The Snake Stone

111

Amelie Lefevre shivered as the door swung shut behind her.

She set her lantern on a low shelf, opened the glass pane, and lit the wick with a trembling hand. The air was very cold.

She held the lantern over her head, gathered up the hem of her skirts with her free hand, and began to slowly descend the spiral of water basins leading down to the mouth of the tunnel.

At the bottom she stepped into the shallow water. Drops of condensation on the lantern threw whirling freckles of light deep into the tunnel, skimming across the rough brick walls to vanish suddenly in the black wings of her own shadow on the roof.

She reached into her pocket and took out a small ball of white wax and a reel of black cotton thread. She softened the wax against the lantern and used it to fasten an end of thread to the opening of the tunnel, an inch or so above the waterline. She stood up and tucked up her skirts. Loosely holding the cotton reel in the crook of her fingers, she entered the tunnel, paying out the thread behind her.

At the first fork she veered to the right, without hesitation, but about five yards in she stopped to listen. The water sluiced softly around her feet. Instinctively she glanced back: the pressing darkness took her by surprise, and she swung the lantern nervously over her shoulder. A drip from the roof landed on the tip of her nose, and she jerked back.

Calm yourself, she murmured, wading on. Concentrate on the detail. Roman bricks. A later repair, using cruder materials; perhaps builders had crashed through the roof in some remote age. The Turks seemed to have rediscovered the secret of Roman cement, she thought. The walls were bare; nothing could grow down here.

Amelie Lefevre. An archaeologist. Like my husband.

She began to count her steps.

She counted a hundred, two hundred. At five hundred paces she began to feel the weight of the city pressing down on her, slowly sealing off the distant mouth of the tunnel. She stopped counting.

This is the Snake, she told herself. It has stood firm for a thousand years, a lost feat of Byzantine engineering.

I’m in good hands: Byzantine workmen, a Renaissance scholar-and Maximilien Lefevre.

She had read it all in Yashim’s book; the book her husband had hidden in his apartment. The book that Max had always meant her to find.

The reel snagged in her hand. She looked down and took another out of her pocket. She tied the ends of the thread together, curved her fingers over the new reel, and went on.