Free A Lady of Good Family by Jeanne Mackin Page A

“Volcanic rock is soft, easy to shape. You may pick up one of the stones and scratch it with your fingernail. Test it.”
    Beatrix did. It flaked, leaving grit under her nail. No nourishment in it, she thought. Nothing could take root there, even if there were light, perhaps not even moss or lichen. It was good only for the already dead.
    “Come,” said the monk. They stepped into deeper shadow, and then into darkness, their candles lighting the way.
    The second level was a little wider than the stair passage had been, and lined on either side with what seemed like shelves carved into the rock itself. “These cubicula were carved in the fourth century. This is where the bodies were laid to rest,” Tommaso said. “At one time there would have been hundreds in these catacombs, but alas, there has always been a market for relics, for crushed bone and mummy powder.” He sighed at the general gullibility of a frail humanity.
    Beatrix, adjusting to the darkness and feeling slightly freed by it, felt an impulse to find a bone, to bring it back to Bar Harbor and crush it into powder, to feed that powder to the ramblingrose that splayed against the south wall of the house. Would the rose know that it was now part Roman?
    Minnie had more practical concerns. “How did they die, the people laid to rest in this catacomb?”
    “Lions in the Colosseum, probably,” Teddy said with relish.
    “Some martyrs, yes,” the monk said. “Others, perhaps the Roman fever. Perhaps a plague. Who knows? Death comes to us all, no matter what the path.”
    Minnie held her candle close enough to her face that Beatrix could see her expression. She’s thinking of Father, Beatrix thought. The divorce. A different kind of death.
    They moved deeper into the darkness. “The mausoleum of Marcus Clodius Hermes,” said Brother Tommaso, holding his candle high to illuminate the cubicula. “See the paintings here, on the entrance wall. A funeral banquet.”
    Beatrix stepped closer to the wall, moved her candle in a circle as she studied the ancient faded wall painting of wealthy Romans dressed in flowing tunics and heavy earrings, reclining before tables spread with clusters of grapes, haunches of meat.
    “And the miracle of the calling out of Cerasa’s demons.” The monk paused before another section of the painted wall.
    “Cerasa’s demons?” Edith asked, interested. She had been quiet until now, breathing slightly heavily behind Beatrix. “Ah, yes, the man in the cave. Christ cast out his demons and they went into a herd of pigs and then over a cliff, squealing.”
    “You are not a believer,” Tommaso said quietly.
    “I am not a disbeliever. We must both be content with that.”
    “I thought there would be . . . remains. Skeletons. That kind of thing,” Teddy said, plainly disappointed.
    “In many of the catacombs, yes, there are. But not in San Sebastiano. They have all been removed. Reburied or looted.” The monk, slightly taller than Teddy, peered down at him, his gaze a reprimand for desiring the grotesque over the merely antique.
    By now Beatrix’s eyes had adjusted to the thick darkness. She could see in the way she thought seeds underground saw, with their whole being, not just a single sense. She could see the cold emanating from the underground stone walls, the warmth in the center of the passageway where they stood clustered together. Time itself seemed visible, the long marches of centuries floating in the motes illuminated by their candles. The candles themselves seemed like a constellation of distant suns. Invisible planets circling them in the swirling darkness.
    She thought she saw a movement in a corner shadow, movement where none of them stood, and had a sensation of being observed. They who had come to see wonders were in fact being watched by some invisible presence—she could feel it. She thought she heard the patter of feet, felt some rough furred animal of shin height rush past her. A cat, she told herself.