I knew from the reading I’d done that morning that the church hadn’t been built when Isotta was alive. In her time there was asmaller church here, but it was rebuilt from scratch about the same time that she died. Pretty as it was, I didn’t think it was worth looking inside. Nothing from Isotta’s time was likely to have survived.
I was much more interested in what was directly below it: the Hypogeum Santa Maria Assunta.
I’d learned from Google that it was an underground system of tunnels and chambers used by the Romans to worship water nymphs, nymphs like Cyane. After the Romans, St. Zeno of Verona had baptized people in the underground spring. By Isotta’s time, it was an important place of Christian pilgrimage.
I was convinced that Isotta would have known of this place and visited it. She wasn’t just an educated woman with an interest in mythology, and Cyane in particular, she was devout, too, and had the means to travel.
Just as compelling as the hypogeum’s history were the photographs of it that I’d seen online. Deep underground was something so remarkable I couldn’t believe more people didn’t know about it: an ancient, incredible ceiling decoration. I’d never seen anything like it before and it looked so much like some of the most mysterious imagery in the Voynich that it had taken my breath away.
For centuries no one had been able to explain the weird imagery of water pipes, tubes, and bathing pools that appeared on so many pages of the Voynich manuscript, or the naked women who bathed in them. But if you linked them to this hypogeum and to Isotta’s poetry, you surely had the answer: the women were water nymphs.
Finally, everything felt right. This was the place where everything came together. The evidence, my gut, and a sense of connection with Isotta that I couldn’t deny told meThe Book of Wonderwas more likely to be here than anywhere else. The site’s history didn’t put me off. The hypogeum may have been in use over centuries, but it had been a holy place, preserved intact, no intensive archeology or modern development for tourists. Of all the sites I’d considered, this seemed the one where secrets had the most chance of remaininghidden for centuries. I felt sure that even if I didn’t find the book down there, I would find another clue to where Isotta had hidden it.
The entrance to the hypogeum was behind a closed and padlocked metal gate. Through it, at the bottom of a flight of steps, I could see the mouth of a tunnel, dark and unwelcoming.
I wasn’t sure when the hypogeum would next be open to the public and I couldn’t wait. I rattled the gate, making a small space between it and the post, but it wasn’t wide enough for me to get through. I thought the gap above the gate might be. It looked be tight, but not impossible.
I took my backpack off, climbed up the gate, dropped it over—no going back now—and squeezed myself through the gap, falling down heavily on the other side. I got up and dusted myself off, feeling as if the thud I’d made must have alerted someone, but the square remained deserted, the cat still watching, its tail flicking.
I walked down the steps and was soon underground. The darkness was so complete it was as if someone had thrown a hood over my head, as if I’d stepped into every story that had ever terrified me. The outside world had gone. There was no noise or light in front of me, just blank silence. My brain screamed at me to retrace my steps and get out, but I turned on my phone’s flashlight, and kept going.
At the bottom of the steps the beam of my flashlight revealed a niche in the wall, with a statue set into it of a man dressed in a toga, the first trace of the ancient origins of this place. To my left was another dark passageway. The torchlight only illuminated the first few meters. I was hyperaware of what might lie in the shadows and my breathing sounded too fast and too loud, a sharp ebb and flow of hot fear disturbing the dank, still air. If there were predators down here, they would easily mark me as prey.
I heard water flowing, a strong trickle, but the sound was muted, as if the water was separated from me, perhaps running somewhere deeper, beneath my feet or behind the wall. I guessed I was hearing the underground spring.
I’d memorized the hypogeum’s layout from a plan I’d seen online and knew this was the second of three tunnels I had to go through to reach the main complex of chambers where the walls and ceilings were painted. I tried to swallow my fear as I pushed on, but claustrophobia got a grip on me, and I was panting by the time I emerged into a small, square space carved out of rock.
A marble mausoleum lay along one wall, squat and heavy. I ran my hands over it, feeling how cold and smooth it was. I looked for inscriptions but there were none. The lid was far too heavy for me to move to see what might be inside. I was starting to realize that this was no place to hide any book, let alone one as valuable asThe Book of Wonder. It was too cold and damp down here. I pinned my hopes on seeing something that would tell me what to do or where to go next.
A low stone lintel marked the entrance to the final tunnel. Its ceiling was very low—I would need to stoop to walk through it—and it was horribly narrow.
I took off my backpack again. With the bestiary inside, it was bulky and heavy, awkward to stoop in. The tunnel seemed to last forever. I felt as if the walls were closing in around me, as if the oxygen would run out. My heart raced. Light from my phone bounced off the rough stone walls and floor. It felt like I was walking to the center of the earth. When I finally emerged, the space around me opened up and I lifted my head gratefully.
I was standing in an atrium, an explosion of color and pattern above and around me, covering the walls and ceiling. It was shocking to see such incredible work hiding all the way down here. It was powerful and marvelous.
On either side, the atrium opened out into two chambers. My light gave me glimpses of their mosaic floors and semi-domed ceilings. I was looking for the paintings that had lured me here, and I caught my breath when I got my first glimpse.
I’d never felt such a sense of wonder before, but it was shattered in an instant. From somewhere close behind me I heard footsteps.
Chapter Seventeen
Clio
Clio was alone in the room when she woke up. There was no sign of Sid or Anya, and she was grateful, because her cheeks were wet with tears that she didn’t want them to see. She wiped them away roughly.
She hadn’t got to sleep until four in the morning because she’d been trying to work out what to do, wondering how deep this went in the force, and if Lillian had left her so abruptly on the steps of the British Museum because she was trying to get away quickly. Had she known that they’d been seen?
Clio’s brain had worked on the problem while she slept and the answers made her feel a little dead inside, as well as desperately sad.
Lillian had to have known that her death was imminent, and she’d tried to force it into taking place in such a way as to make Clio suspicious of murder. Why else would she have chosen one of the most surveilled places in London to meet Clio? Even though the exterior cameras had been disabled somehow, whoever murdered Lillian hadn’t got to the ones inside the museum. Lillian had likely gambled on it being impossible to put every camera out of action, and hoped Clio would figure it out.
She’d sacrificed herself to expose evil.
And I did figure it out, Clio thought. She threw back the covers and got out of bed. She’d slept in her clothes. In the bathroom, she splashed water on her face, scrubbed away her tears, and looked hard at herself in the mirror as she swallowed her feelings. Not now.
She heard a soft knock on the door of the room and the sound of it opening cautiously. “It’s me,” Sid called.
She let herself out of the bathroom. He was alone. “Where’s Anya?”
