Oracle of the Dead(48)
It was as if all Italy was sick with anticipation.
That afternoon I called Hermes to my side. “We’re missing something,” I said.
“You’ve been saying that for some time,” he said. “What do we do about it now?”
“You know what I’ve taught you. We can’t expect new evidence to come to us. The woman Floria was a stroke of luck unless she was something more sinister. We have to find it ourselves. So how do we do that?”
He thought a bit. “We go back and reexamine what we’ve already seen and look for what we missed.”
“Right. We’ll start where this all started, in the tunnel of the Oracle. This time with no mumbo-jumbo to distract us. No drinks, we bring our own torches and make our own smoke, and it had better be clean smoke with no funny colors in it. Come to think of it, get new torches with linen-wrapped heads and soaked in the best olive oil. I don’t care about the expense, I want as little smoke as possible. Same oil for the lamps. No chanting, no prayers, no uncanny voices. It will be just like when I was an aedile and we went down to inspect the sewers or the basements of buildings.”
He grinned. “I always loved sewer-crawling.”
“Bring three or four of our best men to carry torches and lamps; I want plenty of light. All armed. We know that there are people who don’t want us finding out things. They’ve committed a number of murders already and won’t scruple at a few more.”
An hour later we were in the valley of funerary growth and standing before the tunnel. Our purposeful little band, clinking with swords and daggers on bronze-studded military belts, had attracted some attention and a number of idlers, bored with the ongoing festival, had followed in hopes of seeing some action.
Iola rushed up to us with some of her acolytes or whatever they were, robes disheveled and dignity lost in their haste. “Praetor! What is going on?”
“Iola, I am going down into your tunnel to find out whatever is to be learned there. Everyone here has been lying to me or at least withholding the truth. I intend to get to the bottom of this and I propose to begin at the literal bottom, in the chamber of the Oracle.”
“You cannot do this!” she shouted, eyes and hair wild. “It is sacrilege!”
“Iola, Roman law recognizes sacrilege only as an offense against the gods of the state. Hecate is not a god of the state, but a foreign deity. My good friend Appius Claudius is censor this year and he is purging Rome and Italy of evil influences. He is a very upright and energetic man and he hates foreign cults. If you don’t want to be driven from Italy and your tunnel filled with rubble, you had better not hinder my investigation in any way. Do I make myself clear?”
She looked fit to have a stroke, but abruptly she caved in. “Very well, Praetor.”
“Now tell me something, Iola. Who was the chief sacerdote here ten years ago? Was it you?”
“No, Praetor. I came here from Thrace, homeland of the goddess, seven years ago. The priest ten years ago was Agathon, but he died right about that time. Then Cronion succeeded to the high priesthood. He was quite old and perished about the time I arrived. Hecabe became high priestess then and made me her acolyte. She died three years ago from the bite of a serpent and I succeeded her.”
“Yours is a hazardous priesthood.” I observed.
She shrugged. “People die. It happens all the time.”
“You stay up here. I want none of your people in the tunnel while we are there.”
She closed her eyes and let out a deep sigh. “As you will, Praetor. But this is a terrible violation of our shrine. I shall make protest to the Senate.”
“Feel free to do so. But you have no idea how busy they are going to be soon. They will have very little attention to spare for the likes of you.”
I got my men together at the entrance of the tunnel. “I want two of you to precede us with torches. We will descend very slowly. I want to examine everything very closely—the walls, the ceiling, the floor, everything.”
“What are we looking for, Praetor?” asked one of the men.
“Anything that doesn’t have an obvious reason for being there. If you see any sort of opening, anything that looks like a door or access to some other place, I want you to draw it to my attention. Now, let’s go.”
The two torchbearers went ahead, one before the other due to the narrowness of the tunnel. The uncommonly fine torches I had specified indeed made almost no smoke as we crept slowly down the passageway. I examined every niche, lifting its lamp and feeling the level spot and its back. Hermes and my other men ran their fingers over the walls and felt the ceiling, trying to find any irregularity. The work was so exacting that we felt none of the supernatural trepidation of my previous visit, and little even of the natural discomfort that comes with being in cramped quarters underground.