Just moments after sending my non-fiction manuscript off for copy-edits – and about six months after an epochal two weeks spent in the fascinating isles of Orkney – a new notion bubbled up from the world of Finds&Keepers: what if Tanny somehow got back her Tanny Sense? Or what exactly IS her Tanny Sense? Simply her second sight, sacrificed to save Jim in Place of Sacrifice, or is it more bone-deep than that? And what if her latest child, Hailey Persephone, is somehow involved in a new adventure set in Orkney? Never mind that the action will have to be set some years into the future, since technically Persie is about two years old at the time of this writing. Archaeo-Futurism, anyone?
REFLECTIONS ON A SERIES
It began with a phone call to a crowded graduate student office, one muggy New Jersey summer afternoon. The voice mentioned something about an unrobbed sacrificial chamber, then asked for a very large favor indeed.
Two years of writing and five books later, Jim’s life is saved, Tanny has a final baby and the likelihood of tenure on the way, the excavation site near Orvieto beckons, and their two eldest Riverbankers are all but launched into the world.
What is a romance, after all, without a happy ending?
But that search for happiness would take me to strange interior places. Remembered landscapes rose up, but shibboleths of death were there, too. I found myself in the Green Lands, and walking down the hallways of memory to my characters’ interior hearths. I constructed a plausible – and gory – ritual for the banishment of sinister elementals. I cooked up a ridiculous Atlantis cult based upon real obsessions, and followed the sullied trail of my anti-hero to his own brand of redemption.
Mostly I dug deep into my own experience of love, the friction and obsession of it, the teamwork and compromises, and the deep fear of loss. My own mother’s brushes with death, the eventual death of both my parents, and the regrets around those events that time only temporarily removes, all found echoes in the stories.
Ursula K. LeGuin has said that we do not write our lives into our stories word for word. Rather, they are the bits and pieces, the mulch from which our stories grow.
There are other things that arise entirely on their own, the tertium quid when the characters stand up and demand to be heard. When a character reaches out of his own volition and kisses his graduate student, startling not only them both, but me, too.
Then there were the visions, things I know must be in the story, even when so much else is revised away. Of a fighter plane, crashing into a mesa near San Jon, New Mexico. Of a helicopter, pulling away from Aetna. A poem that finally scans. Two children coming to a back door on a rainy night, startling a stern old man. A man falling from a tower.
What of the visions that had no place in the story, like Gesualdo on his scooter, eternally racing along the street on the ridge of Monte Mario, going...where?
It has been a long, strange, rich ride.
Glossary for Deep Scansion
Glossary & Dramatis Personae for Deep Scansion, Book 2 in the Finds & Keepers series
• Aeneid, Vergil’s – written by Publius Vergilius Maro from 29 to 19 BC, in 9,896 lines of dactylic hexameter divided into 12 books. It is a Latin epic poem that tells the story of Aeneas, a Trojan prince, the son of the hero Anchises and the goddess Venus. He escaped the fall of Troy and led a group of refugees to central Italy by way of Carthage and Sicily.
• Aetna, Mt. – (or Etna) an active stratovolcano on the eastern coast of Sicily.ß
• anceps – (Latin) according to Tanny it is “place where stress goes” on a word. See also syllaba anceps.
• andate e ritorno – “going and return” = a round-trip ticket.
• amblyopia – weakness of the eye.
• animali – nickname either of the students of the Arca (get it: Ark, animals?) or of the Riverbankers, Mole and Ratty.
• Arca – see Rome Center for Ancient Studies.
• Arezzo – ancient Arretinum, an Etruscan town on the Val di Chiana, famous for its beautiful red-clay Arretine (also called Samian) pottery and its fabulous yellow gold. More recently exorcised by Saint Francis of Assisi and the site of a yearly Giostra, a joust held every September in the Piazza Grande, as well as a monthly Antiquarian Fair.
• arsis – (Greek) stressed syllable in a word: where the ictus falls, though there is some argument about this.
• asino – “donkey” or “stubborn fool”
• Babbo, il babbo – “Daddy” aka Angelo Cotto, chief archaeologist at La Castellina and old friend of the Lewises.
• Bassi, Luisa – Full Professor of Archaeology at UNITO (the University of Torino) with a joint appointment at the University of Rome, La Sapienza. Recent recipient of a large grant to dig in the Imperial Fora of central Rome, specifically in the ruins of the Temple of Peace. The granting agency was known as The Atlantis Trust. She was also a high school exchange student to Tuscon, staying with the Lewises when Jim was in middle school. Seduced him, but never went “all the way,” and has been obsessed with him, ever since.
• basta – “enough, that’s all”
• battibecco – “squabble”
• BCP – Book of Common Prayer, mainstay of Episcopalian worship.
• bestia – “beast, animal, monster.” (Italian – as are all translated terms unless otherwise indicated)
• binario – “track” as in the track at a railway station where you catch or meet a train.
• bistecca fiorentina – an enormous Chianina-beef t-bone steak, sold in weights of one kilo or more, traditionally served with a side of spinach and fries.
• Bonifazzi, Caterina – beloved of Lavinia Bradley-Arnold, who met her when she was Secretary of the Department of Art History in Princeton. Mother of Giovanni Bradley-Arnold, whose father is John-Allen Prester via artificial insemination. Also sometime lover of Gesualdo Verbicaro.
• Bonisti – students at Santa Bona (q.v.)
• borsina/e – a thin plastic shopping bag with handles. Italy had them earlier than most.
• Bosco Parrasio – “Forest of Parrhasius” is an ancient park on the steep slope of the Janiculum Hill of Rome, wedged between the public gardens and botanical gardens to its north and the stairway/street of Via di Porta San Pancrazio to its south. The tall gates at the base of the slope are labeled with their name. In the Renaissance, it was a sort of Lyceum. As Parrhasius ruled Arcadia, Parrhasia is another name for Arcady, an idyllic pastoral paradise.
• Brothers of the Book – a creepy organization whose financial branch is the Atlantis Trust, made up of white males who want to rule the world as Philosopher Kings by means of magic, violence, misogyny, smoke, and mirrors. HQ is on the imaginary island of Alegria.
• Buon divertimento – “have fun!”
• caffe lungo – a cup of drip coffee
• caligae – (Latin) a stout shoe with a heel, a Roman soldier’s boot, worn with socks.
• cantina – the place on an Italian farm where the bottling is done, whether bottling olive oil or wine or both.
• cara – a common Italian endearment meaning “dear.” Masculine = caro. Also carina. Che carina! means “what a little dear girl!”
• Carnivale – the season between Epiphany and Lent, when children in Italy dress up, people throw confetti (what they call coriandoli) at each other, and eat rich fritters.
• Casti, Francesco “Cecco” – friend and conspirator of Marc B. Short, comes from a wealthy family in Viterbo, studies to become a doctor, comes to a bad end.
• Chase, Mary Coyle – journalist and playwright most famous for the eternal hit play Harvey, about a 6-foot white pooka and Elwood P. Dowd, the man who can see him.
• chimera – a mythological beast originating in Asia Minor, part lioness and part fire-breathing goat, with a snake for a tail. Vanquished by Bellerophon on board Pegasus. Part of a famous bronze group found buried near the train station of Arezzo. Chimaerism is when DNA is exchanged between unborn babies and their mothers, resulting in changes to maternal appearance. Also refers to blending of fraternal twins into a single individual.
• ciào – (Italian) “hello, goodbye” from the Venetian dialect, s-ciào (vostro) “(Your) slave,” in the sense of “Your obedient servant.” Ciào, bella/o! – “Hello, beautiful/handsome!”
• Cloaca Maxima – “Biggest Sewer” (Latin) built in Rome’s earliest days to drain the Forum Romanum, but added to down the ages. Still drains into the Tiber.
• cornetti – Italian-style breakfast croissants, brushed with sugar syrup and often filled with custard or jam or chocolate.
• Cotto, Michele-Angelo (“il babbo,” Angelo) – Director of Excavation at La Castellina, professor of archaeology at La Sapienza. Owner of the Range-Rover and father with Anna-Maria Ficino-Cotto of Franco, Lorenzo and Andrea Cotto.
• crotalis – a small cymbal or jingle-bell.
• DE PEREGRINATIONE IN MUNDO ANIMARUM – See LoCieco, Padre.
• Die Fledermaus – an operetta that premiered in 1874, with music by Johann Strauss II, in which a man plots a humorous revenge upon a friend who allowed him to be found asleep in public dressed as a bat, or “fledermaus,” after attending a costume party and getting drunk.
• doppelgänger – “double-goer” (German)
• Din Giovanni – Mozart’s operatic masterpiece featuring sublime music and the last acts of a predator upon females and murderer of their protectors, culminating in a dinner to which he has invited his most recent victim, Il Commendatore, who takes him bodily to hell.
• dottore/dottoressa – “learned person” not necessarily “Doctor.”
• drachma – (Greek) a silver coin in this case issued by Athens, given by Dr. Lewis to Tanny some years back when she had done heroic work on the Finds Catalogue. It came with a hug. She had it strung as a pendant on a necklace and wore it almost constantly.
• drogheria – little grocery store
• edicola – a newsstand
• È niente! – “It’s nothing!”
• eff, effing – standing in for the ubiquitous and sexist f-bomb and its allied verbs.
• Fontana Paola – a large and beautiful fountain at the top of the Janiculum, dedicated by Pope Paul V in 1612 at the end -- of the restored Aqua Traiana aqueduct re-named in his honor.
• Serafina Fidati (Short) – the Arca’s peerless and beautiful Executive Assistant and sister of Lydia Fidati Buoncompagni, Arca cook. Aka Fina or Ninnù.
• Foundation and Empire, a science fiction novel by Isaac Asimov.
• gelato – Italian ice-cream, less creamy, more intensely flavored and softer than American ice cream, with usually more than one flavor per cone or cup.
• Golden Bough, The – a huge compendium of the world’s magical and animist practices by Sir J. G. Frazier, published between 1890-1915. But the name comes from the magical branch used by Aeneas to access the Underworld alongside the Sibyl of Cumae.
• Greenough, William T. Burnsey – aka “Daddy Bill,” Tanny’s father, an Air Force Pilot and amateur classicist, the great-grandson of William Sandhurst Greenough, “The Great Classicist.” Bill died under mysterious circumstances when Tanny was 15, crashing a fighter jet he was ferrying to Colorado into a mesa near San Jon, New Mexico. Looked like suicide.
• Greenough-Lewis, Tanaquil Susannah – aka Tanny, Tanina, the River, Tanny-Sue, comrade. Our biracial heroine, half Black, half Norwegian. Just turning thirty when our story starts, she has already earned her Masters of Science in Classical Archaeology from Princeton and is hard at work on her Doctorate.
• ictus – (Latin) the stress or “down-beat” on a certain syllable of a given word.
• Il Messaggero – the morning daily paper of Rome.
• in vino veritas – (Latin) “in wine (is) truth” meaning that when people get drunk they stop holding back what they truly feel.
• Jim – see James Pericles Lewis.
• Jones, Matthew Arnold – Procurator of the Brothers of the Book. Or maybe the whole kit and kaboodle, other than his small circle of sick pals and those guys with stones. Hard to say.
• La Castellina – “the little citadel,” furthest northeastern corner of the ancient city site of Tarquinia, where Tanaquil has done all of her archaeological work to date, and whose curse was only lifted a few months (or hours) before this story begins. Features at the site include the mundus, the hypogeum, the Temple of Vanth and Tages, the Hut Circle, and the Place of Sacrifice. This last is a sore point with our heroes, who have very different ideas as to what is in it. If Tanny is right, it contains the bones of plague victims; Jim says they are soldier bones.
• Lanciani, Rodolfo Amedeo Giuseppe Filippo, born 2 January, 1845, died 21 May 1929, an archaeologist and art historian. He was known for his studies of the topography and monuments of the city of Rome, was prominent in excavation work at the site of ancient Rome and occupied the chair of science at the University of Rome. He also lectured at Harvard College, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. In this story, he is the outward appearance of St. Michael the Archangel.
• La Sapienza – the University of Rome “La Sapienza,” founded in 1303, with one of the largest enrollments of any European university, frequently ranks first in the world for classics and ancient history. Jim (as an adjunct) and Angelo are both members of the faculty of La Sapienza’s Department of Historical, Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences of Antiquity.
• latte caldo – “hot milk”
• Lewis, James Pericles – aka Giacomo, Pericles, Jimmy, “the Badger.” Tanny’s “colleague, spouse, and best beloved,” Princeton Professor of Classics, gifted archaeologist, Arca Director, and father of the Riverbankers (q.v.). He is only five years older than Tanny, having starting college at a very tender age.
• Lewis, Horace Nathaniel – “Nate,” father of J. P. Lewis (et al.), husband of Irene, and Chair of the Mathematics Department at the University of New Mexico, Tucson.
• Lewis, Irene Morris – wife of Nate, mother of Anna (surgeon, wife of Steve Smith the financier), Claudia (lawyer, music-lover, wife of Jake Englebreit the engineer) and J. P. Lewis (q.v.), longtime head of a private school, retired after being diagnosed with congestive heart failure.
• Liddell, Elisa – professor of Greek at the RCAS and renter of the Villa Diana.
• LoCieco, Padre Titono Empedicleo – Tanny’s late god-father, a priest-warlock who taught her how to travel by means of Lucid Dream Travel using his book DE PEREGRINATIONE IN MUNDO ANIMARUM, “Concerning travel in the world of the spirits.” He died dramatically while exorcising La Castellina of both a Vanth and Tuchulcha.
• long by nature – when a syllable has stress or length because of its stem or inflexion, not because of its position relative to other syllables.
• long by position – when a syllable gains stress or length because of its position relative to other syllables, specifically if it comes before a pair of consonants or a diphthong.
• lorica plumata – (Latin) “feathered breastplate” was a beautiful chain-mail shirt decorated with feather-cut silver scales and worn as parade armor by Roman soldiers.
• Magician’s Nephew, The – children’s fantasy by C. S. Lewis (no relation), which recounts the Beginning of Narnia, including the episode of The Wood Between the Worlds.
• marito – “husband”
• matrimoniale – “wedding (bed),” either a double bed or a room with a double bed.
• merenda – “worthy of being deserved” (Latin) a mid-morning or mid-afternoon snack.
• Michael the Archangel – patron of children and those who must go to war, chief of the archangels in the Judeo-Christian tradition. He overcame the rebellious angel Lucifer and his name means “He Who Is Like God.” In this story, invoked by their mothers, he watches over Serafina and Tanny.
• Mor – “Mother” (Norwegian), what the Riverbankers call Tanny and what Tanny calls her mother, Hailey Niilasdatter Greenough, whom the Riverbankers call Bestemor, “Grandma.”
• Morris, Tyler – son of Jim’s mother Irene’s second cousin Lizzy, he is an undergraduate in the Santa Bona overseas studies program in Castiglion Fiorentino, mostly to be near his obsession, namely Tanny. He basically wants whatever his famous relative has.
• mundus – (Latin) “world” but also a pit for offerings that is open on certain days of the year and acts as a channel of communication between human beings and cthonic deities.
• naturalmente -- “naturally”
• negroni – a potent cocktail involving equal parts sweet vermouth, a dark digestivo like Cynar, and gin or vodka, served on the rocks with a twist of orange peel.
• Nero – “black” in this case the name of Clo’s kitten and not the Julio-Claudian emperor.
• Ninnù – nickname of Serafina Fidati.
• Numero venti-nove – “Number twenty-nine” is the location of the house in the hamlet of Mammi where Tanny hid away that fall, trying to finish her dissertation and hide out.
• ostinato – “O obstinate one”
• panino/i – sandwich sold at a coffee bar, made on a long bun and grilled on demand.
• Panorama – a weekly news magazine published in Italian. Marc Short does freelance work with them.
• Pantano, Giulia – Marc Short’s aunt-by-marriage and former Director of Tarquinia’s National Etruscan Museum, until she and her husband Riccardo were caught smuggling.
• Papagena/Papageno – two characters from Mozart’s The Magic Flute who wind up with each other at the end of the opera, clearly made for one another.
• Paolini, Col. Pasquale – a good friend of Professor of Jurisprudence Anna-Maria Ficino (see Angelo Cotto), he is attached to the Tarquinia Municipal Police and in charge of the investigation of missing antiquities from La Castellina, with a large file on Marc Short.
• pasticcia – an Italian version of pastitsio, a meat casserole topped with béchamel. Tanny calls it “an insanely-tasty kind of Italian moussaka,” but pasticcia doesn’t have eggplant in it.
• patatina – “little potato,” Minnie’s first nickname.
• patricide – (Latin) “killing of one’s father” punishable in ancient Rome by being sewn up in a sack with various vicious live animals and being thrown in the river.
• pere et fils – (French) “father and son”
• perfetto – “perfect”
• Pichetti, Leonardo (“Leo”) – Marc Short’s cousin on his mother’s side.
• piedi sono freddissimi – “feet are extremely cold”
• Pinacoteca – Art Gallery
• Polizia di Stato – National Police Force that assists local police agencies.
• Porta Romana, Porta Fiorentina, etc. – “Rome Gate, Florentine Gate” are the gates in a walled town like Castiglion Fiorentino or Viterbo out of which the road goes to that city.
• Potts, Dr. Emmett – Professor of Poetics and Chair of Princeton’s Department of Classics and Tanny’s Doctoral Advisor, now that she’s gone and married her old one, J. P. Lewis.
• Preliminary Exams – subject examinations a doctoral student must pass before reaching the “all but dissertation” stage of doctoral candidacy.
• Prester, Rev. John-Allen – aka “Prester John,” Padre, or “Johnny, he is Tanny’s closest friend since their years together at St. John’s Episcopal School in San Antonio, Texas. They were in many Gilbert & Sullivan operettas together, he as the tenor lead and she as the contralto. She once kissed him backstage, discovering his preference for boys over girls. With Gesualdo Verbicaro, he is one of The Guys, family friends of the Lewises.
• quincunx – (Latin) a square pattern of four evenly-spaced objects with a fifth in the middle, as in the 5 face of a die or the planting pattern of an orchard.
• ragazzo/a – “kid”
• Rasenna – the language used by the Etruscans, who called themselves Rasenna. There are plenty of notions as to where these people came from, ranging from the island of Lemnos to the earth of Italy itself, but their language is most unlike Latin. Contrary to the myth perpetuated in my stories, only a very few words of it survive. Hence is it “exiguous.”
• Riverbankers – children of James Pericles Lewis (“the Badger”) and Tanaquil Greenough-Lewis (“the River”). The biological mother of elder two, Cloelia Agnes (“the Mole”) and Horatio Lawrence (“the Rat”) is Lavinia Bradley-Arnold, but they were adopted by Tanaquil upon her marrying of James. Mole and Ratty are respectively eleven and six years older than Erminia Cecilia (“the Otter”) and eleven and seven years older than Peter Cincinnatus and Cornelia Irene (“the Field Mice”). Fred Cole, an old friend of Jim’s, gave Clo and Larry this nickname.
• Roman food – as seen in Chapter XXV, Tanny would argue it is the best in Italy and therefore in the world, because of its variety and excellence. Some of her favorites include “saltimbocca and cacio e pepe with a side of cicoria.”
• Rome Center for Ancient Studies (RCAS, or “Arca,” for short), imaginary home of a semester-long overseas-study program for thirty-odd fortunate scholarship-supported undergraduate fellows, located in the Villa Parrasia a building set within the ancient Bosco Parrasio on the slopes of Rome’s Janiculum Hill. Their logo is a faun playing a flute and their motto is Et in Arcadia Ego.
• meter – (Greek) the rhythmic pattern of a line of poetry.
• Monteverde Vecchio – the part of Rome just south of the Janiculum Hill, just east of Villa Doria Pamphilij and just west of Trastevere.
• raku – (Japanese) “enjoyment” but technically the name for a free-style form of pottery from Japan that is removed from the kiln while still hot, with interesting texture effects.
• sacrilegio – what you yell when someone breaks a religious law.
• Salvator Mundi – “Savior of the World,” an international hospital in Monteverde Vecchio.
• Santa Bona – named after the patroness of tour guides, this overseas studies program in Castiglion Fiorentino caters mostly to architects from American colleges.
• Sardegna = Sardinia
• sbarramento – “blockage, dam”
• Scansion – please see Tanny’s description in Chapter One of Deep Scansion or consult a Latin or Greek Grammar.
• Serafina – see Fidati (Short)
• short by nature – when a syllable is short because of its stem or inflexion.
• Short, Marcus Boethius – the perfectly-built, amazingly good-looking (medium, dark, and handsome) Dr. Lewis’ former graduate student, Tanny’s former boyfriend and the former site photographer. Born in Providence, Rhode Island, his mother was from Sardinia and married his American father when he came to the island to work for a mining consortium. He was deeply involved in stealing jewelry from the La Castellina site for an illegal antiquities trade run by the late Tony Ellington. Also known as Boetio Corto or Eto Corto.
• si – “Yes.”
• signora, signore, signorina – “Madame, Sir, Miss”
• Skagen – a kind of analog wrist watch with a durable metal-mesh wristband.
• Società Geografica Italiana - Unità di Ricerca e Sviluppo (SGIUdiReS) – a venerable geographical society housed in the Palazzetto Mattei on Rome ‘s Caelian Hill, with a well-endowed library including exploration maps, globes, and a mysterious box in the basement.
Sparks, Christopher “Buster” John (“Daddy Buster”) – Tanny’s step-father, a mechanic at Lackland Air Force Base. Had been good friend of Bill and Hailey Greenough before Bill’s crash. Taught Tanny everything he could about casting and smithery.
• Stai attento! – “Watch out! Stay alert!”
• Stazione – a train station. Stazione Termini is Rome’s chief station, named after the nearby ruins of the vast Baths (Terme) of Diocletian.
• stregheria – “witchcraft” or the power possessed by a witch or warlock. Tanny has plenty of this, focused in her right eye, where her second-sight or “Tanny-sense” resides.
• studentessa – just what it sounds like: a girl student.
• syllaba anceps – the process whereby a syllable loses it original value, becoming whatever is required of it to make the meter work at the end of a line of poetry. Metaphorically, this is what Tanny calls “deep scansion,” where people’s natures are changed by circumstances to something unlike their usual selves.
• “Tanny-sense” – see stregheria.
• tanti auguri! – “best wishes!”
• telefonino – a cell-phone of the more old-fashioned, folding type.
• televisore – “television set”
• tessera – a bus pass
• thesis – (Greek), in our context, one of the unstressed syllables of a word.
• “tick-tick” – Jim’s father’s railway watch, a fine large repeater with a chain, much beloved of Minnie, and handy in a pinch.
• Tuchulcha – the winged Etruscan death-demon who is male, green, has snaky hair, a beaky nose, donkey ears and carries a big double-sided hammer. Ruled by Nefluns, god of water.
• va bene? – “it goes well? Okay?”
• Vanth – the winged Etruscan death-demon who is female, white, has a flip hairdo, wears a fluttery skirt but no blouse and carries a long golden torch. Ruled by Begoia, goddess of lightning.
• Verbicaro, Gesualdo – aka “Waldo,” acrobat and gymnastics teacher at All Saints Church, Rome, where he was raised as a foster child. Son of a Rom (“gypsy”) woman and an Italian circus strongman, he was rejected by both his Rom families. He is John-Allen Prester’s partner and the sometime lover of Caterina Bonifazzi.
• vero? – “true? right?”
• Villa Parrasia – see Rome Center for Ancient Studies.
• Zazi – a friend of Leo’s fiancée Lia. She has a hair salon in Montecelio.
• Zinnibiri Mannu – a seaside village on the east coast of Sardinia.