“Who are you?” Giovanni asked.
“My name is Iddawg.”
“The Embroiler of Britain?”
“That I was.”
“Is it true you started the Battle of Camlann?”
“I claim that honor,” Iddawg said. “King Arthur wanted to make peace with Mordred.”
“You were the king’s messenger.”
“The most powerful man in the realm.” Iddawg took the poet’s elbow, drew him close, and whispered, “Amazing what one can accomplish with a few choice words in the right ear.”
“Giovanni!” Nadja screamed, above and behind him.
He saw the bridge overhead. A blade swung down. Giovanni ducked. The weapon sliced off Iddawg’s ear. The belligerent shade picked it back up and held it to the side of his head.
Giovanni broke free of Iddawg’s icy grip and saw his friends on the ridge above. They had climbed up already. The knight reached down with the Lance. Giovanni gripped it, and Marco pulled him to safety.
A foul air rose from the tenth ditch. Marco knew that smell. Plague.
“The Devil’s breath,” Giovanni said.
Marco saw shades heaped in darkness, wracked by sores and scabs, bruises and buboes. Wailing, the victims climbed over one another to escape the pestilence. They moaned and mumbled, unable to form coherent sentences. Giovanni managed to get a name from one—Sylvester II, a pope who dabbled in sorcery—but the shade was half-mad and would speak no further.
“Alchemists.” The poet called out: “Daedalus! Daedalus! Where are you?”
A voice groaned in answer. Marco found him waxed and feathered. Daedalus picked nervously at his scabs.
“Why do you pester me?” Daedalus asked.
“We saw Icarus in Limbo,” Giovanni said.
“My son? Please, don’t tell me how he suffers. I could not bear to hear it. I want to remember him as he was, yet in my mind he falls forever. Poor boy. It was all my fault.”
“He gave us a message.”
“Does he hate me?”
“Your son loves you and forgives you.”
Daedalus said nothing, but nodded weakly, and his eyes gave thanks before they wept.
A leprous man crawled into the lancelight. “Why do you carry that wicked weapon?”
“A holy weapon,” Marco said, “anointed in the blood of Christ.”
“In the blood of my king,” the shade replied.
“Who was your king?”
“Arthur, King of Britain.”
“Are you Merlin?” Giovanni asked.
“I am.”
“Then you know the Grail.”
Merlin nodded. “A greater enemy than Mordred. We lost many of our greatest knights in the quest for the Grail. They left and never returned.”
“I saw the cup,” said another shade, who was bearded and wore the robe and hat of a Persian magus. “I saw it at a great banquet. For us it was the cup of doom. Mane thecel phares.”
Marco remembered the words, which Rienzo had carved on the wall of his hermitage. “What does it mean?”
“My king once asked me that.”
“King Arthur?”
“Belshazzar, King of Babylon. He drank from the Holy Grail, which had been stolen from the Jews,” he said, scratching urticate skin. “I was there. I saw the writing on the wall. The hand of God appeared, and in His hand, like a finger, was a spear dripping blood, a spear much like the one you carry, and in blood God wrote: mane thecel phares. What did it mean? No one knew. I was the king’s astrologer but I could not answer the riddle. Only Daniel understood: the kingdom will fall.”
A pustular woman clawed to the top of the festering heap. A rabid man gnawed on her leg as the woman exclaimed, “That lance belongs to my son!”
“Who are you?” Marco asked.
“Mother of a great prince. With a single thrust of that lance my son killed his father and my brother.”
Giovanni said, “You are Morgan le Fay.”
“You are right.”
“The Lance does not belong to Mordred. It belongs to God.”
Nadja said, “What do you mean, his father and your brother?”
“Incest,” Giovanni said.
“I wanted a son,” said Morgan le Fay.
“So you slept with Arthur?” Nadja asked.
“A great son needs a great father. I disguised myself, sneaked into his bedchamber, and from brotherly love created—”
“A monster,” Giovanni said.
“A hero.”
“Who killed his own father.”
“What son does not dream of killing his father? Most are too weak. Not my boy. Not my beautiful Mordred.”
“The Holy Lance!” another shade cried out. He writhed on the ground in agony, bloated with dropsy, his skin blackened and blistered.
Marco looked down at the miserable creature. “Who are you?” he demanded.
“Peter. A poor monk. A prophet in my time.”
“What do you know of the Lance?”
“He discovered it,” Giovanni said. “Isn’t that right, Peter? Peter Bartholomew?”
Peter smiled. “So they say.”
“You found the Holy Lance at Antioch. The crusaders used its power to turned back the Saracens.”
“A miracle, really.”
“A pack of lies.”
“As God is my witness.”
“And the Devil your jailer. You are a charlatan.”
“Says who?”
“Look around you, Peter. You are punished with the forgers and counterfeiters.”
“Slander! Lies! Innuendo! You’re the charlatan, Giovanni Boccaccio. Oh, yes, I’ve read your work. Nothing but lies.”
“I’m a poet. My lies tell the truth.”
“But look who’s in Hell now.”
“Sorry. Just passing through.”
Peter raised a burnt hand, pointing to the Lance. “With a poor piece of forgery, if I’m any judge.”
“I agree,” said another disease-ridden shade. “That relic is a fake.”
“Who are you?” Marco asked.
“Christoforous. Because I based my greatest forgery on the legend of a cured leper, I am now condemned to leprosy.”
Nadja asked, “Who was the leper?”
“Emperor Constantine. I forged the Constitutum Donatio Constantini.”
“It’s a forgery?” Giovanni said, and laughed. “William would have loved to hear that.”
“I also did a brisk trade in relics,” said Christoforous. “Made a few Holy Lances myself, though Holy Grails were my specialty. Quite a demand for those. But let me ask you, brothers in the art, how did you get your Lance to glow like that? An impressive trick. Wish I’d thought of it myself. Essence of firefly, is it?”
“Are you sure this Holy Lance is a fake?” Giovanni asked.
“Without a doubt,” said Christoforous.
“I concur,” said Peter Bartholomew.
Giovanni turned to Marco. “If it’s a fake, we’re in deep trouble.”
Marco nodded, playing along. “Deep, deep trouble.”
“An ordinary lance would be worthless in Hell.”
“Yes,” Marco agreed, “but what if this Lance was anointed in the blood of Christ?”
The poet shrugged. “Only one way to be sure.”
Marco stabbed Peter’s thigh. Peter screamed as the Lance burned a hole through phantom skin. Then the knight stabbed Christoforous in the hand. The forger cried out in pain. The shades slunk away together, seeking solace among the damned.
“Nadja!” cried a sinner who lay trembling and feverish, her skin smoking like steam in winter.
“Helena?” Nadja said.
“It’s me.”
“Oh, poor Helena. You were alive when I left home.”
“You left a pestilence in your wake. It found me, Nadja, as it found your mother.”
“Why were you sent here?”
“Because of you.”
“Me?”
“And the Inquisitio
n. They made me say things.”
“What kind of things?”
“How you lured those boys into wicked orgies with your pretty face and your demonic attacks.”
“I was raped.”
“So you said.”
“You believe me, don’t you?”
“No one believes a witch.”
“But I’m not a witch. I never consorted with devils.”
Helena laughed. “If you came down here to consort with angels, you’ll be sorely disappointed.”
“You bore false witness against me.”
“I wasn’t the first.”
“Who was? Who gave my name to the Dominicans?”
“Not for me to say. But I truly thought you were a witch. At least, I came to think so, after the inquisitor told me what the others were saying.”
“But you knew me, Helena. You were my friend.”
“Don’t say that.”
“My best friend.”
“I’ll deny it,” said Helena. “I denied it before, I’ll deny it again. I’m a friend to no witches. Go away, Nadja. Look at what you’ve done to me.”
Beyond the last ditch of Malebolge, nearing the edge of the chasm, they heard a low rumble like a human voice.
“Raphél maì amecche zabì almi.”
Nadja saw dark towers rising up from the central pit of Hell. As she approached, the towers come into view, and she realized what they were.
“Giants?”
“Nephilim,” Giovanni said. “The noise you hear is Nimrod, who built the Tower of Babel. Because of this sin, he has no human language.”
Like the towers at Monteriggioni, giants ringed the abyss. Nadja looked down and saw needles of ice jutting up like spears at the base of the cliff. Hundreds of shades were impaled as if thrown down from a great height. Their phantom skin was frosted over. They twitched and moaned on cold skewers.
“Is that the bottom?” Marco asked. “The ninth level?”
Giovanni nodded. “Cocytus.”
“I expected fire, not ice.”
Nadja said, “There is no warmth this far from God.”
Circling the edge, looking for a way down, they saw Ephialtes, a giant who, with his brother, warred against God. He was bound five times with a chain around his body, and struggled so mightily against his fetters that the ground shook.
When the pilgrims reached a third frozen giant, the colossus spoke. “I am Anteaus. You are Marco da Roma, Giovanni Boccaccio, and Nadja of Munich.”
Marco said, “We came to see your master.”
“You are expected,” said Anteaus.
“Is there a way down?”
“There is.”
“Will you help us?”
“No. But I will take you to the Devil’s lair.”
Anteaus held out his hand. The pilgrims stepped into his open palm. Slowly, gently, the giant set them down at the bottom of the abyss.
CHAPTER 31
A frozen sea of tears sloped gently into a darkness unfathomed by grace, untouched by love. Nadja shuddered. This glacial plain was all that stood between them and the provenance of terror.
“Caina,” said Giovanni. “Betrayers of kin.”
Nadja heard a sound like a hailstorm, but saw no hail. A wind like the foehns of Bavaria pulsated over the ice. The Devil wind, she thought. The vast plain was studded with small mounds of ice. Thousands dotted the expanse like gravestones. On closer inspection, Nadja saw that these were not crystalline formations, but human heads, sinners encased in ice up to their necks. Their faces were livid, their eyes leeward and downcast to protect them from the wind. Nadja realized the sound she took to be hailstones was chattering teeth.
“Betrayers,” Giovanni said, “worst of all sinners.”
“Who did they betray?” Nadja asked.
“These, I believe, betrayed their families.”
The pilgrims stepped around the heads when they could, and over them when the population became too dense. Twice they doubled back to find a better path through the sinners. Some heads turned a little in the ice to follow their progress, though most of the mouths were frozen shut and many of the eyes had closed with frozen tears. Nadja tried not to look at the faces, but looked instead on the flat ice where she could set her next step. Several times the slippery base betrayed her feet, throwing her down hard on elbows and knees. Giovanni was having just as much trouble, but Marco used the Lance as a staff and did not fall. Each time he planted the Lance into the ice, the frozen surface melted a little, then refroze, leaving an impression. A dotted line trailed behind him.
Nadja was watching this when she tripped over one of the frozen heads. Her hands splayed on the ice. Her left cheek smashed against the unforgiving surface. It stung, then throbbed. She rolled over, sat up, and turned back to apologize to the sinner she had kicked.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and recognized the face: stern eyes and thin lips that rarely smiled. This was how she had looked in life, before the pestilence disfigured her. “Mama?”
Her mother’s face was frozen in tears, but the alluvium had cracked when Nadja kicked her. Nadja reached out and pulled the ice from her mother’s cheeks and lips.
When she was free to speak, the shade said, “Nadja? Is that you, child? My clumsy child?”
“It’s me, Mama.”
Her mother had always been a pious woman, attending church, confessing often, and raising her daughter to fear the Lord. What had happened? Why was her mother here, in this wellspring of evil?
“I knew you’d come,” the old woman said, nodding to the sound of cracking ice.
“Why?”
“For what you did to me.”
“I loved you.”
“You cursed me.”
“I came here to do God’s work.”
“God has abandoned you. Like your miserable father did.”
“God is with me now,” Nadja said.
“Look around you, child. You are in the Devil’s lair. The farthest place from God.”
“I brought Him with me,” she said. “In my heart.”
A cold cackle rattled her mother’s throat. Her lips formed a scornful grin. “Stupid girl. Foolish little whore. You saw the Devil and you called him God.”
“No.”
“You are cursed.”
“It is a gift.”
“Grandchildren are a gift. Children are a curse. But you wouldn’t know that, would you?”
“I tried, Mama.”
“What man will have you now?”
“Only God.”
“He sent you here. But I’m sure the Devil will have you. If he hasn’t already.”
“Don’t hate me, Mama.”
Nadja bent down to kiss her mother’s cheek, but the woman turned her head away, spurning her daughter’s love.
Then Nadja knew the truth. Perhaps she had always known it, but here in Caina, surrounded by the lost souls of those who betrayed their kin, Nadja could deny it no longer. Oh, Mama. The revelation overwhelmed her.
“It was you,” she said. “You told the priest I was the Devil’s spawn.”
“I made my confession.”
“You told them I was a witch.”
“You were always evil.”
“I wanted to be good.”
“You got it from your father.”
“What did I get from you?”
“I fed you, I clothed you, I kept you safe.”
“Did you ever love me?”
“You ask too much.”
Nadja took her mother’s face in her hands and kissed the frozen forehead. Her chapped lips adhered to the ice. When she pulled away she lost some skin. Nadja tasted warm blood and wiped it from her lips with the back of her hand.
“Bye, Mama,” she said. “I forgive you everything.”
Water flowed from her mother’s eyes. The shade opened her mouth to speak, but hesitated too long. Tears fell and froze, locking her visage in an icy rigor mortis, until her face became once more a mask of sorr
ows.
Giovanni paused and surveyed the frozen heads of the traitors. He’s here.
“Mordred!” Giovanni called out. “Where are you, Mordred?”
“Over here,” said a voice not far off.
Giovanni went to him. “Where is the Grail?”
“You carry the Holy Lance,” Mordred said to Marco, “yet you are not of the Round Table.”
“I am a Knight Templar.”
“Do you not remember me, Marco da Roma?”
“We have not met.”
“Oh, but we have. It was not the Lance you carried then.” Mordred’s laughter crackled over the ice. “You look confused. Did he take your memory, as well? That was a nasty trick. I will tell you everything, if you give me the Lance.”
“I give you nothing.”
“Then I give you this, Marco da Roma. A riddle: you are the oldest man alive; why are you not dead?”
“He’s a liar,” said Giovanni. “Don’t listen to him.”
“All men are liars,” said Mordred.
“You were Arthur’s son.”
“His nephew.”
“You were both, and you betrayed him.”
“My king, my father, my uncle—three betrayals for the price of one—yet I never betrayed the Grail. It should have been mine. Arthur was a foolish old man. By all the laws of Heaven and Earth, the relic should have passed to me.”
“You killed Arthur for the Grail?” Nadja asked.
“I did what I was born to do.”
“Slay your father?” asked Giovanni.
“I would have killed a hundred fathers and a thousand uncles and a million kings to attain my destiny.”
Giovanni looked over the ice. “This is your destiny.”
“Yes.” Mordred laughed. “I belong with the Grail.”
“Is it here?” the knight demanded.
“Close,” Mordred whispered.
“Where?”
“Very close.”
“Tell us.”
“Can’t you feel it?”
“No.”
“Because you are lost, Marco. All of you, lost. But I can feel it. Oh, yes. I feel it even now.” Mordred grinned. Shards of ice calved from his face and fell tinkling on the wind-swept ice that was his tomb. “It feels like victory.”
Leaving him, they walked toward the rhythmic wind and came to a place where shades were buried to their chins, unable to turn their heads. Marco saw one shade gnawing on the head of another, feeding on skull and brains.
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