“Feast your eyes upon that, Matthew . . . and, er, Madam!  Florence!  The City of Flowers!  A simple, peaceful nickname designed to convince people that this is an innocent, harmless country town, with no more influence on world politics than a humble sheep farm.  And yet, this Second City of Italy hides within its walls a secret, a secret that few have discovered and fewer still have lived to tell.  Yes, Florence may be second to Rome in population.  Yes, it may be second to Rome in prestige.  But in power, it is first!

“Those who are gullible enough to believe the official reports disagree.  They say that Rome is the one and only capital of Italy, and that it has been ever since the country was founded after the Black Plague brought down the Roman Empire in 31 BC.  And, on the surface, they would appear to be right.

“Certainly, to the untrained observer, Rome seems to be the most likely candidate for the job.  All the trappings of power are there.  The Maximum Circus, the only place where Messala and Judah Ben-Hur could finally settle their age-old feud.  The Colosseum, the heart of the judicial system, where millions of criminals were put to death every year as punishment for their heinous crimes.  St. Peter’s Square, the base of the Catholic Church since time immemorial.

“But what these fools forget is that these things were all in the past.  Sure, Rome looks like the capital, and it was . . . many millennia ago!  Today, there is only one true capital of Italy, and its name is Florence!

“The story begins in the Renaissance.  A young man named Machiavelli de Medici lived a quiet life here with his family.  But while things may sometimes appear to be quiet in Florence, they never stay that way for long.  The Medici family was betrayed by their rivals, the Paparazzi.  Every member of the family was arrested on trumped-up charges, led through the town in disgrace, and then executed.

“Every member, that is, except Machiavelli.  This young man swore on the family grave that he would have revenge, but his revenge would not be on the Paparazzi alone.  Machiavelli dreamed big.  Clearing his family’s name was not enough.  Destroying those responsible was not enough.  Ruling all of Florence was not enough!  Machiavelli did not rest until he had used his international network of assassins to seize control of all of Italy!  Ever since then, this soft underbelly of Europe has been ruled by the tough gut of the Medici.

“Of course, it goes without saying that Machiavelli’s greatest confidant in his endeavors was none other than Leonardo da Vinci, mastermind behind every great conspiracy, past, present, and future.

“Now, to properly tell the story of Machiavelli de Medici would take days, but I will do my best to sum up the most important parts now . . .”

“Your friend enjoys giving these speeches very much, yes?”

“Very much indeed,” Matthew responded.  “He is, however, the only one that does.”  The sheer quantity of misinformation made Matthew so dizzy it was a wonder he didn’t pitch forward and roll all the way down the dome to his death.  He was pressing himself back against the wall as strongly as he could, but in that tight space it was impossible to get too far away from the edge.

The other tourists up there did not appear to be about to collapse, but the looks on their faces made it quite clear that they did not appreciate the speech any more than Matthew did.  Most of them probably could not understand what Jack was saying (Matthew spoke the same language, and he couldn’t understand what his friend was saying), but the noise level was bad enough.  Jack had lost his personal volume control down the proverbial couch cushions at a young age, and he had never bothered to go looking for it.

“He has a very . . . unusual view of history,” the woman continued.  She was glancing around rapidly, though Matthew had no idea whether she was looking for mafia snipers or simply trying to determine when the crowd was going to lose its patience, form a mob, heave the noisy American over the railing, and cheer.  He could have asked, but what was the point?

“Do you know from where he gets his . . . facts?” she asked.

“No idea.”  When Jack talked about Rome, Matthew had always assumed that everything he said came from either movies or TV (often from features about different cities).  For Florence, it seemed entirely possible that his friend had run out of that kind of “facts” and was now just making things up entirely.

“. . . and now here we stand, atop the Domo, the impregnable citadel from which the Medici family manipulates the politics of the entire Mediterranean!  Looking down at Florence, just as they do, we—”

“This is not true,” the woman interrupted.  Jack’s tirade came to such a screeching halt that for a moment Matthew thought he might trip and go down the side of the dome.  The other tourists held their breath, wondering how long the interruption could last (and perhaps plotting to extend it with their own methods if it wasn’t long enough).

“The house of the Medici is elsewhere in Florence,” she continued.  “That is where their power was based.”

“Then what are we doing up here?” Jack cried as he headed for the stairs.  The crowd refrained from celebrating, just barely.

“Nothing in that mess was true,” Matthew muttered as they left the balcony.  “Why did you wait until then to correct him?”

“I needed to convince him to leave,” the woman replied.

“Are we in danger?”

“Not especially.  We must keep moving if we are to discover anything.”

“Oh.  Wait, there wasn’t anything in Jack’s speech that has to do with what we’re involved in, was there?”

“That would be difficult to say.”

“Aha!” Jack cried out, stopping suddenly and allowing Matthew a chance to catch up to him.  “Now that’s a house worthy of the family that secretly rules Italy!  Only the biggest show in town would be good enough for the Medico.”

After resting for a moment or two to catch his breath, Matthew adopted his usual role of explaining to Jack things that he felt should have been obvious, even to a child.  “First off, it’s Medici, not Medico.”  Most of the time he dismissed correcting Jack’s pronunciation as a Sisyphean endeavor, but he did occasionally make the effort in particularly important cases, or when the mispronunciation was actually a different word (especially when the word was likely to get them into trouble).

“Second, the Medici never ruled all of Italy.  They just controlled the Republic of Florence or the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, as political boundaries shifted over the years.”  Matthew decided to move on rather than attempt to explain the political history of northern Italy.  Jack had a very hard time understanding that the names and shapes of countries had not always been the same as they were in the modern day.  Matthew had once tried to tell him about the Holy Roman Empire.  That was a period of several hours that he would have liked to have back.

“And third, that’s not a house; it’s a cathedral.  The Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore, more commonly known as the Duomo.”

Jack frowned.  Matthew wasn’t sure if it was because he had just contradicted him or if his friend was trying to process all the information he had been given.  His response suggested it was the latter.  “Dwomo?  Oh, I get it.  Because of the huge dome on top, right?”

“No, actually,” Matthew said.  As far as Jack’s misinterpretations went, this one was fairly reasonable.  “Duomo means—” he began, quickly stopping when he realized he was about to sound stupid.

“It means ‘house,’” finished the mystery woman as she appeared behind Matthew.  She seemed to have gotten much better at sneaking up on people than she had been the other day.  Matthew wondered if she had been putting in extra practice ever since Jack had smacked her in the face with his shovel.  “However, your friend is correct.  The building is a church.  No one lives there.  The word is used to refer to cathedrals all over Italy, both current and former ones.  The meaning ‘house’ is because the church is the house of God.”

Jack turned back toward the cathedral and stared at it for a while, presumably until he was satisfied that it looked like a church.  Then he faced his companions again.  “Right.  House of God.  Got it.  So what’s important about this place?”

“The Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore is the fourth-largest church in Europe,” Matthew rattled off.  “Construction was begun in 1296 based on the design of Arnolfo di Cambio, but the project would last more than one hundred seventy years under the leadership of more than half a dozen different architects.  The distinctive octagonal dome was designed by Filippo Brunelleschi, one of the greatest architects and engineers of the Renaissance.  Formerly the largest dome in the entire world, it remains to this day the most massive dome ever constructed out of brick.”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s big,” Jack agreed.  “I can tell that just by looking at it.  What I wanted to know was if there’s anything important about this place.”

“The construction of the dome was tremendously important to modern architecture,” Matthew countered.  “It was by far the largest project of that type since the construction of the Pantheon in Rome more than a millennium earlier.  Brunelleschi had to invent machinery just so he would be able to lift—”

“I think,” interrupted the woman, “that your friend means, ‘Have any important events occurred here?’ or ‘What famous historical persons have been in this church?’”

Matthew shrugged.  “It was one of the biggest construction projects of the Italian Renaissance.  It’s the seat of the archdiocese of Florence.  Along with the rest of the center of the city, it’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  Lots of important famous people have been here.  And Brunelleschi was one of them!”

Jack looked half-bored, half-mutinous, but the mystery woman interrupted again.  “If I remember correctly, I once read that Giuliano de’ Medici was assassinated in the cathedral on Easter Sunday as part of the Pazzi Conspiracy.”

“See?  That’s what I’m talking about!  Assassination!  Conspiracy!  And it always comes back to the Medici.  Come on, let’s go investigate this crime scene!”

Matthew did not know what Jack expected to find at a crime scene five hundred years old.  Probably just as much as he would have been able to find at a crime scene five minutes old, his cynical side suggested.  It was also most likely the exact same amount of information he would be able to get out of the mystery woman, but that did not stop him from trying.  “I don’t get it,” he said, as Jack raced off toward the Duomo.  “Do you actually think that the thing we stumbled on has something to do with the Medici?  I mean, there aren’t any of them left, right?”

“Officially, no.  But that does not mean that there is no one who might try to claim descent from the family, either for political gains of because he truly believes that his ancestor was Lorenzo the Great.”

“But what would be the point?  The Medici haven’t wielded any power in Tuscany for almost three hundred years.  And does anyone actually buy the old ‘I can trace my ancestry back to some illegitimate son that no one’s every heard of before’ story anymore?”

“The point?  I cannot say.  This is a country where history is very important.  Is that not what drew you here in the first place?”

“Yes,” Matthew agreed, adding in a mutter, “though I generally prefer it when history stays in the past.”

“So, you’re saying that we stumbled onto something connected to some sort of major conspiracy.”

“Yes.”

“And now because of what we know—or what they think we know—our lives could be in danger.”

“This is correct.”

“And you’ve been assigned to keep an eye on us and make sure we’re safe, which is why you’ve been following us.”

“Yes.”

“Wouldn’t it have been a whole lot easier just to walk up, introduce yourself, and explain all this to us in the first place?”

“We did not wish to frighten you.”

“Frighten us?  Did you not stop to think that it would be much scarier if we thought we were being trailed by a mysterious figure for no reason?”

“Please calm down.  I could say that it was not my intention to be seen by you at all, but I do not believe that this information would bring you very much comfort.”

“Good guess.”

“Tourism is an essential component of the economy of Rome.  It is not good for us to scare visitors by telling them that their lives may be in danger.  You most likely would have tried to leave the country.  This may have put you at even greater risk by drawing attention to yourselves.  This way was best for all of us.”

“Hmph.  But still, after watching us for . . . however long you were watching us for, you must have realized that we wouldn’t have just run off.  One of us would have been even more willing to stay if you just told him instead of hiding.”

“Yes . . . it is unfortunate, but when you work in a job such as mine, stealth becomes a habit.  It is a habit that is difficult to break.”

“I see.”

“Now that my presence has been noticed, however, everything is, as you said, a whole lot easier.  I can direct you and your friend to take actions that are most beneficial to your safety.”

“Like telling us to go to Florence?”

“Yes.  My superiors have felt for some time that it would be best if you left Rome temporarily.  Since there is no longer any meaning in staying hidden, there was no reason for me not to encourage you to do so.  By going to another popular tourist destination such as Firenze, we are able to make it appear as though you are still just simple visitors, unaware of the danger.”

“Ha!  That’s not much of a stretch.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“We’re just as unaware as they think we are.  You haven’t told us anything, really.”

“As I explained already, we are not sure about your situation.  There is no purpose in meaningless speculation—”

“But you must know something!  You didn’t just look down at us from your perch and say, ‘Hmm, those two guys look like the kind of people that are likely to be targeted by a secret, multinational crime syndicate!’  Does it have something to do with the time Jack yelled at the Swiss Guards?”

“I cannot say.”

“Or when we got kicked out of the Colosseum?”

“Please understand.  It is for your own safety that I tell you nothing.  The less you know, the easier it is for you to go on with your lives as if nothing was wrong.”

“Ignorance is bliss, huh?”

“That is one way to think of it.”

“You’ve got to tell us something, though.  What about your name?  Can we get that much, at least?”

“Ah, no.  That is for my safety.”

“You know, it’d be a lot easier for me to pretend that there was nothing wrong with my life if I wasn’t walking around with an agent from an Italian intelligence agency who won’t even tell me her name.”

“If you would prefer it, I can return to the rooftops and follow you from a distance again.”

“No, that’s okay.”

“Do you mind if I ask you a question?”

“I don’t see how it’s fair, seeing as you won’t tell us anything, but sure, why not?”

“Why is your friend so upset?  Usually he is very bright and always talking, but he has not spoken any word since we arrived.  Is he also angry with me because I will not tell you what I know?”

“Nah, that wouldn’t bother Jack.  He doesn’t need you to tell him anything.  He makes it all up on his own anyway.  He’s probably just depressed because we had to leave Rome.”

“He does not like Florence?”

“He thinks that Rome is the only real city of intrigue.  Nowhere else can compare.”

“I do not understand.  Does he not know that this city was home to Machiavelli?  To the Medici House that manipulated Tuscan politics for centuries and produced four Popes?”

“Whoa!  Did you say Popes?  Hmm . . . maybe I was wrong about this Florence place.  Yeah, I get it now.  It seems like Rome is where all the action is, but secretly it’s all run by the Catholic Church in Vatican City and that Medical Family here in Florence . . . and there’s a connection, because some of the Popes were members of that family!  Ha ha!  Come on, guys!  This place might be worth checking out after all.”

“. . . okay, I know you’re new at this, but generally it’s best not to tell him things like that.  Now he’s going to run off and do something stupid.”

“Yes, I understand.  I did it on purpose.”

“What?”

“Protecting you is my primary job, but we are also hoping that your actions may produce further clues that help us to figure out exactly what is going on.  You have a saying in English, don’t you?  ‘If life gives you lemons, make lemonade.’”

“Wow.  That’s very reassuring.”

“Do not worry.  I am here to protect you.  Nothing will go wrong.”

Matthew sighed.  “That would be a lot more comforting if Jack hadn’t knocked you out accidentally just by swinging a shovel around.”

It would have been the stupidest, most utterly meaningless question he could have asked in that situation.  It would have shown that he completely missed the point.  But for some reason, Matthew had a very difficult time convincing his brain not to lead off with the question, “Where did you get that shovel?”

After a few minutes of silence, uninterrupted by either the woman (who was still unconscious) or Jack (who was making vague motions with his mouth as if talking was something he had only ever seen on TV before), Matthew was able to ask the much more sensible: “What happened here?”

“I don’t know,” his friend replied.  Despite his stunned state, it came out easily; it is, after all, the natural default statement for when you can’t figure out what to say.  The follow-up, however, came much more slowly.  Matthew had not seen Jack this confused since he had once tried to explain to him, for some foolish reason, that there had once been an Eastern Roman Empire that did not, in fact, contain Rome.

“I was digging,” he began, pointing at the shovel.  He seemed to want to make sure that Matthew understood the very basic parts of the story, as a sort of preemptive apology for that fact that there would be later portions that made no sense.  “For the treasure.  Then all of a sudden I thought I heard something behind me.  I was worried about other treasure hunters coming to steal our prize, so I quickly jumped up and spun around to see what was going on.  I, uh, didn’t have time to put down the shovel, and . . .,” he trailed off, gesturing toward the woman.

“You’d better go look for help,” Matthew suggested.  “I’ll wait here and try to see if she’s okay.”

Jack nodded and took off, still holding the shovel.  Despite the recent accident, Matthew couldn’t really blame his friend for hanging on to it.  A shovel is simple, solid, easy to understand.  It stood in direct contrast to the person it had just laid out, who was still a rather large mystery.

Matthew knelt down next to her.  On closer inspection, she appeared to be more like ten or fifteen years older than him.  That, however, was about all the closer inspection revealed.  Much of her face was either lying against the ground or covered up by her hood, and the part that wasn’t was marred by an unsightly, shovel-shaped mark.  There did not appear to be any bleeding, and she was still breathing, and that was as far as Matthew’s medical expertise took him.

After a minute or two, Matthew decided that he wished he had gone off for help and left Jack there, because he wasn’t sure what to do.  Despite his friend’s tendency to get out of control, it was rare that he actually knocked someone out, so Matthew did not have much experience with the situation.  His instincts said that it was probably best to just let her lie there, so that was what he did.

It took about a minute for his curiosity to get the better of him, at which point he started shaking her by the shoulder in an attempt to wake her up.

Her eyes fluttered open.  She glanced around, started to lift her head, winced, and then continued with the process anyway.  She did not seem nearly as shocked as the person who hit her had.

“Are you alright?” Matthew asked.  He probably had the Italian version of the phrase written down somewhere on him, but at times like this, people don’t generally think to dive for guidebooks.

She looked up at him and adopted an expression of surprise that might have been a lot more convincing if Matthew didn’t have any suspicions about her.  “I am . . . well,” she answered.  “Thank you muchly.”  Her accent was strong but not too hard to understand.  “I am striked?”

Matthew nodded brusquely.  Jack could handle the apologies.  Now that he had confirmed that the damage was mostly just cosmetic, he felt no qualms about moving past pleasantries.  “What are you doing here?”

“I?  I am to see-sighting.  Touristing.  You are same, no?”

“No, you’re not.  I know you’ve been following me.  I’d like you to tell me why.”  It seemed a little to crude to add, “If you don’t, I’ll have my friend come back and whang you with the shovel again.”

The woman sighed.  The innocent look flickered out of her eyes.  “Yes, you are right,” she said.  “I am caught red-handed.”  Though her grammar and vocabulary improved markedly after she gave up the act, her accent remained about the same.  “Where is your friend?  It is best if I can explain to both of you.”

They set off in search of Jack, who as usual was not hard to find.  He standing in the middle of the ruins of the amphitheatre and shouting for help, presumably either because he thought that the acoustics there would send his message out farther or because he just thought the most interesting-looking building on site was also the headquarters.

Once Jack had finished apologizing (as with everything else he did, he put in much more effort than was necessary), the woman had them sit down.  “Let me explain.  No, that will take too long.  Let me sum up.  I work for the Agenzia Informazioni e Sicurezza Interna.  It is much like your CIA.  I am assigned to follow you for your protection.  You appear to have discovered a major conspiracy and your lives may be at risk.”

Matthew was too stunned and disappointed for words.  Jack, on the other hand, was not at all surprised at this, or at the fact that they had been followed for days.  “I knew it!” he crowed triumphantly.  “I knew I had to be right about one of them!  So which is it?”

The woman grimaced.  “That is a problem.  We are not sure also.”

The ability to post pictures has been restored . . . or perhaps restored itself (I’m not too clear on the details). Either way, it means the return of Jack and Matthew and their weekly picture adventures. Pictures have now been added to those posts where I was unable to before, and I am re-posting the most recent installment for those who need to catch up. New adventures will start next week.

And for those of you who liked Brevity=Wit, don’t worry, it may very well be back again some day (the more I hear about it, the more likely it is to return).

“I should have known this would happen,” Matthew grumbled.

Matthew had lost his friend. The moment the possibility of pirate treasure came up, Jack had, as expected, gone a bit berserk. The search for a shovel, metal detector, wheelbarrow, and all the other tools of the amateur treasure hunter immediately became paramount. Unfortunately for Jack, since Ostia Antica was primarily a sleepy archaeological dig site, they did not have any of the items he was looking for, at least not in a place where an ordinary tourist could get his hands on them. Thus the radius of the search expanded rapidly, to the point where Matthew was no longer able to keep up.

He was not, however, overly concerned about Jack’s disappearance. Sure, Jack still had the only key to their hotel room, but Matthew was confident that he would be able to find him at the end of the day when he needed to. His friend had never been good at keeping himself hidden. In addition, despite Jack’s frantic desire to find a shovel no matter how long it took, Matthew was confident that his friend would not get far. For an amateur treasure hunter, Jack had an astonishingly poor grasp of maps, and since his skill with the local language was juvenile at best, Matthew could not see him managing to figure out a train or anything else that would take him out of the area. There was always the risk that Jack would attempt to do something foolish, but as he himself had said, there was no one around, so what could he do?

Matthew had other things to worry about, anyway: he was searching for the person in gray. Although he grumbled out of habit, for once Matthew was actually pleased that his friend had managed to disappear. It made hunting for the gray-clad figure much easier when he did not have to explain to Jack what he was doing or make up a semi-plausible excuse to avoid the question. He was free of distractions. Ostia Antica was deserted. It was just Matthew and the person in gray . . .

. . . except that it wasn’t. Unlike Jack, Matthew could not feel that the site was empty, because he kept drifting back into the past, when it was not “Ostia Antica” but just plain old “Ostia.” To him the port was still alive. The buildings were whole, the streets were teeming with activities both legal and otherwise. On the one hand, this meant that for Matthew the site was interesting enough to not require inventing a phony hunt for pirate treasure. On the other hand, it wasn’t at all helpful if you were trying to find something.

Matthew groaned. He supposed that he should not really have been surprised. Earlier, when he was attempting to forget about the figure in gray and focus on the past, the modern world had constantly intruded on his thoughts. Now, naturally, the opposite was true. It figured. Every time he tried to peer around the corner to catch the person that had been pursuing him, he ran into a shady merchant sailor trying to sell him a special salve that could only be found in the distant reaches of the forests of Germany, presumably because in any other location it would have been considered poisonous.

Even when Matthew was able to clear his head and return to the present, a different sort of distraction was there to plague him: doubt. Part of him believed that he had no reason to think that he could catch the person in gray even if he could devote his full attention to the problem. The kind of person who behaves like that, said a voice in the back of his mind, is the kind of person that is very good at not being found. Matthew tried to argue that he had spotted the figure a couple of times already, but he countered that seeing someone for a moment through a crowd is very different from being close enough to actually communicate with him.

Matthew was forced to admit that this was true, but a few moments later he rallied, saying that he was giving way too much credit to this mysterious figure in gray. He had no reason to believe that this was some sort of James Bond-like super spy. Why would a person like that be following him? Again, the counterargument came right back: You have no reason to believe that any sort of person would be following you, by all normal logic. And yet here you are.

Eventually, Matthew was forced to concede that he was right: his chances of finding the figure in gray were next to nil. Even if this person wasn’t expecting Matthew to be looking for him, that slim advantage had been eliminated, since Matthew had spent the last few hours snooping around the area in an obvious manner. Even if he had managed to track him down, Matthew still had not been able to answer the question, “Then what do I do?” So he called off the pointless search and switched to a more meaningful one: finding Jack. Rather than glancing around corners in what he thought was a stealthy manner, he kept his eyes to the ground, looking for places where someone had been frantically digging with a rock, his hands, or whatever he could find.

It was because he was staring at the ground that he spotted the woman first. She was lying on the ground in an awkward position, as if she had been struck and suddenly fell into unconsciousness. The woman was probably a few years older than Matthew and Jack, and she appeared to be Italian. After a quick glance, Matthew almost certainly would have next looked up to see his friend, who was carrying a shovel and looking much more bewildered than usual, except for one other things that caught his eye.

She was wearing a gray hooded cloak.

“I should have known this would happen,” Matthew grumbled.

Matthew had lost his friend.  The moment the possibility of pirate treasure came up, Jack had, as expected, gone a bit berserk.  The search for a shovel, metal detector, wheelbarrow, and all the other tools of the amateur treasure hunter immediately became paramount.  Unfortunately for Jack, since Ostia Antica was primarily a sleepy archaeological dig site, they did not have any of the items he was looking for, at least not in a place where an ordinary tourist could get his hands on them.  Thus the radius of the search expanded rapidly, to the point where Matthew was no longer able to keep up.

He was not, however, overly concerned about Jack’s disappearance.  Sure, Jack still had the only key to their hotel room, but Matthew was confident that he would be able to find him at the end of the day when he needed to.  His friend had never been good at keeping himself hidden.  In addition, despite Jack’s frantic desire to find a shovel no matter how long it took, Matthew was confident that his friend would not get far.  For an amateur treasure hunter, Jack had an astonishingly poor grasp of maps, and since his skill with the local language was juvenile at best, Matthew could not see him managing to figure out a train or anything else that would take him out of the area.  There was always the risk that Jack would attempt to do something foolish, but as he himself had said, there was no one around, so what could he do?

Matthew had other things to worry about, anyway: he was searching for the person in gray.  Although he grumbled out of habit, for once Matthew was actually pleased that his friend had managed to disappear.  It made hunting for the gray-clad figure much easier when he did not have to explain to Jack what he was doing or make up a semi-plausible excuse to avoid the question.  He was free of distractions.  Ostia Antica was deserted.  It was just Matthew and the person in gray . . .

. . . except that it wasn’t.  Unlike Jack, Matthew could not feel that the site was empty, because he kept drifting back into the past, when it was not “Ostia Antica” but just plain old “Ostia.”  To him the port was still alive.  The buildings were whole, the streets were teeming with activities both legal and otherwise.  On the one hand, this meant that for Matthew the site was interesting enough to not require inventing a phony hunt for pirate treasure.  On the other hand, it wasn’t at all helpful if you were trying to find something.

Matthew groaned.  He supposed that he should not really have been surprised.  Earlier, when he was attempting to forget about the figure in gray and focus on the past, the modern world had constantly intruded on his thoughts.  Now, naturally, the opposite was true.  It figured.  Every time he tried to peer around the corner to catch the person that had been pursuing him, he ran into a shady merchant sailor trying to sell him a special salve that could only be found in the distant reaches of the forests of Germany, presumably because in any other location it would have been considered poisonous.

Even when Matthew was able to clear his head and return to the present, a different sort of distraction was there to plague him: doubt.  Part of him believed that he had no reason to think that he could catch the person in gray even if he could devote his full attention to the problem.  The kind of person who behaves like that, said a voice in the back of his mind, is the kind of person that is very good at not being found.  Matthew tried to argue that he had spotted the figure a couple of times already, but he countered that seeing someone for a moment through a crowd is very different from being close enough to actually communicate with him.

Matthew was forced to admit that this was true, but a few moments later he rallied, saying that he was giving way too much credit to this mysterious figure in gray.  He had no reason to believe that this was some sort of James Bond-like super spy.  Why would a person like that be following him?  Again, the counterargument came right back: You have no reason to believe that any sort of person would be following you, by all normal logic.  And yet here you are.

Eventually, Matthew was forced to concede that he was right: his chances of finding the figure in gray were next to nil.  Even if this person wasn’t expecting Matthew to be looking for him, that slim advantage had been eliminated, since Matthew had spent the last few hours snooping around the area in an obvious manner.  Even if he had managed to track him down, Matthew still had not been able to answer the question, “Then what do I do?”  So he called off the pointless search and switched to a more meaningful one: finding Jack.  Rather than glancing around corners in what he thought was a stealthy manner, he kept his eyes to the ground, looking for places where someone had been frantically digging with a rock, his hands, or whatever he could find.

It was because he was staring at the ground that he spotted the woman first.  She was lying on the ground in an awkward position, as if she had been struck and suddenly fell into unconsciousness.  The woman was probably a few years older than Matthew and Jack, and she appeared to be Italian.  After a quick glance, Matthew almost certainly would have next looked up to see his friend, who was carrying a shovel and looking much more bewildered than usual, except for one other thing that caught his eye.

She was wearing a gray hooded cloak.

“Are you sure we’re in Rome?”

Matthew really had to wonder how his friend could possibly be looking at a sign like that and still have to ask the question.  Sure, there were sections missing, but come on!  There were roman numerals on it!  They were using Vs instead of Us, for god’s sake!  Knowing Jack for as long as he had, Matthew was not at all surprised, but still, you really had to wonder.

“Technically,” he began with a mild hint of annoyance, “we are not in Rome.  This is Ostia Antica, as I explained to you several times on the train ride over.”

“Attempted to explain” might have been a more accurate description, as was evidenced by the fact that the fruitless task was repeated several times.  To Jack, there was no form of transportation more romantic and exotic than the train.  Matthew could sort of understand the fascination; living in the U.S., they had very little exposure to trains, while at the same time their constant appearance in popular culture as the setting for dramatic chases and robberies could not fail to excite the imagination.  What he could not understand was his friend’s reaction every single time they boarded a train—even a perfectly boring local commuter train—which was to run around and jump up and down like a six-year-old that just ate an entire box of Pixy Stix.

“Ostia was the port of ancient Rome,” Matthew said, figuring that there might be some value in repeating himself for a fifth time now that Jack was off the train and relatively motionless.  “Ostia means ‘mouth’ in Latin.  The port was built here on the mouth of the Tiber River, where it emptied into the Tyrrhenian Sea.”

Jack looked around, and for once even Matthew was willing to admit that his puzzlement was justifiable.  “So . . . where’s the sea?”

“If you were listening carefully, you would have noted that I said that Ostia was the port of ancient Rome.  Since then the sea level has fallen, and the area around the old port silted up.  We’re now about two miles away from the water.”

“So what’s here now?”

“Just an archeological dig site and museum.”  There was no point in sugar coating it.  Jack had admitted that it was wrong of him to take control of the expedition the previous morning, and he declared that it was Matthew’s turn to pick their destination.  Matthew had no obligation to try to pretend that there was anything there likely to excite his friend.  Knowing Jack, he would probably do just fine making up something on his own anyway.

Jack wandered around, glanced at the ruins of the ancient brick buildings, and then turned back to Matthew with a worried look on his face.  “But are you sure that this is part of Rome?”

Matthew groaned.  “Like I said, technically—”

“I’m not talking about that.  It’s still part of the general Rome area, right?”

Matthew raised an eyebrow.  He had rarely seen his friend so concerned.  “What’s the matter?”

“There’s NO ONE here!” Jack shouted, his voice echoing off the centuries-old walls.  “This is ROME . . . or close to it anyway.  The greatest city in the world!  How can there be no one here?  I mean, I know it’s just a bunch of boring ruined buildings, but it was like that in the Forum, too, and that place was packed!  What’s going on here?”

What Matthew most wanted to say was: “Just a bunch of boring ruined buildings?  The Forum?  The former center of the known world?  Admittedly, the signage there is lacking, so for someone unfamiliar with its history it might be difficult to appreciate, but still!  The FORUM?  Boring?  Let me tell you a thing or two about the Forum . . .”

What it would have been most honest for Matthew to say was: “I know.  That’s the reason I picked this place.  It’s not that I’m not interested in the history, because I am, but that’s not the reason I specifically chose to come here today.  I’m looking for the figure in gray.  I wanted somewhere with no one else around, no crowds to disappear into.  I know the gray-clad figure will have followed me here, because there are so many ruined walls and other convenient places to hide.  But he doesn’t know I’m looking for him.  He won’t be prepared.  All of a sudden I’ll jump around a wall and then BAM . . . um, something will happen.  I’m not exactly sure what.”

What Matthew actually said was: “Just because a place isn’t packed doesn’t mean it’s boring.  Some sites just take a little more effort to enjoy.  Ostia Antica isn’t famous like the Colosseum or the Circus Maximus, but it’s just as rich in historical significance—in fact, I’d say it’s even more so.  You have to imagine what it was like back in the old days.  Think about what the buildings looked like when they were whole.  Picture the streets when they were full of merchants pouring in from all around the Mediterranean Sea.  Trust me, you won’t think it’s boring then.”

Jack was trying, Matthew had to give him that.  He could see the effort on his friend’s face.  Unfortunately, there were just some things that Jack’s imagination was really good at and some things at which it was terrible.  So Matthew took pity on his friend and gave him something easier to work with.  “It was sacked by pirates, too.”

“What?” Jack asked.  Matthew could have sworn he saw his friend’s ears perk up.  “Did you say pirates?”

Matthew nodded.  “Now, there’s no record of any treasure being buried in this area, but . . .”

“Well why didn’t you say so in the first place?” Jack asked, his face breaking into a broad smile.  “We’ve got to hurry up and find this treasure before someone else does!  Come on, help me find a shovel!”

“Come on,” Jack said.  “We need to get back on the subway in order to return to the hotel.  The nearest stop is a bit of a walk from here.”

“How much is ‘a bit?’” Matthew mumbled, but apparently the subject was not open to debate.  Jack quickly trotted away from the Circus Maximus, showing no signs of fatigue from his earlier exertions, forcing Matthew, who both showed and felt plenty, to hurry after him.

As they speed-walked, Matthew reflected on the fact that “nearest” is a truly dubious word.  For example, Proxima Centauri is, as its name suggests, the nearest star to our solar system, but it would still take more than a lifetime to get there.  Coincidentally (or perhaps not), this was about how long Matthew felt it was going to take for them to reach the subway station.  Jack kept walking and walking, never slowing, only barely stopping to look before crossing streets.  The storefronts and apartments they walked by seemed hardly to change at all.  Matthew tried to ask how much farther they had to go several times, but Jack never responded.  Matthew assumed that his friend was lost, which was unfortunate, because until they ran into some sort of landmark, so was he.

Even a person who wasn’t desperately searching for something recognizable probably would have spotted that, though.

“Stop!” Matthew shouted.  Somewhat to his surprise, Jack did stop.  “What the heck is that?”

Jack peered over in the direction that Matthew was pointing.  “Isn’t that a section of the Aurelian Wall?”

“No, not that,” Matthew said irritably, shifting the orientation of his finger slightly.  “I know that’s part of the Aurelian Wall.  I’m talking about that!  The huge pyramid sticking out of it!  Wait, how do you know what—”

“Well, let’s just take a look at the guidebook, shall we?” Jack suggested brightly, pulling a small but thick book out of his jacket pocket.  He started rapidly flipping through pages, completely ignoring Matthew, who was repeatedly asking him when and where he had purchased a guidebook.  “Aha, here we go!” he announced a minute or two later.  “What we have here is the Pyramid of Cestius!”

“So what is it?” Matthew asked eventually, more than a little concerned that the answers were coming from Jack and not him.

“The pyramid was built around 12 BC, as a tomb for Caius Cestius Epulo, who was praetor, tribune of plebs, and a member of the Septemviri Epulonum.  It was built during a time when Rome was going through a fad for all things Egyptian, which explains the choice of a pyramid for a tomb, though whether its relative steepness is due to influence from the Ptolemaic dynasty or the pyramids of Nubia is unclear.  Roughly three hundred years after its construction, the pyramid, along with many other existing buildings, was incorporated into the Aurelian Wall for the sake of expediency and to save money.  During the Middle Ages the tomb’s origins were lost; many came to believe that it was the tomb of Remus because of its similarity to the pyramid-shaped tomb of Romulus, a belief that was supported by Petrarch.  The tomb’s true nature was rediscovered in the 1660’s during excavations carried out by Pope Alexander VII.”

“Oh,” Matthew said.  It took him a while to digest all the information that his friend had just spouted out.  It took him even longer to wrap his head around the fact that Jack was not only capable of reading and pronouncing things like “Caius Cestius Epulo” and “Septemviri Epulonum,” but also that he appeared to be capable of understanding them.

“We’d better keep moving,” Jack said, pocketing the book and gesturing for Matthew to follow him again.  “The subway stop isn’t far now.”

“Wait, we’re just going to leave?”

“You want to stay?” Jack asked.  “There isn’t really anything else to see here.  It’s just a pyramid.  The burial chamber is sealed off, so you can’t go inside.”

Matthew stared at his friend, profoundly perplexed.  Matthew did not want to stay; the problem was that he could not understand why his friend agreed with him.  Conspiracy freaks are supposed to go absolutely nuts over pyramids, claiming either that aliens taught the Egyptians how to build them or that the Egyptians taught aliens how to build them.  And the existence of the supposedly debunked rumor that it contained the final resting place of Remus should have made it all the more enticing for a man who had just spent the past couple of hours hunting for the Lupercal.  The burial chamber may have been sealed, but Matthew would have thought that that would stop his friend from trying to get in about as much as his common sense would have, which is to say not at all.

“You’re not Jack, are you?”

Jack nodded.  “But the question is,” he began, reaching down into another, surprisingly deep pocket of his jacket and whipping out a gray hooded cloak, “who am I?”

“Oh,” Matthew said, sounding a little disappointed and bored.  “This is a dream.”  He walked over to the pyramid and punched it as hard as he could.  No pain.  “Yup.  Dream.”

Matthew woke up immediately.  He was in the bed of the small hotel room that he and Jack were sharing.  Now that he was awake, he could see several reasons why the dream should have been obvious from the beginning: the Circus Maximus had its own perfectly good subway stop, his friend never would have worn a jacket on such a warm day, and every single person he had passed on the street was wearing either a toga or a full set of centurion’s armor.

He glanced over at Jack, who was sleeping in the cot they were taking turns using for the night.  He made a mental note never to go near the Pyramid of Cestius.  Sure, it had just been a dream, but he didn’t want to risk a repeat.  Once was unnerving enough.

“Hey, you wanna run a couple of laps of this thing?”

Matthew eyed his friend with amazement.  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“I’m deadly serious,” Jack said, and Matthew could tell that, unfortunately, he was.  “We’ve got to stay in shape if we’re going to take down this conspiracy.  We’re up against the Catholic Church, or maybe the oil industry, or alien overlords, or possibly even something worse than all of those put together!  We’ll have to narrowly escape from certain death in the nick of time every time!  How can you expect us to be able to do that if we don’t get a little exercise now and then?”

Matthew didn’t know what Jack’s definition of “a little” exercise was, but he was pretty sure that it was not remotely close to what either he or Noah Webster thought it should be.  “We’ve been walking all day,” he pointed out.  “Ever since we got off the subway this morning.”

“So?  We’re going to be walking all day every day that we’re here, aren’t we?  We need to be prepared for any situation.  The agents of evil aren’t necessarily going to attack us first thing in the morning, you know.  Don’t you remember when we were chased out of the Vatican by those guards?”

There were many things from Matthew’s past that he wished he could remember but had been lost in the flow of time: the feeling of the fur on his first dog, the name of the girl he had had a crush on in fifth grade just before he moved, countless other glimpses of childhood innocence.  On the other hand, he recalled with crystal clarity every incident of his life in which Jack had been present, and he could only assume it was because he wanted so desperately to forget them.

“I remember,” Matthew said, though he remembered differently.  “But I also remember running all the way up the Palatine Hill less than an hour ago, so I think I’m going to have to pass on the exercise for right now.  Honestly, I’m surprised that my legs let me walk this far without giving up.”

At that moment, Matthew’s legs, deciding to follow the Central Tenet of Cartoon Physics (namely, that no force in the universe can take effect until the person on whom it is trying to act realizes that it should be), collapsed underneath him, settling him into a sitting position on the grass surrounding the great dirt oval.  “See?” he said, wincing and wishing that he had been standing over a slightly less bumpy patch of ground.

Jack frowned but nodded.  It was plain to see that he had forgotten, both physically and mentally, running up the hill like a lunatic.  “I guess I’ll just have to run twice as many laps to cover your share as well.  Wait right there until I come back!” he said as he took off.

For various reasons, Matthew had no intention whatsoever of disobeying Jack’s order.  He also had no intention of telling Jack that his plan to run extra laps to cover up for him was absolute nonsense.  The longer his friend spent running around the old racetrack, the more time he had to rest and recuperate.

As Jack tore around the ancient dirt track, forcing the other tourists to wonder if he was an athlete in training or just some lunatic, Matthew sat in the stands of the Circus Maximus during the height of its glory.  A young, up-and-coming freedman chariot racer (whom Matthew could not get to stop looking like Charlton Heston despite his best efforts) flew by, and Matthew was close enough to feel the sting of the small particles that the whirring wooden wheels kicked up as they spun.

The race was not his primary focus, however; Matthew was more interested in the people in the stands.  He heard them roar with excitement, and he heard them roar even more loudly in disappointment when the favorite was beaten by a wealthy merchant’s dissolute son (some things don’t change much over the centuries).  There was even an emperor in attendance.  Matthew decided it was . . . oh, I don’t know.  Vespasian.

Entranced by his vision of the world that was, Matthew was able forget about his surroundings.  He could ignore the pain in his weary legs, and he didn’t have to worry about all the strange looks his friend was getting as he ran around and around the Circus Maximus.

But . . .

Every now and then, when there was a lull in the action, his mind slipped back to the present, and it invariably spent that time searching for the figure in gray.  He looked under trees, atop buildings, all along the Palatine ruins.  He did not really expect to find what he was looking for, but that did little to quell his need to look.

Matthew decided that enough was enough.  He was not going to put up with this obsession with the mystery figure.  He was going to catch him in the act, pull off the white sheet, shut down old man Macgregor’s projector and kazoo operation.  If he found out who the person was, he felt, it would no longer bother him.  Matthew did not yet know how he was going to do it, but he was certain he could come up with something.  At that moment his biggest concern was making sure that Jack did not find out, because his friend would undoubtedly want to help.

An excited Jack returned to the spot where Matthew was sitting.  “Hey, guess what I found?”

“What?” Matthew responded.  Then he remembered what Jack was looking for and immediately regretted his decision.

Words spilled from his mouth.  “There’s some stone stuff over in the corner in this fenced-off area and—”

“It’s not the cave.”

“Well how do you know?  You’re not even helping to look.”

“I can’t,” Matthew said.  He did not add, “I’m looking for something else.”

Their descent from the Palatine Hill was much less rapid than their climb.  Matthew thought it was ironic that when he had been leading, they charged up the hill like they were being chased by the hounds of Hell, and when he was following Jack, they moved at a gentle pace.  Then, just like everyone else who is too smart for his own good, he started to wonder if this was actually ironic or just one of those things that seemed like irony but that smart-alecks will tell you is just a coincidence or something like that.

Matthew did not have to spend any time figuring out why they were moving so slowly under Jack’s direction, because that was perfectly obvious: he was looking for the cave.  Matthew did, however, start to worry that his diversionary tactic may have worked a little too well.  His friend had hardly spoken since they decided, after fifteen minutes of arguing, that the ruins of the arena or garden or whatever it was had nothing at all to do with the Lupercal.  Matthew was sure that his friend would not find anything, because experts had tried for centuries and failed (and because his friend spent much of his time looking in places where one would be unlikely to find a cave, such as between blades of grass).  He was also sure that Jack would have no idea what to do even if he found it, because his friend knew as much about spelunking as he did about radiology.  Still, the fact that he kept looking so intently was unnerving.

Matthew was never able to decide for sure if his thought was ironic or not, because he was interrupted by a sudden command from his friend.  “Hey, look over there!” Jack said, pointing ahead of them at a long depression in the earth.  “I bet that could be—”

“It is not the Lupercal,” Matthew said forcefully.  He didn’t know whether to grin or groan.  At least they were getting a chance to see another one of the sites he had wanted to visit.  “This is the Circus Maximus.”

“Are you sure?” Jack asked.  “It doesn’t look like a circus.  There’s only the one ring, see?  Circuses have three.”

“That’s not what ‘circus’ means,” Matthew said with a sigh.

“No, I’m pretty sure that it is.  I’ve been to plenty of circuses before, and—”

“I mean, that’s not what ‘circus’ means in Latin.  It’s a race track.  Can’t you tell by the fact that it’s a big oval with raised areas on the sides for seats?  Think of it like the English word ‘circuit,’ not ‘circus.’”

Matthew felt that this explanation would have been completely satisfactory to any normal person, but he saw that his friend remained unsatisfied.  “Look, you know the part in Ben-Hur with the chariot race?”

Jack’s eyes lit up.  “Oh yeah!  Messala was riding a Greek chariot,” he added pointlessly.

“Yes, well, that was a circus.”  This seemed to shut Jack up for a while; presumably he was busy thinking about various other scenes from the movie.  Matthew took the chance to call up in his head scenes from history, trying to imagine what an actual chariot race would have looked like, as opposed to the over-dramatized Hollywood version.  He imagined the crowds in the now non-existent stands, cheering, booing, some of them even throwing things; this was long before the days when an event would be brought to a total halt simply because an errant beach ball bounced its way onto the field.

“So why is it called the Circus Maximus?” Jack asked, when he had finished his internal review of the epic.  Only Jack could manage to compress a three-and-a-half-hour movie into a few minutes.

Matthew opened his eyes.  Was his friend’s grasp of foreign language really so bad that he could not even recognize simple cognates?  “It’s because it was so big.  You know, like ‘maximum?’”

Jack frowned.  “It doesn’t look that big.  I bet the Indianapolis Speedway is at least twice as big as this thing.”

Matthew cringed at the thought that someone could compare ancient Roman chariot racing to modern NASCAR.  The comparison was perfectly apt, but it still made him shudder.  “It was big for back then,” he muttered, knowing that his friend was unlikely to accept such an excuse.

“So you say that Ben-Hur was here?” Jack said after a minute or two of silent thought.

Matthew had not said that, and if he had it would have been utter foolishness.  The chariot race in the movie took place in Judea, not Rome, and the character of Judah Ben-Hur was entirely fictional anyway.  But Matthew was still somewhat tired out from his earlier panicked running, so he did not have the energy to explain this to his friend.  “Sure.”

“And Ben-Hur was friends with Jesus Christ,” Jack continued.  Matthew recognized the look on his face: he was putting things together like a child determined to get pieces to fit into his jigsaw puzzle no matter what their shape.  “And we’re near the birthplace of the founder of Rome, where the headquarters of the Catholic Church is located.”

“Didn’t I already say that this isn’t the cave?” Matthew protested.  “And the Lupercal isn’t the birthplace of Romulus and Remus anyway; it’s where they were cared for by a wolf.”

“So it was still important to them.  And even if we’re not right by this cave, it must be close.  That’s the hill right over there, isn’t it?  He could have easily made a stop there before the race, pretending he just wanted a better view.”

Matthew sighed.  “So where are you going with this?” he asked wearily.  Knowing his friend, not even the sky was the limit.  Aliens featured frequently in Jack’s conspiracy theories.

“I’m not sure . . . yet.  But there’s definitely something here.  Something big.  Something . . . maximus.”  Jack grinned at his little joke; Matthew thought he might cry.