with a rope hoop for a handle with a fob hanging upon it.
The rope handle was plaited hair.
And the fob was Fiammetta’s jewel.
It was the exact one from the painting, with a trinity of hanging pearls and a ruby set in gold. My heart was in my mouth with triumph, and I turned to Brother Guido, my slow smile matching his. “This is it,” he said, always one for stating the obvious.
“Well, come on then, what are we waiting for?”
He placed a hand on my arm. “Wait,” he whispered. “First, let us ascertain the whereabouts of the priest. If he observes our exit, then the secret is revealed.”
I saw the sense of this. “Hold hard then. Won’t be a heartbeat.” I nipped back to the aisle to check on the robed figure—he was still tending candles at the far end of the aisle, but as if my gaze had bidden him, he turned and straightened. My heart began to thump painfully. He was . . . very tall for a Neapolitan. And his robes looked, well, fuller than a humble priest’s. The figure began to stride down the aisle toward me and I was suddenly rooted to the spot like a coney in a fox’s gaze. His black robes swirled around him, his cowl fell back a little, and halfway down the nave a shaft of godlight struck his hood and caught the light of his strange silver eyes.
It was not the priest of San Lorenzo.
It was the leper.
Realization freed my feet. Quick as a cat, I was back at the doorway. “He’s coming,” I hissed urgently. “Move!” There was no time to explain; let Brother Guido think I feared no worse than the interference of a nosy priest. I yanked at the loop of hair and felt the plait pull open a portal, to reveal a twist of stairs falling below. As Brother Guido and I plunged down the steps, the door closed behind us, silently, completely, without a chink of light to tell our pursuer where we had gone. I pictured the leper turning around and about in the dim church, his robes whirling, unable to countenance our disappearance. I should have been exhilarated; we had confounded the threatening specter who shadowed us by disappearing into thin air. But I was unsettled and could not forget the silver eyes that held the promise of death in their gaze. We clattered down the dark steps, plunging into deeper gloom; we were entering Hades but I felt no fear: we were leaving behind a figure above who held much greater terrors for me.
At the foot of the stair the space opened out again into a massive cavern, a cathedral of rock. We stopped, breathed heavily and looked around. I don’t know what I expected—buried treasure perhaps, or the other members of the Seven playing dice together. But I certainly did not expect a gloomy cavern, colder than Candlemas and wetter than Whitsun. “You think Don Ferrente meant us to see this . . . this cave?” I ventured.
“Not a cave,” he corrected. “Look carefully. For this place was built not by nature but by man. See—pillars, here and here. And a well, and a Roman arcade.”
Sure enough, as my eyes adjusted, I saw as he did. Forms and shapes of a buried city. “What is this place?”
“A place that was once called the new city, and is now the old. Neapolis, Roman Naples.”
We walked the underground world with wonder. The hairs on my neck prickled as we trod the streets of the ghostly city, passing the pillars of a market, noting iron rings where horses had once been tethered, fragile arches spanning above. All lit by a gloomy greenish light coming from up ahead. I trotted after the striding monk, not wanting to linger. “You think this is a secret way known only to the Seven?”
“I do.”
“What makes you think that no one else has found the passage?”
He stopped abruptly and I almost barreled into the back of him. “Fiammetta’s jewel,” he said briefly. “I imagine it was placed there for a pair of reasons. One, that it is a signpost to those who can read the painting—id est, members of the Seven.”
I ignored the Latin but took the point.
“Two—it is a test: a way to maintain the security of the portal. For if a common thief or vagabond found the passage he would steal the jewel at once, for it is a thing of great price. The Seven, as