For an hour we travelled more lightless tunnels and corridors, turning first one way, then the other, rising and descending stairs, sometimes passing through chambers (one so big that the lamp illuminated neither walls nor ceiling from which our footsteps echoed) until I thought it impossible that anyone might track us. Finally we entered a short corridor terminating in a wooden door. Meussin pulled a chain from around her neck; on it was a single gold key. This she fitted to the lock and, turning it, pushed the door inward. And so we entered the hidden apartments of the Pope’s daughter.
A barred window, high on the opposite wall, weakly lit the room. She extinguished her lamp, then shut and locked the door behind us. The room contained a settee and two oak chairs arranged around a low table; on the tabletop was a tray with the crumbs from Meussin’s last meal. In one corner stood a shelf holding a ceramic pitcher and bowl, some towels and sheets, a large stoppered bottle of lamp oil, a tinder box, and other sundries required for her stay. Aside from the door through which we entered, there were two other interior doors, both on the same wall and both ajar. Through one I saw the corner of a bed, while the other appeared to be a toilet. The room we were in was small, but comfortable enough with the three of us; a fourth and it would have been crowded.
Meussin bid us sit. Taking a wooden box from the shelf, she placed it on the table and opened its lid, revealing a cache of food—bread, apples, oranges, and an assortment of hard cheeses and cured meats—enough, at least, for several days. “My appetite is small, and they bring more than I can eat. If we share that, and what I’ve managed to put aside, we won’t starve.”
Starve? I wondered how long we were to be here.
“Twenty-five days,” Meussin said, as if she’d read my thoughts. “The balance of Lent.”
Lent
There was lots more I wanted to know, both about Meussin’s role in what had just happened, and her circumstances here. So I resolved to extract what explanations I could. My resolution, however, was unnecessary. In her small sitting room, she spoke at length and, I believe, with candour. As I said, I need be in most people’s company only a few days before I can discern their lies; I was at close quarters with her for twenty-five, and remained convinced she was forthright in all she said—and nothing I have seen or heard since would give me cause to think otherwise.
Meussin confirmed what Ambrose had told me, that each year Bishop Singleton and a Garde escorted her to Rome. From Ash Wednesday to Easter—the duration of Lent—she occupied this secret apartment. As best as she could tell, no one knew of this place save for those two men and the Holy Father. Leastwise, she’d never seen anyone else here, nor was there ever a sign that anyone else had inhabited these rooms during her absence. Except for a new layer of dust, her things were always as she’d left them.
Even so, it is hard to keep secrets in Rome, making it impossible to say how many Cardinals might have guessed of Meussin’s existence. But she was certain Bishop Singleton, who’d been charged with her care from the day of her birth, had been diligent in his silence. She told us the Bishop, before becoming Meussin’s guardian, had acquired a reputation for tact and discretion, as well as cultivating an intimate knowledge of the secret passages of the Vatican. It was not surprising that he became the Pontiff’s eyes and ears—and it was inevitable that he’d become the steward of the Pontiff’s secret shame. When she was thirteen, the Bishop confided to Meussin that he thought the visits madness, and could not see the need for them. Meussin, however, thought she could: she believed that risking discovery was part of her Father’s self- imposed penance.
When I asked why she had such trust in the Bishop, she told us he was, in fact, a Cardinal in pectore—that is, a secret Cardinal. Meussin believed the honour had been bestowed as a way of ensuring his silence. Such Cardinals were appointed by the Pope, and known only to him. They did not sit with the College, nor were they allowed to wear a Cardinal’s vestments or exercise any of the privileges of the Cardinalate—until publicly named by the Pontiff. Should the Pope die before doing so, however, the elevation expired with him. This, according to Meussin, was Bishop Singleton’s greatest fear.
As for Meussin’s time at the Vatican, it ran with a predictable regularity, measured in the tolling of bells for Canonical Hours. Each morning, before sun-on, her Father would arrive, always with the same Garde, who would stand at attention outside her door and never spoke; then, forty-five minutes later, when the Holy Father emerged, the two would return to less secret places in time for the celebration of Matins. At Sext, and again just before Vespers, the Garde would return alone, bearing her meals on a tray. Although her Father never entered her bed chamber, and the Garde never entered her apartment at all, she thought it best that we absent ourselves at these times rather than try to hide within.
That first day Meussin took us out into the maze of surrounding dark passages, guiding us some distance to a place that was at the juncture of two corridors. She walked us there once, and asked me to lead the way back, which I did unerringly. She then sent us alone to do it again, without her lamp. In the absolute dark, Ali stumbled into me twice, before I took her hand and placed it on my shoulder; my heart seemed to stop when I did so, for I feared she might pull it away in anger, but she didn’t—her grip, however, was fierce. We moved slowly as I felt my way along, trying to match what was under my feet or beneath my fingertips with what I had seen on our first trip. It took perhaps three times as long, but we found what I was certain was the junction.
“Good,” Meussin’s disembodied voice floated to us through the dark, and I realized she’d been following us all along, without a sound. “Now back.”
We repeated the trip twice more, and each time my confidence, and our speed, increased in measure. Back in her apartment, Meussin told us where each of the corridors at the junction led, in case we should ever need to flee.
Then she bade us go one more time, as Sext was approaching.
Meussin waited until we returned, then shared out her noon meal, supplementing it from her store. We ate in a gloomy silence. She seemed unconcerned about pursuit, but I was on edge, listening for the sound of footsteps in the corridor outside. I picked at my food, my appetite lost. There were several other things bothering me, too—things that had occurred to me while we’d been sitting at the dark junction of the corridors. When I put my uneaten portion back in her store, I said as much to her.
She bid me ask.
“You don’t think they will pursue us?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“If they interpret the scene as we intended, they will believe Kite was bent on vengeance, and that two scared boys panicked and fled into the secret passages. Since there is nothing to implicate you and Ali, no one will give you a second thought, except to wonder if you managed to escape the Vatican tunnels—or met your end in darkness and despair.”
“Yet the Cardinal knew.”
“Not knew, suspected.” Meussin sighed. “We were so bent on creating a plausible context for Kite’s vengeance, it didn’t occur to us that Adolfo might anticipate the act himself—and strike first.”
“Yet you barred the door, as if you knew he’d have a chance to flee. I’d have had more faith in Kite, and wouldn’t have thought of such a contingency.”
“Nor did we,” she admitted. “Barring the door only occurred to me when I heard the commotion.”
“Then you were there for another reason?”
“To do what I did: to keep you from the hands of the Inquisitor.”
“Because of what we knew?”
“In part,” she answered. “But if that were the only reason, having Kite kill you would have been simpler, wouldn’t it?” She said this matter-of-factly, our lives weighing little against their secrecy.
“Then you have plans for us.”
“Not I,” she replied. “But that, by itself, is a disingenuous answer, and I would like to be as honest as I can. So a better answer would be that, yes, I know t
here are plans for you, but I have not been told what they might be, nor do I want to know.”
We fell silent for a moment, and I considered the possibilities.
“You said there were several things bothering you, Thomas.”
I did, but was hesitant to ask it of the Pontiff’s daughter. “Why Cardinal Adolfo? Why not the Pope Pius?”
“He is weak,” Meussin answered. “And Cardinal Adolfo would likely be his successor.”
I suspected this was not the only reason, but decided to leave it—for now, at least. “Was Ignatius part of this?”
“It was his plan more than anyone’s,” Meussin answered.
“And Bishop Singleton?”
“No. He is faithful to the Church. It is his life.”
“So he knows nothing of us?”
“No.”
“In that case, I have one more question.”
She nodded.
“You told us that the Bishop, more than any man, is acquainted with the Vatican’s secret ways. If they were to search for us, would he not be given charge?”
“It is probable.”
“Then he could lead them to us.”
“He would prevent any search here, for fear my Father’s shame be exposed.”
“And perhaps his own,” Ali said. The two women locked eyes, and something passed between them that I didn’t understand.
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Meussin answered. “But, yes, that is likely.”
The Bishop’s shame? I recalled the times I’d encountered the Bishop, and could remember nothing out of the ordinary—save that first time when we’d taken him unaware at The Widow’s Walk. There had been something odd in his comportment towards Kite and Meussin, and in the way Meussin had addressed the Bishop. And just now Meussin had shared the Bishop’s private thoughts and fears. I cursed myself for being blind to what had been obvious to Ali: the Bishop’s conduct that day had been more suited to a jealous paramour than a chaperone. Meussin was his inamorata.
I don’t know what she saw, or thought she saw, in my expression, but Meussin said, “You will learn these things are not so important, Thomas.”
I felt my face flush. Ali laughed, and my embarrassment turned to anger. “Will we have to absent ourselves during his visits, too?” My words were out—and I was stricken, for Meussin had done nothing to deserve my scorn.
“No,” she said, not stung by my question; rather, she cast me a look of pity. It made my boorishness seem all the worse.
Meussin said more, perhaps to soothe me. I don’t remember. Not much of it, anyway. I burned inside, preoccupied no longer with shame of the Pontiff or the Bishop, but with my own.
There is one more thing worth telling about that first day: after sun-off, Meussin surprised me by insisting we all share her bed.
I protested I would be fine on the floor of her sitting room, until she pointed out that both her father and the Garde possessed copies of the key, and that, in the event of an unexpected visit, we at least had a chance of concealing ourselves in her bed chamber. Ali accepted the arrangement with equanimity, as she had much of what happened since that day at the river. I can’t say why, but this bothered me, more than if she had balked. For my part, I’d have felt uncomfortable—even ungallant—at sharing a bed with the two women under any circumstances, but it was all the worse with these two women, particularly after our conversation earlier that day. I couldn’t see any way around the logic of Meussin’s suggestion, and reluctantly agreed, with the proviso that I might still sleep on the floor.
“The mattress is far more comfortable,” Meussin said. If nothing else, she was practical, no matter what anyone else might think, even in matters between the sexes. I admired her for that, largely because I couldn’t claim to be so sensible.
Meussin and Ali proceeded me into the room, leaving the lamp with me; I delayed, making noises about cleaning up anything that might betray the presence of extra occupants. I wasn’t anxious to join them, and thought it best that I give them time to make whatever preparations they would, so that I could discreetly enter after they were in bed. Even though I was sure there was no trace of our presence, I meticulously went over everything again, looking for stray crumbs and plumping the cushions to remove any sign that they’d been used by anyone other than Meussin. After completing this, I did it again for a third time, before I picked up the lamp, and went into the bedchamber.
As I’d hoped, they were both abed. I placed the lamp on the floor next to where I thought to stretch out—and froze. Against the two walls not visible from the sitting room rose floor-to-ceiling shelves packed with books. There had to be a thousand or more, a library of books. Large and small, thick and thin, bound in leather dyed in dark, rich colours, all with titles stamped in ink or gilt lettering on their spines. None, as far as I could see, were The Bible or its Addenda.
I had never thought to see such a thing; I was astounded.
I took a step towards the nearest shelf and reached out, running my fingers over the ridged spines, to convince myself of their reality. I wondered if on these shelves might be any of the books my mother had so much loved, and for which my father had died.
“Do you like to read, Thomas?”
I pulled my hand away like it had been stung. I turned to her, and saw on an end table next to the bed a small stack of books, flagged with slips of paper. “I don’t know,” I said, truthfully. Then added, “My mother did.”
“I do, too.” Meussin was sitting up in bed, a book in her lap, Ali a shadow next to her. The light from the lamp seemed to cling to Meussin, and as ethereal as she sometimes appeared in the day, in this light she seemed like a radiant spirit. “It helps pass the time.”
“It is a sin.”
Meussin laughed, and it was like a small bird had flown into the room. “I am the Pope’s daughter. I was conceived in sin. How much worse can possessing these books be?”
I thought, then, of my father. “The Church will try you for heresy.”
“Then they will have to try themselves,” she said dismissively. “From whose libraries do you think I stole them?”
I was taken aback; it had never occurred to me the Church might ignore its own edicts. Yet, all around us was proof.
“Go on,” Meussin said. “You will learn much from them.” She lay back, and the light in the room seemed to diminish.
With a trembling hand, I pulled a volume from the shelf, and placed it on the floor next to the lamp. Opening it, I read, “Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes.”
I did not understand much of what I read in that book. I did not recognize the place names, and the setting was wholly foreign to me, both country and city. Despite my gift of memory, which had also given me a considerable vocabulary, I did not know many of the words I read. Numerous elements of the work seemed fantastical, inventions of a wild imagination, and I knew by this that it must be a piece of fiction, a novel, wherein such things may be drawn, whole cloth, from the author’s imagination. But despite the strange new world, the thread of the story was familiar, for it was about people of various stations swept up in war.
I drank from that book like a man dying of thirst.
When Meussin shook me before sun-on, I lifted my face from the cold, stone flags and rubbed my eyes, the last tendrils of my dream evaporating. In waking life, my memory is perfect; but my dreams evanesce as readily as the next man’s. I struggled to retain what I could in our hurry to depart before the Pontiff’s arrival. But I lost it all, save for a single echo: that of me as Napoleon, standing in front of my pavilion on the banks of the Niemen, surveying a world I made ready to conquer.
We Come to an Arrangement
I was infected by stories.
In those twenty-five days Meussin harboured us in her chambers, I read without pause, giving in only when exhaustion took me. The second morning I woke on the floor with my face pressed into the pages of an open book, and had to gently peel the paper f
rom my damp cheek. On the third, I awakened to find myself atop the austere sheets of Meussin’s bed, her arm draped protectively over me. I know I hadn’t crawled in myself—I hadn’t the nerve. Which meant that she’d carried me to the bed. I lay rigid, my heart thudding, while Meussin’s breasts pressed against my back, and her deep, warm breaths tickled my neck. I found it impossible to sleep. Some time later, Meussin gently shook my shoulder, for the Pope’s visit was nigh. Ali stirred and sat up, rubbing the sleep from her eyes—and looked, at first shocked to find me on the other side of Meussin. She said nothing about it, not then or later, but glared at me throughout the day, making her displeasure clear.
That night, and the next, even when Meussin roused herself to try to convince me otherwise, I stayed on the floor, and wondered how could one arm, draped so casually over me, contain all the love in the world?
The novels I read, I quickly realized, contained an idealization of truth. In real life, the truths are still there, but they are never quite so clear. That’s why people in stories always act in character—the good remain good, and the bad remain bad. If there is any change, it is small and hard won. Why is this so? Because we, as readers, demand it. Real people, however, are messy and complicated. We act out of contradictory motivations that even we ourselves are frequently at a loss to explain. Even stranger, we create our own fictions about who others are and how they will act. And when they do something incongruous to the character we’ve built for them in our heads, we believe they’ve deceived us and think nothing of rewriting them entirely. Good becomes bad, or vice versa. And so it was with Meussin for me.
On the fifth night, I opened a slim volume that began, “Adelrune’s earliest memories were of finding the Book of Knights, hidden away in the attic of the four-story house of bricks where his foster parents lived.” I had closed the bedroom door, as I had on the previous night, so my light wouldn’t disturb Meussin and Ali’s sleep. I was drawn out of my book when I heard them talking quietly, earnestly. To tell the truth, I was relieved, for Ali hadn’t said two words since we’d taken up residence. She’d also taken to wandering the tunnels by herself for long periods of time. It worried me, and I could tell it worried Meussin, too. I had my books for solace, and I suppose they distracted me from my guilt and shame. But, in the absence of action and in our confined space, Ali had nothing else to distract her. I wanted to believe that in unburdening herself to another woman Ali might feel better—but I also dreaded what Meussin might think of me if Ali did. Nevertheless, I was glad they were talking, and hoped it helped Ali.
The Book of Thomas - Volume One: Heaven Page 17