King's Crusade (Seventeen)

by Starrling, AD

  Jackson’s eyebrows rose at the older man’s words. ‘I didn’t think a member of the Secretariat of State would be interested in one of our archaeological digs.’

  It was Lorenzio’s turn to look surprised. ‘How did you know I was part of the Secretariat?’

  Jackson shrugged. ‘It’s the only department of the governing body of the Roman Catholic Church that has offices in Vatican City.’

  Lorenzio nodded approvingly. ‘You’re as sharp as your papers suggest. And you are indeed correct.’ A smile spread across his face. ‘Archaeology happens to be one of my pet interests, among other things.’ The smile gradually faded and he glanced around nervously. ‘I’m glad Dimitri has you working on this task. I can’t think of a better mind to tackle this complex matter. Come, follow me,’ he said in a low voice. He turned and retraced his steps across the square.

  Jackson glanced at Alexa and saw his own unease reflected in her face. They headed after the archbishop.

  Lorenzio led them to a pair of large bronze doors at the top of a flight of stairs. He nodded distractedly at the two Swiss Guards guarding the imposing entrance to Vatican Palace and murmured, ‘They are with me.’ He indicated Alexa and Jackson with a tilt of his head.

  The sentinels watched them blankly as they swept past. Jackson saw Alexa’s gaze skim across the handguns resting in their sword belts.

  They followed the archbishop into the bowels of the palace until they reached a brightly lit office in a private corridor on the second floor. An open window at the end of the room overlooked a courtyard. The sun-drenched facade of St. Peter’s Basilica was visible beyond it.

  ‘Please excuse the secrecy,’ said Lorenzio apologetically as he ushered them to a pair of chairs. He locked the door and took the seat behind the desk. ‘I’m afraid the subject matter we need to discuss is too delicate for me to risk our words falling on the wrong ears.’

  ‘Dimitri said you had information on a secret sect whose members bear a Rose Croix tattoo?’ said Alexa.

  The archbishop leaned forward on his elbows. ‘Before I say anything, tell me what you know so far,’ he said carefully.

  Jackson spent several minutes narrating Ismael Sadik’s experiences and impressions of the secret society that had infiltrated the corridors of power in Turkey and its neighboring states in the last fifty years. When he finished talking, Lorenzio sat back and drummed his fingers on the desk, a thoughtful frown on his brow.

  ‘Your friend is an emeritus professor of philosophy and religious studies in Istanbul?’ the archbishop asked finally.

  ‘Yes,’ said Jackson with a nod.

  ‘I believe I met him at a seminar once.’ Lorenzio’s expression remained brooding as he slumped in his armchair. ‘He has done well to have discerned so much during his time within the academic sphere in Turkey,’ he said slowly. ‘But I’m afraid his theory is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Alexa straightened in her seat at the archbishop’s words. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked flatly.

  Lorenzio did not reply immediately. Instead, he rose to his feet and crossed the room to the window, his footsteps silent on the polished parquet floor. ‘Did Dimitri tell you how we met?’ he murmured, his gaze focused on one of the Apostles crowning the facade of the Basilica.

  ‘No.’

  The archbishop turned and studied her with a shrewd expression. ‘Being a close associate of Reznak, I take it that you are also…special?’

  Alexa stared at him. ‘You must know Dimitri very well.’ She was annoyed at her godfather for not having revealed more about his relationship with this man. She wondered what else the archbishop knew about the immortals.

  Lorenzio smiled faintly. ‘And Professor Jackson?’ he added with a raised eyebrow, glancing at the man beside her.

  ‘He’s not one of us,’ said Alexa. ‘But he knows.’

  Jackson nodded in agreement.

  Relief flashed in the older man’s eyes. ‘I didn’t think you were,’ he said to Jackson apologetically. ‘But it’s good that you’re aware of the remarkable circumstances of this situation. It will make the rest of our discussion less awkward.’ He returned to his seat, removed a key from an inside pocket of his cassock, and unlocked a drawer in his desk. He took out an old, worn folder and laid it carefully on the desktop.

  ‘In 1849, six months after the assassination of the Papal government’s Minister of Justice and Pope Pius IX’s subsequent flight to the city fortress of Gaeta, Napoleon III sent troops to Rome to restore the Pope’s seat and the temporal power of the Holy See,’ said Lorenzio. ‘This formidable show of power resulted in Pope Pius’s eventual return to Rome in 1850. Alas, when the Franco-Prussian War began two decades later, Napoleon was forced to withdraw his soldiers from Rome.’

  ‘If I remember correctly, there were also grave political tensions between France and Italy at the time,’ said Jackson.

  ‘Indeed.’ Lorenzio nodded. ‘Italy had remained neutral with regard to that particular war, but the French feared that the Italians might use the presence of Napoleon’s garrison in Rome to join the Prussians. Napoleon did not take the decision lightly and was tortured by the fact that he had in effect removed his sovereign protection from Rome and abandoned the Pope. Although the Italians demanded their government retake the city under the ongoing unification process, the Italian King, Emmanuel the Second, did not make his move until Napoleon lost to the Prussians at the Battle of Sedan in September of that year. In his resolve not to hand over the political powers of the Roman Catholic Church to the Italian government, Pope Pius resisted all attempts at a peaceful takeover of the city by the Italian army. There followed a short, ten-day battle that was to be a symbolic stand, at best.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Jackson. ‘The infamous Capture of Rome.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lorenzio with a sad smile. ‘Pope Pius’s troops were easily defeated and Rome was officially annexed to Italy the following month.’ He removed a thick, yellow parchment from the folder and lowered it carefully onto the desk in front of them. ‘Does this look familiar?’

  Faded and cracked, the paper curled slightly at the edges. Alexa stared at the sketch depicted on it in bold strokes. ‘It’s a drawing of the Rose Croix,’ she said.

  ‘It does look similar to the tattoos of the men we saw in Istanbul,’ said Jackson reluctantly.

  ‘That’s because it is,’ said Lorenzio.

  She noticed the initials and date at the bottom of the page. ‘FL, Rome, 1880?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lorenzio. ‘It was I who drew that picture.’

  The muted roar of the crowd from St. Peter’s Square was the only sound that broke the hush that followed.

  Alexa gazed steadily at the archbishop’s lined face. ‘You are not an immortal,’ she stated.

  A brief smile touched Lorenzio’s lips. ‘You are correct. I am not an immortal.’ He rested his arms on the table. ‘I met Dimitri in 1850, when he accompanied Pope Pius IX on the pontiff’s return to Rome from Gaeta. He was part of the entourage that negotiated the agreement between Napoleon III and the Pope to the effect that the French would not meddle in the affairs of the Church. At the time, I had only just become a member of the Papal Court. It would be another ten years before I entered the Roman Curia. Dimitri and I shared a few common interests, and we became friendly acquaintances. We did not see each other for another twenty years, when he returned at the head of a group of powerful nobles determined to protect the Pope’s interests after the Italian army took the city.’ A wry grimace flitted across his face. ‘At that stage, it became obvious to both of us that the other party was not exactly…human.’ His gaze became direct and strangely forceful as it settled on her face. ‘You see,’ he said quietly, ‘I am the descendant of an immortal-human offspring.’

  Jackson tensed. He
glanced at her, his fingers suddenly gripping the armrests of his chair. ‘Is that even possible?’

  Alexa did not reply immediately. ‘I am aware that immortals and humans have successfully mated in the past,’ she said after a while, her eyes never leaving the archbishop’s face. ‘But the children of such couplings did not inherit the abilities of their immortal parent.’

  ‘That is true,’ said Lorenzio with a careful nod. ‘For example, I do not boast the healing powers, strength, or speed of the immortals, and I would most certainly not survive a death. I do, however, possess one of your most important assets: longevity.’

  ‘How?’ asked Jackson in a strained voice, mirroring the question going through Alexa’s mind.

  ‘Because the immortal progenitor of my lineage was a pureblood,’ said Lorenzio.

  ‘A pureblood?’ the Harvard professor repeated.

  Alexa had related the genealogy of the immortals to him briefly the night before. Purebloods were immortals who could trace their ancestry all the way back to the original forefathers of their races. According to Reznak, there were none still alive today. The significance of the archbishop’s words slowly sank in.

  ‘I was born in Naples in 1800,’ Lorenzio continued in a steady tone. ‘It wasn’t until I turned sixteen that my mother first relayed to me the strange reality of our origins.’ A self-deprecating smile crossed his face then. ‘I didn’t believe her at the time. Once I reached my forties however, I could no longer deny the truth. While everyone around me was aging, I was not.’ His expression sobered. ‘After I met Dimitri for the second time, that fact became irrefutable.’

  Jackson’s expression turned wary. ‘Are there many others like you?’

  Lorenzio shook his head. ‘I wasn’t aware of the existence of beings with our unique bloodline outside my own family at the time.’ His gaze shifted to the sketch on the weathered paper before him. ‘It wasn’t until the Italian army marched into Rome that I met another descendant of a pureblood immortal-human offspring.’ He looked up, his troubled expression lost in the distant past. ‘Among the soldiers who breached the Aurelian Walls at Porta Pia was a young brigadier general by the name of Alberto Cavaleti. It was several decades before I came to know of his similarly remarkable ancestry.’ His eyes focused on them once more. ‘That drawing is a depiction of the tattoo he bore on the back of his neck. He was not the only soldier I saw with such a mark in the days that followed the capture of Rome.’

  ‘Did Dimitri know about this at the time?’ said Alexa sharply.

  The archbishop shook his head. ‘No. I never saw the need to tell him. Twenty-five years after my first encounter with Cavaleti, I saw him again in Budapest, where I was attending a religious seminar. Like me, he had barely aged in the time that had passed. I approached him on that occasion.’ Lorenzio hesitated. ‘His reaction was quite different from Dimitri’s. He wanted nothing to do with me and became aggressive. I did not take offense, as I understood his need for privacy. After all, my own family had lived in anonymity for most of their lives. Over the decades that followed, however, I started to note the appearance of more individuals bearing the Rose Croix tattoo. Like your friend’s observations in Istanbul,’ he glanced at Jackson, ‘these sightings were not confined to one arena. It soon became apparent to me that what I was seeing was a slow and focused infiltration of the geopolitical and socioreligious spheres of a number of European states by a determined sect. The subtle physical changes I discerned among these beings over time led me to believe that they were not true immortals, but more likely half-breeds like myself.’

  ‘Were they aware of your existence?’ said Alexa.

  Lorenzio shrugged. ‘Cavaleti was, at least. I became curious about their intentions and started to follow their movements more closely. But it wasn’t until twenty years ago that I began to gain an insight into their true motives.’ The older man’s eyes darkened and he looked at Jackson. ‘I take it you’ve heard of Cardinal Eduardo Morettii?’

  Jackson’s brow furrowed slightly. He nodded. ‘He was a former President of the Pontifical Commission for the Cultural Heritage of the Church.’

  Alexa glanced at him. ‘Is that another branch of the governing body of the Holy See?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jackson. ‘It’s one of its many institutions.’ He stared at the archbishop. ‘Cardinal Morettii died in a car accident in Breggia in 1989. If I remember correctly, the vehicle he was in slipped down an embankment and crashed at the bottom of a gorge. The cause of the accident was presumed to be a landslide.’

  The archbishop’s eyes grew inscrutable. ‘Eduardo visited Breggia in August of that year,’ he said. ‘It was the driest month on record for the canton of Ticino in half a century.’ He reached inside the folder before him. ‘The police report did not comment on any significant geological disturbance in the area that would have accounted for the supposed ground movement. Furthermore, these pictures taken at the scene of the accident tell a different story.’

  He removed three prints and handed them across the desk.

  Alexa took the photographs and studied the images. They had all been taken from an elevated position and showed different views of a road that snaked along the side of a forested mountain. The land dropped away into a steep, green valley beyond the narrow shoulder that bordered the cracked asphalt.

  ‘There are two sets of tracks at the edge of the road,’ observed Jackson.

  She stared at the dark rubber streaks that marked the blacktop. It would have required a considerable amount of pressure on the tires to produce the imprints. She looked up at the archbishop. ‘Are you saying that the Cardinal’s death was not an accident?’

  ‘Yes,’ Lorenzio replied quietly. ‘I believe his car was deliberately pushed off that road. An analysis of the tire tracks by several private forensic experts hired by the Vatican support that theory. Another vehicle was present at the scene and was directly involved in the incident.’ A muscle twitched in his jaw. ‘The charred bodies of Eduardo and his assistant were eventually recovered from the burnt remains of the wreck a few days later. The boot of their car was riddled with bullet holes.’ He stared at his hands. ‘They were both close friends of mine.’

  ‘Why was this never made public?’ asked Jackson in a troubled voice.

  A sigh left Lorenzio’s lips. His lined face suddenly looked decades older. ‘For very good reasons, Professor Jackson. You see, Eduardo went to Breggia to investigate a disturbing rumor. It concerned the possible discovery of a historical document that would have put the cultural heritage and ideology of the Catholic Church in great jeopardy should it become common knowledge.’ He hesitated. ‘I take it you’ve heard of the Mutus Liber?’

  Jackson’s eyebrows rose. ‘The Wordless Book? Yes. It was an alchemist text and manual consisting of a series of fifteen illustrations that allegedly outlined a process for manufacturing the Philosopher’s Stone. There’s a hand-colored, copper-engraved copy of the plates in the Library of Congress in Washington. The authenticity of the claim aside, experts in the field of alchemy, theology, and philosophy have long argued that the images do not accurately represent the first manuscript. In fact—’ His eyes suddenly widened. ‘Wait, you’re not suggesting that Morettii was on the trail of the original text?’

  ‘That is exactly what I’m proposing,’ said Lorenzio calmly. ‘Although the manual’s author was said to have been a French apothecary in La Rochelle, the truth will probably turn out to be stranger than fiction,’ he continued, ignoring Jackson’s dumbfounded expression. ‘Unfortunately, Eduardo was murdered before he could uncover the veracity of the rumor. By the time a second contingent from the Church, of which I was part, travelled to Breggia and reached the abbey where the document was said to have been hidden, the complex had been burnt to the ground. The subsequent police investigation came to the conclusion that it was an act of arson. The culprit was n
ever found. There was, however, one witness.’

  The archbishop took another photograph from the document wallet and laid it on the desk. ‘A monk who survived the fire spoke of a man he saw near the abbey grounds the night the blaze started. We managed to trace some of the tourists who visited the monastery on that fateful afternoon and took copies of the pictures they had taken. This,’ he tapped the picture, ‘is the man the monk glimpsed that night.’

  Alexa’s breath froze in her throat as she gazed at the image. Although the distant figure was slightly blurred, she recognized his face and posture. It was the man with the red hair and deep-set gray eyes.

  ‘That’s Alberto Cavaleti,’ said Lorenzio.

  Jackson glanced at her with a frown. ‘It’s our guy from Istanbul.’

  ‘You’ve met him?’ asked the archbishop sharply.

  ‘I fought him last night,’ Alexa admitted reluctantly. She related the rest of their tale from the previous twenty-four hours.

  Lorenzio sat rigidly in his chair while he listened. ‘This is news indeed,’ he said after a short silence. He took a deep breath and released it slowly. ‘Cavaleti has not been sighted in public for almost five years,’ he explained at their puzzled expressions. ‘Which brings me to the second reason why Eduardo’s murder was never publicized. Shortly after the incidents in 1989, the Pope ordered the creation of an independent commission to investigate the sect behind these crimes. No one outside the Secretariat knows of the existence of this secret council. It answers directly to the Pontiff. I was placed in charge of that commission.’

  ‘This is—’ Jackson started to say in a dazed voice.

  ‘Does the sect have a name?’ Alexa interrupted.