The Seventh Sinner - Elizabeth Peters [22]
Involuntarily both women glanced up at the dark ceiling, which now seemed to be pressing down on their heads.
“I hope they left plenty of nice solid dirt in place,” Jean muttered. “You know, Andy, a person could get claustrophobia down here.”
“There isn’t much to see in this area,” Andy admitted. “Just a few moldy fragments of frescoes. When you’re finished here, take those iron stairs down, and you’ll drop back another three hundred years—back to the first century A.D. The walls you’ll see down below were built to replace houses that burned in the great fire of Nero.”
At some point in the next half hour Jean lost Jacqueline. That was one of Jacqueline’s better qualities: you didn’t have to talk to her, or be polite. Not only did she expect you to do your own thing, she was quite capable of going off and doing hers, without comment or explanation. The spell of the dark ruins was a melancholy, morbid charm, but it was hypnotic. Occasionally she encountered other shadowy wanderers; once she caught a glimpse of Ann’s flaming hair. There were few other tourists; San Clemente was not on the regular route, and only specialists and people who had many weeks to spend in Rome found time for it.
Confusing as the fourth-century church was, it was a marvel of simplicity compared with the lowest level. Jean knew approximately what she was going to see there. As Andy had explained, there were essentially two buildings—or rather, parts of two buildings, for both had been only partially excavated. One of them was a private house, or palazzo, with rooms surrounding a large courtyard. The other structure was an apartment building, in the courtyard of which, eighteen hundred years earlier, a small temple of Mithra had been built.
The low vaulted ceiling suggested the roughly rounded roof of a cave, an impression which was reinforced by the damp atmosphere. The lighting was artfully dim, but it was enough to illumine the benches built along both the long walls, and the stone altar in the center of the floor.
Jean was examining the relief on the side of the altar when José joined her.
“A friendly face,” he said, with relief. “I think I have been lost. This area is truly a maze.”
“The level above is almost as bad.” Jean indicated the relief, which showed a vigorous, youthful male figure in the act of stabbing an animal which it held by the horns. “I take it this is Mithra?”
“No doubt.” José peered at the stone. “The youthful hero who slew the bull and, by the outpouring of its blood, gave immortality to mankind. An eastern cult…But you would know more about that than I.”
“I don’t know much either. Except that it was popular in the early centuries of the Christian era, and had some elements in common with Christianity.”
“What elements?”
“Mithraism had a high ethical code, if I recall correctly. And the concept of sacrifice…Immortality through the shedding of blood…”
“The Blood is the Life,” said José. His voice echoed oddly in the low-ceilinged chamber, and Jean glanced at him in surprise. His dark, chiseled face had an abstracted expression. “It is an old idea, is it not? It must go back beyond civilization, into the prehistoric time, when the ape-people dyed red the bones of their dead to restore to them the hue of life…. Brrr.” He smiled; the flash of white teeth lightened the somber planes of his face. “I make myself morbid. This place is too dark; I am going up into the sunshine.”
“I’ll see you later.”
Jean watched the tall black-robed figure move out through the narrow doorway; and she thought that his archaic costume suited the place. She was the one who was out of place here; the very walls seemed to