On the Fifth Day

Thomas woke with the sun hot on his face, his jaw aching as if he’d had a root canal, and a gaggle of tourists staring at him as if they had stumbled on the last bit of combat to be staged at the Paestum amphitheater. There was no sign of Satoh.

He brushed off the offers of assistance and made for the exit, humbled and confused, sure only that he understood even less of what his brother had been involved in now than he had an hour before.

He didn’t believe it. How could he? Satoh was a liar who had spied on him, broken into his room, and—when caught out—had spun the first tale that had come to mind. Even the fight had been fraudulent, leading to that final sucker punch— or whatever the kick equivalent was called. Thomas rubbed his jaw. No. He wouldn’t believe it. It all felt wrong.

But a part of him also knew that the parts that felt wrong weren’t the right parts. The yarn about the Herculaneum cross had not been made up on the spur of the moment. It was too good. It fitted the facts too well. What felt most wrong, if he was going to be honest with himself, was the way he’d gotten the guy to talk at all. The end of the fight had shown that Satoh had some real skill as a martial artist. That Thomas’s clumsy sparring had managed to beat him into a submission forcing Satoh to sing for his supper now seemed suspicious at best.

Could this business about the Herculaneum cross be more disinformation, a smear campaign like the suggestions of ties to terrorism intended to make Thomas stop asking questions? If so it wasn’t going to work. That wasn’t loyalty or love for his brother. It was his accustomed defiance and need to know the truth that had surfaced at numerous uncomfortable moments in his career, particularly when he thought he was being snowed.

His ticket to the site also gave him admission to the attendant museum, and he drifted in, as much to get rid of the dirt and blood as to see whatever might be on display. He found a restroom and washed thoroughly, frowning at his torn cheek and the gash above his eye in the mirror. There was no way he was going to be able to make himself look like a regular tourist. He pushed at the wound with his fingers and winced, stopping only when two men speaking what sounded like Dutch came in and regarded him with unmistakable concern. He left hurriedly.

The collection and the manner of its exhibition were surprisingly impressive. The place was air-conditioned and cool, the artifacts nicely spaced in display cabinets of blond wood and elegant wall mountings: stone metope reliefs of Hercules, a bronze head of Zeus found in a local river, ancient pots, terra-cotta statues, a pair of extraordinary bronze vases from the strange triangular heroon he had seen outside. The shrine apparently dated from the sixth century BC and archaeologists had been forced to cut away part of its sealed roof to get in. They found six bronze jars of honey that was, some said, still edible.

Impressive though the collection was, it was only when he reached a room at the back that the urgency of his visit came back to him. There were five stone slabs, all painted with scenes of young men reclining on couches, playing pipes, and engaging in some kind of game that seemed to involve drinking and throwing cups of wine. The men wore wreaths of plaited leaves around their heads but were otherwise naked, at least to the waist, below which they were draped with sheets or rugs. The youths were mostly grouped in couples and one pair was touching each other in ways that seemed to Thomas undeniably amorous or sensual, but then the ancient Greeks attached none of the Christian world’s stigma to such things.

The panels made up the four sides of a long stone box: a tomb, painted on the inside. The lid of the sarcophagus showed a naked man—presumably the deceased—arcing down through empty space into blue water overhung by stylized trees.

Thomas stared, then riffled through his guidebook. The tomb dated from the fifth century BC and was unique. The diver image, said the guidebook, was a metaphor for the soul’s transition from life into death and the world beyond.

Is this what Ed felt in that final second: a freeing plummet into a new, life-giving element that washed away the accumulated dust of life?

He would like to think so, but death still seemed to him a blankness, a wall: an end, not a transition. Ed had not swum into cooling waters, or climbed ashore in some Elysian field any more than he had ascended to join the heavenly choir. He was merely gone, and Thomas—after yet another strange day traipsing around ancient places that had been home to rank upon rank of the dead—was no nearer to knowing why.

“Not in the town,” he responded, as if he were talking to some kind of mental defective. “In necropolis.” And the curator stabbed his finger at the edge of the map beyond the walls. Then he looked up and pointed north. Thomas did not wait to hear any more.

As he walked along the road that skirted the site, looking for the Porta Aurea—the golden gate in the old city walls— Thomas began to feel his scuffle with Satoh starting to tell. Apart from the cuts, his right hip was beginning to throb where he had fallen on it, and his left side ached with each deep breath: bruised ribs?

He was walking in the direction of the modern town, he thought, but this was no urban site like Pompeii and Herculaneum; beyond the walls there were only fields, derelict barns, and colossal thistles as tall as elephant grass. He kept going, feeling the increasing strain on his rib cage as he labored, feeling the sweat on his neck as he hiked along the shadeless and deserted road, increasingly doubtful of any sense of purpose. The heat stood in a dense haze over the vivid greens and yellows of the fields, and even the birds had vanished, so that the only signs of life were the dry rattlings of stalks as the ubiquitous lizards skittered for cover at his approach.

Then, before he saw the weavings of stone in the ragged grass, he saw a distant lean-to and a bright array of gleaming metal and vivid orange tape: part of a dig. He cut sharply off the road and headed straight through the brush. In seconds he caught sight of a tall, angular man in shorts and a wide-brimmed hat stooping to consider something on the ground.

The man had his back to Thomas, who was able to approach unseen, getting a few seconds to prepare his opening remark. He stepped over the orange tape and down into a brushed-out rectangle of dusty earth in which stones were set like the base of a wall.

The man leaped to his feet, turned, and swept the hat from his head in a single fluid motion. Except that it wasn’t a man. It was a woman, unusually tall and broad, but sinewy-slender, with dark hair that now fell about her shoulders in rumpled waves. Her green eyes were lit with fury.

“Who am I?” she snapped, her eyes wide at his audacity. “I’m Deborah Miller, I’m in charge of this site, and I want you out of it.”