The King's Agent (28 page)

Nineteen

In the middle of the journey of our life
I came to myself within a dark wood
where the straight way was lost.

—Inferno

A
urelia felt scandalous in her boots, hose, and stockings, though she wore all beneath her sturdy riding gown. She cared little if the wind rose up and tossed those skirts about, if the male apparel peeked out. The sun beat upon their heads with a scorching heat and she had forsaken her veil as the road led them through the forest and unpopulated fields in the journey south from Florence. Like her skirts, her hair flapped out behind her, whipping up with each bouncing gallop, the breeze cool and invigorating on her sweat-soaked neck. Her mouth grew dry, but she could not close it to the pummeling air, her smile unrelenting; here, at last, she basked in the unrestrained freedom she craved.

Not long after they had passed beneath Florence’s city gate, where the strong gray blocks of
pietra forte
gave way to hard-packed earth, Battista had led them easterly rather than true south, galloping off the wide Via Cassia and onto a narrower, less used road. As they moved closer to the curving mountain range slicing the peninsula in two, Aurelia had not asked for an explanation, for one was not necessary; who knew what manner of beasts may follow them, they could take no chance continuing on upon the main thoroughfare.

The logic of it did nothing to dampen her disappointment; their trek allowed only glimpses of the resplendent villages they passed from a distance. This urban land boasted many lovely towns; cresting any given hill, a traveler may see more than a few upon the horizon, their encircling walls marking the boundaries, their bell towers providing a compass point to guide them onward. Nor was the architecture confined to the rolling meadows and low flatlands; imposing mountains were terraced almost to their summits, the pale stone villas as natural a part of their façades as the gray-green olive trees and the umbrella-like
pineta
filling the air with their piney redolence.

As the sun hovered near the horizon, its heat casting a vivid magenta and tangerine hue over all it touched, she pulled back on the reins, lifting herself from the saddle, peering with ingenuous awe at the mammoth city rising out of the distant plane to the west. Did she spy the walls surrounding the Vatican or perhaps the Pantheon? Could those pillars thrusting up from the ground be the columns of the Forum? She hoped they were, dared to by her desire to see such sights.

“I’m sorry, Aurelia.” Battista’s voice came from her side; her disappointment apparent even through the dappled light filtering through the trees.

“Perhaps, if we ...” He shook his head. “Someday, perhaps, I may show you the great city. But not now.”

Aurelia lifted one corner of her seamed mouth; it was a hope she would wish for then, if he were to offer it again, pleased he spoke to her in a kindly manner. They had not exchanged many words over the last few days, over the course of the hard travel of the day, and when he did speak she heard again a hard edge, though if it was anger, mistrust, or impatience she did not know him well enough to determine. Their relationship had somehow fallen into disrepair, obstacles rose between them as surely as the mountains stood between the coasts, and she knew not how to bridge the divide. But she would not waste any moments on what was done, living only in each one offered her, immersed in the adventure and her goals.

Battista turned, looking at Frado slumped in his saddle with commiseration. They had been on the road since early morning, and the older man faltered beneath the weariness they all shared.

“I think it best we make camp for the night,” Battista said, slowing to a trot, waiting for his friend to catch up.

“Are you sure?” Aurelia pulled up as well, though not eagerly. “Will we still reach the grottos by tomorrow if we do?”

He turned a flat, dark gaze upon her, the coolness of gloaming back in his demeanor. “We are more than halfway there. As long as we set off at first light, we will arrive soon after midday.”

His assessment proved accurate, if conservative, and as the sun reached its apex on the following day, their horses struggled to climb the foothills of the Ausoni Mountains, hooves slipping on the loose rock of the craggy passage. They leaned as far forward in their saddles as possible, heads almost butting with those of their straining mounts.

“We’ll have to walk,” Battista called out as he quit his steed.

Only too keen to follow suit, Aurelia dropped from her saddle. Rubbing her fine stallion’s sweat-drenched mane, she leaned her forehead against him as she would any other beloved friend. “You have worked hard, my dear,” she whispered, and the horse whinnied softly with a toss of his head.

“Walk?” Frado whined. “How far must we walk?”

It was a good question, one without an answer. Battista raised his head, hand to his forehead to shield his eyes from the glaring sun, gaze following the path as it thinned and scaled the formation of rock and earth above them, where it blazed a brown swath through the low scrubby green vegetation. He insisted the cave they sought lay in this karst region with an innate certainty, but where the entrance may lie he could not say.

“We must go up just a bit further, to that plateau. See it there?” He pointed to a ledge not far in the distance, and though a majestic mountain rose up beyond it, it was difficult to see what lay between. “I think we will be able to get a lay of the land from that vantage point.”

Frado toppled from his mount with a clumsy thud, grunting and mumbling his curse-strewn dissatisfaction.

“We will take our midday repast from there as well,” Battista tossed back as he crested the ridge. The mention of food and wine would lessen the pain of exertion. Predictably, Frado’s grumbling subsided though he continued to move at a sluggish pace.

“Dio mio!”

Aurelia hesitated at Battista’s stunned utterance, moving faster when she moved again. “What is it, Battista? What is wrong?”

It took but a short sprint up the path and she stood beside him, sucking in her breath with an audible gasp, hand to her heart.

They stood on the rim of a circular basin; below them, sheltered in the arms of the curved stone valley, lay a hidden paradise.

Curvilinear formations of rock and vegetation sat around and among shallow pools of water, the surface so still and clear, perfect images of the curvaceous arrangements were duplicated in the reflections, their beauty multiplied again and again, an unending oasis of cream rock, green growth, and azure sky.

“When I see such things, I see the hand of God,” Battista murmured reverently.

Aurelia turned a tender gaze on the man beside her; she had never seen him attend church, yet he wore his faith with the same ease as his leather jerkin, and with equal relish. His was a spiritual soul, and she silently celebrated such theology.

“Life’s true beauty is often concealed where the eye cannot see it. It may be found only if one is open to it,” Aurelia replied, turning back to the breathtaking panorama.

Frado reached them, panting, only to drop to his knees as his sight beheld the vista. They laughed together, Aurelia and Battista, at his unadulterated joy at the place they had found.

They fell silent, allowing the stillness to envelop them, offering themselves completely to it. Minutes passed uncounted, but without a care.

Battista broke the peace, with a gesturing finger and a soft declaration. “Look.”

They followed his signal to a spot on the curve diagonally across from them. Though not readily detectable, a jut of rocks formed an arch over an outcropping of boulder. On top of the striated stone, a cap of spiky green fronds stuck out, like short hair hackled in fright. A rim of darkness stood out between the boulder and the formation just beyond it, but whether space existed between the arch and the outcropping it was hard to tell from this distance.

“It could be an entrance, to be sure,” Aurelia said.

“Let’s find out.” With a cluck of his tongue and a tug on his reins, Battista pulled his horse forward, edging down the stony embankment.

“Do we dare enter this refuge? Are we worthy?” Frado whispered.

“I think we were meant to,” Aurelia assured him, reaching out to squeeze the man’s clasped hands, thinking without saying that the passage and this chasm could easily be symbolic of the anti-Purgatory, that which must be traversed first in Dante’s poem.

The journey downward became ever more treacherous as they fought the pull of the earth, as they struggled to control their descent. Arriving safely if sweat-soaked, they splashed onto the plateau on the bottom, their horses dipping their mouths eagerly into the fresh, clean water. Bending at the knee, Battista, too, refreshed himself, bringing the water to his mouth with a cupped hand.

Aurelia kicked at it gently, sending gemlike droplets sparkling up into the sun, splashing her face with the cooling fluid. She wished she could shed all her clothes and baptize herself with the rejuvenating liquid. She settled for cleansing her face and hands and the back of her neck, shivering as a bead of water dribbled down the hollow of her spine.

Battista reached the outcropping first, tying the reins of his horse to a smaller but similar projectile beside it. Peering around one side, and then the other, Battista turned to them in displeasure.

“There is no more than a crack between,” he said dejectedly.

Aurelia secured her horse and stepped to the stone monolith. It rose over her head at least ten men high and half as many wide. She squinted to see less distinctly but far more clearly.

“It is a robed man,” she said, head tipped almost straight up on her long, thin neck.

Battista came to stand on one side of her, Frado on the other, each tipping his head back in a comparable posture.

“I see him,” Battista said, voice strangled by the awkward position.

The craggy lines upon the rock face drew an abstract but interpretive form of a bearded man, a long nose and deep-set eyes, his head tucked into the mantle of his robe falling in folds to the ground.

Battista lowered his head. “ ‘I threw myself devotedly at his holy feet, asking him to open out of mercy; but first I beat three times upon my breast.’ ”

Aurelia recognized the opening stanza of the
Commedia’
s second canticle, the beginning of
Purgatorio
. She held her breath as Battista knelt and, with a fisted right hand, beat upon his breast three times.

A black bird cawed overhead as a gust of wind swooshed around them, but the rock cropping did not move.

“Wait,” Aurelia demanded. Lifting her skirts, she fell to her knees, and then to her stomach.

“What in Heaven are you doing?” Battista demanded.

“Dear lady, you’ll hurt yourself,” Frado insisted, then threw up his hands with a laugh, as if the absurdity of the situation suddenly dawned on him.

“ ‘From beneath the robe, he drew two keys.’ ” The words came out in muffled grunts, spoken into the moist stone beneath, one hand stretched out in front. With a happy yelp, her digits moved beyond the edge of the outcropping, disappearing into the tiniest crack between rock and ground. She squirmed forward, hand completely engulfed by the gap of stone.

She yanked her hand—now fisted—out and jumped to her feet with one swift, graceful move. Holding out her limb, she unfurled her fingers, quoting Dante once more, “ ‘The one was made of gold, the other of silver.’ ”

The men bombarded her, jostling her as they squeezed closer. On her scratched, gritty skin lay two strange pieces, one whitish and one yellow. Though clearly keys, they were more akin to dowels of metal, not carved nor bright, straight cylindrical shafts with unique indentations, the metal tarnished and worn.

“Do you think they are truly made of silver and gold?” Frado’s hushed murmur spoke of value, not discovery, and Battista bumped the man’s shoulder with his own, knocking Frado’s attention back to the matter at hand.

“Well done, Aurelia,” Battista praised, though grudgingly. “But where are the keyholes?”

They separated, each heading for a different part of the mammoth boulder, each searching—with eyes and hands—for indentations to accommodate the unique keys.

“Here, here. I’ve found it!” Frado cried, his thrill to be an active part of the quest ringing in his high-pitched squeal. With a squelch of shallow water beneath his boots, he ran to Aurelia, swiped the keys from her hands, and returned to the left side of the boulder. Patting the stone surface, finding the two small barrel holes, one sitting atop the other, he pinched the small yellow dowel between thumb and forefinger and raised it up.

“Stop!” Aurelia and Battista cried together, rushing toward him, Battista passing her with his long-legged stride.

Frado froze, hand poised in the air, face awash with fright.

“You must put the other in first.” Battista reached him, placing a calming hand on his startled friend’s shoulder.

“ ‘First with the white, then with the yellow, he plied the gate so as to satisfy me,’ ” Aurelia quoted the instructions.

Frado heaved a cleansing breath, switched the devices in his hand, and raised them once more. He gently pushed one in and then the other, turning first to the right without yield and then to the left, where the small pins slipped and then receded, as if pulled by someone, or something, on the opposite side.

“They c—”

With a thunderlike boom and a grinding of stone, the monstrous boulder shuddered and fell to the right, creating a gap no more than a foot wide, broad enough for Battista to slip through sideways.

The stone dust fell upon them, fluffy as snow, the motes dancing in the sun’s bright glare.

With wide-eyed eagerness and the hint of a grin, Battista leaned toward the opening, slipping one foot and one shoulder into the space.

“No, not yet!” Frado pulled him back, grabbing and tugging his friend’s arm. “You have not eaten a thing since early morning and only God knows how long you may be in ... there. I insist you eat, rest, and drink before embarking on this journey.” He stood with arms akimbo, mouth set tight and firm.