“And still you trouble me? Am I to be your dog?”
I sought the right words to explain myself, but the shade simply turned away, its winding sheet trailing on the wet stones. “I know what you seek,” it said.
Armed with only the short sword I carried at my side, I stepped across the holy circle and followed. But the path soon became confusing, and I felt that we were descending farther into the earth, beneath the Colosseum itself, and into another region. Here, although there should have been no light at all, there was instead another sky, with clouds that looked like banks of glowing coals and a yellow moon the color of a rotting tooth. The shade led me on over ground that crackled like bread crust under my boots. In the wind, I could hear voices murmuring and lamenting, but I could see no one other than my silent guide. At the end of a promontory, he stopped and, pointing a lean finger toward a marshy hollow below, said, “There. Take the water, if you can.”
I saw a green pool under a rocky ledge, surrounded on all sides by bulrushes waving in the hot wind. And though I carried no cup or bowl, I thought perhaps that he meant for me to drink. And so I descended into the bulrushes, which came and went like the wind. When I sought to part them, they vanished, and when I did nothing, they clung to my garments, obscuring my way so that I stumbled over several blocks of stone. Or so I thought. It was only upon a closer inspection that I discerned these had once been human shapes, now cast in stone, their arms still upraised, their faces twisted in horror. I clutched the handle of my sword, but I had not come so far to turn back now.
Wading into the pool, I cupped my hand to drink of the water, but even as I did so, the water seemed to shrink away. I put my hand yet lower, and again the water receded. Then I shall simply plunge my face in, I thought, and drink whatever I can catch. But my lips were less than a braccia from the surface when I saw a face reflected there. Its glowing eyes were shaped like almonds and its hair was made of writhing serpents. I could hear their hissing and I knew that the Gorgon, whose gaze could turn a man to stone, was crouched on the ledge above me. I drew my sword, and watching its image in the water, I saw it spring from the rock. My blade swung round and caught the creature in its scaly breast.
But it was not a deadly blow, and while averting my eyes, I held its head beneath the water. The tiny snakes bit at my hands, and when I could hold on no more, I lifted the head enough to hew at the neck as if it were a stump of wood. It came away in my hand like a melon cut from the vine.
Even to this day I cannot say how I escaped this infernal region. My guide was gone, but my boots, half-filled with water from the pond, somehow retraced their steps to the Colosseum floor. Of divine help, I’m sure there was none, not in such a place as that. Crossing again into the circle, I hurled what sticks remained upon the smoldering fire and left Dr. Strozzi to lie in peace, his whiskers blowing in the wind and his limbs twitching in the throes of his dream.
It was many hours till dawn, during which I kept watch, but when it broke, Dr. Strozzi awakened and, rubbing his eyes, said, “My thoughts remain cloudy.”
“As do mine,” I said. Indeed, my head hurt as much as if I had drunk a barrel of wine.
“Did we raise the dead?”
A pair of crows landed in a puddle of mud, squawking.
“And what is that in the bag?” he said, pointing at the sack swinging back and forth on the flogging pole. Water had leaked from its bottom, and the few blades of grass below it had withered and died.
When again I did not reply, the doctor said, “Whatever prize it may be, I promise that you will receive your share.”
But this was no treasure to be divided like coins, and when Strozzi saw that I was not in the giving mood, he wisely busied himself with other things. The trophy was mine, and no man would ever take it from me.
[Translated by David L. Franco, Ph.D., Director of Acquisitions, Newberry Library Collections, Chicago, Illinois. All rights reserved.]
Chapter 1
CHICAGO
PRESENT DAY
As the guests began to take their chairs, David Franco felt that little flutter of anxiety that he experienced whenever he had to make a speech of any kind. Somewhere he had read that public speaking was one of the most commonplace fears, but that wasn’t a lot of help right then. He glanced at his notes for the hundredth time, told himself that there was nothing to be nervous about, and straightened his tie again.