“That’s the Rathaus,” Kit explained. “Nothing to do with rodents, happily—unless the rat catcher has headquarters there. It’s like a civic centre. Administration, local government, city offices—everything, even a prison.”
“It looks like the kind of place Dracula might hang out in. Kinda creepy.”
“You know, you’re right.” Kit smiled. He had enjoyed the day and Cass’ company far more than he imagined when inviting her for a stroll in the country. But now it was over and he was considering how to keep the moment alive when they reached the door of the Grand Imperial.
“Thank you for taking me with you, Kit. Maybe we can do it again sometime?”
“No problem,” he said and instantly cringed inside. No problem? Was that really the best he could do?
She put her hand on his arm, warming the spot she touched.
Kit was on the cusp of thinking a kiss on the cheek might be in order when the coffee shop door opened and Wilhelmina appeared, holding a compact parcel the size of a loaf of bread. “Oh, there you are,” she chirped. “Not interrupting anything, am I?”
“Just got back from our walk,” Kit said. “What’s in the bag?”
“Coffee grounds,” Mina replied, hefting the bundle.
“A gift for one of your many admirers?”
“Yes, actually,” she said. “In exchange for this rare and important commodity, I gain certain favours from my alchemist friends.”
“Nice.” Kit nodded appreciatively.
“Are there really alchemists around?” wondered Cass.
“Oh, sure,” Mina confirmed. “They’ve been most helpful to me—one in particular. I’m sending this up to him with a note requesting a visit. But it’s got to get there before the clock strikes six.”
“Because he morphs into a dormouse?” said Kit.
Mina rolled her eyes. “Because that’s the changing of the day guard, and entrance to the palace becomes tedious and unnecessarily complicated after that.”
“What do they do with the coffee grounds?” asked Cass.
“Who knows? Experiments of one kind or another. The thing is, it’s valuable stuff on account of its scarcity, and I’m happy to keep the lines of supply open because sometimes I need a favour.”
“Like shadow lamps,” Kit guessed.
“Like shadow lamps,” confirmed Wilhelmina. She made to move off. “So if you two will excuse me . . .”
“Mina,” said Kit quickly, “Cass and I were talking about that. What are the chances that you could get enough lamps for each of us to have one?”
“I don’t know,” Mina said. “But it’s a good idea. I’ll ask Gustavus and see what he says.”
CHAPTER 11
In Which a Line of Succession Is Elucidated
Douglas Flinders-Petrie dashed the water out of his eyes and then grabbed his knee. The path underfoot was rougher than he had anticipated and, blind from the leap, he had taken a tumble. The palm of his left hand was grazed and he had torn a hole in the knee of his trousers. “Good work,” he muttered. “Capital.”
He heard a grunt and glanced back over his shoulder as he straightened. Snipe was two steps behind him with a wicked smirk on his big, bland face. “Not funny,” Douglas growled.
Rubbing his knee, he straightened and looked around. They appeared to be in a trench cut into a thick stratum of brick-coloured stone. Closer examination revealed that the rock was tufa—the soft, porous volcanic rock that covered much of central Italy. Smooth terra-cotta-coloured walls bearing the hatch marks of the tools used to carve them rose to the height of two or three metres on either side, creating a sunken pathway: a Sacred Road.
From his research Douglas knew that these hidden byways seamed all throughout the region, but he had not imagined them so big, nor so deep. A few dozen steps ahead he observed a doorway carved into the trench wall, the spiral lintels decked with a garland of fresh flowers; at the threshold stood a clay jar decorated in black and red.
“It worked,” he breathed happily to himself. “It bloody well worked. We’re here.” Turning to Snipe, he said, “Come on.”
They started along the trench, pausing briefly at the decorated door. It was a tomb, as were all the chambered nooks lining the length of the Sacred Road. The floral decoration told Douglas that a deceased someone had taken up residence inside and that the funeral had been recent. He paused at the tomb. The door was also tufa stone, and both it and the lintels had been freshly painted vivid blue, the Etruscan colour of death and eternity.
Douglas regarded the door and then, stooping, took up the jar. It was sealed, but he broke the seal and raised the vessel to his mouth. “Here’s to immortality,” he said, then drank a long, satisfying draught. The wine was sweet and warm. He drank again and passed the jar to Snipe. “Let’s go see who we can find.”
They followed the path until they came to a T-junction. A flight of steps had been carved into the wall at the join and, mounting these, the two travellers emerged into a classic Tuscan landscape of gently mounded hills accented by slender dark cypress trees that stood like exclamation points. A simple dirt track led from the now-hidden Sacred Road. To the west lay a low rise of grain fields, green beneath dazzling, cloud-scudded skies; to the east, a forest of live oak and pine, covering the gentle swells like a prickly green blanket.
As he stood taking this in, a pair of local farmers appeared on the track a little distance away, leading a young bullock. They slowed as they approached, taking in the strangers’ outlandish mode of dress. The farmers—father and son, by the look of them—wore pale-red knee-length tunics, sandals, and wide-brimmed straw hats. Douglas wore black trousers and a loose-fitting white shirt. A man in a three-piece business suit at the beach would not have appeared more out of place.
There was no disguising his foreignness, so Douglas embraced it. Raising his hand in greeting, he called aloud, “Hello! We are travellers.” The two rustics exchanged a puzzled glance. Knowing he would not be understood, Douglas boldly plunged ahead. “What land is this?”
The elder of the two natives said something in a language unlike anything Douglas had ever heard; certainly not Latin—which he had hoped to use—and it was definitely not Italian. The farmers looked him up and down, then regarded Snipe, who was at that moment pulling the legs off a grasshopper. With a final glance at one another, the two hurried on their way, giving the strangers a wide and wary berth.
Douglas’ elation over having successfully deciphered and used one of the symbols from his scrap of the Skin Map faded as he watched the farmers walk away. Clearly, reading the symbols was only half the battle. Add that to the fact that this time Douglas had a wealth of insider knowledge: he knew from boyhood stories that his great-grandfather Arthur had lived some years in old Etruria; he knew about the Sacred Road and the burial customs of the Etruscans. He knew the story of how Turms the Immortal had been instrumental in healing his great-grandmother and making the birth of his grandfather Benedict possible. Knowing all these things enabled him to guess his whereabouts . . . this time.
Next time it might well be an altogether different story. If he was to succeed in finding and reuniting the scattered pieces of the original map, he could not count on guesswork, no matter how astute. He would need more—much, much more. At the very least he would require a key of some kind, some way to gain even a little foreknowledge of his destination before embarking. What shape or form that key might take, he had no earthly idea. There were seventeen tattoos on the section of map in his possession. Visiting each place and working out not only where it was but also when, and all the other attendant details, would require time, patience, and, above all, dogged persistence.
Thus, Douglas concluded gloomily, unless he found a key to orient the symbols to their destinations, he was in for an exceedingly long and tedious stretch of trial-and-error.
“Put down that grasshopper, Snipe,” he grumbled and started down the trail. “We might as well find out what we can before heading home.
”
Pausing only long enough to make a little cairn of stones to mark the location of the tufa trench containing the ley line, Douglas struck off along the track. The countryside was pleasant and deserted. They met no one else, and the sun was high overhead when they stopped at a ford some time later. As they stooped to drink, Douglas heard voices and, looking downstream, saw three women washing clothes. He watched them for a moment, listening to their speech; he could sense a rhythm to it, and this time the vowel sounds seemed similar to what he knew of archaic Latin. He was on the point of risking a word or two when there came a tremendous splash.
A curtain of water descended over him and he leapt to his feet. “Snipe! You fool!” he spluttered. Whirling around, he saw the young misanthrope lifting another large stone to heave into the stream. “Drop that rock!”
Snipe obeyed, letting it fall heavily into the water. The women heard the commotion, of course, and saw the two weirdly dressed strangers lurking nearby. Douglas smiled and raised his hands, trying to show he meant no harm, but the damage was done. They all jumped up and one of them ran away, shouting as she disappeared into the brush lining the stream. The remaining washerwomen picked up stones from the bank and held them in readiness. Douglas, still smiling and waving, backed away from the ford, pulling Snipe with him. As soon as they were out of sight of the women, he turned and began trotting back the way they had come.
Soon there were shouts behind them. A rapid look over his shoulder confirmed that they were being pursued by a posse of agitated locals—some of whom carried sticks or clubs. Douglas doubled his speed and began searching for a place to hide, but the countryside was open field on either side of the trail. Their only hope was to dive into the hollow of the Sacred Road and try to lose their pursuers there—a slim hope, but the best he could muster under the circumstances.
On they ran—the chase edging closer with every step. As the first stones began to strike the path around them, Douglas pulled up. Shoving Snipe behind him, he turned to face the crowd, raising empty hands high. “Amabo!” he shouted, hoping Latin might at least slow down the rush to judgement. “Ego nullam iniuriam!”
The desperate feint worked. The crowd—numbering a dozen or so, mostly men—halted and began arguing—quarrelling, he guessed, over what to do with the intruders now they had caught up with them; this was an improvement in that they were no longer being pelted with stones. The dispute ended and one of the men stepped forward. He pointed to Douglas and addressed him directly; the fellow seemed to be inviting him to respond in some way. “Amabo,” Douglas repeated in Latin. “Amabo. We mean no harm.”
The Etruscan spokesman made a gesture that left Douglas in no doubt that he and Snipe were to come along meekly or face unpleasant consequences. Douglas, his smile shading into a grimace, made a show of compliance. Gathering Snipe under an arm—more for the natives’ benefit than for Snipe’s—he allowed himself to be led away.
They were conducted by the crowd to the foot of a hill where the dirt track was met by a long, straight upward path that led to an imposing, official-looking structure—a temple, Douglas decided, or perhaps a palace, or something of the sort—with a roof of terracotta tiles; deep, shadowed eaves; a spacious, open portico lined with stately columns painted blue; and a copper-clad door. A double row of cypress trees shaded the rising path to this edifice; the flanks of the hill were planted with olive trees and rampant with tiny yellow wildflowers and blood-red poppies.
At the bottom of the ascending path the crowd halted. The hill was very symmetrical—much too symmetrical, Douglas thought, to be natural, and the building too perfectly placed. The combination suggested the site held ritual significance. “This has got to be the place,” he murmured to himself as Snipe bent and with a lightning-quick grab snatched up another grasshopper.
Surrounded by their captors, they were made to wait while the self-appointed spokesman climbed the hill and sought entrance to the structure. Douglas watched as a round man in a yellow robe appeared on the portico, and a brief discussion ensued, following which the spokesman descended the hill and took his place with his fellow Etruscans once more.
Presently the yellow-robed priest, if that was what he was, and another, somewhat younger priest appeared on the temple steps; they were joined by a third man in a long crimson robe, and all three proceeded down the long path to the bottom of the hill.
“Stand easy, Snipe,” Douglas breathed. “Put down that grasshopper and don’t make trouble.”
The portly priest—the senior cleric, Douglas surmised—ordered everyone to step back and form a more orderly assembly. The rustics obeyed, leaving the two captured strangers exposed before the man in the crimson robe. The red-robed one regarded them for a fleeting moment, his large intense eyes taking in the details of their exotic appearance, and made up his mind at once. Raising his hand to his people, he spoke a few words in a calm, reassuring voice and received a respectful, even obsequious, reply with nods and little bows of acquiescence. Then, addressing two yellow-robed ones, he spoke a command, turned, and retraced his steps to the temple.
His assistants took up positions on either side of Douglas, and one of them indicated that he and Snipe were to follow their leader.
Up the steep path they passed between the long rank of finger-thin trees on either side and arrived at the steps to the temple portico, where the travellers were forced to remove their boots before they were allowed inside. Barefoot, they were then conducted into the temple—which, Douglas quickly realised, was less a temple and more a residence. The walls were painted in shades of pale green and decorated with a broad band containing a series of hunting scenes. There were banks of overstuffed cushions scattered around a large, low table of dark polished wood and iron tripods holding painted pottery jars in red and black. From somewhere the lilting music of a flute sounded like running water.
Two servants in short green tunics came running with a large camp chair, which they unfolded and lined with cushions. The crimson-robed man lowered himself into the chair with the air of an Oriental potentate taking his throne. Meanwhile, the yellow-robed lackey Douglas assumed to be the junior assistant directed the visitors to kneel before his master, who studied the strangers with intense interest—much, Douglas imagined, as a collector might study a new species of beetle. The silence grew and stretched, and still the red-robed one neither spoke nor was spoken to by any of his evident minions. After a time, the rotund senior priest returned, this time accompanied by two men—one older and bald-headed, the other much younger; each was dressed in a long white tunic with a wide braided belt of golden cord. They, too, fell to studying the strangers with an interest that matched that of their red-robed master.
Moments later, the servants returned—one bearing a copper tray with a jar not unlike the one from which Douglas had drunk outside the tomb; also on the tray were three shallow bowls and a dish of almonds. The senior priest directed the servants to pour the wine, which they did and then, bowing low, retreated without a word. The yellow-robed assistant passed a filled bowl to his master, then handed one each to Douglas and Snipe, who immediately drained his bowl and held it out for more. The servant stared at Snipe, then glanced back at his master, who merely nodded. Snipe’s bowl was refilled and Douglas whispered, “Do not guzzle that.”
Snipe gave him a dark look and dipped his tongue.
The man in the chair raised his bowl as if in offering to the gods on high, then, pronouncing a word, inclined his head and drank. Douglas recognised this as his invitation to drink too. He took a swallow of the bittersweet resin-infused wine—a taste he recognised but had never acquired. He forced a smile, and the man in the chair gave him a nod of approval before turning to one of the white-garbed onlookers, who bowed, then turned to address Douglas. The fellow rattled off a few words and paused to regard Douglas expectantly. Douglas merely shook his head, whereupon the fellow spoke again in another language that sounded very like Greek. Douglas gave his head another slight shake and s
aid, “Ego”—he tapped his chest with a finger—“narro latin nonnullus.”
This produced an immediate response. The man loosed a string of words that sounded somewhat familiar, though different enough from the Latin Douglas knew that he could not make head nor tail of what the fellow was saying. He smiled and shook his head. “Latin,” he said.
“Latica,” replied the servant.
“Haud Latica,” offered Douglas. “Non narro Latica.”
The servant turned to his master, put out his hand, and spoke a word that snapped Douglas to sharp attention: “Turms,” he said, and repeated, “Turms.”
In response, the red-robed man placed his hand to his chest and repeated the word, producing in Douglas the fervent hope that he was possibly in the presence of the one man he had most hoped to encounter on this journey: Turms the Immortal, Priest King of the Velathri.
“Turms,” Douglas said and offered a formal bow. Speaking Latin, he added, “Greetings, Turms of the Velathri.”
The king nodded indulgently and waited with an expectant look. Douglas placed his hand on the head of his glowering companion and said, “Snipe.” He repeated the name, then placed his hand on his own chest in imitation of the one Turms had used and said, “Douglas.” He patted his chest, saying, “Douglas Flinders-Petrie.”
Now it was the king’s turn to be astonished. Pointing to Douglas, he loosed a string of words Douglas could not make out, then added, “Arturos.”
It took a moment for Douglas to work out that he had just been told the name by which his great-grandfather had been known among these people. Douglas nodded his understanding, saying, “Arthur Flinders-Petrie.” He then engaged in a simple pantomime in which he described stair steps, or levels, each one a little higher than the last. “Arthur,” he said, his hand describing the lowest level. “Benedict.” His hand described the next level higher. “Charles,” came next, and then the rising hand came to rest on his own head. “Douglas.”