The Whirling Girl (35 page)

The Great Philanthropist

SIR HAROLD PLANK WAS flying to Tuscany to view a demonstration of archaeological exploration techniques. Luke Tindhall, the Plank Foundation's representative in Tuscany, had invited archaeologists working in the area to help with the demonstration, which would employ equipment that the Plank Foundation had assembled to donate to worthy excavation projects afterwards. The event was to take place on property the Foundation was in the process of purchasing from the heir of the American writer Geoffrey Kane.

Would it work? Did Clare care?

She made her way up the dry stream bed, wincing at the trampled vegetation alongside. It was lunatic for this to be taking place in the middle of the day, in the middle of a heat wave — a time when sensible people closed themselves off behind shutters and tried to ignore the shrilling of cicadas and the dry scraping of insects of every other sort, echoed by the slither of snakes and lizards as they ate them up. Luke had a reason for the timing, of course.

The meadow was crackling with the intense dry heat. In the shimmering light that bounced off everything, her first sight was Luisa di Varinieri drifting from behind one of the little hills in another tomb-figure-from-Tarquinia outfit, grape-cluster earrings sending out wobbly bolts of gold as she made a slow tour among the hillocks with both arms stretched out in front of her, holding a willow rod. Then more people began to materialize, like those hidden animals in children's puzzles. William Sands and Vittorio Cerotti, pulling a flat metal box. Anders trailing behind, with long wires. Carl Berhnoff on top of one of the hillocks, literally with his ear to the ground.

Clare sought out the shade of a little umbrella pine on the hillock closest to the eastern flank of the horseshoe cliff. Now, adding to the surreal scene, a figure in a yard-wide straw hat with a black curtain fluttering around the rim was emerging from the shade of the stream bed trail. Clare recognized the red-and-black harlequin pants as the figure approached with preoccupied springy little hop-steps, as if concentrating on a game she was making up, as if she didn't care a fig about the rest but just on a whim had decided to come along.

When Nikki spied Clare, she clambered up to join her. She parted the ruffled curtain of her hat and peered out. It was a Hakka hat, she said. An old boyfriend had once sent it from Kowloon. A boyfriend her parents had not approved of, she said. She'd been young and listened to them. He'd gone off to the Orient. She had married William on the rebound. Years later the boyfriend, who was manager of an export company out there now, had sent her the hat. She said the Hakka people, famously, carried the bones of their dead around with them, and so she'd never been sure what to make of the gift.

“But it's good for moments when I want to travel in disguise.”

Nikki hadn't intended to come today at all, she said. It was ridiculous how Plank, the so-called Great Philanthropist, had all these people jumping to his will. But she'd decided it would be a good opportunity to give Clare back her pen, which —
ta-da!
— she'd discovered, after all, in the bottom of her satchel.

The nib was bent and the end was chewed. Clare pushed it into her pants pocket. Whatever she might have said was flattened by the heat. They both watched the peculiar scene in the field. Now on horseback, out of the heat haze, came Ralph Farnham and Federica Inghirami.

“But where is the Great Philanthropist?” Nikki said. “What's with all the secrecy? I wasn't to breathe a word to anyone.”

“You know about as much as I do,” Clare said. “It's Luke's show. He just told me that if word got out about Plank's visit, a man who has so famously refused to travel, there might be a stampede of reporters thinking he was on to some remarkable find.”

“Is he?”

A GREAT ROAR RIPPED away any chance of reply. A helicopter tore in over the trees, blasting wind in all directions, flattening the grasses, spraying petals from the flowers, making the horses rear and snort.

Luke stepped from the machine and held out a hand to portly Sir Harold Plank, who was trying to hold onto what was left of his hair. The rotors slowly stopped turning. The pilot leaned out and flicked away his cigarette. The butt landed in a patch of crispy weed, sent up a spiral of smoke, then flared into a coronet of flame. No one seemed to have the wits to do anything about it, until Clare sprinted past the rest of them. The flames caught on so fast that they danced around her legs as she tried to stamp them out. She tore off her shirt, threw it down, threw herself on top of it and rolled around. She struggled up, sooty, bra-less, idiotic tears streaming down her face, shouting at Luke that this was the dimmest idea she'd ever heard of. To come here with a helicopter and do this damage to the plant life, when everyone with the smallest brain knew that the whole of Italy was tinder-dry.

She caught herself up, shook her head, then couldn't restrain herself from dipping a knee in a mock curtsey.

“Sir Harold, welcome to my humble property.”

He smiled. He undid his tie, removed his crisp, striped shirt, exposing many folds of rosy flesh, and put it round her shoulders. He meekly begged her pardon. He hoped she would understand that the true culprit was the gout. He said that when Luke had explained the path they would have to climb, there was nothing for it but to telephone an outfit in Ravenna to send over a copter.

The awkward moment was broken by a different sort of racket, far down the field. Luke's eyes widened. “Well well,” Clare said. “Someone must have let it slip.” A collection of journalists and TV crews was straggling from the trees.

Luke ran forward, demanding to know what this invasion was about, saying this was merely a small exploration on private land. Vittorio Cerotti moved his shoulders in a heating-up sort of way, as if to keep simmering the great minestrone of rules and regulations he encompassed. But after much talking back and forth, waving of hands, pounding of fists into palms, Luke finally allowed the press to stay; “That is, if Sir Harold agrees.” Then he began explaining, in a resonant TV archaeologist's voice, how Sir Harold Plank, “the eminent British philanthropist,” had long suspected this area had the potential to reveal a collection of undiscovered Etruscan tombs. He walked the group over and around the hillocks, as he told the unseen television audience that there had been initial excitement at the thought that these might be
tumuli
, the so-called melon tombs of the Etruscan Orientalizing phase. But various tests had produced no such evidence. A major disappointment.

“So here you've caught us resorting to what one might, at first glance, think of as an example of Etruscan archaeology's lighter moments, harking back even to the use of dowsing with a willow wand. Allow me to introduce my good friend, the Contessa Luisa di Varinieri,” he said with a flourish.

Luisa smiled an enchanting smile, before wandering off with her wand.

“However,” Luke continued, “The wand has refused to confirm our hopes that the mounds might be
tumuli
. Just before we were interrupted, the willow drew us back towards the hillside there …” Now Luke was striding between the mounds, propelling the Great Philanthropist forward. All the press followed. When he got to the cliff, he grabbed one of the overhanging branches and began to scrabble his way up, still half-turned to the TV crew, at the same time pulling the branch aside so he could get a purchase on the rocks. Then a rock gave way. He gave a cry of pain as he landed, his legs buried by rubble.

But no one rushed to help him. The cameras continued to whirr.

All the Pentaxes and Nikons clicked repeatedly. Everyone was staring at the suddenly exposed opening in the cliff face.

There would have been a stampede, if not for Vittorio. He grabbed one of the Italians from RAI by the arm, muttered, and the reporter put down his mike and gestured to the cameraman to do the same. Luke struggled up, clamped an arm around Clare's shoulder and hobbled towards the cliff.

Harold Plank, though, in the few moments when attention was focused elsewhere, had managed to scuttle up and over the remaining rocks and disappear into the dark beyond. Vittorio was trying to hold the rest of them at bay, while at the same time both he and William were walking backwards as if drawn by a giant magnet.

It had worked.

This had been Clare's gift to Luke: that he could “present” the tomb discovery in any way he thought best, making sure Sir Harold was front and centre. Luke had expected her to be part of the package, despite her having gone off with Gianni. She thought he'd relished the thought of her boomeranging back, so he could revel in his own humiliation, revel in the way they'd hate and need each other. Of course she couldn't possibly be with him anymore. But at least she could do this.

As for what would happen as this “discovery” proceeded — Clare had insisted that the inner chamber stay untouched, just as she had left it, and that Vittorio Cerotti be present today, to make sure protocol was followed and none of the inner contents came to harm. She still had only the merest hint of what this would lead to. But she felt really queasy that she had allowed the whole thing to become a circus.

Once Luke scrabbled in, he pulled a flashlight from one of the pockets of his khaki vest and swept it around the first, empty chamber, expressing amazement. For the benefit of the press group — still held back at the entrance — he described the funeral benches, the coffered ceiling, adding with resignation that the place had been looted centuries before.

Then he said, “Holy Jesus! What's this?”

His flashlight broadened its arc, and the gloom disappeared in the glare made by television crews from RAI and CNN. Everyone stared at the pile of rock against the back wall, where the farther cavity barely showed. Harold Plank was in the lead again. Shirtless, but not caring about the rough stone, he got himself wedged into the opening like a cork, his flailing legs stopping anyone else from coming close.

When he finally eased himself back out, he held his pen light between his teeth. Gingerly, reverently, its weight distributed between two hands, he carried what might have been mistaken for a greenish, heavily encrusted ping pong paddle.

“Doctor Cerotti,” he said, “I turn this over to you with profound apologies for my injudicious haste.”

Before he relinquished it, his eyes under the grey bushy brows did a slow sweep of the place, meeting each camera in turn. “We must all step back, now, and allow the proper authorities to do their proper work.”

A SECOND HELICOPTER HAD roared in carrying the Carabinieri, as summoned by Vittorio. Two of the splendid fellows in their towering hats were now posted to prevent the press from further peering. To loud complaints, Federica and Ralph had been excluded by the time they had attended to the horses.

According to official regulations, no one should be inside the tomb, and certainly nothing in the tomb should be touched until an emergency team of excavators and conservators arrived from Florence. Clare was beginning to wish she had not been quite so fastidious when she'd had a chance to explore the inner chamber. Nikki whispered that any minute Vittorio was sure to get a call from his superiors officially kicking everyone out.

Vittorio declared in a sombre inspectorial voice that he, Vittorio Cerotti, in these unique circumstances, would dislike to deny himself the benefit of the wise opinions of his colleagues regarding, at least, this remarkable bronze mirror that Sir Harold Plank had discovered.

Luisa pulled a white cashmere sweater from her tiny gold backpack, enabling the mirror to be laid down without damage.

Then she exclaimed, “But look!”

She pointed out that when the mirror had originally been deposited, it had been wrapped in cloth, leaving what she called “a perfect pseudomorph” of what that fabric had once been. As the mirror had corroded over centuries, the process slowly replaced the cloth fibres with metal, leaving an exact replica of the weave.

Clare leaned close. Yes, it was clear that metal had replaced a swatch of woven fabric, making even the warp and woof of it distinct. But then she began to wonder if an even more remarkable transformation might be taking place, right before her eyes. Was the stern archaeological process being replaced by the metallic heft of Sir Harold Plank? She saw him move close to the inspector. After a quiet rumbling in Vittorio's ear, Vittorio allowed that once his esteemed colleagues had had a chance to inspect the mirror, it might be possible to take a small look into the second chamber.

“So then let's get on with it!” Nikki called out in her brassy voice. “Luisa, you'll never see who's fairest in the land in that mirror!”

But when Luisa turned the mirror over and directed the beam of light at a raking angle, a woman did spring into view. Incised on the ancient greenish bronze, a woman wearing a floating dress and elegant pointed shoes was holding in her arms the naked body of a most beautiful young man.

This brought on a flurry of conflicting opinions. Luisa said the female figure would be Thesan, goddess of the dawn, mourning the death of her son slain by Achilles. Anders declared it was Thesan, but she was abducting her human lover, who was very much alive, as they would see if they took note of the mirror's border of round leaves and up-thrusting spikes, which charged the iconography with the erotic.

Clare moved closer, caught her breath. “No. This is the death of Adonis. The goddess is Aphrodite.”

Anders sniffed. There was no record of such a scene in the entire
Corpus Speculorum Etruscorum
, which recorded some three thousand mirrors so far discovered.

But Clare pointed out the pattern of droplets on the front of the goddess's filmy dress. They were not tears but drops of blood. There, at Aphrodite's feet, were flowers, delicate as moth wings, one central flower drooping to show the mound of pistils and stamens. “That is
Anemone coronaria
. The flower Aphrodite caused to spring up from her lover's blood.”

Anders said, “Then can our expert tell us about the vine that surrounds the scene with phallic clusters?”

“Aye!” A surprising rumble from Sir Harold. “But that's no ruddy vine. There's something odd in the space just above the mirror's handle. A tree trunk? With some poor lass walled up inside?” He pulled out an army knife with a tiny magnifier, passed it around.

“Myrrha!” Luisa breathed. “Yes. Here we see her arms already turned into branches, which reach up to make the border!
Straordinario!
This is by a master! To encircle the coming fate of the son Adonis within the crime of the mother in this way!”

Harold Plank shut his knife with a snap. “What was her crime?”

“She seduced her daddy, and got grounded for her pains.” That came from Luke.

Clare heard her own voice: