by Clay Ferrill
The image of Tasmeem, “most powerful” appeared on the screen. The reaction was instant and urgent. The smooth torso showing in the image, the face beautiful and pleasing to the eye, Tasmeem was a single-generation clone assigned specific tasks of assassination and luring homosexual males of authority position into the open for such assassinations. Swiping right I read in the data that this particular clone was not used to genetically infect, but had been created and modified to seduce just one single man, an important man apparently. Both were now deceased. Confirmed. Swiping back to the picture of him, I again looked onto his image and felt extreme arousal. This Tasmeem was dangerous if recreated.
It read that the clone had been created in an Austrian farm that produces only single-use clones and mostly supplied to purchasers for millions of dollars each on the black market for pleasure only. The facility would need to be leveled and all clone template bodies destroyed. I tapped the image again and the blank page appeared without a microphone icon? Tapping the document icon, the screen painted with a seal of Papal authority posthumously approving of the summary execution of both the Tasmeem clone and his target, a religious cleric closely associated with the Ayatollah in Iran. The facility in Austria had apparently already been destroyed in a massive explosion. No human casualties reported. The clone blanks killed were not considered human lives lost. This saddens me how man plays with God’s creation of the human being and then doesn’t even consider them as lives.
What am I supposed to do with this one? Fuck this. No options appeared to me to select to either pend it for approval, prioritize it, or submit the individual case for authorization and further instruction. I swiped right again in frustration to pass the case and another image of a very handsome man appeared. Mahan. In Arabic this word means “most lethal”. He is stunningly beautiful to the eye. Mahan is a multiple-generation clone like the Dahrah it appears, yet not as prolifically as the Dahrah. Only four known alive. One in Abu Dhabi and another right here in Rome, the two remaining, location unknown. He is a poisoner. He dissolves his victims with acid. Evil. Reading more of the statistics, his kills were all middle-aged men, genetic scientists all, and all the primary geneticists in positions of authority and power over the larger clone production facilities around the world.
I looked up at the ceiling unsure how to proceed. Thinking carefully, I laid the iPad down on the table just as a faint knock sounded and the glass door clicked open. The old priest poked his head in as the glass of the room once again became clear. He looked into my face with a big smile and stood perfectly straight waving his hands in the air, no longer hunched over in discomfort and pain. He looked at my full glass of water, the beads of sweat on the glass glistening on the surface.
Without asking, he stepped into the room and lifted my glass to his lips, drinking it deeply until it was gone. “Ahhh. I was so thirsty, I apologize for commandeering your glass young Father Livingston. You were right. Bursitis in both shoulders, confirmed by the Pope’s primary physician and again by his personal chiropractor. I have had a wonderful adjustment and hot mud bath and massage and will return for the same adjustments and treatments every two days to make sure I stay pain free until the bursitis subsides. I can’t thank you enough young Father Livingston.” He turned to leave the room and closed the door, the glass again fully dimmed to opaque. I smiled at having had the opportunity to help someone. Ease the old man’s pain a bit.
During that exchange I had decided what needed to be done. I lifted the iPad and swiped to reveal the papal orders page and tapped the microphone icon, watching it begin to pulse he spoke firmly. “Annihilations. The Mahan clone has been infiltrating all know clone farms and genetics laboratories around the world. All of them must be suspect as infected. The Muslim gene strain will spread. We must annihilate all known clone farms and body templates wherever the Mahan clone has visited and remove all detectable DNA.” I stopped speaking and added “one moment” and retreated into my mind to think. I would not be able to intervene personally to assist in dispensing any Papal authority related to this, yet I felt compelled to give death orders?
Something much larger was responsible for this sudden onslaught of genetic infection. I read what had been transcribed onto the page in front of me and tapped the microphone icon. “Long term annihilation and cleansing strategy needed.” I swiped right and the page painted with the familiar appearance of the official Papal seal and scrawled signature read “Father Coleman Livingston granted full authority to devise a long-term strategy to eliminate the Muslim gene threat. His wishes are to be dispensed without question or otherwise impugned in any way.” I smiled. My thoughts immediately surfaced Luigi’s image in the shower and how he had leaned his body into me. I smiled, eyes closed, envisioning the moment of the feeling of him that had enveloped me entirely, so overwhelmingly. I opened my eyes and not having swiped to advance to the next case, the image of the Ayatollah painted the screen. Just like before with the Dahrah, there were 8 more sub-images imbedded in this case log. One by one I tapped the images to bring them to the surface and display full-screen. Kings and Princes, all. The puppet masters of the “Knights of Damascus”.
Tapping the last of the images it shrank down again revealing only the remaining image of the Ayatollah. I swiped right and the Papal authority blank page showed, the glowing and pulsing microphone icon already active. “Individual assassinations are necessary. All members of the Jihad. This must be stealth and undetectable. I recommend a nerve toxin that stops the heart, yet remains undetectable should autopsy be performed with any chemical analysis. All will appear to have died from natural causes. The King and Prince first priority.” I watched as my words painted the page. I would be visiting the royal family myself as an advanced security advisor to clear the way for an official papal visit. This is not common, but the royal family have long been open and hospitable in receiving visits from Catholic Popes in the past as they have been granted audience while in Rome, so it would not be that difficult or unusual to arrange.
Two of the targets in one place. Smaller and more obscure as a royal family, their wealth was still enormously vast. The King himself and his young Prince son, the heir to the throne. For this to appear as anything but an assassination, it would need to be cleverly arranged. Bottom line, the infants growing in the princess’s womb must not be allowed to draw breath in life. All four of the males must die. The final screen painted with the Papal Seal and signature. The text read: “Authority hereby granted to dispense the will of God and smite the Muslim jihad members with impunity and by any means necessary. The long-standing autocratic dynasties must end forever. Annihilation authority granted.” I couldn’t believe how many times the authority to take human lives had been granted, clones or not. I closed the cover over the iPad and set it down on the table, leaning back in my chair.
In my mind I imagined actual documents being prepared, unread by their preparers, then rolled and placed into sealed tubes in sequential order. All such Papal dispensations and bulls are stored in this manner and have been since time immemorial. Picking up the iPad and standing, I settled the chair against the table and brushed my hand across the surface wiping away imaginary dust. I turned and left the room, leaving the door open for the attendants to clear the water and prepare the room for the next cleric that would use it. With a broad smile on my face, faked, I ascended the long staircase up two levels to the main sanctuary floor. I would feel the bright sunshine of God on my face as my mind arranges tasks and plans to execute them. I will do that in my garden pace right now.
Chapter Five
1508 A.D.
Countess Algonquin du Bourgogne of French Catalonia
The Countess of Bad News
For the past few weeks we have been preparing for Rome. Archy bought 4 pigs, 3 males and one pregnant sow, so soon there will be a barnyard brood of pigs. After carefully surveying the land immediately around the main house and small keepers’ cottage, a single room house unfit to live in, he moved the pig p
en and paddock slightly downhill to the east of the main house and inset the sty right into the hill’s crest. It was brilliant. Once moved there, we did not hear them, but most importantly, we could no longer smell them from the house save errant west-blown breezes. Watching him at the edge of the hill, shirtless and sweaty as he pounded new shaved poles into the dense soil there, I paused in my painting to take him a glass of cold lemon water.
I said nothing to my mother, busy stitching in the sunshine, or the Marquesa, and filled the glass and walked it outside to him. He was breathing hard and covered with sweat and grime. He drank the glass down and chewed the lemon.
I looked up into his face, squinting against the sun. He leaned into me to block the sun from my eyes. I backed up a step and turned my head back to the house and the image of my mother staring out at us with her arms crossed over her chest. I looked back away and cast my eyes to the ground. “Giuseppe, she knows. I have just seen the recognition of it in her eyes. Look up to her yourself and see it there.” Archy lifted his eyes and immediately looked down at the ground where I was looking, the two of us there in broad daylight looking as guilty as thieves caught in the act.
“What do we do?” I asked him in whisper. “We have been so careful in our meeting alone at night. Perhaps we should hold off for a while to let her lose the scent.” I looked up into his face and he was shaking his head no. “My mother already knows Raffy. I told her about us. She asked and I do not lie to my mother, so I told her about us. That I took you and continue to take you. You now, must do the same to bring us into plain sight to them. I love you. I will not hide this fact from our dear mothers.”
During the day his mother sits for me quietly and studies me with her eyes as I study her, my mother dutiful and attentive to our needs and comfort while she sits spanning hours at a time. My mother is insistent on frequent small breaks for Marquesa, and runs water out to Archy herself or sends Ilsa now since she saw us speak to one another so intimately and tenderly. She has been looking at me sideways, not sideways exactly, but I can explain it no other way. She is distancing from me though, I feel this, and this my heart will not stand. I will speak with her in private later this evening and clear what is between us as best as I am able. Refusing myself from those thoughts, I studied her face closely as she watched me in thought, smiling in the light.
I rose to move the large candle over a little as I frame her face in the same technique I used on Yellow Roses. I can capture the halo of the light so well that way because the halo is a very real thing that I can see when illuminated by candlelight. I just need to see it and not simply imagine it, as other artists have done before me so unconvincingly.
Studying her eyes carefully, she has added a bit of blush color rouge to her cheeks today that she brought with her from France. She wants very much to appear youthful and beautiful in the portrait. I can see so much of Archy in his mother’s eyes especially, the color of her hair is the color of his, save she has aged, hers now shows wisps of graying. This matters not. In my portrait of her she will be fair haired and beautiful in every possible way. I paint the truth of what I perceive, not necessarily what my eyes see.
I decide to seize the opportunity of the three of us alone together in the room. “I love Archy, mothers. You too Ilsa. I know you’re listening. I love Giuseppe. Heart and soul. Forever. I will speak no more of it as this will not change.” I cleared my throat as I loaded my brush with a very clever lavender tinted with actual saffron from the Marquise’s small spice collection that travels with her. “The lavender in your dress mother … mother Marquesa. It is singing to me today. The light is exquisite against your beautiful skin.”
I looked up into her eyes, smile a half smile, as I again reload my brush and lean forward into it. Wanting to press myself into the canvas and embrace her there. Give myself to her so that she may give to me her son. The look on her face now in pose. So moving, the intensity of it. The loving sweetness there. Her eyes tear with joy and her cheeks jiggle fighting a smile. I close my eyes to burn the image into my mind and rise to leave the room. I will show this expression in her portrait.
I walked down toward the lake slowly. To have her here with my mother like this when they are so closely widowed is comforting. That they became again such fast friends in their grief as if they were again young girls, fast friends then as well, is truly a gift from God. They confide things now in one another that may not have been suitable between mothers and their adult sons. My mother and I now have a basis for our discussion to clear our differences and love one another again fully. I must not distance from her again.
Archy speaks incessantly of his home in Orleans, France, and his youthful exploits on the outskirts of Paris and in Stockholm where he studied the art of war and battle from the decedents of Vikings. He beckons to me with his frequent mention of this place to me. I feel he trying to lure me away from this place, from Italy, and it is my will to follow him always. I would go if he would take me with him. I do try to get him to talk more of his time at war most recently, his damage from it, but a sadness overcomes him when I have mentioned it. His eyes twist with such anguish at the mere mention of it. Rather than make him sad, which I certainly am not want to do, ever, I am waiting for him patiently to tell me when he is ready. Unburden himself to me, safe from judgment.
He has become a very wonderful and very true friend to me in every way imaginable. I would, truly, give him anything. We are, or have been, insatiable lovers of late, at night in the barn and in moonlight. Often during most days down at the lake behind the trees and hidden from view, before we swim to bathe when it is not too terribly cold and just making love if it is cold. We warm one another.
Twice now my mother has confirmed with me that I will in fact fulfill my father’s obligation to the Vatican. I leave next Tuesday to make the trip there, which takes one week’s time. Giuseppe will accompany me and we will stay at his family’s grand house which sits largely vacant most of the time. Archy busies himself with dispatches to ready them for our residence long term. In Rome together. We have not told the mothers of this just yet. We would be abandoning them of men. While further from the Vatican than I would have liked to live, by horseback Archy tells me I can make the trip in three quarters an hour if I ride at a steady gate. Archy also informed me that I will be taking their carriage to and from and not to bother myself with securing horses because he owns 12 at that estate alone.
How he describes this place where he a large portion of his childhood, his father a banker and French aristocracy, he grew up primarily with his mother in Orleans, about 100 miles south of Paris. It was well known that his father was a philanderer and was rumored to have sired many children with many different women, all of them married. Eventually the Marquise, with her son held closely, chose to live in whatever palace he was not living. When he died he left them incredibly wealthy with very old fortunes dating back to the original bankers of Jerusalem over five hundred years hence. Archy pondered working at the bank that bears his title there, Bank de Orleans, in central Rome.
Or, perhaps a better choice, he may not elect to work there at all and simply own it and profit from it. He wishes, though, to give back as he puts it. He endlessly tosses silver coin to the merchants and beggars here. The world through his view so vastly different than my own. How he shines in me now.
At dinner this evening, which we all dressed very well for, I unveiled my work on the Marquise’s portrait thus far and she was captivated by the effect around her face and hairline. She cried. She was there in youth. I had sensed this wish from her unspoken, and painted her exactly as I see her. This, in fact, is the first portrait I have used this effect on and tell her so. Had I known then, only, that it would later almost singularly define my life. This eased her understanding that her portrait will not be finished before I must depart to move to Rome on Christmas Day, in order to make the journey and report for my new position, which is a paid position, on January 1, 1509.
I will return o
nce my position as First Assistant to the head of Art Acquisitions for Pope Julius II is confirmed. In my post to them to confirm and inform them of my date of expected arrival in Rome to meet the master I am to submit to for ten years, I asked, rather demanded to be shown my painting Yellow Roses in Moonlight. I wondered then if the Pope would allow it, allow me to see it and speak with him about why he likes it so much as Archy has described in so heavenly a way to bring me joy and pride every time.
Toward Home from Rome
It is now early November and the weather unseasonably cold, snowing often and hard, which slows our trek back to Urbino and our waiting mothers. Our visit to Rome a success on all fronts. Their palace there, initially intimidating to me, I had eventually warmed to it even in our brief stay before traveling back north. Tonight, we sleep in the carriage again because it is raining, then snowing, then raining again, the cold so bitter it is biting into my very bones with its relentless and pressing coldness. I worry now for Archy, who kindly relieved the driver so that he may warm himself inside the carriage with me, out of the bite of the wind. He sat silently rubbing his hands together and enjoying the warmth. I shared my water bladder with him as well. This endless jostling seeming never to end.
We hit a bad spot on the path and the carriage bounced hard. I heard the wheel crack and break. My side of the carriage fell downward and back until the axel stopped it from tipping over. Archy’s reach into the window moments later startled me as I struggled to sit up and reach the door, his hand found my face and cupped it in his frozen glove as he called inside over the whistles of the wind gusts. He would have to replace the wheel. Luckily, we had an accident-free trip thus far and were in fact carrying the spare wheel, but we would need to unpack the back so he could get to it. I opened the door to help him against his insistence that I remain inside and stay warm. I would hear none of it. The door fell open to the very deep dip unseen that fractured the wheel and it was full of icy, muddy water. The slope of the carriage and nothing to grab on to, I fell right into the muddy icy water face first and fully submerged my body before I could press my hands to stop the fall.