Italian Caprice

RONDO

"Ow!" Alan lifted his stubbed toe. He turned round gingerly. "It's pitch black in here. Wonder what's over this way?"
"Wait, Alan." Tin-Tin clutched his sleeve nervously. "It's a tomb. There might be... you know."
"No-one rests here now," Antioni said, coming over in a flickering pool of light with his candelabrum. "In the past the village boys they break in, they have the nightmares, and everyone say signore Antioni, this is your fault. So twenty years ago we spread the dust of my ancestors in the vineyards. It is the greatest vintage I ever produce." He sidestepped slowly along the wall, the candlelight illuminating a surface of marble blocks, then stopped in front of a large lion's head carved in bas-relief. In the animal's jaws a stone snake clamped its own tail in its fangs. "This is what I look for. If there is the hidden way it will be here."
"Say, you could be right." Virgil held his torch close to the marble. "There's a crack running right down the wall here."
"And one this side," Alan added, excited. "But this building isn't Roman, it's medieval."
"In those times many things were remembered that now are forgotten," Antioni said. "But what do we do?"
"Push?" Virgil suggested. "Or maybe that's too simple."
At the first count of three nothing happened, but at the second attempt there was a shriek that echoed through the bones of the building, and a door-sized square of marble with the lion's head in its center swung back so rapidly that Alan, Alfredo and Virgil followed the curve of their applied force and went with it, ending in a confused sprawl in the dust on the other side.
"So it was that simple." Alan picked up his torch and looked around the brick-walled passage in awe. "We could be the first people through this door in over five hundred years. It's medieval alright." He got to his feet. "Hey, and there are some steps going down here."
"Yeah." Virgil dusted himself down. "But I think we should leave our exploration of those until the morning, when we can organize a proper expedition. We've proved there's some kind of tunnel, that's a pretty good start for tonight."
Antioni stepped into the passage, the smoke from his candles gathering in an inverted pool under the arch of the roof. "But we cannot go back now, hesitation she does not make the rich men. At the bottom of these steps there may be..." He raised his free hand expressively. "Who knows?"
"That's what worries me," Virgil said. "Anyway, it must be a mile at least to the spot where that X is marked."
"Let's just see where the steps lead," Alan suggested. "No harm in taking a quick look, then we'll know what to be prepared for when we come back tomorrow. I'll go first. Virgil, you bring up the rear."
The darkness was thick and almost tangible, and as they descended a chill far heavier than the evening cool above invaded the air. In the wavering candlelight and in the torch beams they could see their breath condense in a fine fog before them, and, as if their postulated treasure already surrounded them, gems of moisture glittered from the walls. Tin-Tin pulled her thin wrap tighter round her shoulders and started counting the stone steps. After a hundred, maybe a few more, Alan stopped suddenly and the beam of his torch swung up and down, slicing up empty darkness. "This is it," he said, "we're at the bottom."
The stairwell opened at a right angle into a wider passage, and they trailed out in slow single file, peering at their new surroundings in the inadequate light. Massive stone blocks like the bricks from a giant's play-set lined the walls, four courses forming a tunnel some eight feet high. Other huge rounded blocks arched over without obvious means of support to form a claustrophobic ceiling, and from their chiseled surfaces the small sounds of moving feet were thrown back magnified but dull and flat, as dead as the masons who had dusted down their work and left it nearly two thousand years before.
"Wow, real Roman masonry." Alan's fingers, pressed against the wall at eye-height, came away slicked with a colorless slime, and he sidestepped to avoid the few inches of dark water that lay in the center of the slightly dished floor. "Looks like we found your storage tanks, Virgil, or at least a passage between them. If there was a bathhouse here this tunnel might've brought its water supply. Only thing I don't understand is the smell."
"Yeah." Virgil sniffed. "There isn't one."
"And that water must've been lying here for years. This place should stink."
"Right, it doesn't make sense. And that's part of the reason why I don't think we should hang around. Come on, we've seen what's down here, now let's get back." Virgil started off to retrieve Antioni, whose candelabrum was a faint light about fifty yards down the tunnel, and Alan turned to investigate a shadowy recess in the wall. The embrasure was wide, the span of his outstretched arms, its inner surface faced with small rough bricks: medieval again. One or two bricks were loose, and he poked at them idly.
Starting to shiver under her cover of chiffon and cold diamonds, Tin-Tin watched Virgil returning and fell in behind him hopefully. "Are we going?" she asked, but before she got a reply Alan's voice carried down the tunnel.
"Hey! Come here, I think I've found another... aaaaggghhh!"
"Alan!" Tin-Tin screamed.
Low-pitched and loud, but dull, as if through an immeasurable depth of earth, there was the grind of stone on stone, followed by a sudden violent blast of air. The tiered candles of Antioni and Alfredo puffed out, extinguished like two birthday cakes raked by the output of an immense pair of lungs, and the light from Alan's torch disappeared. In the darkness footsteps ran; Alfredo yelped and there was a clatter and a splash. "Stay close, Tin-Tin," Virgil shouted, but he reached out to find no one there. A boom like the sound of a giant manhole cover being dropped from above reverberated through the tunnel, closely followed by another, then the air was suddenly still and the only noises left were confused shouts.