Blind Alley - Iris Johansen [96]
He moved ahead of her. “It depends on what you consider long. I have an idea time's moving a little slow for you right now.”
She tried to think of something else besides this blasted darkness. “Cira probably knew about that vomitorium. This was her town, her place. I can see her walking around, talking, laughing, playing her games with the men of the town.”
“So can I. That's not hard to imagine.”
“Not for someone like you who definitely thinks about Cira in a physical sense. She did what she had to do to survive.”
“She was no martyr. She enjoyed life. According to Julius's scrolls she had an unseemly sense of humor, but he forgave her because in bed she was a true goddess.”
“How patronizing. She probably had to have a sense of humor if she was forced to go to bed with him.”
“No force. Choice. She made the choice, Jane.”
“Her birth and circumstances made the choice. What else did the scrolls say about her?”
“That she was kind to her friends, ruthless to her enemies, and it wasn't wise to cross her.”
“Who were her friends?”
“The actors in the theater. She didn't trust anyone else.”
“No family?”
“No. She took a street boy into her home and was said to have been very kind to him.”
“No mention of anyone else?”
“Not as far as I remember. Most of Julius's scrolls concerned her beauty and sexual prowess, not her maternal attributes.”
“Chauvinist pig.”
He chuckled. “Me or Julius?”
“Both of you.”
“Chauvinist or not, he was ready to kill for her. In one scroll he was contemplating murdering his rival who was stealing her away from him.”
“Who was it?”
“He didn't name him. He referred to him as a young actor who had recently come to Herculaneum and taken the town by storm. Evidently he had also taken Cira by storm and it threw Julius into a rage.”
“Did he kill him?”
“I don't know.”
“He's far more likely to have tried to kill Cira if he couldn't change her mind about leaving him.”
“You think so? Interesting.”
Not interesting. Horrible. And only a small example of the life Cira had lived.
Trevor suddenly stopped. “Here's the passage Joe will take to get to the ledge overlooking the vomitorium.” He shone the light on the rocky wall to the left and she saw a shallow dark cavity close to the tunnel floor. “It's barely crawl space and he'll have to wriggle through the opening, but two yards into the passage he can stand and walk upright until he gets to the ledge.”
“I would never have noticed it if you hadn't pointed it out.”
“And neither will Aldo.” He started down the tunnel again. “There are too many offshoot branches in this tunnel for him to notice a small hole in the wall. He's going to have a plethora of choices.”
“Aren't we close to the vomitorium yet?”
“Yes, a few minutes' walk from here.”
“Then let's hurry. I want out of here.”
It seemed longer than the few minutes Trevor had stipulated when he stepped aside and shone his flashlight into the blackness ahead. “Here we are. Not exactly the most elegant example of Cira's time. Though those six marble bases that are scattered around the area probably held statues of gods and goddesses and maybe the current emperor on the throne.”
But the bases were now jagged, broken remnants that guarded the darkness of the three tunnels leading off the vomitorium like sentinels with bared teeth. There were three photography can lights and a battery generator next to the bases but she paid no attention to them. She took a step forward, her gaze on the center of the room. A long red velvet cloth lay on the rocky ground.
“What's that?”
“Part of my prep work. I wanted to make sure Aldo knew he'd reached pay dirt.”
“I'd think that the lights would tip him off.”
“Okay, it's a little dramatic touch. So I'm a ham.”
The velvet looked like a splotch of blood in the oozing darkness and she couldn't take her gaze off it. “That's where you're going to put the coffin?”
“Eventually. But we want Aldo to know what's coming. We can lead him so far and then we turn