"Attractive, isn't she?" he said with a chuckle. "Ouch!" he said. "That
wasn't very lady-like."
"What wasn't?" asked Joan sweetly. "I didn't do anything."
"Well, someone kicked me," he replied.
"You don't think I'd do a thing like that? Do you?"
"Yes," he said. He inched ahead along the lightless passage.
"Jaro."
There was no reply.
"Jaro!" cried the girl in panic. "Where are you? Wait for me, Jaro.
I'll never kick you again."
"Is that a promise?" he asked from the darkness right at her ear.
"Eeek!" she gasped. "Yes, it's a promise, though I regret it already."
He chuckled, said, "Give me your hand," led her forward.
They had gone only a few yards, when his foot struck an obstacle.
"Careful," he warned. "Here's a stair." They crept up to the next
level. The familiar alcoves began again along the right hand wall. He
tried the first one. It revealed a rectangular tank of water some ten
by twenty feet. The walls were a mosaic of hand painted tile depicting
Nemi, the rain god, descending to Mercury in a shower, Nemi searching
for his bride, Nemi at the nuptial feast. The fourth wall was the one
through which they were looking; and they couldn't see its decoration.
From the realism of the ancient artist and the sequence of events, Jaro
decided it was just as well they couldn't.
"Whew," he said, "what a bathroom!"
Joan put her eye to the peep hole. Jaro gaped in amazement. From a
circular hole in the ceiling poured a curtain of rain. The shaft,
he realized, must lead straight up through the different levels and
through the roof. A raised dais with a rim around it received the rain
in the center of the room. The surface of the dais he saw, was composed
of a springy wire mesh through which the water drained into some
subterranean channel.
"The bed of Nemi," said Joan. "That's where the queen must sleep on her
wedding night. Nemi is supposed to visit her in the rain."
"What a clammy way to spend your wedding night," Jaro said, putting
his eye back to the aperture. The appointments of the chamber were
magnificent. It glowed with a rosy, pulsating light. The floor was
carpeted with a shaggy white rug; a divan large enough to hold at least
six people rested against the left hand wall. Around the walls ran
murals depicting the exploits of Nemi: Nemi touching the red egalet
which burst into flower, Nemi squeezing the juice from a cluster of
Latonka grapes.
The next room proved to be an ordinary sleeping chamber, obviously
the bedroom of the queen for the remainder of the year. Jaro saw a
beautiful Mercurian girl packing clothes and trinkets into a chest. The
green band about her ankle marked her as a temple priestess. She was
singing a lilting, happy refrain in the odd language of Mercury as she
went about her work.
Joan put her eye to the hole.
"That's the ex-queen," she informed him. "She's getting ready to move
to the apartments of the temple priestess."
"She doesn't seem unhappy at her approaching bereavement," said Jaro.