Sixtine- The Complete Trilogy Box Set

by Caroline Vermalle

  “No,” Sixtine sighed. “I spent my teenage years going through that trunk, hoping to find something she might have left me before she died. There was nothing there. I don’t think she wanted to leave me with decades old electricity bills and hotel brochures. Most of them will end up in the trash. I have no idea what Gigi meant when she talked about my mother’s secrets.”

  The different glow in Thaddeus’s gray eyes prompted Sixtine to reveal the old woman’s last words to him.

  “That’s what she said just before she died,” Sixtine added. “Apparently, my mother kept secrets. And Gigi realized something when I got out of the pyramid. She said the secret was in my name.”

  “The key to secrecy is like an answer to a question. The important thing is that you know the question,” Thaddeus proclaimed.

  “The problem is, I have no idea.”

  Thaddeus raised an apprehensive eyebrow as her thoughts seemed to dwell elsewhere.

  “The last few days with Gigi,” Sixtine said, “she asked me what I wanted to do with my life. It upset her, to think that I might want to leave the world. She thought I was much too young, that I still had a lot of life ahead of me. It is true that since the pyramid, I have mainly tried to gather the pieces of the past.”

  She sighed and put the pages and papers back inside the trunk, leaving only the photo album and the kraft envelope on the floor.

  “That’s what’s left of it. A photo album that comes apart at the seams and that.”

  She reached for the envelope, and picked it up, but the contents spilled onto the floor. Paper clippings, folded photocopies, scribbled sheets, cut-out items.

  Thaddeus grabbed one and read the words scribbled on them. “These are poems.”

  “Yes,” Sixtine nodded. “I couldn’t find a signature or a name. There are several different handwritings. One of them is my mother’s, but I don’t recognize the others. I don’t think she wrote them, she copied them, maybe. I’m not sure why I keep them. Maybe because they’re talking about what Gigi was worried about, and the coincidence is – I don’t know – strangely comforting.”

  “What are they talking about?”

  “Classic themes of poetry. Living in the present moment, death gives meaning to life, and so on. Not very original.”

  “But true,” Thaddeus added, inspecting one of the sheets.

  “Hmm,” Sixtine said, taking the page from Thaddeus’s hand and stuffing it back into the torn envelope. “Gigi’s death opened my eyes. I’ve spent the last few months living like a ghost. To settle past scores. I paid a lot of money to find out the truth. Now I know who I am.”

  She stuck the envelope between the pages of the album and stood up.

  “And today, I finally realized,” she said as she closed the trunk lid in a clatter of dust, “I want to live.”

  She sat on the trunk and looked into Thaddeus’s eyes. She wanted to tell him so many things, to share with him this possible future glimpsed in the dunes, but no words wanted to come out.

  “I have to go back to New York,” he said suddenly. “I have things to fix.”

  “De Bok ?” she said in a whisper, her throat tightened.

  He remained perfectly still, with that particular intensity that had always fascinated her. Could he read in her eyes the images that passed through her consciousness? The moment he shot De Bok in cold blood to save her life? Or the one where she escaped, pursued by armed men, only in front of his salvation to the great alabaster statue haloed in blue?

  “You’re afraid they’ll find me, aren’t you?” he asked.

  Sixtine didn’t want to lie, so she lowered her gaze. She stood up, took his hand, and drew him against her. As soon as his body was pressed up against hers, everything changed. In the middle of the dark attic, their bodies fused as if they had been shaped from the same rare substance. Sixtine felt every part of her being relaxed, grow, blossom. She was where she should be.

  “You want a new beginning, Sixtine?” he whispered, his lips brushing against hers. “You don’t have to leave. You just need to stop being afraid. Then your life will begin, and I promise you it will be beautiful.”

  Thaddeus’s gray eyes came alive with tenderness, and Sixtine smiled.

  “But I want to take you somewhere,” he continued. “Because the secret is in your name, Sixtine, and I know exactly where to look for it.”

  4

  Dressed in a rose-gold evening gown, Sixtine made her way through the Vatican corridors, her high heels clicked on the marble floors. She was surprised she was still able to walk in heels; Jessica was still very much alive inside her.

  She was finally going to discover The Sistine Chapel, and with it, the secret of her name.

  Making her way through those corridors, she noticed that the very mention of Thaddeus di Blumagia opened the doors of Rome as much as those of Mexico City. Even at eleven o’clock at night, when the last tourists of the night tours were escorted to the exit and silence finally settled around Saint Peter’s Basilica, the doors were still open for them, in their evening wear.

  Thaddeus spoke in Italian to several security guards, who let them pass without verifying their identity. He was confidence personified and never lost his way in the maze of ornate corridors. They met a cardinal in his black and red suit who was focused on his mobile phone. Thaddeus greeted him in German and the cardinal’s body jolted, mumbling hello. They passed nuns, men in uniforms, technicians in jeans who dismantled tapestries. Several of them exchanged pleasantries with Thaddeus, but kept it brief. Sixtine had never learned Italian before, yet it seemed to her that she understood the message Thaddeus portrayed.

  At the end of the hallway, the key keeper waited for them.

  As they went up a few steps, she took Thaddeus’s arm and breathed a mischievous tone onto him. “Why is it that you feel so at home in the most secretive places in the world? There must be hundreds, if not thousands of employees here.”

  “Five thousand, to be exact. But the places here are passed down from generation to generation. Come back in ten years and you’ll see the same people again. And I don’t want to disappoint you, but this part is open to the four winds. If I really wanted to access the secrets of the Vatican, such as the fortress where the chests are located, or the prison, I could, but I’d still have some difficulty.”

  “Some difficulty. Yeah, right. You can manage anything,” Sixtine scoffed, raising an eyebrow.

  A rattle echoed down the stairs and Thaddeus stopped. “My friend Alessio is very sensitive to grappa aged in oak barrels.”

  “Who is Alessio?”

  A short man with a flat nose and a military haircut approached them with great strides, and Sixtine assumed he was the man Thaddeus had referred to.

  He clutched a key ring made up of countless keys, and Thaddeus went to meet him. The two men greeted one another warmly, speaking loudly and at the same time. Alessio then turned his attention to Sixtine in her rose-gold dress at the top of the stairs. With bright eyes, he addressed her in a few Italian words in a tone that sounded like meditation, which cause Sixtine’s pale skin to flush. Italian was a beautiful and somewhat alluring language and it sent shivers through her body.

  “He is delighted to meet you and finds you even more charming than he imagined,” Thaddeus said, translating what Alessio had said.

  “I am flattered,” Sixtine replied, looking at Thaddeus.

  The three of them continued to walk under the high golden ceilings, the sound of their footsteps on the marble floors. Sixtine had left the two men to their conversation and never tired of admiring the treasures adorning every inch of the building. They entered an antechamber, the Sala Regia, and it was magnificent. The richness of the stucco ornaments, the marble marquetry, the brightly colored frescoes, everything contributed to an explosion of opulence.

  They walked towards a large door strangely reduced by the rich decor around it.

  Alessio presented one of the hundreds of keys in front of the
lock, made two turns, then turned to face Thaddeus and Sixtine. He took the young woman’s hand and kissed it, observed her with almost religious fervor, then left, leaving in her wake a symphony of rattling.

  “Are you ready?” Thaddeus asked.

  When Sixtine nodded, he opened the large door.

  Her breath was lost in her chest. What was before her was so wonderful and so vast that she did not know where to look. All around her, the walls, floor and ceiling expressed the sublime paroxysm of beauty, art and human excellence. The empty space inside the chapel in which she stood was charged with a magical and regenerating energy.

  The Sistine Chapel.

  The same chapel which had moved her mother so much, moved her in turn.

  Thaddeus explained that it was a privilege to enter through this door; tourists had to enter through a small door at the other end, and did not see Michelangelo’s works as the great artist had imagined them.

  However, Sixtine didn’t listen, as she was transported by the story the frescoes whispered into her soul.

  They spoke to her in a language she understood.

  She recognized everything, every detail, every character, every symbol.

  Since she had left the pyramid, she had been surprised by the unexpected revelation of this knowledge, the source of which she did not know, and she had always observed this anomaly with a detached curiosity. But these discoveries had never brought her so much joy.

  Here, Sixtine felt at home, in communion with the whole as well as with every detail.

  She recognized Christ’s ancestors at the edge of the ceiling. Then the prophets, and, in the highest part, the nine stories of the Book of Genesis. Adam’s creation, that moment when God touched man’s finger, moved her as her eyes filled with tears. She also discovered Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, the Great Flood. And at the back of the chapel, covering the entire altar wall, Michelangelo’s greatest fresco and its four hundred characters.

  The Last Judgment.

  Sixtine did not even notice Thaddeus observed each of her movements, each of her reactions. The attraction of the fresco was so strong that it guided her steps towards the altar. The work was centered around Christ, revealing the wounds of his crucifixion, alongside the Virgin Mary. Christ looked down at a damned man.

  Mary, on the other hand, looked at the souls of the chosen ones, dedicated to heaven. It was the journey of souls that most fascinated Sixtine. Seven angels of Revelations woke the dead to the sound of trumpets. From their tombs, the chosen souls ascended to heaven, helped by other angels in the air or on clouds. None of the angels had wings, and they could have been confused with men. The damned, on the other hand, were destined to be sent to Hell by the ferryman Charon, and Minos, son of Hades, an atrocious character with a reptile’s body. The demons pulled them towards the gaping mouth of the furnace, but many tried to escape and ascend to heaven. One of the angels showed them the book where their sins had been recorded, probably to prove to them that what awaited them was only just compensation for their crimes, but other angels did not hesitate to use their divine power to repel them.

  “The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all the causes of sin and all those who commit iniquity, and they will throw them into the fiery furnace,” Thaddeus whispered.

  “Then the righteous will shine like the sun in their Father’s kingdom,” Sixtine continued, her eyes still fixed on the fresco. “The Last Judgment.”

  They remained motionless for a long time, then Sixtine said in a calm tone, “What I like about this fresco is how much all these characters look like us. Look how human they are. Their emotions, their doubts, their distress. Even the separation of souls, between the chosen and the damned, one does not have the impression that the saints are very sure of this judgment. And Mary seems resigned, thoughtful. They are divine, yet perfectly imperfect.”

  “If you are looking for the meaning of life, it is there,” Thaddeus said. “The explanation is imperfect, because the artist was a man and those who commissioned the work wanted to impose their religion, but the truth is here, before our eyes. Michelangelo even left us keys to remember that the Catholic Church does not have a monopoly on the meaning of life and the history of life after death. Look at this. See that scene in the corner with David and Goliath?”

  Sixtine nodded.

  “They have the form of the letter gimel, which symbolizes strength in the mystical tradition of Kabbalah. And now you see the scene showing Judith with her servant, carrying Holofernes’ head that she just beheaded. Their silhouette forms the Hebrew letter that represents kindness, generosity. There are dozens of hidden signs in the frescoes, showing that Michelangelo actually wanted this chapel to be a kind of bridge between the Roman Catholic Church and the Jewish faith. The city of Florence, in the time of the Medici, was a community that was receptive to Jews at a time when they were persecuted elsewhere. And some of Michelangelo’s mentors were studying Kabbalah, an esoteric tradition of Judaism.”

  Sixtine glanced at him, waiting for him to continue.

  “But that’s not all. Look at the scene of Adam’s creation, with God and his angels on the right. They’re surrounded by some kind of purple cape, isn’t that strange? Doesn’t the shape remind you of anything?”

  Sixtine squinted, and suddenly she smiled. “A brain?”

  “Yes, a brain,” Thaddeus said with a smile. “It may seem very strange, except when you know that Michelangelo, like Leonardo da Vinci, spent his nights dissecting stolen cadavers to study anatomy. Of course, it was totally forbidden at the time.”

  “Stealing cadavers is still illegal, Thaddeus,” Sixtine pointed out.

  Thaddeus grinned and continued, “But his fascination with science is also what defined the Renaissance. Michelangelo adhered to an integral religious philosophy, and the Sistine Chapel is a gold mine of hidden messages of brotherhood, tolerance and free thought.”

  His gaze was still lost in the vault of the chapel when he spoke again,“What you see around you is a vast mystical code that speaks to us of universal love.”

  “I could spend hours here,” Sixtine sighed. “And the secret Gigi was talking about, is here, I know it.” She paused, then continued, her voice deeper, almost broken. “Mom always told me about the chapel. But she’s never seen it in person. She would have been so moved.”

  As her throat tightened, she felt Thaddeus’s hand slip into hers. He looked at her with a determined look, his gray eyes glittering with intensity. He placed a hand on her neck and pulled her face towards his. Their lips brushed against each other, and Sixtine’s heart heard the words before he even said them.

  “I love you.”

  He didn’t give her any time to say anything, as he squeezed her fingers and knelt down on the marble floor. “I’ve loved you since the first day,” Thaddeus whispered. “I’ve loved you since before the first day. And I’ll love you after the last one. I don’t know what the road ahead holds for us, but I have one thing for sure: whatever it is, I want to do it with you.”

  A small, dark blue box materialized in front of her and revealed an extraordinary jewel: a gold ring adorned with a blue sapphire.

  “I want that too.”

  As she had stood in front of the priest who married her to Seth, her certainties had wavered, but this time she had not hesitated, not even for a moment. She could swear before God and the Virgin Mary, before the angels and demons that she loved Thaddeus with a love carved into the cliffs. Her heart had made this promise at the top of Egypt’s largest pyramid. She would never betray anyone again.

  Soon the ring was on Sixtine’s finger and the two lovers kissed under the decorated vault. They had no need for a priest; the angels of the Sistine Chapel were officiating.

  Suddenly, Thaddeus stiffened as a cracking sound echoed in the distance and the chapel darkened.

  “We have to leave. Now,” Thaddeus said, taking her arm.

  He led her to the back door, under
the Last Judgment. Then she heard another sound in the distance, unsure of what it was.

  “What is going on?” she asked, but Thaddeus didn’t answer her, which was worrisome, to say the least.

  The chapel door closed behind them and they faced an empty corridor – a corridor more than a mile long.

  “Alessio told me that the door would be open at the other end,” Thaddeus said, his jaw clenched, and he quickened his step.

  “Tell me what’s going on,” Sixtine demanded.

  “You were right in saying that I know everyone here. But that doesn’t mean everyone likes me.”

  Clang!

  One of the lights behind them suddenly went out.

  Clang! Clang!

  Two others followed.

  Clang! Clang! Clang!

  The lights went out one after the other, and the black devoured the corridor, meter by meter. The terror of darkness awakened in her and swept away everything; Thaddeus immediately understood this.

  “Run,” he called out.

  Sixtine took off her shoes in a hurry and they both started running.

  Clang! Clang! Clang!

  In front of them, the Vatican’s gilding became duller as the light dimmed. Behind them, the darkness gained ground. And as they ran, Sixtine perceived other noises, first a constant friction, similar to the sea she heard from her old room, in the house on the cliff.

  “What is it?” Sixtine asked, out of breath.

  Her blood froze. The noise was in her head, and that could only mean one thing. Nefertiti and the monkey were very close. The corridor was already half dark, and the door at the end was still not visible.

  Clang! Clang!

  The friction became more violent, like water throwing itself against rocks, and her mouth filled with a taste of stone.

  Clang! Clang!

  But Sixtine no longer looked down the darkened hallway. She stared at the Green River that was coming towards her in a gigantic wave.

  Clang! Clang!

  Then, absolute and eerie quiet.

  There was no more light to smother. Nowhere. Sixtine wanted to scream, but she was mute and her limbs helpless, out of reach of Thaddeus whom she was trying to grab. As the green crest of foam filled the sky, her face was covered in sweat and her body shook with tremors. She felt Thaddeus’s touch trying to protect her, but Sixtine’s consciousness was completely caught up in the presence at the end of the corridor.