Second Act

Twenty-Two

One hundred and forty miles to the south, in the caverns beneath the fortified coastal town of Cumae in Campania, the High Priest unwrapped a package. Inside a soft cloth protected with oiled goatskins was a bowl. It had been fashioned from solid gold, engraved with horses and warriors, inlaid with silver, and weighed a bloody ton.

‘Let me see, let me see!’

Yanking off the wrinkled mask with one hand and reaching out for the bowl with the other, the Sibyl whooped with delight. Far from the old crone her clientele mistook her for, the Oracle was a handsome woman in her thirty-eighth year, who saw no reason why she and her brother shouldn’t keep this scam going for many more years before he retired to the estate he fancied in the country, she to a palace a long way from Campania, where she could retain a harem of girls well versed in the art of pleasing women.

‘Who’s it from?’ she asked, leaning back to maximize the light from the tall candelabra behind her throne as she studied the bowl.

‘Sextus Valerius Cotta, estate owner, senator, and gullible fool.’

How they fell for it, she’d never know. You’d think someone would twig that the ghosts they met were not floating on air, but on wooden platforms manipulated by black painted ropes. It never ceased to amaze her by what miracle these so-called Seekers of Destiny uniformly accepted that the faces of their loved ones had been rendered unrecognizable by death, not by a thick coating of chalk. Even more incredibly, no one had questioned the necessity of the heads of their ancestors being veiled in the Underworld. They didn’t think that maybe long, flowing robes and an abundance of thick, swirling mist might be to disguise physical dissimilarities between the originals and the facsimiles?

Of course, it wasn’t all smoke and mirrors and a cast of bad actors. To maintain her credibility, the Oracle needed to have her facts right, so she and her brother arranged for the Seekers of Destiny to be drugged, disorientated then left alone in a darkened antechamber to stew for a while. During this time they were able to compile a dossier on the Seeker’s nearest and dearest from the masses of files which were housed in these tunnels. Given that only the very, very, very, very, very, very rich could afford the exorbitant entrance fee to the theme park that was Hades, the Oracle and her brother could easily afford to have these files constantly updated by a whole team of scribes working round the clock on data gathered by a network of informants. It was from the secret libraries beneath Cumae that the scenes for the re-enactment were rehearsed and put together.

‘Is the Arch-Hawk planning a return trip?’ she asked hopefully. The work on this bowl was quite splendid.

‘He doesn’t say.’ The priest turned the note over. ‘Nope. It would appear this is simply a token of his gratitude.’

‘Pity others aren’t as grateful,’ the Oracle muttered.

‘We don’t do badly out of the deal, little sister.’

‘It’s an expensive business, the special effects, the informants, the huge number of staff, the elaborate costumes-’

‘Get away with you.’ The priest laughed. ‘We earn enough to give this bowl to the dogs to eat off.’

Ah, but they were good howlers, those hounds. Mournful buggers, whose baying travelled for miles through those underground echo chambers.

‘Buying silence doesn’t come cheap,’ the Sibyl reminded him tartly.

Only last year, the wife of a well-known politician became lost in the catacombs and fell down a shaft. Her pitiful wailing had only added to the atmosphere, but by the time the team had located her, she was so badly injured that she’d died before they could get her up to the surface. Then, and rather more recently, there was one of the Sibyl’s lovers, who, when discarded, had threatened to expose to the Emperor the hokum they practised, and unfortunately had had to be strangled.

‘Not so expensive,’ the priest corrected. ‘Remember, an awful lot don’t come out anyway.’

He’d lost track of the poor sods who were so keen to speak to their ancestors that they’d tried swimming what they thought was the Styx, only to drown as the underground river sucked them under before disappearing in swirls back into the rock. Or those who came here for the express purpose of joining their loved ones. Once they were convinced there really was life after death, they’d stab themselves, fall on their swords, slash their wrists-and in such quantities that each Seeker of Destiny was now searched for concealed weaponry.

Death, however, accounted for only a small percentage of mishaps. Far more visitors became so traumatized by the experience, succumbing to claustrophobia and worse, that they suffered a complete mental collapse. Many more fell victim to the effects of ingesting a cocktail of henbane, belladonna, hellebore and poppy seeds which was fed them. Consulting the Oracle was a dangerous business.

None of which, the priest reflected cheerfully, led to adverse publicity! Disappearances and breakdowns only added to Cumae’s mystique, corroborating the Sibyl’s power to summon the dead. After all, it wouldn’t do for Hades to become a place which was not to be feared.

All that gold the Seekers laid out, just to watch a few actors wailing away on a plank suspended in mid-air by ropes! Throw in a spurt of fake blood from the loved one’s ‘fatal’ wound. Gloss over tough questions with a moan or a groan. Ward off misgivings by having the weary ghost being called back to the Elysian Fields. Money for nothing.

But what the Sibyl and the priest could not get their heads round-and had frankly given up trying-was that every single Seeker of Destiny went away happy with their few lines of inscrutable gibberish. The Sibyl did not feel in any way responsible for her actions. Did not see how she shaped anyone’s destiny, other than her own and her brother’s. Even though she had an idea of what Cotta was planning, so what? I have no influence here, she would plead. Fate is fate, I cannot change it. We simply let the punters see what they want to see, let them hear what they want to hear.

‘Right,’ the Sibyl sighed, replacing her wrinkled mask. ‘Back to business.’

Business was greed. Business was god. Their minds had been closed to morality a long time ago. Brother and sister ceased to take interest in the ambitions of their clients, even when that client was the Arch-Hawk of the Senate and his plans threatened to undermine the whole Roman Empire.

The High Priest tossed more sticky beads of Arabian incense on the fire, turned down the lights, then beckoned the next disorientated visitor forward.

‘Who’s there?’ the ancient crone on her gold throne cackled. ‘Who comes to consult the Oracle?’