“If I was not in danger, why are you so pale?” I inquired.
“Exhaustion,” Stefano replied coldly. “The exertion of moving the stone was strenuous, for a cripple.”
“I can’t imagine how you did it,” I murmured, letting my eyes linger on the breadth of shoulder, displayed by his wetly clinging shirt. Unperturbed by my regard, Stefano smiled.
“Because my leg is injured does not mean all my muscles are atrophied. Can you stand?”
“No.”
“I can lift you,” Stefano said, “but I cannot carry you any distance. So, unless you wish to remain here all day….”
“Oh, stop baiting me,” I cried. “It was a horrible experience! You may say I was in no danger, but I am still shaken; I must rest a little….”
I turned my head so he wouldn’t see me crying. Now that the danger was over, I felt drained of all strength. After a moment Stefano spoke in a gentler voice.
“I know it must have been frightening, Cousin. You are no coward, I’ll say that for you; I expected to find you screaming with hysterics, or in a swoon. Rest a while. But Miss Perkins will be pacing the floor until she sees you safe and sound.”
“Then it was Miss Perkins who sent you? Or did you know he would do this?”
“In God’s name, how can you suggest such a thing?” Stefano demanded in a rough voice, quite unlike his usual smooth tones. “Do you suppose I would not have warned you if I had suspected for an instant.…It was an accident,” he added, controlling his voice. “You can’t believe it was anything else.”
I raised myself on one elbow and looked earnestly at him.
“Stefano, you must tell me the truth.”
Stefano studied me thoughtfully. Then he nodded.
“You are right. The truth is probably less frightening than the things you are imagining. It all began here, you see—five years ago, when he excavated this particular tomb. It is a very old one, dating back to the early days of the Etruscan kingdom—the seventh or eighth century before Christ. How it remained hidden so long, I don’t know. Many of the other tombs had been robbed. But this was untouched; the rich treasure was still here. Weapons, lamps, pottery— and the jewels you wore the other night. Also—the bodies of the dead.
“Those in the outer chamber were mere heaps of dust. But the inner chamber had been sealed. The Prince had to demolish the barricade himself. He had difficulty forcing his people to come here at all. Only a few of the bravest entered the tomb with him, and at the sight of that enigmatic, walled-up door, they fled, screaming of curses and vampires. So Grandfather took up chisel and hammer and attacked the wall. His imagination had been fired by the fine things in the outer chamber; as soon as one block had been removed, he thrust his head and one hand, holding a candle, into the aperture.
“The air in such places is usually bad. One might expect that the candle would not burn. But this one flared up, and the scent that reached his nostrils was not noxious; it was dry and strangely, spicely perfumed. As the candle flame leaped, he saw—her.
“She was lying on the stone bier at the far end of the chamber. At first he thought it was a statue he saw, one of those marvelous chryselephantine statues of gold and ivory, like the great Minerva of Phidias described by ancient writers. She was all gold, from her glittering gown and jewels to the golden hair streaming over her shoulders, down her ivory arms and breast. Her face was one the great Phidias might have claimed as his masterpiece, pale and unmarred. The Prince stood transfixed; and as he watched, her pure perfection suddenly crumbled. She fell into dust before his very eyes. The golden scales of her gown collapsed, with the faintest of musical chiming, and her diadem dropped into the hollow that had been her face.”
I let out a little sound of horror, and Stefano nodded gravely.
“It must have been an appalling sight; I remember my own reaction when he described it to us, days later. He fell into a swoon after that dreadful vision. One of his most courageous attendants, venturing into the tomb in search of his master, found him lying on the floor, cold and still as a dead man. He was ill for days, but as soon as he could move, he insisted on returning to the tomb. We helped him demolish the wall. Andrea and I—for the story had gotten about and not a man on the estate would go with us, threaten as we might. There was nothing on the slab, only the eerie suggestion of a vanished form, outlined by the positions of the jewels that had fallen from it.”
“I don’t believe it,” I muttered. “Such things don’t happen. He must have been dreaming. He was ill. He saw the jewelry, fallen, as you saw it, and collapsed. In his delirium he imagined the rest.”
“That is what I myself believe,” Stefano said. “But it doesn’t matter, does it? What matters is what he believes. And he believes he saw her—the Etruscan princess, the ancestress of our race.”
I lay back, flat on the ground, and stared up at the blue vault of the sky. Never before had I so appreciated the simple joy of being alive, under the sun.
“There is one more thing.” Stefano said slowly. “Among the objects we found in the inner chamber were some silver jars that had contained perfume or cosmetics. They were inscribed with a name.”
“And that name was—”
“Larthia.”
“So.” I said, after a moment. “It was Miss Perkins who sent you in search of me.”
“Yes. She had no real cause to fear for you, only a vague foreboding. But when she told me he had called you by that name, when you first arrived…. You have the golden hair, the family blood. Such a fancy might explain his sudden reversal of feeling toward you. He has had…odd spells since the discovery, times when he doesn’t seem to be himself. They don’t last long, they are infrequent, but.…I thought he looked strange last night, when he had decked you out in his treasure. And so I came. I—I met the Prince between here and the castle. When I asked him where you were, he looked surprised and said he had not seen you since breakfast.”
“You saved my life,” I said. “If I had been there longer, I would have broken down.”
“Don’t thank me, thank your Miss Perkins. She has quite redeemed my opinion of the English—which has been somewhat prejudiced by Aunt Rhoda. A remarkable woman! She told me she had been haunted by that name since you came. Seeing you wearing the jewelry last night revived her memory. She spent the morning in the library looking for the reference. Dennis mentions the tomb and the name in his book on Etruria.”
I sat up. My head spun for a moment, but soon I was able to get to my feet. I felt exhausted.
“Can you mount without help?” Stefano asked, still seated.
“I am afraid not,” I said apologetically.
He rose. Limping badly, he came toward me. He did not have his stick. I knew, by the fact that he had forgotten this essential aid, that he had been more alarmed than he implied; but his face had settled back into its usual cold mask.
He helped me into the saddle, not without difficulty. His horse was cropping the sour grass nearby, but he made no move to approach it.
“Ride on,” he said curtly.
I started to object, and then I understood. He did not want me to see him struggling to mount. So I turned the mare’s head and set her into a walk. I heard nothing and I did not look back. After an interval Stefano came up beside me, and, as the trail narrowed, went ahead. We did not speak again.
I was not so resilient or so brave as I had thought. For some time I had horrible dreams of being shut into dark places or being pursued through underground passages by invisible horrors. I said nothing to Galiana about the experience. In fact, no one knew about it except Stefano— who never again referred to it—and Miss Perkins, who brushed aside my emotional thanks with gruff embarrassment. Grandfather behaved as if no such thing had happened and when, several days later, he made a casual remark about taking me to the cemetery, “…which you have not yet seen,” I realized that the episode had been wiped from his mind. I did not need Miss Perkins to tell me not to go in that direction with him again, yet strangely I was not uneasy with him.
I had plenty to occupy my mind, and before long the incident had faded in my thoughts, except for the occasional dreams. The work on my new suite of rooms proceeded apace, and the dressmakers from Florence arrived with cartloads of lovely fabrics. Galiana and I forgot our other concerns when that rainbow assortment was carried in; we reveled in India muslins and silver lace, in flame-colored taffeta and azure moireé.
I had become fond of Galiana, although I often thought in my smug way how typically Italian she was with her volatile moods—one moment convulsed with mirth over some schoolgirl joke, the next pensive and sad as she described her mother’s failing health. Her black eyes could snap with anger when one of the servants failed to obey quickly enough, but her rages passed as quickly as the summer storm, leaving her sunny and cheerful again.
