CHAPTER 10
When Marcus awakened again he found himself lying on a warm sheepskin near a fire just outside the door of a wattle and daub hut. He was wearing a long, soft white linen tunic, his injuries were perfectly healed and next to him chestnuts were roasting in the fire’s embers and a cork tray was spilling over with grapes and figs.
Not far away Hanibald, the old monk with the long beard, was sitting on the bank of a stream quietly contemplating the flowing waters. He was wearing rough goatskin breeches and he still wore his garland of meddlers and hemlock flowers on his bald pate. At first Marcus Fabius looked around as if he were seeking someone, but then he wondered desperately if he was not dreaming. Could his mind have imagined the whole thing? He made his way towards the old man on his hands and knees, his voice trembling as he asked him:
“Old man, that evening when I met you, after you had fled, I went into your cave and wandering around I accidentally ended up in a labyrinth of tunnels, endless passages that led me to caverns with altars, tombs, pools of boiling waters, grottoes with vaulted roofs, can you tell me anything about them?”
Hanibald looked at him darkly at first and then bent his gaze back on the flowing waters without answering, he lowered his head almost as if he wished that the other man would disappear. But Marcus persisted:
“Old man! Are you blind or deaf? Has time warped your mind and spirit as well as drying out your raddled old body if you hear me but don’t answer?”
“Science turned my hair white, long vigils weakened my sight, but my ears work perfectly. Rather than waste words on you, I’d prefer to get drunk or throw myself to the wolves. My old master Zoroaster, peace and blessings be on him, was right when he said that the dregs of mankind hardly ever realise when they see the light because the sacred light blinds them like a lightning flash. So tell me….. tell me how a little worm of a barbarian Roman, a monster of pride and arrogance, who dared enter the famous twelve caves reserved for the sacred rites following the Sacred Road to the afterworld, how come you weren’t instantly blinded? How come the viper of the sepulchres didn’t strike your heart as soon as you set foot in the burial grounds? Don’t you know that passage is only used by solemn processions with heavy funeral cars? It is forbidden to the uninitiated. Didn’t the hyenas, the devil custodians, see you? They would have torn you to pieces.”
“Roman? You called me Roman? So you know who I am? Who told you of my plans? How did you manage to worm my secret out, old man?”
“I’ve known all about you ever since you first set foot in the forests at the Pass of the Kite, I know you’re not a robber or a pirate even if you do command the waves with iron oars. Your Roman friends say that you’re brave, loyal and strong, that nobody can withstand you, nobody can escape you, nobody can .. kill you. In battle you fight like a savage, if you’re left alone and wounded on the field you’d drink your own urine and eat tree bark like a goat to survive, because you’d survive anything, you can eat poisoned berries and stinging nettles without problems. I know all this and more about you, soldier.
Nothing is a mystery here in the Holy Woods of Etruria, the cradle of the faith revealed. These lands were once inhabited by the population of the Falischi, who descended directly from stone age man, children of the giant ferns, a hardy race of hunters, fishermen and shepherds. You came blundering along ready to cut the throat of friend or foe and got lost in the meandering tunnels quarried by this antique population like a little boy. ”
“So those labyrinths and caves, the tomb of the princess, the solid gold bier, the lake of boiling water, they were all real? In that case those villages with youths playing the flute and long-haired maidens dancing in walnut and pomegranate groves watered by running streams were all real too? And that wonderful valley bathed by the sea full of deer and gazelles, marvellous vineyards where singing women crowned with wreaths of lilies and laurel leaves pressed the grapes, all that paradise is real too? Tell me old man, did I really meet the secret tribe of the daughters of Arius or was that all a dream? If it were all true then I could find Uri, my siren with her hair flowing down to her feet.”
Hanibald got up slowly, picked up a bundle of dry sticks lying on the ground and put it on the fire, then he stoked the fire carefully with a cherry branch and methodically added more wood, obviously trying to gain time before he answered, he nibbled his lower lip to delay speaking. His face was more drawn than ever, emaciated and shadowed, so pale and drawn the white gleam of his skull shone through his paper-thin skin. Finally he looked Marcus full in the face with his hawk’s eyes and whispered in a grave tone:
“It would have been much better for everyone if you’d bought yourself a nice donkey and gone off to chop wood instead of coming to break your neck here.
No! You didn’t dream your barbaric sacrilege, your sin-stained eyes really saw the tombs, the lake of boiling water, the golden bier where the Elected One will lie in state for the last Etruscan cycle of the moon. The groves with their flowing streams and bountiful fruits, the deer and gazelles and all the rich Etruscan lands, they were all real too. It was Uri, the priestess you call siren, who saved your life. For seven days, while you lay possessed by the dark, she healed you with decoctions of burdock and chamomile flowers, you were just a broken reed and in the eyes of Uri’s sisters you should have died, were already dead. But she watched over you day and night and didn’t let anyone touch the sacrilege.”
“What are you talking about, old man? Why should Uri have healed me, answer me, why?”
“Certainly not for your own sake, or to let you complete your mission in these sacred mountains. And yet every day lovely Uri made you drink her healing drafts and then spent hours and hours anointing your disgusting, smelly, suppurating wounds with a salve from a clay vase she had prepared. Although you were a mass of revolting, running sores, a mangy, stinking carcass, she cured you as if you had been a dying bird with a broken wing. She took your sandals off and massaged your feet with her own hands, every day she prayed to the god of the volcano to save you because it was he who had thrown you onto the rocks like a wrecked, rudderless boat with a broken mast. He had left you hanging between life and death at the mercy of human piety. Neither heaven nor earth had pity on you. If Uri hadn’t saved you, you would have been keeping Pluto company down in the depths of his kingdom beyond the grave days ago.”
“Why did Uri rescue me from my evil fate then?”
“Do you remember when she tried to talk to you? She laid out the life of her people before your unseeing eyes. She explained the beginning and the end without omitting a single thing, but you didn’t understand and now you’re asking me why she saved you? As I’ve already said, it certainly wasn’t so you could complete your disgraceful mission, she and her sisters and all the people of Etruria know that their destiny is almost complete, a thousand years of glory for the people of the Tyrrhenian sea are about to come to an end. Your useless death wouldn’t do anyone any good.”
“What you say is true, old one, other soldiers would come after me and more after them. But this doesn’t make Uri any less generous. She saved my life, and I am her worst enemy.”
“Uri did wonderful things for you, things you will never discover. But you, you blind, deaf, wingless being, how are you going to repay her hospitality, my brave soldier? Are you going to draw your sword and sack the whole of Etruria, killing its people and leaving its women and children widows and orphans? Do you want to know whether Uri hates you? Whether she hates your land, its people, your mould-clogged eyes? Well, even if she knows all about your plans, even if she found all your maps with their carefully drawn paths and each and every one of the signs you left on the trees, she still doesn’t hate you. Nobody knows what hate is here. Listen, you sneaked in here like a ghost, like a silent ship without sails or oars, go back to where you came from you repulsive insect of death, give up your fell plans, there’s still time, you can still put things right.”
“You can tell Uri that I have no intention of using those
maps.”
“Liar!”
“Or rather, I want to tell her personally, please let me see her so that I can explain everything.”
“Certainly, now you want to say you’re sorry, now you’re truly grateful, you wear a humble guise with cold pride and haughtiness, you’re ready to swear on your knees that you’ll halt the infamous treachery you’re planning, but this is just a passing phase. While the storm is raging cowardly man crawls fearfully into the creases of the earth to hide, but as soon as he gets his strength back there he is, popping up out of his burrow like a rabbit after a storm, hungry for power and ready to spit venom like the serpent he is. But over my many, many years I’ve learnt that there’s always a shred of decency even in the most arrogant of men, so if you want to be noble and virtuous for once in your life there is one thing that you can do: when you get back to Rome wait a little while before telling them what you have discovered. Your lips can be messengers of life or death, it’s up to you to choose which they will be. Let the Etruscans conclude their mission on this earth and you shall have a great reward.”
“I swear that I will do what you ask, but now let me see Uri, I only want to talk to her for a minute.”
“No! I am here to tell you that you will never see her again. Forget her and go now that you are healed, go you scoundrel, go as quickly as you can. It would have been better for all of us if you had never come, even if it won’t be you with your ship of straw who conquers this holy land.”
“But I must see her!”
“No! No mortal will ever see her again. From now on until the cycle of the moon next August when the sacred lanterns will be lit in the Divine Temple under the sign of the constellation of Leo, Uri will remain alone, preparing herself for her complete separation from the material aspect of life. The Council has chosen her as the high priestess who will show the way during the last cycle of the moon, it is she who will embark and set sail on course for the dream of immortality, finally returning to her father.”
“I knew that Uri was one of the predestined priestesses for the divine mission but if she stayed by my side to save me when I lay here close to death, why can’t I see her now?”
“Uri allowed you the honour of being by her side when she spoke to you, but you failed to understand her message. Then she saved your life despite everyone’s opposition, but at the time she still hadn’t been elected high priestess. Now neither you nor anyone else can go anywhere near her. Nobody must disturb her. You will never see her again in this life, so I’ll say it again for the last time, get out of here, Roman barbarian. Go and hunt pharaohs, dragons or rats for all I care, but get out of here. That’s all we ask. For the last time, go, before the crows build a nest on your head, get back to that conceited race of yours. You cannot grasp the secret of how to swim in the realm of fantasy, you will be a slave to your earthly span for the rest of your days.”
“How to swim in the realm of fantasy? What are you talking about, old man? No, I’m not going until you’ve explained, what do you mean when you say she’s been chosen for the last cycle of the moon? The last cycle of the moon of what?”
“Of the Etruscan civilisation. Uri’s mission is the most important a living creature could be charged with, she is to be sacrificed to the Supreme Etruscan Being to reach the pastures of the realm of the stars. “
“How will she be sacrificed?”
“When a red comet appears in the western sky, that is the sign of the end. A golden horn will proclaim the final command and the doors to eternity will be flung wide. When the time comes Uri will throw herself into the boiling pool at the end of the sacred way that runs through the twelve caves. She will enter the spring of the sacred waters amidst music and dancing and there will accomplish her glorious mission, swallowed by the deadly waves.”
“Do you mean that Uri will deliberately throw herself into that boiling sulphur pool?”
“A butterfly is born to live for a beat of its wings, hovering over the stamen of a scarlet poppy. The dog rose flowers in the morning and bestows its petals on the evening breeze, neither seeks to linger forever in the mist. Even the water lily is born in mud only to be immediately devoured by larvae.”
Marcus had hundreds of other questions to ask but, struck by these hard, prophetic words he fell silent, remembering the noxious fumes and sinister seething of the sulphurous pool with horror.