It was still in something of a daze that Carmen arrived at Rare Books & Manuscripts. She was quickly shaken out of it, however, when mobbed by librarians and researchers anxious for word of Raffaele, Lucia, and the morning’s horrors. She shared with them what she knew before Victor, the department head, called time and sent everyone back to their duties.
The department itself comprised a string of six tall rooms linked by open archways, so that you could see from one end all the way to the other. The first five were virtually identical, the bulk of them lying to the left of the central aisle, each furnished with a long pine research table with power points and reading lamps, between walls lined floor to ceiling with fitted bookshelves fronted by security glass and cream curtains to keep the sunlight off their precious volumes. To the right of the aisle, by contrast, there were small alcoves large enough only for a librarian’s desk, each of which backed onto a pair of French windows that would have led out onto the grand stone terrace overlooking the port, had they not all been locked, barred and covered by white cotton sheets.
The sixth room, however, was a little different – not a room so much as a converted hallway, fitted with a small round research table and three wooden chairs. Instead of bookshelves, it was lined with steel storage cabinets housing the outsized books, plans and maps, and other special collections. And, rather than another open archway, it ended in the newly installed steel security door to the Colonna room – named for some now-forgotten Neapolitan mayor.
Every weekday for the past few weeks, Lucia Conte, Zeno D’Agostino and Father Alberts had gathered here – joined, when the mood took him, by Taddeo Santoro as well – to work on the newly discovered scroll. By Philodemus, they all said. They even called themselves the Philodemus Working Group.
But was it?
According to its own website, the Pontificia Commissione Biblica had been established to interpret and defend sacred Christian scripture. And what did Philodemus have to do with that? He’d died forty years before Jesus had even been born. His school of Epicureanism had had little overlap with Christianity. Why then would Alberts spend so much time on one of his texts? Why would his pontifical commission even care? The answer was self-evident. It wouldn’t. Philodemus was a smokescreen. The scroll held Christian interest of some sort.
And why not?
The Herculaneum papyri had excited intense interest upon their discovery in large part because of the possibility of finding early Church writings among them. Christianity had reached Rome well before Vesuvius, after all. Nero had reputedly blamed Christians for the Great Fire of 64 CE. He’d put Peter and Paul to death for it. And this whole coast had been the resort of choice for the Roman elite. Anything that reached there would have reached here too. All kinds of Christian texts might plausibly have been in circulation. Transcripts of sermons and prayers. Letters from church leaders. Books of rules and orders. Perhaps even an early account of the life and—
Her heart kicked like a spooked mule. Rome, the 70s CE. She looked again at the locked steel door, her mind spinning so wildly that it left her nauseous.
But it couldn’t be. It couldn’t be.
Could it?
Romeo Izzo drove back home to change out of his dress uniform into the darker of his two brown suits. His mother-in-law Isabella was out, he was relieved to discover. They’d never got on well, but living here together through the gruelling last few weeks of his beloved wife’s life had exacerbated rather than healed the antagonism, each of them privately blaming the other for anything and everything that had gone wrong, so that now they could barely stand to be in the same room together. Yet he could hardly kick her out; he owed his wife better than that. Besides, she was genuinely devoted to Mario, who loved her back, and she was undeniably useful for the school run and other errands.
He left the keys to the Fiat for her, in order that she might collect Mario later, then walked on into the station, picking up a slice of pizza and a bottle of sparkling water along the way. He settled himself at his desk and brought up the extended clip of Agnetta Gaudino’s meltdown that he’d saved on his hard drive.
It began sedately enough with the local TV news reporter shouting questions at protestors as they marched upon the Town Hall. A few gave answers. Most ignored her. Then came a group of three, an elderly woman with scrawny arms and jerky movements being shepherded by her son and daughter. Any lingering suspicion that she might have been responsible for this morning’s horror was instantly put to rest. She was simply too small, too old, too frazzled. She wore bright orange lipstick and too much mascara, while her frizzy hair was dyed such a brilliant red that the sunlight made it look for all the world as though her head had caught fire. The reporter shouted out her question. At once Agnetta turned on her. Her eyes were wild and vengeful and her wrath was too intense for her mouth, rendering her almost incoherent, though it was easy enough to edit in one’s mind. ‘These are our homes,’ she cried. ‘Our homes. How dare they! I was born here. Right here. I’ve lived here seventy-six years. And now these wicked people… How can they be so… Archaeologists, they call themselves? Historians! Then they should know what we did to people like them who ruined lives. We locked them inside great brass bulls and set them on fire just to hear their screams. We sewed them into sacks with snakes and monkeys and cocks, then tossed them out to drown. We hung them by their feet and painted their eyeballs with honey for the birds to pluck.’ A documentary on ancient punishments had been broadcast two nights before the march, and Agnetta had evidently drunk it in. She turned now from the reporter to the camera, staring into its lens with such intensity that he could see the madness in her eyes even as her spittle flecked the glass. ‘I curse you. I curse you all. You and your children and your children’s children. Take me from my house and you will burn. Take me from my house and you will drown. Take me from my house and the birds will feast upon your eyes. We’ll lock you in cages for the rats to have your guts. We’ll spike you all the way from your arseholes to your throats.’ She lunged for the camera, as though it itself were taunting her, only to be held back by her mortified children. Instantly, she turned on them. ‘Let me go!’ she shrieked, trying to free her arms. ‘Let me go! Or do you want my curses too?’
‘And I thought my mother was embarrassing.’
Izzo looked around. Valentina Messana was standing there, a wry smile on her lips. ‘You checked her out, yeah?’ he asked. ‘Just in case?’
‘The guys did, yes,’ Messana told him. ‘She was out with her sister.’
‘How about one of her kids?’ he asked. ‘Doing a favour for their ma? Giving in to her bullying?’
‘The son works on containers. He’d been at sea three days already when the letter got put up on the gates. He’s still out there now. I checked. And you can see for yourself that the daughter has the tremors. Not terrible, but she could never have written that letter so neatly. I suppose the son could have written it for the daughter to post…’
‘Yes,’ sighed Izzo. ‘Fair enough. Point made.’
The clip stopped. Even for a hardened news crew, so public a disintegration had proved too much. Izzo stared at the screen a few moments, then brought up the death threat letter. It had been found early one morning by a local businessman of unimpeachable character on his walk into work. It had been written with a fountain pen in bright green capital letters on one side of a single sheet of plain woven cream writing paper, then slipped inside a protective plastic sheath and taped to the outside of the Villa’s gate.
TO ALL THOSE INVOLVED IN EXCAVATING THE VILLA, A FINAL WARNING.
DESIST NOW OR I CONDEMN YOU TO THE SICILIAN BULL, THAT YOUR SCREAMS MAY RING OUT AS YOU BURN.
DESIST NOW OR I SENTENCE YOU TO THE DROWNING SACK, WITH MONKEY, SNAKE AND COCK.
DESIST NOW OR I PAINT YOUR FACE WITH HONEY, FOR THE BIRDS TO PLUCK YOUR EYES.
DESIST NOW OR I LOCK YOU IN THE VERMIN CAGE, FOR RATS TO FEAST UPON YOUR GUTS.
DESIST NOW OR I IMPALE YOU ON THE PIKE, FROM ANUS UNTO MOUTH.
CURSED WILL BE THE SOIL BENEATH YOUR FEET. IN HUNGER SHALL YOU STARVE.
DAMNED WILL YOU BE TO THE MOLTEN PIT, PREPARED FOR THE DEVIL AND HIS ANGELS.
MAY ALL THESE FATES COME UPON YOU, AND OVERTAKE YOU, UNTIL YOU ARE DESTROYED.
He read it again and then a third time. Much as he hated to admit it, Giovanni Bruno was right. The same content in the same order, yet lacking its energy and menace. But maybe that was deliberate. Who the hell could say?
‘You know that history programme?’ murmured Messana, still at his shoulder. ‘The one broadcast before the march.’
‘What about it?’
‘I watched it, like you asked. All the punishments she mentioned were in it, as we thought, though in a different order. But I spotted something else too. That one about sewing murderers into a sack with all those animals, then tossing them in the river to drown. It’s called poena cullei, apparently. Penalty of the sack.’
‘So?’
‘So,’ she said, with a slight smile. ‘One of the talking heads they had on to discuss it was our good professor Zeno D’Agostino.’