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By feel and by careful clambering about in this small pocket of a collapsed room, I found the alcove, and the framed portrait. This must have been the lowest room of the tower, and if so, it was odd that such a memorable photo would be kept here. It was as if they did not want it seen. I felt all the way around the frame, knowing by then that I had to unhook it to see more.
The hook was rusted and broke within seconds, and the glass cracked and shattered. Somehow, I avoided being cut as the pieces tumbled out, splashing into the water. Those pieces would be a hazard on exit. It could not be helped. I had the framed photo in my hands, and then the photo came loose from the frame and was in my fingers. I took it over to where the light from above illuminated a bright patch of water.
I held it there, staring at his arm in the image, feeling the paper disintegrate in my fingers and slough away. Within seconds, I held only a smudge of flaking paper, and the water below was full of the fallen fragments.
Glass and paper. One would cut me, the other would make it harder to see.
Yet I had seen what I had seen, and I looked skyward, with my hair dripping musically into this trapped part of the sea. I’d risked my life to see a tattoo on a man’s arm, and I was now sure that the tattoo was the same one that marked my doctor’s arm.
Had Ireallyseen that? Memory is a funny thing, and it was difficult not to doubt what my brain had recorded.
I thought this had proved something weird, but was I right? If he was his own grandfather, he was the same man. That made the doctor at least, judging by the looks of the man in the photo, about…one hundred and twenty years old?
That would be extraordinary but not completely impossible.
Except for one thing—he had not aged.
What also bothered me, now that I had a new perspective on the man, was why theSPQRwas there at all.
I should search the room before I returned. The glass was probably, mostly, in the water. I searched with great care, looking for any remnant of the people who had once upon a time used this room. A realization arrived as I searched—the photo had been taken in a room with black-and-white tiles and I thought I’d seen that room before.
At the base of the alcove, something palm-sized squished beneath my hand. It was made of metal, but fragile. My fingernails raked across small metal links and lumps that seemed attached to whatever was left of the stonework of the alcove. I tugged. It broke apart. Holding the remnants up to the patch of light revealed a mesh of green metal. This might be corroded silver.
So, I’d destroyed two historically significant objects?
Historians would shoot me. I turned the piece in the light and was not shocked to find an engraved gold label beside a clasp that might have belonged to a purse.To Patricia with Lo—
The rest was gone. It had beenlove,of course, that final word.
This could be a memento, or just a purse she’d left and had meant to fetch on that day. I would never know. I left the remnant in the alcove then studied the water. It was still clouded with paper, and dirt was splattering onto the surface. I raised my head to follow the path of the dirt through the air. It trickled from the hole above, the hole that led to the surface.
How stable could this cavity be when it sat below where a huge tower had once reigned over the cliffscape? The weight of earth and rock above this space must be enormous. It had been here decades, but it would eventually collapse. That was gravity for you.
My anxiety returned with the smallest twinge in my chest and stomach.
“Time to go.”
I could make it out. I’d made it all the way in. I was in no hurry, was I? I felt my way downward, did two dives to check the orientation of my exit, then shook myself into calmness, again.
“I can do this.”
I dived.
The way out was darker, scarier, for the reflections were blocked by my own body, and I almost did not get to the exit in a state where I could even attempt to reach the surface. I did, though, a little addled, a lot terrified, with my lungs burning for oxygen. I kicked upward and was closer than ever to blacking out when I burst through into the air.
The buoy was yards away, bobbing happily. I sucked in a few more much-needed, shaky breaths, coughed out some water, and turned toward the beach. Both the men were standing there, gazing at me. They were looking at me judgmentally, I thought, though I was too far away to really see expressions.
Fuck.
Even if he was older than Tolkien, The Beatles, and the scrappy garden gnome my mother had once owned, the doctor had a hard hand and some ingenious punishments. Did I believe what I thought I had seen? I had no proof, only my memory. I stared at my hands that had held those objects, the photo, and the purse, and I remembered the shape and weight of them, the look of them, then I began to swim to shore.
The dimly lit cave had reeked of a forgotten time and, in this daylight world, what I’d seen below the sea had become quite impossible. My intuition and that silver purse told me I should visit the Inner Sanctum again.
26
CHARITY
Some memories fade with time and become even more ridiculous. This one hung around, especially when I waded up the beach to face Cassius and the doctor. The sand sank under my feet, and my wet hair clung to my back, as per normal, but I kept thinking about how to tell if I was right. Did he look like the man in the now-vanished photo? Yes, but…
