The Seventh Sinner - Elizabeth Peters [55]
“What’s the fight about?”
José grinned.
“Andy asked Montini about the old problem of Saint Peter’s daughter. The church holds that the relationship was a purely spiritual one, but Andy is insisting that Petronella was the Apostle’s physical child.”
Jacqueline joined them in time to hear the question and José’s answer.
“Doesn’t the Bible mention Peter’s wife?”
“I believe so,” José said indifferently. “It is not a question of great importance.”
Jacqueline shook her head, muttering. Jean caught a few words; they sounded like “another virgin saint.”
Finally the disputants calmed down, and Montini announced,
“And now, andiamo! Discendiamo nel sotterraneo!”
Jean looked at Michael, and met a cold glare. Apparently he was still climbing back on the horse that had thrown him. After seeing the condition he had been in once before “nel sotterraneo” she wasn’t sure this trip was a good idea.
Fifteen minutes later she was sure that it wasn’t a good idea. They had visited catacombs before, and she had not liked them much; for an atmosphere of pure concentrated gloom there is no place worse than the corridor of a catacomb. These were even more depressing than the others she had visited. Some of the more popular catacombs, often visited by tourists, had a feeble lighting system. Here the group walked in single file, holding candles as the sole source of illumination. The corridors were so narrow that the bigger men—Scoville, Andy, and José—had to turn sideways in some places. The low ceiling was only inches over their heads. And on either side, yard after yard and block after block, the grave niches filled the walls from floor to ceiling—tiers of graves, row on row on row, stretching out into the darkness eternally.
Jean wondered how on earth Michael could stand it. Had he been joking about his claustrophobia—inventing it, to explain a distress which might have had another cause? Jean wondered. She couldn’t imagine how anyone who had found San Clemente disturbing could endure this place.
Half the candles had gone out, as the result of incautious movements on the part of the bearers. From the head of the procession Montini called out a cheery reassurance. They were not to worry, he could find his way through this maze blindfolded.
Jean found the statement unconvincing. People had been lost in the catacombs; the corridors had no regular plan, they branched and intersected at random. There were no landmarks, only the same grimly monotonous walls and their blocked-up niches. A few of the graves had been opened; the gaping blackness within held shadowy suggestions of what had once inhabited the space. Occasionally there was an inscription or a sketchy drawing on the plaster that sealed the grave. Montini’s voice echoed hollowly as he pointed out some of the symbols—the dove, the fish, the olive branch, other emblems of the Faith—and the rare epitaphs. “Be of good cheer; no man is immortal,” one read, with a Spartan fortitude that struck Jean as more pagan than Christian. The most common epitaph was the simple phrase “in peace.”
They might have been a funeral procession from the time when the catacombs were still in use. The roughness of the floor necessitated a funereal shuffle; the dim light illumined faces that seemed drawn and anxiously shadowed, leaving the rest of the figures in darkness. Gradually an unholy fascination replaced Jean’s nervousness. She kept stopping to stare at the mute shapes of the graves, morbidly picturing what lay within them. She was at the end of the line, and there was a tendency on the part of the others to crowd forward, close to the comforting figure of their guide. They were silent. Even Montini had stopped talking. The atmosphere discouraged speech. All at once Jean looked up from her contemplation of a very small niche, whose miniature dimensions had struck her poignantly, and found that she was alone.
She strained her eyes through the enclosing darkness and tried to deny the fact. It was impossible. They had to be here, they couldn’t simply disappear…. From somewhere seemingly an immense