Chapter 12

12

Outside the Mouth of Hell, a wild storm had begun to brew, darkening the sky and whipping the wind up around us as we walked. It soon became apparent that we wouldn't be able to work that afternoon. Jack and Paolo gathered up Dalí's equipment and we headed back to where the truck usually waited for us. We looked up the long dirt road that led to the village and the palazzo on the top of the hill. There was no sign of transport in sight.

"It's only a fifteen-minute walk," I said, trying to be cheery. "The exercise will be good for us."

"Fifteen minutes up the side of a mountain," Gala barked at me. "This is your fault. If you hadn't angered Ignazio, he would have been here, waiting." She said something else in Russian and then stomped off, leading Dalí by the hand.

"Don't let her bust your chops," Jack said after they were out of earshot. "I've not known her long, but she's always been fussy. And she's not one for liking other dames."

"Do you think Ignazio didn't come because he's angry with me?" I asked as we trudged up the road. The first few raindrops were beginning to fall.

"Maybe," Jack said.

I looked at Paolo, the only Italian among us.

"It is rude to say no when offered food, but it's also rude to force someone to eat something. I cannot say, Signorina Julia."

We walked the rest of the way in silence, the wind growing stronger and stronger. I wished I had a ribbon to tie back my hair and keep it from flying into my mouth. Dalí and Gala had run ahead, but I stayed back with Jack and Paolo, who were burdened by the equipment. The rain was coming down harder, and by the time we reached the town, we were drenched and Dalí's painting was ruined.

"I'm sure they will be furious with me," I said, looking at the smeared paint.

"It's not your fault," Paolo said.

"Tell that to Gala."

"Don't worry, I'll get her off your back," Jack assured me. "She turns into a kitten with the right words."

Not wanting to know what words those might be, I was relieved that Gala, Dalí, and Ignazio were nowhere to be found when we returned to the palazzo.

"I think I'm going to spend time in the library this afternoon," I said, mostly for Paolo's benefit. I hoped he would tell me more about the diary.

"I wouldn't mind falling asleep on the couch as you read to me." Jack winked, and I blushed. "But I don't want to rile Gala up any further."

I left them to finish putting away the equipment and headed up the stairs. At the top landing, Demetra materialized from the shadows. A bolt of lightning flashed, illuminating her hollow eyes. A waft of petrichor hit my nostrils, and while it seemed to emanate from the maid, I knew that mustn't be true. It had to be from the rain on the stones of the castello.

"Madonna Julia," she said, bowing her head in deference, "I have drawn you a bath."

I had never been called Madonna before and was grateful for all the art history classes I had taken or I wouldn't have known it was an archaic way of addressing noblewomen who had gone by the wayside centuries past.

Her action surprised me. "But how did you know I even needed one? Or when I would be coming back?"

Demetra only looked out the tall arched window toward the dark skies. A massive crack of thunder made me jump. "I can assist you with your bath if you desire. Let me help you out of those wet clothes, shampoo your hair." She sounded eager, which made me uncomfortable.

"No, no. I will be fine on my own," I insisted as another flash of lightning brightened the corridor.

I made my way to the bathroom, locked the door, removed my dripping garments, and slipped into the tub. The maid had put a silky oil that smelled of oranges and almonds into the bathwater. Closing my eyes, I luxuriated in the warmth.

Julia...

My eyes flew open. The room was empty.

Julia...

I couldn't tell where the voice was coming from. "Who are you?" I whispered back.

I am Julia.

I did not like this game. "No, I am Julia. Please, leave me alone."

Thunder broke above the house. The lights flickered wildly before dying completely, and I was immersed in absolute darkness.

I couldn't breathe. I sat there, listening for movement, terrified that I would hear someone—or something—in the room with me.

BOOM! A massive crack of thunder shook the house.

I huddled in the bath, my heart pumping so furiously I thought for sure I would die of heart failure and they would find my lifeless body naked in the tub in the morning.

She loves you , the voice said, so faint I wasn't sure I heard what it had said.

He loves you , it said again. Love you, love you, love you... The whispers swirled around me.

"Go away," I hissed.

Silence.

Lightning flashed again, and mercifully, I could see no one in the room with me. I was getting out of the tub when the power returned. Quickly, I stood and grabbed my robe, wrapping it tightly around myself.

Don't... The whisper was loud in my ear.

I put my hand on the door handle.

Don't let them...destroy you.

I pushed the door open, only to find Ignazio walking down the hall toward me. My heart began to pound hard. I held my clothes tightly against me, making sure the bathrobe didn't reveal too much.

"How was your bath?" he asked. I hated that his husky voice was so delicious to my ears.

Lightning flashed again at the window on the stairway landing. "I don't like bathing with such a storm raging." My voice shook.

"I won't let anything hurt you, Julia," Ignazio said, stopping a few paces from me. It seemed he had forgiven me for refusing him earlier. "Worry not." He gazed past me, out the window, and his eyes took on a briefly vacant look. "The thunder will pass soon."

"You sound so sure of that."

"I am." He nodded as though I had just passed some sort of evaluation. "We still have time."

"Time for what?"

"Time until dinner," he said, flashing me his heart-melting smile.

"Ah, that," I said, though I had the distinct feeling that he was referring to something else.

He reached out a hand and cupped my cheek. I froze, unsure of what to do. Instinct told me to rip my body away, but everything about his touch seduced me into ignoring any warning bells. I thought he might lean forward and press his lips to mine, but then he was gone, down the stairs, leaving me shivering in my robe in the dim hallway.

He loves you...

I ran from the voice, slamming the door to my room behind me. As I lay down on my bed, struggling to catch my breath, I tried to make sense of the messages I was hearing. If the ghosts were from my past lives, what could that mean? Who was sending them here? They were incomplete and often faint. I was the only one who seemed to be hearing them. What were they warning me about?

Unable to make heads or tails of this eeriness, I found the courage to dress and go down the hall to the library. As I'd hoped, Paolo stood by the window, staring into the valley beyond.

"Sometimes, when I look at the garden at night, I see a green glow," I said as I approached him.

He turned to me, then looked back at the garden and pointed. "Come quello?"

I looked out the window. It wasn't night, but the storm clouds had cloaked the boschetto in darkness, and emanating from the Sacro Bosco was a sickly green light. It played at the edges of the tempietto and seeped up through the trees.

"You see it, too?"

" Sì. This is the first time."

"Then I'm not imagining things." Relief filled me.

We stared at the glow for a few moments before it abruptly winked out.

"What do you think it is?" I asked in a low voice.

He looked at me for some time before responding. "I think there is something down there—something not from our world."

Three days earlier, I would have laughed at such a thought, but after everything I had experienced since arriving in Bomarzo, it seemed as plausible an explanation as any. I sat on the couch, and he joined me, taking Giulia's journal and another slim volume out of his bag. He put the journal back and thumbed through the book. La storia di Bomarzo was etched into the spine. The History of Bomarzo.

He thumbed through it. "I found this book in the library. There's not much in it, but I read something interesting. You remember the big vase in the middle of the garden?"

"Yes, it seemed important to me."

"There are ashes of a woman inside."

"I knew it," I gasped.

He raised an eyebrow at me. "You did?"

"I told Jack I thought someone was buried there. I don't know how I knew it."

"Her name was..."

I knew what he was going to say.

"Julia," we said in unison.

" Sì. She died on that spot one hundred years after Giulia Farnese married Vicino Orsini and came to Bomarzo. The Della Rovere family owned the property after the Orsini, and they buried one of their nieces there. She had loved the garden."

I put a hand on his arm. "Remember when I told you I could hear someone calling my name?"

He nodded.

"I've seen ghosts too."

Paolo gaped. "Fantasmi?"

I nodded. "They look like me."

Paolo stared at a point on the floor as if trying to comprehend what I was saying. He drew a deep breath. "Reincarnazioni?" He began talking to himself in Italian and I only caught a few of the words, all a little incredulous, with a few Hail Marys thrown in for good measure. Finally, he turned back to me. "How can that be?"

"I don't know if they are reincarnations." The possibility unsettled me more than I cared to admit. I pointed at the journal. "Does the book say how the woman died?"

"Legend has it that she died from eating six cakes over the course of a week or so, each topped with a rotten pomegranate seed."

I thought of all the ruby seeds that had dotted every dish I'd been served since my arrival in Bomarzo. They'd even dotted my body.

"Couldn't anyone tell that they were rotten?" My question was more to myself, voicing the doubt that gnawed at me.

Paolo didn't have an answer, nor had I expected him to. It seemed too implausible that pomegranate seeds would kill the poor woman. The idea of them being rotten was too convenient of an explanation for her death. Then it hit me.

"Wait, six seeds?"

Paolo nodded.

"Like Proserpina."

He traded the history book for the journal and opened it. "Giulia also writes of another story the local peasants told of the boschetto —about it being haunted by the spirit of a woman who died in a cave surrounded by pomegranate bushes. I think this must be the story Ignazio was referring to when we first came to the wood."

I wondered if her name was also Julia. "How did she know all this?"

Paolo shrugged. "Stories of this nature are often passed down from generation to generation. If I were to tell you all the legends of my village, you would be just as amazed."

"What else does Giulia write about?" I looked at the journal in Paolo's lap.

"She was in love with Aidoneus."

"Does she say that in the journal?"

He shook his head. "Not so directly. But it is clear in her descriptions of him, and of their lovemaking, and of the longing she has for him between the times she sees him."

"Did Vicino ever find out?"

"I don't know. Beyond discussing care for the home or their conversations about the Sacro Bosco, it seems he didn't pay much attention to her in life."

He picked up the worn volume and thumbed through it. "She used to wander through the wood with Aidoneus and they would dream up fantastical stories about the rocks scattered about. Later, she'd recount these stories as dreams to Vicino, never mentioning where they'd originated. The history book—" he jerked his thumb toward the volume in his pack "—tells us that Vicino had her sketch the monsters that supposedly visited her in her sleep. He then used those sketches to help inspire the creation of the boschetto.

"Signorina Julia, there is something else you should know."

I had a feeling I wasn't going to like what he was about to say.

He drew his lips into a fine line, as though measuring his words before he spoke. "Her descriptions of Aidoneus... Well, he sounds just like...Ignazio. Pale green eyes. Heavy brow. Dark hair. And she often wrote that he smells of smoke and... canella ."

Cinnamon.

"That's not...possible." I couldn't believe what I was hearing. "Wait, does she mention his hot hands?"

He nodded, his eyes growing wide. "Ignazio... His hands are like this?"

"They are. He radiates heat." I felt lightheaded.

"There is one more thing." He flipped to the back of the journal. "In her last entry, Giulia seems very worried about something, maybe an unwanted pregnancy. To help her, Aidoneus had been preparing a special, um, pozione ...for her every day. He was going to bring her a sixth dose after her evening meal. He told her she would be cured within the week."

My heart sank. "Let me guess. The potion was made of pomegranates."

" Sì. There is a little portrait of her in one of the salons, which has her date of death as the same date as the last journal entry."

"Dear god." I shuddered.

"That is why I didn't want you to drink the pomegranate juice today, Signorina Julia." He paused as if not wanting to speak his next words. "How many seeds have you eaten?" His voice was nearly a whisper.

I thought back. There was the one in the parsnip soup the night we arrived, the apple-and-pomegranate fritter that first time in the orco , the date-and-pistachio candy from Poliphilio's dinner, and atop the cup of chocolate from the meal in the garden.

"Four. It would have been more if you and Orpheus hadn't intervened earlier."

Paolo closed the book and handed it back to me. "You must be very careful."

"This is madness," I said, straightening. "A bad dream."

Paolo reached over and pinched my arm.

"Ow!"

"Not a dream, Signorina Julia."

I ran my hand over the journal cover, wondering what happened to Giulia. "There's something I don't understand."

"How much of this are we supposed to understand?" Paolo joked. "è tutto ridicolo."

"I agree, it is ridiculous—all of it. But what I find most confusing is that all these women named Julia eat the seeds and die. They can't all have been Proserpina reincarnate, or it wouldn't keep happening, right? They would end up in the Underworld and stay there. But their ghosts linger."

Paolo knitted his brow in thought. "Are they really ghosts? Could they be something like memories, or echoes of you, like... impressioni you left behind in the world. Do they respond to you when you see them?"

I thought for a moment. "They do, but in a restrained way. It's as if they're bound within certain confines, compelled to replay crucial moments, and offering small glimpses of insight or warnings."

"Ecco qua."

There you have it. I had to admit that Paolo's idea of the ghosts being impressions of me made sense. I had never heard of such a thing, but perhaps that was what ghosts often were? Memories?

"I don't know," I said. "Maybe our minds are just drawing strange parallels because this is such a creepy place."

"Maybe. But they are compelling parallels."

As I put the journal back on the shelf, thinking it would be safest there, I remembered the secret passage and asked Paolo if Giulia had mentioned it again.

"Ah, sì. I think it is somewhere in this room. Perchè? "

"Maybe it leads to something that would give us a hint about all this."

He shrugged, then gave me a big smile. "And because it is a secret passage. Everyone wants to find the secret passage."

I chuckled. He was certainly right about that.

Soon we were examining every little nook and cranny of the library, pressing the edges of the wallpaper, feeling under drawers in the desk, tipping back books on shelves. We hadn't been at it long when I heard Dalí bellowing for Paolo.

"He must have seen the painting," he said with a sigh. He gave me an apologetic look, then headed toward the sound of the maestro's voice.

As I watched him walk out the door, my gaze landed on a tiny bronze detail on a corner of the lintel—an arrow pointing toward the bookcase on its left.

Julia...

I ignored the voice and followed the arrow, which led to another at the edge of the bookcase. This one pointed down. The arrows were so tiny that if you didn't know what you were looking for, they would be easy to miss among the decorated bookcases.

Julia...

The truth was, I was losing my fear of the whispers, hearing them now for what I thought they surely must be—a warning. About what, I could hardly imagine, much less say aloud. About Ignazio? About the seeds? About my potential death?

I felt along the edge of the bookcase until I found another bronze arrow, this one an arrowhead without a shaft, pointing toward the wall. I pressed it, and suddenly, there was a whoosh and a slight sucking sound as the corner of the library seemed to pull backward in upon itself, revealing a door. It opened to an extremely dark set of stairs. The air was stale, and I was pretty sure no one had used the passage in centuries. I marveled that Vicino Orsini had found someone with the technology to create a staircase like this.

Beyond the library, I could still hear Dalí's voice, and occasionally, I caught my name. Much as I wanted to find a light source and descend into the passageway, I was sure they would miss me soon. I did not see any way to pull the door closed, but when I pressed the arrow again, the bookcase and the corner swung back toward me and clicked shut.

Just as I turned away from the secret door, Dalí appeared in the library. "My little goddess, you must come now. Those fools! They destroyed you, and they melted your visage. I must make it anew. Now!"

Reluctantly, I let Dalí lead me to the salon, where he had me lie upon a table, one leg and arm dangling, my head barely propped up by a pillow. I was naked, but a fire raging on the grate not far away kept me warm. Dalí had blissfully forgone the notion of the pomegranate seeds and seemed focused primarily on capturing my image with the intention of adding any adornment later. He banished everyone with the instruction that no one was to enter, not even Gala. When Dalí first began to paint, I tried to spark conversation about his technique, but he commanded my silence with a grunt and a sharp wave of his hand.

So I lay there for hours, with only a few short breaks. I had not yet seen Dalí in such a fervor, so deeply invested in his art on the canvas rather than the art of his personality.

My mind ran wild, thinking over every meal I had eaten, every interaction with Ignazio, and every whisper of the ghosts. I didn't understand how Orpheus fit into this puzzling mix, but his actions were so deliberate that I was sure he did. Nor did I understand the connection of these ghostly women to this place and why all their names were Julia. But, above all, I couldn't get my head around this person named Aidoneus.

"Maestro Dalí, do you sometimes find that life is more surreal than your paintings?"

He frowned. I thought I had annoyed him, and he might not answer, but then he fixed his wide eyes in my direction. "No. My paintings are more surreal, but they are also safer."

"I wish I could live in one of your paintings," I said wistfully.

"But you do, little Proserpina," he said, turning the canvas toward me so that I could see my body rendered in paint, stretched across a vast ocean, floating, my hair falling to touch the water, my eyes open, staring at the viewer.

"My name is Julia," I said, suddenly angry at his insistence on calling me Proserpina. Perhaps Dalí was entangled in the murderous scheme that was unfolding around me. He was practically possessed with the idea of me eating the pomegranate seeds, demanding my compliance.

"You are who I say you are! You bear the name that I give you, the name that will live on for centuries after you, that will be forever emblazoned upon this canvas. You are Proserpina, a woman stolen from her life, stolen from her loves, doomed to darkness. Now HUSH." He slashed an arm across the air toward me, like a sword sweeping off a champagne cork. "HUSH!"

When we finally finished, it was late. Ignazio had left me and Dalí a warm platter of bread, roasted chicken, an assortment of savory pastries, and some more Elysium wine. Despite my desire to taste the heavens again, I decided I would not have any wine that night. I wanted my wits about me, even though, to my relief, there wasn't a single pomegranate seed in sight.

While we ate, the others played Machiavelli, a card game Paolo had taught them. "It's a little like rummy," Jack explained when I joined them. The goal of the game was to be the first person to play all their cards. After my first hand, Gala and Dalí, who'd been downing the wine incessantly, had become so intoxicated that they started undressing each other right there, in front of us. Embarrassed, Paolo quickly excused himself, and I, not wanting to be an unwilling part of the Dalís' orgy, followed suit.

"Dio mio," Paolo cursed after we had escaped the salon. "They are wicked."

I wasn't sure I thought of them as wicked, just oversexed, but I didn't say as much. While I had been privy to a number of sexually deviant situations in the art world, the Dalís took it to another, much more uncomfortable, level.

"No melograni tonight, at least," he said.

I had always loved the Italian word for pomegranate , not only because of the way it rolled off the tongue but also because of the imagery it evoked, an apple ( mela ) with many grains ( grani ). But now it had taken on a darker meaning for me, and if I never heard it again, I would not mind. " Sì , I am glad for that."

"Be careful, Signorina Julia." He gave me a little nod, then left me at the door to my room.