Free Death Among the Ruins by Pamela Christie Page A

like them to put your valise, Bunny?” she called over her shoulder. But there was no answer. Belinda had walked into the first bedroom she had come to, and fallen facedown upon the bed.
    On her way back upstairs, Arabella met her brother coming down.
    “Shouldn’t you like to have a nap, Charles?”
    “Presently, presently,” he replied, and she guessed what was afoot, for prior to separating at the customs house, Arabella had given him money with which to pay for the carriages. And he had done; she had seen the lire pass hands. But not understanding the rate of exchange, she had probably given him too much, and Charles must now be looking for a way to lose the amount left over.
    Mr. Kendrick would have liked very much to take a nap. But with impressive alacrity, he had grasped the true reason for his inclusion in the party, and now he followed in Charles’s wake without a murmur of complaint. Because he loved her.
    When a sudden pang of remorse stabbed at Arabella like a stiletto on the staircase, she ignored it. Mr. Kendrick, she knew, would not want her to suffer on his account. He adored performing these services for her. They were what he lived for, and nothing was required of her in return save that she permit him to anticipate her slightest wish. At least, that was how she saw it.
    On entering the room that would be hers, Arabella was aware of an odd, suffused brightness. Her mind, by this time, was somewhat dulled by fatigue, so it took her a moment to identify the source: a sunbeam, stealing through a crack in the shutters. Without so much as a glance at her inviting bed, she threw open the French doors and stepped out onto a small balcony. The sun was once again in possession of what little was left of the day, and now, by its mellow light, Arabella beheld the ruins, which lay cupped beneath her in a kind of crater, like a small-scale replica in a dish: columns, arches, partial walls with shrubs sprouting from their cracks or ivy dripping down their summits, fragments of streets, the remains of sunken gardens, and oddly shaped mounds that she guessed to be unexcavated buildings. Here and there, a cypress pointed a slim, accusatory finger at the sky, from whose impassive blue expanse the ancient gods had once beheld the destruction of the faithful.
    All was quiet, save for an occasional bird note echoing in the stillness, and the air sparkled with the prisms of quivering raindrops, refracting the golden sunlight of late afternoon. The resurrected city appeared to be sleeping. Arabella had not realized that the hotel was so close to it. She hurried inside and quickly dressed to go out, her fatigue vanished upon the instant. When she came downstairs, she glimpsed Charles playing vingt-et-un in the parlor with a puffy-looking fellow who had seemingly just arrived, for a vast collection of trunks and travel cases was once again piled in the lobby. Kendrick stood behind Charles’s chair, looking exhausted. Arabella did not want to talk to them. She paused beside the parlor doorway, gathered herself together, and swiftly plunged past it, without being noticed.
    The air outside proved chillier than she had expected or prepared for, but a path ran round the rim of the sunken city, gradually spiraling down to merge with one of the ancient streets, and by taking this at a brisk pace, she was quickly able to restore the warmth to her limbs. Like an explorer arriving on an undreamt-of continent, Arabella broached gardens, peered into windows, and paced through rooms that had once been studies and libraries and private kitchens. The spell of the past descended upon her consciousness like a gossamer scarf. A part of her mind was still grounded in the nineteenth century, but another part felt itself to be rooted in the distant past, as if she were somebody else, clinging to an existence that lay buried beneath the rubble, and seizing the chance to revisit its beloved city through the agency of a living body.
    The sensation