observed.
“I was just trying to save myself from having to carry you out of here. You looked about ready to faint.”
Steven steadied himself. The adrenaline response from the arachnid racing up his arm had his hands shaking a little. He took several deep breaths. “Mind handing me the screwdriver?”
Natalie complied, and he carefully slid it along the edge of whatever was lying in the hidden recess. It shifted a little, and he wedged the entire blade under it and pried it up. The distinctive sound of metal-on-metal grated. After reassuring himself that there were no more spiders — deadly or otherwise — he reached in and grabbed the hidden item. It was heavier than he was expecting. He slid it out and found himself holding a burnished metal plaque covered with dust. Steven noisily blew it off, creating a small cloud and causing both of them to cough.
“What is it? What does it say?” she asked.
He studied it. “If I’m reading this right, it’s the key to deciphering the Scroll. Look — see the symbols? It’s a substitution cypher, but it looks like it takes two glyphs to compose one traditional letter — and even then, the glyphs before and after change the letter.” He wiped at it with his hand. It was a deep brown color, with the letters and glyphs etched into the metal by hand. “It’s a brass alloy. That’s why it didn’t degrade other than the surface patina, and why it’s so heavy. Someone went to a lot of trouble to create a record that wouldn’t be lost to time,” he said, hefting the plate.