As Nadja approached the Colosseum from the basilica of San Clemente, the massive circular walls of the amphitheater seemed to grow with every step. On her earlier visit to Rome, she had seen the Colosseum only from a distance, and thought it was as big as a cathedral. Now, seeing it close up, she knew it was the largest building she had ever seen.
“It must have been built by giants,” Nadja said.
“By men,” Giovanni assured her. “Great men who left their stamp upon the ages. Rienzo understood. He dreamed of recapturing the city’s glory.”
“And its decadence?” William asked. “Wasn’t it here they threw the Christians to the lions?”
“The Christians won, Father. The lions are gone.” He glanced at Nadja. “I think its safe to go inside.”
When Nadja stepped inside she wondered how safe it was. The walls were weathered and cracked and bore the burden of the sky. “It’s very old,” she observed.
Giovanni said, “The Colosseum has stood a thousand years.”
“It will not stand a thousand more.”
The poet answered in words Nadja could not comprehend:
Quandiu stabit coliseus, stabit et Roma
Quando cadit coliseus, cadet et Roma
Quando cadet Roma, cadet et mundus
“The Venerable Bede,” William said to Nadja. “‘While the Colosseum stands, Rome will stand. When the Colosseum falls, Rome will fall. When Rome falls, so will the world.’”
The pilgrims walked the circuit but did not climb down to the bottom, which was overgrown with grass and ivy and bracken. Ahead of them on the ambulatory an old man pulled a barrow filled with garments and blankets.
“Care for some clothes?” Marco asked Nadja.
Giovanni said, “Those come from the plague houses.”
They followed the barrow to where a section of the Colosseum floor was piled high with smoking ashes. The old man threw clothes on the smoldering heap, and watched them catch fire. Nadja saw bones in the ashes.
“So it’s come to this,” said William. “Cremated like pagans in a pagan shrine.”
“They died faster than they could be buried,” Giovanni said.
No need for lions, thought Nadja. Now they throw Christians to the fire.
Outside the Colosseum, near the Arch of Constantine, a crowd descended in such numbers that it seemed impossible to continue further. William hoped to avoid the throng, but Marco waded in. The friar grabbed Nadja’s hand and followed. Bodies jostled him. Twice he nearly fell, but Nadja helped him keep his feet. The knight seemed undeterred. The tallest man around, he shoved all others aside, creating a path toward the center to where everyone was looking.
The friar saw, in the midst of this ecclesia, a theater of blood. Three dozen flagellants, stripped to the waist and brandishing short whips, walked in a circle. They scourged their own backs with a zeal that would have shocked Peter Damian. The triple-pronged whips were spiked with shards of stone and glass, drawing blood as they slapped bare flesh with a sound like rolling thunder. The air trembled at it. The throng was led by two Franciscans friars with tattered robes, tonsured heads, gaunt bodies, and apocalyptic voices. As the flagellants circled, they chanted:
We whip ourselves to worship Christ,
Who for our lack was sacrificed.
He felt the lash upon His skin
To taste the fruit of Adam’s sin.
Because it is a blow to God
To spoil the flesh and spare the rod,
Our pain is felt, our penance dealt,
By scourge and scab and burning welt.
O sorry souls who take no side
For good or evil, woe betide!
O heathen hearts who scorn and flee
The waters of the baptistry!
O carnal curs who do not trust
In God, but give yourselves to lust!
O gluttons gorged on drink and sup
Who turn away the holy cup!
O hoarders, you who keep and count
What in the end will not amount!
O squanderers who spend and flaunt,
Unbridled by an idle want!
O wrathful souls with rage unfurled
To turn your hate upon the world!
O sullen souls whose anger delves
To turn your hate upon yourselves!
O heretics whose lies result
In twisting canon into cult!
O homicides who overwhelm
The portal of the mortal realm!
O suicides who would undo
What God Himself has given you!
O blasphemers who rail in vain
And burn God’s ears with your refrain!
O sodomites who flirt, pervert,
And furrow the infertile dirt!
O usurers who tender loans
Then dun the debt from skin and bones!
O panderers who are to blame
For luring others to their shame!
O sweet seducers tempting fate,
Suborning all to fornicate!
O flatterers with honeyed wit,
Who spin pure gold from purest shit!
O simonists who never fail
To offer offices for sale!
O fortune tellers who divine
By bird and beast and demon sign!
O grafters, you collecting alms
With sticky fingers, greasy palms!
O hypocrites who lie, and worse,
Who say one thing and act reverse!
O thieves, so nimble with the nim,
Forgetting that you rob from Him!
O evil counselors who steer
By pouring poison in the ear!
O sowers of discord whose art
Is rending mended things apart!
O alchemists who master tools
To transmute wise men into fools!
O counterfeiters who have doled
Till all that glitters is not gold!
O traitors, you who have betrayed
With outward smile and inward blade,
The Devil waits within the fire,
To punish sinners, dead and dire!
Beware the lure of lusty days!
Beware the call of evil ways!
Beware the life that sin defiles
And all the Devil’s clever wiles,
Or you will fall, as Satan fell,
From Heaven’s hall to burning Hell!
Rather than linger at the Forum, which was filled with pagan temples and the carcasses of cattle, the pilgrims pushed ahead, hoping to reach Marco’s villa before dusk. These streets were treacherous enough in daylight. Nadja did not care to meet the denizens of the dark.
As they rounded the Capitoline Hill, Nadja saw the unfinished steps leading up to Santa Maria in Aracoeli, the Franciscan church that had sheltered them on their initial visit, when they were seeking a man she had only dreamed of.
Marco studied the stairs, which ended two thirds the way up the hill. “Did they run out of brick?”
“Rienzo lost his throne,” Giovanni said. “The masons lost their funding.”
“It was the pestilence,” Nadja said. “The masons lost their lives.”
Giovanni shrugged. “Rienzo wanted a grand staircase for the Jubilee next year, but I doubt there’s going to be a Jubilee next year.”
Nadja said, “There might not even be a Rome.”
They abandoned the pilgrim’s path for the Tiber, walking past the imperial theater to reach the Ponte Cestio, where dead bodies were stranded at the roadside waiting for a cart. The river was fronted by ramshackle houses packed between edifices of ancient stone. Stairs descended to the river’s edge. Giovanni led the way. They rested with sore feet cooling in the water and watched fishermen on Tiber Island haul back their nets. One man cursed as he disentangled a carcass from his lines.
The river was rife with carrion: horses and dogs and children. Giovanni wondered how far the dead had traveled. Romans buried their dead outside the city walls or bur
ned them in the Colosseum. These bodies must have come from towns upriver, from Todi or Perugia or Città di Castello. Some, perhaps, had floated for days before passing through Rome to the port of Ostia in search of the endless sea.
With feet rested and muscles stiff, the company climbed back to street level and walked downriver to the Aventine Hill, through the districts of three rival families, the Savelli, the Caetani, and the Frangipane. At each district they were confronted by local militia, dagger-wielding bravoes less loyal to Rome than to their barons. William negotiated safe conduct in return for hearing confessions. The local priests had perished. Now everyone feared for their souls. One confession inspired the next, and by the time William uttered his last “Absolvo te,” the hills of Rome were already birthing shadows.
Marco’s villa stood majestic on the northwest slope of the Aventine with a view of the moonlit city. Across the river, torchlight marked Saint Peter’s in the distance. The pilgrims paused to admire the vista before resolving their climb at Marco’s front gate.
The iron latch was broken.
“It wasn’t broken two weeks ago,” Nadja said.
Marco swung the gate wide and entered. The others followed up stone steps to the portico. Marco pushed open the door and stepped into the front room, where high windows welcomed the moonlight. He heard footsteps inside: the slap of bare feet running on marble tiles, then falling silent.
He called out, “Hello?”
In the next room a wooden something scraped the floor. The sound of a jostled bench. And again, the sound of running feet. Marco chased the footfalls with his own, racing into the dining room, through the kitchen, and down the hall, where he caught sight of a child, a barefoot boy dressed in a dusty black tunic, who darted into a bedroom and leapt to the open window where Marco caught him by the ankle and hauled him back inside.
Holding the boy upside down, Marco demanded, “Who are you?”
“Please.”
The boy could not have been older than ten. He was unwashed and stank of death, though he showed no other signs of pestilence.
“Who are you?” Marco repeated, the irritation welling in his voice.
“Nobody.”
“Do you live here?”
“No. I mean, yes.”
“Which is it?”
“Please, sir.”
Marco gave him a shake. “Tell me, boy.”
“Three days. Only three.”
“Do you know me?”
“No, sir.”
“Have you seen me before?”
“No, sir.”
“The truth, boy.”
“Yes, sir. Trying, sir. Please, sir.” The boy was crying now. His face was turning red.
“I’ve seen you.”
“No, sir.”
“Yes. In the neighborhood. I’m sure of it.”
Was it true? He wanted it to be true. He wanted to remember this boy, this place.
The boy shook his head. Tears rolled down his forehead and splattered on the tile. “No, sir.”
“Whose place is this?”
The boy pointed to the testered bed. Marco saw a dead man lying in the linen: slack face covered with purple sores.
It’s not the boy who smells of death.
William spoke from the doorway. “His name was Tancredo. He told us you had gone south with the army.” The friar crossed himself. “He was your majordomo.”
CHAPTER 14
The boy’s name was Nek. He was nine years old. He claimed to have no family, said he never had a family, and denied angrily that his parents had fallen sick.
Nadja learned these things as she washed his hands and face in the cold bath. Nek’s dark curly hair was a matted nest for fleas and lice. Nadja did what she could to rid him of the vermin. The boy did not complain of this attention, nor did he seem to welcome it, and he only spoke to answer her questions. Truth and falsehood danced together in his words, and Nadja could not always tell one partner from the other. She hoped the boy would learn to trust her, but for now his words were few and his eyes were fearful and he trembled like a newborn kitten.
The men buried Tancredo behind the house. William spoke the prayers for the dead. Giovanni sang the Dies Irae.
When he went back inside, William found Nadja combing the boy’s hair, working through the knots. The friar had hoped to speak with her in private. Nadja was more open when they were alone, and there were things she might not say with the boy listening.
“Marco must come south with us,” he said.
Nadja’s brush caught in the boy’s hair. She pulled apart the tangle, and began brushing again.
William said, “We cannot stay here, Nadja. And we cannot take the boy.”
The brush snagged, and the boy cried out.
“I’m sorry,” Nadja said. “Hold still.”
“Don’t pull so hard,” the boy complained.
“Things are hard now, but they’ll be better soon.”
“They’ll get worse,” said William.
“Don’t scare the child.”
“Fear, too, is a gift from God.”
“How can things get worse?” said Nadja.
“You’ve seen it.”
“I did not see the boy. Why not? If my dreams are true, why didn’t I see Nek?”
“Because he’s not coming with us.”
“The boy, at least, is real.”
“We can take him to Santa Maria in Aracoeli. The Franciscans will care for him. Feed him. Cloth him. Teach him to love the Lord.”
“Does the Lord love him?”
“Very much.”
“So do I.”
“Then leave him here.”
Nadja continued brushing, and said no more.
Marco woke past midnight. The bedroom was dark and cool and redolent of roses. A soft wind billowed the curtains of the testered bed. Marco sat up slowly, quietly, trying not to wake the dead man beside him.
Tancredo, he remembered, but did not speak the name. Let him rest.
A sword lay on the floor. Marco went to pick it up. The weapon had no weight, but gleamed brightly in the moonlight.
Marco heard footsteps outside the door. He stepped into the hall, saw nothing there, and returned to the bedroom.
The bed was gone.
In its place, Marco found a suit of armor hanging on a post. A helmet was mounted above the breastplate. It looked like a Knight Templar clad in light and shadow.
“Hello,” Marco said.
From behind the visor, the knight of shadows echoed, “Hello.”
“Who are you?”
“Who are you?”
Now the voice was mocking him.
Marco raised his sword.
“I don’t remember.”
“I don’t—”
He swung the blade, decapitating the helmet from the post. It bounced against a wall, then came to rest at his feet. With the tip of his sword Marco opened the helmet’s visor, letting the last word escape.
“Remember.”
“How much do you remember?” William asked after Marco recounted the dream.
They stood together on the balcony, looking out past the Tiber River to Vatican Hill and beyond.
Marco said, “This is not my home.”
“Then you have no reason to stay.”
“You said it was.”
“I said this was your villa. Home is not a place. Home is not some piece of property. Everything you see belongs to God. Every place is God’s place. Give yourself to God and you will always feel at home.”
“I don’t believe in God.”
“Even the Devil believes in God.”
Marco laughed. “Well, then. That settles it. Who am I to argue with the Devil?”
“You are Marco da Roma.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“There is a mark upon your chest. Many men have worn this mark. They sacrificed their lives to protect the Grail. Now one man remains. The last Knight Templar. One man stands between this world
and utter darkness.”
“I don’t know that man.”
“You must find him in yourself,” said William. “It is time for you to be the man you are.”
Giovanni found Marco sitting in the pomegranate orchard behind the house, leaning against a slender trunk. He was dreading this conversation but had promised William he would make the effort. William refused to go south without Marco, and Giovanni needed to go south. All of his hopes had fled to Naples. He intended to follow them there, even if it meant making peace with this overgrown amnesiac.
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