I regarded Baldini with some perplexity. “I assure you, I saw this with my own eyes. I met the young lady’s distressed father, and we burst into Trevisan’s home to free her. Hence his attempt to have me arrested, and you guiding us as recompense.”
Baldini’s dismay was unfeigned. “The conte said nothing of this to me. He indicated that he owed you a debt, which he would pay by sending me to entertain you. I gladly accepted.”
“’Tis the truth.” Brewster rested a massive hand on a column. “We went ’round to see the girl’s dad. He’s that unhappy his daughter’s head was turned by the conte’s riches. This conte met her in a church, and wooed her, like.”
“Met her in a church?” Baldini grew resolute. “No, I do not believe it. The conte, he is not one who fears God. He’s more like Bonaparte’s Frenchmen and their atheistic ways. He does not approve of the power of the church, in any case.”
Baldini lowered his voice, as though cardinals might swoop from the pagan streets and arrest him for this dissent.
I spread one hand. “I can only tell you what I saw, and what Signor Proietti has said to me. Do you know of Proietti?”
Baldini’s eyes held blank ignorance. “I have never heard of a Signor Proietti. The conte has spoken nothing of him.”
Grenville broke in, his tones soothing. “How often do you travel to Rome? Or meet with Conte Trevisan?”
“I have not seen him in some time,” Baldini had to admit. “He wrote to me and requested that I guide you—I did not see him in person. Only once since he has been in Rome have we met, and that was weeks ago. In the past, I have traveled to Milan, or he has met me in Napoli.”
“And you say he is learned about art?” I asked.
“Oh, yes.” Baldini’s approval returned. “He has studied it throughout his life, not collecting much himself, but advising others. He excels at knowing what a piece is worth and its provenance. The pope himself consults with the conte.”
Grenville’s brows rose. “Though he dislikes the church?”
“The conte makes no pretense regarding his feelings toward the papacy. But his expertise is such that those in the Vatican overlook this to consult with him on worldly matters.”
In light of this information, Trevisan might have gone to the church to assess artworks or meet with someone about them. He’d seen Gisela Proietti, and …
“Sometimes older men grow foolish,” I said gently. “They forget their devotion in a mad moment.”
“Not Conte Trevisan.” Baldini gnawed his lower lip in consternation. “The afternoon grows late. Perhaps we ought to return to the inn?”
“Certainly,” I said. “I apologize for upsetting you.”
“I know you are mistaken, Captain,” Baldini said decidedly. “I shall ask him to explain. It will be a misunderstanding or scurrilous gossip.”
I did not argue. I knew from experience how difficult it was to discover that a man one had admired was not the paragon one had believed. Colonel Brandon had disillusioned me long before I’d found out about his affaire de coeur with another woman, betraying his wife and my dearest friend, Louisa. I’d felt an ass for believing in him.
Grenville likewise did not carry on the dispute. He agreed that we should retire and take a meal, returning in the morning to continue our exploration.
On the way back to the inn, Grenville, who was excellent at smoothing the waters, began a conversation with Baldini about the wall paintings and mosaics we’d seen today. This mollified our guide somewhat, and he chatted readily with Grenville about the motifs and styles of that period.
We dined at the inn, the landlord bringing us platter after platter of food, which included plenty of fish and shellfish, the sea being so readily to hand. We washed it down with good wine and excellent coffee.
I decided not to take my usual evening stroll, to Brewster’s relief, though I longed to catch our knife-wielding friend and discover some answers.
If the fellow was deaf, I was not clear how I’d communicate with him, but Grenville presumably had experience with this sort of thing. Our attacker might be able to write his answers to my questions, even if Brewster had to threaten him with a dire fate if he did not.
As I took to my small chamber to pen letters to Gabriella and Peter of what I’d seen today, I pondered Baldini’s certainty that Conte Trevisan would never abandon his wife for a young lady of Rome. Baldini simply must not know Trevisan as well as he thought, but I wondered. What would make a man change from his rigid ways?
Perhaps someone had threatened Trevisan’s wife to coerce him to do something, and Trevisan had decided to pretend she meant nothing to him, thus taking the teeth from the threat.
No, I could not see Conte Trevisan being easily intimidated. He was a cool man, playing some game of his own. He’d realized his mistake in sending the law after me and had lent us Baldini to, as Donata might say, turn me up sweet.
I pondered more on the question of Trevisan’s motives but drew no conclusions.
The night passed refreshingly without incident and we rode back to Pompeii after breakfast the next day.
Baldini had been restored to cheerfulness as he took us around more of the ruins. The site was so extensive I knew we’d need several days to see it all, and those was only the areas that had been revealed.
Today we viewed more of the forum and a basilica, with its heavy columns holding up a portico with an empty floor above that. Majestic, I thought, and yet somehow sad. It had been a mighty place, powerful, and now, it was a ruin, wind brushing it mournfully.
Baldini showed us a few temples that had been uncovered, their walls exposed, the space inside open to the sky. Each of these buildings would have held at least one large statue, Baldini explained, to the deity worshiped there. The priests took care of the statue, which they believed was visited by the essence of the god. Everything had to be pristine and the statue was often clothed in silks.
All gone now. Whatever had remained after the eruption had been carried off long ago.
We visited the theatre, a semicircle of stone benches that led down a hill to a natural bowl. Actors would have strutted on the stage, chanting their lines, while patricians and plebeians alike watched, imbibing nuts and other treats while they enjoyed the play.
I sat down on one of the seats to stretch my bad leg. The stone was warm, absorbing the sunshine, which felt good against the wintry breeze. Grenville and Baldini wandered away, Baldini pointing out inscriptions on the stones, while Brewster, as usual, stood stoically watchful.
Brewster was the first to see our man. “Oi!” he shouted.
He started off down the steps of the theatre, and then I too spied my attacker darting behind the stones of the ancient stage.
As Brewster raced along, the earth moved in another tremor. Brewster lost his footing and tumbled forward, his momentum carrying him down the hard stones. He rolled a few more times and came to a stop just below the last seats.
Grenville and Baldini were already hurrying to him, they too stumbling as the earth shook. I was on my feet, steadying myself with my walking stick as I picked my way down the steps.
Brewster lay unmoving. The assailant took to his heels, heading for the ruins of the outer walls.
I flung out my arm, pointing. “Grenville! Go after him. I’ll see to Brewster.”
Grenville looked, saw, and darted after the fleeing gentleman. Being athletic, he quickly closed the distance. I lost sight of them and continued to the weeds and stones below the seats.
The tremor had ceased by the time I reached Brewster. He lay on his back, cradling his arm, alternately groaning and cursing.
I bent to him, Baldini hovering worriedly. “Where are you hurt?” I asked.
Brewster, a retired pugilist, would know what injuries he’d sustained better than any surgeon. “Me arm.” His lips thinned as he said the words. “Probably broke it. Bloody hell and all that’s holy.”
“Lie still,” I advised.
“Well, I won’t be prying meself up with this limb, will I? Did you get the beggar?”
“No,” I had to tell him.
“Bleeding bastard.” Brewster said a few more choice words about him. “Find him, guv, so I can tear him in half.”
Brewster’s face was wan with pain. He tried to hide his discomfort as we heaved him to his feet, but I saw his eyes tighten, and he swallowed a grunt.
“We must return him to the inn,” Baldini said in distress. “I will send for a surgeon.”
“Don’t need some foreign quack poking at me,” Brewster growled.
“At the very least, he can tie up your arm,” I said. “Then Gautier can look after you when we return to Napoli.”
“The Frenchie is a physician as well as a valet, is he?”
“No, but he seems to know how to mix remedies and concoctions to make one feel better.”
Brewster grumbled, his temper in shreds. I understood that he was angry at himself as well as the unknown man. Instead of capturing and interrogating our assailant, Brewster had failed and had injured himself. He would be grim about this for a long while.
“We will take Signor Baldini’s advice and return to the inn,” I said. “Explore another day.”
“Not without me, you’ll not,” Brewster snapped. “It’s me job to keep you safe, and you’ll not go wandering about until I’m well.”
Which could be weeks if he was badly hurt.
“Ah, well.” I said, trying to keep my tone jovial. “I planned to return to the villa and fetch my daughter and son, in any case. By the time we venture back here, you will be mended.”
“Huh,” was his only answer.
“Where is Mr. Grenville?” Baldini peered about worriedly.
I scanned the area behind the theatre and saw neither Grenville nor the man he’d pursued.
“I’ll hunt for him.” I set my walking stick on the uneven stones, ready to start my search.
“No you won’t, guv. A grand idea, race to the very place your companion disappeared and see if you get thumped on the head with ’im. Help me fix meself a sling, and we’ll all go after ’im.”
“You ought to sit down,” I began.
Brewster cut me off with a string of foul epithets. “Just help me.”
He shrugged out of his coat and looped the arms of it around his neck, placing his bad arm in the cradle of fabric. Bits and bobs clinked from his pockets to the stones, and I fetched them without a word.
I slid his trinkets into my own pocket—coins, tiny stones, and minuscule tiles. The coins were not modern ones, and neither were the tiles.
Once I helped Brewster settle his arm, tying the coat tightly, Baldini declared he’d lead us, as he knew every lane and turn in the ruined city. Following him, we made our slow way to the open area of the stage.
Unlike on a modern stage, where actors remain on a raised platform, the ancient players stood in the semicircle in front of the benches. From the long, flat end of this semicircle rose a proscenium; the brick buildings would have had arches, pediments, and columns to be used both as a setting for the play and also a screen to cut off the view to backstage.
Any steps to the platform had long since crumbled away. Arches on either side of the seats, for the most prestigious visitors to enter and sit in style, led nowhere, blocked with rubble.
We had to scramble up onto the ledge of the proscenium, Brewster proving surprisingly agile even with his injury. From there, Baldini led us around the stage to the jumble of ruins beyond it.
Behind the theatre lay a flat, open area, choked with weeds now, but its shape so regular that I imagined this had once been a smooth and well-tended space. Columns marched around it, having once held up a roof of an arcade. What the area had been used for, I could not tell.
Grenville was nowhere in sight. My heart thumped with worry as we searched, and I paused to cup my hands around my mouth and shout for him.
No answer. We reached the city wall at the other end of the open area. To the left, volcanic rubble was piled high, this earth not yet excavated. Baldini, without pause, took us along the wall to our right, following it to a tumbledown temple where digging commenced.
The men working here regarded us in surprise and we hastened to them. Baldini spoke to them in rapid Italian, but they shook heads and appeared puzzled. They’d seen no one.
Baldini waved us on. I thought he’d take us to the forum, open ground a man could run over to make his surest way for the gates and out. Instead, he herded us back more or less the way we’d come, halting at a steep slope pressed between the flat space and the large theatre. The concave bowl of land and the regular stones ringing it spoke of another theatre, smaller than the other and much more ruined.
Baldini led us down the slope toward what must have been the stage. Instead of elegant stone screens, this stage sported a tall brick wall with only a few narrow openings in it. Baldini, agile, scrambled up the stage and through one of these gaps, Brewster and I more carefully coming behind.
Beyond this theatre lay a maze of walls, some cleared down to their bases, others buried in dirt and fallen stones. Baldini wove his way through these, perfectly at home.
“Keep him in sight, guv,” Brewster said behind me.
I understood why. Baldini could easily vanish, leaving us stumbling through this labyrinth. We might exhaust ourselves trying to find the way out, rendering us vulnerable to attack. Baldini, after all, was loyal to Trevisan, a man we’d disparaged.
I followed Baldini’s hat as it bobbed among the ruins. To his credit, he slowed and waited for us when he realized he’d left us behind.
“What was this place?” I asked, waving at the walls close around us.
“Some believe for gladiators,” Baldini answered, barely out of breath. “They trained in the place with the pillars we went through and slept in these cells.” He indicated an opening to a very small room. As famous as some gladiators had become, they’d in the end been slaves, living in cramped quarters with little hope of freedom.
Baldini started off again, and we moved as swiftly as we could through the warren formed by the rock-hard ash and mud. No Grenville.
“Where the devil has he got to?” I asked the air around me.
It did not answer. We returned to the flat area that Baldini had termed the training ground. Nowhere did we find a London dandy, slightly the worse for wear, engaged in battle with our assailant or out of breath and impatient for sight of us.
Exhausting the area around the theatre and gladiators’ grounds, Baldini at last returned us to the forum, where we asked anyone we could find if they’d seen Grenville. All answered in the negative.
“Bloody hell.” I planted my walking stick into the earth. “He could have chased the man anywhere in this city.”
“Or outside it,” Brewster added, sinking to sit on an upturned stone block. “There’s the new town and then all the inns and roads between here and Naples.”
“You are pessimistic,” I said, my mouth tight. “I hope we round a corner and find him—maybe he will come striding back, our attacker in his grip.”
“Let’s hope the bloke got away from him,” Brewster said. “And Mr. Grenville’s simply resting from the chase. Don’t matter whether that chap can hear or not—he’s dangerous.”
I agreed. Also dangerous was letting Brewster run about with his arm untreated.
“We will take Brewster back to the inn,” I said, taking command. “His arm needs tending. We can return afterward and hunt for Grenville.”
“Allow me to stay and search while you care for your man,” Baldini offered. “I know Pompeii well, and you also could rest, sir.”
Likely I was looking as peaked as Brewster. “A sound plan. Do you need to rest a bit before we go?” I asked Brewster.
Brewster heaved himself up from the block. “I think it’s a bad plan, meself, but if I sit under this sun much longer, it will be the death of me. Send me pay packet to Em and take me out to sea and throw me in when I go. It’s beautiful here. My ghost might quite enjoy it.”
“Onward,” I said sternly. “You’ll not die of a broken arm, Brewster. Not in my employ.”
“He’s the Almighty now, is he?” Brewster remarked this to no one and marched toward the gate. He did not need to ask the way—Brewster was very good at speedily learning the lay of the land.
“Why do you think it a bad plan?” I asked once I’d said goodbye to Baldini, who assured me he’d send word the moment he found Grenville, and were through the gate and on our own. “Baldini can search more quickly than we can and he knows the grounds better.”
“Because who knows who he’s in league with. We’d never met the cove before yesterday, and he has strange ideas about this Trevisan gent. What’s to say the man with the knife and this Baldini ain’t thick as thieves? That Baldini weren’t luring us someplace so his mate could have us? Our bad luck I had to fall on me arm.”
“I believe Signor Baldini is genuinely bewildered at these events,” I said. “He expected to take three slightly naive Englishmen through the ruins where he could show off his knowledge and boast of his connections to Ancient Romans. Now he’s been pulled into our adventures and told that a gentleman he respected is duplicitous.”
“So, you trust Mr. Baldini completely, do ye?”
“I never said so.”
Brewster grunted something but said no more.
It was little over a mile to the inn and both of us were flagging when we reached it. I bade the landlord send for a surgeon and he sent a boy running off on the errand.
Not long later, a small man with eyes set rather too far apart in his narrow face, appeared. He shut himself with Brewster and me in Brewster’s chamber, examining the broad arm Brewster presented him.
The man spoke no English, but he let us know through gestures and the rudimentary Italian I understood that the arm was not broken, only badly sprained. Brewster, with his knowledge of pugilists’ injuries, concurred.
The surgeon expertly bound up the arm and left Brewster a concoction to drink for the pain. Brewster was reluctant to take the remedy, but I stood over him until he downed it. I knew he was in more agony than he wanted to let on.
The surgeon grinned at me and held his hand out for a fee. He nodded after I’d dropped several coins into his palm, then departed.
The drink soon had Brewster snoring. I made certain his arm was resting where it wouldn’t be jostled, covered him with warm blankets, and left the room.
Outside, the boy who’d run for the surgeon waited for me.
“You are to come, Signor.”
“Come where?” I asked in trepidation. Had Grenville been found? “Did Signor Baldini send word?”
The lad, who had more English than the adults in this tavern, shook his head. “You are to come,” he said. “I lead you right.”
He grabbed my sleeve and dragged me out of the inn, into the gathering night.