Maya put down her glass of wine. “Is it a map?”
“It’s much better than that. Maps can be lost or destroyed. This particular guide is hidden beneath the streets of Rome. It’s the Horologium Augusti-the sundial created by the Emperor Augustus.”
When the waiter came to their table, Lumbroso discussed various options for the next course, finally deciding on veal cooked with fresh sage. When they were alone again, he poured himself another glass of wine.
“The Horologium was not some little sundial found in the back garden. It was the center of Rome-an enormous circle of white travertine inlaid with bronze lines and letters. If you’ve walked passed the Italian Parliament building in the Piazza di Montecitorio, you’ve seen the Egyptian obelisk that created the shadow.”
“But now the sundial is buried underground?”
“Most of ancient Rome is underground. It could be argued that every city has a ghost city hidden from view. A small portion of the sundial was excavated in the 1970s by German archaeologists-some friends of mine-but they stopped after a year of work. There are still natural springs beneath the streets of Rome, and a stream flows across the surface of the sundial. And there were security problems as well. The carabinieri didn’t want the archaeologists digging a passageway that would lead directly to the Parliament building.”
“So what does this have to do with finding an access point to another realm?”
“The sundial was more than just a clock and a calendar. It also served as the center of the Roman universe. On the outer rim of the sundial there were arrows pointing to Africa and Gaul, as well as directions to spiritual gates that led to other worlds. As I said, the ancients didn’t have our limited view of reality. They would have seen the First Realm as a distant province on the edge of the known world.
“When the German archaeologists finished their project, most of the sundial was covered with dirt and rubble. But that was over thirty years ago, and Rome has experienced several floods since that time. Remember-an underground stream flows through the whole area. I’ve inspected the site and I’m convinced that a much larger section of the sundial is now exposed to view.”
“So why didn’t you check it out?” Maya asked.
“Anyone entering this area would have to be flexible, athletic, and”-Lumbroso gestured to his stomach-“a good deal less corpulent. You’d need an oxygen tank and breathing apparatus to go underwater. And you’d need to be brave. This ground is highly unstable.”
Both of them were silent for a few minutes. Maya took a sip of wine. “What if I bought the necessary equipment?”
“The equipment is not the problem. You’re my friend’s daughter-which means I want to help you-but no one has explored this area since the flooding. I want you to promise that you’ll turn around and come back if it looks dangerous.”
Maya’s first reaction was to say Harlequins don’t promise, but she had broken that rule with Gabriel.
“I’ll try to be careful, Simon. I can’t agree to anything more than that.”
Lumbroso bunched up his napkin and dropped it on the table. “My stomach doesn’t like this idea. That’s a bad sign.”
“But now I’m famished,” Maya said. “So where’s the waiter?”
34
The next evening Maya met Simon Lumbroso in front of the Pantheon. She had spent the day buying scuba equipment at a dive shop in the western suburbs and had stuffed everything into two canvas bags. Lumbroso had also gone shopping, buying a large battery-powered lantern, the kind of equipment miners carried in caves. He gazed at the tourists eating gelato in the square and smiled.
“The Greek philosopher Diogenes of Sinope wandered around Athens with a lantern looking for an honest man. We’re looking for something equally rare, Maya. You need to take a photograph-just one photograph-of the directions that will lead us to another world.” He smiled at her. “Are we ready?”
Maya nodded.
Lumbroso led her over to Campo Marzio, a side street near the Parliament building. Halfway down the block, he stopped in front of a doorway between a tearoom and a perfume store.
“Do you have a passkey?” Maya asked.
Lumbroso reached into his suit coat pocket and pulled out a wad of euros. “This is the only passkey you need in Rome.”
He knocked loudly and a bald old man wearing rubber boots opened the door. Lumbroso greeted the man politely and shook his hand, paying the bribe without the vulgarity of mentioning money. The bald man let them into a hallway, said something in Italian, and then left the building.
“What did he tell you, Simon?”
“‘Don’t be a fool and lock up when you’re done.’”
They walked down the hallway to an open courtyard filled with lumber, scaffolding, and empty paint cans. Families had lived in the tenement for hundreds of years, but now the building was empty and the stucco walls were stained from flooding. All the windows were smashed, but iron bars still formed a grid in the window frames. The rusty bars made the building look like an abandoned prison.
Lumbroso pulled open an unlocked door and they climbed down stairs covered with plaster dust. When they reached what appeared to be the building’s cellar, Lumbroso switched on the lantern and opened a door labeled with red paint: PERICOLO-NO ENTRI.
“There’s no electric power from this point on, so we’ll have to use the lantern,” Lumbroso explained. “Be very careful where you step.”
Holding the lantern low, he moved slowly down a passageway with brick walls. The floor consisted of plywood boards placed over concrete crossbeams. Fifteen feet beyond the doorway, Lumbroso stopped and knelt beside a gap in the floorboards. Maya stood behind him, peered over his shoulder, and saw the Horologium Augusti.
The excavated section of the emperor’s sundial had become the floor of a stone-walled cellar about eight feet wide and twenty feet long. Although the sundial was underwater, Maya could see its travertine surface as well as a few bronze lines and Greek letters inlaid in the limestone. The German archaeologists had removed all the rubble, and the room resembled a looted sepulchre. The only modern touch was a steel ladder that ran from the gap in the plywood boards to the floor of the cellar nine feet below.
“You go first,” Lumbroso said. “I’ll hand you the equipment; then I’ll come down with the lantern.”
Maya placed the two sacks of equipment on a plywood board and removed her jacket, shoes, and socks. Then she climbed down the ladder to the sundial. The water was cold and about three feet deep. Lumbroso handed Maya the equipment sacks, and she looped the drawstrings around the steps of the ladder so that they hung from opposite sides.
While Simon took off his fedora, suit coat, and shoes, Maya inspected the cellar. As she moved around the room, little waves sloshed back and forth, breaking against the walls. Over the years, the minerals in the water had transformed the white travertine sundial into slabs of grayish stone; in various places it was pitted, cracked, and stained. The bronze lines and Greek symbols that had been embedded in the limestone had once been a bright gold color that glittered brightly in the Roman sun. The metal had oxidized completely and now the letters were dark green.
“I don’t like ladders,” Lumbroso said. He put one foot on the top rung as if to test the ladder’s strength, and then climbed down slowly with the lantern. Maya walked over to the corner and found a drainage hole in the gray stone wall. The hole was about two feet square and completely underwater. Its bottom edge was flush with the surface of the sundial.
“The water flows out here?”
“Correct. That’s where you have to go.” Still wearing his long-sleeved white shirt, necktie, and black pants, Lumbroso stood with an odd sort of formality in the water. “Turn back immediately if it gets too difficult to move.”