They reached the bottom of the steps, and Abigail turned to look at the scene in front of them. The guidebook she had gotten when they bought the Pompeii Pass, which included entrance to Oplontis, said that the central courtyard before the eruption had olive trees, cypresses, lemon trees, oleanders and box hedges, as well as ivy, roses, and plane trees. Now, plaster casts of the roots of some of the plane trees were visible, and new plants of the same varieties as the original ones had been planted. However, the effect was spoiled somewhat by the wiring closures around the gardens.

  “I hope we’ll be able to find the Spear of Destiny here,” Abigail said.

  “All we can do is try, and if we can’t find it, then I’m sure nobody else can.”

  “You have a point.” Abigail walked into the villa. “The frescoes in here have kept their color much better than Pompeii!”

  Riley agreed. “And there seem to be more paintings of wildlife and birds than there are at Pompeii. It seems more of a palace than a villa.”

  Abigail stared at the magnificent frescos on the ceiling overhead. “The Villa Poppaea was being renovated at the time of the eruption. Archeologists found columns from the swimming pool area dismantled, and the sculptures here had been moved away because of the work going on. They have excavated only half of this villa—the rest of it is under the modern city. In fact, they have only excavated a small part of Pompeii itself.”

  “I wonder why whoever it was decided to hide the Spear of Destiny here,” Riley said.

  “I have no idea.” Abigail thought for a moment. “I can’t even begin to guess.”

  “And I wonder why Giles Benedict didn’t have it moved.”

  Abigail shrugged. “Well, it’s probably very well hidden here, and he did have an elaborate system of clues as to where it was hidden.”

  Riley inclined his head. “A rather precarious system of clues. I mean, anybody could have moved the painting from the basilica, or maybe the inscription in the catacombs could have been damaged.”

  They had reached the entrance, and Abigail walked inside, marveling at the high ceilings. “Where’s the cryptoporticus?” Riley asked.

  “A staircase in the south-west corner of the peristylium leads to it,” Abigail told him. She added, “The peristylium is an open courtyard inside a house.”

  They walked further until they came to a small room. “This must be the Lararium,” Abigail said. “The cryptoporticus should be just ahead.”

  “What was this room used for?”

  Abigail turned back to Riley. “The shrine to the Lares, the household gods.”

  “Oh yes, the guardian spirits of the family.”

  Abigail quirked one eyebrow. “How did you know that?”

  Riley looked sheepish. “It was on a Doctor Who episode about Pompeii. The Doctor and Donna rescued a family from the eruption, and the family made little statues of Doctor and Donna and thanked them for protecting them. Don’t look at me like that! I do watch TV.”

  Abigail was perplexed. She couldn’t imagine Riley watching TV, much less Doctor Who. She shot him a smile and walked on.

  The cryptoporticus was easy enough to find, and the roof towered over their heads. To the left, windows high above let in light and air. Abigail gasped and pointed to the fresco depicting the mythological Echo playing the double flute. “The last clue! This is definitely the right place.”

  They picked up speed and walked briskly along to the end. Barring their way was a chain lock temporary fence which they soon skirted behind. A round hole in the wall sat directly behind the fence. “What would that have been used for?” Riley asked Abigail.

  “I think it’s a product of the excavations which appear to have ended here,” Abigail said. “I suppose you’re going to tell me we have to go in there?”

  Riley pulled two flashlights from his backpack and handed one to Abigail. He poked his head inside. “There does seem to be a passageway.”

  Abigail groaned. “I was afraid of that. The guidebook says the passageway from the cryptoporticus leads under the Conte di Sarno Canal, which was built in the sixteenth century, and connects with the cryptoporticus, but we’re already in the cryptoporticus, so I’m rather confused as to what it means.”

  “Let’s have a look around.” Riley crawled inside.

  Abigail took a deep breath and crawled on her hands and knees after him. It was narrow, but she had been in worse places. Naples wasn’t known for snakes, thankfully. Now, if only the roof wouldn’t fall in on top of her.

  Riley vanished into the pitch black passageway. Abigail crawled in too. As keen as Abigail was to find the spear, she was afraid of closed-end spaces. She did her best to fight the claustrophobia.

  “Bats!” Riley said, just as they flew past Abigail.

  She took a deep breath to control her breathing. Abigail didn’t like bats, but at least she was not deathly afraid of them. Abigail thought they had been crawling for some time, but she knew bats lived near the entrance to caverns. She had lost all sense of time.

  After a while, they seemed to be descending. Finally, to her relief, Riley’s flashlight shone over a vast cavern. He stood up and helped her to her feet. “It’s like a cave,” she said, somewhat unnecessarily.

  “It’s man-made.”

  Abigail agreed. “And it’s obviously ancient—look at all the niches for the oil lamps.”

  “The passageway continues over there.” Riley shone his flashlight over a tunnel entrance on the far side of the cavern.

  “It looks tall enough for us to stand up in,” Abigail said hopefully. She fought the desire to turn around and crawl back out of the passageway to the safety of the cryptoporticus as fast as she could.

  Riley appeared unperturbed. “It does seem the sort of place where one would hide an ancient valuable priceless relic.” He nodded slowly as he spoke.

  Doesn’t he ever get scared? Abigail asked herself. She shone her flashlight over the ground. There were piles of rubble, but it didn’t look as though there had been any significant roof fall. They picked their way carefully over the rubble to the entrance of the next passageway. Abigail was right—there was plenty of room to stand, but she was sure she could smell the faint odor of sulfur. “Can you smell that?”

  “The sulfur?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’re in a geothermal area. We’re probably heading in the direction of Vesuvius.”

  “Great!” Abigail said. “I want to be as far away from Vesuvius as possible, not heading toward it.”

  The passageway descended now quite steeply, and Abigail had to concentrate so she didn’t slide. At the end, it turned sharply, and they had to crawl into a smaller passageway. This was hot and smelled strongly of sulfur. Abigail stepped backward and called to Riley. “Is it safe in there?”

  “If it isn’t, we’ll come straight back out,” he said. “I’ll go first.”

  She squeezed in after Riley into the next tunnel. It was tall, several feet above her head, but narrow. Most of the time, she had to turn sideways to get through. She wondered how Riley managed with his broad shoulders. It was hot inside. While uncomfortable, it was nevertheless bearable although smelled strongly of sulfur. They kept going downward. The temperature did not grow any hotter but remained unpleasantly warm.

  Abigail hoped she wouldn’t suffer from sulfuric acid asphyxiation but was comforted by the remark her science teacher had made back when she was in grade school, that so long as one could smell the sulfur, they would be safe. She had no idea whether that was correct but hung onto that hope.

  They passed numerous niches for oil lamps. By the time they took a sharp left, Abigail was in terror. She was terrified of closed in spaces, and she was also terrified of volcanoes. What’s more, she intensely disliked being underground. It was like being faced with every fear of hers at once.

  “You’re doing well,” Riley said. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  “You won’t be able to protect me from a volcano,” Abigail said in a trembling voice.

  “Don’t worry about the volcano,” Riley said. “There haven’t been any tremors since we’ve been in Naples, and we would have warning of an eruption.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Abigail said, fighting the blind panic.

  The only illumination was from their flashlights. Abigail knew Riley had chem lights in his backpack so wasn’t worried about everything going dark. Rather, she was worried about the roof collapsing on them, being trapped there forever, and suddenly turning a corner to find a flood of molten lava rushing at them. Abigail fervently wished she didn’t have such a good imagination.

  Suddenly, they came upon an S-bend. “Look at this,” Riley said.

  Setting her fear aside for a moment, Abigail saw he was pointing out ancient pivots where a door had once been.

  “There’s a second tunnel here, and if this door…”

  Abigail interrupted him. “What door?”

  “Well, it’s missing now,” Riley said, “but if there had been a door, it would have hidden the entrance to this tunnel that runs off at an angle.”

  Abigail shot the flashlight behind and in front of her. “Yes, you’re right. And it’s not near any of the niches for the oil lamps. Somebody would have walked straight past this.”

  “And if it was partially opened, it could have been used as a ventilation system, sucking the hot volcanic air out at ceiling level, while the surface air could be drawn in.” Riley continued to talk about a ventilation system, but Abigail was not at all interested. She just wanted to find the Spear of Destiny and beat a hasty retreat.

  “So, do you think we should take the tunnel behind the missing door?” she asked when he paused for breath.

  “Yes, the people who constructed this were obviously trying to hide something.”

  They walked into the new passageway, which proved to be the steepest tunnel so far. They soon came to another S-bend. This one did not seem to have any pivots at the entrance, but they soon but came to a second S-bend. Riley stopped and shone his flashlight over the walls. “I don’t think this ever had a door,” he said. Abigail agreed. Riley stepped forward and then stopped so abruptly that she ran to his back. “There’s a stream here. It’s bubbling.”

  “A hot spring?”

  “Yes, and if we hadn’t stopped to look for pivots, we could have gone straight into it.”

  Abigail trembled and looked down. “It actually looks as though it might be boiling water. There are boiling springs and sulfur vents in this entire area. It’s known to be an entire labyrinth of tunnels, stretching as far as the city of Baia, and the Phlegraean Fields.”

  “Where is Baia?”

  “Not far from here. It was located over natural volcanic vents. Nero, Cicero, and Caesar were known to have visited the city’s hot springs which were said to have healing properties.”

  “Not if they hit you in the face,” Riley said. “This is a booby trap of sorts.”

  “I’ve had enough of booby traps to last me a lifetime. At least there are no snakes.”

  “Naples does have scorpions.”

  Abigail’s hand went to her throat. “I wish you hadn’t told me that!”

  The temperate was getting hotter and hotter. While still bearable, it was most unpleasant. The smell of sulfur was growing stronger.

  “Surely, this all wasn’t built just to hide this spear,” Riley said.

  Abigail shook her head. “It could have been designed to supply water to the bathhouses. The Romans needed a lot of hot water to pump into their bathhouses. Pompeii had a very fancy system.”

  “Then why the S-bend?” Riley asked.

  “You have a point. I have no idea, to be honest. The tunnels under Baiae have puzzled archeologists for decades.”

  They stood at the edge of the boiling stream. Rocks forming a rudimentary bridge covered the water, although it bubbled up around them.

  Abigail gasped. “You would think we were in the mythological Underworld itself,” she said. “How will we ever get across those rocks?”

  “Very carefully,” Riley said dryly. “Let’s think about it first.” They edged further along and looked at the rocks. The water was indeed bubbling over some of them, but there appeared to be a safe way across to their far right.

  “We can cross there without getting wet,” Riley said. “Most of those rocks are flat on the top. We’ll go together because the only danger would be to slip. I’ll steady you. It’s a shame there isn’t something we could tie a rope to on both sides and then you could walk across holding onto the rope.”

  “Yes, it is a shame.” This was Abigail’s worst nightmare. It could only get worse if Vortex agents appeared and shot at them. Still, that was a possibility.

  Abigail was glad she was wearing hiking boots. She certainly didn’t want to test whether the water was, in fact, boiling, by putting her foot or even her hand in it.

  “Ready?”

  No, Abigail thought. Aloud, she said, “Yes.”

  Abigail was grateful for the intense white light of the chem light as they made their way carefully across the rocks. It was only a short distance to the other side, but the boiling water bubbled as it rushed across the rocks.

  26

  Pompeii, 79 AD

  FIRST DAY OF THE VESUVIUS ERUPTION

  “Flavia!”

  Was it a dream? Had she heard someone call her name?

  Flavia looked around. Everything she saw was covered with gray; not another color was to be seen. It was worse than the most frightening nightmare she had ever had.

  “Flavia.” The word came again.

  Flavia stood up. What if Titus was alive, and buried under the rock? She frantically attacked the rock with her fingers, until she heard the name again, only louder.

  Swinging around, she saw an apparition behind her, leaning on the remaining column and surrounded by a halo of swirling ash.

  Titus? Or had he died and this was his ghost?

  As Flavia stared, the apparition moved. He was alive! Flavia ran to him. “Titus!”

  The two clung to each other tightly for what seemed an age.

  “Titus, are you badly hurt?”

  Titus coughed and then said, “The roof collapsed, but I managed to get out. It took me a while, and it was difficult to work hard and breathe through the ash at the same time. More importantly, are you harmed?”

  Titus held Flavia at arms’ length and looked at her. “How did you find me?”

  That question remained unanswered for the moment, for at that time, Flavia noticed the sky and flung herself back into Titus’s arms.

  Titus turned slowly to look, in dread of the scene before him. Behind them were alarming dark clouds, which opened every few seconds to reveal huge blocks of flaming fire in the skies. Lightning flashed continually, not the normal lightning but wider and more frightening, flashing like daggers through the fiery sky.

  Titus took Flavia’s hand. “Let’s head for the sea!”

  The pair hurried back to the street. The flames had faded, and Titus and Flavia were engulfed by darkness, the like of which they had never known. It was blacker than a closed room on the darkest night.

  A sea of voices in uproar flooded toward them, children crying in terror, women wailing, and men shouting urgently to their families. Some were calling loudly to their gods; others were violently cursing their gods for abandoning them. Others were praying loudly to their gods that death would fall swiftly on them. Yet so dark was the city, that Flavia and Titus could not see a single face.

  Titus had a tight grip around Flavia’s waist, and suddenly he pulled her into a doorway, out of the crowd.

  “It’s not safe to be in that crowd while we cannot see. If we get knocked down in the street, the crowd will crush us.”

  Flavia shook off some of the ash then brushed the bulk of it off her. “What should we do? Should we stay under cover until this storm has passed?”

  Titus put his arm around Flavia and held her tight. “We don’t know if this storm will pass, or even what it is. I can only hope and pray that it is not affecting Rome and the rest of the world.”

  When Flavia trembled violently at his words, he hurried to reassure her.

  “It seems to be coming from Mount Vesuvius, so if we can get as far away from here as possible, we should be safe.”

  “So you don’t think we should stay under shelter, away from the burning rocks and the ash?”

  “No, I think we need to get out away. It could get worse than this, and if so, we don’t want to be around when it does.”

  “How could it possibly get any worse than this?” Flavia asked, partly to herself. To Titus, she said, “But the fiery rocks are dangerous. Should we risk going back into the open? Are you sure we shouldn’t stay here and weather the storm?”

  Just then, the building next to them collapsed, showering Titus and Flavia with profuse amounts of ash.

  “There’s your answer,” Titus said as he pulled Flavia back into the street. “We have to make for the sea. I saw a fleet of battle ships earlier before it all went black, so I think the navy has been sent here from the base at Misenum to get everyone to safety. Let’s cut through this house and come out on another street. It might be a safer route.”

  Flavia had noticed a glimmer in the house but had assumed that the house was on fire. When they got closer, they saw that a little oil lamp had been dropped, and it was still burning. Titus picked it up and quickly scouted around.

  “Here Flavia, here are two pillows and some rope. Let’s tie these on our heads. It’ll give us some protection from the ash and fiery stones.”

  After quite some trouble, but with the help of light from the little oil lamp, they managed to tie pillows over their heads. Flavia then made the welcome discovery of a little glass jar of water. Titus tried to insist she drink it all, but she refused. After some discussion, they drank half each. The water was the most delicious thing Flavia had ever tasted. Her throat had been so dry that it felt like its sides had stuck together.

  Just as they reached the other side of the house and stepped into the street, the oil lamp finally flickered out, but they could still see. Flavia coughed against the smell of sulfur, then looked around for the source of light, and saw a wall of flames sliding to the city.