The Medusa Amulet Read online

  The Medusa Amulet

  Robert Masello

  The Medusa Amulet

  Robert Masello

  Prologue

  [From La Chiave Alla Vita Eterna (The Key to Life Eternal) printed in Florence, Italy, c. 1534. Attributed to Benvenuto Cellini. Anonymous gift, donated to the Permanent Collection of the Newberry Library, 60 W. Walton Street, Chicago, Illinois.]

  To venture into the Colosseum at night is not for the faint of heart, and in following the lead, and the lantern, of Dr. Strozzi, I wondered if I had not cast my fortune unwisely. Although the old man was learned, I could not help but see his hand shaking as we came near to the great and ancient stadium itself.

  Long abandoned, and in much need of repair, it was surrounded by pens and stables and fenced yards, which had once held the lions and crocodiles, bulls and tigers, elephants and leopards, that had been imported from all corners of the Empire and then pitted against each other in the arena. Thousands of them, it has been said, were slaughtered in a single day’s entertainment.

  Men, too, of course. As Dr. Strozzi carried the lantern past the barracks of the Ludus Magnus, where the gladiators had trained, I could still detect the scent of sweat and leather and iron.

  But like all young men of talent and industry, I did not allow fear or superstition to bar my way. On my back, I carried the burlap sack containing the necessary ingredients for the unholy work that lay ahead. In preparation for that night, Dr. Strozzi, a man whose skills in necromancy were famous from Palermo to Madrid, wore the robes of a dead Franciscan friar, and I wore the clothes of a murderer, hanged at a crossroads on the outskirts of the city.

  “To call upon the dead,” Dr. Strozzi had informed me, “it is necessary to become simpatico in every way. We must take on the odor of decay.” For that purpose, we had not bathed for a period of nine days and had eaten no salt, as that was a preservative. Our meat was dog, the companion of Hecate, goddess of the dark moon. Nor had we engaged in any carnal intercourse. As I said to Strozzi in answer to his many warnings on that matter, “Who would have me in such fashion as this?”

  In further deference to the spirits that we hoped to summon that night, we entered the Colosseum through the Emperor’s Gate. The bronze clamps that had held the marble in place had long since been stolen, and the marble itself had been plundered for its quicklime. As an artisan, I mourned the loss of such skilled work. The world, as I have often remarked, is overrun with barbarians.

  With rain coming soon, we did not hesitate once inside. Under the gaze of the ancient gods, whose broken statues stared down at us from every column, we descended into the hypogeum -the labyrinth of tunnels and ramps and stairs that had once been concealed by the dirt and sand of the arena floor. Now, the maze lay exposed, and at its very center, we found a holding cell where part of the roof still afforded some protection from the gathering storm. Rusted manacles hung from the walls, and a flogging post provided me a hook on which to hang the sack.

  Moving always in a left-handed direction, as that is the direction of all things occult, the aged sorcerer made a circle of chalk in the dirt, marking it with the symbols of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. This would keep the demons and spirits at bay. As he did so, I prepared the fire from the kindling in the bag. Once Dr. Strozzi was done, he directed me to feed the flames with the herbs we had also brought. Myrtle, sage, asafetida. The wood had been soaked in tar, and between that and the stench of the herbs, I thought my senses might give way at any moment. My eyes wept, my nostrils burned, and more than once sparks from the fire threatened to burn the filthy tunic I wore. I would not have mourned its loss.

  But even as the doctor made his incantations, and raindrops began to splatter the stones around us, I lowered my head and made my own invocation. Despite his reputation, the doctor, I feared, would not succeed. His motives were impure. He sought out the dead only to ask them where great treasures might lie hidden in the earth, while I sought them out in order to fathom the depths of genius, and thereby procure my own immortality. And so it was that as the night wore on, and the doctor’s supplications yielded no result, my own did… in the form of a pale figure, flickering like a wax taper, just beyond the limits of our circle.

  Dr. Strozzi, upon seeing it himself, fainted dead away, but my resolve was only strengthened. This figure, with its long nose and pointed chin and sharp eyes, was the very spirit I had wished to summon. It was the shade of the greatest poet the world had ever known, a fellow Florentine by birth (though he had denied it by character), Dante Alighieri.

  “I honor you,” I said.

  “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.]

  Part One

  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.

  The room itself-the exhibit hall of the Newberry Library-had been nicely appointed for the event. Lighted display cases held a selection of the rare manuscripts from the library’s collection, and a classical ensemble, playing antique instruments, had only just stopped playing. A computerized lectern was set up on a dais at the front of the hall.

  “It’s showtime,” Dr. Armbruster, the matronly chief administrator, whispered in his ear; she was dressed in her usual gray skirt and jacket, but she had enlivened it for the occasion with a rhinestone brooch in the shape of an open book. Stepping out to the lectern, she welcomed everyone to the event. “And thanks, especially,” she added, “for coming out on such a freezing day.”

  There was an appreciative murmur, followed by a bit of coughing and rustling as the thirty or forty people present settled into their chairs. Most of them were middle-aged or older-well-heeled and successful book lovers and friends of the library. The men were generally white-haired, and wore bow ties, Harris tweeds, and flannel pants; their wives were in pearls and carried Ferragamo handbags. This was Old Chicago money, from the Gold Coast and the suburbs of the North Shore, along with a smattering of academic types from Northwestern or Loyola. The profs were the ones in the rumpled corduroy trousers and jackets. Later, they’d be the first to hit the buffet line. David had learned never to stand between a professor and a free Swedish meatball.

  “And on behalf of the Newberry,” Dr. Armbruster was saying, “one of Chicago’s landmarks since 1883, I want to thank you all for your continued support. Without your generosity, I don’t know what we’d do. As you know, we are a private institution, and we rely upon our friends and associates to sustain the library in every way, from the acquisition of new materials to, well, just paying the electric bill.”

  An elderly wag in the front row waved a checkbook in the air, and there was some polite laughter.

  “You can put that away for now,” Dr. Armbruster said, then added with a laugh, “But keep it handy.”

  David shifted from one foot to the other, nervously awaiting his cue.

  “I think most of you know David Franco, who’s not only our youngest but one of our most industrious staff members. A summa cum laude graduate of Amherst College, David was the winner of a Fulbright Scholarship to Italy, where he studied Renaissance art and literature at the Villa I Tatti. Recently, he completed his doctorate at our own University of Chicago, and all this,” she said, turning toward David, “before the age of what? Thirty?”

  Blushing fiercely, David said, “Not quite. I turned thirty-one last Friday.”

  “Oh, well, in that case,” Dr. Armbruster said, turning back toward the audience, “you’d better get a move on.”

  There was a welcome wave of laughter.

  “But as you can see,” she continued, “when we received, as an anonymous gift, the 1534 copy of Dante’s Divine Comedy, printed in Florence, we knew there was only one person to hand it over to. David has supervised its physical restoration-you would never guess what its binding looked like when we first acquired it-but has also entered its entire text, and its many illustrations, into our digital archive. That way, it can become available to scholars and researchers the world over. Today, he’s going to show us some of the most beautiful and intriguing images from the book, and also, I think,” she said, glancing encouragingly at David, “take us on a brief tour of the poem’s nature imagery?”

  David nodded, his stomach doing a quick backflip, as Dr. Armbruster stepped away from the microphone. “David, it’s all yours.”

  There was a round of subdued applause as he tilted the microphone higher, spread his papers on the lectern, took a sip from the water glass that had been left for him, and thanked everyone, again, for coming. His voice came out strained and high. Then he said something about the freezing weather outside, before remembering that his boss had already commented on that, too. He looked out at the room of expectant faces, cleared his throat, and decided to cut the small talk and just launch into his lecture.

  As he did so, the lights went down, and a screen was lowered to his right.

  “Dante, as you might know, had originally titled his book The Comedy of Dante Alighieri, A Florentine by birth but not in character . The title Divine Comedy only came later, when the book became regarded as a masterpiece. It’s a work that can be approached in a thousand different ways, and over the centuries it has been,” he said, his voice gaining strength once he was on firm and familiar ground. “But what we’re going to focus on today is the use of natural imagery in the poem. And this Florentine edition which was recently donated to the Newberry collection-and which I think most of you have now seen in the central display case-is a particularly good way to do that.”

  He touched a button on the lectern’s electronic panel and the first image-an etching of a deep forest, with a lone figure, head bent, entering a narrow path-appeared on the screen. “‘In the middle of the journey of our life,’” he recited from memory, “‘I came to myself in a dark wood where the straight way was lost.’” Looking up, he said, “With the possible exception of ‘Jack and Jill went up the hill,’ there is probably no line of poetry more famous and easily identifiable than that. And you will notice that right here, at the very start of the epic that is to follow, we have a glimpse of the natural world that is both realistic-Dante spends a terrible night in that wood-and metaphorical.”

  Turning to the etching, he elaborated on several of its most salient features, including the animals that animated its border-a leopard with a spotted coat, a lion, and a skulking wolf with distended jaws. “Confronted by these creatures, Dante pretty much turns tail and runs, until he bumps into a figure-who turns out of course to be the Roman poet Virgil-who offers to guide him ‘through an eternal place where thou shalt hear the hopeless shrieks, shalt see the ancient spirits in pain so that each calls for a second death.’”

  A new image flashed on the screen, of a wide river-Acheron with mobs of the dead huddled on its shores, and a shrouded Charon in the foreground, pointing with one bony finger at a long boat. It was a particularly well-done image and David noted several heads nodding with interest and a low hum of comments. He had thought there might be. This edition of the Divine Comedy was one of the most powerful he had ever seen, and he was making it his mission to find out who the illustrator had been. The title pages of the book had sustained such significant water and smoke damage that no names could be discerned. The book had also had to be intensively treated for mold, and many of the plates bore ineradicable green and blue spots the circumference of a pencil eraser.

  But for David, such blemishes and signs of age only made the books and manuscripts he studied more precious and intriguing. The very fact that this book-n
early five hundred years old-had passed through so many unknown hands, and through so many different places, only lent it an air of mystery and importance. When he held it in his hands, he felt connected to that chain of unrecorded readers who had turned its pages before… perhaps in a palazzo in Tuscany, a garret in Paris, or a country seat in England. All he knew of the book’s origins was that it had been donated to the Newberry by a local collector, who had wanted to be sure it would be properly restored, studied, and its treasures made available to all. David had felt honored to be entrusted with the task.

  As he talked, he became not only more relaxed, but positively excited by the opportunity to share some of the discoveries he had made about the methodology that Dante had employed in his use of natural imagery. The poet often included animals in the text, but he also made regular use of the sun (a planet, according to the Ptolemaic system of the time) and the stars, the sea, the leaves of the trees, snow. Though the hall was dimly lighted, David did his best to maintain some eye contact with the audience as he elucidated these points, and midway through he noted a woman all in black, with a small black hat and a veil across her face, slip into the room and take a seat close to the door. The veil was what struck him. Who wore such things anymore, even in mourning? For a second he lost the thread of what he was saying and had to glance down at his notes to remember where he was.

  “The meaning that Dante attaches to these natural elements changes, as we move from the Inferno to the Purgatorio to the Paradiso .” He continued with his thesis, but his eye was drawn periodically to the mysterious woman in back, and for some reason it popped into his head that she might be the donor of the book, there to see what had become of it. As the images passed by on the screen to his right, he found himself explicating them as if he were talking chiefly to the woman concealed behind the veil. She remained completely still, her hands folded in her lap, her legs in black stockings, and it was all but impossible for him to figure out anything about her… most notably her age. There were moments he felt she was in her twenties, dressed up as if for a grim costume party, and other times when he suspected she was a more mature woman, perched primly, almost precariously, on the edge of the chair.